The post has an interesting take on the millennial left.
The gulf between liberalism and Old Left ideas — socialist ideas — has only grown since the 1930s. Unlike liberals, who emerged from the 1960s prioritizing the political freedoms associated with individual rights, the socialist left has posited that most people — the working class — remain effectively powerless if capitalists control work, wages and welfare. In their view, the left’s mission — the reason for its existence — ought to be expanding the idea of political freedom to include economic freedom. This historical distinction between liberalism and socialism has resurfaced with the millennial left.
snip
The 1930s left critiqued the limits of New Deal reforms. Some Old Leftists wanted workers to have complete autonomy in their workplaces. Still others, inspired by Soviet Russia, wanted the working class to control the state and command the economy. Many leftists did not go that far, yet at the very least wanted what they called “industrial democracy” — a political and economic system accountable to the needs and desires of the industrial working class. New Deal liberals, who seemed to prefer technocratic tinkering, were considered barriers to such a left-wing vision of America.
The Guardian highlights the “dirt bad left”. Das Mondne in the other thread linked to an article in the New Republic about this.
Here is the Guardian’s take:
It’s the feeling that the new liberal agenda resulted in a whole generation of young Americans being shafted, locked into a gig economy, loaded down with student debt and no access to healthcare. A reaction has been building against Democrat politicians of the 90s who tried to make a compromise with corporate capitalism and then defined liberalism around cultural issues of diversity, immigration, women’s rights and so on, while riding along with the shafting of the working class.“In a recent edition, Jezz In My Pants, Chapo hosts cited the success of Jeremy Corbyn’s social democratic platform in the UK as proof of the potency of “dirtbag” politics. “It’s the beginnings, or the contours, of something else, like a shaft of light.
I have bolded part of this because it expresses the core beliefs of the young I encountered on the Sanders campaign.
In general Sanders is not taken seriously with establishment DC types. You can even see that in Booman’s reaction in his thread on neo-liberalism.
In this he badly misreads the contours of the generational politics on the left of center all over the world.
I will admit I am surprised at how much legs this has on twitter. Jacobin Magazine opines
We’re running downfield with government jobs for all, free college, and Medicare for All while the liberal intelligentsia haughtily flies the banner of: “Better Skills, Better Jobs, Better Wages” — the party’s proposed motto for the 2018 elections. While the socialist and Berniecrat left takes it for granted that all Americans unconditionally deserve the good life, the Democrats want to see your resume first.
Bernie Sanders isn’t the most popular politician in the country because Americans have suddenly become socialists. He’s beloved and trusted because he’s the first person on the national stage to speak to the mass discontent of our oligarchical times. The first person to burst into the elite zone of detachment and shout, “The building’s on fire.” The liberal intelligentsia in the Discourse, however, just sees a bull in their china shop
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/07/chapo-trap-house-bernie-sanders-discourse
