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The kids may or may not be alright, but one thing is clear: They are super into Marianne Williamson. If engagement on TikTok is any indication, a Democratic presidential primary held today among people under 50 would result in a landslide for the bestselling author now making her second bid for the nomination.

Williamson has only posted 65 videos on TikTok, yet has drawn more than 11 million views, according to a TikTok data counter. But there are also endless Marianne stan (Maristanne?) accounts @marianne2024winner and @marianne4prez among them that post her speeches and rack up massive numbers. A scroll through the popular account @realdemocrat20turns up multiple Williamson videos, all generating eye-popping numbers for her treatises on universal health care, corruption, gun rights, or abortion, including nearly a million views for whatever this is.

A recent poll found Williamson hovering above 20 percent with voters under 30 far higher than she reached in the crowded 2020 field suggesting the buzz on TikTok is translating into real support or that real support is producing the buzz on TikTok. I am obsessed with it, said Jessica Burbank, a leftist political TikTok star who posts as @kaburbank, of the Marianne mania.

Some reasons for the support are obvious: Videos of her pledging to wipe out student debt and remove marijuana from Schedule I have predictably gone viral. But so have others that speak more holistically about the political system and the corruption that limits the ability of people to have their voices heard or their collective will translated into public policy. And the one that mentions student debt and weed also includes a pledge to beef up the National Labor Relations Board, cut all government contracts with union-busting companies, and otherwise do everything she can as president to boost organized labor.

The notion that Williamson, in her second run at the prize, can seize the Democratic nomination remains far-fetched, as shed probably be the longest shot in American history to claim a major-party nomination, after maybe John W. Daviss surprise win at a deadlocked Democratic convention in 1924. The same poll had Joe Biden up 73 percent to 10 over Williamson though her support rises to 14 percent in battleground states. Still, theres much to be learned about our current politics by taking seriously the phenomenon of her surging youth support.

Williamsonrealized something unusual was going on when friends began reaching out to say their kids were becoming her fans on the platform. All these people would text me and say, My 17-year-old loves you, My 20 or 22-year-old wants to know if she can have your email, she said. I dont wake up in the morning, look in the mirror, and say, Hello, TikTok star. But obviously, Im grateful that there is a platform, that there is a venue, where Im seen and the message is received.

The popularity of Williamson on TikTok and among young people generally means that the White Houses strategy toward her so far explicit mockery may come with some risks. Asked about Williamson in March, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre fumbled a canned effort at ridicule. I mean, if I had a what is it called? A little globe here, Jean-Pierre said, laughing, a crystal ball, then I could tell you. A magic eight ball or whatever. If I could feel her aura. If Williamson does end up overperforming among young voters who see her as a credible outsider critic of the system, Democrats will have a hard time winning them back over if theyve done nothing but mock her.

Williamson is often dismissed as a flighty, self-help mystic, and it grates on her. Her books have sold millions of copies and spent months atop the New York Times bestsellers list, but she senses that many of her critics are not among those readers. A lot of people talk about my work who clearly have not read it, or they will take one sentence out of context. she said. When it comes to the idea of crystals and auras and all of that, Ive written 16 books, and nowhere do you read anything about crystals or auras. Although in some of my books, you do read about the corporatocracy, racial inequity, criminal injustice, etc.

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What makes Williamson unique in politics is her explicit linkage of spiritual inspiration and personal uplift with left-wing sensibilities around community and a collective struggle against corruption and greed. Williamson largely champions the agenda established by fellow 2020 presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders, but Sanders never spoke directly to the spiritual rot wrought by neoliberalism the way Williamson does. New Age is not quite his thing.

