The threat from the illiberal left
www.economist.com
Don’t underestimate the danger of left-leaning identity politics | Leaders

Milton Friedman once said that the “society that puts equality before freedom will end up with neither”. He was right.

Aspects of liberalism go against the grain of human nature. It requires you to defend your opponents’ right to speak, even when you know they are wrong. You must be willing to question your deepest beliefs.

You must accept the victory of your enemies at the ballot box, even if you think they will bring the country to ruin.

  • Castor_Troy [comrade/them,he/him]
    ·
    3 years ago

    Am I wrong to think that Lenin was saying The Economist represented social democracy in Bourgeois Philanthropists and Revolutionary Social-Democracy?

    The Economist, a journal that speaks for the British millionaires, is pursuing a very instructive line in relation to the war. Representatives of advanced capital in the oldest and richest capitalist country, are shedding tears over the war and incessantly voicing a wish for peace. Those Social-Democrats who, together with the opportunists and Kautsky, think that a socialist programme consists in the propaganda of peace, will find proof of their error if they read The Economist. Their programme is not socialist, but bourgeois-pacifist.

    And if I am not mistaken, Stalin was also talking about "Bourgeois-Democratic “Pacifism”" when he wrote the line I put in the title from Concerning the International Situation.

    • captcha [any]
      ·
      3 years ago

      Yeah you are. He is telling "Social-Democrats" and "Opportunists" to read what "Advanced [british] capital" are saying in The Economist. He's saying Social Democrats are wrong because they are taking the same line as the hautiest bourgeoisie.

      Lenin here is taking the same line as Marx in treating The Economist as the ultimate Mouth of Capital.