Why Aren’t the Other Slavers Getting Cancelled?

August 10, 2020 By Gene Veith

America’s legacy of slavery is certainly shameful. But other countries enslaved Africans on a much greater scale and are escaping criticism.

The conservative columnist Dennis Prager makes that point in a provocative article in the Jewish Journal entitled Anti-Americanism: The New Anti-Semitism. In it, Prager, who is Jewish, argues that anti-semitism and anti-Americanism both grow out of an envy that breeds resentment. In the course of his argument, Prager takes up one criticism of America today and shows just how selectively it is applied:

If having had slavery was a real issue in the left’s anti-Americanism, the left would hate the Arab world and Latin American countries such as Brazil more than it hates the United States. While The New York Times and other left-wing institutions are preoccupied with slavery in America, they ignore — out of ideological nonconcern or ignorance — the vastly larger number of Africans enslaved by Muslim and South American nations.

Of the more than 12 million African slaves shipped to the Western Hemisphere, only about 3% — between 306,000 and 380,000 — were sent to America. The other 97% were sent to the Caribbean and Brazil. And the slaves in the U.S. South lived longer and made larger families than the slaves of Latin America. Yet, the U.S. is singled out for hatred. Why? Because Brazil is not an object of envy.

Likewise, there is no left-wing hatred of the Arab world, which enslaved far more Blacks than the North and South Americas combined. The internationally recognized expert on African history, Senegalese anthropologist Tidiane N’Diaye, wrote in his 2008 book “The Veiled Genocide,” “Most people still have the so-called Transatlantic [slave] trade by Europeans into the New World in mind. But in reality, the Arab-Muslim slavery was much greater …. The Arab Muslims were the most murderous of all those involved in the slave trade.”

Part of that murderous treatment of African slaves involved castrating the males so they could not reproduce. And the women and girls were traded as sex slaves.

Where is the leftist anger at the Arab and Muslim world? There is none. The left protects the Muslim and Arab world against moral criticism. The left hates America for its success and influence on the world, just as anti-Semites hated Jews for their success and influence on the world.

Of course, it doesn’t justify something evil just because other people have done that evil even more. Slavery is especially inexcusable in a nation that proclaims its allegiance to freedom and equality. But Prager makes a good point. By the same reasoning, we could conclude that the left isn’t really serious in its concern about LGBT or women’s issues, since it gives a pass to the Muslim world despite its harsh treatment of women and gays.

When you ask a leftist about this seeming double standard, you will be told that the Muslim world has been victimized by Euro-American colonialism. According to the rules of woke intersectionality, victims may not be criticized.

So that’s the reason, incoherent and morally bankrupt though it be.

I would add that slavery is still rampant in the world, with more slaves now (40 million) than in the transatlantic trade (13 million), but no one seems to be cancelling the sex industry or Asian companies manufacturing our consumer goods.

Photo: Advertising hoarding, Bangor cc-by-sa/2.0 – © Rossographer – geograph.org.uk/p/4407232

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Big Corporations vs. Capitalism

July 30, 2020 By Gene Veith

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This week the CEOs of big tech–Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Apple’s Tim Cook, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, and Google’s Sundar Pichai–have been hauled before the Congressional Antitrust subcommittee, which is investigating whether these companies have become too gigantic and powerful.

Not only the House Democrats but also Republicans are piling on, with conservatives like Donald Trump and Sen. Josh Hawley threatening to break up these megacompanies.

But aren’t Republicans supposed to be pro-business? Don’t conservatives favor free market capitalism? Why should the federal government interfere with these successful companies?

The answer is that companies sometimes are so successful and grow so big–thanks to free market capitalism–that they undermine free market capitalism.

Back in the 19th century, Karl Marx, observing the course of the Industrial Revolution, predicted that Capitalism would eventually collapse due to its “internal contradictions.” Specifically, as companies in the various industries competed with each other, the weakest would go out of business and only the strongest would survive. Where there were once many companies producing and selling a product, in time there would only be a few, or only one.

