My hot take is that the vast majority of US leftists are also liberals and I wish they’d just admit it.
Bernie and Zohran and Warren are calling for Scandinavian-style welfare programs and labor protections, not the abolition of private property. And how many writers at Jacobin or The Nation support throwing out individual rights and democracy in favor of a dictatorship of the proletariat? Almost none. Hell, one of the top leftist causes right now is antitrust, on the grounds that monopolies harm market competition. So leftists aren’t even anti-market anymore!
I think the distinction is mostly about aesthetics, not core values. This is why leftist politicians, who actually have to govern, are much more positive toward the abundance agenda. Abundance policies actually help them achieve their goals.
Haven’t read the whole article yet but I do find it quite funny that Against Me! later put out a song called “I Was A Teenage Anarchist” talking about how they were wrong to be a teenage anarchist.
Having read her memoir, followed her on Instagram and seen her live twice, I can confidently say that Laura Jane grace is a chaotic person whose political advice should not be followed and her romantic advice even less
I’m not a centrist by choice but when I saw the pro-Palestine march through Seattle within a month of Oct 7 and argued with a Boomer communist downtown about how far back into history we should reach to justify violence I became relieved Bernie lost for the first time. Now people on X tend to think I’m MAGA.
Politics is not 2 dimensional. “Left” is defined by chaos in resistance to oppressive order.
Interesting but imo people read abundance-oriented liberalism as centrism because it sidesteps the core political question: how far redistribution should go. It seems like abundance libs are comfortable guaranteeing a strong floor: universal benefits, public investment, broad access but stop short of limiting what the wealthy can consume or opt out of. From what I can gauge, that hesitation comes from a belief that constraining the top is “zero-sum” and risks harming innovation or dynamism.
Leftists, by contrast, argue that without some ceiling or some mechanism that keeps everyone in the same institutions, the floor itself eventually collapses. The fight over different variations of Medicare for All is actually the perfect illustration : should the wealthy be able to pay more to get ahead in line if we do universal healthcare? The left argues that if the wealthy can carve out private tiers, they drain resources and political support from the public plan.
I think the disagreement isn’t rlly about technocracy or optimism or “abundance” itself imo it’s about whether fairness requires equalizing outcomes at the top, not only raising conditions at the bottom. and if you are willing to sacrifice some growth or dynamism for producing less inequality within the nation state.
Limiting what people can consume, or what they can earn, wealthy or otherwise, isn't just zero-sum and bad for innovation and dynamism. It's fundamentally authoritarian, so pretty much the opposite of liberalism.
Yes, liberalism absolutely does reject the kind of ceilings you discuss because they do not actually help the poor.
I think we should significantly expand the safety net and increase welfare spending. We need tax revenue to do that, and I believe we should have a revenue maximizing tax rate on the wealthy in order to do that. A revenue maximizing income tax rate would be about 70% for very high incomes, much higher than the status quo. If we simply place a ceiling on the wealthy or impose non-revenue maximizing taxes then we can't spend as much to help people.
Ironically, some "leftists" minimize the importance of these welfare programs and seem more concerned with the income differences between the very rich and the merely well-off. Those leftists are fighting for the bourgeoisie rather than fighting for the poor.
Of course what blocks those revenue maximizing taxes is actually political pragmatism. Centrists politicians who are rightfully concerned about their re-election prospects have resisted these tax rates out of a fear of massive spending against them. That dynamic is much harder to overcome, and squabbling over the difference between a 70% tax rate and a 90% rate is pointless.
Strong disagree that abundance liberalism doesn’t answer those questions. It may be that the answer isn’t satisfactory to you or others, but that’s not the same as it not existing.
I'm not sure I buy this argument. I'm here for liberalism but it's not clear to me that housing abundance and permitting reform and abolishing the filibuster are "liberal" causes exactly (I support them); rather, they are movements for a different set of values: more construction as opposed to local control (which chills construction), legislative action as opposed to inaction (because of the filibuster). If we want to define it as a substantive liberalism, maybe it is better called "big government liberalism" or a liberalism of action.
