Wednesday, December 4, 2019

Cui bono?

Capitalism vs. socialism framework is not very useful because it obscures more than it explains. It focuses on salient but superficial differences while ignoring far reaching similarities. It is like the Anglican Church vs. Catholic Church clash. It is a quarrel who is the boss – the hereditary monarch of England vs. the guy elected by the College of Cardinals. Beyond that, it is hard to tell the difference between the two. Likewise, the capitalism vs. socialism debate focused on who the boss is – the government in London or Washington vs. the government in Moscow or Beijing while ignoring far reaching similarities of economic institutions.
The core economic institution shared by all modern countries is bureaucracy. Max Weber defined bureaucracy as a form of hierarchical organization in which formal rational rules set the organizations’ structure or lines of authority, the area of activity or goals, division of labor and the roles and qualification requirements of individuals engaged in organization’s activities. “Formal” means that the rules are written and fixed, rather than being made ad hoc by individuals. “Rational” means that the rules are optimized to achieve organization’s objectives in the most efficient way.
While early forms of bureaucracy appeared in ancient Egypt, Rome and China, bureaucracy became the dominant organizational form of government and economy only recently, with the advent of industrialization. Key factors responsible for the growth of bureaucracy were the advances in science and technology, which allowed more effective communication and transportation systems. As bureaucratic organization expanded to the economy, it allowed more efficient production and distribution of resources, which in turn unleashed industrial revolution that led to even greater advances in science and technology.
Indeed, the history of modernization and industrialization is the history of bureaucratization, the most effective, if not efficient, organizational from created by humankind. There is no viable alternative to bureaucracy – insufficient bureaucratization of the economy invariably means economic backwardness and under-development. What is popularly perceived as “communism” in countries like Russia or China was in fact a program of rapid bureaucratization of backward rural economies. In practical terms, governments of these countries were creating the same forms of economic organization as those found in the more developed countries of Western Europe and the United States – the bureaucratic corporation. Political rhetoric, by contrast, served similar purpose as the anti-papist rhetoric of the Church of England – to exaggerate differences and establish the legitimacy of the new bosses (the King of England, the government in Moscow or Beijing) and delegitimize the old bosses (the Pope and the government in London or Washington).
Although there has never been an alternative to bureaucracy, there are alternative versions of bureaucratic governance. While bureaucracies are inherently hierarchical and cannot be otherwise without ceasing to be bureaucracies, they differ in their goals and operational rules. Those goals can be broad, serving an entire population, or narrow, serving a very small group of people. The operational rules can concentrate decision-making authority at the top of the organizational hierarchy or distribute it throughout that hierarchy.
The bone of contention is not, and has never been, bureaucracy vs. supposedly alternative to bureaucracy forms of economic organization, as no such viable forms exist, anarchists and libertarians notwithstanding. The bone of contention is about the goals and leadership of bureaucracy, which boils down to the question cui bono? The few or the many?

Friday, November 29, 2019

Donald the Terrible Show


Liberals are clueless about Trump and they will likely wake up with their hand in a chamber pot on November 5, 2020.  They see Trump as a fanatical right winger, Hitler incarnate, and believe that this will drive voters to a reasonable centrist technocrat, like Biden, Buttigieg or even Warren.  My bet is that Trump will win in 2020 unless liberal Democrats do the unthinkable – embrace Bernie Sanders as their presidential candidate.

I make this bet not because I am a strong Bernie’s supporter who is attracted to his program and makes regular $27 contributions to his campaign.  In fact, I have no illusions that his signature initiatives, M4A and GND, will be signed into law in the foreseeable future.  I even doubt whether M4A and GND are what most Americans really want.  But this is precisely why I believe that only Bernie has a real chance of beating Trump in 2020. 

If this sounds absurd to liberal pundits and their audiences, it is because they are looking at Trump through a wrong set of lenses.  Theirs are the lenses of a conventional political popularity contest, whose goal is to attract voters by appealing to their lowest common denominator, or views that are shared by most and detested by fewest. Ideas like patriotism, motherhood, professionalism, folksiness, and conventional likeability.  In the view projected by these lenses, the most liked and least detested candidate wins.  Hence the constant polling trying to gauge how candidates score on likeability scales.

Pondering whether such lenses are useful for predicting winners of elections is generally a wild goose chase, because such predictions are either self-fulfilling prophecies or tautologies.  Pundits have no way of knowing who the public likes or dislikes.  They can either turn their opinions on that matter into self-fulfilling prophecies by bamboozling the public into liking or disliking candidates through media appeals, or into a tautology – a candidate who won must have been the one who was most liked and least disliked.  Such views are true by definition or convention, and it is nearly impossible to disprove them.

The 2016 provided a unique opportunity to disprove this conventional wisdom, because the most disliked candidate, Donald Trump, won the election instead of losing it, as pundits said he would.  To a critical thinker, this should be a sign that conventional wisdom is either altogether wrong or at least does not apply to Trump.  Yet the liberal pundits missed that clue by a mile and doubled down on the conventional wisdom.

I realized that Trump is a different kind of a player than a conventional American politician during his first debate with Hillary Clinton.  “Debate” is a misnomer here.  These events are theatrical spectacles in which the performers adhere to strictly scripted roles projecting ΓΌber-conventional images of a successful American politician – patriotic, folksy, honest, good-natured, poised, fair, quick witted but not too brainy, and physically fit. Trump ostensibly broke this character – he was physically menacing, threatening, crafty, cunning, mean, arrogant and very un-gentleman like.  Despite the punditry almost unanimously proclaiming him a “loser” I realized that this guy was playing a very different game, one appealing not to pundits but directly to the segment of the public that his “most qualified ever” opponent labeled “deplorables” in her infinite wisdom.  And since pundits are few and deplorables are many, I thought it was Trump who actually won that debate. 

This connection between Trump’s “debate” role and the intended audience was prompted by a video clip I saw earlier on the Facebook, showing Trump treacherously sucker-punching from behind his opponent at a professional wrestling show.  The obvious intention of the clip was to discredit Trump, portray him as an unrefined brute and a clown unfit for the dignified role of the President of the United States.  It was an obvious smear effort launched by Trump’s opponents, akin to many such campaigns launched by Republican operatives against Democratic candidates (Willie Horton, Gary Hart on Monkey Business, Swift Boat Captains, etc.).  But why would Trump willingly embrace such ostensibly unfavorable character himself during the “debate?”

