Must-read: Jonathan Chait: “Oh, Good, It’s 2016 and We’re Arguing Whether Marxism Works”

Must-Read: Jonathan Chait: Oh, Good, It’s 2016 and We’re Arguing Whether Marxism Works: “[Tyler] Zimmer is articulating the standard left-wing critique of political liberalism…

…illiberal left-wing ideologies, Marxist and otherwise, follow the same basic structure… reject… free speech as a positive good enjoyed by all… conclu[de] that political advocacy on behalf of the oppressed enhances freedom, and political advocacy on behalf of the oppressor diminishes it.

It does not take much imagination to draw a link between this idea and the Gulag. The gap between Marxist political theory and the observed behavior of Marxist regimes is tissue-thin…. [The] party… [that is] the authentic representative of the oppressed… [can] shut down all opposition…. [And] Marxists reserve for themselves the right to decide ‘which forms of expression deserve protection and which don’t,’ [so] the result of the deliberation is perfectly obvious…