An idea.......

As I'm sure you know, over at Sainted Norm's, there is a regular feature where various bloggers answer questions and do a bit of promo. The fine fellow Mod had one recently

http://normblog.typepad.com/normblog/2009/05/the-normblog-profile-296-modernity.html

Whilst I've enjoyed the series, I always pondered what a lot of the non-blogging commentators (Commenters?, Commeters?) might answer to a similar list. They, who unlike the great unwashed masses of the bloggeratii, have real jobs to go to and social activities to attend but still, they are as much a part of this as the bloggers themselves. I think it would be fun, interesting and a very easy for me to fill blog space to do a series on such fine people's answers. Though I may disagree violently with them and there are many of who I have insulted and libelled over the years but always (and not always) in the best of spirits, all are welcome. Those with blogs, if a particular commentatorat is worthy, then please forward them.

Speculative questions (after a self composed summary) and my own starters for ten

Why do you comment?

Preening self-regard for my own opinion, really. And cos I think I'm funny

Where?

HP, Shiraz, Crooked Timber, Tendance, Modblog, Cafe Turco, Dave's Part

Who are those commentators you always enjoy reading?

Metta from HP, a wit, an intellect and a dispositories of many an amazing story

Which was the best thread you took part in?

At HP, a thread about the BPA, never laughed so much on a blog

Are blogs important and why?

A forum in its classic sense is vital, essentially as tradition forms of it seemed to doomed to demise or depolitisation. Good blogs educate by both their own content as well as the subsequent debate on top of being an arena for polemic, screed and heavy heavy sarcasm

Which rhetorical device in argument do you hate the mostest?

Essentialism, though clumsy whatabouttery comes a close second

Long post Bad, Short post Good?

A long post has to be good, the patience of the reader must be rewarded

Policy on trolls?

Ignore once you realise they are beyond arguing. They have literally nothing to say anyway

Policy on Benjy?

Listen on China, fuck off on all else

Have you ever been banned from a site and why?

Not yet

Greatest evil facing humanity and greatest humanity facing evil?

Utopia as a destination rather then a unreachable goal and the women fighting for their rights in Afghanistan

Best novel ever?

Cancer Ward

Best documentary ever?

Confessions of a Superhero, beautiful

Worst song ever inflicted onto air and human ears

California Love by Tupak

If you had to give a political label to yourself, what would it be? (clumsy mash-ups of terminlogy welcome)

Larkin cum Herzen

So Hasan Pristina, Metta, Israelinurse, Sue R, John Palmer, John Meredith, John P, Richard Harris, OP, Alcuin, Jako, Alan Ji, Graham, Nick (Ex-SA), YossiUk, Josh Scholar, Dan, various Marks, Shmuel, Fabian, even Flanker and NO. Come along fellows

A gem

'Any man who has once proclaimed violence as his method is inevitably forced to take the lie as his principle' - Solzhenitsyn

The Republic does Weber - An ideal type for....Socialism

Conservatism here:- http://thesocialrepublic.blogspot.com/2008/07/conservatism-mit-added-weber.html

Libertarianism here:- http://thesocialrepublic.blogspot.com/2009/05/republic-does-weber-ideal-type.html

Before I start, there are a few housekeeping issues. Unlike Conservatism that has a fairly clear starting point (Between Burke's reflections and the Peel ministry), Socialism might well be seen as an eternal. Were the agitators for the Roman agrarian laws not socialistic or the Peasant revolt or the Levellers or Diggers? Was Babuef and the Equals not socialist before it had a name? I would say that the Socialism that gave birth to Social democracy, Bolshevik Communism, New Left, the Third way etc is a modern phenomena i.e. a child of the Liberal struggle and victory over the feudal state and 'old corruption'.

Before 1830, 'Levelling' had merely contingent forms, no continuity of ideological tradition, it was the initial gut reaction, the social urge for relief from poverty and powerlessness. After 1830, Socialism increasingly became a evolving and independent movement of ideas. It exists only as modern capitalism began to revolutionise human life. It is born of the age of the railroads and steam and the pressure therein.

So

'An attempt to seek human emancipation from oppression of hierarchy and capital via collective action of those at the bottom of society and to transcend Liberal societies with a utopia of collective ownership and mass political action'

Let the unpacking commence

'An attempt to seek human emancipation....' - Emancipation is key to Socialism. Socialism conceives the current human condition as one bound by chains. The nature of these chains is variable and particular but the general concept holds. Thus Socialists seek a redemptive breaking of these bounds and to begin again human society without the weight of these restraints.