Like most members of the American literati class, I do not watch professional wrestling shows.  My knowledge of the genre comes mainly from my interest in cognitive sociology, specifically the seminal book by French literary theorist Roland Barthes “Mythologies” published in 1957, in which he explores social aspects of communication.  The central concept of Barthes’ analysis is “myth” or a communicative device that consists of two layers of meaning, the concrete meaning grounded in the sensual perception of physical attributes of objects, and abstract meaning grounded in the perception of social significance of that object.  For example, an article of clothing is perceived at the first, concrete, level as an object with various, physical attributes, such shape, color, pattern, etc. On the second, abstract, level the same garment also symbolizes the “dress code” i.e. social circumstance and social status of the person who wears it.  In a well-constructed myth, the physical attributes of the object embody the abstract social meaning – the very shape, color and pattern of the garment clearly signal the social occasion and the status of the person who wears it, eg. blue collar vs. white collar worker, guests vs. servers or ushers, physicians vs. medics, vs. patients, business professional vs. service worker etc.

One of the popular myth systems explored by Barthes was wrestling, known as “professional wrestling” in the US.  Professional wrestling is a spectacle of staged fights between two cartoonish characters representing moral virtues of good and evil.  The key to a successful wrestling spectacle is that the physical features and gestures of the actors must clearly and unambiguously embody the moral virtue they play. Thus, to quote Barthes (p.17):
“[…] each physical type expresses to excel the part which has been assigned to the contestant. Tahuvin, a fifty year old with an obese and sagging body, whose type of asexual hideousness always inspires feminine nickname, displays in his flesh the characters of baseness, for his part is to represent what, in the classical concept of salaud, the ‘bastard’ (the key concept of any wrestling match), appears as organically repugnant. The nausea voluntarily provoked by Thauvin shows therefore a very extended use of sign: not only is ugliness used here in order to signify baseness, but I addition ugliness is wholly gathered into a particularly repulsive quality of matter […].
It is therefore in the body of the wrestler that we find the first key to the contest.  I know from the start that all Thauvin’s actions, his treacheries, cruelties, acts of cowardice, will not fail to measure up to the first image of ignobility he gave me; I can trust him to carry out intelligently and to the last detail all the gestures of a kind of amorphous baseness, and thus fill to the brim the image of the most repugnant bastard there is: the bastard –octopus.  Wrestlers therefore have a physique peremptory as those of the characters of the Commedia dell’ Arte, who display in advance, in their costumes and attitudes, the future contents of their parts, just as Pantaloon can never be anything but a ridiculous cuckold, harlequin an astute servant and the Doctor a stupid pedant, the same way Thauvin will never be anything but an ignoble traitor […]”
After watching the video clip posted on Facebook by his detractors, and watching his performance in his “debate” with Clinton, it dawned on me that Trump plays a very different character than one that the pundit class expects of a conventional politician – the  “bastard” character from a professional wrestling show instead of one of the “most electable” American politician.  It is rather obvious for anyone willing to open his eyes and see that no person, no matter how tone deaf, can inadvertently commit so many obvious blunders as Trump did during his presidential campaign.  There must be a method to this madness, and this method is turning a trite and boring spectacle of staged presidential “debates” into a professional wrestling show.  I am of course not the only one who made this observation.  Matt Taibbi devotes an entire chapter of his book “Hate, Inc.” to draw an analogy between Trump’s behavior and professional wrestling shows.

However, most of the liberal echo chamber missed this rather obvious conclusion by a mile.  They still think that it is the most electable American politician show and double down on bombarding the public with a barrage of examples how horrible a character Trump is.  The Democratic party establishment, never a thought leader and always sheepishly following conventional wisdom, followed the suit by starting impeachment proceeding against Trump for alleged treason, knowing darn well that the chances of him being actually removed from office are smaller than passing a M4A law. 

All those “character assassination” attempts play right into the role of Trump playing the “bastard” in a professional wrestling show.  Far from hurting Trump, they reinforce public perceptions that Trump is well in character of the “bastard” and will reward him for good performance with four more years in office.  On the surface, this sounds paradoxical.  Why would the audience reward a vile and despised character? Do not they expect the good guy beating the bad guy at the end?

They do, but only if the good guy enters the stage and joins the fray.  So far, however, no good guy is on the stage.  The audience rooted for Trump in 2016 because he was the bastard beating up even bigger villains, “Crooked Hillary” and Washington “swamp critters.”  They did it, because they had nothing to lose, but they could score a symbolic victory against those who, in their view, spat in their faces for too long – the political establishment. American politics ceased to have any meaningful relationship to the lives of ordinary people long time ago and instead became a theatrical spectacle and a farce of democracy.  It is not that political decisions do not affect lives of ordinary people, but that they are handed down by technocratic elites as done deals and, in the words of the German finance minister Wolfgang Schaeuble, ‘elections change nothing.’  In the United States, elections, especially national elections, became a trite and boring theatrical spectacle of “electability.”  Sending a villain from a professional wrestling show to Washington was the American public’s way of throwing rotten tomatoes at bad actors in a bad show.  It is not that it would change anything, but seeing the despised critters run at least offered the spectators a sense of schadenfreude.

Trump has not broken the bastard character while in office.  This is particularly evident in his treatment of immigration.  The Obama administration implemented massive deportations program that reported nearly 3 million people, earning Obama the title “The deporter in chief.”  Trump’s administration deported far fewer people in total and on a per year basis. .  However, while the Obama administration deported people quietly, without much publicity, Trump brought deportations to the center of public attention, which flooded the media with images of countless adults and children suffering in the US custody.

