Your thoughts helped clarify for me what sometimes seems a paradox. Liberal democracy delivered to the American people during the second half of the twentieth century a level of general prosperity that was unequaled in human history. Which is not to say there were not ongoing problems, but one would think that if materialism were the primary mover of human happiness, the 21st century would be a particularly blessed era - but it clearly isn’t. And even with the current grotesque maldistribution of wealth, the material standard of living for most Americans is pretty good compared to much of the world and certainly most of human history. So the notion that the problem is not material but spiritual - a crisis of meaning - seems correct to me. I also agree that liberalism freeing citizens to pursue happiness, not just material wealth, but to create art, study nature, challenge assumptions of the past with a conviction that there is a Good that can be pursued and is worth pursuing; that liberalism is appealing and can certainly imbue life and community with meaning. And envisioning a society of free, engaged, active citizens who disagree and debate about the Good under the constraints of laws that are mutually agreed upon - that is a beautiful conception and perhaps represents the American ideal. But I think there is a problem. Freedom as a good is complicated. And for many it is stressful. Living free requires courage and facing up to a future that is undetermined. And for some that leads to insecurity. As some economic and materialist factors seem to be impelling back toward a form of feudalism, I can’t help but worry that the appeal of feudalism was not only to the landed wealthy who ruled, but to the serfs who, however miserable their lives were, accepted their lot as serfs and found meaning in subservience and loyalty to a sovereign, trading freedom for certainty about their place in the world and perhaps some protection from a sovereign who might make their lives simply less “nasty, brutish, and short”. It is hard not to see some of that playing out today.
You've offered such a beautiful synthesis here, at once humble and breathtaking in its scope: a way to organize my own spiritual leanings, private thoughts and public policy preferences into one cohesive, dynamic and actionable framework. Classical Liberalism, recovered and restored. Thank you for making clear these economic materialist distinctions, and making the primary framework for big tent Liberalism so much stronger, easier to grasp and hold onto in these divisive times. Bravo!
Minor quibble: Marx’s historical materialism, as he laid it out in the German Ideology, was technically descriptive, analytic in character, not prescriptive. It purported to explain why history and society looked the way they did without taking a position on the moral or political desirability of economic processes prefiguring the social structure(s) of society.
He was just saying, at least initially, “This is how it is, deal with it”, in contradistinction to the idealism of Hegel, whom Marx was explicitly - and persuasively - turning on his head. Now, one can get into how honestly descriptive, as opposed to prescriptive, the historical materialist conception (or “scientific socialism”) really was, but on its face it was nothing more than that.
That’s a fair intellectual-historical point about Marx’s intentions. I’m deliberately collapsing some distinctions to make a broader argument about frameworks that efface agency—and reasonable people could say I’m oversimplifying.
Still, the “purely descriptive” claim does ideological work of its own. Once human action is cast as determined by socio-economic forces, the space for resistance begins to look illusory. “This is how it is, deal with it” sounds neutral, but it often functions as counsel for accommodation.
You’re right that there’s a long and complex history in how Marx’s analytic project evolved into Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy, and I’m not doing full justice to those nuances. The real question is whether that level of precision would strengthen this piece—or blunt its force for a general audience. I suspect the latter, given where I ultimately land.
👌like I said, just a quibble. Not sure you saw my comment on one of your earlier pieces but it referenced this old interview with Karp on NPR in about 1968, along the same lines as the article from 1988 but more on all fours with the broader points you have been making and also fascinating (I think) in its own right. I recommend it as a companion to the article: https://www.wnyc.org/story/walter-karp/
Adam Smith would have agreed with this: he saw one of the main benefits of the industrial revolution as being the increase in freedom resulting from the loss of power by the landed aristocracy. “Having sold their birthright, not like Esau for a mess of pottage in time of hunger and necessity, but, in the wantonness of plenty, for trinkets and baubles, fitter to be the playthings of children than the serious pursuits of men”, the “great proprietors were no longer capable of interrupting the regular execution of justice, or of disturbing the peace of the country”. (Wealth, bk 3 ch 4).
