December 05, 2004
One Year and Still Waiting...
by JeremyThose eloquent and inspiring bloggers at Socialism in an Age of Waiting (SIAW) marked their one year anniversary yesterday, so congratulations to them!
They celebrate with a guest post by Hak Mao (whose name, I think, has less to do with her political alliances than with the sounds her cat makes) in which the whole 'waiting' thing is explained. I might as well say that I, myself, am not waiting for a socialist revolution. I don't think pure socialism is a recipe for structuring a society (though I must disclose that I'm a lousy scholar, unlike the folks mentioned above, so I'm not challenging anyone to a debate on scripture, though I invite them or anyone else to voice their views here, dissenting or not). The goals of a well-meaning and intelligent socialist, though admirable, are in my view utopian.
Where I strongly agree with the views expressed in Hak Mao's post is that an effort to force a better society using a top-down approach initiated by a tiny elite is a recipe for totalitarianism (which no one should doubt is the enemy of honest socialist ideals when you consider that there are few meaningful differences between Stalinism, Maoism, and Fascism. Ask a knowledgeable person to differentiate these and you'll know the sound of a hair being split).
Hak Mao warns would-be revolutionary socialists (emphasis mine):
Attempts at revolution without sufficient support and preparation are play-acting, and place people in unnecessary danger. When the international working class is ready and sufficiently organised, revolution, in whatever form, will take care of itself. Until then the totalitarian impulses apparent in so many so-called leftist groups must be challenged, and the commitment to the principles of universal, indivisible human rights and freedom of thought proclaimed.
"...the commitment to the principles of universal, indivisible human rights and freedom of thought." Now that has the makings of a litmus test I can proudly stand behind. And what has amazed me these past few years is the wide ideological variety among the people I have found passing this test with flying colors. The result is that I feel I have a common cause with socialists, conservatives, libertarians, centrists...and I'm increasingly proud of that. I think this is progress.
To put it another way, I consider myself on the same ideological team with Lefties who bitterly reject Stalinism and other forms of totalitarianism, Righties who bitterly reject social Darwinism and the fostering of fascist client states, and of course centrists who have never been tempted toward such sinister failings of either political pole (which is to say many but not all centrists).
What we're all in fact waiting for is a universal commitment to democratic principles within a system that excludes fewer and fewer people.
And the SIAW guys have repeatedly shown a belief, which I share, that you can't magically jump from a corrupt society to an ideal society, that until enough people have shown a genuine commitment to even the most rudimentary notions of liberal democracy, of justice and freedom, until the number of people laughing at such phrases has been reduced to a ridiculed minority...until then we've all got some more work to to before we can get to anything categorically better. And this is true regardless of how you, as a decent person, would define what a better society will look like.
But my point (delivered within a fittingly long post!) was really just that I greatly respect those SIAW guys and have appreciated their ideas and their prose, and so my congratulations!
Jeremy, I'll be putting this up on my blog as soon as blogger lets me.
In Defense of Abusing Socialist Revolution
Three critical developments since the death of Marx show the utter futility of pursuing Socialist revolution in the current era; John Nash's work on cooperation in complex economies, the expansion of economic roles available to individuals in diverse economies, and the historical consequences associated with the overwhelming number of socialist revolution that have already occurred.
John Nash's work on cooperative games as models for complex economic systems destroys the requirement for revolution by showing that cooperation can be beneficial to all parties, especially the worker. Mathematical proof that choices can be made, agreed upon, and improved over time by multiple parties with disparate goals to the benefit of all is a stake through the heart of socialist revolution. You can do what is best for yourself and the group for optimal results, John Nash proved this. The Nobel winning "Nash equilibrium" means that individual choices about personal contribution to group benefit have value. This is a concept that socialist revolutionaries throw away the instant they start to seek power; I am not sure that they have to, but I am sure that they have never reached power without doing so.
Hairdressers and massage therapists are the death of socialist revolution. The existence of these non-essential occupations are not valuable (in the sense that they are not assigned a significant value) to socialist revolutionaries. Regrettably, in large and prosperous economies, occupations like these are available as independent businesses to individuals in unplanned ways. More to the point, the millions of hairdressers, massage therapists, web page designers, and such have vital reasons to oppose socialist revolutions that would disenfranchise their independent economic activities. It is impossible to believe that socialist revolution will come from a "Supercuts"; however it is easy to believe that the revolution will die there. Hairdressers talk about winning the Lottery, not sacrificing everything for socialism. While there are not as many hairdressers as traditional laborers; diversity of economic roles means that individual economic choices blur the differences between labor and capital to the point where critical mass is unobtainable by revolutionaries.