Why would the president deliberately bring such negative publicity to his administration?  A president concerned with maintaining a “nice guy” image, like Obama, certainly would not, but Trump plays the role of the bastard from a professional wrestling spectacle, and public inflicting of suffering is in character.  Here is Roland Barthes again (p. 19)
“What is thus displayed for the public is the great spectacle of Suffering, Defeat, and Justice.  Wrestling presents man’s suffering with all the amplification of tragic masks.  The wrestler who suffers in a hold which is reputedly cruel (an arm-lock, a twisted leg) offers an excessive portrayal of Suffering; like a primitive Pieta, he exhibits for all to see his face, exaggeratedly contorted by intolerable affliction {…} This is why all the actions which produce suffering are particularly spectacular {…} Suffering which appeared without intelligible cause would not be understood {…} suffering appears as inflicted with emphasis and conviction, for everyone must not only see that the man suffers, but also and above all understand why he suffers.  What wrestlers call a hold, that is, any figure which allows one to immobilize the adversary indefinitely and to have him at one’s mercy, has precisely the function of preparing in a conventional, therefore intelligible, fashion the spectacle of suffering, of methodically establishing the conditions of suffering.  The inertia of the vanquished allows the (temporary) victor to settle in his cruelty and to convey to the public this terrifying slowness of the torturer who is certain about the outcome of his actions […]”
That this is a spectacle for public consumption becomes evident when we juxtapose it with Trump’s decision to call off air strikes on Iranian radar facilities in retaliation for drowning an American drone.  The justification Trump gave for his decision was excessive number casualties such attack would produce.  This shows Trump willingness to orchestrate a show of pain and suffering, but backing off actions actually inflicting new pain and suffering. 

This, of course does not imply that the suffering of people detained and deported is not real, but that such suffering is merely a byproduct of the normal functioning of the American state and its cherished institutions rather than a sadistic act of the president or other government officials.  America incarcerates, detains and deports more people than only other country in the world and created a vast prison-industrial complex to perform this task thoroughly and efficiently.  This process is designed to punish, that is, inflict suffering on the incarcerated persons, but by extension, on their families and communities.  No government official, including the President, can alleviate this suffering without dismantling the institutional apparatus that produces this suffering.  All he can do is to either cover this suffering up or expose it to public view.  By contrast, ordering a military strike rests solely within the purview of presidential discretion, so the suffering such an action may produce hinges on presidential fiat.  Trump showed no hesitation to publicly reveal suffering already inflicted by the American carceral state, but stopped short of actually inflicting new suffering by the means of discretionary military action.

This apparent paradox reveals the true nature of Trump’s presidency – it is all about a spectacle portraying him as the meanest ass-kicking bastard in town, rather than about the business of governing.  He is an entertainer, a mountebank, a con artist if you will, not a politician in any conventional sense, let alone an incarnation of Hitler. Here is Roland Barthes (p.20):
“But here again, only the image is involved in the game, and the spectator does not wish for the actual suffering of the contestant; he only enjoys the perfection of an iconography.  It is not true that wrestling is a sadistic spectacle: it is only an intelligible spectacle.”
Trump perfected the mean ass-kicking bastard role in his television shows and expertly plays it in the circus spectacle that has become of the American presidential elections.  It is all spectacle because ‘elections change nothing’, but it is a very different kind of spectacle than that delivered by the American political establishment.  Instead of a spectacle in which cartoonish characters mull bromides signaling their “likeability” and “electability”, Trump’s spectacle is the one in which the prize goes to the meanest ass-kicking bastard in town.

Without doubt, the professional managerial class and media pundits are disgusted with Trump’s spectacle and are anxious to return to business as usual: technocrats handing down political decisions benefiting corporations, and elections limited to bromide slogans parroted by hand-picked by political party bosses politicians.  However, the managed classes, the “deplorables” seem to enjoy the Trumps’ spectacle, if only to see the pundit class and the “liberal elite” royally pissed.  This is what the American journalist Hunter S. Thompson called politics of total retribution of people who have been relegated to the sewers of society and whose only chance of getting respect is to poop on the party of the elites.  To quote SusanMcWilliams (The Nation, December 15, 2016)
“rather than gracefully accepting their place as losers in an increasingly technical, intellectual, global, inclusive, progressive American society, [they] stuck up their fingers at the whole enterprise. If you can’t win, you can at least scare the bejeesus out of the guy wearing the medal. You might not beat him, but you can make him pay attention to you. You can haunt him, make him worry that you’re going to steal into his daughter’s bedroom in the darkest night and have your way with her—and that she might actually like it.”
The “bastard in the White House” game is sticking up the middle finger at the Washington establishment and it is likely to continue into 2020.  The only way to beat that bastard is to play the same game he is playing, the professional wrestling spectacle, and remain true to its character.  Who among the Democratic prospects will best play this role without breaking the character?

It is hard to imagine wonky Buttigieg playing the role of a mean badass taking on Trump. He may impress limousine liberals and NPR types, but he has zero appeal to the minorities and the left behind managed classes, especially those enjoying Trump’s spectacle.  Neither does speaking on both sides of his mouth Joe Biden who promises to cut deals with the other team behind your back but cannot refrain from tripping over his own shoelaces in public appearances.  Elizabeth Warren may have a plan for everything, but the clout to change nothing, which poorly suits her for the hero role in the presidential wrestling spectacle.  Like Buttigieg, she may impress policy wonks and professional managerial classes, but not the managed classes whose support is essential for winning the election.
 
The only candidate who may successfully take on the meanest ass-kicking bastard inside the beltway is Bernie Sanders. Unlike most Democratic Party apparatchiks, Sanders is a straight shooting never wavering character from the myth of politics as it ought to be (but never was). His promise to beat the crap out of billionaires who stole or democracy and bring back good things to life, M4A, free college and good union jobs, is well suited for the genre.  It promises a titanic struggle against evil forces, and rewards when the struggle is over.  The rewards are akin to the 70 virgins awaiting jihadists in heaven, enticing but elusive, so each warrior can fill that promise in with details of his desire. 

And this is precisely Sanders’ strength.  He promises a quest, not a laundry list of “achievable” goals cooked up by political consultants and DNC hacks.  Unlike Warren’s plans, whose details provide ammunition to the detractors to undermine them, Sanders’ proposal can only be accepted or rejected as a whole, thus further signaling the inevitability of the titanic battle that it promises.  Either way, Sanders’ message is reinforced and made even more appealing to the mobs of spectators enjoying the Trump’s show. This kind of spectacle may be repulsive to the professional managerial class, but they better hold their refined noses and embrace it or else they will wake up to four more years of Trumps’ meanest bastard in the beltway show.

