What's Good for Il Duce... or Can We Get a Little Empathy Now?

Over at Cliopatria, Timothy Burke complains that Jonah Goldberg's forthcoming new book  abuses the word "fascism" in describing modern US liberals as heirs of the fascist tradition of the earlier 20th century.  Putting aside whether Goldberg is right or wrong for the moment (though having seen a draft of one chapter on the economics of fascism, I thought his argument was good enough to require a serious response from the left, rather than the comparisons to Ann Coulter it is drawing in Matt Yglesias's comments), I think it's probably a good thing for those on the left to have to deal with what they perceive to be misleading or inaccurate terminology about their beliefs that is damaging.

After all, libertarians have been dealing with everything from Pinochet to Halliburton described by leftists as "the free market," when neither authoritarianism nor corporatism are what libertarians stand for (the latter is closer to fascism, Italian style, in my view). And let's not forget Naomi Klein's book The Shock Doctrine in which Milton Friedman and capitalism more generally are linked to torture and the intentional destruction of communities for political purposes. Then there's Michael Moore blaming the "free market" for the problems with US health care, an industry in which almost half of the expenditures are made by government. The left has practically made a movement out of blaming every social outcome they don't like on "capitalism" or "the free market" and/or calling everything that conservatives or libertarians do that they don't like "fascism." It's hard to drum up a ton of sympathy when the current victims have been guilty of the same sorts of sins.

So now that the worm has turned, and a conservative is seen to be abusing the language in describing the views of the left, perhaps folks on the left will be more circumspect in their own use of language when talking about the positions held by conservatives and libertarians, or in labeling the institutions of the very mixed economy as being "free market" or "capitalist." At the very least, I hope they are more empathetic to libertarians when we complain about such abuses.

Cross-posted at Liberty and Power

 

Comments

[Rafe Champion]

The spin that Hitler put on fascism has made it almost impossible to discuss the topic in a dispassionate mannner. That is unfortunate because it would be illuminating to trace the implications of collectivism from Plato to Mussolini's Italy, the New Deal, New Labor in Britain, the UE and the bipartisan support for big, intrusive government in the land of the free. Whitehead described western philosophy as footnotes to Plato and that is most obvious in political philosophy, and practice.

[Brian Pitt]

Rafe,

I could not agree more. I would love for some of those with the "sociological imagination" to undertake such a project.

Question:
Is it possible to trace the consequences of collectivism (e.g., the New Deal) without a working knowledge of economics?

[Rafe Champion]

Thanks Brian! Alvin Gouldner was a sociological "shooting star" in the '70s. He helped to destroy the status of Talcott Parsons and he wrote a book called "Enter Plato" (as a sociologist) without bothering to mention "The Open Society and its Enemies" (1945) that showed how Plato anticipated many Marxist themes. "The Open Society" is far too long but fortunately there is a condensed version on line. http://www.the-rathouse.com/popshorterOSE.html