I’ve commented about the connection between “is” and “ought” on another post of yours. It seems to me that there are moral truths, so that, confronted with facts about the number of lives destroyed by a Hitler or a Putin, we can do more than murmur “chacun à son goût”.
As Parfit wrote: “Economists are not chiefly to blame for having these beliefs, since it was philosophers who first claimed that reasons are given only by desires, that all rationality is instrumental, and that no values are facts, because there are no normative truths. Given our increasing powers to destroy or damage the conditions of life on Earth, we need to lose these beliefs.” (OWM, Vol2 ch 31)
A desire always implies a forecast about the satisfaction we will get from fulfilling it. While, as liberals, we are clear that the state should not interfere in the pursuit of our wants (subject to the usual provisos about harming others), as realists we need not pretend that people’s forecasts are invariably accurate. (Indeed large parts of the economy are devoted to ensuring that they remain inaccurate). If you believe that you can’t derive an “ought” from an “is”, you treat all wants as equally valid, and are ready to believe that measures of national income are also measures of happiness – an attitude that you rightly criticize.
Again, Adam Smith was under no illusion that all wants are equally valid: “How many people ruin themselves, by laying out money on trinkets of frivolous utility? What pleases these lovers of toys is not so much the utility, as the aptness of the machines which are fitted to promote it. All their pockets are stuffed with little conveniences. They contrive new pockets, unknown in the clothes of other people, in order to carry a greater number. They walk about loaded with a multitude of baubles”. (TMS, Part 4 ch 1)
Thank you for pulling this essay outside the paywall. I have many thoughts about it. The most important is that this piece is fundamental to understanding how to move forward towards making a better country and a better world. It is a powerful framework of ideas for self-governance and society.
Very much enjoyed this essay, Mike. A society’s economic system - whether the materialism of socialism or of capitalism - should be understood as an emergent phenomenon arising from that society’s fundamental power dynamics and spiritual values … Who holds power and why and how? What is govt for? Who does it serve? To what ends are we committed and by what means shall we get there?
As you so well articulate, classic liberalism accords power in a democracy to its citizens, who slowly, argumentatively, and often begrudgingly choose the means by which power is created (the ballot), and the ends for which power is distributed and deployed (legislation). Democracy and its messy chaotic processes comprise the structural or foundational framework for understanding and managing power, from which should emerge an economic system that’s best suited to realize the goals and values that have been democratically determined…
BTW, did you catch Eric Schmidt’s NYTimes op-ed on using AI algorithms to support democracy?
I'm just not going to quibble over semantics. What you've tried to say is valuable food for thought, but you're going to get a variety of reactions to your comparisons of terms. Let's not get embroiled in that. Another version of "socialism" is merely some form (and check out the list!) of putting people's well-being first, material or spiritual. We've certainly been taken for an ugly ride by low-trust/bad faith sociopaths, and need to resurrect our spiritual commitment to equal opportunity and treatment under the law, an appreciation of the varied ways people have found to express the creativity of culture. That's the "exceptional" American Way. Dump the oligarchs, but more importantly, crush the attitudes, institutions, and suppositions that preserve the privilege of property against spiritual equality.
I appreciate the support for spiritual values over material ones. My argument is specifically about how we pursue those values—through democratic framework that comes first, or through economic transformation as prerequisite. That's not semantics; it's the question that divides liberals from socialists. But I'm glad we agree on the ultimate values at stake.
I strongly disagree with your (Brock's) thesis. The objective conditions in the Soviet Union determined the values of its citizens. Suspicion, fear, dishonesty, and related values were not the values Marx predicted, but they nonetheless resulted from objective political economy. The same is true for the objective reality built by neoliberals. Isolation, alienation, and disregard for others were not the values predicted by Hayek and Rand, but they too resulted from the objective political economy.
There is a feedback loop Subjective-Objective-Subjective (SOS). First come the values to a small number of ideologues. These ideas, in combination with contradictions in the existing order, create the objective conditions that determine the values of the vast majority. This does not mean the vast majority are stupid, but rather that their interests lie elsewhere, and the most expedient way to fulfill them is to adopt the values imposed by objective political economy.
Political-economic relations are primary, and spiritual values are derivative. This is a historical fact, and the failures of Marxism and neoliberalism to accurately predict those values do not alter the fact.
