In Part I of this essay, I argued that the evils associated with capitalism can emerge even when capitalism is absent. They emerge, for example, in academia, which is not part of capitalism and which is currently under the control of liberals and leftists. In Part II of this essay, I argued that a possible response of liberals and leftists to Part I – namely, that the appearance of these evils was caused by the intrusion of capitalism into academia – wouldn’t stick because of the abysmal behavior of academic liberals and leftists.
In this concluding part, I’m going to explain why I called these essays a “leftist defense” rather than simply a defense of capitalism. I called it a leftist defense because I take leftism to be egalitarian and to have a concern for the poor, and I now believe that capitalism helps the poor better than anything that leftists have ever done for them. I now regard socialism and communism as nothing but rich people’s leftism, the primary concern of which is to ensure that the guilty rich people running it get the best jobs, while actual poor people are kept poor. Let me recount to some extent what led me to these conclusions, though I cannot now recall everything that contributed. For those not interested in hearing about my experiences, scroll down until you get to the numbered paragraphs.
When I got my Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Minnesota, I was a socialist and I hated capitalism. That was in 1984, but three years later I was becoming extremely disillusioned with the publishing situation in academia. It seemed impossible to get anything through the “gatekeepers” at the journals. But in the fall of 1987 I had the first of a series of important insights in my area of expertise (Greek philosophy – the insight concerned Plato’s reaction to Parmenides) that I thought would help me get published. Indeed, it was enough to get me into an NEH Summer Seminar for College Teachers led by one of the big names in Greek philosophy, Gregory Vlastos, so things seemed to be looking up. In addition, I received plenty of advice on getting published from my fellow seminarians. Nevertheless, publications still wouldn’t come. Meanwhile, I had a new insight, this time on the later presocratics (Empedocles, et. al.). I realized they weren’t the dim bulbs that scholars imagined they were, so I dashed a letter off to Vlastos explaining my insight. He said it made good sense to him, but as usual, journal editors were unimpressed.
After receiving yet another rejection letter on my presocratics article in the winter of 1991, one which said (as others had said) that I didn’t know the literature, I spent the next three months looking at everything I could possibly find on them. Yet, at the end of that time, I felt I hadn’t learned much of anything new from all this literature that I had missed that would explain the rejections. Instead, I had a new insight; before, I had been talking about Empedocles’ response to Parmenides, but now I saw how Parmenides’ student Melissus fit into the whole business. So, I rewrote my presocratics paper and submitted it to Review of Metaphysics. They agreed it was publishable, but insisted they had too big a backlog to accept it. That, by the way, was the best response I ever got from a journal to which I had submitted an article. Submissions to journals after this got rejected. By 1993, I had a great insight that explained much of Plato’s late period in a completely new way, and subsequent insights allowed me to explain his obscure “unwritten doctrines.” But once again, journal editors and their referees were not impressed.
As my career began going down the toilet, I was asking everyone I knew about academic publishing, and everyone had a story to tell of peer review going awry, yet no one seemed the least bit inclined to demand reform. The day after the 1994 election, I ventured the opinion to a younger leftist that the left had done nothing to reform academic publishing. She just looked baffled and said, “That wasn’t part of the agenda,” and was unmoved when I said it should have been.
From that day on, I began moving in a different direction politically. I began to read things I wouldn’t have read otherwise, and I also began to read conservative writings sympathetically. Before that, I had read the conservatives only to bash them, but now I read them for insights into leftism. And those insights slowly came my way. For example, I read something in the American Spectator that, in talking of some environmental campaign, said, “Once again, environmentalism trumps egalitarianism.” This statement represented a thought so at variance with my ways of thinking and with the ways of thinking of everyone I knew or knew of that it took me a while to figure out what was meant. Once I did, I began looking for other ways in which leftists were hurting poor people. To my surprise, many different ways came to light.
Meanwhile, in 1995 I had submitted my presocratics article for the Rockefeller Prize in philosophy, a prize given to unpublished articles by those without jobs. I won. It was quite a surprise to get the check for $1,000 in the mail, especially since it was at a time when my wife and I were in great need of it. I was told that from then on the winning article would automatically be published in the Journal of Value Inquiry, but would I be interested in having my article submitted to the editor to see if he would be interested in publishing it? I would, and it duly got published. A friend told me it has even be discussed, but by the time that happened I had long since ceased to care.
By this time, the Internet had come along, as well as print-on-demand publishing. Strangely enough, technological advances were doing what the left wasn’t even trying to do: giving those of us at the bottom a voice. In 1997, I put an article on the Internet, and in 2006, I published at long last a book on Greek philosophy. Andreas Graeser in Switzerland had been informed of my article by his student, Alain Metry, and he had written me a kind letter praising it. Later, he wrote a review of my book, though I’m not sure if it was ever published. (It was in German and was submitted to a German journal.) Plus, his student, Metry, had described my article in his (German-language) Ph.D. thesis. It seemed strange that people were writing about me in German, but not in English.