While socialist revolutionaries have become inured to recanting the horrific results of past revolutions, their cognitive dissonance is not shared by the masses. The tens of millions of dead, the ecological disasters of global proportions, and the brutal suppression of culture happened and are known by the "proletariat". There is no explanation available to socialist revolutionaries for why this time they won't put millions more up against the wall, especially when so many of their fellows and supporters are screaming for this to happen. There is a suspicious lack of discussion about the impact draining the Aral Sea and turning it's tens of thousands of square miles of arable land into a salt desert has had on global warming, or any of the other massive ecological disasters performed by socialist revolutionaries. Probably this is because scientists can do enough math to realize that there is no point in shaking down bankrupted governments with a pronounced tendency to kill inconvenient persons. The destruction of indigenous cultures practiced by socialist revolutionaries to suppress dissent is a documented historical fact that is being played out on a smaller, so far less lethal, scale, on university campuses here in the United States. We do not have to imagine the consequences of cultural suppression; we can go to any local campus and witness it.
All of this is why socialist revolutionaries are fair game for denouncing, ridiculing, and abusing at every turn. I am not entirely convinced that efforts to date to do so have been the most effective. It should be noted that the simpler and more wildly fraudulent your claims are, the more sensational they can be. People committed to telling the truth have more restrictions on their speech than those who abandoned honesty as the price of admission. I am interested in working towards improving this situation, and so I am going to work with the local chapter of Protest Warrior towards developing responses to the endless wave of protest here in Portland. I am not interested in violently confronting the socialist revolutionaries here, because I do not respect them that much. Ridicule, however, is a tool I plan on using a lot!
Posted by: Patrick S Lasswell ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.whoknew.us/nav-commenters.gif)
at December 5, 2004 04:46 PM
Thanks for the juicy comment, Patrick. Let me respond, react, go off on tangents, etc, in a random way because I'm too scattered today to do otherwise:
It's true, I'm an unapologetic petit bourgeois wannabee and I do think capitalism, like fire, is a powerful gift that produces great things for the world but must be handled in such a way as to prevent things like, metaphorically speaking, this.
I checked out Protest Warrior and what's funny is that the tone of political fervor reminds me very much of the campus leftism I'm more familiar with (from my Social Thought & Political Economy days. The acronym for that, STPEC, is pronounced in such a way as to prompt my brother once to refer to it sarcastically as STIVIC). But I like a lot of the posters (not all!) especially this one. I'm all for -- and here's a British expression that's really growing on me -- taking the piss out of off-the-wall revolutionaries.
Your use of John Nash here is intriguing. I can't say I know that much about the Nash Equilibrium, but maybe I should finally read more on that. In any event, it sounds a hell of a lot less like social Darwinism than does Ayn Rand.
Anyway, thanks for helping to stoke the coals a bit!
Posted by: Whoknew at December 6, 2004 11:05 AM
The refutation of the zero-sum game model is largely a result of his breakthrough. One of the things I genuinely despise about the the nutbar left and right is their adherance to the notion that for one side to win, the other side has to lose. Arguably the most winning aspect of Compassionate Conservatism is their embrace of the notion of mutually advantageous solutions.
The Left's biggest problems center around their abandonment of that concept and the insistance on a model for describing Iraq that precluded a belief in: servicepersons serving of their own free will for the benefit of others, Iraq benefitting from American invasion, America deriving benefit from the invasion without looting Iraqi oil, and that the administration could accomplish anything not of benefit to their close friends. The Left has tied themselves to the mast of the zero-sum game and that ship is on the rocks and breaking up.
Posted by: Patrick S Lasswell at December 8, 2004 02:59 PM
And the SIAW guys have repeatedly shown a belief, which I share, that you can't magically jump from a corrupt society to an ideal society,
Where I part ways with you here, is that I don't believe there is an ideal society. Magic or not, there is no jump to be made. I don't believe in the tooth fairy, either. Whether of not a proper socialist society would even be an improvement is open to question. Parts of Europe have been making the experiment since the Russian revolution with disastrous results. The current, more benign, versions also strike me as failing. Now, if people were ants...
Posted by: chuck at December 8, 2004 03:26 PM
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