The winners–either singly or in an alliance of the top companies called a “trust”–would then be in a position to squelch any further competitors, either by undercutting them in the marketplace or by simply buying them through mergers and acquisitions. In attaining a “monopoly,” in which the trust or the dominant company is the only provider of the product, the industrialists could be free of the market’s role in pricing, enabling them to charge whatever they want, unrestrained by competitive pressures and the law of supply and demand.

Thus, free market economics would lead to the abolition of the free market. With that “internal contradiction”–and Marx identified others–wealth would be concentrated into fewer and fewer hands. In an inevitable economic crisis, the privately held monopolies would fail, dragging down the entire economy and social order with it. Whereupon the people would rise up and seize the means of production for themselves. The new socialist order would simply substitute state monopolies for privately-owned monopolies, operating them for the good of the people instead of for the personal aggrandizement of the wealthy owners. But it would simply exchange one monopoly for another, with both of them repudiating the free market.

Now Marx did not factor into his calculations the rise of true collective ownership in the stockmarket, or the way the free market would create so much wealth that the workers too would attain a lifestyle and a level of prosperity formerly associated only with the bourgeoisie, or the effects of political and economic freedom. But it looked like he was right about capitalism turning into anti-capitalism, as big trusts–the Oil Trust, the Railroad Trust, the Steel Trust–began to dominate America’s economy in the late 19th century.

But then the Republican Party, led by President Theodore Roosevelt, took up the cause of “trust-busting,” passing laws against anti-competitive activity and price-fixing, in some cases breaking up monopolies and overly-dominant businesses. The motive was to save capitalism and to preserve free market economics.

In today’s economy, technology companies such as Google, Amazon, Apple, and Facebook surely deserve their success. The creativity of their founders, the way they have marshaled technology to enhance our lives, and the impact they have had on society as a whole are marvels. But their very size and dominance threatens to undermine the social and economic system that allowed them to thrive.

The conservative online magazine The Federalist explains how in an article by Rachel Bovard entitled It’s Time For Congress To Get Serious About Big Tech’s Threats To Individual Rights.

Conservatives have long complained about the political bias of big tech. Facebook and Twitter are communication tools designed to promote the exchange of ideas, but with their de facto monopoly on social media, they can adjust their algorithms to censor, deplatform, and marginalize ideas they do not approve of. (Notice that the big corporations are not only anti-conservative in their economics but also in their political and social beliefs.)

Bovard writes about that, but she goes on to also detail how these companies are also, in one of her headings, “Using Market Power to Crush Innovation and Competition.” She tells how these companies have sometimes heard investment proposals from smaller businesses, only to then steal their ideas by making the product themselves. Google uses its position as virtually the only search engine for the entire internet to manipulate searches so that they favor Google products. Amazon, of course, has cornered the market on on-line shopping, manipulating prices and eliminating competition accordingly.

She also writes about the ways big tech violates our privacy, accumulating a vast amount of information about each of us–by reading our emails, tracking our location, and getting access to our purchases. The ostensible purpose is to manipulate us more easily with targeted advertising. But, as Bevard says, “In this bizarre legal landscape, Google has a right to your medical record, but you don’t.” The scale of this mass surveillance is totalitarian and defies the values of a free society.

She also exposes big tech’s complicity with China, which manufactures many of the products big tech sells to us, even to the point of co-operating with that Communist country’s suppression of democracy and human rights abuses. Again, the big corporations are undermining political, economic, and personal freedom.

Bovard concludes, referring to the Congressional hearings,

The sheer scope of Big Tech’s massive influence and unprecedented power over individuals as well as society is becoming frighteningly clear. Efforts to force this hearing into the frame of “private companies versus the government” or “appropriate or inappropriate uses of antitrust law” are distractions in the face of what lawmakers should be focused on: investigating the intersection of innovation and power, and discerning what is merely commerce versus what is a collective corporate action to change the nature of a democratic society and a free people.

