why

i think that the mainline left wants government growth in order to accomplish specific admirable goals: the amelioration of poverty, for example. but i also do think that there's an underlying commitment to statism almost no matter what, because the basic idea is that the state is all of us together; it's our collective action and identity; it ameliorates not only poverty (well...) but our aloneness, our individuality. this is why inside that discourse 'individualism' is a name for evil, what we're supposed to be fighting against. the state is our solidarity, our unity, or even our love etc. now all of this would be relatively groovy, if the whole thing did not obviously rest on coercion. the reality so luridly puts the lie to the ideology that i find it hard to imagine how the ideology persists.