Here we meet the first fallacy, that human society has a binary oppressed/free nature and there will (inevitably) be a dawn when it switches. This is very bad sociology and meaningless anthropology. Human societies do not have oppression externally thrust upon them, rather they create their norms and structures. These are a negotiation with their past state, contingency and the agency of the individuals involved. As a Socialist, I have ideas around these impasse, but they are for elsewhere. I am seeking the contradictions, not solving them.

'...from oppression of hierarchy and capital...' - Here is the generalised nature of the 'chains'. The Socialist movement were born into a world where the struggle with the old estate society and Liberalism was still ongoing.

The Socialist conception of oppression has a dual nature. The first is that passed down by Liberal radicalism, that of a ruling elite of non-producers, a despotic and tyrannical parasitic group. This 'old corruption' of worthless Barons and Dukes represented a plain and blatant inequality in wealth buttressed by political power. Their wealth was 'excessive', 'amoral', glorified thievery. This and their power over the political system were seen as a repugnant imposition. Socialists took this critique and made it their own. Power via wealth was an a-social evil, it denied those without it their humanity. It is thus no surprise that Socialists were at the forefront of the battle over legal and political equality

Socialism then swung the charge back at Liberalism and revolutionary Capitalism. They accused these 'innovators' of replacing a hierarchy of birth and privilege with one of wealth and luck, where success was due to the ruthlessness that one might render your fellow man. Liberalism, by such a switch, was a ideology of hypocrisy, seeking a formal equality whilst desperately undermining it, again omitting the poor majority. Capital raised up a new power, one just a determined to extract the labour of the have-nots for as little as it could get away with.

It should be noted that over the nature of the capitalist revolution, there is a considerable divide in opinion within Socialism. The modern industrial society was considered the devil by some Owenites and the Mutualists, whilst the Saint Simonists and the Marxists were enraptured by its dynamism and power. This divide continues today (I, myself, am in awe of the industrial revolution)

I will also add that after the mid 19th century, the old radical conception of hierarchy had little to say beyond providing a vocabulary of demonologies to be cast at the 'assuming men' of the rising bourgeoisie and their nouveau riche usurpations. Where such autocracy remained, it placed Socialists with a uncomfortable choice. How, in the age of steam and steal and Vanderbilts and Standards Oils, could Tsars and Kaisers anointed by God and hordes of Boyers and Ritters survive. Some Marxists adapted their analysis to lengthen the historical process of Bourgeois-ification, to await the finality of a French style Liberal revolution (Mensheviks, Ebertian Reformists, Labour Socialism). Others saw an opportunity, where willed political action could force society past both feudal and capitalist stages. This essentially Nihilist outlook provided the left with a program of romantic heroism, social scission, action and making history. It burnt out humanism and left pity for a never never time, literally for the utopia.

Surely the deviances from a model are a chance to re-examine, find the limits and to think anew. For years, much of Socialist dogma has seemly failed to come to terms with the world today. Only by monkish retreat ala SPGB or by seeking bloody leaps could the gap be surmounted. Between the Ostrich and the Piranha....

'...via collective action...' - Socialists hold a basically Aristotelian view of man as an inherently political and social animal. Only by combination with others could change be both effective and virtuous. The manner of this collective or combination is again particular. It is argued that the Vanguard is collective, which is true in its widest and most meaningless sense. Most Socialists however would see collective action as internally democratic (again a contentious debated term) and externally united. Here we see the possibilities and all too common pitfalls/dangers of the interaction between a individual and the collective. An ethics of collectives awaits its author, methinks.

'...of those at the bottom of society...' - Socialism conceives of itself as a movement of the poor (how poor and what the word means is again a deeply contested point). The poor are denied political power by hierarchy and exploited and made robota by capital, thus the poor have no material interest in the chains on human society. Here, yet again, we swim in a sea of arguable terms. At base, the Socialist lies between idealism (the possibility and promise of change and the utopia to come) and materialism (the nature of poverty). The poor have been reluctant numerous times to push too hard for material benefits or at all for a new world. There is thus a conflict between the ideal and the material at the heart of Socialism that is rarely addressed. Further Socialism still has not be able to conceive convincingly of why the poor are so 'unreliable'.

Asking why this reluctance, when Socialists can only promise the moon and not a extra slice of bread is vital, no matter how painful.

