What do you think of the following so-called critique against the left by Malcom Kyeyune, a “Swedish socialist”?
I think Kyeyune is being cynical toward the professional/managerial class (PMC), and maybe he is also pandering to the political right in his disparagement of AOC. Kyeyune’s eloquent insults don’t add rigor to his analysis of the political economy.
But as for the professional-managerial class, the PMCs, their solidarity with the rest of us in opposition to the systemic abuses of the super-wealthy is key.
Doctors, engineers, attorneys, scientists, non-monopolistic entrepreneurs…etc actually create goods and services that benefit society.
By contrast, individuals cannot amass billions of dollars without a rigged system allowing it.
Such extreme wealth concentration threatens both democracy and prosperity.
Let the brilliant people in business create as they will but don’t let them be monopolists. Don’t let them buy politicians. Don’t let them wage war on the middle class. Don’t let them run the country over a cliff.
Dreher seeks to write as a thoughtful conservative. But his article does not seem to address big money control over government and society, which in my opinion is the root issue.
Dreher also references Julius Krein’s article. Krein’s data about the gap between the PMCs wealth and that of the 1 percent and .1 percent is important.
But, contrary to Krein’s claim that change will only come from a clash between the PMCs and the 1/.1 percent, history shows the important role that non-elites play regarding reform and revolution.
For what my opinion is worth, I disagree with Kyeyune’s claim that the left should discard cultural progressivism.
In my opinion, the problem with the Democratic Party and mainstream liberals is the compartmentalized framing of social justice whereby, for example they present a sort of classist anti-sexism, and classist anti-racism, instead combining those issues.
I can’t see how any progressive movement could extricate economic from racial issues.
Posturing and virtue signaling from many Democrats is a function of neglecting both classism and structural racism.
It’s quite a stretch for Kyeyune and Dreher to conflate the Democratic Party’s corporatism with the failure of “the left” and to claim that the self-righteous identity politics of mainstream liberals represents the “left.”
Calling the Democratic Party and their corporate liberal media “the left” distracts from our capacity to actually discuss the issues our country faces.
Kyeyune’s article, in my opinion, is unfocused and cynical in conflating liberals with “the left” but I find helpful the combined effect of Dreher’s article in the American Conservative and Krein’s in American Affairs.
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