But what makes this magazine liberal is its spirit, not its policy positions. You want to persuade others, not scold them into submission or shun them (which the rest of the chattering classes on the left often seem to want to do). It's "liberal" as an adjective, as Michael Walzer has put it.https://dissentmagazine.org/article/what-it-means-to-be-liberal/ + a set of policy positions that the left seems to have a lot of discomfort with.
I think the question isn't whether Jerusalem is centrist (she was always left of Yglesias on The Weeds but whether The Argument is. Is it a liberal big tent that has centrists on the periphery or is it a centrist tent that has some liberal positions for spice?
I'm glad to see the Argument writing about the liberal tradition, but just know that Jerusalem doesn't speak for all liberals here. Which is fine, to be clear! But just know that what she's referring to is just one form among many.
Think of liberalism a bit more like you think of Christianity. There are tons of denominations who, while loosely unified around some core commitments, will appear to actually disagree about most things. Some Christians believe in biblical literalism, penal substitution, and the exclusion of women from ministry. Others, like the Episcopal Church to which I belong, believe in none of that. Just so, there are libertarian liberals who strongly emphasize non-interference and a minimal state and egalitarian liberals (like me) who emphasize fairness and welfare. There are proceduralist liberals who emphasize transparent rules and political neutrality, and perfectionist liberals who think the liberal state can and should advocate for a particular conception of the good life. There are liberals who are hawkish about intervention in the affairs of sovereign nations to promote liberal outcomes, and liberals who hold sovereignty as sacrosanct even when other states use their sovereignty to choose illiberalism. There are liberals who would like to see open borders, and liberals (like Joseph Heath) who think that tightly controlling immigration volumes and assimilation is essential to maintain the social order that sustains liberal norms.
Take Abundance, for example. Abundance is self-consciously a reaction to the excesses of small d-democratic, participatory, and procedural governance that defined the neoliberal era. This was the liberalism of Ralph Nader, notice and hearings, and CEQA. Abundance rejects that, but it's not because that wasn't liberal and they are. It's just that liberalism is a loose container for ideologies that may actually be radically different.
While I do think that there are some loose commitments shared across the many different forms of liberalism, these are so thin that it's hardly worth trying to mobilize people behind them without the substantive scaffolding of the whole picture. Just as many people who would like to call themselves "Christian" simpliciter, or "non-denominational" are actually just reformed protestants whose theology is basically just Presbyterian, many folks who would call themselves "liberal" simpliciter are actually wedded to a particular form of liberalism. It does us all well to name these particular forms and their commitments so that we can avoid talking past each other. Precision doesn't come easy, but neither does clarity, excellence, and non-violent political achievement.
Is there really a liberal consensus on the filibuster? I consider myself a liberal, but I have some reservations about which questions should be decided democratically. In fact, I think most things should probably be decided by other mechanisms - the color of my curtains should be decided by my personal preferences and the options provided by the market, not subjected to democratic deliberation! I'm also skeptical that 51% is the right threshold when we decide to use democracy to make a decision that had previously been handled by other mechanisms. And I'm extra extra skeptical when the decision being made is of the form of 51+% voting to take something from 49-% for themselves.
This is a great piece that speaks to my heart, Jerusalem - I have never identified as a centrist and chafe when people try to put me in that box. But on this quote, I have a question: "Liberals are extremists on human flourishing, individual freedom, and freedom of movement." That is true. But "individual freedom" is where I may deviate. Maybe I'm not a liberal, then. Because it seems to me this country's hyperindividualism has become a structural weakness, and we need to shift to a more communitarian approach where it's less about "me me me" and more about "us us us." How do we balance individual freedom with community flourishing? I think "human flourishing" and maximal individual freedom (depending how that is defined) are not entirely compatible, and that has to be explored. Maybe for another piece?
I think the way to properly frame this in the current landscape is "Liberals believe in maximizing the amount of people who can thrive" via a high trust society.