The designers of classical liberalism were indeed materialists. The “founding fathers” were all wealthy landowners. They believed that the objective political economy of property rights and prosperity would lead to values of human dignity, democratic citizenship, and self-governance. They were, however, more cognizant of the feedback loop than Marxists and neoliberals, recognizing that the values of human dignity, democratic citizenship, and self-governance would also lead to property rights and prosperity. They were also more correct in their predictions than today’s Marxists and neoliberals. Initially, classical-liberal systems lasted for centuries. Georgists would point out that the ultimate mistake was in considering land ownership as inherent in property rights.
Fear of wealth concentration does not contradict the notion that objective reality determines the values of the vast majority. Those defending the status quo a century ago fear the power that comes from wealth concentration precisely because it does.
It is the political economy that determines values, not politics, nor the economy in isolation. The demand for political change should not be confused with the values of the vast majority. The primary objective of FDR was materialist; to save the political economy by empowering and increasing the economic prosperity of its citizens. To believe that FDR's primary motive was expanding democratic ideals is as naïve as believing that Lincoln’s primary motive was emancipation.
I agree with you and the democratic socialists that politics and economics are inseparable. The objective political economy determines the values of the vast majority. But you argue that any economic system can go hand in hand with a just political system. Historically, that has never been true. Classical liberalism was associated with free-market capitalism, a lack of diversity among wealth holders, and, in many places, a frontier. It would never have worked with workers’ control of the means of production, a diverse workforce, or a lack of free land.
The conflation of politicians' proposals with the values created by objective political economy does not negate the thesis. The values created by a political economy are also created by its contradictions. Otherwise, values would not change with time. Mamdani tapped into the values created by the current contradictions of our political economy and used his oratory skills to rise to power. His oratory skills would have counted for nothing in the 1950s.
In some cases, your values are concerning. For instance, claiming that market suppression is acceptable with democratic consent. Would you accept the killing of Jews or the enslavement of African Americans with democratic consent? Of course, you would not. There must be a better justification for accepting market suppression than just democratic consent.
The democratic socialists argue for democracy and socialism. What they do not realize is that the values created by such a political economy will kill democracy in the long run, and more rapidly with a diverse working class. Nevertheless, the key to the increased longevity of our current political economy is democratic socialism for about ten years to reverse the grotesque inequality (a reason to support market suppression by democratic consent). Then we can go back to Hayek and Rand, again by democratic consent. However, these violent swings of debt-based capitalism will not produce the democratic values sought by the original classical liberals. How can we create a system to restore those values with a prosperous, diverse working class?
You propose a solution very close to the correct answer. The ideas of Henry George. Unfortunately, because you see values as determining the political economy, your solution, the land-value tax, is full of contradictions (e.g., no property owner would ever vote for it, taxing location at 100% makes assessment impossible).
You talk of two materialisms, but there are at least three. Marxism, neoliberalism, and land in the Commons Trust. The idea that the fruits of labor belong to the individual, and the gifts of God and Nature belong to the community, is very much an assertion in materialism. Nor is it desirable that democratic consent (at least not a simple majority) override this fundamental material relationship to property. In a sense, it is pure capitalism of labor and pure communism of land. It is neither neoliberalism nor Marxism; it is hardly a compromise, but a synthesis.
Land-based capitalism is such an objective reality. The values created by an objective reality in which land is in a Commons Trust, available for exclusive use to the highest bidder in a continuous auction, with ground rent divided equally among every person, constitute an objective political economy that will restore the values of classical liberals. Land is never taken through force but purchased in voluntary transactions by a profitable business implementing the AFFEERCE business plan. In such a system, free enterprise reigns without taxation, while necessities such as nutritious meals, warm and safe shelter, basic healthcare, unlimited free education, and local government are paid for through voluntary ground rents (kept high in desirable and productive areas by continuous auctions). Cellular democracy, formed as a necessity for benefit distribution, raises democracy to a new height, rigorously defined by individual sovereignty, objective, and subjective rights.
