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A Commentary on the Passing Scene by Robert Paul Wolff rwolff@afroam.umass.edu
My Stuff
https://umass-my.sharepoint.com/:f:/g/personal/rwolff_umass_edu/EkxJV79tnlBDol82i7bXs7gBAUHadkylrmLgWbXv2nYq_A?e=UcbbW0
Coming Soon:
The following books by Robert Paul Wolff are available on Amazon.com as e-books: KANT'S THEORY OF MENTAL ACTIVITY, THE AUTONOMY OF REASON, UNDERSTANDING MARX, UNDERSTANDING RAWLS, THE POVERTY OF LIBERALISM, A LIFE IN THE ACADEMY, MONEYBAGS MUST BE SO LUCKY, AN INTRODUCTION TO THE USE OF FORMAL METHODS IN POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY.
Now Available: Volumes I, II, III, and IV of the Collected Published and Unpublished Papers.
Now Available: Volumes I, II, III, and IV of the Collected Published and Unpublished Papers.
NOW AVAILABLE ON YOUTUBE: LECTURES ON KANT'S CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON. To view the lectures, go to YouTube and search for "Robert Paul Wolff Kant." There they will be.
NOW AVAILABLE ON YOUTUBE: LECTURES ON THE THOUGHT OF KARL MARX. To view the lectures, go to YouTube and search for Robert Paul Wolff Marx."
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About Me
- Robert Paul Wolff
- As I observed in one of my books, in politics I am an anarchist, in religion I am an atheist, and in economics I am a Marxist. I am also, rather more importantly, a husband, a father, a grandfather, and a violist.
13 comments:
When I click on a link, PFD or .doc, I get a blank screen with a header corresponding to the document. Otherwise, no content.
Rats. I need to solve this. Stay tuned.
The same as Dean. I'm using Chrome by the way.
Firefox here.
Exactly the same result with Microsoft Edge..
OFF TOPIC
David Leonhardt's column in today's NY Time says so much better what I have been trying to say on this blog on why the Left keeps losing and what can be done about it:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/08/opinion/sanders-democratic-primary.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage&te=1&nl=david-leonhardt&emc=edit_ty_20200309&campaign_id=39&instance_id=16601&segment_id=22017&user_id=3eb544acf33074153136256ee3f4e9dc®i_id=46623236emc=edit_ty_20200309
David Palmeter,
It is human trait, perhaps at times a flaw, to hold beliefs and stick by them. However, Leonhardt's thesis that progressive and lefties are too wedded to their beliefs and lose because of this is flawed. Political parties bring together groups with shared interests by articulating a set of beliefs that they share and inform their action. It's hard to forget the devotion to ideology of the Reagan conservatives. They were slavishly devoted to ideological purity so much so they used primary challenges against incumbents who were seen as not conservative enough to maintain ideological purity.
The Sanders campaign is about to lose the nomination not because it was too ideological and not committed to winning, but rather because of the red-baiting and fear mongering ginned up by countless op-ed pieces in conjunction with a beautifully engineered series of endorsements that consolidated the neo-liberal wing Democratic party. It is ideology, understood here as beliefs that distort understanding of reality, that is the basis of the neoliberal criticism of Sanders. One has to capture swing voters, appeal to the middle, get independents on your side, and if you move to the left you will lose the middle. Each of those assumptions is provably wrong. We have a 'myth of the middle' that guides our analysis and actions and it is wrong.
"These tropes conjure up a particular image: a pivotal bloc of reasonable “independent” voters sick of the two major parties, just waiting for a centrist candidate to embrace a “moderate” policy vision. And there’s a reason this perception exists: you see just that if you look only at topline polling numbers, which show 40-plus percent of voters refusing to identify with a party, or close to 40 percent of voters calling themselves moderates. But topline polling numbers mask an underlying diversity of political thought that is far more complicated." (The Moderate Middle Is A Myth, Lee Drutman, FiveThirtyEight, Sep. 24, 2019)
I think it ironic that MSNBC, generally considered a liberal media outlet, had Dr. Bitecofer on after her spot on projection of the 2018 blue wave. Bitecofer dismissively call the belief in swing voters "the Chuck Todd theory of politics." In those interviews she made quite clear that the assumptions about swing voters, independents, and the need to "win the middle" were flat out wrong. But when push came to shove, MSNBC's primary election commentary relied on precisely those outdated political beliefs. These myths comprised the ideological underpinning of the barrage of Bernie can't win op-eds.
Oddly enough, Trump ran on fear. Biden will win the nomination not because he is a good candidate or that he has a coherent platform and a vision for the country, but because of fear. Ironically, it is a fear of a return to the party of FDR, Keynesian economic policy, progressive taxation, etc.
Christopher M.,
I agree with what you say about Biden's winning the nomination.
However, what strikes me about Biden from what I know about his political career are his duplicity and opportunism. Surely, there are moderates who are decent, honest, forthright people and after all, centrism is a respectable political position, although it is not mine. However, Biden sucks as a human being, independent of his political views, if he actually has any besides pandering to what he believes will be most useful to his political career.
S. Wallerstein -
I agree with your assessment of Biden. At least in the states, centrism seems to be equal to neoliberalism. Thus, I suspect that centrists are oriented toward business interests first, people's needs second. With the caveat that I am not that familiar with centrist parties in Europe or elsewhere, I am not sure what it means to be a centrist. Here, if you are a centrist you rely on a kind of unspoken consensus that both extremes of the political spectrum are bad. And that assumption is what has sunk the Sanders campaign.
Centrism is pretty much equal to neoliberalism everywhere.
Isn't it possible that anti-semitism is a factor that has worked against Sanders? A dirty secret that no one wants to talk about. I'm not talking about goose-stepping, neo-Nazi anti-semitism, but simply the fact that many people see Jews as "weird" or are uncomfortable with them.
My impression as a Jew is that lots of people everywhere don't like Jews, which isn't the same thing as hating Jews.
I believe Anti-Semitism is a factor tho how much I can’t venture a guess. There has clearly been an increase since Trump’s campaign. Anti Semitic has been big part of the bigoted side which is itself a big portion of history that is rarely taught of U.S. history. The KKK was as anti Semitic as it was anti- catholic and racist. A good source for more info is the anti defamation league or the southern poverty law center.
Besides the virulent KKK-type anti-semitism, there's a prevalent subtler anti-semitism, which isn't so much hateful or still less violent, but rather of being "turned off" by Jews, of not feeling comfortable with them.
What's more, Sanders is very Jewish. Not religious of course, but in 10 seconds of conversation with him, one would pick up through his accent and body language that he's the quintessential Brooklyn Jew.
However, since he's very critical of Israel (rightly so), the official Jewish community is unlikely to point out the anti-semitism underlying some voter rejection of him. In addition, his attacks on Wall St. are unlikely to win him friends among the finance Jewish crowd (Goldman Sachs, etc.), which has a lot of influence on the so-called liberal media, for example, the New York Times.
Finally, since Jews on the left (such as myself) recognize that the generally subtle discrimination that we face (which I believe affected Sanders' campaign) is "nothing" compared to the violent racism blacks face, we tend not to bring up the subject.
I'm not claiming that anti-semitism is the only or even the chief factor behind Sanders's not beating Biden, but I believe that it is a factor.
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