NOTE: Marxian doesn't mean Marxist. It is an academic term, and here it means something like pseudo-Marxist or Marxist-like. For my latest thoughts on why criticalism isn't Marxism, see this 2021 post.
Hi everyone, welcome again to the fifth season of the TaraElla Report, where we dive deeper to take a real look at the issues underlying the toxic political environment we have throughout the West right now. This show is brought to you by my new book, The Moral Libertarian Idea, which is all about reimagining a positive and pro-community, pro-humanity classical liberalism for the 21st century.
Today, I'm going to talk about what it would take for a truly humanity centered, pro-liberty political movement to succeed. As you would know, during the past year on this show, I have often discussed the now withdrawn campaigns of Andrew Yang and Tulsi Gabbard. Now that it's all over, let me say this: I always knew they were long-shot campaigns. The reason why they got me excited was because of their approach to change. During this past primary, we saw three different approaches to change, among the so-called 'progressive' candidates: the top-down, technocratic plan represented by Elizabeth Warren; the class warfare inspired, conflict driven approach represented by Bernie Sanders and his movement; and the broad-tent approach represented by Yang and Gabbard. Ultimately, all three failed this time around, but I still have the most faith in the broad-tent, consensus building approach. In the rest of this episode, I will explain why I support this approach, and what needs to happen for this approach to win the future.
What many of us agree is that structural economic and political change is needed. But where we are often divided is in our theory of how this change should come about, which I think reflects a deeper difference in worldview. For example, as Yang himself said, Bernie is the candidate of anger and revolution. The most extreme Bernie-aligned activists often have a Marxian worldivew, which is a worldview based on seeing people as fundamentally divided into groups of oppressors and the oppressed. They have a model of change via group-based struggle against a common enemy. The problem is that, where such a conflict based model is used, there needs to be an enemy, because the whole movement is powered by the idea of fighting an oppressive enemy. I think this is why some far-left people have been aggressive to supporters of several 2020 candidates, including Warren, Yang and Gabbard. As we've just seen, this kind of division leads to a lose-lose result. Furthermore, many extreme Marxians also have the pessmistic view that it might be best to burn it all down because it's all so oppressive and hopeless anyway, which is where the idea of accelerationism comes from. The desire to burn it all down comes from a long line of Marxist-type thinking, of course. Such thinking is clearly misguided, because it's always harmful for the social fabric, and harmful for families. It has always been only those who are out of touch with the common decency of everyday working people who would even entertain burning it all down. I think one reason why Bernie failed this year was because his movement had too many of this kind of people in it, which naturally alienates working people who are grounded in their family lives.
On the other hand, Yang and Gabbard represent another theory of change. If the most extreme Bernie Bros are the modern-day Bolsheviks, then Yang and Gabbard are the modern-day FDRs. FDR was able to build long-lasting structural change by having a broad coalition of support, as evidenced by winning the US presidency four times! FDR didn't need an enemy to struggle against, because he was able to build a broad consensus for change that was based on a commonly accepted vision of freedom. That was exactly what Yang and Gabbard set out to achieve, why they went on shows like Tucker Carlson, Dave Rubin, and more, to have a conversation. Only conversations where free speech is respected, where there is a sincere exchange of ideas, will build a new consensus and make the broad-tent model of change possible. Yet the Bolshevik-like activists accused them of talking to the enemy. It's similar to how they accused even Bernie of accepting Joe Rogan's endorsement. These people would prefer to have clear enemies to struggle against, because it's where their energy comes from. However, history has shown us that the FDR way was much more successful and much less harmful than the Bolshevik way. Furthermore, you can only have one or the other; you cannot logically pursue both, because having defined enemies to struggle against also means you can't have open conversations with them. If I believe in the FDR approach, I literally cannot entertain the Bolshevik approach at all.
The key to success for the broad-tent consensus approach to change is to be able to have those difficult conversations with people holding diverse views. Society-wide consensus doesn't come from just talking with people inside the your own bubble, so we all need to be brave enough to meet other people where they are, and be open to a sincere exchange of ideas with people who think differently from ourselves. The trouble is, the current toxic political atmosphere makes having these conversations difficult, as the Yang and Gabbard campaigns have demonstrated. Tulsi, in particular, was very mindful of the need to heal the divides of society, and her decisions stemming from that brought massive backlash from the modern-day Bolsheviks, who probably played an important role in burying her campaign. In short, Yang 2020 and Tulsi 2020 failed because there wasn't the right cultural environment for them to thrive, because the political landscape had already been thoroughly poisoned four or five years ago. What needs to happen before a similar campaign can thrive again, is that this toxicity needs to end, and society itself needs to heal. Which is why we certainly can't give into the 'burn it all down' fantasies of the modern-day Bolsheviks. If anything, we need to head in the opposite direction. I guess the lesson we should learn from the failure of Yang 2020 and Tulsi 2020 is that, without healing society itself first, there really is no good path to political and economic change at all.