The AFFEERCE business plan cannot be implemented unless property rights are respected. Nevertheless, we use the values created by neoliberalism to drive the AFFEERCE business plan to its ultimate success. The obsessive desire for wealth and the drive to get the best deal propel the plan toward its goal. Marx and Hegel would be impressed.
Your criticism of California's Prop. 13 property-tax straitjacket is spot-on. "Conservatives" who blame California's myriad problems on "Democrat" leaders completely miss the point. Prop. 13 lies behind every crisis Californians face. Until the people understand why it must be repealed, everything will only get worse.
"I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.
"I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress. I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that the present tension in the South is a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace, in which the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substantive and positive peace, in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality. Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured."
(Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., "Letter from Birmingham Jail")
What you call “Economic Royalism” has a name: Mercantilism. It is the system Adam Smith fought against. But modern conservatives are so blinded by their anti-Socialism zeal that they brand anything that counters their dogma as Socialism or, worse, Communism.
While the Right tried, I believe with Lee Atwater in the GHW Bush 1988 campaign, to make “Liberal” a dirty word, the emergence of Neoliberal Economics have now made it a dirty word now on the Left. The Liberal Party of Norway and Australia are considered Center Right.
But what really throws the discussion now is the nature of Capitalism has changed. If you explain Capitalism to a 12 year old, you would say, “People or companies produce goods and services which people either consume or reject producing the best living for society.”
But Capitalism also involves investment. It’s that Second Economy, an economy for the Investor Class that has gotten out of hand. It changes Capitalism from a system of Production to a system of Extraction, an economy that benefits only the Investor Class.
This is how the Tech bros have come to the conclusion that suddenly we need Neofeudalism. And that, in the words of Peter Thiel, “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible." In Thiel’s eyes not only should the economy benefit only his class, but Freedom itself. This should be abhorrent to anyone not rolling in money or who enjoys servitude. The real class warfare is with people who want to turn the masses, as Yarvin dreams, into Biodiesel.
There seems to be an argument that while MAGA morality is in freefall, "honest conservatives" still value decency and are looking for ways to recover their own self-respect. The first step seems to be calling themselves "independents".
All of this is still the inability to think straight, a property of mistrust dealt in very young childhood -- the inability to differentiate oneself as a valid human and the attendant dependence on validation by others -- who apparently can be virtually anyone and any damned thing. "Conservatives" did not completely fall off the cliff but should still be viewed with suspicion, while treated with compassion. MAGA needs serious individual therapy, and we'll not get there any time soon.
Much of the "conservative" world has been taken over by MAGA and its sociopathic/psychopathic funders, so institutionally, conservatives have to rebuild. I'd prefer that we strive to find the somatic therapy to help them recover their spiritual foundations in interpersonal trust (spirit arises in and from natural processes that our brains are open to connecting as a matter of personal strengthening). This is a major challenge for our culture, as it needs to be a cultural imperative, not just political.
Your words here seem to flip the distinction you are trying to make(?) for the specific times we are very deeply within. Overturning an increasingly extreme economic system may be a prerequisite to even being able to consider the classical liberalism you describe (?)
We need to treat a severe debilitating infection that threatens to kill millions before we can discuss how we want to live our lives going forward. First stop the lethal attack on our body politic and economy….
Transition with proven democratic socialist policies…
stable footing from which to reconsider our way forward. Importantly with many many more people engaged ; hoping for Everyone to be engaged as the ultimate goal.
Wisdom of the crowd shouldn’t be the be all end all but it surely is better than the current system to disenfranchise and demonetize those individuals who make up the crowd and have some LOUD demands .
“The socialist tradition puts exploitation and class conflict at the center in ways liberalism historically doesn’t. It takes worker dignity and economic equality more seriously than liberals often have.”