Monday, April 29, 2019

The myth of higher education


Imagine going to a doctor’s office and the receptionist telling you “The doctor cannot see you until you pass a test showing that you are in good health.”  It is of course absurd on its face, but like with most obvious things, it is worth pointing out why.  It is absurd because it is a vicious circle or “catch 22” –reasoning taking the form “to have A you must have B, but you cannot have B without having A.”

Yet, the absurdity of this vicious circle fallacy all but disappears when it comes to education.  You cannot be admitted to a university unless you pass a test showing that you have “scholastic aptitude” which in plain English means that you are already educated.  That college entrance exams are not seen as a “catch 22” absurdity can mean only one thing –that the role of universities is to provide not education but something else that requires education.  That “something” is credentials or a glorified letter of recommendation saying that the bearer is worth admitting to a club that excludes mot other people.

The idea that the main social function of universities is dispensation of credentials on which social inequalities are built is, of course, not new.  It has been well documented in research (see for example Randall Collins, “The Credential Society: An Historical Sociology of Education and Stratification”).  Less clear is the idea that colleges do not provide education, but rather use it as a material to create their final product – credentials- for which they take credit and charge a hefty price.
To use the medical analogy again, the role of the school is not that of a doctor but that of a midwife.  The role of the doctor is to take a patient who lost his natural state – health – and return him to that natural state.  By contrast, the role of the midwife is to merely assist what she can already do naturally – give birth.  In fact, if the patient could not give birth naturally, this situation would call for a doctor rather than a midwife. 

Likewise, universities merely assist people who have “scholastic aptitude,” that is, who are already educated in finding a path that leads them to socially prestigious or desirable jobs.  To perform this function, they need to make sure that their students already have education, because they need it but they cannot create it themselves, just like midwives cannot bring sick patients back to health.  This is also what fundamentally sets apart universities and similar institutions of “higher” education, from primary and secondary educational institutions, which actually help their students to acquire education rather than leeching on the education they already have to sell their products.  This is evidenced, among other, by the fact that primary and secondary education institutions do not require “aptitude” tests as an admission requirement, like most universities do. 
Virtually all people, save those with congenital brain defects, are naturally born with a “scholastic aptitude” that is, the capacity to learn, examine facts, communicate, and think.  This capacity is first manifested by learning a language, by far, the most complex and intricate system of thought invented by humans.  Learning a language is by far the biggest and most fundamental human task without which no further education would be possible.  Yet virtually all people accomplish this task mostly on their own, without help from any “educational institutions,” at least initially.  However, the learning of a language is a very lengthy process that is contingent on the development of cognitive capacities that for humans take about 16 years. 

This is where the primary and secondary educational institutions fit in.  Human language is an extensive and complex creation.  Acquisition of it requires constant practice and by that virtue, a lot of time and a fair amount of help from fellow humans.  Here is where the primary and secondary educational institutions come in.  Their role is to act as a midwife in the language acquisition process.  They fulfill that role by setting aside a block of time dedicated primarily for practicing cognitive tasks necessary for language acquisition, by creating a safe space that shelters the students from outside interruptions, and by providing role models (teachers) for students to emulate. 
The distinction between primary and secondary institutions in this context is mostly arbitrary, rooted in institutional administration and competition that schools faces with societal demands for child labor.  Historically, primary institutions were for all children while secondary institutions only for those children who did not face urgent demand for their labor.  But form a cognitive point of view the services provided by both types of schools were closely tied to the development of cognitive capacities in the human child, which reached the full potential in the late adolescence.  The service these institutions provide aim at aiding a natural development process with something that learners may not be able to get on their own – opportunity and safe and enriching environment.  This is why these institutions generally eschew any “admission tests” and rely mainly on diagnostic testing aiming potential deficiencies in acquiring necessary skills.  

Any cognitive differences that emerge during this process are due largely to external circumstances that affect the student learning.  This predominantly takes the form of parental influence that makes all the difference in the world – sometimes by providing nurturing learning environment, but by far more often, by royally screwing up children in one way or another, e.g. by abandon and neglect or by turning them into hypercompetitive psychopaths.  Parents are often child’s worst enemy as far education is concerned. Social environment is another factor.  If most people around you are teachers, doctors or engineers you want to learn to be like them.  If otoh most are petty crooks, hookers and drug dealers, you do not need any education be one of those.

That changes rather dramatically in the tertiary educational institutions aka universities.  Unlike other types of schools, universities provide services to adults who, form a biological point of view, have fully formed cognitive capacities.  Therefore, the type of education these institutions provide serve a rather different function – the acquisition of highly specialized jargon used by esoteric groups and cults.  Initially, universities served organized religion by training its clergy in in the arcane sophistries of theological speculation.  Later, they became finishing schools for the children of aristocracy and wealthy businessmen, teaching them proper manners and forms of talk before they assumed the role of managing their family estates. 

However, in the 19th century that role changed and universities were expected to educate their students in the arcana of scientific knowledge.  This change came with the emergence of professions, such as medicine or engineering, whose claim to jurisdiction over certain types of economic activity rested on possessing a certain type of scientific knowledge.  What set the professional apart from the medieval guilds was that skills possessed by guild members were transmitted from other members of that guild, and thus were specific to that guild, whereas knowledge claimed by the professions was universal and independent of profession membership (cf. Andrew Abbott, “The System of Professions”).  While the guild system of knowledge transmission was very effective in maintaining the guild monopoly for that knowledge, it also had inherently limited capacity of transmitting that knowledge to areas beyond the guild control.  This was a fatal weakness in the area of capitalist expansion to wide geographical areas.  The universal knowledge claimed by the professions, by contrast, was easily transferable across different areas, but to be truly universal, this knowledge had to be produced outside the system of professions.

In this context, universities assumed the role of transmission and production of such scientific role.  In the United States, this new function was introduced by the Johns Hopkins University in 1876 that, unlike the New England finishing schools for business aristocracy and clergy, integrated education and scientific research based on the German model.  But this model was quickly adopted by other institutions, as the demand for scientific knowledge fueled by the development of professions grew.  Alas, the university produced scientific knowledge faced one problem from the professional practice point of view.   It was universal, and thus open the entry to the professions to anyone who possessed it.  The professions initially solved this problem by following the guild example, by creating a credential system, administered by professional associations and later by the state, as a requirement for practicing a profession.