Illustration from Amazon.com

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The Ultimate Devotional Resource

June 18, 2020 By Gene Veith

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I have been working on a new edition of my book The Spirituality of the Cross: The Way of the First Evangelicals, which will include lots of fresh material, including an additional chapter on Christology. I am also revamping the “Resource” section to include not only a bibliography but a discussion of both the classic, foundational works of the Lutheran tradition and the more recent contributions to Lutheran “spirituality.”

I thought I’d highlight at least some of those on this blog. Today, I’d like to draw your attention to a resource that will be helpful to any Christians–not just Lutherans–who practice daily devotions. It is entitled The Treasury of Daily Prayer.

This is a fitting title, since it really is a “treasury” of extensive Bible readings, meditations from throughout the history of the church, prayers, and personal liturgies.

Of course you can do very well with your own Bible reading and personal prayers. But sometimes it helps to have a little structure to keep you focused and to guide you through some texts and meditations that you might not otherwise have benefited from.

For every day of the year, the Treasury gives a Psalm, an Old Testament reading, and a New Testament reading. These are organized around the church year–Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Easter, Ascension & Pentecost, Trinity, etc.–and comprise the historic “Daily Lectionary,” which takes the reader through the main texts of Scripture in a year.

Also, for each day there is a “reading” from a Church Father of the early church or some other classic author from the Middle Ages, the Reformation, or the more recent centuries.

Each day also includes a hymn text and a prayer for the day.

You can go through all of this material every day. Or use part of it in the morning and part of it at night. Or just select part of it–e.g., a Psalm, the writing, the prayer; the New Testament reading; the prayer–depending on how much time you have.

And if you miss a day, you can plunge right into the reading for whatever day it is. Or if you want to do a devotion only a few times during the week or just on Sundays or whenever, it is easy to manage. (The Treasury includes not only church year descriptions but also calendar dates, for ease of finding things.)

In addition to the daily breakdown, the Treasury has brief orders of personal worship and prayer, including the Daily Offices (Matins, Vespers, Compline). These were originally services held over the course of the day by monks and nuns, with clergy being obligated to read them privately when they could not worship with others. (I have noticed priests and nuns in the airport “reading their offices” while waiting for a plane.) The Reformation made these offices available to laypeople and they became staples of individual devotion as well as family worship. They are collected here for your use, along with less formal liturgies and orders of prayer to help you stay focused in your devotions.

The Treasury also includes the complete Psalter (along with chant tones and how to sing them), the Catechism, prayers for various occasions, helps for self-examination, and more.

It also has six bookmark ribbons to help you keep all of your places.

You can adapt the devotional treasures in this book not only for both your own personal devotions but also for family devotions. And for any time you need to lead a group devotion.

The Treasury of Daily Prayer is a resource that also supplies other resources. You can use it in great chunks, or pull out of it small bits of what you need. It’s the most comprehensive devotional compendium I have ever come across.

You can buy it here. You can also get it on Kindle or as an App. Get one for yourself. It would also make a good gift. Come to think of it, this would be a very meaningful graduation present. Or a Father’s Day gift!

Image by reenablack from Pixabay

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On Disbanding the Police

June 17, 2020 By Gene Veith

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The revulsion against police brutality against black people–sparked by the killing of George Floyd–has inspired calls to defund and even to disband the police. That can have a whole spectrum of meanings and possible consequences.

The City Council of Minneapolis, where George Floyd was killed by a police officer, has voted unanimously to disband its police force. Exactly what that will entail has not yet been made clear.

Some cities have disbanded their police force in the sense of firing everybody and replacing them with other officers. That is not disbanding the police, as such.

Some municipalities have dissolved their city police forces out of financial considerations, leaving the county sheriff’s office to take over law-enforcement responsibilities. That isn’t disbanding the police either.

