Cold War Daily

This is an excerpt from a piece by Ruy Teixeira in the Liberal Patriot– which excerpts Leigh Phillips. He asks the right questions. Although I’d argue that the left has been alienated from the possibility of tech progress since about 1973. The oil crash, stagflation unhelped by technological change, the promise and failure of technology to win the Vietnam War, or pull more people into the middle class – all of these elements are contributors.

Teixeira: “the left’s 21st century project should have embraced techno-optimism rather than techno-pessimism. Rapid technological advance is key to fast productivity growth and rising living standards. But the left has been lukewarm at best about the possibilities of new and better technologies, leaving techno-optimism to the libertarian-minded denizens of Silicon Valley. As British science journalist Leigh Phillips has observed:

Once upon a time, the Left…promised more innovation, faster progress, greater abundance. One of the reasons…that the historically fringe ideology of libertarianism is today so surprisingly popular in Silicon Valley and with tech-savvy young people more broadly…is that libertarianism is the only extant ideology that so substantially promises a significantly materially better future.

“Sound familiar? The left has ignored growth and its drivers to its great detriment. In its place, it has squandered enormous political capital on a 21st project that has largely failed. Twenty-five years is long enough; it is high time to try something new.”