I’m trying to explain it using everyday language. I haven’t the time or the inclination to do a one thousand word Peterson essay.
It’s the difference between socialism and socialist. Socialism has always existed in one form or another as long as taxation has existed. Your roads, police, army, are not freebies. Socialist policies on the other hand is taking it further and the government using its authority to socially engineer societies and introduce collectivisation.
Yes, the Marxists saw the failure of socialist policies in the 80s but didn’t abandon them, they changed the name into progressivism. Obama, Clinton and Sanders are all self-confessed progressives, but stop short of the word ‘communist’. The terms Liberal fascism, communism, progressivism, they’re all the same thing, just as ‘spread the wealth around’, ‘you didn’t build that on your own’ and ‘we’re going to take things away from you’ are more than just individual sound bites. They’re another way of saying something without using the word itself.
Yes, I agree with Peterson, what he refers to is cultural Marxism (Gramsci ‘Prison notebooks’), the change from workers to identity politics as the agents of change, but the end result of Marxism is still there, it’s just the characters have changed to suit a particular era. It’s not just confined to the left either; progressivism occurs from both the left and right. Cultural Marxism (the SJWs, multiculturalism and identity politics you refer to) is a part of current postmodernism, but not postmodernism itself.
Post-modernism then describes an era and what happens within it, just as parts of modernism were the American railroads, or industrialisation from the agricultural to the industrial. Equally, both Russia and China have returned to nationalism, that is part of their post-modernism. What you’re getting mixed up with is assuming post-modernism is cultural Marxism, when Cultural Marxism is simply a part of the west’s post-modernism, just as food kitchens, mass-unemployment, or rising poverty are.
Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire. ― Gustav Mahler
I was earlier reading an article on post postmodernism, that postmodernism was already dead. I hope someone comes up with something better than postpostmodernism.
Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire. ― Gustav Mahler
It’s more a matter of degrees.
A socialist would eventually take socialism to its logic conclusion - communism; or as Lenin remarked, ‘The goal of socialism is communism’. Anyone who believes that economic or social equality can be achieved, is by definition heading to a centralised government, which in turn leads leads to a dictatorship, which is all communism ever was.
In the same way Democrats make me smile when I hear them saying they disagree with the violence of BLM and Antifa, socialised healthcare, or complain of tens of millions on government dependent welfare. They voted Marxist Obama believing he was a cuddly American Democrat? What did they think they were going to get?
Saint-Simon was more of a social reformer and not a classical theorist. He simply built on those ideas. He certainly didn’t envisage it leading to the equality based state distribution of private wealth (socialist), or the state owning the wealth (communist) - that came later and is the difference in socialism – socialist – communist.
There is a backlash in Europe, but whilst the recession lasts, it’s not going to change much. Collectivism arises during post-war periods, or economic downturns and Marxists don’t do well in strong nationalistic societies. Near full employment and the American dream? That’s gone. The irony is that the more socialist policies are introduced, the worse it gets and so without a world war, or an international disaster involving millions, this looks like it and a further move towards progressivism the likely outcome.