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The self-proclaimed socialists are actually seeing the world through a rear-view mirror


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2019 Feb 11, 8:06am   1,559 views  9 comments

by cmdrda2leak   ➕follow (1)   💰tip   ignore  

http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/mistaken-futures/


And so the Democratic Party has gone and hoisted the flag of “socialism” on the mizzenmast of its foundering hulk as it sets sail for the edge of the world. Bad call by a ship without a captain, and I’ll tell you why. Socialism was the response to a particular set of circumstances in time that drove the rise of industrial societies. Those circumstances are going, going, gone.

The suspicion of industry’s dreadful effects on the human condition first sparked in the public imagination with William Blake’s poem “Jerusalem” in 1804 and its reference to England’s newly-built “dark satanic mills.” Industry at the grand scale overturned everyday life in the Euro-American “West” by the mid-19th century, and introduced a new kind of squalor for the masses, arguably worse than their former status as peasants.

And thus it was to be, through Karl Marx, Vlad Lenin, and the rest of the gang, ever-strategizing to somehow mitigate all that suffering. Their Big Idea was that if government owned the industry (the means of production), then the riches would be distributed equally among the laboring masses and the squalor eliminated. You can’t blame them for trying, though you can blame them for killing scores of millions of people who somehow got in the way of their plans.

Nobody had ever seen anything like this industry before, or had to figure out some way to deal with it, and it was such an enormous force in everyday life thereafter that it shattered human relationships with nature and the planet nature rode in on. Of course, the history of everything has a beginning, a middle, and an end, and we’re closer to the end of the industrial story than we are to the middle.

Which opens the door to a great quandary. If industrial society is disintegrating (literally), then what takes its place? Many suppose that it is a robotic utopia powered by some as-yet-unharnessed cosmic juice, a nirvana of algorithms, culminating in orgasm-without-end (Ray Kurzweil’s transhumanism). Personally, I would check the “no” box on that outcome as a likely scenario.

The self-proclaimed socialists are actually seeing the world through a rear-view mirror. What they are really talking about is divvying up the previously-accumulated wealth, soon to be bygone. Entropy is having its wicked way with that wealth, first by transmogrifying it into ever more abstract forms, and then by dissipating it as waste all over the planet. In short, the next time socialism is enlisted as a tool for redistributing wealth, we will make the unhappy discovery that most of that wealth is gone.

The process will be uncomfortably sharp and disorientating. The West especially will not know what hit it as it emergently self-reorganizes back into something that resembles the old-time feudalism. We have a new kind of mass squalor in America: a great many people who have nothing to do, no means of support, and the flimsiest notions of purpose in life. The socialists have no answers for them. They will not be “retrained” in some imagined federal crusade to turn meth freaks into code-writers for Google.

Something the analysts are calling “recession” is ploughing across the landscape like one of those darkly majestic dust-storms of the 1930s, only this time we won’t be able to re-fight anything like World War Two to get all the machines running again in the aftermath. Nor, of course, will the Make America Great Again fantasy work out for those waiting in the squalid ruins of the post-industrial rust-belt or the strip-mall wastelands of the Sunbelt.

Most of the beliefs and attitudes of the present day will be overturned with the demise of the industrial orgy, like the idea that humanity follows an unerring arc of progress, that men and women are interchangeable and can do exactly the same work, that society should not be hierarchical, that technology will rescue us, and that we can organize some political work-arounds to avoid the pain of universal contraction.

There are no coherent ideas in the political arena just now. Our prospects are really too alarming. So, jump on-board the socialism ship and see if it makes you feel better to sail to the end of the earth. But mind the gap at the very edge. It’s a doozie.

Comments 1 - 9 of 9        Search these comments

1   Patrick   2019 Feb 16, 6:25pm  

I don't think the situation is quite that dark for humanity, just for the Democratic Party. And I'm fine with that. They betrayed labor and have a platform overt racism and sexism, so they deserve to fail as a party.

