Left Moldbuggism
The last internet ideology, maybe
Left Moldbuggism is a term I invented to describe a political ideology that is in the process of being constructed. Its prime exponent is my buddy
who is simultaneously one of the most prolific and most original Substackers. However, I also think the term applies to a lot of the work of Richard Hananiah who sometimes promotes my articles, and sometimes gets cranky when he gets rekt on 17th century history.1 Another candidate is Anatoly Karlin.My goal in this article is to explain what I think Left Moldbuggism is. I am not myself a Left Moldbuggian, and contemplating the Hideous Strength which Leftism exerts continues to inspire in me a feeling of existential horror that is sometimes sufficiently overpowering to the degree that I briefly lose the ability to feel ordinary human joy. However, I think Left Moldbuggism is the first ideological system that vindicates the present state of affairs while conforming to a minimum standard of rationality2 and, for that, it deserves an airing. DLA does not accept the term and claims not to have to been influenced by Moldbug, except negatively, so I thought I would explain what I mean by it.
Left Moldbuggism can be described simply as accepting the basic model of modern ‘democratic’ society outlined in Unqualified Reservations, but concluding that it nevertheless represents the best possible option among viable alternatives and we should work within the system to improve it. Left Moldbuggism agrees with Moldbug theory on the following points:
The United States conquered the world over the course of the 20th century and now runs a global empire with only a handful of independent states left.
The formal institutions of government in America (presidency, senate, supreme court etc.) are not actually able to govern a 21st century society (and it’s dubious whether they were able to govern an 18th century society). In fact, America is ruled by a vast, sprawling network of institutions, some of which are formally private or non-governmental. Since this network is not coordinated by a formal chain of command, it must be coordinated by ideology, and the most successful ideology for this task (proved by centuries of competition in the marketplace of ideas) is left-liberalism.
No country can do without an established religion; the fact that America does not officially have one only tells you that America’s formal constitution is a work of hallucination. In fact, America’s established religion is left-liberalism.
The universities exist (not solely, but crucially) to indoctrinate members of the elite in the evolving doctrines of the new religion, and also to train a priestly class
Educated, intelligent, conscientious and generally competent people are drawn to the Left because the Left is where the power is. Conversely, since the Right is just all the people getting chewed up by the functioning of the system, it consists of a mix of grifters, maniacs, losers and corrupt interests, plus just ordinary mediocre folks who lack the ambition and drive to keep up with the evolving morality of the Left and feel ‘left behind’. The Right can never actually takeover, and it wouldn’t be a good thing if they could.
In the free market of ideas, the Left always wins in the medium to long term, because, over multiple iterations, it is smart people who win the debates, and most smart people are on the Left.
Leftism evolved out of Protestant Christianity, through adaptation to the needs of modern society. All attempts to use Christianity to defeat Leftism are inherently doomed, like using a bayonet against an M16.
Despite the name ‘democracy’, the people do not actually rule, and they should not rule, and, in all likelihood, they can’t even rule. Real democracy is what we call ‘populism’ and populism is bad.
Leftist economic ideas are also bad, in the sense that they make people poorer on aggregate while achieving few or none of the ends that they are supposed to achieve.
The areas where Left Moldbuggism departs from the main branches of the tradition (whether NRx, neoabsolutism, Landism or any of the others) are the following points.
Moldbug comes up with various ideas about how to create a better system of government, but they don’t seem that great. Despite his protestations to the contrary, a neocameralist government run purely for profit would obviously conclude that substantial parts of its population were a dead loss and exterminate them. The only way of averting that would be an appeal to morality with some power center to back that up, and then you’re back to the Cathedral.
In any case, Moldbug’s plans to get to that state seem to be entirely fanciful. Lots of people read Moldbug, click like, share and then go back to some form of electoral politics. All he has achieved is contributing to a shift in the doctrines of the loser party, but this has happened before. Probably, as James Lawrence says, ‘the modern total state is dystopian by its very nature.’ In practice, post Unqualified Reservations, Curtis Yarvin defaulted to shilling for China, right at the same time as China embarked on an orgy of self destruction.
Speaking of China, the reason that they went full retard on Covid (when they could have used it as a weapon to destroy the west) seems to boil down to ‘Xi Jinping is scared of the flu’. Moldbug may be right that the only way to solve the intractable problems of sprawling bureaucracy is monarchy, but monarchy just introduces its own set of intractable problems, in particular breakdowns in information feedback loops. Why did Putin think his army wasn’t jank? because his generals told him so. Why did they tell him that? Because that’s what he wanted to hear. How do you solve this problem without having some kind of system involving people incentivized not to tell the present ruler what he wants to hear, like in a parliament or something?
