True Scientific Socialism?

Marx did not believe he was designing a value system or ideology, but rather thought he was engaged in creating "scientific socialism". I'm certainly no expert on Marxism, so I'll leave it to more knowledgeable minds to argue over which parts of Marx's work bear relevance to society.

Clearly he got some things right, and his theories provide a good account of why crises occur and the exploitative nature of wage labour. However, the idea of Marxism as "scientific" has drawn a lot of criticism - most notably from Karl Popper, who distinguishes theories like Marxism from science on the grounds that the former is unfalsifiable, but not everyone agrees with this claim. As stated, I am no expert and if I start making conclusions about Marxism's scientific credentials having read nothing more than the Communist Manifesto and half a volume of Capital then I'm going to start offending people (looking at you Dom Curran!).

The essence of science is experiment and falsifiability, not grand philosophical theorizing. Grand theoretical thought has its place in science, but most often in order to design experiments, to create falsifiable hypotheses.

Libertarian socialism is a true "scientific" socialism, not in terms of its theoretical basis, but in its practice - by calling for spontaneous cooperation and organisation along with radical decentralisation, it allows myriad experiments - a practical science of social organisation. By overturning the sterile uniformity of the state, an anarchistic society could see areas alongside one another using different models of social and economic organisation - mutualism, syndicalism, communism.

Possibilities for experimentation abound: communal versus individualist settlements; highly automated industrial regions versus agrarian eco-communes and religious societies; decisions by consensus versus democratic voting versus networks of small, non-institutional affinity groups.

Without compulsory political communities people could choose the system, or non-system to live under, communities could learn from one another and the track records of different approaches could be looked at scientifically. A radical shift in society's social, economic or democratic organisations would no longer need us to wait for years to elect new representatives to decide how tens of millions of people are or are not allowed to live and cooperate. John Stuart Mill got something right when he talked about limiting government to allow "experiments in living" - the problem was that he didn't go far enough, failing to challenge property rights or the existence of a centralized territorial state.

If you believe Marxists, there has never been a society "truly" organised on Marxist lines - the USSR and other "communist" societies are widely accepted to have been nothing of the sort. On the other hand, we have clear instances of libertarian-leftism in action - Maknovista Ukraine, anarchist Catalonia (read Dolgoff's The Anarchist Collectives), cooperative economic institutions, factory occupation and self-management movements, small Intentional Communities (communes), the student movements of 1968, Occupy Wall Street and so on. Thousands of written accounts exist documenting the successes and failures of these movements and institutions.

So, do you agree that libertarian socialism is the only true scientific socialism?

The Problems of Political Fiction

Political novels, especially those with a utopian/dystopian flavour, have been formative in the intellectual development of many an ideologue. Some are fairly uncontroversial, for instance 1984's critique of totalitarianism or Animal Farm's superb analysis of Stalinist communism (if one even considers Stalin's reign worthy of the honorific "communist"). Others lead to more contested ideological territory - Ayn Rand's work springs to mind as does Huxley's Brave New World. The former leads many readers to adopt an egoistic moral acceptance and worship of capitalist meritocracy while the latter seems to imbue its critique of hedonistic manipulation of man's nature with a healthy dose of sexual and moral puritanism.

The problem lies in the tension between the impact of the book on the political mind of the reader and its actual empirical value. It is hard to diligently critique the underlying assumptions and values imbued in a novel while reading it; the reader suspends disbelief and allows the author to set the rules. This is innocuous enough in a work of pure fiction, if George R R Martin wants to implicitly condone violence, rape and slaughter of civilians as "normal" within his universe then fine, it needn't spill out further than that - we can, on a limited basis, accept those norms in our reading of his work. It is when a work of fiction steps into the realm of polemic, of political-philosophical tract, that things get muddled. 

In Ayn Rand's universe the poor really are scroungers, moochers, takers; they do not create wealth, they are not exploited but in fact benefit from the schemes of the rich. Technology in Rand-land is the result of single, dedicated inventors who create miracle products - this hero-inventor mythos is patently false, ignoring the contributions of collective scientific advancement in laying the foundations for such advances and the origins of many modern technologies in military R&D projects (the internet for one).

