why so much leftist infighting?

i find this article quite strange. it is written for adbusters magazine, a leftist magazine published out of canada, a magazine which claims to be anti-capitalist or at least anti-consumerist and anti-advertisement. but it is talking down to other leftists and insulting them, insulting the democrats and the liberals of the united states. of course it says “north american” instead of just referring to the united states, so i assume it is also insulting the leftists of canada, where this magazine is published. now the author is a contributing editor of rolling stone magazine, which can hardly be considered an anti-capitalist publication. i assume the author makes plenty of money. the author tries to accuse others of hypocrisy, but only implicates himself. his dissociation from calling himself “liberal”, after admitting that when other people do it it is cowardice, and after admitting that he agrees with liberalism, is complete cowardice. the problem is, there are too many people like him in the leading ranks of the democratic party and liberalism and leftist movements, people who try to be divisive and insult the masses that they should be rallying to the cause.

what kind of idiotic movement insults its own followers? the church of the subgenius does so, but that is because it is a postmodern satirical pseudo-religion. the democratic party and the liberal/progressive movement has no excuse. i support the democratic party and liberalism, and consider myself a liberal democrat. i am not afraid of taking on that identity. what is weird is, either a centrist or a hardcore leftist could author a critique of the type that this fellow wrote. but the real problem is, leftist movements have always had a great deal of infighting, especially at the top, in stark contrast to the well-organized cooperation of right-wing movements. we leftists are too willing to look for any problems in ourselves or our movement, too willing to question ourselves, but most importantly, too willing to air our dirty laundry regarding our self-doubts to the public.

those on the left-wing side of politics always seem a little too eager to attack each other, instead of focusing their attacks on the common enemy, the right-wing side. usually the people who do this attacking think they are doing their fellow left-wingers a favor and helping them out. they are almost always wrong. joe klein of time magazine is a typical centrist left-wing backstabber, who thinks his constructive criticism will help more than it hurts. no, it won’t. it’s criticism, not praise. and it’s in fricken time magazine, a magazine that lots of people of all political persuasions read. any help it does will be grossly outweighed by hurt. if those of us on the left do not even believe in our own ideology (if we even have an ideology), then how convincing does that make us look to someone who is neutral between left and right and defaults to being doubtful towards both?

there are plenty of publications such as the nation magazine which are entirely left-wing, and these could carry all the internal disagreements of the left, while keeping our inner disagreements out of publications that carry both sides. there is no reason to ruin our chances for success by discrediting ourselves out in the open in front of everyone. the right-wing side offers a unanimous message throughout the media, with no dissenting voices. you hear the same point of view from fox news, the wall street journal editorial page, the washington times, and right-wing talk radio. there may be some debate between right-wingers on minor minutiae of something, but not on major issues like whether president bush is good or bad, or whether it was right or wrong to invade iraq. if one side of the political spectrum agrees on everything, and the other side can’t seem to make up their mind on anything, people have a tendency to go with the side that at least agrees with itself.

i mean, i am not advocating being as completely monolithic and rigid in our groupthink as the right-wingers, by any means. but how often do you hear right-wing voices in the media seriously question whether they should support the republican party? it may have been happening a bit more recently, but not at all as much as the left-wing voices questioning whether they should support the democratic party. the republicans are a marriage of convenience between 2 natural enemies: the amoral wealthy elitists who make money for large corporations off their political connections, and the simple folk who inhabit our nation’s heartland and believe in fundamentalist preachings. those groups have completely divergent best interests and political agendas. one group has no morals whatsoever and just wants to steal money from everyone else while nobody is looking, and the other group has too many moral values, many of which are completely wrong, because of their obsessive biblical literalism. why do these 2 groups work together? the amoral wealthy folk who want to make money off us mainly care about economic issues, while the fundamentalist religious folk are obsessed with puritanical values about sex and mainly care about social issues. and on issues of national security, both sides can embrace war, either through amoral war profiteering, or through the religious doctrine of “just war theory”. mainly the reason the 2 sides avoid conflict is their political leaders know not to get in the way of the other side, because they both support the same political party, and, love it or hate it, their fortunes rise or fall together. in the end, that is the only real reason these 2 forces are allied with each other. and basically the amoral war profiteers have proven to have more influence in washington, while the religious right turn out to be less influential, whenever they actually disagree on an issue. so the religious right can never actually have an open conflict with the wealthy, despite how jesus famously condemned the wealthy to almost-certain damnation in hell, comparing their chances at salvation to the chances of putting a camel through the eye of a needle. the religious right cannot be antiwar, despite jesus’s strong pacifist stance, because the military-industrial complex votes republican. so millions of americans have been enslaved in the voting booth to fundamentalist preachers who are mere pawns in the hands of politically well-connected billionaires and multimillionaires. this shaky alliance only seems sturdy because they keep their disputes out of public view. there are only a small number of people in charge and they all know each other... why should they air their dirty laundry in public?