But some people are advocating the actual elimination of the police. In a report on the subject, journalist Scottie Andrew cites the desire for reform that “ends the culture of punishment in the criminal justice system.” He tells about the work of one such organization:

MPD150, a community advocacy organization in Minneapolis, focuses on abolishing local police. Its work has been spotlighted since the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis Police custody.

“The people who respond to crises in our community should be the people who are best-equipped to deal with those crises,” the organization says.

Rather than “strangers armed with guns,” the organization says, first responders should be mental health providers, social workers, victim advocates and other community members in less visible roles.

It argues law and order isn’t abetted by law enforcement, but through education, jobs and mental health services that low-income communities are often denied. MPD150 and other police abolition organizations want wider access to all three.

This seems to be what the Minneapolis City Council has in mind. Andrew quotes a member of that council:

City council member Steve Fletcher, in a Twitter thread, said council members are discussing “what it would take to disband the Minneapolis Police Department and start fresh with a community-oriented, non-violent public safety and outreach capacity.”

“We can totally reimagine what public safety means, what skills we’re recruiting for, what tools we do and don’t need,” he wrote. “We can invest in cultural competency and mental health training, de-escalation and conflict resolution.”

We blogged about the police vocation and the difference between police officers who fulfill their calling to love and serve their neighbors by enforcing the law, and those who violate their callings by harming and mistreating their neighbors, as opposed to upholding the police motto “to serve and protect.”

But these proposals come out of a completely different worldview. Are human beings moral agents responsible for their actions, so that committing a crime is a moral offense that society needs to be protected from? Or are human beings not responsible at all for what they do, so that those who commit crimes are themselves victims of the society?

Is a murderer someone who should be apprehended, by force if need be, and punished? Or is the murderer mentally ill, in which case he needs to be dealt with by a “mental health” expert instead of a SWAT team. Or did the murderer kill because he was the victim of social injustice–formed by economic hardship, a dysfunctional family, and cultural mistreatment, all of which fueled his rage and provoked his violence–in which case he needs to be dealt with by a social worker, with the larger imperative of changing the social problems that are causing murderous behavior.

In the traditional mind-set, attention would focus on individual police officers, with the view of identifying and punishing the “bad cops,” while still respecting the vast majority of “good cops.” But the collectivist mind-set that sees bad behavior as “systemic” blames all police officers as a collective group.

Thus, activists speak of “the myth of the good cop.” As one explained, “The phrase ‘good cop’ is an oxymoron. There is no morality in choosing to work in the field of state-sponsored violence.” The pop culture has long portrayed police officers as heroes, but is now pulling back from that, with TV networks cancelling long-running programming. (No, Paw Patrol has not really been cancelled, but the cartoon that includes a dog in a police uniform did come in for criticism for promoting “the good-cop archetype.” In the words of the New York Times, “‘Paw Patrol’ seems harmless enough, and that’s the point: The movement rests on understanding that cops do plenty of harm.”)

So while the anti-police activists call on eliminating “the culture of punishment,” that only applies to individuals. The police as a whole should be punished. This is the logic behind the “defund the police” movement. Already, sixteen of the nation’s largest cities, including Los Angeles and New York, are responding to the protests by slashing police department budgets. Thus, police who never committed misconduct are being punished for the crimes of a few, even though the funding cuts mean less money for training, supervision, and more minority hires.

The big question is how these proposed alternatives would deal with violent criminals. If an active shooter starts killing school children, a 911 call will bring a social worker? Would that save lives or cost lives? Would a mental health counselor be able to stop a terrorist?

Most proposals to eliminate the police would make use of community members to protect each other. So untrained members of the public would face down threats to the community? We are talking about vigilantes? Such as those responsible for lynchings?

Most progressives don’t like the Second Amendment or the idea of a citizenry armed for self-defense. But that would be the first and totally justifiable result of eliminating the police force, on a scale that rivals the “Wild West.”