In this alternate reality projects based on "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need" really are ego-trips that inevitably lead to a poisonous climate of workers hiding their talents while other big up their needs. Back home on earth, workers are managing factories in Argentina without reliance on the talents of superhero-esque industrialists; in Italy the region of Emilia-Romagna produces 30% of its GDP through co-ops and is thriving for it; Mondragon continues to employ tens of thousands in a network of small, relatively egalitarian, cooperatives; and, collectivised workplaces with total income equality have a proven track record in the short-lived anarchist control of parts of Spain in the Civil War.

Monopolies are just and beneficial - after all, if everyone chooses one provider, why should they not be allowed to supply the entire market (yes, somehow this applies to natural monopolies such as Dagny Taggart's railway project, which miraculously is not a natural monopoly in the novel). The rich are superheroes, geniuses, mavericks, both highly virtuous and wholly selfish (not a contradiction in Rand's topsy-turvy political fiction).

It might not be true, but it is very effective - through simple conditioning the slog through all 1500 pages of Atlas Shrugged left me subconsciously reacting against certain phrases - innocent ideas such as "serving humanity", opposition to "profiteering" and "living for others" triggered mental red flags, brought my mind back to the depictions of Rand's novels - the witless and unsympathetic philanthropist, or the ego-tripping creators of the cooperative factory that set John Galt off on his task to destroy society to protect the privileges of the wealthy.

One striking point is that capitalistic novels are scrubbed clean of sympathetic "weak" characters. Oppressed members of other races, LGBT people, the disabled - all are missing or presumed worthless.

In reading Heinlein's "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress", a sympathetic portrayal of an anarcho-capitalist society on the moon, it is notable that Heinlein makes all women on Luna beautiful, earth diseases are rare to non-existent, all must work and there is no charity yet few appear to starve or go homeless. It is also interesting that very few characters seem to work as permanent employees of others on Luna - Mannie, the protagonist, chooses to do odd jobs because he says he was "born free" - other characters work on a short term basis or own smallholdings and trade goods at market.

Capitalism is invariably portrayed in fiction as involving independent people as bosses or without bosses per se, or toxic workplace hierarchies, or small business owners. It is an idealised vision of voluntary trade in a largely artisan or farming economy - this sidesteps innumerable problems that arise with large scale industrial capitalism. The idea of egoistic individuals promoting their own wellbeing, looking out only for themselves, is talked a lot in Heinlein and Rand's work but the pure egoist is never really shown - family and custom always constrain these "rational egoists"

Heinlein's work is not without merit of course and, aside from being a great read, does provide a lot of new ideas - something sci-fi is able to do very well by distancing us from current norms and models of politics and showing creative alternative models. The exploration of private law is interesting, its take on family structures and gender relations provides food for thought and its anti-authoritarianism is refreshing. The underlying political philosophy, "rational anarchism" is interesting and may be discussed in a later post.

Political fiction needs to be seen as just that, fiction, which doesn't mean it is useless but simply that we should be sceptical - interrogate the novel's premises - ask what the author is assuming and see if it appears to hold true here in the real world.

Now given my interest in politics and my desire to write, it is not unlikely that at some point in the future I may put together some work of political fiction, some unrealistic little utopia offset in a distant galaxy far far away where things function differently than in our parochial little here-and-now world.

In such a case I urge you to treat me with suspicion, dust off this little article and critique me with it.

Update.

Just to let my readers know, I will be writing a guest post on Connor Woodman's blog, Manufacturing Hegemony. The article will be titled the "The Anti-Science Left" and will focus on the tendency of some on the Left to refuse to accept or understand certain scientific ideas for ideological reasons, with specific emphasis on GM crops.

Connor will in turn be writing a guest post here on, I believe, the situation in West Papua, about which my knowledge is seriously lacking, so this will hopefully be enlightening for me and for my readers. Connor writes about foreign policy, mainly, and his posts are well written and researched so you should definitely check out his blog.

We're hoping to expand our readerships (though at ~600 views I'm trailing behind Comrade Woodman) so, to anyone directed over here from Manufacturing Hegemony, welcome and I hope you check out the rest of the blog!

Resources.

