Case:
Who is a "paleo-socialist"?
I think the author gets Naomi Klein right here (below). Dorman is a UMass type economist, having abandoned neo-Classicism, theoretically at least, in favor heterodox economics -- mixtures of Marx, MInsky, Robinson, behaviorists, and complexity theorists.
The Naomi Klein "socialism" fits the anti-modern monicker. It is "looking backward" in a primitivist reaction to the excesses of modern capitalism. This kind of "socialism" will forever be an elitist one, since it is of very little use in the daily struggles of working families. However, its sway in the environmental movement is very strong. This does not mean the anti-modern socialism would have no appeal among working people. There are many workers who are environmentally conscious -- but they have little time or income or means to enjoy the privilege of dropping out of the corporate, commodity-based, global economy.
Why have many reincarnated "socialisms" -- not counting Bernie Sanders (Bernie is NOT a "paleo-socialist" -- but he has quite a few "paleo-socialist" supporters in Vermont) -- become anti-modern, anti-technological, anti-global in their critiques of "capitalism"? Dorman argues this is in part a reaction to the retreats and/or collapse of "classical socialisms" associated with the Soviet, Cuban, and early Chinese experiments.
I think Dorman gets part of it right: I have heard, on my radio program, numerous spokespersons of sundry environmental campaigns deny (without any evidence) that combatting climate change, for example, will require MORE, not LESS, technology; and that, regardless what efficiencies in energy production and consumption we could achieve via public policy -- the future of human civilization will require every MORE, not LESS energy. Rivers of it, indeed.
Further, the anti-Modern critiques overlook the stunning AVERAGE performance of market-based development (ESPECIALLY in less developed societies), compared to the "classical" socialist, command-economy model. One can point to all kinds of contradictions, but "non-market" socialisms, at least in this era, are most definitely "paleo" -- long gone and not coming back.
So what constitutes a "non-paleo" socialism?
First: I submit there is no economic escape from the production of commodities (items and services produced for exchange for money -- the "special" commodity) and their circulation (my definition of capitalism -- borrowed from Marx) except the one Marx speculated: make them (through technology, automation, and science) so cheap and abundant, as close to "free" as possible. At that "point" -- not actually a "point" in time, but a rather lengthy and complex process -- "to that degree" is a better expression than "at that point" -- the satisfaction of new and emerging human wants will not be filled by commodities, and can be restructured to support different relations.
Second, economic escape from capitalism, and socialist politics, are NOT the same. Between here and an economic escape from capitalism lies any number of political upheavals and likely revolutions. When we talk about socialism today, in politics, we are talking direction, not some state of being. And the fundamental measures of progress are the reduction of inequality AND the expansion of public goods to the extent scarcity in the material means of life can be alleviated.
Third: class struggle is a common thread through all of capitalist development. INdeed, it is a KEY source of its development and revolutionizing of production and services. The definition of "classes" will also change with every shift in the division of labor and capital in society -- but any notion of socialism that seeks an end to class struggles, or an escape from technology, industrialization, globalization or capitalism through "looking backward" politics in this era will be disappointing to its supporters.
As Jesus explained to the faithful Pharisee, a good man who consistently followed the Law, when the latter complained that Jesus paid more attention to a sinful slave girl who washed his feet and sought forgiveness than himself: "If I forgive two debtors of their debts, and one owes me little, but another a lot, who will love me more?". To Hillary Clinton, I say -- the last will be first: the enslaved are the future, not the well-intentioned rich. Choose well.
Dorman
Modernity and Capitalism
Peter Dorman(Econospeak)
Well, that's a heavy title. I'm not going to say the last word about it in a blog post, but I would like to make a fairly simple observation: for at least a century, defenders of capitalism have argued that the two are inextricably connected. If you like modernity you have to like capitalism, and if you get rid of capitalism you will lose modernity with it. By modernity I mean a way of life that is science-based, rational and skeptical, technologically innovative, liberal, cosmopolitan and adapted to markets.
The traditional response of the left was to argue that modernity under capitalism is flawed and that a better, socialist modernity is possible. In other words, it rejected the identity and saw modernity as bigger than any particular version of it.
That position has been complicated by the collapse of traditional models of socialism that do seem to fail the modernization test: they were clunky and inefficient, closed to the outside instead of open, stultifying instead of dynamic. Now, I can already hear the cries of paleo-socialists in my ear: No! Socialism didn't fail in Russia/China/Cuba/wherever; it was encircled by the forces of capital and betrayed from within. I don't agree, but I won't debate it here; my only point is that most of the left is not paleo-socialist, so they've had to figure out what it means to be left wing and anti-capitalist in a world in which capitalism and modernity (in their eyes) largely coincide.