But I do agree that we need an inspiring and coherent vision for the future of humanity. Religion used to provide that, but now the only strong religion is Islam, which demands death for all who fail to worship Mohammed and celebrate his many well-documented robberies, rapes, and murders. Not a good vision.

Many things are actually going quite well. Solar power production is now cheaper that fossil fuel power production, so the only remaining impediment to it is good battery technology. This will not only be good for the environment, it will be bad for Saudi funding of Islamic terrorism. Win-win. World population growth is clearly cresting.

Sure, it's never an "unerring arc of progress", but in spite of various calamities, we are still here. I think the way forward is to look back at the traditional values that brought us down to the present day and admit they were actually pretty damn good, all things considered.
2   Ceffer   2019 Feb 16, 6:44pm  

Socialism may indeed have a bright future, because government corruption is one of the only guaranteed career tracks any more.
3   Patrick   2019 Feb 16, 7:32pm  

Ceffer says
Socialism may indeed have a bright future, because government corruption is one of the only guaranteed career tracks any more.


Yes, but what is the ultimate cause of corruption?

I say corruption inevitably arises whenever the government is composed of career politicians. They naturally look out for themselves, so they look to sell their influence. And they get better at selling it the longer they are in DC.

What we need are politicians who are new to politics. People who do have not yet joined the network of corruption. For a limited time only, they may act in the public interest.

This is why Trump, for all his faults, is a great president. The existing network of corruption hates him, and he has not yet started to work with it for personal profit.
4   Patrick   2019 Feb 16, 7:37pm  

There is a great short book called "The Evolution of Cooperation" by Robert Axelrod.

In it, he gives the example of how trench warfare in World War I reliably degenerated into schemes of soldiers' saving their own lives by learning to cooperate with the enemy.

The French would stop shelling for a moment, and the Germans would do the same. In this way, a kind of communication channel developed. They then learned at which times of day they should relax, and which times they should get into the trenches and shell, the other other side cooperated.

Eventually, they would have lunch with each other, and then go back to their trenches for the 2pm daily shelling. The war was at a standstill.

The generals figured this out, and the solution was obvious: keep rotating the soliders! Keep them new and unable to develop that cooperation with the enemy.

I'm not saying that soldiers should die. I am saying that the way to prevent corruption in politics is to keep infusing it, and even overwhelming it with new people, all the time. Overwhelm DC with people who don't know the scams and have not yet gotten the offers from the corrupt telecoms, banks, and pharma companies to sell out.
5   MisdemeanorRebel   2019 Feb 16, 8:53pm  

Patrick says
Sure, it's never an "unerring arc of progress", but in spite of various calamities, we are still here. think the way forward is to look back at the traditional values that brought us down to the present day and admit they were actually pretty damn good, all things considered.

I call it "An Expanding Spiral". It's the eternal return, but each time it's better than the last go-around.
6   MisdemeanorRebel   2019 Feb 16, 8:56pm  

Patrick says
I'm not saying that soldiers should die. I am saying that the way to prevent corruption in politics is to keep infusing it, and even overwhelming it with new people, all the time. Overwhelm DC with people who don't know the scams and have not yet gotten the offers from the corrupt telecoms, banks, and pharma companies to sell out.


Term limits: 5 Terms in the House, 2 in the Senate. 10-12 years is enough "Public Service" for anybody. We have it for Presidents, after all.

When there's a major shift in the House, the new regime only lasts a term or two before it peters out into Business As Usual.

Another great idea is to repeal the direct election of Senators, so Senators kill any Unfunded Federal Mandates automatically, since they're beholden to their State Legislature.
7   HeadSet   2019 Feb 17, 7:56am  

Another great idea is to repeal the direct election of Senators

+1000
8   anonymous   2019 Feb 17, 8:05am  

Patrick says
The existing network of corruption hates him, and he has not yet started to work with it for personal profit.


Say it ain't so....

http://patrick.net/post/1322446/2019-02-17-how-trump-s-swamp-works-now
9   Patrick   2019 Feb 17, 9:54am  

OK, it ain't so.

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