Eliminating law enforcement officers would result in a reversion to privatized justice, from the reimposition of revenge codes to private security armies. Criminal gangs already enforce revenge codes with their drive-by shootings, and they would certainly rush into the void left by the police to enforce rough justice and impose their own brand of social order.

Wealthy individuals and organized groups would pay for their own security details. We can see what that looks like in Mexico, for instance, where drug dealer armies battle private armies, with innocent men, women, and children caught in the cross-fire.

The police profession may need to be reformed and even be policed. (Don’t activists want the perpetrators of the George Floyd and similar homicides punished? Or do they too just need to see a mental health counselor or social worker?) But that does not mean condemning all police officers and denying the existence of any good police officers.

One of the worst effects of the current anti-police backlash is that it is demonizing men and women who really do, routinely, risk their lives to protect the public. Police officers across the country, stung by the new lack of respect and their portrayal as villains no matter what they do, are resigning. Calls for police reform include hiring more minority officers, but how can that happen in a climate that condemns black police officers as “class traitors”?

Photo by San Francisco Foghorn via Flickr, Creative Commons 2.0 License

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The Newest Church Growth Paradigm: Digital Church

June 4, 2020 By Gene Veith

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The epidemic has forced churches to resort to online services. But now some church growth experts are hailing that problem as a new paradigm for “doing church.”

A The COVID-19 pandemic has “propelled the Church into the contemporary world,” according to a report from an evangelical Anglican organization in the UK. “Last month we were the Odeon, today we are Netflix.” An “Odeon” is a building designed to feature musical performances; that is, a concert hall.

In the 1950s, the Odeon was okay, but then along came consumer choice, individualism and crowded complex lifestyles. Then came TV film channels, and now Netflix, Prime and others, where you can watch whatever you want, whenever you want, wherever you are on whatever you’ve got. . . .The Government has shut our ‘Odeons’ down, so in response we have stumbled into ‘Homespun Netflix’ and it’s looking promising.

Indeed, churches that want to be contemporary have adopted the concert hall model. Sanctuaries are dominated by a stage, complete with overhead spot lights, microphones, a drum set, and guitar amps. The service is modeled after a concert performance, with the band and the preacher putting on a carefully-orchestrated show. Today, most people turn to the internet and streaming TV, rather than concerts, so why shouldn’t churches adapt accordingly?

Notice that both the concert hall and Netflix models assume that worship should be analogous to entertainment. Both approaches are very different from the historical approach to church, in which members of a Christian community gather together to receive God’s gifts in the Word and Sacraments in front of a pulpit and an altar.

The study, from the Church Pastoral Aid Society (CPAS), does find some good results from online church services. According to the authors Bob Jackson and George Fisher, “Most churches going online have discovered that far more people are accessing their services than ever came to the building. What seemed initially to be a devastating blow to churches may actually generate growth.”

One church reported, “We’ve had a huge number of hits, many more than the number of people in church on a Sunday, connecting with people who would not come to a regular service.”

Another said, “Our online services on our YouTube channel, through Facebook, through our website, have doubled or nearly tripled Sunday morning numbers.” . . .

People are finding it easier to access church online because they can join in the services without feeling concerned about ‘doing the wrong thing’ – like standing or sitting at the ‘wrong’ time, they don’t have to enter a strange building and meet new people, and they can access the services at a time that suits them.

One church reported: “One previously non-churchgoer said that online she felt comfortable, fully part of the service and so more welcomed than if she had been in the building unsure of how to behave.”

Now this is tremendous for Great Britain, where church attendance has dropped to nearly imperceptible levels. The internet is indeed a great tool for outreach. If services posted on YouTube or Facebook can show unchurched people what church is like, convey the Word of God to them, and encourage them to actually come to church, so much the better. American churches too might want to consider continuing and enhancing their internet presence.

That doesn’t mean that churches should reinvent themselves according to the “Netflix” model. Watching the Food Network can inform viewers about food they might want to try. But it is no substitute for eating.

