The Left and THE LEFT
Responding to the crisis of soft neoliberalism
Brad DeLong (in a recent post summarising a joint podcast with Noah Smith) walks back his previous suggestion that it was time for neoliberals, among whom he had numbered himself, to pass the baton to “the Left”.
The political basis for this is that 20 or so Senate Republicans have been willing to pass legislation from time to time, rather than shutting down the government altogether. I don’t find this compelling, but I also don’t want to debate the issue.
Rather, I’m interested in the following remark, which crystallized a bunch of thoughts I’ve been having for some time
”How has the left been doing with its baton? Not well at all, for anyone who defines “THE LEFT” to consist of former Bernie staffers who regard Elizabeth Warren as a neoliberal sellout.”
This is a classic, indeed brazen, motte-and-bailey1, in which the hard-to-defend bailey “the Left of the Democratic party (of which Elizabeth Warren is a prominent member) is doing badly” is replaced by the motte “THE LEFT (as represented, in this case, by disgruntled former Bernie staffers) is doing badly”.
The left and THE LEFT: from ChatGPT prompt, “draw an image with two panels, one peaceful with symbols of feminism and environmentalism and the other dynamic and representing the revolutionary left”
It’s one which I’m seeing increasingly from the group I’ve called “soft neoliberals”, and who are increasingly reclaiming the term “liberal”, though usually in less blatant forms. Over the fold, I’ll put some thoughts on what’s happening here.
The motte-and-bailey here works in part because the the term “left” can be understood both in terms of a symmetrical representation of political systems with roughly equal sized groups on the left and right and a more-or-less indeterminate centre, and in historical terms to the revolutionary tradition associated with Marx and Lenin, and before them with the Jacobins in France (whose position on the left of the speaker in the National Convention gave rise to the synecdoche in the first place).
At least as far as the political class was concerned, the two understandings matched up pretty well during the period of neoliberal ascendancy. Virtually everyone who mattered politically could be classed as “centre-right” (what I’ve called hard neoliberal), “centre-left” (soft neoliberal), or just plain centrist. So, the term “left” could be equated with “LEFT” and used to refer to a small group on the fringes. Similarly, the far-right could safely be ignored as a historical relic.
The failures of neoliberalism since the turn of the century have broken down this equivalence. We have seen the emergence, or resurfacing, of a substantial political grouping which is neither centre-left, in the neoliberal sense, nor LEFT in the Marxist-Leninist sense. In the US setting that group typically uses the self-description “progressive” and includes environmentalists, feminists, democratic socialists and unreconstructed New Dealers. I will just use the term “the left” to describe this group.
The left poses two problems for soft neoliberals. First, it represents a plausible political alternative to the market-friendly policies of soft neoliberalism (deregulated finance, charter schools, a Grand Bargain on deficit reduction). These policies have clearly failed to deliver on their promises.
More fundamentally, perhaps, the left poses a challenge to interpretations of liberalism in which the political right (unlike THE LEFT) is treated as a legitimate interlocutor, rather than an enemy to be struggled against, and, if possible, driven from the field of political discourse. In the context of academic political philosophy, this version of liberalism takes as canonical a range of legitimate opinion from Rawls (or maybe Dworkin) on the left to Nozick on the right.
Unsurprisingly, the easiest response for soft neoliberals is to ignore the left and to focus on some version of THE LEFT which can be characterised as authoritarian and illiberal. The implicit assumption (somewhat undermined by reactions to recent protests) is that only liberals, as interpreted above, are reliable defenders of freedom.
That’s as far as I’ve got, so I’ll throw it open to discussion.
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Both John Holbo at Crooked Timber and I (In a review of Pinker’s Blank Slate) talked about the rhetorical manoeuvre avant le nom. John’s suggestion of the Two-Step of Terrific Triviality was fun, but “Motte and Bailey” is much better.
I didn't like the DeLong/Smith piece either. But …
I think that soft neoliberals are still pleased with the progressive left, largely for its pragmatism. The LEFT does not make deals; the left does. Soft neolibs view the Republican party as fash-adjacent, at best. They do not like fascism. On the other hand, I agree with you that the soft neolibs long for a "legitimate" hard neolib party. That's a mistake, not the least because hard neoliberalism is unpopular, and hard neolibs need to make very unsavory alliances to get elected.
On charter schools, you're out of date. Fifteen years ago, the soft neoliberals were in favor of charter schools. They were receptive to the idea on the merits, and thought it was a valid point of compromise with the hard neolibs. (Soft neolibs did not like vouchers; hard neolibs did.) Now, charters are poison among soft neolibs, for a few reasons. First, the results are in, and charter schools don't look very impressive. The performance of charters in well-regulated states is nothing special, and the scamsters step in where regulation is poor. Charter advocates can come up with no better inherent charter advantage than "Union Free." Second, the teachers' unions are a core part of the Democratic Party. Third, it is increasingly obvious that charter schools are a stalking horse for the right's war on public education. The hard neolibs want it all left to the market; the Jesus folk cannot tolerate tolerance; and the fash want to tear everything down. Even the soft neolibs realize this by now.
(fwiw, I sent my kid to a charter school. It was one of the good 'uns, and nobody has a social conscience with respect to the welfare of their children)
The neolibs simply use straw man arguments and the compliant MSM report that. It's like the current Aussie 'discussion' we are having around gas. Quite simply we should not be opening new fossil fuel projects, but when that is brought up, pollies from both sides, and lobbyists, counter with the line that we can't shut the industry tomorrow. No one is saying to do that but then the pollie keeps on answering the question they wanted asked