In his latest piece, Paul Craig Roberts poses and answers his rhetorical question: What became of the left? His answer is that “the European and American left, which traditionally stood for the working class and peace (bread and peace) no longer exists.”
Not a terrible answer since he defined the Left. But the Left does exist. The Left has just been extremely marginalized, and it has been rebranded elsewhere, a rebranding to which Roberts is somewhat gullible.
States Roberts,
The cause championed by those who pretend to be the “left” of today is identity politics. The “left” no longer champions the working class, which the “left” dismisses as “Trump deplorables,” consisting of “racist, misogynist, homophobic, gun nuts.”
Roberts is quoting Hillary Clinton who he (quotation marks aside) fallaciously calls “the ‘left.’” Clinton, who is definitely not of the Left, is the person who denounced Trump’s supporters as “deplorables” – at least half of his supporters.
Roberts notes that this “Left” is a “pretend Left,” so why not just stick with the honest designation of pretend Left? Roberts’ thesis is: there is no Left, but there is a “pretend ‘left.’” That pretend Left is, in fact, the Right.
Yet Roberts’ definition of the Left is grossly inadequate. It is Roberts creating a strawman. The Left does not boil down to one single attribute: the working class. To assert this is to fail to comprehend what the Left…