The New Reds, Part Deux
I doubt that it’s just my own wishful thinking, or that of others, that caused me to say “…we’re the new Reds“. Rather, I’ve been persuaded by mounting evidence that, in slow motion perhaps, there is a discernible paradigm shift now underway that will redefine the political meanings of “Left” and “Right” and, ultimately, rock American and global politics to its very foundations.
As I’ve said before (and yes, I do use that phrase a lot):
…it could be said that the state socialism inspired by Marx hijacked that historically libertarian “left†and that these several years after the near global meltdown of state communism, a mere blink of the eye in the grand sweep of history, is potentially just a transition period in which a drifting “left wing†that itself ranges from moderate to radical has been in search of a new radical creed to orient itself on. I and others like me seek to provide that radical creed by further refining and evangelizing the thought of men like Rothbard and Konkin.
In short: We’re the Libertarian Left, and we’re the new Reds.
The existence of Reds implies the existence of Pinkos. As I started out explaining, some people will take a while to personally come to terms with the futility of political reformism and embrace a revolutionary approach. I want to encourage them to do so as quickly as possible, but that is a deeply personal matter of conscience and not to be taken lightly. I respect that.
Well, the Pinkos are coming out of the woodwork, Goddess bless ‘em.
About a year ago, I came to these pages, intrigued by sentiments and ideas that were familiar yet oddly out of place. I consider myself economically conservative yet socially liberal. [emphasis added]
Damn! That rings a freakin’ bell. Where have I heard sentiments like that before? Maybe it was here:
Quite counter-intuitive to Chinese intellectuals, “conservative” in contemporary America means, economically, less government and more market elements, whereas “liberal” denotes more government intervention…
Besides economic affairs, another area where Conservatives and Liberals are deeply divided is in the sphere of social affairs. Generally the Conservatives cherish traditional social values such as marriage, family, and faith, while the Liberals are more tolerant towards unorthodox values such as abortion and gay rights.
You may also be familiar with the word “libertarian”, which is gaining steam in America today, particularly among young people. In a word, Libertarians are economically conservative and socially liberal. They strongly believe in individual freedom, both economically and socially, and believe that government should be inactive basically in any areas. People have the right to do whatever they want, they argue, provided that they do not hurt others.
Now, back to our DailyKos “New Pinko” moderate libertarian diarist:
I like the free market and I think the government should keep its fiscal house in order, but I also think that who I associate with and what I do behind closed doors is nobody’s business but mine, and certainly not Uncle Sam’s. This is a set of beliefs that, I thought, made me a right-winger.
Yet here I was, reading posts on an ostensibly left-wing web site, and agreeing more often than disagreeing. At first I thought it was that my beliefs had changed, and that I was mellowing into a liberal with age. But then I realized that it was not I who was moving, it was the ground moving underneath me. The Right was morphing itself into an unrecognizable NeoCon monster, and many of the ideas I espouse were being taken up by the Left in response.
There is indeed a change underway and I don’t think I’m going to far out on a limb to say that you’re going to see a lot more of that kind of sentiment in coming years.
It would be nice if we, my comrades and I, could take credit for it. Perhaps in some small way we partially can. Massive political paradigm shifts, though, revolutions in the most profound sense of the term, are often explained by sociologists as arising from failure of a ruling class to maintain its own internal cohesion, thereby succumbing to factionalism that fatally loosens its grip on power.
The job of savvy revolutionaries is to exploit such crises of the ruling class when they naturally arise, and we can do that without firing a shot. As anarchists, we have the luxury of having no need to seize power. We have only to debunk the superstitions that apologists for political power hide behind.
Share This
[...] I’ve said it before and more than once — and others have both alluded to it and magnificently expounded upon the underlying ideas in scholarly terms… We’re the Libertarian Left, and we’re the new Reds. [...]
[...] The fact also remains that a lot of well-intentioned libertarians who aspire toward principled behavior, including some who see themselves as more Left than Right, remain attached to counter-productive electoral reformist strategies. As I’ve said before, if we (agorists and radical left-libertarians generally) are the new Reds, there will be shades of pink. Such is the natureof the batlle of ideas. There will be a spectrum of incomplete acceptance. [...]