Another church growth expert, Carey Nieuwhof, also advocates “digital” church, but he also complicates the picture. In his post The Original 2020 Is History, he gives some important data about online services during the pandemic.

Yes, 29% of congregations showed an increase in online visitors over their regular in-person attendance. But that means 71% did not.

Of Americans who regularly attend worship services, 48% did not tune in to their congregation’s online services; 40% did; and 23% tuned in to another church’s online service. (The total is more than 100%, since some, over the four weeks being studied, attended their own congregation’s service some times and attended a different one other times.)

That does not strike me as an overwhelming success. Nevertheless, Rev. Nieuwhof sees “digital church,” rather than just “physical church” as the wave of the future.

Digital technology, he says, will accelerate the trend we are already seeing in the “consolidation” of the church, as smaller congregations close in favor of fewer but bigger megachurches. And yet, Rev. Nieuwhof says, the physical churches will not disappear. Here are some of his observations:

Growing churches in the future will become digital organizations with physical expressions, not physical organizations with a digital presence.

The difference in this trend is as stark as JC Penny and Amazon.

JC Penny (which recently filed for Chapter 11), like Sears and ToysRUs, were physical retailers that slowly adapted an online presence, behaving like most people still wanted an in-person experience.

Amazon, of course, started as a digital retailer that gradually moved into physical stores.

What’s surprising is that sometimes the digital connections have been as or more meaningful than the in-person connections. . . .

To put digital church back on the shelf in the new normal is to ignore the greatest opportunity the church today has to reach people.

Seeing digital as optional really does mean your church will end up like malls in the age of Amazon, just hoping for people to show up again.

And it also ignores the fact that many will want digital to be at least an option, if not a preferred method of engagement where geography and other barriers prevent access. . . .

Further, digital scales in a way that analog doesn’t.

Online church transcends geographic, physical and time barriers in a way that analog doesn’t.

Will we still have in-person, physical gatherings and services? Absolutely. But in the future church, if you care about people, you’ll care about digital church.

Notice the other metaphor being used to think about church: businesses. Mom ‘n’ pop retailers vs. the big box stores vs. Amazon.com. Big corporations swallow up the little guys, and digital corporations swallow up the physical shopping malls. And so it will be with churches. Again, historically and Biblically, churches were always different kinds of things than business ventures.

Consider the other implications of digital church. Certainly, the technology can engage more people, with the need for fewer pastors, at a smaller expense, without even the need for large megachurch facilities and campuses. Since a digital church “transcends geographic, physical and time barriers,” we won’t need as many of them. We will need few, if any, pastors. It won’t even be necessary to plan a new service or a new sermon every week. A library of different sermon topics and musical performances can be put together, and viewers can just click which ever one they are in the mood for at any given time. As with Netflix.

From the beginning, churches were situated; that is, they existed in a specific place. Thus, St. Paul writes his epistles to the churches in Rome, Corinth, Galatia, Ephesus. Today, we have the Roman Catholic Church, the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, and local congregations of every affiliation in cities, suburbs, small towns, and countrysides.

A community, whether secular or sacred, needs a sense of place. The church is the body of Christ, so it needs to be embodied. The Sacraments ensure that it is. Churches have to do with body, blood, and real presences–of Christ and also of Christians. Churches exist in time–in redemption history from creation through incarnation and atonement and resurrection to the last judgment, as part of the historical church, in the cycles of life from birth through death, in the church year, in the present, in eternity.

A fully digitized church will bear the same relationship to the actual church–against which the Gates of Hell will not prevail–that virtual reality bears to actual reality.

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

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Bourgeois Leftists

May 20, 2020 By Gene Veith

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We have blogged about the odd inversions in American politics, in which the most zealous members of the Left–including the socialist wing of the Democratic party–are found among the affluent, college-educated middle class. And the most zealous members of the Right–including Donald Trump’s base in the Republican party–are found among the lower-income working class.