So much of current leftist discourse focuses on maximizing freedoms for people who either refuse or cannot participate in society. Focusing on these small fringe populations comes at tremendous costs for the large majority of people who do try to participate in the common good.
Meanwhile the right tries to minimize the amount of people who can thrive by making society exclusive to a narrow band of people they deem acceptable, regardless of capability or interest in participation.
Both approaches from either side fundamentally destabilize the common good. Liberalism correctly sees both as threats to a society that allows for human flourishing and also curtails personal freedom.
If liberals want to expunge the reputation of being centrists, they should stop agreeing with and repeatedly publishing fake "studies" to propagandize in favor of the centrists. You can't pretend go be non-centrist all while going out of your way - including publishing bullshit polls and fake analysis - to justify, defend, and push forward the centrist line. At some point, you actually have to prove that you are different in substance. Instead, every other piece you people put out is shifting on the left and progressives. If you want a different reputation, behave differently.
I personally didn't like the centrist label bc I think it sounds like you're accusing someone of sloppy analytical practice, but I think that is the accusation that is meant, while most people agree that moderates (not ones who define themselves by extreme aims) do better as politicians and moderation is a verb/tool to do better in elections if you're out of step w the public.
Don’t confuse centrism with heterodoxy. There are many many issues that ought to be uncorrelated, such as one’s opinion on capital gain tax vs abortion, but somehow the issues become culturally coded as liberal or conservative. If your opinions about various issues don’t cross left/right lines periodically, it’s probably because you aren’t thinking very much about them.
My hot take is that the vast majority of US leftists are also liberals and I wish they’d just admit it.
Bernie and Zohran and Warren are calling for Scandinavian-style welfare programs and labor protections, not the abolition of private property. And how many writers at Jacobin or The Nation support throwing out individual rights and democracy in favor of a dictatorship of the proletariat? Almost none. Hell, one of the top leftist causes right now is antitrust, on the grounds that monopolies harm market competition. So leftists aren’t even anti-market anymore!
I think the distinction is mostly about aesthetics, not core values. This is why leftist politicians, who actually have to govern, are much more positive toward the abundance agenda. Abundance policies actually help them achieve their goals.
I think Zohran in fact has been on record calling for buying out a lot of private property, which is fairly extreme.
Haven’t read the whole article yet but I do find it quite funny that Against Me! later put out a song called “I Was A Teenage Anarchist” talking about how they were wrong to be a teenage anarchist.
Having read her memoir, followed her on Instagram and seen her live twice, I can confidently say that Laura Jane grace is a chaotic person whose political advice should not be followed and her romantic advice even less
I’m not a centrist by choice but when I saw the pro-Palestine march through Seattle within a month of Oct 7 and argued with a Boomer communist downtown about how far back into history we should reach to justify violence I became relieved Bernie lost for the first time. Now people on X tend to think I’m MAGA.
Politics is not 2 dimensional. “Left” is defined by chaos in resistance to oppressive order.
Interesting but imo people read abundance-oriented liberalism as centrism because it sidesteps the core political question: how far redistribution should go. It seems like abundance libs are comfortable guaranteeing a strong floor: universal benefits, public investment, broad access but stop short of limiting what the wealthy can consume or opt out of. From what I can gauge, that hesitation comes from a belief that constraining the top is “zero-sum” and risks harming innovation or dynamism.
Leftists, by contrast, argue that without some ceiling or some mechanism that keeps everyone in the same institutions, the floor itself eventually collapses. The fight over different variations of Medicare for All is actually the perfect illustration : should the wealthy be able to pay more to get ahead in line if we do universal healthcare? The left argues that if the wealthy can carve out private tiers, they drain resources and political support from the public plan.
I think the disagreement isn’t rlly about technocracy or optimism or “abundance” itself imo it’s about whether fairness requires equalizing outcomes at the top, not only raising conditions at the bottom. and if you are willing to sacrifice some growth or dynamism for producing less inequality within the nation state.
