Behind the political games, a lot of the confusion comes down to the fact there is a split in socialism between 1) revolutionary socialism and 2) social democracy. A short thread:

Revolutionary socialism (Marx, Lenin, etc) says that to achieve equality, fairness, justice etc we should overthrow democracy and the existing political system, while social democrats (e.g. UK Labour party, Beatrice Webb) disagree.

The list of "socialists" the Republicans gave in their resolution are mostly revolutionary socialists that believed overturning democracy and civil liberties was necessary for progress. This doesn't go well.

The list of nice things (medicare, social security) defenders of socialism are talking about in this debate were generally efforts of social democrats (FDR, LBJ etc) to humanise capitalism.

One issue is "socialism" and even "social democrat" has long been a dirty word in America, something made worse by the Cold War. There is no similar stigma in Europe.

Another aspect of the "what is socialism?" debate is the role the government should play in the economy. Should it own the factories and businesses, "the means of production"?

After WW2 this was a popular approach in Europe but was reversed with privatisation in the 80s (e.g. Thatcher). A "third way" socialism (e.g. Blair) accepted this, hoping to use the tax revenue from free(er) market for better public services. I.e. :

However, the benefits of the government owning businesses and intervening in the market are still debated. Some say it's the secret to China's success, others predict disaster. But worth noting many "capitalist" countries such as South Korea and Singapore still do a lot of this.

Originally tweeted by Brendan Miller (@brenkjm) on February 3, 2023.

An interesting argument from Rules for Radicals is that change never comes the "haves" (benefit from status quo) or "have nots" (crushed by poverty), and so *must* come from the middle-class.

And that's what's happened in history. Check out his list of middle-class radicals:

I often hear critics attack activists on the basis that they're middle-class (e.g. "champagne socialist", "metropolitan elites") – but they're the ones with both 1) the incentive & 2) resources to fight for change.

I mean I can't say this guy would be my ideal spokesman for anything (sorry whoever you are), but it is remarkable that Adam Boulton seems to think "middle-class" is a valid point of criticism. https://t.co/gsDCQHqeC6

Though all this might just be me feeling defensive for loving Radio 4

Originally tweeted by Brendan Miller (@brenkjm) on January 15, 2021.

1/ "Why do reasonable people disagree so much on political questions?"

So much stupidity in politics comes from a failure to take this question seriously.

2/ Weak answers include "they're nasty" (what the Left thinks of the Right), "they're naive" (what the Right thinks of the Left) or what I've called the bad information hypothesis: "they've been brainwashed"

3/ A more useful answer is from @JonHaidt who argued that different people are instinctively sensitive to different moral ideas, almost like some people might have a sweet tooth and love chocolate, while others are indifferent to chocolate but really love savoury snacks.

4/ This is Moral Foundations Theory and it's a useful way of looking at politics. Here are the tastes, each of which is thought to originate in a particular evolutionary challenge:

5/ The theory is that people of different political persuasions have different tastes, with a lot of agreement between Left & Right over the importance of care/harm, but conservatives much more sensitive to ideas of authority, loyalty ("ingroup") and sanctity (purity).

6/ This theory has consequences for persuading opponents. E.g. someone on the Left that supports refugees shouldn't just rely on care/harm ("look at these people suffering") but might also appeal to loyalty ("our great nation was built on welcoming refugees").

7/ I'm open-minded on whether Moral Foundations Theory is right, and there are other ways to model the psychology of Left and Right. But this kind of thinking is helpful because it gets us thinking about persuasion, something often missing in today's politics.

Originally tweeted by Brendan Miller (@brenkjm) on January 16, 2023.

“[Something] [something] THE MEDIA” is one of the most tiresome arguments in politics — whether it’s the Left complaining about Fox News, Murdoch and the tabloids; or the Right complaining about liberal woke BBC.

At root, it's a model of politics I call the "bad information hypothesis": the idea that people have the wrong political views because they've got bad information.

There's a sort of sense to this idea. After all, with questions of science, the more correct information and evidence there is, we expect a convergence towards a single truthful answer. Why not with politics?

What’s going wrong – according to this model – is that tabloid/BBC propaganda, lack of education/ brainwashing liberal universities, are getting in the way of the right information, and thus leading people astray.

The truth though, is that political views go deep and different information — media, education, propaganda etc — has a limited effect. Tabloid views drive tabloid propaganda as much as the other way around.

Now of course information and media does make some difference. Giving opponents your arguments and evidence can have an effect and I’m not saying we should give up on trying to persuade others.

But the constant noise about THE MEDIA isn’t about persuading opponents, it’s about dismissing them. And that helps no one.

Thank you to @Samfr excellent piece for getting me thinking about this

https://samf.substack.com/p/its-not-a-dead-cat

Originally tweeted by Brendan Miller (@brenkjm) on January 12, 2023.

This thread between @Samfr and @Martha_Gill is an interesting example of something I think about a lot: the degree to which people have a scarcity-mindset towards political action.

Sam mentions he believes there is a policy issue with girls outperforming boys in formal education. Martha argues if there is an unfairness it's offset by the parenting gap later on in life…

Sam says we can solve both problems. Martha argues "a comparatively slight advantage in a small area does not feel like the priority problem to solve". Fix the parenting pay gap, pension disparity and the lack of women on boards first.

Of course politics is often about priorities. You have limited money, time, political capital. Prioritising is at the heart of effective political leadership.

On the other hand sometimes "it's not a priority" is another way of dismissing an issue. E.g. the argument we should cancel overseas aid and focus on UK homeless, coming from people who don't appear to have ever been concerned about the homeless before.

Originally tweeted by Brendan Miller (@brenkjm) on January 10, 2023.

When I was following politics at school and university, I suffered one particular misunderstanding of news and politics which might be useful to share.