Universities developed their own credentialing system as well, in form of admission tests.  The problem they faced in this task was that those tests could not simply test general knowledge, because they would not sufficiently discriminate between those select few deemed worthy admitting to an exclusive club, and the rest who could also master the required general knowledge.  This problem was solved by the introduction of “scholastic aptitude” tests.  The ingenuity or perhaps turpitude of that solution was that while on surface it appeared to be an objective test of knowledge and cognitive skills, it reality it was anything but that.  To perform its discriminatory function, the “scholastic aptitude” had to produce the so-called “curve” (aka the “normal distribution” or “Bell curve”) in which the vast majority of test takes occupy the central part of the curve, and a small number of takers are in the either end of that curve.  Those test takers on the “high” end of the curve are deemed to have the “right scholastic aptitude” that makes them eligible for admission to a club from which everyone else is excluded. 

This is the genius part of this solution.  The turpitude part, like in sausage, lies in how this this thing is made.  The test is constructed in such a way that it must always produce a “curve” – if it does not – it is modified until it does.  In practice this means that the test consist of a relatively easy questions that most takers can answer, which is necessary to produce the middle part of the curve, it also introduces artificial stress in the form of short and rigidly controlled timing that makes answering all questions very difficult.  Those who can cope with this artificial stress can answer more questions and thus fall on the “high” end of the curve.  However, this is contingent on two factors – practice and knowing a few tricks and shortcuts how to answer certain questions without actually solving their underlying problems –which in turn require a lot of preparation, for which the test takers have to pay.  A lot.  

However, the “scholastic aptitude” test is not the only scam that universities practice.  A much bigger scam is what is going on for the four or so years after the select few have been admitted to these exclusive clubs.  The education these institutions provide, and for which they charge $50k or so dollars per year, can be easily acquired by most adults at evening classes at local community colleges or on line at a small fraction of the college tuition.  Most of what is going on those campuses are “finishing school activities” – learning proper manners and forms of speech and getting the right social connections.  That is all that there is to this so called “higher education.” 

In a nutshell, the main function of universities in modern society is reproduction and legitimation of social inequality.  While these institutions provide some education, in that role they act more like a midwife by helping students to educate themselves.  The prices they charge for this service, at least in the US, are an outright scam.  So if someone is trying to bribe a wrong person to get admitted to this fraudulent system, this is really trying to beat the system at its own game, by selling shit to a shyster.

Friday, October 5, 2018

What is democratic socialism?





1. A phoenix and its ashes

Democratic socialism arises like a phoenix from the ashes of its predecessor.  After the downfall of the Soviet bloc and pompous proclamations of the “end of history” and “no alternative” to capitalism, the notion of democratic socialism – perceived as the antidote to the excesses of capitalism - again starts gaining popularity.  This is evidenced by opinion polls as well as swelling membership in Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) – an organization whose central mission entails spreading socialist ideology in the country considered to be the bastion of unbridled capitalism.

As the phrase “democratic socialism” again entered the political discourse in the US, this raises the question what is democratic socialism anyway?  Indeed, this is the question that people frequently ask DSA activists  Answering this question is muddied by the fact that this newly reborn socialist phoenix is often associated with the ashes of its predecessor – socialism of the Soviet bloc countries.  How is “democratic socialism” different from the Soviet version of socialism which, as it is commonly believed, was a quite nasty authoritarian and inefficient system that collapsed under its own weight?

While the legacy of the soviet system is still being debated, the reality is that none of the Soviet bloc countries were socialist even by their own admission.  Socialism was merely a goal that, according to the official state propaganda, these countries were supposed achieve in some unspecified future, but at the current historical juncture they implemented the so-called “dictatorship of the proletariat” – or consolidation of all political power in the political party ostensibly representing the proletariat.  The official justification of the dictatorship of the proletariat was a threat posed by “class enemies” and foreign agents to the attainment of socialism in the future.  To what extent that threat was real (after all, imperialist countries like the US and Great Brittan have a long record of orchestrating coups and otherwise meddling in the affairs of other countries) or manufactured for political expediency may be subject to debate.  The main point is that the Soviet bloc countries officially espoused a certain level of authoritarianism as the necessary measure to achieve socialism in some unspecified future than never materialized.

This distinction between the authoritarian means and the socialist ends is not mere semantic sophistry.  The logic of equating an entire political philosophy or belief system with practices of its followers in one place and time may serve propaganda purposes but is fundamentally flawed.  Few people would seriously argue that Christianity is characterized by the Spanish Inquisition and child abuse by priests, Islam is characterized by terrorism and suicide bombers, or capitalism is characterized by enslaving of Blacks and genocide of Native Americans.  The logic is faulty, because there are adherents of Christianity, Islam, capitalism, and socialism who are free of the aforementioned excesses, and those excesses are not limited to the adherents of any particular political philosophy or religion.

Neither socialism, nor capitalism, or for that matter, any system of religious beliefs can be identified with a particular set of nation-states.  Instead, each of these concepts represents a set of principles that can be implemented in various ways by political regimes governing nation states.  Christianity practiced in Poland is different from Christianity practiced in Sweden, Islam practiced in Saudi Arabia is different from Islam practiced in Uzbekistan, capitalism practiced in Germany is different from capitalism practiced in the United States.  To define these doctrines, we need to focus on their core principles not on their implementations.  To understand the essence of a phoenix it is necessary to grasp the concept of rebirth, not to rummage through the ashes.

2. A break from history
Socialism is a political philosophy that gained prominence in the 19th century in response to capitalist industrialization and its discontents.  The essence of that philosophy was to keep good things brought by industrialization, which can be summarized as liberation from the “idiocy of rural life” and the production of vast quantities of useful stuff, while getting rid of its discontents – general unavailability of that useful stuff to people who actually produce it.  The root cause of that discontent, according to the 19th century thinking, was private ownership of the means of production, which allowed factory owners to sell the stuff produced by the workers and pocket the proceeds, instead of sharing them with the people who actually produced them.  Therefore, the socialist remedy to the discontents of industrialization was changing the ownership of the means production – from private to social. 