Yet the self-help, up-by-their-bootstraps mentality runs deep in American mythology. Even the term New Age undersells how old the phenomenon is, the way a mixture of striving and inchoate spiritual yearning has coursed through American culture back to its colonial days. It has most often been channeled politically by the right as an elevation of rugged individualism wielded against any form of collective action or as a valve to release pressure on the government to do something. Dont like your working conditions? Dont bond together with fellow laborers into a union; just go West, young man. Williamson inverts that right-wing critique and argues that it is our atomization, particularly in such anxious and precarious times, that drains both our power and our spirit in the service of the powerful. Her pairing of those two strains is neatly captured in the title and subtitle of her 2019 book, A Politics of Love: A Handbook for a New American Revolution, which is itself a nod to her mega-bestseller, the 1992 book A Return To Love.

Williamson has helped herself on TikTok by embracing the platform and using it the same way other creators do, which helps her appear more authentic. She also told me that her team reached out to one of the first stan accounts, @marrianne4prez, and brought the author in-house to show them how to do it. But Burbank noted that even the nonnative stuff does extremely well. Videos of her giving speeches regularly go viral, Burbank said. She seems more unfiltered and ready to call out corruption and offer root solutions this time around. She said a recent extended livestream of hers held an audience of 5,000-7,000 throughout, ending up with two million likes.

Kids are just so critical and done with systems being broken, not being able to have access to health care, education, Burbank said. The actual deliverance of public goods is something that shes always talking about.

Marianne Williamson greets supporters as she launches her 2024 presidential campaign in Washington, D.C., on March 4, 2023.

Photo: Jose Luis Magana/AP

In capturing the hearts of young people on TikTok, Williamson is perhaps reproducing a phenomenon on the left that already swept through the right half a decade ago or more. I mean no offense when I say Marianne Williamson has the potential to become the Jordan Peterson of the left, fusing a politics of personal accountability with the pursuit of spiritual fulfillment that is achieved in significant part by fighting collectively with those around for a better world. Put another way, the Marianne Williamson phenomenon among young people is what you get when you combine Bernie Sanders and early Jordan Peterson. The Sanders slogan of 2020, Not Me, Us, is expanded by Williamsons campaign to suggest that the me and the us are interrelated, that fighting for the us makes the me a better person, one more able to confront the traumatizing reality of contemporary society together than alone.

Early in his rise, Peterson also encouraged personal responsibility and offered his fans ways to improve their own lives and sense of self-worth, primarily through videos on YouTube and his bestseller, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos. A Canadian psychologist, he would often urge his viewers to keep their bedrooms clean as a symbolic first step toward getting their life in order, as well as something concrete that makes their day-to-day life more ordered. That he amassed an audience in the tens of millions or more spoke to a collective or, as he saw it, individual yearning he met.

But Peterson has since lost the sense of uplift that originally distinguished him, leaning into a mean-spirited, reactionary politics and diving deeper into conspiratorial thinking. While Williamson speaks to the same spiritual void, she has a more constructive response: that you are responsible not just for improving your condition within the world, but also for constructing a new world along with others. Theres meaning, at least, in the struggle for it.

In one Williamson talk reposted to TikTok, she directly addresses the anxiety and trauma dealt with by the younger generation but urges people to consider that for, say, Iranian protesters or civil rights demonstrators crossing the bridge in Selma, trauma was motivating rather than debilitating. I think weve gotten to a point where were coddling our neuroses a little bit too much right now, she says, with orchestral music in the background. This is not to minimize the pain. Sometimes you call your girlfriends, you call the people in your life: Can I share my pain? And then that call is over, and the person who loves you on that call says, Promise me youre going to go out there this afternoon and show em what you got.

She added, We need to say, Meditate, take a shower, pray in the morning, and kick ass in the afternoon.

If anything, it might make more sense to think of Jordan Peterson as a Marianne Williamson of the right, as her rise to prominence predates his by several decades. But Petersons innovation was to code his worldview as rooted in or at least connected to right-wing politics. Williamson said that Peterson was given space to be seen as political in a way that she wasnt. He became specifically political, she said. He brought it in, and people didnt say, How dare you? Stay in your lane? Because in his world, they werent doing that. In my world, when I started talking about political things, [people said,] Stay in your lane. How dare you? Even though my first political book was published in 1998.

