With respect to the Republican coalition to end democracy in the USA, I usually focus on the big players: fascism, theocratism, anarchism, blends like Christo-fascism, fake anarchism / “libertarianism.” Maybe this week I can say a few words about communism? May seem a bit odd and near to false equivalence. I’m not sure we here in the USA even have a proper anti-democracy communist party, nor politicians, pundits. The closest I’ve seen is the odd online anti-democracy “leftist,” and I usually rather suspect they’re fascist trolls. Nevertheless, for the sake of completeness, let me just say a few words this time on what I perceive as some unhelpful elements in certain strains of ostensibly “leftist” thinking that seem to me to parallel bad economics in the conservative style quite closely.
As with the suppression of normative or ethical issues and feigned replacement with positive issues in bad economics in the conservative style, resting on confusion about positive and normative, science and ethics, so also with Marxian scientific “materialist” analysis. This materialist analysis leads communists to their famous critique of what they call “capitalism,” in which the economic “system” based on material conditions of production, dominate and mold political systems, like bourgeois democracy, as well as ideologies, values, and so on. This seems often to lead those interested in this line of reasoning to downplay the significance of voters discussing normative or ethical issues, including those in Marxian economics, as well as the ability of voters in democracy to revise market systems. Instead, improvement of the (economic) “system” is meant to be a technocratic issue in which those who know are meant to do what’s required, after which the thinking of the people reactively comes along, an idea that has famously led them down anti-democracy, authoritarian paths.
Ironically, this determination democracy is not important, captured by economic power, merely a rubber stamp or way of legitimizing the economic system, can lead these “leftists” to make common cause with anti-democracy fascists as far as the goal of ending democracy. Historically, one pattern has been for communists and fascists to work together to end democracy, then slug it out on the streets to determine which group of proposed technocrats will administer the economic system the ostensibly correct way. Sometimes one, sometimes the other. In the case of 21st century USA, of course, we would be talking about fascism as the result of any such anti-democracy revolution. We have a powerful, popular, well-funded, right wing, anti-democracy fascist movement in the USA, but no real anti-democracy communist movement.
Materialism surely has a kernel of truth. Without the internet and its ability to allow random individuals to bypass the power of the gatekeepers, I wouldn’t be writing fascinating little threads like this one, but it’s not only that, surely. Ideas matter. Philosophy matters. Fighting bad economics in the conservative style is all about making plain the normative or ethical choices that must be made, including relating to economic policy, establishing voters should discuss, decide them using democracy. Bad normative economics obscures those normative or ethical choices, downplays the significance of voters, democracy in addressing them, portrays them as a positive, scientific or logical matter of immutable laws of nature of one sort or another. We should fight bad economics in all its forms. Economic systems entail normative, ethical choices that should not be resolved by ostensible ethical arbiters or technocrats of either right or left wing varieties who may, of course, discuss, give ideas, in a democratic setting.
The science of economics, the positive bit, not normative evaluation but prediction of empirical phenomena, or fact, logic, math, is different. Thus, fighting bad normative economics depends crucially on being able to distinguish normative issues from positive issues. But there’s no real distinction between positive and normative issues you say, harkening back to a bit of bad philosophy from the 1970s? Fine. Next time. Positive and normative. Again. Because that’s the way I roll.