but those of us on the left never know when to stop. we verbally attack each other all the time. liberalism and the democratic party are both sort of shaky, fractious coalitions, but then again, liberalism is the democratic party and the democratic party is liberalism, or at least it would be that way if things worked the way they were supposed to work. of course we all know that conservatism is the republican party and the republican party is conservatism. what republican politician would ever deny being a conservative? people are proud to call themselves conservatives. yet democratic politicians shudder at the term “liberal”, and it probably gives them nightmares at night. people are so afraid of being associated with 1 little word, and for what? it is ridiculous, the cowardice. now it is true that true liberals who stuck with the liberal ideology would never be able to “sell out to the man” and be buddies with big business and get corporate contributions in big numbers. the democratic leadership council and bill clinton were the ones who found a money source for the the democrats, who had been tired of losing presidential elections to people like ronald wilson reagan and george herbert walker bush. and what was that money source? the same corporations who gave money to the republicans! it turns out amoral big businesspeople are willing to pay off any crooked politician to enact their economically ridiculous policies.

but what is the basis for this amoral capitalism of big business, and how does it differ from a more moral version of capitalism? it turns out that the amoral, evil school of thought in economics is known as the “neoclassical” school of thought. it is based on the “classical” school of thought that was built on a house of cards and turned out to be dead wrong about everything once the great depression hit in the 1930’s. world war ii ended the great depression by essentially turning the united states into a command economy like under communism, but only temporarily, and then once the war was over, the economy was quickly and efficiently transitioned back to capitalism, in a transition that had been planned in advance. we got out of the great depression through a socialist transition back towards eventual capitalism. the neoclassical and classical schools of thought both believe in “free trade” and other big lies like keeping taxes as low as possible and having as few regulations as possible both being in the public interest, regardless of circumstance. economists tend to oversimplify things, and need to adopt a more circumstance-oriented view of reality, dealing with each circumstance uniquely, as best suits that particular circumstance. anyway, neoclassical views of economics tend to lead to the same results as classical views of economics: large corporations do extremely well, and the gap between the rich and poor gets bigger all the time. there is another, more moral version of capitalism, where the false idol of the market is not worshiped as infallible, and market failure is taken seriously. neoclassical economists make unrealistic claims of universal human rationality which are completely bogus, and they use fatally flawed, grossly oversimplified economic models to misrepresent a highly complex and dynamic reality that is incapable of such simple description. having taken 4 university economics classes myself and having done exceptionally well in them, i can tell you for certain that what i studied was not how the economies of the world actually behave, but what existing popular economic models claim is the behavior of the economies of the world, both in microeconomics and macroeconomics. the mathematics is beautiful in its simplicity, but things are just not that simple in real life.

and really, why are leftists such infighters? is it because we are immune to groupthink, or because groupthink operates differently on us leftists than how it operates on right-wingers? if you look at all of the socialist and communist political groups in the united states and their history, for instance, you will find that they have suffered this problem of infighting a great deal throughout their history, and a similar problem has plagued the “internationals”, which are international socialist organizations. why was it the democratic convention of 1968 that had so much infighting, and not the republican one? nixon, ford, reagan, and bush the first all would have fallen short from the ideological litmus test of today’s conservative republican movement, yet the republicans always rally to support their party and try to bring along as many non-partisans as they can in voting republican. the 2006 election was no different; the republicans just did quite badly in convincing anyone who was not a republican to vote for them last year, but it was not for lack of trying, or for lack of a unified message. they had been hit on all fronts throughout 2005 and 2006, and they were simply on a sinking ship. the mark foley sex scandal just sealed the deal of their failure, but hurricane katrina and tom delay’s legal troubles were what caused the failure in the first place. now sure there were some conservative commentators who deserted the sinking ship of the republican party when it was greatest in need, but those commentators are either simply opportunists who sense it when public opinion shifts, or perhaps they were actually expressing their real opinions. those commentators will probably all be back on board in the 2008 presidential election, supporting the republicans again. they probably just need to show that they are not complete partisan hacks every once in a while, in order to create the illusion that their opinions are any more worthwhile than anyone else’s. but this dissension among the ranks was an anomaly of 2006, and it went against the general rule for how conservatives behave. perhaps they had just finally seen so much overwhelming evidence that the point of view they had been advocating was wrong that they finally just accepted reality. let us hope not, because the longer conservative commentators live in a fantasy land, the better the chance liberals have at beating them in the real world. we liberals are still the political underclass, the one nobody wants to admit to being a member of. changing our stripes and calling ourselves progressives just shows our cowardice and shows the conservatives that we are on the run. but if you have read the communist manifesto, half of it is devoted to attacking other socialist schools of thought that existed when it was written, in 1848. and communists have never tried to pretend to be anything other than communists; the communist party of the united states had its peak during the times of mccarthyism because all the publicity got people interested in it and some of them joined. those cowards who are afraid to be called liberals, who needs ’em? they are losers anyway. i for one am a winner and i am a liberal too. nobody can ever extinguish the flame of liberalism. it will keep flaming away forever. ha ha.