Your thoughts helped clarify for me what sometimes seems a paradox. Liberal democracy delivered to the American people during the second half of the twentieth century a level of general prosperity that was unequaled in human history. Which is not to say there were not ongoing problems, but one would think that if materialism were the primary mover of human happiness, the 21st century would be a particularly blessed era - but it clearly isn’t. And even with the current grotesque maldistribution of wealth, the material standard of living for most Americans is pretty good compared to much of the world and certainly most of human history. So the notion that the problem is not material but spiritual - a crisis of meaning - seems correct to me. I also agree that liberalism freeing citizens to pursue happiness, not just material wealth, but to create art, study nature, challenge assumptions of the past with a conviction that there is a Good that can be pursued and is worth pursuing; that liberalism is appealing and can certainly imbue life and community with meaning. And envisioning a society of free, engaged, active citizens who disagree and debate about the Good under the constraints of laws that are mutually agreed upon - that is a beautiful conception and perhaps represents the American ideal. But I think there is a problem. Freedom as a good is complicated. And for many it is stressful. Living free requires courage and facing up to a future that is undetermined. And for some that leads to insecurity. As some economic and materialist factors seem to be impelling back toward a form of feudalism, I can’t help but worry that the appeal of feudalism was not only to the landed wealthy who ruled, but to the serfs who, however miserable their lives were, accepted their lot as serfs and found meaning in subservience and loyalty to a sovereign, trading freedom for certainty about their place in the world and perhaps some protection from a sovereign who might make their lives simply less “nasty, brutish, and short”. It is hard not to see some of that playing out today.
You've offered such a beautiful synthesis here, at once humble and breathtaking in its scope: a way to organize my own spiritual leanings, private thoughts and public policy preferences into one cohesive, dynamic and actionable framework. Classical Liberalism, recovered and restored. Thank you for making clear these economic materialist distinctions, and making the primary framework for big tent Liberalism so much stronger, easier to grasp and hold onto in these divisive times. Bravo!
I upgraded my subscription to Paid, in order to read this essay.
It was worth it.
Great piece. It echoes Walter Karp: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B771FAm_antDdmpoYWRwS3dHdTg/view?usp=drivesdk&resourcekey=0-RfyFWpP4eu9DaHE_jwlfLg.
Minor quibble: Marx’s historical materialism, as he laid it out in the German Ideology, was technically descriptive, analytic in character, not prescriptive. It purported to explain why history and society looked the way they did without taking a position on the moral or political desirability of economic processes prefiguring the social structure(s) of society.
He was just saying, at least initially, “This is how it is, deal with it”, in contradistinction to the idealism of Hegel, whom Marx was explicitly - and persuasively - turning on his head. Now, one can get into how honestly descriptive, as opposed to prescriptive, the historical materialist conception (or “scientific socialism”) really was, but on its face it was nothing more than that.
That’s a fair intellectual-historical point about Marx’s intentions. I’m deliberately collapsing some distinctions to make a broader argument about frameworks that efface agency—and reasonable people could say I’m oversimplifying.
Still, the “purely descriptive” claim does ideological work of its own. Once human action is cast as determined by socio-economic forces, the space for resistance begins to look illusory. “This is how it is, deal with it” sounds neutral, but it often functions as counsel for accommodation.
You’re right that there’s a long and complex history in how Marx’s analytic project evolved into Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy, and I’m not doing full justice to those nuances. The real question is whether that level of precision would strengthen this piece—or blunt its force for a general audience. I suspect the latter, given where I ultimately land.
I will read the Karp piece with great interest.
👌like I said, just a quibble. Not sure you saw my comment on one of your earlier pieces but it referenced this old interview with Karp on NPR in about 1968, along the same lines as the article from 1988 but more on all fours with the broader points you have been making and also fascinating (I think) in its own right. I recommend it as a companion to the article: https://www.wnyc.org/story/walter-karp/
Adam Smith would have agreed with this: he saw one of the main benefits of the industrial revolution as being the increase in freedom resulting from the loss of power by the landed aristocracy. “Having sold their birthright, not like Esau for a mess of pottage in time of hunger and necessity, but, in the wantonness of plenty, for trinkets and baubles, fitter to be the playthings of children than the serious pursuits of men”, the “great proprietors were no longer capable of interrupting the regular execution of justice, or of disturbing the peace of the country”. (Wealth, bk 3 ch 4).
I’ve commented about the connection between “is” and “ought” on another post of yours. It seems to me that there are moral truths, so that, confronted with facts about the number of lives destroyed by a Hitler or a Putin, we can do more than murmur “chacun à son goût”.
