The Extreme Naivete of Pundits Who Don't Know (or Pretend Not to Know) that National Rulers Fear Their Own Working Class

This naivete renders their discourse absurd.

Here are two political pundits—Alex Christoforou and Alexander Mercouris—whom I follow because they report the news fairly well even if they don’t have a clue about what makes it happen. These gentlemen are typical of the naive pundits who either just don’t “get it” or pretend not to “get it” that there is intense class conflict inside virtually all nations today.

If you listen to this video (below) of them discussing Putin’s recent State of the Nation address and U.S. and European reactions towards Russia’s winning the war in Ukraine, you will see that they perceive the world as one in which the rulers of some nations (such as Russia and China) are good guys who obey international law and are trying to make life good for their people, whereas the rulers of some other nations (such as the United States and European nations) are bad guys because they ignore international law to coerce the good guy leaders of other nations. This is naive.

Here’s an example of this naive way of thinking. Alexander Mercouris in the above video notes that Putin is enacting domestic programs in Russia that, in the past, would have been called Social Democracy and would have been considered very liberal, not conservative: things such as providing health care for all, support for families with children, etc. But, as Mercouris points out, Putin is a conservative who emphasizes traditional values, not the liberal stuff so prominent in the West today. Then Mercouris tells us that Britain’s post WWII prime minister, Cement Attlee, was an extremely conservative politician who nonetheless enacted Social Democracy programs (such as health care for all) in Great Britain. Mercouris’s point is that sometimes a conservative political leader realizes that what his/her people need is a Social Democratic program. Thus a conservative politician can be a good guy just like a liberal one.

The naivete here is the notion that political leaders who enact programs that benefit their people do so because they have a genuine concern for the welfare of their people, in other words they’re good guys whether they identify as liberal or conservative. According to this naive way of thinking, the reason FDR enacted the New Deal was because he was a good guy who had a genuine concern for the welfare of working class Americans who were suffering during the Great Depression. Likewise, according to the naive way of thinking, LBJ strong-armed Congress to make it vote for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that abolished the racist Jim Crow laws because LBJ was an anti-racism good guy.

The actual facts about FDR and LBJ are the opposite of this naive view of them. As I write about FDR here, FDR implemented the New Deal because he was afraid that if he had not done so there might very well have been a revolution by the working class to abolish the capitalist system that enabled him and his class to remain so wealthy, powerful and privileged. Likewise, as I write about LBJ here, he was a notorious racist who did what it took to end the Jim Crow laws because he (and the class he represented) feared what might happen if those laws were not abolished: revolution.

Be it Clement Attlee or Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping, one can be sure that leaders of nations in which there is great class inequality (virtually all nations today), leaders whom the likes of Alexander Mercouris perceive as good guys, are just like FDR and LBJ: they are doing what they feel they must in order to prevent their own people—the working class—from making a revolution.

I have written here (in footnotes mainly) about how Vladimir Putin represents an oligarchy in Russia that profits from the oppression of the Russian working class. I have written here how Xi Jinping’s Communist Party of China oppresses the Chinese working class. These national leaders are not good guys. When they enact policies that benefit their people it is for the same reason that FDR and LBJ did so: fear of what their people would do if they didn’t enact such policies.

If we want not to be naive, then we need to understand the world realistically. In virtually every nation today there is a huge conflict waging between the vast majority of its population—the working class—and the small minority that holds the real power. The rulers work hard to disguise the reality of this conflict, and they are generally pretty successful at that. But now and then the truth makes itself known, when there are uprisings of the working class that the rulers must repress, often with violence.

If we want to be on the side of the good guys—the ACTUAL good guys, the people who genuinely want to make the world more equal and democratic whom I call egalitarians—then we need to explicitly side with the working class people inside nations and not with any so-called “good guy” rulers of those nations.

The naive framework, however, says NOT to side with the working class people inside nations. The naive framework does this two ways.

First, it declares that what we need to do is support the “sovereign rights of all nations.” This means we need to ignore the class conflict inside a nation and only ask whether it’s a good nation or a bad nation. A good nation is one whose rulers are not violating international law to coerce the rulers of other nations. Bad nations, in contrast, are those whose rulers do violate international law to coerce the rulers of other nations. As long as a nation is a good nation, the naive framework says we must not criticize its rulers for oppressing their people because that would be a “no no”: it would mean violating the “sovereign rights” of that nation.

Second, the naive framework says that the only appropriate way to criticize the ruler of a bad nation is by criticizing them for violating international law to coerce the rulers of other nations. Again, one must, according to this naive framework, ignore the fact that the bad nation’s ruler oppresses their own people; what counts is only that they oppress the rulers of other nations.

Let’s dump the naive framework. Let’s build solidarity with egalitarians across all national borders. The hell with "respecting the national sovereignty” of oppressors! Read here why this “national sovereignty” notion is a cover up of oppression.

Read here how YOU can help build the egalitarian revolutionary movement.