Basically, my problem was that I underestimated the role of personality, jealousy, rivalry, pride, revenge, and gossip in politics and current events.

One problem was that the high-status people who were my sources of insight into politics (teachers, professors) were serious and well-reasoned people. Surely, I thought, those even closer to power would be similar.

I also thought of focusing on personality etc as low-status — what less-educated people and tabloids obsessed over. I remember approving of Tony Benn’s call for politics to be “about issues, not personalities”.

Also, the way I was taught politics and history tended to avoid these factors in favour of structure, theory, models and other theoretical approaches.

Interest in these issues also seemed to accompany a cynicism about politics and life in general (”they’re all a bunch of crooks!”) that I instinctively rejected.

But it turns out (of course!) that if you are interested in trying to accurately understand how things work, these factors are key.

Journalist Andrew Rawnsley's accounts of the Blair years were my first shock. Even accounting for Rawnsley’s exaggeration, it was clear Blair & Brown (the adults I looked up to) and their actions were being shaped by personality and “psychodrama”.

Later, three years in Westminster as the series producer on #bbcqt gave me more insight into this. Of course, it’s not all gossip etc, there’s lots of hard policy problems too. But still, it was a big update for me.

Originally tweeted by Brendan Miller (@brenkjm) on January 4, 2023.

Something that happens a lot in politics is what I call the “unacceptable consequences fallacy”. 🧵

For example, let’s look at the idea that genes play a huge role in determining intelligence, a controversial idea in politics but not in behavioural genetics.

One of the reasons this idea is controversial is that it seems to imply all our efforts with education and social programmes are pointless. Some kids are dumb and thus doomed to failure and poverty.

In this example, starting idea A (genetics plays a huge role in determining intelligence) leads to B (no point in education), an idea which is unacceptable.

The fallacy comes when, *because* B is unacceptable, people refute A, even when there’s strong evidence for it.

In the intelligence/genetics debate, you can see this in all the political think pieces discussing eugenics, Nazis, the racist history of IQ, and questioning whether intelligence even exists.

But before refuting A because you don’t like B, it’s worth looking at that arrow linking the two: does B necessarily follow from A?

And there you see the error. Just because a trait is genetically determined doesn’t mean we shouldn’t take action to help those disadvantaged. Short-sightedness is another trait that has a strong genetic element. Yet we still give glasses to those in need of them.

Here’s another example. One of the controversies around the 2021 Sewell on racism was whether racism had improved in the UK. One side insisted “Britain is racist” while others countered that huge progress had been made.

Largely unspoken in this debate, but giving it all its energy, was the idea that if racism *had* improved, then it followed that we could relax about the issue and stop focusing so much on it.

So even though the argument was ostensibly about A (has racism improved?) it was really about B (should anti-racism still be a priority?).

Those of us who see it as obvious (at least from polling data) that racism has improved from a generation ago but still think should be a focus were left with nowhere to go.

Originally tweeted by Brendan Miller (@brenkjm) on January 5, 2023.

I know Elon musk has a lot of haters right now but what is the past few years has actually been a GENIUS political strategy that will save the planet? 🧵

Something unique about climate change is how much support is needed to make progress. A large majority of people need to change their behaviour.

Often in a democracy you don't need a majority. Just having more votes than others (a "plurality" vs a majority) if enough to pass climate laws. But without mass support you get backlash — the gilets jaunes protests against fuel taxes in 2018 for example.

For success on climate change, a large *majority* of people need to change how they travel, eat, get energy and so on, to make a difference.

The problem is most people are not @GretaThunberg. They have other priorities, problems and many (me?) are just not that altruistic or enlightened. Only a minority will ever be "do-gooding" enough to change their behaviour. And a minority is not enough.

This is why a big part of the answer on climate is technology. It's only when carbon-free cars, planes, meat, etc are cheaper and better will you see the majority changing their behaviour.

So when Musk introduced the Tesla and it was *cool*, winning car awards and hype, and prodding the industry to shift towards electric, it was as a huge climate success.

But after those initial successes there remained a problem…

Electric vehicles have a huge image problem politically, especially in the USA, the world's biggest economy. A recent poll found Democrats more than twice as likely as Republicans to consider purchasing an electric vehicle (58% vs. 23%).

I mean look at this anti-Democract ad that ran in the recent midterms. "We want tranks run on American energy!" while oil pumps work away in the background.

But if it's still pretty bad, the way electric vehicles are associated with Democrats used to be even worse.

In fact, in 2018 two political scientists (@HetheringtonUNC & @jonweiler) wrote a book on how the answer to the question "Prius or pickup?" was enough to work out if you were Democrat or Republican.

This is why it was so significant when, in 2019, Musk released an electric vehicle _pickup truck_, one that was big, brash, marketed with macho "strength-tests" and generally the opposite of an eco-conscious Prius.

And since then there's been a steady stream of rightwing signalling from Musk. Love for Canadian truckers, guns on the bedside table, "prosecute/Fauci" etc

And while Republican hostility to electric vehicles remains, it has shifted in a positive direction. Today Republicans are slightly *more* likely to trust the Tesla brand, 27% compared to 25% among Democrats.

Note this is the kind of strategy politicians rarely achieve. For example Blair & Clinton were praised for their presentation of leftwing politics and thus win power. But as well as presentation they also shifted rightward in the substance of their politics.

But Musk hasn't shifted anything that matters. The battery inside a Tesla is still 100% electric.

Now, I don't know if this is all on purpose – maybe that gives @elonmusk too much credit. But nevertheless if he succeeds in making electric vehicles popular with Republicans, it will be a huge success (another one) in the fight against climate change.

Originally tweeted by Brendan Miller (@brenkjm) on January 7, 2023.