Leighton Woodhouse writes thoughtfully today about a schism on the American political left, and argues that “left libertarianism” founded on “the cult of the individual” has prevailed. I’ve been thinking almost exactly the opposite, but I don’t regard it as a settled question. What’s clear is that “the left” as we’re currently experiencing it has been disordered and remodeled, precise outline TBD, and is now trapped in a downward spiral of pathologies.
I see two traditions on the American political left.
One is a tradition skeptical of authority, or aggressively hostile to it: Striking miners battling Coal and Iron Police, or Pinkertons, or Colorado sheriffs, or the National Guard; Wobblies fighting cops in the street; Great War-era socialists attacking the military draft, and going to prison for it; the Weatherman planting bombs in police and military offices. This tradition on the left views government as authority, a repressive servant of the status quo — “the executive committee of the bourgeoisie.” Leftists in this tradition say that of course government serves capitalism and corporate power, and of course the government isn’t on our side. Go back to the Coal and Iron Police to see how radical labor activists saw them: state-sanctioned police, with badges, on the private payroll of the industrialists. The young radical George Orwell, writing about his time fighting in Spain: “When I see an actual flesh-and-blood worker in conflict with his natural enemy, the policeman, I do not have to ask myself which side I am on.”
The other is a tradition centered on the supposedly inherent decency, wisdom, and fairness of government, a tradition that runs through the capital-p Progressive Era and Woodrow Wilson, to the New Deal, and onward into the Great Society. In this tradition, state power is benevolence itself, and points its kindness downward. Government interposes itself between the downtrodden worker and the power of the wealthy, ensuring the dignity of the poor. Tax the rich! In this tradition, government represents our best selves, our highest yearning for a better world. Why, just look at how much more equitable the progressive income tax made our social order, back when marginal tax rates were so much more fair at the top. Government serves, protects, nurtures: It’s the tool of the ordinary man, offering the noble guarantees of Social Security and Medicaid. Of course government is on our side, fellow downtrodden, and we need more of it.
Those two traditions don’t fit together, though the obvious way to square the circle is to say that a Bill Ayers opposes the power of the state when it opposes him, and embraces it if he thinks his side has come to control it. This would mean that there aren’t two ideological traditions — just two different instrumental postures. But no one who survived the Ludlow Massacre thought the government was a benevolent servant of the working man.
As Leighton Woodhouse notes, we have a good deal of what looks like anti-authority leftism in our cities, in the form of movements that call for the end of mass incarceration, the defunding of the police, and the transition to a social services model in response to homelessness and drug addiction. In this view, rising crime and growing homelessness are signs of urban leftists rejecting authority as a tool. Homelessness is not a crime, you fascists!
But I’ve written before about the incredible strangeness of progressive political columnists denouncing Donald Trump’s vicious authoritarianism, and then proudly pivoting to an expression of their approval of the warm and caring Justin Trudeau — who cracked down on incipient Trumpism in his country by boldly freezing the bank accounts of dangerous participants in the evil right-wing truck convoy. When government freezes the bank accounts of protesters, government is fighting against authoritarianism, obviously. More government power means less authoritarianism!
In practical terms, the left’s turn toward the ironclad embrace of state power is everywhere: The NSBA letter and Merrick Garland’s response. The metastasizing January 6 investigation, leading to raids and arrests for being near the Capitol without going inside. The aggressive federal arrests of pro-life protesters. Vaccine mandates, lockdowns, mask mandates, school closures, Gretchen Whitmer’s existence in general. And the incredible strangeness of strong, pro-Antifa leftists like Caroline Orr Bueno who denounce American fascists for…criticizing the FBI, because criticizing authority is authoritarian.
Gideon’s Trumpet liberalism celebrated the growth of individual rights against the power of the state; 21st-century progressives are appalled by Heller, which they believe invented a fake individual right that really belongs only to government. I wish I could go back in time and show that argument to Robert F. Williams or Huey Newton.
We had two political traditions on the left, but we lost one. What it looks like to me is that the tradition of the statist political left took the tradition of the anti-statist left out behind the barn and strangled it to death. There is now on the American political left only the view that government is benevolent, and dissent against its institutions is inherently an assault on the moral decency of the state. Stop criticizing the FBI, fascist! Restrictions specific to individual elements of government action — local policing is racist, so we should have less of it — strike me as special pleading for narrow cut-outs in the face of a rising wave of fanatical and repressive statism. But compare this to Leighton Woodhouse’s view that “left libertarianism” has prevailed, and let the argument begin.
As a child of the 70s and 80s, I remember being incredibly skeptical of the government (but alas, raised as a democrat). When I went to college, I learned all about the New Deal and the Great Society and how important and critical it was to the development of American society. For years, I held those two opposing concepts in my brain at the same time, thinking they were both true (without really questioning it). Then came 2020 and the aftermath of that. Which radicalized me in ways I still can’t properly communicate and exposed the ridiculous dichotomy of these concepts. I suspect this is way more common then the enemy media will ever understand.
The FBI is an “institution to hold power accountable”? Right... and war is peace, freedom is slavery, and ignorance is strength. I’d also add: fear is virtue, and obedience is courage.