The result that seems to be unfolding is a widespread rejection of modernity on the activist/committed left. This is obvious in a book like Naomi Klein's This Changes Everything: Capitalism versus the Climate. She denounces "western science" and the industrial revolution. She is against globalization and wants each of us to stay put and cultivate our relationship to the soil—to native plants and local, stable communities. She has rediscovered spirituality and finds it answers life's questions better than rational skepticism. She thinks traditional societies lived better and possessed more wisdom than those swept up in modernity. And of course, any use of markets (other than carbon taxes) is to be denounced as the sin of greed.
What Klein writes wouldn't matter so much if they were only her personal thoughts (just like mine don't matter very much), but the reception her book has received shows she has distilled a worldview shared by much if not most of the left. Her anti-modernist stance is not even mentioned; it is taken for granted. Or more precisely, it is how we understand her to be radical and left-wing: that's what it means to oppose capitalism in the Anthropocene. (My spell-checker doesn't recognize Anthropocene yet. Give it time.)
So that's how we've come full circle. The identity between modernity and capitalism is no longer offered in defense of the existing order but (or also) as the basis for its rejection. My prediction is that the benefits of modernity are so obvious and compelling for the vast majority of humanity that anti-modernist leftism will be an evanescent cult, something future generations will look back upon with curiosity.
And I still think we need to consider what form a non- or post-capitalist modernity might take.
(Postscript: If you want to think about how this conceptual turn of events began, you might look at the emergence of postmodernism, which transferred the critique of capitalism to the critique of modernity and arose at about the same time classical socialism/communism lost its intellectual luster.)
(Postscript ^2: This is not about anarchism vs Marxism. Anarchists used to be modernists. Read Kropotkin's Fields, Factories and Workshops or, for cultural modernism, Emma Goldman's Living My Life.)
The traditional response of the left was to argue that modernity under capitalism is flawed and that a better, socialist modernity is possible. In other words, it rejected the identity and saw modernity as bigger than any particular version of it.
That position has been complicated by the collapse of traditional models of socialism that do seem to fail the modernization test: they were clunky and inefficient, closed to the outside instead of open, stultifying instead of dynamic. Now, I can already hear the cries of paleo-socialists in my ear: No! Socialism didn't fail in Russia/China/Cuba/wherever; it was encircled by the forces of capital and betrayed from within. I don't agree, but I won't debate it here; my only point is that most of the left is not paleo-socialist, so they've had to figure out what it means to be left wing and anti-capitalist in a world in which capitalism and modernity (in their eyes) largely coincide.
The result that seems to be unfolding is a widespread rejection of modernity on the activist/committed left. This is obvious in a book like Naomi Klein's This Changes Everything: Capitalism versus the Climate. She denounces "western science" and the industrial revolution. She is against globalization and wants each of us to stay put and cultivate our relationship to the soil—to native plants and local, stable communities. She has rediscovered spirituality and finds it answers life's questions better than rational skepticism. She thinks traditional societies lived better and possessed more wisdom than those swept up in modernity. And of course, any use of markets (other than carbon taxes) is to be denounced as the sin of greed.
What Klein writes wouldn't matter so much if they were only her personal thoughts (just like mine don't matter very much), but the reception her book has received shows she has distilled a worldview shared by much if not most of the left. Her anti-modernist stance is not even mentioned; it is taken for granted. Or more precisely, it is how we understand her to be radical and left-wing: that's what it means to oppose capitalism in the Anthropocene. (My spell-checker doesn't recognize Anthropocene yet. Give it time.)
So that's how we've come full circle. The identity between modernity and capitalism is no longer offered in defense of the existing order but (or also) as the basis for its rejection. My prediction is that the benefits of modernity are so obvious and compelling for the vast majority of humanity that anti-modernist leftism will be an evanescent cult, something future generations will look back upon with curiosity.
And I still think we need to consider what form a non- or post-capitalist modernity might take.
(Postscript: If you want to think about how this conceptual turn of events began, you might look at the emergence of postmodernism, which transferred the critique of capitalism to the critique of modernity and arose at about the same time classical socialism/communism lost its intellectual luster.)
(Postscript ^2: This is not about anarchism vs Marxism. Anarchists used to be modernists. Read Kropotkin's Fields, Factories and Workshops or, for cultural modernism, Emma Goldman's Living My Life.)
John Case
Harpers Ferry, WV
Harpers Ferry, WV
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