Social ownership of the means of production is the common theme of various strands of the 19th century socialist doctrines, even though those doctrines gave divergent responses on the form of that social ownership as well as the role of the markets and money in the distribution of the produced stuff.  This 19th century concept of socialism as social ownership of the means of production survived to the 21st century.  It is also the ash of the previous phoenix that stains the feathers of the newly born one. 

The chief reason is that the concept of the ownership of the means of production evolved since the 19th century.  Today, most of the economic activity is conducted by joint stock corporations whose key feature is separation of ownership from control.  Legal ownership of a corporation may be vested in an entity that has little or no control of its operations, such as a holding company or a government.  Economic ownership, defined as exposure to risks associated with its operation, is typically distributed among shareholders, both natural persons and institutions, who also have no direct control of the operations of the corporation whose stock they own.  The operational control is exercised by the management, who nominally are employees, but who often have considerable ownership interest through stock ownership. 

It is therefore clear that ownership of the means of production can be socialized to include all employees through Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOP) or in an extreme form, the entire society by distributing shares to every citizen.  This, however, will not make the corporation any more socialistic if the actual control of the operations is concentrated in the hands of the management.  The economies of the Soviet bloc countries are a case in point.  Although the majority of the means of production were nominally owned by “the people”, their operations were controlled by the management and state planning boards, while the workers, let alone “the people” had very little say how these companies were run, what they produced, and how they distributed it, how much they paid in wages, etc.  In that respect, they were no fundamentally different from “capitalist” corporations.

It is therefore clear that the 19th century definition of socialism as social ownership of production is no longer adequate in the 21st century economy.  Not that the fundamental idea of social ownership is irrelevant or wrong, but that the concept of ownership evolved and has been separated from operational control.  And it is the operational control not legal ownership that matters.
The second limitation of the old definition of socialism stems from the macroeconomic dimension, namely that the producers, whether privately or collectively owned, operate in an environment in which they have to interact with other producers to obtain raw materials and intermediate products as well as with customers buying their finished products.  This unavoidably creates the markets in which exchange of goods and services must be negotiated by the producers and consumers.  The unavoidability of the markets is demonstrated by the fact that they existed even in centrally planned economies of the Soviet bloc countries, which distributed raw materials, intermediate products, and finished good by a central plan.  Despite these allocations, firms had shortages of some materials or intermediate products and surpluses of other, so they developed a secondary market system outside the central plan in which surpluses were traded among firms.

The importance of markets in complex economic systems was recognized by many socialist theorists.  Among them, the Polish economist Oskar Lange argued that markets can not only function in a socialist economy, but they can function better than they do under capitalism.  Managers of socialist enterprises can set their prices the same way as managers of capitalist firms – by observing changes in supply and demand and adjusting prices accordingly, by trial and error.  However, a socialist economy has an advantage in the allocation of capital, which is based on genuine social need rather than interests of individual capitalists, according to Lange.  To illustrate, the capitalist Elon Musk can invest vast sums of money to boost his ego, like sending his car into the outer space.  In a socialist economy that money would be invested in more socially useful pursuits, such as public transit or education. 

The macro-economic dimension – efficient allocation of capital resources and distribution of goods to optimally meet social needs – cannot be addressed by the form of ownership alone.  A worker cooperative needs capital and has to sell its product just as an individually owned firm does.  On the other hand, consumers do not care about ownership form of good producers. What matters to them is the availability, quality, and price of the goods and services they need.  All these aspects are affected by macro-economic factors that are set by government policy in socialist and capitalist economies alike.  It is government that regulates the supply of money and its availability to different producers, decides which goods are public and which must be procured through the market, controls the prices of many critical goods such as energy or food, sets minimum wage, etc.  The only difference is what policy goals are being pursued and who wins and who loses as a result.

We need a new definition of socialism that, while true to its 19th century roots, can nonetheless address two most important aspects of modern economy: the actual control of the production process and macroeconomic policy affecting production and distribution of goods and services.  That definition must also clearly and plausibly show that socialism a more favorable alternative to capitalism.

Capitalist doctrines conceptualize capitalism as a production and exchange of goods and services through voluntary market transactions among private parties free of unnecessary regulations.  The policy goal in such a system is to protect private property rights and make sure that markets operate free from any impediments.  This free operation of the markets, Milton Friedman, one of the chief proponents of this doctrine claims, will result not only in optimal distribution of economic benefits in a society, but also in elimination of social “bads” such as exploitation and discrimination in the work place.

Yet, even the most cursory observation of a capitalist markets revels that the expected outcome - optimal distribution of economic benefits in society – often fails to materialize.  While Elon Musk can blow millions of dollars to send his car to outer space, millions of people do not have adequate transportation, which impedes their ability find employment.  While Hollywood celebrities can spend millions on plastic surgeries, millions cannot afford even the most rudimentary health care.  The super-rich not only waste money on wanton pursuits, but use their resources to affect public policies to their own advantage at the expense of the majority of the population.  A recent study of US politics by two Princeton University researchers found that economic elites have substantial impact on US government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no influence.  What is more, as the markets became freer thanks to globalization, working conditions in the developed economies worsened, wages declined, and the weak position of labor created ample opportunities for discrimination of workers.

So for the socialism to offer a more attractive alternative to capitalism, it must meet tow conditions.  First, it must plausibly show that it can avoid the negative consequences of capitalism – wasteful consumption of the wealthy while most basic social needs are unfulfilled, subversion of democracy by concentrated wealth, and increasingly exploitative conditions of work for a vast number of people.  Second, it must also ascertain that the good things that the capitalist economy created, high living standards and freedom of choice and movement, will be enhanced, or at least not be jeopardized or diminished by its policies.  To this end, the following conceptualization of socialism is being proposed here:
Socialism is any set of public policies that aim to optimize economic well-being and freedom to achieve a full human potential for all citizens by prioritizing, where appropriate, public goods over individual consumption, and democratic decision making on the ‘one person one vote’ principle over concentration of decision making authority in individuals. 
The concept of actualization of a full human potential – popularized by the psychologist Abraham Maslow but having its roots in the philosophy of Aristotle – emphasizes the holistic nature of human needs, ranging from basic physiological needs, such as food or rest, to the needs for safety and security, the need to belong and be loved, and to the need for respect, social status and self-esteem.  A political system is “correct” is it enables actualization of the full human potential of all citizens, and “deviant” if it aims only at the advantage of the rulers. 