Limiting what people can consume, or what they can earn, wealthy or otherwise, isn't just zero-sum and bad for innovation and dynamism. It's fundamentally authoritarian, so pretty much the opposite of liberalism.
Yes, liberalism absolutely does reject the kind of ceilings you discuss because they do not actually help the poor.
I think we should significantly expand the safety net and increase welfare spending. We need tax revenue to do that, and I believe we should have a revenue maximizing tax rate on the wealthy in order to do that. A revenue maximizing income tax rate would be about 70% for very high incomes, much higher than the status quo. If we simply place a ceiling on the wealthy or impose non-revenue maximizing taxes then we can't spend as much to help people.
Ironically, some "leftists" minimize the importance of these welfare programs and seem more concerned with the income differences between the very rich and the merely well-off. Those leftists are fighting for the bourgeoisie rather than fighting for the poor.
Of course what blocks those revenue maximizing taxes is actually political pragmatism. Centrists politicians who are rightfully concerned about their re-election prospects have resisted these tax rates out of a fear of massive spending against them. That dynamic is much harder to overcome, and squabbling over the difference between a 70% tax rate and a 90% rate is pointless.
Strong disagree that abundance liberalism doesn’t answer those questions. It may be that the answer isn’t satisfactory to you or others, but that’s not the same as it not existing.
I'm not sure I buy this argument. I'm here for liberalism but it's not clear to me that housing abundance and permitting reform and abolishing the filibuster are "liberal" causes exactly (I support them); rather, they are movements for a different set of values: more construction as opposed to local control (which chills construction), legislative action as opposed to inaction (because of the filibuster). If we want to define it as a substantive liberalism, maybe it is better called "big government liberalism" or a liberalism of action.
But what makes this magazine liberal is its spirit, not its policy positions. You want to persuade others, not scold them into submission or shun them (which the rest of the chattering classes on the left often seem to want to do). It's "liberal" as an adjective, as Michael Walzer has put it.https://dissentmagazine.org/article/what-it-means-to-be-liberal/ + a set of policy positions that the left seems to have a lot of discomfort with.
I think the question isn't whether Jerusalem is centrist (she was always left of Yglesias on The Weeds but whether The Argument is. Is it a liberal big tent that has centrists on the periphery or is it a centrist tent that has some liberal positions for spice?
I'm glad to see the Argument writing about the liberal tradition, but just know that Jerusalem doesn't speak for all liberals here. Which is fine, to be clear! But just know that what she's referring to is just one form among many.
Think of liberalism a bit more like you think of Christianity. There are tons of denominations who, while loosely unified around some core commitments, will appear to actually disagree about most things. Some Christians believe in biblical literalism, penal substitution, and the exclusion of women from ministry. Others, like the Episcopal Church to which I belong, believe in none of that. Just so, there are libertarian liberals who strongly emphasize non-interference and a minimal state and egalitarian liberals (like me) who emphasize fairness and welfare. There are proceduralist liberals who emphasize transparent rules and political neutrality, and perfectionist liberals who think the liberal state can and should advocate for a particular conception of the good life. There are liberals who are hawkish about intervention in the affairs of sovereign nations to promote liberal outcomes, and liberals who hold sovereignty as sacrosanct even when other states use their sovereignty to choose illiberalism. There are liberals who would like to see open borders, and liberals (like Joseph Heath) who think that tightly controlling immigration volumes and assimilation is essential to maintain the social order that sustains liberal norms.
Take Abundance, for example. Abundance is self-consciously a reaction to the excesses of small d-democratic, participatory, and procedural governance that defined the neoliberal era. This was the liberalism of Ralph Nader, notice and hearings, and CEQA. Abundance rejects that, but it's not because that wasn't liberal and they are. It's just that liberalism is a loose container for ideologies that may actually be radically different.
