Cory Doctorow used his July 9 Pluralistic newsletter to take aim at “post-political” centrism, arguing that calls to move beyond left and right usually confuse cultural branding with actual political conflict.
The writer framed the left-right divide as a dispute over power and rights, rather than pronouns, consumer choices, or other identity markers. In Doctorow’s account, politics turns on whether human rights take priority over property claims, or whether property itself is treated as the highest right.
Doctorow said centrists who complain about polarization often flatten conflicts that are, in his telling, materially different. He contrasted left-wing demands such as higher taxes, stronger unions, environmental review of data centers, and opposition to the war in Gaza with right-wing movements he described as authoritarian and violent. He cited The Guardian’s reporting on protest zines around a Texas ICE facility and Harvard School of Public Health coverage of deaths attributed to the USAID shutdown as examples in that comparison.
Three definitions of the divide
The essay leans on three political definitions Doctorow has returned to before. He cites political theorist Corey Robin’s account from The Reactionary Mind, where conservatism is described as a belief that some people are meant to rule and others to be ruled. Doctorow says that definition explains how movements as different as white nationalism, Hindu nationalism, libertarianism, and imperialism can sit on the same side of politics: each assigns rule to a favored group.
Doctorow also points to Wilhoit’s Law, the aphorism that conservatism requires one group protected by law without being bound by it, and another group bound by law without being protected by it. He ties that idea to claims of presidential immunity and to Alex Jones’s long-running effort, reported by Status, to avoid paying damages to Sandy Hook families.
The third definition comes from science fiction writer Steven Brust, whom Doctorow quotes as saying the key test is whether someone ranks human rights above property rights. If a person answers that property rights are themselves human rights, Brust classifies that person as being on the right.
Property as tool, property as endpoint
Doctorow’s argument is that left politics treats property rights as instruments. They can protect farmers from eminent domain, residents from police searches, and libraries from publisher licensing games. They can also be limited when they block health care, housing, food, or public participation.
He gives several examples. He says governments should have overridden pharmaceutical patents and copyrights to expand vaccine production. He argues towns with large numbers of empty homes and homeless residents should at least tax vacant properties heavily. He cites an Associated Press report about a California farmer who gave away nectarines after a cartel-like patent dispute, presenting it as a case where food access outranked a market restriction.
Doctorow applies the same frame to elections and energy policy. He says a left view of property can justify bans on corporate electioneering, citing Minnesota election law. He contrasts that with support for unlimited dark-money election spending, linking to a recent Supreme Court opinion. He also says tenants should be allowed to install balcony solar despite landlord objections, while farmers’ land-use rights can support wind farms without giving data-center operators carte blanche to run gas turbines.
The essay ends with a blunt claim about centrism: Doctorow says movements that describe themselves as beyond left and right usually preserve the supremacy of property. In his framing, that puts them on the right, whether or not they use the branding.
This story draws on original reporting from Pluralistic.
