A common problem with the Left is that its members seem to turn virtually any question on its head. In particular, I have repeatedly remarked that if the Left accuses someone of something, chances are that the accusation could be levied against the Left (in general) or the Leftist speaker at hand (in particular) with much greater justification.
However, the issue goes well beyond that. Below I will give some representative examples. (A full treatment would be far longer.)
Other examples or partial examples are present in other writings. Note e.g. a text on poverty and an odd claim about Kamala Harris that motivated me to write that text.
While variations of the straw-man theme are common on the Left, a particularly annoying and damaging version is to claim that the Leftist position would be moderate when it actually is extremist and that the non-Leftist position would be extremist when it actually is moderate. (Other portions of this page also often discuss partial examples of straw-manning, while not necessarily mentioning the term.)
To take an example that should be free from the influence of priorities/subjectiveness/whatnot (otherwise a confounding factor):
I have repeatedly seen discussions of “nature vs. nurture” where a Leftist debater claims that the opposing camp would propose a “nature only” position—and now the noble Left must come to the rescue, install some sense into the debate, and show that everything is a mixture of “nature” and “nurture”. In a next step, policies are suggested that base on a “nurture only” position. (Or “so predominantly nurture that we can ignore nature”—I will stick with “nurture only”/“nature only” for simplicity.) Take the idea that more money must be thrown at schools to solve the problem or “problem” that the children of high-SES parents have greater success in school than those of low-SES parents—because some aspect of SES would be a direct and sole determiner of success in school.
This while I have never seen anyone suggest the type of “nature only” thinking that the Left straw-mans. On the contrary, the typical (broadly speaking) “pro-nature” position is that nature is important and that it is a grave error to focus exclusively on nurture. This certainly when we look at more academic proponents of nature, who usually have a very nuanced take—even while being condemned as “nature only” proponents (and, often, sexists, racists, whatnot) by the Left. (For instance, my limited contacts with even the extremely maligned Helmuth Nyborg have pointed to a much more nuanced view than what is so often found on the Left, in gender-studies, etc. A particular telling example is the Eysenck–Kamin debate “Intelligence: The Battle for the Mind”.)
Here, I ask the reader to not get side-tracked by the underlying issue of “nature vs. nurture”: The point is not who is in the right in this question and its sub-questions, but who actually has what position and how the Left misrepresents positions—something independent of who is in the right.
In particular, the discussion is centered on those Leftists who pretend to hold a moderate position—a great many others are unabashedly “nurture only” or are genuinely open to a sane middle road.
That said, the evidence for a strong influence of nature is overwhelming in a great many areas and to argue the opposite is a sign of either ignorance or intellectual dishonesty (but in a manner off topic to this specific page). Note, in particular, that non-Leftists have very little to gain politically from arguing a strong influence of nature, while the Left has very much to gain by arguing “nurture only”, as many of their proposed policies, much of their propaganda on more specific questions, whatnot, collapse if the “nurture only” hypothesis is removed. (Possibly, this is the reason why motives like racism are postulated by the Left—this way, it seems as if the non-Left had something to gain and, to boot, something likely to be more objectionable to voters than what the Left gains.)
If we, for instance, allow inborn differences between men and women, then blanket claims about “social constructs” and “gender-roles” can no longer be taken as the automatic explanations for why more women than men stay home with the children and more men than women go for a career—and political interventions to change the proportions of who-does-what are much harder to justify without further supporting proof. At an extreme, women who prefer the home have been denounced for e.g. being brain-washed (if usually with a less upfront formulation).
Likewise, if we allow that I.Q. (or, better, g) is to a considerable portion inherited and that I.Q. has a strong correlation with success in school, then whole narratives of “social injustice” are revealed as giants with feet of clay. Looking at the above, it is also worth noting that throwing more and more money at schools has been tried ad nauseam and with very little success. It can work up to a low threshold (good education does not require much money) or in very dedicated settings (that cannot be made to scale, e.g. because the proportion of great teachers to average teachers is too small)—but to attempt it on a society-wide scale in a modern Western country has never worked.
A call for freer markets is often dismissed with derogatory and baseless Leftists claims about “market hocus pocus” (or similar), often combined with straw-manning that the proponents would have a hyper-naive belief that giving the markets free room to play would magically solve any and all economic or, even, societal problems.