The nature of class, which has numerous concoctions across the genus, also raised a series of dilemmas. Is the movement to be shorn of all of the not poor enoughs? Is the aim to merely put the poor in the place of the Barons and the 'Innovators', swapping tyranny for tyranny? Or is the concept of class the enemy itself, to be subsumed and made meaningless? This central problem has been addressed by a consensus within the tradition is lacking. Socialism might well be inherently schismatic.

And what to do, post class, with those who were one the powerful. Lampposts? Camps for their re-education and 'reforging'? Plain murder or systemic neglect and prejudice? Again space thus exists within the ideology for a manichean division, the terms of which have degenerated at times to 'sins of the father' or even race. Again, are the poor to mimic the fury of those 16th century Ritters flogging and torturing peasants or make calls for capitalist politics a capital crime in tribute to Robespierre and the Agrarian Law?

'...and to transcend Liberal societies...' - While Marx placed political change within a Hegelian dialectic mechanism, as mentioned, all Socialists sought to overcome the Liberal state of the 19th century. What was involved in that transcendence, what would by part of the coming synthesis and what would be discarded are again a source of either intense debate or icy silence. The lack of, heaven forbid, an ethical and constitutional program for a post Liberal world and how to get there created the space for the . The one binding hope, or myth if you wish, of the various canons of Socialism is that there is better than the Liberal society and state. There can be. Something more just and more humane. That dream is not just possibly but inevitable. It is up to Socialists to conjure it, to argue for it and to make it more humane and more just.

'...with a utopia...' - There is a defence for having a utopian vision. It means excepting that you will never, can never and should never get there. The journey must be contested every day but arrival at perfection is disappointing for the believer and an unending horror for even the uncommitted. Revolutionary change is still inches, tiny incremental steps that can be undone in minutes. Utopia is the secular version of heaven, albeit one we'll never get to for being good girls and boys. It is the hope that endures because it is unattainable. It should guide us without ever letting us assume it is around the corner. In cloying cliche, it is the journey, never the destination.

'....of collective ownership...' - Does collective mean state controlled, worker control, simple free controlled by part time weaver/philosopher/fishermen? Again, whilst collective ownership is a mainstay of the Socialist tenet, its specifics are so tantalisingly vague. What are the limits of ownership? Merely commanding heights or every penny, kopeck and smear of butter? How are things like investment, innovation, management, purchase to be solved. Like it or not, the cash nexus is remarkably efficient at purchase and investment. Innovation, especially with attending high capital costs cannot to be relied apon to spring fully formed from Garden sheds.

The state is, in the kindest of lights, an imperfect and unresponsive manager of anything. Whilst it excels at somethings, one can hardy place the command economies of the Bolshevik states as more efficient in the Fabian sense that those of capitalist societies, in either material or human terms. Socialism's conception of the state and of the very nature of ownership need to move way beyond the statism paradigms of Beverage, FDR, War communism and x year plans.

'...And mass political action...' - Here Socialism has to face the abuse of the term democracy by many of its thinkers and activists. Mass political action could well mean a boisterous level of community democracy, where citizens seek through debate and experimentation to bring change and solutions to their lives. Or it could mean a host of un-speaking extras in a Potemkin civil society, responding pavlov-like to the glorious announcements of the great leader, or the dictates of the dialecticians, extras in their own lives and societies, without even an equity wage to thank them. Such disgusting treatment to the populace, as mass tools for a mass age, as fodder to be feed into the ongoing cogs of whatever transformation is 'progressive' is still mass political action. And it is the wider cancer of a Socialist state with the humanity boiled out of it. Our ideology promises better and should be able to deliver.

It is time for Socialists to stop dreaming or doing for the sake of doing and romantic days on the barricades.

Again, this is discursive, comments welcome and as you can probably tell from the rambling tone, needed. Next, I'll chance my arm at Liberalism

No, No, No.....My sky pixie is much better than yours

One of the standards in debates over religion and Islam in particular is the connection between dogma and the actions of the acolytes. If religion A extols 'bad things' and then acolytes of A do 'bad things', the relationship is clear enough. Thus the brutally sectarian verses in the Koran are thus intrinsically linked to suicide bombers on London buses or Taliban theocrats throwing acid into the face of Afghan school girls.

Conversely, this argument holds, if religion B extols 'good things' and limits 'bad things' to acts of the deity themselves or via proxy, when acolytes of B who do bad things are in schism or heretical. Thus A is irredeemably foul and B is the source of light in the world.