It’s true that America is a global empire, but a global empire is inevitable. The natural limits of empire are determined by geography and technology, and attempts to carve out smaller states than this limit, at best, can lead to some temporary chaos before the empire re-emerges. Right now, the natural limit of empire is the whole world and so someone has to be a global empire. It’s not so much that rivals like Russia and China are undesirable - though they are - it’s that they don’t even look plausible. So, what’s the alternative? Back in the good old days when people paid for subscriptions to Gray Mirror on the promise of a free book (not that I’m bitter or anything), the plan was to have a global empire that just agreed of its own good will to stand back while imposing arms control on the planet’s warring countries to prevent excessive consolidation. Is that still the plan? Is anyone even paying enough attention to check?
Once you’ve accepted that the Cathedral is a spontaneous emergent phenomenon in a world of unformalized power relations, and you have concluded that there are no realistic, desirable alternatives to such a system, what exactly is your beef? Do you get similarly pissed off with the law of supply and demand, or the Iron Law or Oligarchy? This is just how things work in complex societies and, anyway…
Is America so bad? It’s rich, and pretty much anyone with talent who wants to make good money can. Just ask Walt Bismark. Sure, there’s urban crime, but you don’t actually live there. You can literally escape from urban crime by turning off your TV. And, true, people from West Virginia are overdosing on fentanyl and getting pimped out for five bucks so they can overdose on fentanyl, but you don’t actually know any of those people either. You read about them on a blog. You get angry because someone out for status or money decided to stimulate your amygdala by getting you to ‘care’ about stuff you would otherwise have never thought about so that you feel part of a tribe of people you will also never meet. Are you clearpilled or not? How is this any better than ‘caring’ about whales or dindus?
So what’s left? Mostly all the crazy BLM stuff and, sure, that sucks, and it really sucks when you have to take 3 hours off your money-making to listen to some obese negress tell you you’re racist because you won’t admit you’re racist. But what did you do when you were in school and the teacher was talking about geography? You trailed some headphones through your sleeve and leaned on your hand while occasionally nodding your head. Because of capitalism, you can buy ear buds now that no-one will notice and press some buttons and listen to any song you want, literally. And, anyway, maybe these intrusive woke things can be ameliorated, indeed, people keep saying they are already improving.
It’s true that on social-cultural issues everything just keeps getting lefter, but on economic issues not so much. Part of the American system’s resilience is that conservatives come back every decade or so, clear up enough of the socialist mess for everything to keep functioning, and go back to sitting in the corner while the country keeps getting richer. The solution to the problem of how to make the revolution permanent has been found and you are living in it. You only really have a problem with this if you are committed to some kind of traditional religion and that’s stupid because we are all going to be cyborgs in a hundred years, or genetically engineered post humans, or uploaded to AI or all three of them at once. So move on. You don’t like seeing gay people kissing in the meantime? Capitalism allows you to look at whatever you want; hell, if it’s all too much, you can amuse yourself to death.
If you really don’t like it, there’s always Iran or Russia, and, yet, I can’t help but notice you’re still here.
To repeat, these are not my conclusions, but they are coherent enough that I can formulate them without making my head hurt. I think the main task for Moldbuggians who are not Left Moldbuggians is to explain why the current system is so unacceptable. We all sort of knew this a decade ago, but memory is fallible, and the dynamics of the internet are such that attention is grabbed by finding new ways in which everyone sucks, with the result that a great proportion of the criticisms dissidents presently have are actually just made up or nonsense.
Left Moldbuggism can be pieced together from this article and this article which together represent perhaps the best data-based account of how the ‘marketplace of ideas’ is inherently left-slanted, this article which explains how culture is downstream of power, this article which explains how the cathedral functions not, principally, by lies but by control of perspective, this article which provides a Moldbuggist account of how the Right Wing ‘intellectual’ sphere ‘functions’ and this article which shows that the Cathedral is criminally insane.
Compare to, say, Rawls (imagine you were outside the universe and could pick what kind of society you would live in without ever having lived in one, but somehow you have beliefs and preferences and [million words]).
EHC seems to do Ed’s, meds, housing, and babymaking shitty. A lot of it relies on an unsustainable debt load and demographics. I don’t see this changing, it’s an incentive structure thing that isn’t going away because of some substack posts.
Its end point seems to be California, and California barely works due to legacy capital from the before times. Shittier versions of the California model without legacy capital can be found in cities through the rust belt and northeast.
I think of my nephew that visited from California. He and fiancé got chemistry degrees and work in a lab. But they can’t afford a house. They’ve got student loans. They earn average for their job which is a good job, but it’s not enough. They have put off getting married and starting a family. She’s thinking of going to back to school to become a nurse, because getting the right side of the unsustainable meds racket seems like the only path to stability. They are 30 and it’s hard to see them settling down anytime soon.
If you’re well off and own a house from the before times it’s OK I guess. But even if you’re doing well it’s still frustrating that you can’t actually buy anything meaningful (I’m not counting consumer goods).
The “beautiful bubbles” are shrinking. The few places left regular people can live well are all right wing.
Comments that are just positive tend to be low value, but I will mention anyway that I very much enjoyed this article and will engage in the further readings listed at the end!