People aren’t just angry about what they lack. They’re angry about what others have. Populist rage isn’t driven by poverty alone, but by the sense of being left behind while others soar.
The tragedy? That class resentment got redirected into culture wars, instead of solidarity.
That's the thing: it's about relativity rather than absolutes. If everyone was poor or rich it wouldn't be such a problem but the gap between the haves and have nots is what offends Marx and the populists' sense of justice so much. Today's left is wounded more by this gap in culture towards its less prefered groups; the populists more geographically and economically
as for solidarity you are right. It's a shame that it all has led only to more division and hatred. We all want to be heard I guess and when we don't feel heard the worse angels of our nature emerge
Yes, exactly, the 𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘤𝘦𝘪𝘷𝘦𝘥 distance matters as much as the material one. When that gap grows too wide, people stop seeing a shared fate. And when solidarity fails, grievance looks for new targets.
It’s tragic how often those targets are neighbors instead of systems.
Yep I think the narrative thing comes into play here as well: we lose solidarity when our filter bubble's narrative turns us against other groups. At least in the age of the monolithic media there was a certain homogeneity. The house as they say wasn't divided against itself (at least not nearly as much)
Yes indeed. There's a great book (going by your article's depth I suspect you may have read it) called Kill All Normies which does a great job of charting how the radical elements on tumblr and 4chan went to war with each other around gamergate before both rivers emptied into twitter giving us the great culture wars of 2016. Definitely a lot of Shadow dancing going on between those groups
I know of that book, but my main influence here is an older one called Depth Psychology and A New Ethic, about how setting up a society wide ideal inevitably creates a shadow reaction. The book didn't address that directly, but I'm pretty sure it saw the Nazis as one such shadow reaction. I see the 60s, the hippies, as another shadow reaction, probably the French Revolution too.
Both are collectivist mindsets. The right wing militaristic concept does tend more toward strong arming, but the Marxian and to a lesser degree the socialist and democratic concepts are impracticable--mere facades--beyond a very small scale. The U.S. Republic experiment--as well as the Roman Republic, for that matter--exploded into militaristic empires once they got beyond the "farmer, citizen, soldier" stage, and the Communist experiments of the 20th century started as militaristic enterprises destined for totalitarian rule from the beginning.
Beyond the scale where everyone can know everyone and bad actors can be sniffed out quickly and effectively, no collective form of government can be anything but a facade, despite our best intentions, is what I think.
That's analysis. Still not at the synthesis stage yet, as in "so where do we go from here"?
Agreed. Also a shame that violence is required for such revolutions, as those who are willing to do such violence are naturally going to want to perpetuate it. Can such a revolution--or evolution?--occur without violence?
It's not so much the violence of the revolutions that bothers me—by which I mean the violence of the coup. It's the violence that comes after. The only revolution that avoided this in my knowledge is the American one and I think that's because there was an ocean of distance between the ruling class and the upstarts; in most cases the ruling class live next door. Although, that's not quite satisfying. I think maybe Sowell's Constrained vs Unconstrained Visions matter as well. The American Revolution was more of a Constrained affair (though Jefferson and Madison would certainly fall in the other camp) which avoided the purity spiral that tends to go with the radical unconstrained visionairies
To answer your question I don't think it can happen without violence (maybe without bloodshed in theory) but I think the American Revolution is the poster child for a good revolution (and I'm sure I'm overlooking elements of that history. Shay's Rebellion comes to mind)
It's an excellent point you make about the purity spiral. Fanaticism seems to often be the primary reason for the perpetration of violence after the intended goals of a revolution are met. Still, though it seems on the surface an unrealistic ideal, I suspect that a nonviolent revolution could be possible within a culture where the majority of individuals have a proper moral grounding... though I admit I'm still feeling out what that might be.
Ochlocratic that's a new one for me! Here's the way I see it and let me know if you agree. I think that right-wing populism leads to a strongman's rule whether it's Caesar or Trump. Marxism tends to the same in fairness but that's the Leninist turn in Marx's thinking. Actually Marx's "dictatorship of the proletariat" was probably more likely to be akin to mob rule though he saw it more as a group self-organising than the anarchy of a mob 🤔
People aren’t just angry about what they lack. They’re angry about what others have. Populist rage isn’t driven by poverty alone, but by the sense of being left behind while others soar.
The tragedy? That class resentment got redirected into culture wars, instead of solidarity.