The worlds top left-wing expert on the phenomenon that was early Jordan Peterson may well be Current Affairs editor and writer Nathan J. Robinson, who, in 2018, watched hours of Petersons videos and read his works for the essay The Intellectual We Deserve. Robinson said the comparison of the Williamson phenomenon to that surrounding Peterson, insofar as it helps us understand where young voters are, has much to recommend it. But he said we need to focus on how Peterson is received rather than credit him with any genuine effort at reaching people.

To me, Jordan Peterson is something of a charlatan, so if you describe somebody as a Jordan Peterson of the left, they are essentially a fraudulent pseudo guru dispensing bullshit, packaged as wisdom, Robinson said. So theres a cynical view of what it means to be the Jordan Peterson of the left in a way that no one would want to be. But whenever Ive analyzed Jordan Peterson, part of the analysis has always been, Yes, but.

The but is the effect that he has had on people, almost exclusively young men. He speaks to a lot of desperate people who want someone to talk to them in the language of uplift, Robinson said. How to fix your situation and speaking to people who are disaffected and who are lonely and who dont know how to get themselves together. And of course, his individualistic solution is horrible. But I have to say, Ive read 12 Rules For Life, and Ive read Marianne Williamsons The Politics of Love. And I do think that both of them try and fill the spiritual void in peoples lives. I love what Marianne Williamson does in bringing a sort of moral language into politics.

Given the reputation Peterson has since earned himself, its not the friendliest comparison in the wrong light, and I asked Williamson for her take on it. When he began, I really liked him. And Ive watched with horror as he moves in this extreme right-wing direction, she said. When he began, his power lay in the fact that he was speaking to the whole person, but then he veered off into a strange direction.

But the need is clearly there, she said. When you talk about being a figure that young men can look up to and learn from, I was really moved on my latest swings through New Hampshire and South Carolina, to hear how many young men came up to me and said, Im here because I heard about you from Kyle Kulinski, she said, referring to the progressive YouTube broadcaster, and then proceeded to tell me things that had nothing to do with politics, that had to do with the fact that they had been floundering, not knowing what to do with their lives going into what they called some dark places.

Robinson said that Petersons drift into more conventional reactionary politics has cost him with his original audience, which wasnt there for that. Hes actually become very bitter and cynical now, and a lot of people, I think, have abandoned him, he said. I get letters all the time from former Jordan Peterson fans because hes not really doing what he was doing a few years ago. Now hes just ranting about climate change and stuff.

The differing analyses from Peterson and Williamson of who and what is oppressing young people reach back to the long-standing difference between right- and left-wing populism. Peterson identifies an elite cabal that gathers annually in Davos under the guidance of the World Economic Forum on Friday, he was attacking Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as a WEF puppet as the masters of the universe. It is not merely their wealth but their cultural power Peterson identifies and thus channels class war into culture war a model that conveniently excludes from the villain category good billionaires with the correct cultural politics, such as Elon Musk. Williamson, meanwhile, identifies what she calls the corporatocracy more broadly, keeping the analysis in material terms.

Old left meeting New Age, said Robinson, has potential to appeal in the 21st century. I actually like this fusing of the self-help thing with the political thing. And in fact, while some people might have contempt for it, to me, it seems like a potential huge source of support and power for her, Robinson said. Its not a surprise to me that shes big on TikTok.

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By now, that the Democratic Party will be caught unaware should go without saying. The party missed the Sanders phenomenon in 2016, which was perhaps understandable, as there hadnt been any precedent for his campaign since Jesse Jacksons in the 1980s. Getting caught off guard a second time, in 2020, and nearly being beaten by Sanders, suggested the party was incapable of absorbing what lessons his campaign had taught Democrats.