While the professed aim of socialism – fulfillment of human needs and desires – may not substantially differ from the promises of capitalism, socialism fundamentally differs from capitalism in the means through which it pursues those aims – enabling achieving full human potential through provision of public goods and democratic decision making on the one person one vote (as opposed to votes proportional to shares of wealth held), especially in the workplace.

3. Prioritizing public goods
In conventional economic theory, a “natural state” of the economy is exchange of goods and service through market transactions.  What makes is “natural” is a belief that market exchange will invariably create a situation in which all human needs and sacrifices to meet those needs will be balanced at some optimal equilibrium point.  However, certain types of goods or services cannot be efficiently distributed through ordinary market exchanges (goods for payment).  This happens if it is too expensive or impractical to exclude people unwilling or unable to pay for a good from enjoying its benefits or utility (the so-called non-excludability feature).  For example, if fire protection were offered only to the clients paying the market prices, it would not be very effective, because unextinguished fires in the non-covered houses could easily spread to the covered ones.  To avert that, fire fighters could extinguish fires in the non-covered houses as well, but the drawback of this solution a “free rider effect.”  Knowing that their homes will receive fire protection regardless of whether they pay for it or not, many people would decide to “free ride” and not pay for the service.  This, in turn, will bankrupt the fire protection providers.

Conventional economic theory offers a more efficient solution to this problem – fund the service though compulsory payments, such as taxes or insurance premiums, levied from all potential beneficiaries.  However, for this solution to work, the good or service in question must have another property – it must be “non-rival”, which means that one person’s receiving the benefit of a good does not diminish another person’s benefit.  To use the fire protection example, if fire fighters save my neighbor’s house, it does not diminish the level of fire protection I receive, and in fact it enhances it.  By contrast, if my neighbor eats a cake, there is nothing left for me.  All goods that are both “non-excludable” and “non-rival” are more efficiently delivered through institutional arrangement involving compulsory cost sharing such as insurance premiums or taxes, rather than through ordinary market transactions.  As a result, this class of goods and services is called “public goods.”

In conventional economic theory, private goods exchanged through market transactions are assumed to be a “natural state” of any economy, while public goods are an exception due to their peculiar combination of non-excludability and non-rivalry.  However, this assumption is an article of faith grounded in ideology of the market rather than an accurate reflection of reality.  In reality, there is nothing “natural” about being a private or a public good.  All goods and services are social constructs and as such their properties reflect preferences of societies that create them.  They have a certain degree of non-excludability and non-rivalry, depending on the institutional mode (or “institutional sector” in the macro-economic parlance) of their production and delivery, which in turn is defined by social circumstance and government policy.  Take, for example, roads.  If the government builds them using general taxes and makes them available to everyone, they are public goods.  That is, it is not possible to exclude non-payers from using them, and one person’s using them does not diminish the utility of another person using them.  If the government turns them into toll roads, however, they become private goods.  Although they are still non-rival (unless congested beyond capacity, but that is a temporary limitation affecting every user equally), non-payers are prevented from using them.  Another example is health care or education – they can be a public good and funded by taxes or private goods and funded by service fees paid by patients or students.

Being “public” does not necessarily means that a good or service is provided free of charge to anyone .  It means that the procurement of that good or service is funded through public funding of some sort (e.g. taxes or insurance premiums) and made available to all eligible people.  However, the recipients of such goods may be asked to pay an additional user fee to prevent waste and promote efficiency.  Examples include “co-pays” based on the actual visit in addition to insurance premiums, or public transit fare or toll in addition to transportation taxes.  What distinguishes these user fees for public goods from private market transactions is that the former are set only to facilitate an efficient use of a particular resource and rarely, if ever, cover the cost of procuring them.  The difference between user fees and the actual operating costs is covered by public cost sharing mechanism (premiums or taxes).  By contrast, private market transactions must fully cover the cost of procuring the goods, including remuneration of all people involved in this process as workers or owners of capital. 

It is the government policy and social circumstance that determine not only which particular good is public or private, but also the overall balance between public and private goods in the entire economy.  Here is where it makes sense to distinguish between different approaches governing the balance of such goods.  They range on a continuum between two extreme positions: all goods in the economy are private and delivered via market transaction, and all goods are public and distributed by some kind of institutional arrangement, with an array of various “in-between” arrangements.  This can be visually represented by  a scale of the saturation of the economy by public goods ranging from “none” (no public goods) to  “all” (all goods are public).  Of course, values “none” and “all” represent only hypothetical situations.  In reality, we can identify three broadly defined economic environments falling in-between these extremes:

·         “Effective market” in which most goods are private and delivered through market transactions, while public goods are limited to bare minimum, such as roads, elementary education, or rudimentary social protections, such as unemployment insurance:
·         “Mixed economy” in which public goods represent a substantial share of all goods in that environment (the midpoint on our scale);these may include wide range of transportation services, education at all levels, health care, housing, and various forms of public insurance ranging from unemployment to income support, to maternity and old age support. However, most other goods, services and assets are still private, and some public goods are funded by a combination of public funds and private user fees, which makes this environment “mixed public/private economy”
·         “Effective public goods economy” further expands the share of public goods in the economic environment;  this may include nationalization of key industries to produce goods that are funded mostly by the public sector, although they may be distributed through market transactions. 
Which of these three economic environments represent socialism?  The quick and easy answer is, of course, the third one, the effective public goods economy.  However, this quick and easy answer may lead to a dogmatic position of insisting on one answer to all problems, no different from free market dogmatism espoused by many libertarians.  Therefore, a more appropriate answer is a qualified one – the deployment of public good economy when needed to effectively meet social need. This more nuanced approach may lead to “effective markets” in some situations, “mixed economy” in other, and “effective public goods economy” in certain circumstances.

