A friend said in an email, ” When looking at history it is important to break out of our Western bias, our Western (capitalist) bubble.” I agree in the sense that the more I read, write, and engage folk, the more I realize that much of what I had assumed was true turns out to be falsehoods I recieved from propaganda.
But I also realize, as I read, write, and engage folk, that the propaganda includes many of the knee-jerk ideas I’ve acquired thru activism regarding ‘socialism’ and ‘capitalism’. As with other terms, such as ‘revolution,’ it’s easy to use the words ‘socialism’ and ‘capitalism’ uncritically.
I’ve found, thru interviewing people at protests, that we can use watch-words such as ‘capitalism’ and ‘revolution’ for expressing disapproval about the way we perceive the world, while not doing the socially and intellectually demanding work of building solutions.
That reminds me to resume work as a journalist. Part of the role of a journalist is to engage folk in plain English (or whatever other language is spoken) and when not, to use jargon very carefully.
That’s a public service. Jargon detracts from the building of social movements, in that we come across as cult-like or elitist to skeptical outsiders, while assuming we have solidarity and understanding with our comrades when we actually don’t, due to the jargon disguising how we don’t fully understand our own ideas or the ideas of our activist peers. As we’ve talked about before, cliques of jargony activists gather among ourselves in private won’t build a social movement. It’s often repeated that we don’t have the money or the guns, but we have the numbers. Yet, we can’t build strength in numbers esoterically. Hence, love is the cornerstone of my political philosophy.
What does the term ‘revolution’ mean to you, Charlie? When you and Rajeev spoke at the co op a few months ago, you seemed to get excited when talking about ‘revolution,’ like someone talking about their favorite football team or going on vacation.
To compare notes, sometimes the term ‘revolution’ conjures in my mind thoughts of cholera and other diseases as the infrastructure collapses without a functioning government, and masses of innocent people killed as conditions spiral out of control. Many people are killed and hurt in our current state of affairs, but it’s fair to ask whether ‘revolution’ can end up being a cure that’s worse than the disease.
As for “breaking out of our…bubble,” I don’t see that as a process of revelation or some other grand awakening of class consciousness. Instead, I see it as a matter of engaging human beings, without over-emphasizing categories such as ‘class.’
For me, breaking out of my bubble of misconceptions is a matter of critical thinking, whereby we use the humanities and social sciences, combined with logical reasoning, to assess the evidence as to whether an ideology, such as Marxism, is a viable alternative to capitalism.
I say it is not, but instead is a major conceptual tool, among other conceptual tools with which to build alternatives to global capitalism, the likes of which neither Marx nor anyone of us alive now for that matter, can completely foresee.
I disagree with Thatcher’s claim that there is no alternative to capitalism as we know it. We can agree to disagree as to whether socialism or Marxism has been proven to not work as a blue-print for revolution. But even if we assume it’s failed as a blue-print, the defenders of the status quo are wrong to assume that history has thereby proven that there is no viable alternative to capitalism. I wonder how The End of History by Francis Fukuyama pertains to this. Assuming I understand what he said in his essay (I’ve only read part of it), his proclamation is premature, to understate.
Yet reading the first few paragraphs of his essay just now, I’m reminded that I don’t want to lump economic liberalism together with political liberalism. In my mind, there are good things about the latter, and I’m wary of radicals on the left loosely using the word ‘liberal’ to disparage mainstream progressives. It’s another example of how some activists use jargon in self-defeating ways. Their usage of ‘liberal’ to disparage those who are progressive but not as far left as them, comes across to some people as being against liberal approaches to social issues such as those pertaining to queer folk.
But to get back to pursuing alternatives to capitalism, I’d suggest the process of doing that will likely involve integrating some aspects of Marxism to varying degrees, depending on the circumstances. I also suggest it the creation of alternatives to capitalism will vary from one part of the world to another. Further, we can reasonably assume, thru social and physical sciences, that capitalism is ecologically unsustainable.
From that framework, we can develop a set of values regarding human and nonhuman well-being that can gain wider currency as people all over the world apply those values according to their own lights, instead of being coerced or tricked into supporting a centralized authority seeking to implement an ideology.
But as for the way forward from our current situation within the ecologically unsustainable status quo, we seem to have the option of clinging irrationally to capitalism as we know it or pursuing alternatives. When it comes to the latter, I’d suggest being wary of ideologies, such as Marxism, that seem to lend themselves to the formation of parties with concentrated power that claim to represent the interests of ‘the people.’
