Why The Left Keeps On Failing

It simply can't face the reality

Let's just say it out loud: the Western Left reeks of more than a century of failure. Their entirely theory-driven experiments have been repeatedly tried, and led to disappointment and failure every single time. And every single time, what followed was the rise of right-wing reactionary politics of some kind. This was true of the 1930s, the 1960s and 70s, and it looks more and more like history is repeating again right now.

The left knows its defeats well. There's even a very well described phenomenon of left melancholy. Yet, after every single defeat, it just digs in deeper. It takes no responsibility for leaving people disappointed, and making a mess of society in the process. It is able to do that by avoiding facing reality. Again, right now, it looks like history is repeating, with works coming out of the left, spinning the defeats of their recent past as somehow heroic, worthwhile, or at least not of their own fault. We're seeing in real time how the left avoids learning the lessons it should be learning.

The left is able to avoid reality via the use of philosophy, sophistry and echo chambers. It's sort of like the Emperor's New Clothes, played over and over again in slightly different forms, over the centuries. In fact, that's how postmodern critical theory started. It was a rationalization of the post-war Western left's inability to attract the support of the working class, which was basically fatal to its then-assumptions. But instead of learning how to make themselves relevant to the working class again, they rationalized the problem away, and began imagining a future revolution led by philosophers, student radicals and marginalized minorities. Who needs the workers when you could build this radical coalition instead? Of course, this overlooks the fact that workers are the majority, and the New Left have always been a small minority. But in the New Left echo chamber, this never seems to be a problem.

Today, the leftist echo chamber continues to ignore the fact that someone like Bernie Sanders simply can't win in a climate where we have an ongoing culture war, where the New Left is pit against the working class, not because of some kind of conspiracy, but because of a genuine incompatibility of values, caused by the rise of postmodern critical theory itself. In fact, to raise this fact in some left wing circles would get you banished. Instead, they continue to blame Bernie's 2020 defeat on various non-factors, like the campaign of Pete Buttigieg, who didn't even make the top three, or the fact that the Democrats were focused on defeating Trump, which was just the way political parties work, to be honest. A left that behaves this way is simply hopelessly out of touch. Its only impact on the political scene would be to make a mess of everything, and allow an opening for the reactionaries to gain power.