It’s easy to look at [the left] and say, “Well, the left needs to improve its ability to operate at a large scale”—and that’s true to a limited extent. But the left needs to recognize that there’s a reason it sucks at large scales: functioning and acting at a large scale is antithetical to most things the left values. But why is that? Why would different political tendencies be asymmetrical in their ability to operate at different scales? Well, a better question is why would anyone think that disparate tendencies would or should have symmetrical or equivalent abilities? Why would political tendencies that embrace persuasion and consensus be as effective at any ‘scale’—and there are many kinds of scales—as tendencies that embrace violence and coercion? And why would political tendencies that reject the accumulation of wealth be as effective in any context as tendencies that fetishize it? They won’t be. ‘Scale’ presupposes wealth, and wealth presupposes coercion. That’s why leftist proposals about scaling often sound ridiculous […].

Ted Byfield, “Return of the F-scale”