“The right’s real boogeyman is not Karl Marx,
but a better understood Adam Smith.”
I have just published my first book, Commissar Conservatives: How Laissez-faire Libertarianism Is Disturbingly Similar to Communism. As a progressive liberal I just got tired of those on the right wrongly characterizing my political philosophy as Communism. More aggravating to me has been the failure of progressives to respond to this slander.
As I explain in three essays and the afterword I am a liberal that believes in capitalism – not the variety advocated by libertarian-minded conservatives but that of past progressive liberals such as FDR, Truman and their modern day heirs Sherrod Brown, Elizabeth Warren, Katie Porter and Tim Ryan. It is an argument for rational stakeholder capitalism, one uncluttered by the tyranny of unreasonable self-interest.
In this volume I throw Red-baiting conservatives a brush back pitch. Word by word, this book makes the case it is an increasingly radical economic libertarianism, not New Deal legacy beliefs, that will ultimately lead to the destruction of capitalism and American democracy.
Other key points I explore:
- Why progressives need to learn how to refute that old time Red-baiting. We have done it before and we can do it again.
- Why the more likely path to authoritarian socialism does not run through progressive liberal economics but through an increasingly libertarian conservatism. As I declare throughout, conservatives will create more Marxists than any progressive ever will.
- Why when many of today’s libertarian conservatives talk of “freedom and liberty” they actually the right to oppress.
- How neoliberal “centrism” has led to the rise of MAGA libertarianism – and what to do about it!
- How “centrist” Democrats contributed to today’s growing economic inequality by abandoning FDR / Harry Truman stakeholder capitalism
- Why progressive liberal economics preserves capitalism and democracy while laissez-faire libertarianism will ultimately lead to disorder and chaos. And we can prove it!
Commissar Conservatives is more than just a criticism of conservative economics. It is a prayer for the return to a better capitalism, one building upon the form practiced from 1933 through the late 1970s. While it was not a perfect, it was far better than any variety of laissez-faire in its ultimate trajectory towards a fair and just economic system.
I hope that you read Commissar Conservatives and see it as a starting point for progressives to begin reclaiming the economic narrative. It is time to answer back and make the case for a progressive form of capitalism.
Commissar Conservatives is now available in paperback at Amazon and other on line booksellers. Hardcover and Kindle additions are soon to follow.