Yet the second shock woke the party up, and the Biden campaign, after its near-death experience, worked closely with Sanders and his allies, hoping to bring his supporters into the fold, rather than keeping them at arms length, as Hillary Clinton had done to her detriment four years earlier. Throughout 2021, White House chief of staff Ron Klain had the Congressional Progressive Caucus on speed dial, a direct result of the success of the progressive wing of the party. But like the goldfish they are, party leaders are already forgetting it. Klain has stepped aside for a new chief of staff who is dragging Biden rightward again. While Biden flirts with banning TikTok, Democrats are likely to keep missing whats going on there and what it means.

How the party engages with the types of young voters investing their hopes in Marianne Williamson could shape their relationship to the party for decades to come. It shouldnt take a whats it called? a little globe, a crystal ball, or a magic eight ball to see that.

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Marianne Williamson Is Taking Over TikTok - The Intercept

It's a clear prelude to doing to lawyers what the College of Psychologists is doing to Jordan Peterson

Why am I running for bencher (governor) in the upcoming Law Society of Ontario elections?

With more years of practice than I care to admit, high-profile clients and cases that I still have fun with, six books, editor-in-chief duties at a national law report, and more cases at our highest court and provincial courts of appeal than any other employment lawyer in Canadian history, I should be ready to slow down. Or as the late, great Justice Randy Echlin used to tell me, Howard, time to stop and smell the roses and that was 20 years ago.

But there is a crisis.

We saw it with Dr. Jordan Peterson when his regulatory body, the Ontario College of Psychologists, ordered mandatory re-education and took steps to discipline him for conservative political opinions unrelated to his practice of psychology, which he has not actually practiced in recent years.

The Law Society of Ontario, historically governed by the establishment elite, in recent years began implementing overreaching progressive principles requiring all lawyers to think and practise in a certain way, a way that has nothing to do with what the law actually requires. Its a clear prelude to doing to lawyers what the College of Psychologists is doing to Peterson, if the law society doesnt like what any of us are saying. This is particularly egregious since lawyers are societys protectors of freedom of speech and of those exercising it.

Lawyers are societys protectors of freedom of speech

I was personally spoken to by the law society a couple of years back when I referred to a decision of a provincial privacy commissioner, in my regular Financial Post opinion column, as boneheaded, which, by the way, it was. When I responded that I was writing as a journalist of some 25 years, not as part of my legal practice, the answer was But you are a lawyer just as the college did with Peterson.

The law society has a statutory mandate to ensure lawyers do not defraud the public and are educated in their craft. And that is a good thing. But it does not need 550 employees and a salary budget of over $72,000,000 to do that. Imagine the average salary of a law society employee is $131,000.

Think about that. How many lawyers compensate their highest paid staff members anywhere close to that? For that matter, the average lawyer in Ontario makes only $93,000 a year. When you factor in the many lawyers in big firms earning seven figures, how many lawyers make next to nothing to bring the average down that much? What is little known is that the average Ontario lawyer makes the same amount as the average public school teacher, despite the much greater education, longer hours, longer work year, and actual risk, not only financial but even from our own law society.

In other words, many Ontario lawyers cannot afford the exorbitant dues they already have to pay, the highest in North America double those of the much more litigious bars of either New York or California. They are a barrier to entry for any new lawyer and further impact access to justice for our clients, particularly working Ontarians.

The real nub of all of this is that, when a lawyer hears from the law society, they react like all of us do when, however innocent we may actually be, we spot a police car immediately behind us as we drive. But the threat is dramatically greater. Even a frivolous complaint can send us into paroxysms of fear followed by months of legal fees and time defending ourselves from pure nonsense. And the mission creep is going to make the potential for law society attack against any lawyer all the more expansive and egregious.

The initial Statement of Principles (SOP), enacted in 2016, was repealed after the past bencher election, when the predecessor of the group I am running with was elected. But if the opposing slate is elected this time, the rejected SOP will be reintroduced in a different form.

Most lawyers just want to be left alone to help their clients and practise law. The law society is standing in their way. I hope with my group to be able to stop this insidious mission creep and return the law society to its core mandate of protecting the public and fostering competence.

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Howard Levitt: The Ontario law society's slide into wokeness must ... - Lexology

Football

Kansas safety Jalen Dye practices at David Booth Kansas Memorial Stadium on Thursday, March 30, 2023.