This is bullshit

I have read this argument trotted out by Christians and especially Catholics to separate their delusion of a great peeping tom in the sky from that of Muslims. Their prophet is not only a great clean cut all round good guy, but the SON OF GOD too. Mohammad was a genocidal paedo-bandit instead and could not possibly have been given any divine wisdom at all, ever. So there.....

Thus their delusion is clean and all suited to the modern world and Islam is inevitably backwards. Again this is bullshit

But what Christians who enter into this argument and their agnostic kulkur loving fellow travellers forget is this. The link between dogma and action is not so reductionist and that 'actual existing' Christianity, by their slight of hand, was for virtual all of its history, heretical.

The butchery of dissenting sects or rivals for the mantle of Imperial monopoly might well have been at odds with the teachings of Christ, but without them, would there be a christian faith? The complicity with wealth and power and the bitter sweet sops to slaves and the hungry might made a mockery of the Messiah's fetish for poverty, but how else might the 'word' be spread. Christianity as a phenomena was spread as much by its willingness to sanctify the politik and meet with elites on their terms as any intrinsic 'transcendence' in its doctrines. And all this compromise was still to be regarded as following that simple carpenter from Galilee

Did the Knights Orders realise their heretical nature as they cleaved infidel flesh from unbelieving bone? Did Inquisitors understand they were not actual Christians as they burn away Jewish sins and trespasses? Did Luther comprehend that he was in schism from Christ when he called for God's vengeance and subsequent agony to fall on humble peasant rebels? Of course not. They believed, they interpreted and they acted. The centre of this was their own agency and the social situation in which they inflicted pain for the Lord. Doctrine gave them enough clauses and leeway to carry out what they considered was right.

It was pressure from a changed society, from the laity and an increasing secularised world that forced, and it was forced, bitching and whining, Christianity to stop excusing such brutality. Still, we continue to find plenty of examples where 'heretics' can hack away for the light of the world. Codreanu or Miroslav Filipović believed they were doing God's work, so did Joseph Kony or Paul Jennings Hill, just as much as al-Zawahiri or Ismail Haniyeh believe they are doing that of Allah. Weather or not they are doctrinally true to their creed is immaterial, literally. It is to engage in the respective merits of delusions. It is to excuse them the responsibility. It is the theological equivalence of ' I was only following orders', weather or not that is true is beside the point and a mockery of meaningful justice.

If the outcome of religion A and B is the same, mass inhumanity at times of social stress, sandwiched between periods of sanctified bigotry, then the fairy tales themselves are a matter for footnotes. If religion B suddenly finds it cannot get away with such outrages due to outside conditions and pressures and cleans up its act, returns to the narrative, redefines itself a bit, then well done. But forgive me if i don't forget what it took to get it here, that this fairy tale still can kill and that one cannot claim moral superiority over such begrudging transformation.

The Republic does Weber - An ideal type for....Libertarianism

'Until and unless you discover that money is the root of all good, you ask for your own destruction. When money ceases to become the means by which men deal with one another, then men become the tools of other men. Blood, whips and guns or dollars. Take your pick' Ayn Rand

When I began this blog, I had an idea for an ongoing series of posts looking at political ideologies and trying to present speculative and discursive ideal types for each of them. I am a fan of the ideal type, considering its heuristic use and its conciseness. And given the contested nature of the terminology of politics, I believe that giving clear but reflective meanings to such terms allow debate to move on. Thus we can see the continuities of such ideas over history and thus their essence and just as importantly, see the breaks, the changes, the evolution of ideas.

Part 1 on Conservatism to be found here
http://thesocialrepublic.blogspot.com/2008/07/conservatism-mit-added-weber.html

Whilst in fallen, decadent Old Europe, loud and proud Libertarianism is now a minority pastime, east of the Elbe and west of the Azores, this ideology of maximum liberty is a current and vibrant strand of political thought. One might class it as true or classic Liberalism updated for 21st century Richmond, VA. or Gdansk or some sub set of the New right or Conservatism in general or even anarchism in pin stripe. I certainly would not argue that Libertarianism (or to save my ash speckled keyboard, LB) is unconnected to these other bodies of thought. Rather, LB has become self contained, whilst remaining inter-connected with older and more established ideas. It is a synthesis, like much of 20th century political schemas, conjoining bits and pieces and creating a new logic, narrative and coda from the fragments.