but liberalism makes a lot of sense compared to conservatism. conservatives are torn between 2 different pressure groups, big business and the religious right. liberals have no such problems. liberals help out many different interest groups, such as environmentalists, feminists, racial minorities, homosexuals, and any other oppressed minority group, assuming it is a group made up of people who can vote. yes it is true, fetuses developing inside mothers’ wombs do not qualify for liberal assistance, but this is because their needs are less important than the mothers’ needs. try and understand, fetuses. your mothers do not want you to be born, and you would only end up being unwanted in this world. maybe someone would adopt you though. oh well. it is not fair to put women through 9 months of pregnancy. i am a man, so i cannot possibly understand how horrible pregnancy must be. i must be supportive of a woman’s right to do whatever the hell she wants, as long as it helps improve my chances of having sex. ok, so we liberals might not be perfect on every issue. we are sure right on a lot more of them than the republicans! besides, when is the last time anyone ever condemned abortion without resorting to religious dogma? it is not like fetuses are sentient beings anyway. they are in a pre-sentient stage of being. i still think liberals are right on pretty much every issue where they disagree with conservatives. now, those who criticize us for not going far enough in taking issue with conservatives on even more things, that is valid, but there are only so many things we can make into issues before we run out of issues. there is a certain quota, a certain number of issues which is the maximum amount the public can consider at once. any issue that does not make the quota will get ignored by the mass media and most of the public. so maybe we are not always making the right issues the top ones, but who controls which issues become the top issues? either politicians or the media. i think they both feed on each other, really. politicians only have 1 natural predator: journalists. and journalists only have 1 natural predator: politicians. they are both at the top of the food chain. and they respond to poll results, despite the fact that poll results respond to news events in a delayed reaction, and the politicians could simply respond to news events immediately and avoid this delay in dealing with reality. of course journalists wait for poll results too, to avoid saying anything controversial and figure out which issues they need to pretend not to have any opinions on. journalists and politicians both need to avoid being human. journalists have to avoid having opinions and politicians have to avoid doing or admitting to anything bad. so journalists hide all the opinions and politicians hide all the facts, and in the end, nobody really knows anything.

so why all the leftist infighting? it is because leftists do not respect authority figures, and have the same anti-authority instinct as libertarians and anarchists. there are no authority figures like ronald reagan (authority figure of conservatives) that all leftists would look up to. leftists are the ones who want positive change to something new, but it is really hard to define exactly what we want. like if you reject both communism and free-market capitalism, what are you left with? many options, but which to pick? probably just a regulated form of capitalism with antitrust laws and consumer protections and such, if you are a politician. but notice that lately politicians have been much more likely to help us out as consumers than help us out as workers, even though most of us do both consumption and production. this is because of that democratic coziness with industry, to try and sweep the rug out from under the republicans by taking away their money machine, or at least to get in on half the money corporations give to politicians. but the wealthy have the last laugh, because they have bought and paid for both political parties, and they also control the “science” of economics, by using economics against the economists. after the failure of classical economics, neoclassical economics came back because it was funded by the wealthy, in order to advance theories whose advocacy would benefit the wealthy. this simply demonstrates how there is no such thing as a “social science”; it dilutes the meaning of real science. economics is just political theater whose debates are in the language of mathematics, but if your debate team is better funded than the other debate team, more people will want to be on your side and get some of the money. economists who boldly challenge illogical orthodoxy make a lot less than those who mindlessly adhere to it. and that orthodoxy only came about because economists failed to understand that the laws of economics apply to economics departments at universities and individual economists, and that big business had a certain point of view it wanted economists to represent. liberals had better be above that, and be above being bought out. but it is not likely, because human beings are universally corruptible. maybe that is the reason for the infighting: a fight between corporate sellouts and those who still hold true to liberal values. but that still does not explain why even the followers of leon trotsky are unable to maintain a coherent, unified movement. i doubt any of them have been bought out by corporations; they are too unimportant and insignificant. there is some larger disorganizing principle at work here, destroying things, and i still have not been able to figure it out. perhaps each person thinks they know better than everybody else. i think that is the most likely disorganizing principle that destroys leftist movements. that is probably why cindy sheehan had a falling-out with the peace movement. the universal assumption of personal intellectual superiority. if this assumption were dismantled, there could be broad left-wing solidarity from the far left all the way straight through to the center. hmm... i think i know how i would phrase it... “you are stupid. if you do not believe you are stupid, you are twice as stupid as someone who does. and yes, this applies to you.” a bit long though. i need to make it into a short little slogan or soundbite. “hey stupid. yeah, you. maybe someone else is right and you are wrong. think about it.” there has to be some way to attack the intellectual arrogance that seems to be the heart of the problem. i mean, it is good for people to think for themselves, but sometimes people think they are thinking for themselves when really they are not thinking at all. left-wing critics of the democratic party always seems to be overflowing with intellectual arrogance and a smug self-congratulatory attitude of infallibility, at least if they are the ralph nader type. if only those people would get over their own petty egos, they would see that their fortunes rise and fall with those of the democratic party.