Rick Ballard,

Soros has never, to my knowledge, controlled means of production. Calling him a capitalist may be true in the sense that calling a buzzard a carnivore is true but capitalist is associated with production as carnivore is with hunter.

Not so. His funds’ investments include early-stage venture capital and later-stage private equity investments, which are about as pure a form of capitalism as you’ll find.

Soros appears to be an oligarch wannabe which makes his association with and use of the remnants of the left even more entertaining

This I agree with. Soros himself– as opposed to his various fund managers– is essentially an arbitrageur, someone who seeks to exploit pricing discrepancies between various markets or informational asymmetries within one market. In other words, what under communist law was known as the grave crime of “speculation.” Soros’s first millions were made by exploiting loopholes in US taxation of profits on foreign securities; his biggest windfall came from exploiting currency spreads.

So the notion of Soros as the latest champion of “multilateralism” must appear an especially bitter joke for any Briton or for that matter any treasury official around the world. This was the man who unilaterally– indeed, singlehandedly– trashed national currencies and lined his pockets with over a billion dollars worth of public funds. His credibility on anything related to redistribution of wealth or public services is nil.

OTOH Soros did indeed perform a noble service in his charitable career, the one that, prior to Bush’s accession to the White House, was devoted primarily to supporting democratic movements and associations in eastern Europe, where Soros is originally from. His intentions are solid, although the results are mixed: he had some impact in Hungary, less in Czech, and absolutely none in Russia. In fact he conceded as much, shutting down his operations in Russia a couple of years ago and taking a lower profile everywhere else. In this sphere his influence is a bit like Bono’s on African poverty: more for PR and devoting media attention to problems than for actually having any impact on the situation.

Then there is the other grab bag of his more recent charitable causes, the ones which bind him to the Bush-hating left. Medical marijuana. Campaign finance reform (!). Opposing US “unilateralism.” Supporting Moveon.org and vowing in 2004 — never mind his support for campaign finance reform– to “spend as many millions” of his fortune as needed to get the electoral outcome he seeks.

Soros, in sum, as a perfect example of the complete incoherence, diffusion, even silliness of the post-marxist left: a vague and contradictory motley procession of odd cultural obsessions and fierce personal animosity, and lacking any vision of society or generosity of spirit. A hollow shell, as Wretchard writes, into which all manner of intense faiths– radical environmentalism, islamism, queer theory, what-have-you — can find a home.