Lea Ypi: Return to Marxist Dignity
This article, "Eine Frage der Würde", in English "A Question of Dignity", appeared on the 14th of September in the Sunday edition of the Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper. The article takes the form of an interview between a staff-writer for the newspaper and Dr. Lea Ypi, an Albanian national who teaches at the London School of Economics.
Professor Ypi has had a complicated, interesting life, sharing some of the same experiences that my last subject Anne Rabe had. Both of them grew up behind the Iron Curtain. They witnessed its end while still children. Both allow their experiences with Marxism to define their present-day opinions about governing and economic policy—the Marxist God inhabiting her sub-conscious.
Professor Ypi grew up in an observant Muslim family in Albania. Combining her dual experiences of Islam and Marxism in her literary observations makes her popular for her readers, but troubling for me. The British newspaper The Guardian, for instance, gleaned these lines from her lectures:
"Freedom is not only sacrificed when others tell us what to say, where to go, and how to behave," but also when it claims to "enable people to realize their potential;" because it "fails to change the structures that prevent everyone from flourishing."
Curious how all you hear from the Left is criticism of the status quo. Leftists say little about their own policy initiatives, except to take money from the wealthy and give it to the government, and to promote equality by ending the stranglehold of the Bourgeoisie—all of them discredited, Soviet policy-initiatives. Both Ypi and Rabe want to "change the structures", they say, but changing the structures is all they can accomplish. Return the structures to government control? Have your cake and eat it, too? Are you kidding?
More unbelievably, Ypi says in her Frankfurter Allgemeine interview "My version of Socialism is Liberalism without Capitalism." In fact, she understands little about personal freedom and the utility of capital, how it can grow businesses, create independent centers of power, and create wealth. With nothing to recommend Marxist economics, she repeats what every leftist does, reiterate the goal of defeating poverty and achieving equality—appeal to the emotions, in other words.
She cannot speak insightfully about personal freedom because, from habit, she only thinks in terms of authoritarian policies. Like other leftists, she prefers that private citizens not possess wealth. It should belong to the government—and to the cronies and bootlickers who keep it functioning, she should add.
Leftists complain about private "wealth-concentrations". I prefer the many independent centers of private wealth anyday, over the leftist model of government as the only wealth-concentration.