Chait pushes back against the pushback on the President’s application of the term “social Darwinism” to Romney-Ryan Republicanism.
Now, I suspect that right-wingers object to the term “social Darwinist” because it can be understood to imply a more literal application of Darwinism — that the poor should be killed off so they cannot reproduce. Almost none of them would take the theory quite so far. But the more symbolic application of Darwinism to the market, as a morally optimal tool for allocating rewards, seems appropriate. Republicans may prefer a more positive-sounding label, but in politics you don’t always get to pick your label.
Chait in passing claims that Richard Hofstadter “created the label,” implying that Hofstadter coined the term, when it had actually been in use since the mid-late 19th Century. You could say that Hofstadter helped turn it into a label – except that it never ended up being used as a “label” except in a moderately expanded version of the same circle where it referenced an already old discussion.
Not that Chait’s argument is bad: As he says, and starts to demonstrate, there is a rather easily arguable social Darwinist aspect to self-regulating free market ideology as propounded by today’s Romney-Ryan Republicans, who have further managed to fuse it with Christianism and American Exceptionalism – resulting in the apparent belief, asserted in close to these terms, that God chose America as the place to experiment with the Holy Free Market. The notion merges naturally with Dual Covenant Christian Zionism, and for that matter with the Mormon prophetic re-conceptualization of America and with applied Mormon economics.
There are two main problems with attacking this ideology. The first problem is that any criticism tends to look like an attack on religion or creed, and, as we know, the founding gesture of the modern dispensation was the declaration of politicized religious conflict as off-limits, not just in America, but in America especially. All wars in the modern world must be justified on supposedly non-religious terms, with the ambiguous exception of wars against religious warriors, not that the justification of any resort to violence can avoid religious grounds for very long.
The second problem is that social Darwinism loosely speaking describes the political unconscious of most centrist liberalism as well, even or especially in its superficially atheistic versions, the main difference being that social liberals (“liberals” after World War II) are more interested in softening the sharp edges of free market implementation and operation, or in appearing to do so, accepting the trade-off against pure market efficiency, and taking it on faithless faith that enough of the social surplus will remain indefinitely relatively painlessly available from the winners for adequately social calmative re-distribution to the losers.
From the point of view of both liberalisms – the classic economic version and the modernized and socialized one – all the rest is so much Marxism, Satanism, New Ageism, or, even worse, monotheism under obsolete pre-capitalist conceptions. Any willingness to view the world system as a system, with winners and losers distributed across time and global space, undermines the moral confidence of Holy Free Marketers, so must be rigorously denied, rejected, isolated, nullified, and extirpated, or, where nothing else avails, bought off.
[wpspoiler name=”The prior (pre-McCloskeyian intervention) version of this post” ]
Chait pushes back against the pushback on the President’s application of the term “social Darwinism” to Romney-Ryan Republicanism.
Now, I suspect that right-wingers object to the term “social Darwinist” because it can be understood to imply a more literal application of Darwinism — that the poor should be killed off so they cannot reproduce. Almost none of them would take the theory quite so far. But the more symbolic application of Darwinism to the market, as a morally optimal tool for allocating rewards, seems appropriate. Republicans may prefer a more positive-sounding label, but in politics you don’t always get to pick your label.
Chait in passing claims that Richard Hofstadter “created the label,” implying that Hofstadter coined the term, when it had actually been in use since the mid-late 19th Century. You could say that Hofstadter helped turn it into a label – except that it never ended up being used as a “label” except in a moderately expanded version of the same circle where it referenced an already old discussion.
Not that Chait’s argument is bad: As he says, and starts to demonstrate, there is a rather easily arguable social Darwinist aspect to self-regulating free market ideology as propounded by today’s Romney-Ryan Republicans, who have further managed to fuse it with Christianism and American Exceptionalism: God chose America as the place to experiment with the Holy Free Market. It merges naturally with Dual Covenant Christian Zionism, and for that matter with the Mormon prophetic re-conceptualization of America and with applied Mormon economics.
There are two main problems with attacking this ideology. The first problem is that any criticism tends to look like an attack on religion or creed, and, as we know, the founding gesture of the modern dispensation was the declaration of politicized religious conflict as off-limits, not just in America, but in America especially. All wars in the modern world must be justified on supposedly non-religious terms, with the ambiguous exception of wars against religious warriors, not that the justification of any resort to violence can avoid religious grounds for very long.
The second problem is that social Darwinism loosely speaking describes the political unconscious of most centrist liberalism as well, even or especially in its superficially atheistic versions, the main difference being that social liberals are more interested in softening the sharp edges of free market implementation and operation, or in appearing to do so, accepting the trade-off against market efficiency a la Saint Hayek, and taking it on faithless faith that enough of the social surplus will remain indefinitely relatively painlessly available from the winners for adequately socially calmative re-distribution to the losers.
Satanic Marxism and its chief variations – including the major monotheisms under obsolete pre-capitalist understandings – under even a slight willingness to view the world system as a system, with winners and losers distributed across time and global space, undermines the moral confidence of Holy Free Marketers – so must be rigorously denied, rejected, isolated, nullified, and extirpated – or, where nothing else avails, bought off.
[/wpspoiler]
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I like some of those sentences, boy. A few two many twists to get your point across effectively, but I still like em. And who cares about points? The Clippers won last night’s game in every way except for points. It was kind of beautiful on a Social Darwinism level. The best player on the planet showed why he’s he’s still the best player on the planet: because he wins games. But at the same time there was enough trickle down to make room for a very exiting home team to somehow be all the more weirdly exiting since they have to play without an good enough home fan advantage. Who’s getting old. Who’s too young. Who’s already done it. Who might do it? Who may never get there because their team never gets there. All kinds of evolutionary criss-crossings. Both Pau and Blake are nice guys. Will finish last because or despite of their attempts to look tough. It was so cute when they tangled up and wanted to be fierce, but not really, and clearly neither one of them had any interest in brutality. One of my favorite sports moments ever.