This blog is a companion piece to one I posted in September, “Why ‘Libertarian’ Socialism”. That title of course begged the question: what then is socialism? No small amount of ink has been spilled over the “s-word”’s return to acceptable political discourse. My own book, “Politics for the New Dark Age” sits in this tradition but is largely descriptive, rather than normative. It identifies a policy programme grounded in first principles, and loosely describes the result as democratic and socialist. What follows is a first attempt to describe the normative and theoretical core of the ‘new’ socialism.
God dammit, Einstein
When you write anything, one of the first things you learn is that there are few original ideas, and someone smarter once said exactly what you want to say decades before you were even born. As I read Albert Einstein’s 1949 essay “Why Socialism” in preparation for this blog, I realised that the greatest physicist of the 20th century was already way ahead of me. Einstein’s core insight is as follows:
“Man is, at one and the same time, a solitary being and a social being. . . . . The individual is able to think, feel, strive, and work by himself; but he [sic] depends so much upon society—in his physical, intellectual, and emotional existence—that it is impossible to think of him, or to understand him, outside the framework of society. It is “society” which provides man with food, clothing, a home, the tools of work, language, the forms of thought, and most of the content of thought; his life is made possible through the labor and the accomplishments of the many millions past and present who are all hidden behind the small word “society.””
While all Marxists are socialists, the idea of social politics is older and grander than Marx. Einstein goes on, in the same paragraph, to describe the origins and diversity of political personality:
“[T]he existence of these varied, frequently conflicting, strivings accounts for the special character of a man [sic] . . . . It is quite possible that the relative strength of these two [solitary and social] drives is, in the main, fixed by inheritance. But the personality that finally emerges is largely formed by the environment in which a man happens to find himself during his development, by the structure of the society in which he grows up, by the tradition of that society, and by its appraisal of particular types of behavior.”
Here's how I make the same argument in Chapter II of “Politics for the New Dark Age”:
“Socialism as an ideology says that cooperative solutions to social problems tend to lead to better outcomes. Capitalism, as an ideology or set of ideologies, is simply the belief that purely competitive [strategies] lead to better solutions than cooperative solutions or mixed cooperative and competitive solutions. Both capitalism and socialism, in their democratic variants, place the liberal individual at the centre of decision-making. But they come to radically different policy programs because the personality types that underlie their world views see problem solving (and the possibility of trusting others) in fundamentally different ways.”
When I speak, therefore, of ‘capitalism’ and ‘socialism’ I am referring to them as elemental positions – distinct from any specific economic system, set of norms and institutions, class interests or political programmes. They are strategy sets to solve the core social dilemma at the heart of civilization. But socialism and capitalism in this sense also possess conflicting beliefs about the nature of existence and ‘the good life’. We in the modern world have lost any other names for these variations of social contract liberalism, but on some level the same conflict must surely have existed throughout history because the same dilemmas mathematically recur in every society comprised of autonomous individuals.
Re-stating the case
The following three points, for me, are the core beliefs of any socialist system or programme, whether Marxist or non-Marxist. Firstly, that humanity is first and foremost a social species. Secondly, that the nature of social life creates decision dilemmas for which there are cooperative (i.e. trusting) strategies. And finally, that cooperative solutions to social problems are mathematically, practically and normatively superior to the alternative. Because of these three things, humanity has evolved (biologically, culturally, and technologically) to possess unrivalled potential to achieve whatever social end we desire. Socialists are humanist because we hold that we as a species may use our powers thus acquired for “good”; and that possessing such powers does not normatively impair any other (i.e. spiritual or environmental) value.
Stated in this way, we on the left can begin to claw back nature from being the rhetorical preserve of the right. For the last 150 years, the right has claimed the mantle of ‘human nature’ for itself, based on a (mis-)reading of Darwinian evolution. Their core critique of socialism has been that it misunderstands what it is to be human. But “survival of the fittest” does not state that every animal is a utility-maximising egoist, or that cooperation is impossible. Quite the contrary. Selfish animals are not innately better adapted than altruistic ones; and social species are often the fittest in their ecologies. If you look for Homo economicus in nature, at best you find the chimpanzee. And social, altruistic humanity is doing a great deal better than chimps.
Here’s what nature really tells us: human nature is both selfish and selfless, competitive and cooperative. We mix survival strategies in proportion to their success: a society structed along either purely socialist or capitalist lines is likely to prove extremely rigid and susceptible to shocks (I’m looking at you 1989 and 2008). “Nature”, at most, justifies a democratic, liberal society where those ideologies can exist in a state of creative tension that allows cultural evolution to continue.
Thinking like the other side
If we flip the mirror, and look at the other side of politics, what would their argument for capitalist institutions and policies look like? I posit, by analogy, that it would follow the same structure: First, humanity is comprised of egoist, utility-maximising individuals. Secondly, that there are competitive [yet still non-violent] strategies to resolve decision dilemmas between individuals. And thirdly, that competitive self-help strategies are superior, mathematically, practically and normatively to cooperative strategies (viz. neoclassical economics).
While there is a normative case against capitalism as an economic system and political programme, there is also increasing pragmatic and theoretical evidence that the ideology’s core propositions are flawed. The assumption of egotistical, utility-maximising individuals (“homo economicus”) is not only abstract and ahistorical, but totally irrelevant to the way humans actually make decisions. While we are capable of abstract reasoning, humans operate very effectively day-to-day using biologically- and culturally-imprinted decision-rules that often produce more efficient and practical decision outcomes than rational-choice models would suggest they should. When those (irrational) decision rules and social biases are examined, it often turns out that they are efficient when the existence of social life and structures are taken into account (although sometimes they aren't).
And while we can admit that sometimes there are self-help solutions to social dilemmas that are efficient, we should push back against the fundamentalist belief that capitalist competition is the solution to every social problem. Put simply, the market is terrible at providing essential public goods are prices that are accessible to all. Without cooperative institutions to provide those goods (or regulate their provision), a social contract society ceases to exist because it is unable to satisfy everyone's basic human rights. Capitalism's third precept, that competitive solutions to social dilemmas are generally superior, is contestable on mathematical, practical and moral grounds. That’s the case socialists have to make to win the argument.
Seriously, go read Einstein
It’s great. I’ll leave you with one final quote, as a warning against the technocrats (see Chapter IV of my book):
“[W]e should be on our guard not to overestimate science and scientific methods when it is a question of human problems; and we should not assume that experts are the only ones who have a right to express themselves on questions affecting the organization of society.”
Couldn’t have put it better myself.