At some point during all this, someone published statistics of the political leanings of professors, and it turned out that most were liberal or leftist. Prior to this, I hadn’t thought much about the politics of the people who were constantly rejecting my articles, but now it seemed highly likely that they were left-of-center. Considering that I had entered academia as a socialist, I had to wonder at the shabby treatment I was getting.
These, then, were the frustrating experiences I had in academia, and I eventually drew certain conclusions from all of this.
1. While I was writing my Ph.D. thesis, I worked as a computer programmer. Looking back, I had to admit that I had been treated better in corporate America than I had been in academia.
2. The referees and journal editors seemed very stingy to me. I knew my work wasn’t bad because people like Vlastos and Graeser liked what I said, yet I could never get anything published (except via the Rockefeller Prize). What else could this be but stinginess? I vowed never again to call a CEO greedy.
3. At some point, tired of hearing of books by leftist professors promoting a redistribution of wealth, I wrote to every such professor who had a new book out on the subject asking them if they were willing to demand a redistribution of wealth within academia. Only one such leftist professor responded, and he was honest enough to say no, but while I admired his honesty, I couldn’t admire his principles.
4. A friend from grad school whom I thought of as to the right of me suggested that academia was a caste system, which was why we weren’t doing so well. Those of us who had come out of mediocre grad schools like that at the University of Minnesota were being treated shabbily based on where we had gone to school and not on the quality of our ideas. This was an important insight, but I was furious that no one on the left was saying it.
5. Gradually, I realized that not only were most professors in academia left-of-center, they also came from wealthy backgrounds. Since my own background was lower-middle class, I began to wonder about the sort of commitment they had to helping the poor.
6. This skepticism was furthered when I noticed that these same liberals and leftists were uncomfortable with the idea of class and with the ideas that affirmative action should be extended to include class background and that peer review may be afflicted by class bias.
7. Many of the conservatives whom I was now reading would on occasion point out how often leftist leaders had come from wealthy backgrounds. Before, I had praised such people for their devotion to the poor, but now it began to seem different. Their positions of prominence began to seem like not just the stinginess I’ve already mentioned, but as the result of a sort of hidden principle of socialism and communism, a principle that would guarantee that wealthy leftists would get the best jobs in such societies. People like Martha Nussbaum and Bill Ayers and his wife Bernardine Dorhn exhibit this perfectly.
8. For years it seemed impossible to say anything against peer review, simply because it was guarded by a sort of Catch-22. That is, those of us at the bottom who had many complaints about peer review were not listened to, because it was felt that since we hadn’t published, we could not be very good, and if we weren’t very good, then there was no point in listening to us. Meanwhile, those at the top would be listened to, because they were at the top, but then they seldom had any reason for complaint. And so the system remained the same, year after year, decade after decade, with no push for reforms. At some point, it hit me that the way to cut through this Catch-22 was to point out to leftists that since I was at the bottom, and since they claimed to listen to people at the bottom, they ought to listen to me. Needless to say, they haven’t.
And then the Climategate scandal occurred, which began to show ordinary people what peer review was actually like, and it was just as corrupt and sordid as I had been maintaining for years. But instead of demanding reform, leftists insisted that nothing much was wrong.
9. Along the way, a few conservatives actually showed more concern for people like me than any of the leftists I knew or knew of. In The Monist for 1996, John Kekes, a conservative, wrote about academic corruption, and David Shetz, a libertarian, wrote an article critical of peer review. The conservative philosopher Keith Burgess-Jackson has somewhere said that he found it strange that liberal and leftist philosophers would be so concerned with the rankings of philosophy departments, that they ought to be more concerned with the graduates of places like Appalachian State. (I am unable to locate this remark, which was made online.) I wrote many letters to prominent liberals and leftists, and not one seemed a bit interested in the plight of those of us at the bottom.
10. I shall always view my time in academia as an instance of social injustice, but one that was perpetrated by liberals and leftists and one which liberals and leftists had no interest in overcoming. I now view socialism and communism and indeed most of liberalism and leftism as nothing but rich people’s leftism. The commitment of these people to helping the poor is much less than what they imagine.
In a few days, I will write about the contrast between rich people’s leftism (RPL) and poor people’s leftism (PPL).
