Hoisted from the Archives: Who Will Watch How the Watchmaker Works?
Procrastinating on March 30, 2016

Must-Read: Jonathan Chait: Oh, Good, It's 2016 and We’re Arguing Whether Marxism Works: "[Tyler] Zimmer is articulating the standard left-wing critique of political liberalism...

...illiberal left-wing ideologies, Marxist and otherwise, follow the same basic structure... reject... free speech as a positive good enjoyed by all... conclu[de] that political advocacy on behalf of the oppressed enhances freedom, and political advocacy on behalf of the oppressor diminishes it.

It does not take much imagination to draw a link between this idea and the Gulag. The gap between Marxist political theory and the observed behavior of Marxist regimes is tissue-thin.... [The] party... [that is] the authentic representative of the oppressed... [can] shut down all opposition.... [And] Marxists reserve for themselves the right to decide ‘which forms of expression deserve protection and which don’t,’ [so] the result of the deliberation is perfectly obvious...

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/03/oh-good-were-arguing-whether-marxism-works.html

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