I disagree with Peter Gelderloos regarding some of the points he makes about nonviolence. But I relate to his claim that ideology becomes more important and more rigid as leaders become more out-of-touch with the interests of those they claim to represent.
Rarely do leaders admit to blatant lust for power. Instead, they often say that their motives are based on their service to ‘the people’ or to ‘the greater good.’ Conservatives are right in their distrust of concentrated governmental power, which can sometimes conceal its aims under the banner of promoting the common good. But conservatives are wrong in their failure to apply that principle to the concentration of corporate power and other abuses within capitalism.
Given the problem of concentrated political and economic power, various anarchist theories probably are worth examining, not as a blue-print for revolution or some other type of social movement, but as one among many conceptual tools. Also, as side note, throughout this email, I’ve talked as if capitalism and socialism exist as one entirely without the other. Some would say the US and other Western nations have a ‘mixed economy’ where governments can step in for social (and environmental) reasons.
But to get back to the Marxist emphasis on class, why should I concern myself with class, as some feature that deserve special consideration among other categorizations? I’d prefer to relate to people and other animals, striving for common ground as fellow creatures on Earth.
In some respects, talk of class unity or class consciousness seems similar to someone saying “let’s all stick together as Americans” or “let’s all stick together as one White Race” and so on. I’m interested in love as a politically organizing principle because it seems a way to avoid the bedeviling pattern of seeking forms of unity that depend on demonizing the enemy.
In light of that, in my opinion, when one embraces Marxism as a prophetic blue-print for revolution, he or she constrains his or her mind in that the ideology, despite its intellectual sophistication, leads one to over-generalizations about the world, whereby he or she assumes the map is the territory.
The historical and social science-based evidence indicates the Marx’s ideas are extraordinarily useful. But the evidence also shows, thru the example of China and the Soviet Union, that his ideas are not a blue-print for maximizing distributive justice and self-determination within any given society. Further the deeds of Marxist revolutionaries in other parts of the world might indicate something similar, with flaws that we can’t , with intellectual honesty, entirely attribute to Western propaganda or Western machinations that have pitted groups against each other, thereby exacerbating the woes of conflict.
I have a problem with the sort of religious devotion some people have to the ideas of Marx. People don’t base revolutions on theories from John Stuart Mill, Adam Smith, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and various other thinkers. Instead people working and fighting for revolutions and reforms have integrated some of the ideas of those thinkers.
By contrast, many Marxists seem to believe in the prophetic historical inevitability of what Marx had to say. The degree of certainty that seems to exist among some Marxists, irrespective of the historical evidence, indicates irrationality.
When the historical evidence seems to contradict the prophetic visions of Marx, they explain it away by saying it’s just Western propaganda, or they say that Marx was only slightly wrong due to being unaware of a few details that have emerged in the past hundred years or so. Sorry to repeat, but again, we have much to learn from the writings of Marx, but we’re mistaken to think he was right to such a degree as to offer us a blue-print for revolution.
Regarding Mao and Stalin, is it not possible to have a reasonably accurate sense of how many people suffered and died as a direct and indirect result of their policies ?
To simply say the question reflects Western propaganda is to avoid the issue, in my opinion.
I agree that there has been a lot of Western propaganda against the Soviet Union and Communist China. But to what extent have you looked at ‘anti-Western’ propaganda on the part of the Soviets and Communist China? How many people were shot near the Berlin Wall as they tried to escape ? What does that tell us about the kind of society that existed east of that wall ?
As for political and academic freedom, did the Soviets not repress some forms of science and historiography for not reflecting the ‘correct’ ways of thinking ? I am asking this to show that both sides in the Cold War engaged in propaganda, and violated human rights, and engaged in various forms of repression and oppression. Does it mean that there is no alternative to capitalism ? No, it doesn’t. But it also doesn’t mean that Marxism or socialism is the viable alternative to capitalism.
As for propaganda and repression, similar things happened in the US and other Western societies during the Cold War. But, to me, that does not indicate that socialism (as construed and implemented by the Soviets and Communist China) was better than capitalism. Instead, to me it indicates that we should be wary of centralized power and the ideologies that seem to facilitate it.
But to get back to the question of how many people suffered as a result of the policies of Mao and Stalin, I ask that question because it’s relevant to weighing the evidence regarding the viability of an ideology.