In this concluding part, I’m going to explain why I called these essays a “leftist defense” rather than simply a defense of capitalism. I called it a leftist defense because I take leftism to be egalitarian and to have a concern for the poor, and I now believe that capitalism helps the poor better than anything that leftists have ever done for them. I now regard socialism and communism as nothing but rich people’s leftism, the primary concern of which is to ensure that the guilty rich people running it get the best jobs, while actual poor people are kept poor. Let me recount to some extent what led me to these conclusions, though I cannot now recall everything that contributed. For those not interested in hearing about my experiences, scroll down until you get to the numbered paragraphs.
When I got my Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Minnesota, I was a socialist and I hated capitalism. That was in 1984, but three years later I was becoming extremely disillusioned with the publishing situation in academia. It seemed impossible to get anything through the “gatekeepers” at the journals. But in the fall of 1987 I had the first of a series of important insights in my area of expertise (Greek philosophy – the insight concerned Plato’s reaction to Parmenides) that I thought would help me get published. Indeed, it was enough to get me into an NEH Summer Seminar for College Teachers led by one of the big names in Greek philosophy, Gregory Vlastos, so things seemed to be looking up. In addition, I received plenty of advice on getting published from my fellow seminarians. Nevertheless, publications still wouldn’t come. Meanwhile, I had a new insight, this time on the later presocratics (Empedocles, et. al.). I realized they weren’t the dim bulbs that scholars imagined they were, so I dashed a letter off to Vlastos explaining my insight. He said it made good sense to him, but as usual, journal editors were unimpressed.
After receiving yet another rejection letter on my presocratics article in the winter of 1991, one which said (as others had said) that I didn’t know the literature, I spent the next three months looking at everything I could possibly find on them. Yet, at the end of that time, I felt I hadn’t learned much of anything new from all this literature that I had missed that would explain the rejections. Instead, I had a new insight; before, I had been talking about Empedocles’ response to Parmenides, but now I saw how Parmenides’ student Melissus fit into the whole business. So, I rewrote my presocratics paper and submitted it to Review of Metaphysics. They agreed it was publishable, but insisted they had too big a backlog to accept it. That, by the way, was the best response I ever got from a journal to which I had submitted an article. Submissions to journals after this got rejected. By 1993, I had a great insight that explained much of Plato’s late period in a completely new way, and subsequent insights allowed me to explain his obscure “unwritten doctrines.” But once again, journal editors and their referees were not impressed.
As my career began going down the toilet, I was asking everyone I knew about academic publishing, and everyone had a story to tell of peer review going awry, yet no one seemed the least bit inclined to demand reform. The day after the 1994 election, I ventured the opinion to a younger leftist that the left had done nothing to reform academic publishing. She just looked baffled and said, “That wasn’t part of the agenda,” and was unmoved when I said it should have been.
From that day on, I began moving in a different direction politically. I began to read things I wouldn’t have read otherwise, and I also began to read conservative writings sympathetically. Before that, I had read the conservatives only to bash them, but now I read them for insights into leftism. And those insights slowly came my way. For example, I read something in the American Spectator that, in talking of some environmental campaign, said, “Once again, environmentalism trumps egalitarianism.” This statement represented a thought so at variance with my ways of thinking and with the ways of thinking of everyone I knew or knew of that it took me a while to figure out what was meant. Once I did, I began looking for other ways in which leftists were hurting poor people. To my surprise, many different ways came to light.
Meanwhile, in 1995 I had submitted my presocratics article for the Rockefeller Prize in philosophy, a prize given to unpublished articles by those without jobs. I won. It was quite a surprise to get the check for $1,000 in the mail, especially since it was at a time when my wife and I were in great need of it. I was told that from then on the winning article would automatically be published in the Journal of Value Inquiry, but would I be interested in having my article submitted to the editor to see if he would be interested in publishing it? I would, and it duly got published. A friend told me it has even be discussed, but by the time that happened I had long since ceased to care.
By this time, the Internet had come along, as well as print-on-demand publishing. Strangely enough, technological advances were doing what the left wasn’t even trying to do: giving those of us at the bottom a voice. In 1997, I put an article on the Internet, and in 2006, I published at long last a book on Greek philosophy. Andreas Graeser in Switzerland had been informed of my article by his student, Alain Metry, and he had written me a kind letter praising it. Later, he wrote a review of my book, though I’m not sure if it was ever published. (It was in German and was submitted to a German journal.) Plus, his student, Metry, had described my article in his (German-language) Ph.D. thesis. It seemed strange that people were writing about me in German, but not in English.
At some point during all this, someone published statistics of the political leanings of professors, and it turned out that most were liberal or leftist. Prior to this, I hadn’t thought much about the politics of the people who were constantly rejecting my articles, but now it seemed highly likely that they were left-of-center. Considering that I had entered academia as a socialist, I had to wonder at the shabby treatment I was getting.
These, then, were the frustrating experiences I had in academia, and I eventually drew certain conclusions from all of this.
