A socialist starts a socialist magazine, hires more Socialists that are “down with the Cause,” and then faces a revolt when his Socialist workers try to make it a “workers co-operative” and fires them. This is beyond hysterical.
I love this story so much that I want to move in with it and live happily ever after. Seriously this is just one of those moments when a leading proponent of leftist politics reveals himself to be a complete flaming hypocrite. It’s not even contested at this point because, as of two hours ago, he has admitted as much.
If you’re not familiar with Nathan J. Robinson, he has a doctorate in sociology from Harvard but is probably best known as a writer who had a long sting as a socialist columnist for the Guardian. In 2015 he founded his own site called Current Affairs, an online political magazine that promotes his socialist views.
…“On August 8th, editor-in-chief Nathan J. Robinson (author of Why You Should Be a Socialist) unilaterally fired most of the workforce to avoid an organizational restructuring that would limit his personal power. Yes, we were fired by the editor-in-chief of a socialist magazine for trying to start a worker co-op.”…
“When we finally got around to discussing organizational models during a Zoom meeting on August 7th, Nathan became agitated. He instated that in our attempt to set shared internal values, we were disregarding his vision for the Current Affairs as published in the first issue,” the letter said.
“The next morning, he started removing people from the company Slack, and sent letters requesting resignations, eliminating positions, and in some cases offering new ‘honorary titles’ which would have no say in governance.”
Heh! One of those “whose ox is being gored” kinds of stories.
Lovely to hear the angst on BOTH sides of this – a Socialist that no longer believes in the Party line of no private property. And the rubes workers that actually believed that they were entitled to have a lot of slices of somebody else’s pizza simply because “Democrat Socialism”. “Something for nothing and chicks for free” goes that old song. Stupid intentions until human nature kicks in, right? That when self-interest and pride in what one has built kicks in, a CAPITALISTIC outlook, rises, ideology goes out the door.
The full letter was posted on Twitter. It states that 24 hours after saying he’d lost all faith in the staff, Robinson reversed course and admitted he just didn’t want his magazine to be “a democratic workplace.”
And this is real truth in advertising psychology human nature:
I’m trying to produce a more formal statement about it but bottom line is: I screwed up badly and did not live up to my values.
Actually, he did – just didn’t understand, realize, or admit to what they really were. You see, unlike what Elizabeth Warren keeps yammering about, he DID build that. He started it, he nurtured it, and I guess he was pretty good at it for attracting what he THOUGHT were like minded people to come work for him. THEY thought they were all rowing the Socialist-boat in the same direction – until they decided to put their Principles into reality. Then reality hit Nathan Robinson in that everything he had put into Socialist themes were a crock. That just Labor isn’t the end all and be all in an economy, but capital, ideas, motiviation, and work ethic are just as important. Ownership counts and “sharing is caring” is just a canard for kindergartners until they grow up and realize that Life doesn’t always work that way.
I can say where the feeling came from which is: for years I made the magazine basically alone in my living room, and I have felt like it is my baby and I know how to run it. It was hard to feel like I was slowly having my ability to run it my way taken away. I think that it’s easy to talk about a belief in power sharing but when it comes down to actually sharing power over this thing I have poured my heart and soul into, it felt very very difficult to do.
Heh! They say that Liberals that get mugged (which happens a lot more often due to their Defund The Police jeremiad) turn into Conservatives. BINGO!
He just grew up and realized he had been lying to himself for years. Rubber, meet Road.
(H/T: Hot Air)