A friend recently asked what YouTube videos / websites I was using to inform my views and get news; this prompted me to put together this list of resources for both my views on atheism/scepticism and my political ideas. If you are looking for things to read, listen to or watch to further indoctrinate yourself into my viewpoint then here is my officially approved list of resources:

Podcasts:

• As mentioned in a prior post reading Marx's Capital has been helpful for me in terms of political understanding an I will restate the recommendation here: read it with David Harvey's lectures.
• The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe is a great weekly podcast, especially for allowing any of my fellow weak-minded humanities students to keep up with scepticism and developments in scientific thought and technology. Seriously though, understanding science is vitally important for avoiding a coterie of irrational beliefs - anti-GM environmentalists for example, ought to take note of where the scientific consensus is on the issue.
• Atheism-wise, The Atheist Experience can be entertaining; and, The Thinking Atheist is good for a whole variety of social, political and scientific issues surrounding religion and non-belief. Godless Bitches is also excellent - especially for keeping abreast of developments in reproductive rights and other feminist issues from an atheistic standpoint.

Websites:

• Libcom.org - good for news, also has an excellent library of books, articles and pamphlets.
• Reddit is your friend, trust me, - acts as a kind of aggregate news feed as well which does a pretty good job of moving the most important content to the front page - also good for community - if you have a question about a political ideology then there's unfailingly a subreddit to meet that need - r/anarchism, r/cooperatives, r/anarchismpdfs and r/libertariansocialism are good places to start if you're looking for an insight into left-libertarianism. 
• http://www.opendemocracy.net/
• Noam Chomsky is probably the best person to articulate and elucidate any number of issues - the main two being US foreign policy and libertarian socialism - http://www.chomsky.info/index.htm is a good website, which aggregates a lot of his essays, books and lectures.

YouTubers:

• The Young Turks is my main source of US political news; they are much better than any mainstream sources (CNN, MSNBC etc) and help to elucidate, to those who haven't worked it out yet, the decisive role of moneyed interests in US politics.

Pamphlets and books:

• The Spirit Level - explains the societal benefits of economic equality.
• Abundance: Why the Future Is Better Than You Think - vital reading for everyone - especially those who have been demoralised by those who try to claim that the world is just getting worse and worse.
• Inefficiency of Capitalism - provides a practical critique of free markets from the perspective of efficiency rather tan morality or political values 
• Chavs: The Demonisation Of The Working Class - read it, see what Thatcher did to us, how the media creates stereotypes and never use the "c" word again!

Hope this has been helpful to someone - obviously the list is not exhaustive and I don't endorse everything that emanates from the

We're winning!

Uruguay just passed marriage equality, the tide appears to have turned; if even in traditionally conservative, Catholic South America progress can be made on this issue then we are clearly getting somewhere (although bear in mind that Uruguay is considered the most secular country in South America with only 45% of the country identifying as Catholic).

Marriage Equality: A Short Introduction

Gay marriage has recently become a political issue on both sides of the Atlantic; In the United States two cases have come before the Supreme Court, in the first opportunity for the body to make a decision on the issue; In Britain the "Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill" is steadily progressing towards passage through Parliament over the ever louder whines of religious leaders. In France protesters opposed to a proposed equal marriage law clashed with riot police on the Champs-Elysée (full story here). 

In the USA the question is played as a civil rights issue while in Britain a centre-right PM advocates gay marriage as a conservative cause, much to the chagrin of the reactionary right of his party.

This post will cover a number of areas and try to provide an overview of the issues around marriage equality:

• The Supreme Court cases - I will point in the direction of resources that explain the legal issues better than I could ever hope to.
• A look at changing attitudes in the US - why have the polls shifted? Are conservatives moving away from opposing equality?
• Examine the libertarian* argument against gay marriage - should the state be in the relationship business at all?

The Cases

There are two cases before the US Supreme - one involves the "Defence Of Marriage Act" (DOMA) and centres mainly on the right of the federal government to refuse to recognise state laws; the second is about the constitutionality of California's "Proposition 8", a ballot initiative which sought to "ban" same sex marriages in that state.

ScotusBlog is a good place to start, as is this excellent AMA on Reddit, I don't profess to be an expert - read for yourselves if you really want to know!  Here are the ScotusBlog pages for - Hollingsworth v. Perry and US v. Windsor.

Winning the Culture Wars

The Christian Right still exists, of course, and its as insane as ever - the Family Research Council** and others like them continue to churn out hideously offensive sound-bites for Right Wing Watch to chronicle - like this, this and this. Increasingly the country is beginning to see these people as what they are - trolls.