1. While I was writing my Ph.D. thesis, I worked as a computer programmer. Looking back, I had to admit that I had been treated better in corporate America than I had been in academia.
2. The referees and journal editors seemed very stingy to me. I knew my work wasn’t bad because people like Vlastos and Graeser liked what I said, yet I could never get anything published (except via the Rockefeller Prize). What else could this be but stinginess? I vowed never again to call a CEO greedy.
3. At some point, tired of hearing of books by leftist professors promoting a redistribution of wealth, I wrote to every such professor who had a new book out on the subject asking them if they were willing to demand a redistribution of wealth within academia. Only one such leftist professor responded, and he was honest enough to say no, but while I admired his honesty, I couldn’t admire his principles.
4. A friend from grad school whom I thought of as to the right of me suggested that academia was a caste system, which was why we weren’t doing so well. Those of us who had come out of mediocre grad schools like that at the University of Minnesota were being treated shabbily based on where we had gone to school and not on the quality of our ideas. This was an important insight, but I was furious that no one on the left was saying it.
5. Gradually, I realized that not only were most professors in academia left-of-center, they also came from wealthy backgrounds. Since my own background was lower-middle class, I began to wonder about the sort of commitment they had to helping the poor.
6. This skepticism was furthered when I noticed that these same liberals and leftists were uncomfortable with the idea of class and with the ideas that affirmative action should be extended to include class background and that peer review may be afflicted by class bias.
7. Many of the conservatives whom I was now reading would on occasion point out how often leftist leaders had come from wealthy backgrounds. Before, I had praised such people for their devotion to the poor, but now it began to seem different. Their positions of prominence began to seem like not just the stinginess I’ve already mentioned, but as the result of a sort of hidden principle of socialism and communism, a principle that would guarantee that wealthy leftists would get the best jobs in such societies. People like Martha Nussbaum and Bill Ayers and his wife Bernardine Dorhn exhibit this perfectly.
8. For years it seemed impossible to say anything against peer review, simply because it was guarded by a sort of Catch-22. That is, those of us at the bottom who had many complaints about peer review were not listened to, because it was felt that since we hadn’t published, we could not be very good, and if we weren’t very good, then there was no point in listening to us. Meanwhile, those at the top would be listened to, because they were at the top, but then they seldom had any reason for complaint. And so the system remained the same, year after year, decade after decade, with no push for reforms. At some point, it hit me that the way to cut through this Catch-22 was to point out to leftists that since I was at the bottom, and since they claimed to listen to people at the bottom, they ought to listen to me. Needless to say, they haven’t.
And then the Climategate scandal occurred, which began to show ordinary people what peer review was actually like, and it was just as corrupt and sordid as I had been maintaining for years. But instead of demanding reform, leftists insisted that nothing much was wrong.
9. Along the way, a few conservatives actually showed more concern for people like me than any of the leftists I knew or knew of. In The Monist for 1996, John Kekes, a conservative, wrote about academic corruption, and David Shetz, a libertarian, wrote an article critical of peer review. The conservative philosopher Keith Burgess-Jackson has somewhere said that he found it strange that liberal and leftist philosophers would be so concerned with the rankings of philosophy departments, that they ought to be more concerned with the graduates of places like Appalachian State. (I am unable to locate this remark, which was made online.) I wrote many letters to prominent liberals and leftists, and not one seemed a bit interested in the plight of those of us at the bottom.
10. I shall always view my time in academia as an instance of social injustice, but one that was perpetrated by liberals and leftists and one which liberals and leftists had no interest in overcoming. I now view socialism and communism and indeed most of liberalism and leftism as nothing but rich people’s leftism. The commitment of these people to helping the poor is much less than what they imagine.
In a few days, I will write about the contrast between rich people’s leftism (RPL) and poor people’s leftism (PPL).
Great article. I was an undergraduate at U of MN from 1989 to 1994. Luckily, I was a liberal, so the nuttiness there wasn't my personal problem, but it did play a role in my eventual conversion.
I was a major in philosophy, and remember my feminism classes there well. They were, as Camille Paglia might say, "positively pickled in political correctness." I entered the campus just after Dworkin and MacKinnon had left.
When Playboy came looking for beautiful Minnesotans, the feminists went ballistic, making it seem as if the brownshirts were on campus.
I began to see my father's conservative, free-market views as a product of his racism and bigotry. My father was amused by it all, but had faith that after I was done I would eventually transcend all of it.
Posted by: Michael Valle | 07/06/2010 at 04:49 PM
Thanks for the feedback, Michael. I got to the philosophy department at the U. of Minnesota in 1973, and it was pretty normal back then, especially since they were doing analytic philosophy rather than Continental stuff. I shudder to think of what it might be like today.
Posted by: John Pepple | 07/07/2010 at 06:46 PM