The Dirty Open Secret of Socialism was “proletarisation” — the process by which artisans, independent contractors, professionals, entrepreneurs would be forced to work for wages:

In order that the “Socialist evolution” may be realized, it is necessary that industry and capital should be concentrated in a few hands, and, on the other hand, that there should be a great mass of wage‐​earners, increasingly wretched and deprived of all personal property. Such is the process as determined by Marx and Engels in the “Communist Manifesto,” and confirmed by the Erfurt Congress in 1891.

But this phenomenon does not appear if the “artisan” works in isolated independence; neither does it appear if those who carry on small industries, working in their own houses, have not been previously absorbed in the proletariat crowd of workmen employed in the great industries; not does it appear if the small proprietor preserves his love of individual property. The prophesied social evolution miscarries; the heralded paradise of the socialization of all the means of production and exchange vanishes. Democracy and Socialism are antagonistic.

Have I invented and formulated this proposition for polemical purposes? It comes from a Socialist, Herr Werner Sombart.

“What should be the attitude of socialism with regard to the masses which have not yet fallen into the ranks of the proletariat, such as the lower middle class (petite bourgeoisie) and of that part of the population which may perhaps never exhibit any tendency to inclusion in the proletariat? Should the object of the proletariat be essentially proletarian or should it be democratic? If it become democratic, what becomes of its programme? Is it to be socialism or democracy? The fundamental contention is expressed in the opposition between these two points of view.”

Bernstein published a series of articles in 1905 under the title, “Will Social Democracy Become Popular?”

In order to obtain recruits for the Socialist army it is necessary to “proletariarise” those who carry on small industries as well as small trades, and the owners of small properties, all of whom display elements of resistance to the socialization of the means of production. The movement of concentration, which does not take place naturally, must be obtained by force, in order to arrive at the catastrophe foretold by Karl Marx, as “on the one hand a few large industrial establishments and on the other the masses who possess nothing at all, the former absorbing the latter without their being able to offer resistance.”

In order to reach this point, the simplicity and ignorance of the very persons is to be exploited whom it is proposed to ruin, and of their representatives in Parliament. And legislation is to be carried out on the lines of social insurance and regulation of labour, in such a manner as to annihilate the small men, to overburden them with general expenses and risks, to close their shops and businesses and to try by artificial means to bring about the concentration of industries to which economic liberty fails to lend itself.

Werner Sombart frankly recognizes this when he says that “a good system of workmen’s legislation is a weapon of the highest order for proprietors of undertakings on a large scale, wherewith to ruin the small men and disembarrass themselves of their competition.

M. E. Vandervelde also demands this factitious concentration. “We must, he says, “wish for, and even foster by legislative measures, the passing of the degenerate forms of individual production into the superior forms of production in common.”

Yves Guyot, Socialistic Fallacies (1910).
…

While there are elements of this at work today — leaders of the dirigiste state often conspire against independent contractors, as recently shown in California, with Assembly Bill 5, largely because independent contractors tend to be . . . independent — this is not the big move today.

The Dirty Open Secret of Woke Progressivism is the political-cultural necessity always to increase the number of people dependent upon subsidy — and the reliance upon those not proletarised and not made dependents.

For remember: old-time socialism was seen as everyone working for a central authority and receiving “just wages” for their work, whatever that could mean.

Today’s wokester progressives don’t like work much, and demand, instead, to give people stuff for free. Production is not really a big part of their system. It’s just the secret thing they tend to despise. Their ideal job is not even a tech job, it’s a government job: easy, great benefits, early retirement, and you get to boss other people (preferably cis-white males) around.

This makes their schemes completely reliant upon taxpayers, of course. And this entails, in economic terms, reliance upon the proletarians in the market but mainly upon the successful artisans, independent contractors, professionals, and entrepreneurs — and of course the despised hyper-“privileged” owners of land and capital (those who make their living by rent and profit).

Now, older progressives and “progressive conservatives” (really, conservative-minded progressives) once honored the contributors; they extolled those who succeeded and thus serve not only as vanguards of market progress but also as benefactors via charity and even (or, especially) via state redistribution.

Today’s progressives have taken from the socialists not the programs of centralized economic management (boring!) so much as the socialist hatred and envy for the productive who materially serve as benefactors — but offend by being successful when others are not. “The Top One Percent,” for example.

This puzzles conservatives, even enrages them, since it is the essence of conservatism to honor the productive, the achievers, and benefactors, to advance gratefulness. They see in today’s progressives nothing but ingrates.

They are correct. Progressives in the modern vein are indeed ingrates; they promote a system that cannot work, and offends against common sense by lacking gratitude, honor, or aspiration. They are moochers by nature. They are to be despised. As soon as the old pro-productivity element in progressivism goes, there is nothing left good in progressives. Even their desire to help becomes greed and envy and hatred.

We could talk and argue with the progressives who were technocrats, and with progressives who leaned conservatives and thought they were conservative.

It is much harder to argue with the new sort, just as it was nearly impossible to argue with socialists, real socialists.

For they have accepted unsustainable social attitudes as well as an unworkable system. They have embraced systemic anti-sociality.

What do I mean? Well, consult Oscar Wilde, whose embrace of an “individualistic” anti-property quasi-socialism entailed a complete rejection of the altruistic sentiment so common under the capitalism of his day, and who, deep down, seemed to hate capitalism because it required too much attention to others’ needs!

Yes, this new form of progressivism is inherently anti-social.

Oh, sure, a few social groups are fixated upon — you know, as Victims to be honored, secretly pitied, and formally subsidized and promoted. But with this victim cultism comes a target class, for subsidizing some must come at the expense of the non-victims and non-oppressors, who are (or were) the vast majority.

While libertarian theorists will look at woke-progressive demands as unworkable and indeed crazy, conservatives will judge progressive attitudes as ungrateful and uncivilized. And what of old-time progressives and socialists? They will be puzzled by the moral perversity, though unable quite to put their fingers on the problem, since they themselves have so many sub rosa fixations and assumptions that are embarrassing to be made public or even conscious, and which, in fact, gave rise to the new mobbing losers.

But most old progressives I know fall in line with the new woke progressivism of, say, the Squad — the Millennial Democrats in Congress. Old-time progressives have been flirting with socialistic critiques of freedom for so long, and are so addicted to redistribution and regulation that they have nothing left to defend themselves from the agendas of the wokester-barbarian horde.

This is the cultural contradiction of the time. It is fun to watch. It can be great fun to scorn the new ingrates and utopians in their “protest” mobs. But their danger is real.

All-too-real.

Now, I can see why many old-time progressive-symp libertarians (the beltway types) might think this period cannot last, that it’ll just fizzle. Meh, they say. Typical Gen X judgment.

And they are right to understand that woke-progressive ingrate redistributionism is doomed. No doubt. The current woke-progressive program and integral attitudes cannot be sustained.

But it may not necessarily fizzle. It could be an explosion. Or implosion.

The devastation could be vast.

twv