One of the biggest stories of spring football at the University of Kansas was the emergence of sophomore safety Jalen Dye, who has firmly worked his way into the mix in the KU secondary and figures to be a key part of the Kansas defense this fall.

The opportunity to do so presented itself right away, when starters Kenny Logan Jr. and Marvin Grant were ruled out for spring ball before it even started.

Instantly, the KU coaching staff pointed to Dye as a player who could really benefit from the opportunity that was laid at his feet this spring. And Dye wasted no time in taking advantage of the extra reps and increased eyeballs on him.

The soft-spoken, often-quiet second-year Jayhawk even started to assert himself in new ways this spring, not only with how he played but how he understood the game, as well.

Dyes father, Jermaine, who was a two-time Major League Baseball All-Star and the MVP of the 2005 World Series after playing in Kansas City from 1997-2001, was one of the first people to pick up on that, and the younger Dye laughed when thinking back to a phone call between him and his father midway through spring practices.

He says he sees now that Im playing more confident and that my football IQ got higher, Dye said. Now, when Im talking to him about things, sometimes hes like, Wait, what?'

The older Dye played quarterback in high school. But the things his son has started to experience and embrace have pushed him past his fathers football knowledge.

That understanding, which led to defensive backs coach Jordan Peterson saying Dye has a better grasp of the KU scheme big picture wise, allowed and inspired Dye to play faster, harder and smarter throughout spring practice.

Its also led to his coaches trusting him more than they ever have.

I dont know that he was really ready last fall to fully play, KU defensive coordinator Brian Borland said of Dye toward the end of spring drills. But this spring, hes really come around. Where if last fall he would have played, I would have been a little bit nervous about whats going to actually happen out there sometimes. Hes really made some great strides.

Dye credits his increased communication skills for most of that. With Logan and Grant on the sideline, Dye often found himself making calls on the field, whether during drills or in live scrimmages. As the spring progressed, he did so louder and with more confidence, which impressed the KU coaches and himself.

That confidence and the command of whats happening around him and in front of him allowed the 6-foot, 195-pound Dye to use his instincts more than ever, gaining even more confidence with each successful step and correct read.

This spring, I could probably count on one hand the times that hes made some kind of schematic error or something like that, Borland said. And thats hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of plays that hes taken.

When asked a couple of weeks ago for his favorite moment of the spring, Dyes answer demonstrated exactly what that confidence has allowed him to do on the field.

It involved a head-to-head matchup between him and an offensive lineman, and the smile that showed up on Dyes face gave away the end of the story.

Dominick Puni came around and pulled and I put him on his back, Dye recalled. That was fun. He said, You got me; Im going to get you next time, though.'

Puni, who stands five inches taller and 125 pounds heavier than Dye, very well might do that. But it seems to be a safe bet that Dye will be ready for their next scrum all the same.

Although the two sports they excel in are different, Dye said the best advice his father has given him is simple stay hungry.

On the off chance that theres a day that Dye isnt operating with that approach, Logan and Grant are there to make sure he gets there.

We talk every day, Dye said of himself and KUs veteran safeties. Every day in film. Every day in practice. If they see something wrong, they correct it, which I like. Theyre pushing me to another level that I was almost, like, not scared to go to, but I didnt show at first. I think my overall game is just more confident and knowing the calls makes me play with a whole other level that I didnt know I could unlock.

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A native of Colorado, Matt moved to Lawrence in 1988 and has been in town ever since. He graduated from Lawrence High in 1996 and the University of Kansas in 2000 with a degree in Journalism. After covering KU sports for the University Daily Kansan and Rivals.com, Matt joined the World Company (and later Ogden Publications) in 2001 and has held several positions with the paper and KUsports.com in the past 20+ years. He became the Journal-World Sports Editor in 2018. Throughout his career, Matt has won several local and national awards from both the Associated Press Sports Editors and the Kansas Press Association. In 2021, he was named the Kansas Sportswriter of the Year by the National Sports Media Association. Matt lives in Lawrence with his wife, Allison, and two daughters, Kate and Molly. When he's not covering KU sports, he likes to spend his time playing basketball and golf, listening to and writing music and traveling the world with friends and family.

