[lbo-talk] Class, Psychology, and Capitalism

[David Green]

"The second article found that religious people were more inclined not to 
discount the future as much; in effect, they were more future oriented or, as 
Joe Hill used to say, more concerned with pie in the sky.  For two and a half 
centuries, economists, such as Adam Smith, tended to attribute people who 
attained status as a capitalist to their capacity to be more future oriented.  Max Weber, and to some tiny extent, Marx himself tended to attribute the 
development of capitalism to Protestantism. "
 
Hi Michael,
 
I've read your blog post, as well as this one by Thomas Edsall: http://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/15/what-the-right-gets-right/?ref=opinion
 
It seems to me that the reification of "liberalism", "conservatism", and "religious" in relation to political psychology, especially in academia, isn't very helpful in clarifying problems of social class and political behavior. When I try to read Edsall's piece with a critical attitude, I'm constantly reminded not of the psychology of the people that these thinkers are supposedly explaining, but of their own political psychology, as academics operating very much within the limits of allowable capitalist liberal/conservative debate.
 
To put it more simply, I think the article by Edsall largely reflects a high-minded mess of propaganda regarding both "liberals" and "conservatives", at best a complete distraction from issues of economics and politics.
 
How do you think  political psychology can truly illuminate leftist perspectives?
 
David Green