As Parfit wrote: “Economists are not chiefly to blame for having these beliefs, since it was philosophers who first claimed that reasons are given only by desires, that all rationality is instrumental, and that no values are facts, because there are no normative truths. Given our increasing powers to destroy or damage the conditions of life on Earth, we need to lose these beliefs.” (OWM, Vol2 ch 31)
A desire always implies a forecast about the satisfaction we will get from fulfilling it. While, as liberals, we are clear that the state should not interfere in the pursuit of our wants (subject to the usual provisos about harming others), as realists we need not pretend that people’s forecasts are invariably accurate. (Indeed large parts of the economy are devoted to ensuring that they remain inaccurate). If you believe that you can’t derive an “ought” from an “is”, you treat all wants as equally valid, and are ready to believe that measures of national income are also measures of happiness – an attitude that you rightly criticize.
Again, Adam Smith was under no illusion that all wants are equally valid: “How many people ruin themselves, by laying out money on trinkets of frivolous utility? What pleases these lovers of toys is not so much the utility, as the aptness of the machines which are fitted to promote it. All their pockets are stuffed with little conveniences. They contrive new pockets, unknown in the clothes of other people, in order to carry a greater number. They walk about loaded with a multitude of baubles”. (TMS, Part 4 ch 1)
Thank you for pulling this essay outside the paywall. I have many thoughts about it. The most important is that this piece is fundamental to understanding how to move forward towards making a better country and a better world. It is a powerful framework of ideas for self-governance and society.
Very much enjoyed this essay, Mike. A society’s economic system - whether the materialism of socialism or of capitalism - should be understood as an emergent phenomenon arising from that society’s fundamental power dynamics and spiritual values … Who holds power and why and how? What is govt for? Who does it serve? To what ends are we committed and by what means shall we get there?
As you so well articulate, classic liberalism accords power in a democracy to its citizens, who slowly, argumentatively, and often begrudgingly choose the means by which power is created (the ballot), and the ends for which power is distributed and deployed (legislation). Democracy and its messy chaotic processes comprise the structural or foundational framework for understanding and managing power, from which should emerge an economic system that’s best suited to realize the goals and values that have been democratically determined…
BTW, did you catch Eric Schmidt’s NYTimes op-ed on using AI algorithms to support democracy?
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/11/opinion/ai-democracy-government-authoritarianism.html
It's an excellent piece by Eric Schmidt.
PS thank you for this engaging piece.
I'm just not going to quibble over semantics. What you've tried to say is valuable food for thought, but you're going to get a variety of reactions to your comparisons of terms. Let's not get embroiled in that. Another version of "socialism" is merely some form (and check out the list!) of putting people's well-being first, material or spiritual. We've certainly been taken for an ugly ride by low-trust/bad faith sociopaths, and need to resurrect our spiritual commitment to equal opportunity and treatment under the law, an appreciation of the varied ways people have found to express the creativity of culture. That's the "exceptional" American Way. Dump the oligarchs, but more importantly, crush the attitudes, institutions, and suppositions that preserve the privilege of property against spiritual equality.
I appreciate the support for spiritual values over material ones. My argument is specifically about how we pursue those values—through democratic framework that comes first, or through economic transformation as prerequisite. That's not semantics; it's the question that divides liberals from socialists. But I'm glad we agree on the ultimate values at stake.
I strongly disagree with your (Brock's) thesis. The objective conditions in the Soviet Union determined the values of its citizens. Suspicion, fear, dishonesty, and related values were not the values Marx predicted, but they nonetheless resulted from objective political economy. The same is true for the objective reality built by neoliberals. Isolation, alienation, and disregard for others were not the values predicted by Hayek and Rand, but they too resulted from the objective political economy.
There is a feedback loop Subjective-Objective-Subjective (SOS). First come the values to a small number of ideologues. These ideas, in combination with contradictions in the existing order, create the objective conditions that determine the values of the vast majority. This does not mean the vast majority are stupid, but rather that their interests lie elsewhere, and the most expedient way to fulfill them is to adopt the values imposed by objective political economy.
Political-economic relations are primary, and spiritual values are derivative. This is a historical fact, and the failures of Marxism and neoliberalism to accurately predict those values do not alter the fact.