Here goes:-

'A utopian attempt to revolutionise society and mankind itself by investing self interest with cultural particular virtue and removing any barriers on either macro or micro scale to the pursuit of that interest and replacing social interaction with litigation. This, paradoxically, recreates a caricature like gemienschaft of early Liberal societies'

'A Utopian attempt' - LBs seek a utopia albeit one dressed up as the natural state of things. Theirs, as will be mentioned at greater length later, is a world that harks back to a time were state was minimal. Yet this is utopian for their past idyll was a place were the state was increasingly required to intervene and grow. The great period of British Liberalism, the 1850-60s, when Laissez Faire was doctrinal, the state was bigger and more invasive that it had been ever before. Calls to regulate weights and measures, prisons, the behaviour of the poor, the nature of local politics, public carnivals and norms fell on the state. This was no halcyon steady state. In post civil war America, during its great period of breakneck industrialisation, of maximum liberty, a large part of the nation was under military occupation and nationalistic public ritual was introduced en masse from above. If LB claims, as it does, that post some golden age the state suddenly became malignant, it is utopia to believe that via return similar advances of their nemesis might not arise again. If the market can fix almost anything, why did it not the first time round? Why was the state needed at all?

'....to revolutionise society....' - Lest we forget, a society as complex and messy as ours must be revolutionised to become one driven solely by rational self interest. Institutions that do so, such as PLCs, have been labeled by better men that I as systemically sociopathic. Sociopathic is a fairly good definition of most revolutionary movements. Indeed one might call it their common characteristic.

'...and mankind itself....' - If society has to change and become an arena of pure and rational self interest, then its componants need to as well. Mankind is ill suited to such ruthless game theory, being too sloppy, lazy, fat, too kindly to sloth and sob stories. Mankind must be steeled, made hardy and hard. To master a LB modernity, LB man and woman mustact like that ruthless rational actor, no flabby softness.

'...by investing self interest with culturally particular virtue....' - Libertarians are united by the partiality of their individual version of liberties. Some seek an atheistic paradise, others a new realm of piety, some seek an ethnic inclusiveness or soft soaped racism, whilst other maintain a hankering for institutions directly born out of the state as some precious exception. Localism too is a common lens through which to consider liberty. Few have the strength of conviction in holy liberty to leave these pre-conditions or prejudices aside. It is one of the major differences between LB and anarcho-capitalism, that celebration of a Hobbesian freedom. LB seek liberty as a route towards their preconceived utopias, one that must be managed to ensure that there is no diversions.

'...removing any barriers on either macro or micro scale to the pursuit of that interest and replacing social interaction with litigation...' - LBs makes out the state or a coy mythical version of it, is the source of all and every evil. Not only that. Human foibles that get in the way of maximising liberty must be eradicated too, either in the journey to liberty of in the process of dog eat dog.There is a telling contradiction here as well. Having abandoned coercion via regulation and a variable degree of criminal law, the social guarantee against pure anarchy becomes the flaming sword of litigation.

Every social interaction is defined by the possibility of legal action. Be it residents suing the local paper mill over pollution or impurities in your tomato sauce or employers swindling you on your wages, all can only be rectified by legal means. No a priori regulation and thus no coercive agency as a short cut, no arbiting body. No, each case must start from basics, mus be personally actioned from papers to judgement. The coercive state thus is replaced by a truly vast legal frameworks of 24 hour courts which have to shape every single human action time and again. Social life ceases to exist ambiently but must be acted out on the courtroom floor. This legalistic extremism would give birth to a monstrous invasive apparatus, one where money and thus legal expertise is central.

Some LBs have realised this impasse and seek a replacement form of social mediation and arbitration, but then they are on a course out of LB altogether. Rather then embrace the Randian solution of money as the key to human interaction or pure anarchy, the litigation mania allows LBs to protect their virtuous 'no-place' from the pure uncertaincy of hobbesian chaos

'This, paradoxically, recreates the caricature like gemienschaft of early Liberal societies....' - Here the contradictions, the partial prejudices and the inevitable legal leviathan, and the rose tinted glasses quack history of LB come together. They seek a past that never existed. Further the societies that this myth is based swiftly moved away from the tenets of their creed. They seek no understanding of why the ideal of Manchesterismus begat the Nation state economy, with welfare, regulation of trade and central government and why it did so willingly. They seek a static pastishe of a society that was by its very nature hurtling towards their bete noire with open arms

Ta, And please discuss, disagree, call me a liar and a cad etc.

Next time, the Big Red, Socialism