Unless we believe there is a Western imperialist physics and chemistry, as well as a Western imperialist historiography, there is likely a way to approximate an accurate sense of how many people were killed and made to suffer as a direct or indirect result of the policies of Mao and Stalin.
Of course, one could argue that Mao and Stalin were not to blame for their crimes because Western imperialism had created a geopolitical climate so adverse to their noble goals that it was impossible for the two men to implement their ideologies more humanely.
I’ll keep an open-mind, but that claim seems a bit far-fetched. But please understand, I’m not an apologist for capitalism or Western imperialism. My argument that communism or the ideology of socialism aren’t viable solutions should not be confused with me saying that we should not pursue options to capitalism as we know it.
My main point in this discussion is that socialism is a false solution in so far as it requires centralized authority for its implementation. A related point is that I’m wary of loose talk about revolution. As it pertains to socialism, I might be more inclined to support a more gradual, reformist approach over a revolutionary one. For lack of a better term, ‘democratic socialism’ might be a useful concept to include in our tool kit.
As for violent revolution, writers such as George Lakey, Gene Sharp, Maria Stephan, and Erica Chenoweth, and others (amid less credible points) make what seems a strong point : social change based on violence tends to perpetuate injustice, as the new elite uses violence as a result of having grown accustomed to as a means of solving problems during the revolution. But that claim needs a closer look, as far as I’m concerned.
Getting back to the question of how Mao’s and Stalin’s policies affected their populace, I’d say that even though historiography is not precise like physics or chemistry, the humanities are part of rationalism where patterns of logic are to be put into practice, as we weigh the historical evidence.
Standards for evidence in the humanities fields thru which we examine the viability of ideologies and policies for promoting human (and nonhuman) well-being are trans-cultural, in a manner similar to that the social and physical sciences.
I think Churchill, not Orwell said history is written by the victors. There is some degree of truth to that, but plenty of info about repression in China and the Soviet Union was available before ‘the West’ emerged as the winner of the Cold War in the 1989-1991 period.
Further, standards for assessing the viability of ideologies, as well as the character of world leaders are not entirely bogged down in cultural relativism. Borrowing a bit from what Sam Harris says in his book The Moral Landscape, I’d suggest that moral relativism undermines the political left and secularism in general.
As he suggests in the same book, female genital mutilation is wrong, regardless of what culture it occurs in. The genocide against Native Americans and the enslavement of people of African descent was wrong, as well as the genocide against Jews or Tutsis, irrespective of the culture or historical era in which it occurs .
By that standard, I suggest that the ideology of communism or socialism as implemented in the Soviet Union and Communist China showed itself to be no better than capitalism– propaganda aimed at exaggerating or glossing over flaws on either side of the Cold War notwithstanding.
The measure of an ideology’s viability is how the political system in question affects the well-being of humans and other conscious creatures. By that standard, it’s not entirely useless to compare the well-being that existed for people under Communist rule with that of people living in Western countries, as well as people living under the colonial control of those Western powers.
By such a standard, conservatives might emphasize the apparently superior ranking of the well-being of the citizens of Western countries over that of those who lived under communist rule.
But the scales are more balanced when we include the impoverished and otherwise oppressive conditions of those living, currently or formerly, under the colonial rule or influence of Western powers.
To dig deeper in our inquiry, we’d have to look further using historiography and social science in an attempt to determine how capitalism and Western imperialism affected non-Western cultures. In other words, were, for example, the peoples in various parts of Latin America, Africa or Asia better off prior to Western imperialism?
While we can say that slavery, genocide and other forms of oppression were wrong, there are at least some cases in which Western imperialism helped to put an end to inhumane practices, such as bride burning in India.
But as for the evidence of how the ideology of Marxism compares with the less consolidated and less explicitly professed ideology of capitalism, to me the Soviet Union and Communist China indicate it’s unwise to expect centralized power to be a viable means to distributive justice and political freedom.
In terms of promoting the interests of ‘the people,’ the political systems in the Soviet Union and Communist China seemed no better than those in ‘the West.’ But I’m not sure if they were worse, when we account for how slavery, racism, and genocide are, in at least some cases, functions of capitalism.
Whether it’s capitalism or Marxism, I’m not inclined to support ideologies that are closely linked (both historically and in terms of current apparent inclinations) to a political party seeking centralized authority.
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