The designers of classical liberalism were indeed materialists. The “founding fathers” were all wealthy landowners. They believed that the objective political economy of property rights and prosperity would lead to values of human dignity, democratic citizenship, and self-governance. They were, however, more cognizant of the feedback loop than Marxists and neoliberals, recognizing that the values of human dignity, democratic citizenship, and self-governance would also lead to property rights and prosperity. They were also more correct in their predictions than today’s Marxists and neoliberals. Initially, classical-liberal systems lasted for centuries. Georgists would point out that the ultimate mistake was in considering land ownership as inherent in property rights.
Fear of wealth concentration does not contradict the notion that objective reality determines the values of the vast majority. Those defending the status quo a century ago fear the power that comes from wealth concentration precisely because it does.
It is the political economy that determines values, not politics, nor the economy in isolation. The demand for political change should not be confused with the values of the vast majority. The primary objective of FDR was materialist; to save the political economy by empowering and increasing the economic prosperity of its citizens. To believe that FDR's primary motive was expanding democratic ideals is as naïve as believing that Lincoln’s primary motive was emancipation.
I agree with you and the democratic socialists that politics and economics are inseparable. The objective political economy determines the values of the vast majority. But you argue that any economic system can go hand in hand with a just political system. Historically, that has never been true. Classical liberalism was associated with free-market capitalism, a lack of diversity among wealth holders, and, in many places, a frontier. It would never have worked with workers’ control of the means of production, a diverse workforce, or a lack of free land.
The conflation of politicians' proposals with the values created by objective political economy does not negate the thesis. The values created by a political economy are also created by its contradictions. Otherwise, values would not change with time. Mamdani tapped into the values created by the current contradictions of our political economy and used his oratory skills to rise to power. His oratory skills would have counted for nothing in the 1950s.
In some cases, your values are concerning. For instance, claiming that market suppression is acceptable with democratic consent. Would you accept the killing of Jews or the enslavement of African Americans with democratic consent? Of course, you would not. There must be a better justification for accepting market suppression than just democratic consent.
The democratic socialists argue for democracy and socialism. What they do not realize is that the values created by such a political economy will kill democracy in the long run, and more rapidly with a diverse working class. Nevertheless, the key to the increased longevity of our current political economy is democratic socialism for about ten years to reverse the grotesque inequality (a reason to support market suppression by democratic consent). Then we can go back to Hayek and Rand, again by democratic consent. However, these violent swings of debt-based capitalism will not produce the democratic values sought by the original classical liberals. How can we create a system to restore those values with a prosperous, diverse working class?
You propose a solution very close to the correct answer. The ideas of Henry George. Unfortunately, because you see values as determining the political economy, your solution, the land-value tax, is full of contradictions (e.g., no property owner would ever vote for it, taxing location at 100% makes assessment impossible).
You talk of two materialisms, but there are at least three. Marxism, neoliberalism, and land in the Commons Trust. The idea that the fruits of labor belong to the individual, and the gifts of God and Nature belong to the community, is very much an assertion in materialism. Nor is it desirable that democratic consent (at least not a simple majority) override this fundamental material relationship to property. In a sense, it is pure capitalism of labor and pure communism of land. It is neither neoliberalism nor Marxism; it is hardly a compromise, but a synthesis.
Land-based capitalism is such an objective reality. The values created by an objective reality in which land is in a Commons Trust, available for exclusive use to the highest bidder in a continuous auction, with ground rent divided equally among every person, constitute an objective political economy that will restore the values of classical liberals. Land is never taken through force but purchased in voluntary transactions by a profitable business implementing the AFFEERCE business plan. In such a system, free enterprise reigns without taxation, while necessities such as nutritious meals, warm and safe shelter, basic healthcare, unlimited free education, and local government are paid for through voluntary ground rents (kept high in desirable and productive areas by continuous auctions). Cellular democracy, formed as a necessity for benefit distribution, raises democracy to a new height, rigorously defined by individual sovereignty, objective, and subjective rights.