The rest is here:
Huge spring has Kansas safety Jalen Dye on the brink of a big role ... - KUsports

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Incels are men who feel they are involuntarily celibate, and many blame women for their lack of sexual and or romantic success. Despite psychological research delving into the incel phenomenon, we still struggle to address the root causes behind why many young men are drawn to this.

Here are two insights that can help us put this in perspective. Also, there are other related movements such as mens rights activism (MRAs), men who go their own way (MGTOWs), and father's rights groups.

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In a 2022 interview with British journalist Piers Morgan, Jordan Peterson, a controversial Canadian psychologist, was asked if he considers himself the intellectual hero of the incel community.

Peterson replied, Its very difficult to understand how demoralized people are, and certainly, many young men are in that category. They dont know how to make themselves attractive to women who tend to be picky, and rightly so. But these men are lonesome, and everyone piles abuse on them.

A recent study published in Current Psychology found that incels experience more loneliness and less social support than non-incel men. This is associated with multiple mental health and relational difficulties. When these lonely men find an online community that seems to understand them by virtue of shared experiences, they flock to it for a sense of belonging.

At the core of the incel community is a sense of inferiority and sexual and romantic insignificance, which can manifest itself in the form of hatred toward women. These men believe women are directly responsible for their problems. This can lead to further marginalization.

To address this, it is vital to re-examine how we, as a society, treat those who may feel unattractive or otherwise unseen by the opposite gender. The widespread mocking, bullying, meme-ifying, and othering of those who are lonely needs to be curbedand a supportive approach toward self-improvement needs to become the norm.

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This is not to say that everyone who feels marginalized turns to these communities for support. The incel community may attract people with certain pre-existing tendencies, which can lead to the next point.

A new study published in The Journal of Sexual Medicine found that men who scored high on incel traits were also likely to be depressed, anxious, and paranoid individuals. Moreover, the same men were found to be more likely (compared to those who scored low on incel traits) to possess a fearful attachment style. The study also found that scoring high on scales measuring paranoia, depression, and a fearful attachment style could predict the emergence of incel traits.

In one interview, the lead author of the study, Dr. Giacomo Ciocca noted that health professionals and psychologists should be trained to assess these traits.

Recognizing these traits in people who come to therapy with romance-linked depressive, anxious, or paranoid symptoms may hold the key to better understanding. Some men may be less likely to respond to therapeutic intervention, which they may see as a means to control them and subjugate them into becoming docile beta males.

The study also found that a secure attachment style could potentially protect individuals who may score high on paranoia and depression from subscribing to an incel mindset.

This group of men struggles with mental health issues. Prior to joining the movement, these men are likely to have been marginalized and they view the community as an uplifting one without realizing that they are digging themselves deeper into unattractiveness and despair. Greater investment in preventative mental healthproviding counseling, support, and resources for marginalized individualsis the best way to stay in front of the issue.

References

Sparks B, Zidenberg AM, Olver ME. Involuntary Celibacy: A Review of Incel Ideology and Experiences with Dating, Rejection, and Associated Mental Health and Emotional Sequelae. Curr Psychiatry Rep. 2022 Dec

Halpin, M. (2022). Weaponized Subordination: How Incels Discredit Themselves to Degrade Women. Gender & Society, 36(6), 813837.

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Why Do Some Men Turn to the Incel Movement? - Psychology Today

The Right sometimes condemns socialism as a doctrine born of bleeding-heart sentimentalism: a poorly thought-out philosophy that is based in compassion, but that results in disaster whenever people try to put it into practice.