This violates conventional wisdom, political stereotypes, and socialist ideology. But there it is!

Nathan Pinkoski explains why this might be so in an essay at Law & Liberty entitled The Strange Rise of Bourgeois Bolshevism. He attributes this to a self-contradicting development in leftist ideology itself.

Some background: Classic socialism, from Marx through the less revolutionary varieties, focus on the struggle between economic classes. In their reading of history, the feudal system, with its social hierarchies and relational economics, was overthrown by a series of capitalist revolutions (including the Reformation, the French Revolution, the American Revolution, and the Industrial Revolution). In the capitalist system, the middle class–the bourgeoisie–rule. To support their economic domination, the bourgeoisie imposed their values of individualism, personal freedom, human rights, and related democratic principles. But behind such high-sounding ideals was the exploitation of the working class, the proletariat. The middle class, bolstered by their ideology, owned the property, the businesses, and the factories. The proletariat, though, did all of the work. The bourgeois owners exploited these workers and made their profits from their productivity.

Eventually, the capitalist system will collapse of its own internal contradictions–with monopolies concentrating ownership in fewer and fewer hands, and the workers becoming more and more numerous and powerful–until a socialist revolution will break out (or, as the Democratic Socialists believed, would be voted in politically). Once the middle class is overthrown, the workers will rule in a new economic order, one which is oriented not to individual wealth but to the social good of the masses.

Pinkoski points out that the classic socialists always criticized the bourgeoisie for their fixation on “individual autonomy.” Against that, they emphasized the mutual dependence of collective social solidarity.

Today’s Leftists, though–with some old-school exceptions–tend to downplay the struggle between economic classes, concentrating instead on the struggle between races, genders, and sexual identities. But they are doing so in the name of “individual autonomy”! And the obstacles to that autonomy are institutions of “dependence,” such as the family and churches!

So today’s Leftists have adopted bourgeois values and are aligning themselves against the working class, which they see as the locus of racism, sexism, and cultural conservatism!

The old socialist paradigm has been turned exactly upside down!

Read Pinkoski’s essay.

I would add that the reason that the Marxist view of history, with its “inevitable” proletariat revolution, has not come to pass is that Capitalism became so productive that the proletariat, in effect, joined the middle class. Whereas conditions were often hard for workers in 19th century factories, in the 20th century, factory workers themselves became property owners, owning their own homes, automobiles, and a vast array of consumer goods. To be sure, low income folks still have economic problems, but these often have to do more with unemployment than with employment. Also, Capitalism itself developed a kind of collective ownership, not through the state but through the private sector. This is called the stock market, which enables workers through their pensions and IRAs to have a share in the ownership of the means of production.

There are still large-scale economic problems, as we are experiencing now with the coronavirus, but these affect everyone, and, rightly or wrongly, people of all classes show a sense of economic solidarity that socialists thought would only appear after the revolution. There are still social problems, but these are not so much economic as cultural, which today’s Leftists break down into race, gender, sex, and personal “autonomy” issues.

So if the workers have entered the ranks of the bourgeoisie, no wonder the leftists have as well. That’s pretty much the only option, thanks to the victory of Capitalism

What the bourgeois leftists will do to the economy and the government should they take over is not as clear. I assume it will look more like “empowering” individuals, with things like a guaranteed government income. Or governmental restrictions on traditional institutions, such as the family and the church, that restrict what Pinkoski calls the “culture of free self-creation.” Or a further movement away from the manufacture of tangible goods to a reliance on a service economy, which is how many of the bourgeois leftists make their living, even though this will likely mean exploiting a new proletariat of immigrants, overseas workers, and a disadvantaged American working class to make the consumer goods they will continue to crave.

Illustration: Russian placards, 1917-1922 (Vladimir Lebedev) – The red vision of Communism via Paul K, Flickr, Creative Commons 2.0 License

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