Monthly Archives: January 2019

Embracing democratic socialism

Be on the right side of history and start wishing capitalism goodbye
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Democratic socialism

There is just one New Year’s Resolution worth having in 2019: become a democratic socialist.

If you already are one, congratulations! This post may be preaching to the choir but I’m sure you’ll enjoy it anyway and will at least give you some good arguments against those who are still in denial (which sadly includes many on the left). If you’re not, keep reading and if these arguments don’t convince you, then perhaps nothing ever will.

What is democratic socialism?

The best way to describe democratic socialism is to start by what it’s not: communism. If you’re the kind that instantly has a mini heart attack by even a fleeting mention of the word “socialism”, relax, we’re not nostalgic for a return of the Soviet Union nor are we here to provide lame apologies for the disaster that is Venezuela (more on this later). With that out of the way, let’s explain in detail. Democratic socialism is the economic system whereby the means of production are owned and directly controlled by the people who work it. The key word here is directly. Whereas communism attempted to do this by having the state take control of these means (which proved disastrous), social democracy seeks no intermediary. Imagine an economy where every business was a worker-owned cooperative and workplaces guaranteed similar democratic rights to their workers as citizens are guaranteed in the public sphere. That’s basically it.

Democratic socialism might sound similar to social democracy but in practice, social democracy remains capitalist: there is no fundamental difference in the corporate ownership structure in social democratic countries to liberal capitalist ones. The main difference is that social democratic societies tend to provide a wider array of public services (a welfare state and state-owned firms) as well as take a more active role in preventing market excesses (regulation). They also encourage strong trade unions to give voice to workers in the workplace; in fact, many social democratic parties were born from the late 19th century and 20th century labor movements. Social democratic systems like the Nordic Model therefore sit in a muddled middle ground between socialism and capitalism, incorporating the capitalist ownership structure but with strong and active states that help ensure a socially just society. Continue reading →

The New Right ecosystem

The communities and personalities behind conservatism’s lastest bid for your hearts and minds
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The New Right Ecosystem (click to enlarge)

The emergence of a new conservative movement in the Western world in the 21st century has been one of the most important political developments of our time. But despite the way that this movement has influenced recent elections and produced shocking results like Trump and Brexit, the grand majority of people still fail to understand how and where it emerged. Ever since Hillary Clinton first spelled out the “alt-right” in a campaign speech in 2016, this term has been used as a catch-all for all right-wing politicians and pundits that have pursued a populist, anti-establishment rhetoric but this too proven to be far too limiting in scope for understanding the breadth of the movement. It also ignores that many of the people pushing the movement’s ideas don’t identify with the alt-right, aren’t anti-establishment, and may even be coming from the left itself.

I have therefore created a convenient infographic on what I call the New Right Ecosystem: the assortment of communities that are supporting the New Right movement. Some are obvious, like the original alt-right, the men’s rights activists, or the troll and meme armies that proliferate on forums such as 4chan. Many of these were mentioned in a seminal 2016 Breitbart piece co-authored by who was then the rising superstar of the alt-right, Milo Yiannopolous. But over the past decade even other communities that once appeared to embrace left-wing values have shifted squarely into the Trump camp, as is the case with the New Atheist and skeptic communities that initially arose to combat religious fundamentalism of all kinds in the post-9/11 Bush years. Finally, others like the libertarians are using the New Right as a platform to pursue their free market agendas. The fact that nearly all alt-right and anti-establishment pundits refer to themselves as libertarians or “classic liberals” (an increasingly used euphemism for libertarian sympathies) is telling of how nationalism and market fundamentalism have formed a strange and toxic marriage.

I am confident that the infographic is mostly self-explanatory after reading the legends.  However, this post will serve as a basic F.A.Q., with more analysis coming in future posts. Continue reading →

Plucked Chicken Award 2018: Mohammed bin Salman

What happens when you grow up without ever knowing the limits of power
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When Plato described man as a featherless biped, Diogenes the Cynic came to his Academy with a plucked chicken proclaiming “this is Plato’s man!”. The Plucked Chicken Award will be awarded every year to the human being that best represents the folly of our idealization of our species.

Plucked Chicken Award 2018: Mohammed bin Salman

Last year’s Plucha (every award needs its shorthand) was awarded to
Aung San Suu Kyi, not because she was the most horrible human being the world, but being the one that fell most from grace in the shortest of times. In fact, it’s hard to think of someone who went from a Nobel Peace Prize winner to a sponsor of genocide (Kissinger, you came close). This year, however, it does go to one of the most horrible human beings living on planet Earth, and worse still, running a country. And that is the Saudi Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman al Saud. At the tender age of 33 he has demonstrated nearly every psychopathic quality that emerges in a human being who has been raised to know nothing other than absolute power, for tyrants begotten from other tyrants are invariably magnitudes worse than their predecessors. Were he the ruling monarch of some hermit kingdom or dysfunctional third-world kleptocracy, the problem would mostly be contained. Unfortunately, he presides over one of the most geopolitically important countries in the world, a Middle East powerhouse which is a protagonist of nearly every conflict in the region, mainly the ongoing Syrian and Yemen civil wars. His actions matter. Continue reading →