But another popular right-wing line of attack argues more or less the opposite. Socialists are not altruists whose good intentions lead them astray; instead, their primary motive is envy of the better off. Jordan Peterson made the charge recently with his characteristic histrionic flair. After accusing Christian social justice advocates of equat[ing] Marxism of the lowest form with Christianity, Peterson said, Its evil. Just like Marxism itself: which is a manifestation of the envious spirit of Cain, in the guise of the Luciferian intellect.

While its far from obvious what Peterson means by Marxism or indeed whether even he knows what he means by the word the basic thrust of the tweet is clear enough. Marxists, and advocates of progressive causes more generally, oppose hierarchy and favor greater social and economic equality because they are envious of the more powerful and more successful.

On one hand, the accusation of envy is beside the point. Proponents of any moral or political doctrine, such as nationalism or social conservatism, might be compelled by any number of psychological motivations, but those ultimately matter less than the implications of the ideology itself. Likewise, socialism should be judged not on the motivations of socialists but on its content that is, whether a socialist society is both feasible and desirable compared with what we have now.

But even if it were possible to accurately judge a political project by the motives of its supporters, socialism couldnt be dismissed this way, because the actual moral case for socialism has nothing to do with envy. Socialism is not about settling scores between the haves and the have-nots, but creating a better world for all. In fact, a socialist world would be one in which antisocial motivations like envy are less pervasive and powerful.

One problem with the charge that the Left is driven by envy is that one persons envy is anothers justified resentment. That is, to say that someone is envious generally implies that they have a misplaced anger about something that rightly belongs to someone else. Thats the case with the biblical story of Cain and Abel referenced by Jordan Peterson Cain was wrongly incensed at the favor God showed to Abels sacrifice.

But not every case of being angry about what someone else has is a case of envy. When women felt outrage about being denied the voting rights given to men, or when black Americans were resentful of being excluded from job opportunities and public spaces granted to whites, they werent succumbing to envy. These were instances of the oppressed groups feeling warranted indignation at being unjustly excluded from opportunities to which they were entitled.

Socialists argue that, under capitalism, the working class is systematically deprived of the fruits of its labor. Capitalists, by virtue of their monopoly over the means of production, assert ownership over the goods and services that their employees produce, and pay workers less than the value of what they create, keeping the remainder as profit. As the classic labor anthem Solidarity Forever puts it, It is we who plowed the prairies, built the cities where they trade / Dug the mines and built the workshops, endless miles of railroad laid, while the owners take untold millions that they never toiled to earn.

The socialist response is to demand collective, democratic ownership of societys productive resources so that the ultrarich are no longer able to hoard the wealth generated by the working class. This will allow society to ensure that everyones basic needs are met, and to make more rational decisions about investment and production prioritizing ecological sustainability, for instance, over the destructive pursuit of profit at all costs.

This vision is not an expression of covetousness or hate of the better off. It is a demand for a world where basic principles of justice and decency prevail. By chalking up the socialist desire for a redistribution of wealth and power to envy, the Right dodges the fundamental moral question at issue between socialists and their opponents: Who deserves what? Are the idle drones entitled to the wealth the working class produces, or does the world belong to the workers?

Ironically, capitalism itself seems to foster motivations like envy. The capitalist class structure demands that people make a living either through selling their labor for a wage or through making profits on investment. And in both cases, competition is the name of the game: workers have to compete for limited job opportunities, and capitalists must vie against each other for market share.

This setup positively encourages antisocial motives of greed, envy, and the like since those drives compel people to compete more aggressively in the capitalist war of all against all. Its no wonder, then, that psychopaths are especially likely to be found at the top of the corporate pyramid: among senior management executives, 12 percent are psychopaths, compared with 1 percent in the general population.

Socialists want a world where people arent competing against each other to have a shot at a decent life, and where major economic decisions are no longer based on the limitless drive for profit. In that world, competition and motives like envy that fuel competitive behavior will be given a much less central place. If conservatives really have as much of a problem with envy as they say, maybe they should rethink their opposition to socialism.

The rest is here:
No, Socialism Isn't About Envying the Rich - Jacobin magazine