The AFFEERCE business plan cannot be implemented unless property rights are respected. Nevertheless, we use the values created by neoliberalism to drive the AFFEERCE business plan to its ultimate success. The obsessive desire for wealth and the drive to get the best deal propel the plan toward its goal. Marx and Hegel would be impressed.
Your criticism of California's Prop. 13 property-tax straitjacket is spot-on. "Conservatives" who blame California's myriad problems on "Democrat" leaders completely miss the point. Prop. 13 lies behind every crisis Californians face. Until the people understand why it must be repealed, everything will only get worse.
https://winstonchurchill.org/resources/speeches/1901-1914-rising-star/liberalism-and-socialism/
https://winstonchurchill.org/publications/finest-hour/finest-hour-155/english-speaking-peoples-the-role-of-the-state-why-churchill-changed-his-mind/
https://www.dpmms.cam.ac.uk/~tef10/churchill.html
"I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.
"I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress. I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that the present tension in the South is a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace, in which the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substantive and positive peace, in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality. Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured."
(Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., "Letter from Birmingham Jail")
What you call “Economic Royalism” has a name: Mercantilism. It is the system Adam Smith fought against. But modern conservatives are so blinded by their anti-Socialism zeal that they brand anything that counters their dogma as Socialism or, worse, Communism.
While the Right tried, I believe with Lee Atwater in the GHW Bush 1988 campaign, to make “Liberal” a dirty word, the emergence of Neoliberal Economics have now made it a dirty word now on the Left. The Liberal Party of Norway and Australia are considered Center Right.
But what really throws the discussion now is the nature of Capitalism has changed. If you explain Capitalism to a 12 year old, you would say, “People or companies produce goods and services which people either consume or reject producing the best living for society.”
But Capitalism also involves investment. It’s that Second Economy, an economy for the Investor Class that has gotten out of hand. It changes Capitalism from a system of Production to a system of Extraction, an economy that benefits only the Investor Class.
This is how the Tech bros have come to the conclusion that suddenly we need Neofeudalism. And that, in the words of Peter Thiel, “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible." In Thiel’s eyes not only should the economy benefit only his class, but Freedom itself. This should be abhorrent to anyone not rolling in money or who enjoys servitude. The real class warfare is with people who want to turn the masses, as Yarvin dreams, into Biodiesel.
I weep reading what you can articulate that I know to be true. Don’t stop. Don’t be deterred by attacks. You give me hope and I weep.
There seems to be an argument that while MAGA morality is in freefall, "honest conservatives" still value decency and are looking for ways to recover their own self-respect. The first step seems to be calling themselves "independents".
All of this is still the inability to think straight, a property of mistrust dealt in very young childhood -- the inability to differentiate oneself as a valid human and the attendant dependence on validation by others -- who apparently can be virtually anyone and any damned thing. "Conservatives" did not completely fall off the cliff but should still be viewed with suspicion, while treated with compassion. MAGA needs serious individual therapy, and we'll not get there any time soon.
Much of the "conservative" world has been taken over by MAGA and its sociopathic/psychopathic funders, so institutionally, conservatives have to rebuild. I'd prefer that we strive to find the somatic therapy to help them recover their spiritual foundations in interpersonal trust (spirit arises in and from natural processes that our brains are open to connecting as a matter of personal strengthening). This is a major challenge for our culture, as it needs to be a cultural imperative, not just political.
Your words here seem to flip the distinction you are trying to make(?) for the specific times we are very deeply within. Overturning an increasingly extreme economic system may be a prerequisite to even being able to consider the classical liberalism you describe (?)
We need to treat a severe debilitating infection that threatens to kill millions before we can discuss how we want to live our lives going forward. First stop the lethal attack on our body politic and economy….
Transition with proven democratic socialist policies…
stable footing from which to reconsider our way forward. Importantly with many many more people engaged ; hoping for Everyone to be engaged as the ultimate goal.
Wisdom of the crowd shouldn’t be the be all end all but it surely is better than the current system to disenfranchise and demonetize those individuals who make up the crowd and have some LOUD demands .
“The socialist tradition puts exploitation and class conflict at the center in ways liberalism historically doesn’t. It takes worker dignity and economic equality more seriously than liberals often have.”