That's the thing: it's about relativity rather than absolutes. If everyone was poor or rich it wouldn't be such a problem but the gap between the haves and have nots is what offends Marx and the populists' sense of justice so much. Today's left is wounded more by this gap in culture towards its less prefered groups; the populists more geographically and economically
as for solidarity you are right. It's a shame that it all has led only to more division and hatred. We all want to be heard I guess and when we don't feel heard the worse angels of our nature emerge
Yes, exactly, the 𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘤𝘦𝘪𝘷𝘦𝘥 distance matters as much as the material one. When that gap grows too wide, people stop seeing a shared fate. And when solidarity fails, grievance looks for new targets.
It’s tragic how often those targets are neighbors instead of systems.
Yep I think the narrative thing comes into play here as well: we lose solidarity when our filter bubble's narrative turns us against other groups. At least in the age of the monolithic media there was a certain homogeneity. The house as they say wasn't divided against itself (at least not nearly as much)
I also feel liberal cultural dominance was a heavy factor in the rise of MAGA.
https://squarecircle.substack.com/p/maga-as-the-liberal-shadow
Yes indeed. There's a great book (going by your article's depth I suspect you may have read it) called Kill All Normies which does a great job of charting how the radical elements on tumblr and 4chan went to war with each other around gamergate before both rivers emptied into twitter giving us the great culture wars of 2016. Definitely a lot of Shadow dancing going on between those groups
I know of that book, but my main influence here is an older one called Depth Psychology and A New Ethic, about how setting up a society wide ideal inevitably creates a shadow reaction. The book didn't address that directly, but I'm pretty sure it saw the Nazis as one such shadow reaction. I see the 60s, the hippies, as another shadow reaction, probably the French Revolution too.
Both are collectivist mindsets. The right wing militaristic concept does tend more toward strong arming, but the Marxian and to a lesser degree the socialist and democratic concepts are impracticable--mere facades--beyond a very small scale. The U.S. Republic experiment--as well as the Roman Republic, for that matter--exploded into militaristic empires once they got beyond the "farmer, citizen, soldier" stage, and the Communist experiments of the 20th century started as militaristic enterprises destined for totalitarian rule from the beginning.
Beyond the scale where everyone can know everyone and bad actors can be sniffed out quickly and effectively, no collective form of government can be anything but a facade, despite our best intentions, is what I think.
That's analysis. Still not at the synthesis stage yet, as in "so where do we go from here"?
Yep I think scale is a major challenge and the gravity seems to pull it all towards militaristic imperialism. Shame really
Agreed. Also a shame that violence is required for such revolutions, as those who are willing to do such violence are naturally going to want to perpetuate it. Can such a revolution--or evolution?--occur without violence?
It's not so much the violence of the revolutions that bothers me—by which I mean the violence of the coup. It's the violence that comes after. The only revolution that avoided this in my knowledge is the American one and I think that's because there was an ocean of distance between the ruling class and the upstarts; in most cases the ruling class live next door. Although, that's not quite satisfying. I think maybe Sowell's Constrained vs Unconstrained Visions matter as well. The American Revolution was more of a Constrained affair (though Jefferson and Madison would certainly fall in the other camp) which avoided the purity spiral that tends to go with the radical unconstrained visionairies
To answer your question I don't think it can happen without violence (maybe without bloodshed in theory) but I think the American Revolution is the poster child for a good revolution (and I'm sure I'm overlooking elements of that history. Shay's Rebellion comes to mind)
It's an excellent point you make about the purity spiral. Fanaticism seems to often be the primary reason for the perpetration of violence after the intended goals of a revolution are met. Still, though it seems on the surface an unrealistic ideal, I suspect that a nonviolent revolution could be possible within a culture where the majority of individuals have a proper moral grounding... though I admit I'm still feeling out what that might be.
The conspicuous connection between Marxian and MAGA populism is the ochlochratic tendency and the ability of populist ideologues to manipulate it.
Ochlocratic that's a new one for me! Here's the way I see it and let me know if you agree. I think that right-wing populism leads to a strongman's rule whether it's Caesar or Trump. Marxism tends to the same in fairness but that's the Leninist turn in Marx's thinking. Actually Marx's "dictatorship of the proletariat" was probably more likely to be akin to mob rule though he saw it more as a group self-organising than the anarchy of a mob 🤔