While I do think that there are some loose commitments shared across the many different forms of liberalism, these are so thin that it's hardly worth trying to mobilize people behind them without the substantive scaffolding of the whole picture. Just as many people who would like to call themselves "Christian" simpliciter, or "non-denominational" are actually just reformed protestants whose theology is basically just Presbyterian, many folks who would call themselves "liberal" simpliciter are actually wedded to a particular form of liberalism. It does us all well to name these particular forms and their commitments so that we can avoid talking past each other. Precision doesn't come easy, but neither does clarity, excellence, and non-violent political achievement.
Is there really a liberal consensus on the filibuster? I consider myself a liberal, but I have some reservations about which questions should be decided democratically. In fact, I think most things should probably be decided by other mechanisms - the color of my curtains should be decided by my personal preferences and the options provided by the market, not subjected to democratic deliberation! I'm also skeptical that 51% is the right threshold when we decide to use democracy to make a decision that had previously been handled by other mechanisms. And I'm extra extra skeptical when the decision being made is of the form of 51+% voting to take something from 49-% for themselves.
This is a great piece that speaks to my heart, Jerusalem - I have never identified as a centrist and chafe when people try to put me in that box. But on this quote, I have a question: "Liberals are extremists on human flourishing, individual freedom, and freedom of movement." That is true. But "individual freedom" is where I may deviate. Maybe I'm not a liberal, then. Because it seems to me this country's hyperindividualism has become a structural weakness, and we need to shift to a more communitarian approach where it's less about "me me me" and more about "us us us." How do we balance individual freedom with community flourishing? I think "human flourishing" and maximal individual freedom (depending how that is defined) are not entirely compatible, and that has to be explored. Maybe for another piece?
I think the way to properly frame this in the current landscape is "Liberals believe in maximizing the amount of people who can thrive" via a high trust society.
So much of current leftist discourse focuses on maximizing freedoms for people who either refuse or cannot participate in society. Focusing on these small fringe populations comes at tremendous costs for the large majority of people who do try to participate in the common good.
Meanwhile the right tries to minimize the amount of people who can thrive by making society exclusive to a narrow band of people they deem acceptable, regardless of capability or interest in participation.
Both approaches from either side fundamentally destabilize the common good. Liberalism correctly sees both as threats to a society that allows for human flourishing and also curtails personal freedom.
You should have Liam Kofi Bright on to argue about liberalism, based on his post about disagreeing with liberalism: https://sootyempiric.blogspot.com/2022/04/why-i-am-not-liberal.html?m=1
If liberals want to expunge the reputation of being centrists, they should stop agreeing with and repeatedly publishing fake "studies" to propagandize in favor of the centrists. You can't pretend go be non-centrist all while going out of your way - including publishing bullshit polls and fake analysis - to justify, defend, and push forward the centrist line. At some point, you actually have to prove that you are different in substance. Instead, every other piece you people put out is shifting on the left and progressives. If you want a different reputation, behave differently.
What exactly is fake about their polls and analysis? That seems to be stronger claim than that you disagree with it, but that needs some support.
"Liberals are extremists on human flourishing, individual freedom, and freedom of movement" is one hell of an awesome line
I personally didn't like the centrist label bc I think it sounds like you're accusing someone of sloppy analytical practice, but I think that is the accusation that is meant, while most people agree that moderates (not ones who define themselves by extreme aims) do better as politicians and moderation is a verb/tool to do better in elections if you're out of step w the public.
"Once you label me, you negate me" (Kierkegaard). This is pure drivel, damaging to public discourse.
I started writing a blog post about this and didn't finish because I was having a really hard time navigating the distinctions I wanted to make.
Hey-- can y'all make a diagram or an infographic that covers the concepts in this post? For those of us with unga bunga brain?
Don’t confuse centrism with heterodoxy. There are many many issues that ought to be uncorrelated, such as one’s opinion on capital gain tax vs abortion, but somehow the issues become culturally coded as liberal or conservative. If your opinions about various issues don’t cross left/right lines periodically, it’s probably because you aren’t thinking very much about them.