This while the benefits of markets are not only founded in hundreds of years of economic thought but validated through practical experiences over a similar span of time. (And while market proponents are very well aware that not even free markets will solve everything.)
Moreover, the same Leftists do have a “hocus pocus” belief in more government intervention, that somehow the government will make things right, if just given enough money and power—and never mind that practical experiences show failure after failure after failure. At best, something gets done in an inefficient manner; at worst, it does not get done at all, even after incurring great costs. Tell a lie: At worst, the intervention does considerably more harm than good, as has often been the case with e.g. price controls.
Indeed, apparent successes of government intervention are typically more rooted in propaganda than reality or fail to compare the success with what a non-government approach would have achieved. (Cf. e.g. some books by Henry Hazlitt.) Conversely, apparent market failures often go back to previous restrictions on markets by the government, e.g. through artificial entry barriers or crippling regulations, and are then often nothing but politicians trying to blame markets for their own failures.
Of course, free markets occasionally do fail and very often fall short of perfect. However, free markets are usually still the best option, because government intervention would fail even worse or turn short of perfect into the outright poor.
On those points where markets actually do a poor job and government intervention could be beneficial, however, it is usually absent. (For example, to ensure that a private customer who enters a deal with a giant corporation actually gets what he paid for.)
As for solving problems, the best view might not even be that markets solve problems but that artificial market distortions cause problems or allow problems to flower. Restoring markets to their natural free state simply restores what should be and allows the economy to heal, as if a human had his immune system artificially and unnecessarily suppressed, grew ill because an infection met too little resistance, and then recovered once the artificial suppression was removed and the immune system began to do its work again.
An occasional twist is to claim that some non-Leftist preference/action/whatnot comes with a price, when it is actually the Leftist counterpart that comes with the price—often because there is a see-saw involved and the Left has absurd priorities with regard to this see-saw or fails to truly understand the consequences of the see-saw’s movements.
I first encountered this take in some Swedish TV program over thirty years ago (some vagueness in the details results):
Sweden had increasing problems with unemployment and, especially, unemployment among the unqualified, for reasons like high labor costs and obstacles to firing poor performers. Now, however, a TV show spoke of a U.S. man who opened doors and kept door knobs polished—he had a job but at a terrible price: he earned little. Overall, the U.S. was paying the price for allowing such low-paying jobs—there might be less unemployment, but oh that horrible low wage! In reality, of course, it was Sweden that was paying a price for its high-wage and whatnot policies. Had the wages for this man been raised to a Swedish level, he would (barring charity) have been out of a job, because he did not deliver enough value to justify that level of earnings in that job.
Of course, parts of the U.S. (California, in particular) have, for quite some time, been falling into the same trap through overly high minimum wages.
A twist is that Sweden does not have minimum wages in the strictest sense. Instead high “lowest levels” of wages are caused by the strong union influence, collective bargaining, and the like. (Which, obviously, has an element of keeping the insiders, those in employment, happy at the cost of the outsiders, those not in employment.)
Here we can also see another common Leftist problem: Raising superficial counter-arguments that might convince weak thinkers but leave sharper minds cold. Something like “How could obstacles to firings lead to unemployment?” is often heard when similar arguments are raised. Very superficially, this seems like a good point, but it falls flat on closer inspection, as the trouble is the incentives to not hire in the first place.
(With an additional influence from the reduction of profitability through a lowering of average competence levels, increased efforts to filter candidates in advance, and similar. Lower profits, of course, means less money to hire staff, an increased risk of bankruptcy with ensuing mass firings, etc.)
The most recent example came a few days before writing this text: Some Leftist idiot complained that the tax policy pushed by the newly re-inaugurated Trump would come with a price—it would be necessary to cut down on government spending!
In reality, of course, it is the other way around: More spending comes with a price, namely, higher taxes. (Or higher debt, excessive money printing, or some other harmful mechanism with similar effects.) Government spending (beyond some point passed many, many decades ago) is a bad thing. Reducing government spending is a good thing. If in doubt, the apparent supposition that Trump would be naive for having failed to realize that spending cuts were needed, or disingenuous for pretending so, is utterly ridiculous. Not only is he pushing DOGE for the specific purpose of making cuts but “starve the beast” (i.e. cut down on government income to force reductions in spending, size of bureaucracies, etc.) has been an oft repeated suggestion from Republicans since at least the days of Reagan—something that Trump can hardly have missed.
