Piecemeal Reforms
Not what you might be analytical political calculus thinking!
What would a dirtbag MMT’er and macroeconomics justice evangelist think about liberal piecemeal reforms, huh? Huh? You should ask me.
This connects to a previous thing I wrote, where I thought I’d forgotten to mention it, but turns out it was a video I have not yet published. Anyhow no time like the present for dirtbag messaging. So here we are.
I used to think (in my younger days) “Hell Yeah!” to leftiepol activists who had no patience for government reforms and stuff like that. Obama never did nothin’ is the slogan. Clinton was worse than nothing (gutting of whatever-you-name-it that was good about the public sector). I’ll give Jacinda Adern a pass, she was a leader before her time, but she shoulda’ learned MMT.
Right. All true. But not so fast Muster Marx. The quarks of liberal politics act by local causal vertices, not spooky action-at-a-distance.
The Painful Thing…
… to admit is that piecemeal reforms work incredibly well, and almost magically. Like an Adamantium ratchet. How do we know?
We know from good old history, the perennial lesson teacher. Moreover, the enemy ran the proof for us.
If you have not already, then I urge you to study the history of Mont Pelerin institutions and the Neoliberal Thought Collective. Also Ordoliberalism (friggin’ 𝔫𝔞𝔷𝔦-𝔩𝔦𝔱𝔢 shyte). Their plan was smart, strategic, painfully slow, piecemeal to all heck, and wildly successful. It is easy research, 15 minutes will do you. Like… how long does it take for an Irishman to tell a clover from sheep dung?
The entire massively successful enterprise was piecemeal by agonizingly slow piecemeal design. They knew what they were doing, and played one of the greatest longer games in history. Not one of them wished to be King Neoliberal, or Fidel Fiscalastro. They worked in front of the daylight shadows. Everyone could see what was happening plain as day. Why did no one stop them? (I think you know the answer I’d give you! Do the words “modern myth” suffice?)
Who aided them the most? It was not the Oil oligarchs. It was a small segment of Small Government, sometimes called “the deep state” but their minds are shallow. That’s right. Small Government was the problem! Not enough dirty uncouth working people in the mix causing enough ruckus. (I do well remember a few here in NZ who did raise a ruckus, shame on my parents and yours for not going to the mat & busting a gut to support them.)
In view of such dark-light 🤣 you are completely delusional and misguided if you think piecemeal reforms are not the way to go. Or, your imagination has been dimmed so much — by who knows what, but I pity you for having suffered — that you are next to useless as an activist. Che Guevara Chic is fine in the movies and on T-shirts, and I am not opposed to the iconography and tone.
The thing is, in many ways piecemeal reforms are the only way to go. Anything else risks alienating the support of ordinary decent people (like I used to be) that we desperately need. Knowing MMT has made me thoroughly indecent and far too aggressive and rude. But I’m prepared to suffer the character flaw if the rest of my family get the idea and work for piecemeal reforms. Which they all have! Micro-success. Crumb of a piece of a piecemeal. I’ll take it though. I’m not a Nostradamus who can honestly say infinitesimal Zeno-like changes will not sum up. Politics is not The Calculus.
Case in Point: Ecological Just Transition framework. Brian Kohler etc. There is no climate versus jobs trade-off, not if you understand the source of all unemployment.
It is climate & jobs, or it is catastrophe.
(That was an awkward segue, I think I forgot a paragraph?)
Neoliberalism will never come to completion because despite being “smart”1 the neoliberals are all nutcases and typically disgusting thinkers. We do not call them fascists, but they have the same fetid stench. Not intrinsically disgusting people, since every person with an horrific thought can learn to think better of humanity. Redemption of this type is always possible, it does not cost much in real terms. Every single human being is a monopoly issuer of their own moral currency, you cannot ever run out of the stuff.
The More Painful thing…
…. is that centrists will never push through the reforms we need. Centrists are neoliberals and right-wing conservatives through-and-through. There is no such thing as, “Oh, I am socially liberal and economically conservative.” That’s ᲇ⋓ǁǁ𝕤ꖲⅈ╬. Economic conservatism is toxic radioactivity killing the working class, most prominently emitted by public antenna in New Zealand on our National Radio (RNZ) and other news outlets. The wavelengths you never suspected could do harm.2 There is no scientific way that economic conservatism is socially liberal. (But only an MMT aware person would know this, am I right?)
If you correctly re-gauge the Overton Window they are far-right conservatives. Far-right conservatives shift to complete dangerous clowns, they are off the visible political spectrum into invisible Infrared.
And I’ll tell you what I think without being bashful: who are the worst neoliberals?
Not Clinton, Blair, and Obama. The soi-dissant lefties on shows like The Majority Report (Emma and Sam) and the old Marxist dude Prof Richard Wolff, and our kiwi friend Bernard Hickey. They are the ones infecting the Leftiepols with Thatcherite “it is tax payer money!” myths. Friggin’ so bad, I am not even disgusted, it is far worse, I do not have a name for it, but one figure in Persian history said it like how I feel:
Those who harm us the most are not our enemies but are those among our friends who commit such deeds which cause our hearts to lament.
But we have had lefties in parliaments who would be willing to make good piecemeal reforms, and over time that sums to a massive revolution of unimaginably good proportions. Just maybe not in your lifespan. We’ve seen this already over hundreds of years. Forget the last 50 years of neoliberal right-wing roll-back. That is a stage of civilization, perhaps all unnecessary, but it was what it was. Lessons learned.
Never Let a Decent Neoliberal Cut and Paste.
And don’t forget, every Libertarian meme has an actually good Socialist undertone. They want freedom. They just don’t know how to get it for everyone else.
Avoiding Egg on Face
Suppose we do not get ecological and workplace justice via piecemeal reforms, and we do get it through violent civil war?
So what? I would say. It was still the wrong way!
I will not die on the hill of advocating non-violence and piecemeal reforms. I just warn you, the other way is heinous and unnecessary. It risks getting defeated far more, since The Left are not good at violence, except intellectual violence. As it should be. In military police terms we will always be out-manned and outgunned in most countries, Cuba was an exception — a case of a nation with almost no middle class normies and Soccer Moms to worry about. Lucky them. A case where capitalist excess did in fact eat itself, by emboldening the peasants.
Shame on the whole world for not supporting Cuba more.
Sure as can be I do not mind a little bit of revolutionary zeal spice on my leftie puddings. But sweet & sour have a way of blending, am I right? Not all sweet things tolerate mustard.
There will be times when we can go for the jugular. Those will be good times. When neoliberal and far-right ideas get vaporized by the optical cavity laser beams of ordinary working person inner Cyclops superheroes. We on the “far left” have to step back at such times I think, at least a little, and allow the working class consciousness (an abstarct notion) to marinate in the minds of real good people. No guillotines or gulags required. We win when the former neoliberals self-decapitate their rotting ideological limbs. Hardly a drop of blood, after all, their brains are at the microbiological ends of their little toes. So we are talking basically nail scissors. All we need to do is promote blood circulation back to their under-nourished craniums.
Thank you for asking.
That is, book knowledge-smart only, gleaned from reading words strung together grammatically enough to be read by 75 IQ old farts, written by retarded old white europeans like Hayek and von Mises.
Unless you are a Robert Kennedy Jr acolyte of public health misinformation. Look, just put a bit of tin foil around the radio receiver. I sell nanobot free tin foil on TradeMe. 100% recylced beer cans. Use the promo code BITEMYSHINNYMETALASS for a discount until 30 December.