I haven't been a super close reader of them, but I do get all their emails. I guess I would have said they're Biden-esque in some ways but then much more critical of the woke left and somewhat Trump-curious.
Rhetorically, yes, but in terms of what they actually want politically, it seems like Biden was the ticket. They even published at least one article praising his industrial policy. Biden himself did a lot in his four years to take the parts of the trump program that were feasible and actualize them...something that Compact seemed to realize, and yet which didn't alter their overall disdain for him
So maybe we're in agreement, then. On some level they seem more aligned with the Biden Democratic party than any Republican party in living memory, but they struggle to just own it?
Yes I agree, but...doesn't that seem to imply that all this social democracy stuff they espouse is actually not as deeply held a belief as the anti-woke and anti-trans and anti-feminist rhetoric. I mean, there seems to be kind of a revealed preference here...
I don't know what to make of it, honestly. I used to think the revealed preference, with these reformist projects, was for continued access to power, or just a default attachment to one's political identity. I think with Compact it's still tbd. Ahmari certainly has seemed genuine about his economic populism, and he just decamped for UnHerd, which I think is pretty never Trump. So hard to know. But I think your narrative is plausible.
I think of the GOP as the independent owner-operator party, neither Labor nor Corporate is their proverbial bag. Their "essence" is in line with some wily entrepreneur which puts it closer to Corporate mythos, but without the sprawling managerial, technocratic and HR aspect of that world which better aligns with Democrats' para-university efforts (on which "Christopher Lasch's Angry Ghost" has written).
I would expect Democrats to more formally pro-labor *and* closer to corporate America, as corporations and their workers are in a tight and explicit relationship.
You'd have to do some work to persuade me that the GOP hasn't been profoundly corporate for a long time. I know they have a strong base of that type you're talking about -- I'm thinking of car dealers, e.g. -- and certainly represent their interests, but I don't know how you tell a story of the modern GOP without talking about the extraordinary power of the corporate sector.
I hear that, and it seemed true to me up until I graduated from high school, more or less. Circa 2000. And everything about my corporate experience this century has felt much more like being in college than hanging out with Republicans and conservatives.
"Materialist" is doing an awful lot of work here. Neither now nor in Marx can the word be understood literally. Though I'm sympathetic to some turn to "kitchen table" issues . . .
I'm going to start reading Compact more after your recent podcast. I was always pretty skeptical of it but at the same time was impressed by their books coverage. Do they pass the Rubio test? I don't know and haven't followed the magazine enough to completely grasp their politics, but what I do know is that I can learn more about what's going on in the world from reading them/listening to their podcast and that's basically what I'm interested in.
One thing I just noticed after subscribing to their substack: they have a new piece out from Marco D'Eramo, who I frequently read in New Left Review. Just checking now he's had 4 pieces in NLR this year and this recent one is his first for Compact. If someone can write for NLR (a magazine on the left, as indicated in the title) and for Compact (which I understand is commonly thought of as a magazine on the right), that's a good sign.
I like the materialist approach to politics but am not particularly pro-labor. Labor is still a means to the end of consumption. And there are always more consumers than laborers.
Yes I am a longtime subscriber, and largely the politics of Compact don't particularly seem to differ from those of Joe Biden...
I haven't been a super close reader of them, but I do get all their emails. I guess I would have said they're Biden-esque in some ways but then much more critical of the woke left and somewhat Trump-curious.
Rhetorically, yes, but in terms of what they actually want politically, it seems like Biden was the ticket. They even published at least one article praising his industrial policy. Biden himself did a lot in his four years to take the parts of the trump program that were feasible and actualize them...something that Compact seemed to realize, and yet which didn't alter their overall disdain for him
So maybe we're in agreement, then. On some level they seem more aligned with the Biden Democratic party than any Republican party in living memory, but they struggle to just own it?
Yes I agree, but...doesn't that seem to imply that all this social democracy stuff they espouse is actually not as deeply held a belief as the anti-woke and anti-trans and anti-feminist rhetoric. I mean, there seems to be kind of a revealed preference here...
I don't know what to make of it, honestly. I used to think the revealed preference, with these reformist projects, was for continued access to power, or just a default attachment to one's political identity. I think with Compact it's still tbd. Ahmari certainly has seemed genuine about his economic populism, and he just decamped for UnHerd, which I think is pretty never Trump. So hard to know. But I think your narrative is plausible.
I think of the GOP as the independent owner-operator party, neither Labor nor Corporate is their proverbial bag. Their "essence" is in line with some wily entrepreneur which puts it closer to Corporate mythos, but without the sprawling managerial, technocratic and HR aspect of that world which better aligns with Democrats' para-university efforts (on which "Christopher Lasch's Angry Ghost" has written).
I would expect Democrats to more formally pro-labor *and* closer to corporate America, as corporations and their workers are in a tight and explicit relationship.
You'd have to do some work to persuade me that the GOP hasn't been profoundly corporate for a long time. I know they have a strong base of that type you're talking about -- I'm thinking of car dealers, e.g. -- and certainly represent their interests, but I don't know how you tell a story of the modern GOP without talking about the extraordinary power of the corporate sector.
I hear that, and it seemed true to me up until I graduated from high school, more or less. Circa 2000. And everything about my corporate experience this century has felt much more like being in college than hanging out with Republicans and conservatives.
"Materialist" is doing an awful lot of work here. Neither now nor in Marx can the word be understood literally. Though I'm sympathetic to some turn to "kitchen table" issues . . .
Well I just think of it as a useful way to shorthand a style of analysis that looks for causes in economic and class factors.
I'm going to start reading Compact more after your recent podcast. I was always pretty skeptical of it but at the same time was impressed by their books coverage. Do they pass the Rubio test? I don't know and haven't followed the magazine enough to completely grasp their politics, but what I do know is that I can learn more about what's going on in the world from reading them/listening to their podcast and that's basically what I'm interested in.
One thing I just noticed after subscribing to their substack: they have a new piece out from Marco D'Eramo, who I frequently read in New Left Review. Just checking now he's had 4 pieces in NLR this year and this recent one is his first for Compact. If someone can write for NLR (a magazine on the left, as indicated in the title) and for Compact (which I understand is commonly thought of as a magazine on the right), that's a good sign.
I like the materialist approach to politics but am not particularly pro-labor. Labor is still a means to the end of consumption. And there are always more consumers than laborers.