Even both the ethical problems of high taxes and the idea of “starving the beast” aside, high taxes are harmful. Consider issues like misallocation of resources, poor incentives to work (invest, form new businesses, whatnot), wasteful use by the government, the risk that poor businesses are artificially kept alive (preventing new businesses from taking their places), etc. (With details varying depending on the type of tax and how the tax money is used.)
In particular, the Keynesian idea that more government spending would be a good thing is almost always flawed, because the money spent by the government must be taken from somewhere and the lack of money there will do more harm than the government spending does good. (Even apart from the many cases of government spending actually doing harm.)
A very common problem is that typical negative Leftist characteristics are contrafactually projected onto others (cf. below), that typical positive non-Leftist characteristics are contrafactually claimed by the Left (for instance, support of free speech), or that other distortions take place (Feminism is a perennial source of examples).
Here, it is particularly important to keep great individual variations in mind, to note that the non-Left is extremely heterogeneous, and to beware of variations over both time and geography. The above paragraph holds true in the main, but will know many exceptions.
Two particular complications when evaluating the Left is the need to (a) look at actual actions, not fancy words, (b) beware of the many “useful idiots” who go with the Left in the naive belief that the Leftist narratives about the Left and its opponents are true—often, because they take in the fancy words and ignore the actual actions. To (a), note e.g. how Leftists often claim support of free speech but this ultimately amounts to “free speech for me but not for thee”, “free speech, unless I consider it offensive, racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, ...”, or some other variation on such themes.
For instance, I have repeatedly heard the claim that Fascism would, at its core, be a matter of the subjugation of the individual to the collective. That, however, comes close to what I would view as the definition of Leftism and which I have seen repeated again and again, to varying degrees, everywhere that I have encountered the Left. (With some variations, in that it sometimes might be the collective, sometimes the government, sometimes the worker’s movement, etc. The principle remains the same.) If this view of Fascism holds true, then Fascism is best viewed as a Leftist movement. (Indeed, I have a great number of texts dealing with the status as the Nazis, more specifically, as a far-Left grouping, best viewed as a part of the non-Marxist Left rather than of the “Right”.) This while some groups denounced as Fascist strongly favor individualism, as with the approximate equalisation of “Fascism” and “Capitalism” pushed by the DDR (to which the Berlin wall was the “anti-Fascist rampart”/“anti-Fascistischer Schutzwall”).
Speaking of Capitalism, I have seen Capitalism denounced, or even defined, as e.g. “seeing humans as nothing but a means to an end”, which, again, to large parts describes Leftist movements, but is, depending on point of view, either antithetical or orthogonal to Capitalism (and very, very contrary to Libertarianism, where the most ardent proponents of Capitalism are usually found).
I had intended to quote Marx, himself, here, but I have not been able to find the actual statement again. The version given is, then, approximate, but it does reflect a sentiment that I have repeatedly seen in a Communist/Marxist context.
To Capitalism: Exact definitions vary wildly, but at the core we find individuals and businesses freely engaging in exchanges, where both parties are in the (usually correct) belief that they will benefit from the exchange—something very, very different. It is not uncommon that individual Capitalists have an “a means to an end” mentality, but this has nothing to do with Capitalism, as such, is quite common among Leftist big shots, and has been extremely common where Marxist regimes were in power (e.g. in the USSR). Food for thought, given that such persons exist: Is it not better that they run businesses than that they are party functionaries, civil servants, or other wielders of totalitarian power under a Marxist regime?
Or take the accusation that this-or-that non-Leftist party/candidate/whatnot (allegedly non-Leftist in the case of Fascists/Nazis) would strive to create hostility between groups, draw votes from such hostility, or similar: This is, again, a much better description of the Left and/or Marxism, with its “us vs. them” and oppression this-and-that thinking. Marxism has this at its core (evil Capitalist oppressors vs. poor exploited workers), ditto Feminism (evil male oppressors, etc.), ditto various other woke/grievance/whatnot movements. (In a twist, recent years has seen various Leftist movements, notably Feminists and trans-fanatics, come to blows over who is the oppressor and who the oppressed.)
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