Karl Marx would pour scorn on the touchy-feely PC rubbish of today’s woke left

It has been growing for several decades.

In academia, my home turf, it was noticeable in the 1980s with the rise of ‘feelings’ and ‘emotions’ as key social science concerns – how people ‘felt’ about reality, not what reality was.

Reason, rationality and the Enlightenment (scientific) tradition were traditionally left-wing turf (from Karl Marx to Clement Attlee), but are now substituted for feelings – that is, emotional states of mind.

Emotional states, as any psychologist knows, grossly distort perceptions of reality.

They are easy to manipulate via modern media and spin, whilst reason and rationality require scientific discipline and mental rigour.

Woke issues are media-friendly precisely because they have emotional impact, and because the media are dominated by woke educated arts and humanities folk who lack real ‘scientific’ training.

Further, most media folk are middle class, and woke issues don’t threaten their materially-comfortable lifestyles.

Thus banning speakers, political correctness, and emotional outrage don’t involve paying higher taxes to resource practical real solutions; for example, providing better healthcare, welfare, or social services – things that really and inclusively help all races and creeds.

One can still have a second home in France and feel emotionally good by being politically correct.

Woke issues often do exist, like racial inequality, but their understanding of them and proposed solutions are infantile and downright dangerous - like, for example, where curbs on freedom of speech are concerned.

They also ignore white inequalities, like working class deprivation in ‘post-industrial’ society, making working people feel bitter – hence Labour’s drubbing in Northern England.

Yet the flight of the Left from reason has rational explanations, e.g. the collapse of the Soviet Bloc founded on Marx’s Enlightenment ideal of scientific socialism.

The Left sought a quick alternative and found it in sloppy ‘touchy-feely’ politics, instant emotive issues, and symbolic gestures like toppling statues or political correctness.

Marx would have scorned such empty, gesturing fools.

Modern society is frequently unjust and rife with real socio-economic and political problems, but the solutions lie in painstaking, tedious analysis and long-term planning, resources and delivery systems, not grand posturing.

In such a world there is a serious need for a Left to challenge greedy self-interest - doing this is even fundamental to a liberal democratic society.

Here, Ulster’s heritage could provide a template. Modern economics and Enlightenment thought actually has its roots in the Ulster moral philosopher Francis Hutcheson (1694-1746) ‘Father of the Scottish Enlightenment’ and man who taught Adam Smith (1723-90) economics (Smith being credited as founding modern economics).

Both men were moral philosophers who would never advocate greedy self-interest.

They saw the greatest virtue and happiness in dong good for ones community and fellow man (something modern market economics blissfully ignores).

What Hutcheson taught Smith was that by removing artificial constraints, from race to socio-economic disadvantage, over an individual’s ability to develop their talents to the full enabled men to make a greater contribution to their community and fellow men.

This Enlightened, moral dimension of market economics (for the benefit of others) is usually ignored.

But it represents an ‘old’ Left critique of market economics, something which requires the rationality and reason of a disciplined mind - which modern woke-ism now eschews for emotive gestures.

• James Dingley is a former international lecturer and NATO Instructor on terrorism and editor of: Combating Terrorism in Northern Ireland

More News Letter letters and opinion at this link.

——— ———

A message from the Editor:

Thank you for reading this story on our website. While I have your attention, I also have an important request to make of you.

With the coronavirus lockdowns having had a major impact on many of our advertisers — and consequently the revenue we receive — we are more reliant than ever on you taking out a digital subscription.

Subscribe to newsletter.co.ukand enjoy unlimited access to the best Northern Ireland and UK news and information online and on our app. With a digital subscription, you can read more than 5 articles, see fewer ads, enjoy faster load times, and get access to exclusive newsletters and content.

Visit https://www.newsletter.co.uk/subscriptionsnow to sign up

Our journalism costs money and we rely on advertising, print and digital revenues to help to support them. By supporting us, we are able to support you in providing trusted, fact-checked content for this website.

Ben Lowry, Editor