However, the recent statements by Bill O'Reilly explain something of the shift - the gay rights activists have successfully made it into an issue of fairness and rights - hence the prominence of the term "marriage equality" - as O'Reilly puts it, their case has been: "we're Americans, we just want to be treated like everyone else". 

Views have changed hugely in the last decade - Pew polling suggests that in 2003 58% of Americans opposed gay marriage and 33% supported it - today 49% support equality while 44% still oppose it. The poll suggests that it is mostly the more secular, open-minded, "millennials" that have made the difference. 

The Libertarian Argument - Get Government Out Of The Marriage Business!

The anti-gay marriage conservatives, it appears, are fighting a losing battle. Now, self-proclaimed "libertarians" are coming out of the woodwork, putting out a message summed up by the above picture - they  argue that human relationships flourish best outside of the purview of the state, that human sexuality and social relations should not be subject to law and regulation. Reasonable, one may think, but there are problems.

One is tempted to wonder, how much of this new found libertarianism is a face-saving exercise, a post hoc rationalisation for holding a bigoted position, but perhaps that is somewhat unfair. A more relevant critique is that this argument is a distraction, a red herring - abolition of opposite sex marriage is not on the horizon any time soon, equalization of marriage is - the cause of equality should not be impeded by a long term principle - think of the people who oppose affirmative action to correct racial inequalities because they can better be dealt with by no longer "talking about race" and shoving the legacy of segregation under the rug. 

Gay marriage is important as an affirmation of society's respect for gay rights, a rejection of traditionalistic bigotries.  In any case, the state is "in charge of marriage" because there are complex issues of property, custody of children, inheritance and so on.

This "Libertarian Case Against Gay Marriage", for example, while attempting to appear neutral, is stocked with anti-gay tropes (or well-meaning "positive" stereotypes) and conservative attacks on the Democratic Party and "political correctness". The author talks about gay "propaganda" in schools, trivialises the ideas that gays may face discrimination (after all, they can always hide their sexual orientation) and perpetuates the idea that marriage only exists because of the need to rear children and is thus inapplicable to gays - except, of course, that gay couples can and do raise kids. 

His political partisanship comes through here:

But the legislative agenda of the modern gay-rights movement is not meant to be useful to the gay person in the street: it is meant to garner support from heterosexual liberals and others with access to power. It is meant to assure the careers of aspiring gay politicos and boost the fortunes of the left wing of the Democratic Party. The gay-marriage campaign is the culmination of this distancing trend, the reductio ad absurdum of the civil rights paradigm.

By the way, the phrase "homosexual agenda" makes it obvious when a libertarian critique is insincere...

Don't get me wrong - there are libertarians and anarcho-capitalists who want the state out of marriage because they genuinely the state to be corrupting and illegitimate. They suggest that the full gamut of human relations cannot and should not be covered by a legal framework and that in fact the natural fluidity and passion of relationships is harmed by contracts and registrars and divorce lawyers.

Final thoughts

While it is not in question that LGBT rights are vitally important (if you don't think so - get off my blog, bigot), I will leave it up to you decide whether it is the state's business at all - this post has not even addressed the case made by some LGBT activists that gay marriage is either not worth the effort or even represents a step backwards or a co-optation by conservative forces.

Personally, I think the shift on gay marriage across the West is a good thing; it is a barometer of shifting social attitudes that are promising for supporters of social justice and tolerance. Right-Libertarian utopianism is all well and good***, and, in a perfect world, maybe the government wouldn't define what relationships gets social and legal approval; however, in this one, US federal law gives 1,138 benefits, rights and protections specifically to married couples - it is unjustifiable for that package of rights to be denied to a section of the population.

..............................................................................................................................................

*In the sense of the socially liberal, isolationist wing of the American capitalistic right rather than the traditional usage of the word to mean anarchist or libertarian socialist - see this left-wing critique of the Ron Paul crowd's usage of the word libertarian.

**To anyone new to the US's "culture wars" - "family" in the name of a pressure group is a red flag (and not the good commie type) - it more often than not means a hate group.

***Really, I have no problem with wholesale reduction of state influence in social life - there is absolutely nothing wrong with a good dose of utopianism - as Oscar Wilde put it: "a map of the world without utopia is not worth glancing at".

Indeed...

And one more thing - since 1966, the incomes of the bottom 90% of Americans have grown by $59, adjusted for inflation, while those of the top 10% have risen $116,000 - isn't trickle-down economics marvellous!