Leftism

Leftists always have great songs. Which is a problem.

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Tatyana left a comment on this post, linking to a great old communist war song. You cannot tell me that song does not straighten your back and lift your chin.

If you are in the grip of a crazy revolutionary vision, it can be expressed artistically, even if the practical application will be a disaster.

I can sing every word of Billy Bragg’s version of The World Turned Upside Down, and I get a tear in my eye and chill every time I hear it, even though I know it is utter, destructive nonsense.

Nationalism is the other great source of songs, of course, for similar reasons. You can calmly and sanely tell the Irish that being part of the UK would be better for them. But if you sing The Minstrel Boy and have tears in your eyes, and sing O’Donnell Abu, about making the proud Saxon feel Erin’s avenging steel, such sane arguments turn to dust. You join the IRA.

No one can make a great song about how the world is better if there are secure property rights, and people make mutually advantageous contracts, etc., etc. Even the anti-Corn Law League had to sing about the evil lords stealing the people’s bread. There will always be songs about Joe Hill, but there will never be songs about entrepreneurs who take risks and create jobs.

It cannot be done. Why? I think our emotional natures were formed in the millennia before modernity and we still respond to sentiments of solidarity which served us well on the savannah fighting saber-tooth tigers. We are hardwired for Paleolithic conditions.

Good governance cannot be sung about. But people need things to sing about.

This is a real problem for people who love freedom in a sensible, empirical, small-l libertarian kind of way. It has no songs. It does not grab the heart. Our enemies will always be more powerful in this department as a result. Too bad. But I see this as a condition to be worked with, not a problem which can have a solution.

The Allende Myth, by Vladimir Dorta

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My friend Val Dorta originally published this outstanding historical essay on his blog in 2003. With the death of Augusto Pinochet, much attention is again being given to the Allende period, the military coup and the dictatorship that followed. I wanted to link again to Val’s essay but, unfortunately, his blog is no longer online. However, Val has graciously allowed me to republish his essay here, and I am honored to do so. – Jonathan

UPDATE: Google’s cached version of Val’s original post, with comments. (Thanks to the commenter who provided this link.)

UPDATE 2 (12/28/2014): The Google-cached version has disappeared from the Web, but Val’s original post is available via archive.org here.

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The Allende Myth

Vladimir Dorta

07/21/2003

The failed and tragic attempt by Salvador Allende and the Popular Unity at creating socialism in Chile in 1970-1973 has become a myth for the world left, presented as the possibility of a peaceful and democratic transition to socialism that was destroyed only because the almighty CIA acted as master puppeteer of the Chilean reaction. The myth reinforces itself; while the Cold War context is never mentioned, neither is the fact that the CIA’s workings are well documented whereas the Cuban and Soviet interventions are still mostly unknown. The Allende myth may be good for keeping the socialist faith alive, but it evidently contradicts the historical facts.

While Augusto Pinochet’s brutal post-coup repression and terrorism cannot be justified, it is essential to explain what led him and the Chilean armed forces to the fateful coup d’état, outside of the fantasy that had him bursting onto the democratic Chilean political scene on September 11, 1973 with readymade CIA orders to stop a beautiful, pacific and liberating socialist dream. For I have no doubts that if the Chilean Marxist experiment had ended in civil war, as it appeared to most observers at the time, it would have been an even greater tragedy or, had it ended as the totalitarian society it pointed to, it would have lasted much longer and would have brought Chileans much more suffering than Pinochet’s ugly but temporary dictatorship.

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The Democracy Presumption

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Why do most westerners believe in liberal democracy? Why do the vast majority of us believe that the best form of government requires competitive open elections, divided powers, independent judiciaries, a free press and all the other common attributes of modern democracy? Most of us would assert that we do so because we believe that liberal democracies systematically make more wise and humane decisions than do other types of government.

If most of us think this way, however, why does a significant segment of the Left in the West always argue that in any conflict between a liberal democracy and some form of autocracy the liberal democracy deserves most of the blame?

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