To illustrate, consider two services provided by a university: education and food for the student population.  Education in most countries is public good for a reason – it is non-rival and non-excludable.  The fact that there are other students in the classroom in no way diminishes the value or quality of instruction I receive, and it often enhances it.  Excluding people unable to pay for education is highly undesirable and will lead to dire social and economic consequences – illiteracy, low productivity, and shortages of skilled labor.  The food service is a different story, however.  The university can decide to provide it is a public good by charging the funding source  a fixed per student premium, and give every student a coupon to the cafeteria.  Such solution was once the norm, and it does the job, but not very efficiently.  People’s tastes in food vary widely, and if the cafeteria serves food that some students detest, those students will go hungry and will be forced to buy food elsewhere.  A more efficient solution is to open a food court on the campus, where different vendors can offer different types of food that suit different tastes.  Therefore a socialist university would provide education as a public good funded by general taxes, and food services on the market basis.  It will also provide subsidies of one kind or another to those students who cannot afford to buy food. 

4. Prioritizing democratic decision making
Control, or decision making capacity, reflects the concentration of power in the political or organizational environment.  To define power, we need to introduce t concept of social actor – a group of people sharing some common interests (real or perceived) and acting to pursue those interests in the political or organizational arena.  Power of a social actor is that actor’s capacity to prevail when confronted by opposing efforts of other social actors.  In the words of the British sociologist Anthony Giddens “power is to social science what energy is to thermodynamics.”  It determines whether there is social change and, if so, in which direction.

In real life, power can be concentrated in one social actor or distributed among multiple actors.  Concentration of power in the hands of one social actor means that this actor typically prevails when confronted by actions of other social actors that threaten his interest.  Diffusion of power means that no single actor can typically prevail when confronted by other actors, and therefore must collaborate with other actors to achieve his interests.  Stated differently, concentration of power means that one or a few social actors have a hegemonic position in society whereas diffusion of power means no social actor has such a position. 

Using an approach similar to that used to describe the economic dimension, it is possible to use a scale ranging between two extremes: “hegemony”  (power concentrated in the hands of a single individual or a small elite) to “diffusion” (power shared equally by all social actors).    In reality, we can identify three broadly defined political environments:

·         “Effective hegemony” means that political power is concentrated for all practical purposes in the hands of few social actors that form an oligarchy.  The members of the oligarchy can come from the same socio-economic class (e.g. landed aristocracy or industry owners), or the same institutional background (e.g. government bureaucracy, the military, or religious organization):
·         “Contested power relations” means that while power is still concentrated in the upper strata of the society (e.g. landowners or industrialists), the ability of those strata to prevail against interests of the lower strata is relatively limited and not assured.  This can be a result of a variety of factors, such as internal divisions within upper classes, coordinate action of lower classes, economic development, foreign intervention, or even changes in the natural environment;
·         ”Effective power diffusion” means that political power is shared among many social actors or groups.  This of course does not mean that all social actors have equal power, power inequalities still exist, but none of these actors  occupies a hegemonic position allowing it to systematically prevail over other social actors.  On a macro-social scale, this is typically represented by a multi-party parliamentary democracy in which none of the parties can achieve a majority on its own and must form coalitions with other parties.  On a micro-social scale, this is represented by a membership association or a cooperative in which every member has equal voting rights and capacity to determine the policy of the organization.

Historically, the “effective power diffusion” was the ideal sought by socialist movements.  This is represented, among other, by a key defining principle of cooperatives, “one person one vote” , as opposed to capitalist principle in which voting power is proportional to ownership shares.  The effective power diffusion model works well in environments with little differentiation of functions and responsibilities, such as housing or food cooperatives in which every resident or worker has basically the same relation to the organization.  However, things get more complicated in complex environments, with highly specialized roles and widely ranging responsibilities.  This is why there are plenty housing and food cooperatives but not that many airline coops. 

So how would an ideal distribution of decision making power look like in a socialist airline?  Here, we have different groups of actors, pilots, flight attendants, mechanics, baggage handlers, ticket agents, administrators, and last but not least passengers.  A proposition that all these groups share power on the one person one vote principle is absurd on its face.  Instead, different aspects of airline operation require different power sharing arrangements.  In  a socialist airline, all these groups would have equal say in determining certain aspects of operations, such as passenger comfort or conflict resolution and procedures.  I practical terms, passengers would have an equal say how much leg room they can have, what kind of food is being served, how seats are assigned, and what is a reasonable price for these amenities.  All employees – pilots, flight attendants, mechanics, and baggage handlers, and administrators – would have an equal say in setting personnel policy, pay scale, benefits, scheduling, grievance procedures.  On the other hand, a “socialist” flight would look very much like a “capitalist” one – the pilot making all decisions about the flight itself, cabin crew making decisions about what happens in the cabin, and passengers basically following the direction of the pilot and the cabin crew.  Perhaps the only difference is that no passenger would be kicked out of a socialist flight when a higher paying passenger wants his or her seat. 


5. Classification of political-economic regimes
The characterization of political regimes in nation states is heavily influenced by ideological distortions aimed to portray a particular regime of policy in an unreasonably favorable or unfavorable light.  Those distortions typically involve some form of the pars pro toto fallacy, or selectively using one element of a complex whole as a description of the whole.  I this particular case, the ‘whole” is the array of multiple political and economic institutions of any given country, which typically involve various combinations of political controls and market operations.  The ideology inspired par pro toto characterization focuses on one element of that array and ignore other elements to form a narrative advanced by this ideological position.  A typical example of this fallacy is selective focus on extensive social protections in countries like Denmark or Sweden and call them “socialist”, while ignoring the fact that these countries have market economies.  The same narrative focused on the market operations in the US and label it “capitalist”, while ignoring vast government outlays on public goods (defense, roads, etc.) and government regulations, and quasi monopolistic nature of many industries (e.g. telecoms, aerospace, energy and to lesser degree retail).  In the same vein, policy proposals of modest expansion of social programs (e.g. Medicare) are portrayed as “socialism” that will ruin the supposedly “market” economy of the US. 

Those ideological distortions make it rather difficult to discuss democratic socialist in a constructive matter-of-fact way.  Years of indoctrination resulted in a situation in which geo-political enmities are viewed as fundamental ideological differences.  As a result accepting socialism is often viewed as an act of treason and siding with countries declared as the enemies by the US political elites, such as Russia, Venezuela or North Korea.  One way to counter this ideological distortion is to accurately position “ideal type” or hypothetical and actually existing political economic regimes on a conceptual “map” defined by the dimensions proposed above: share of public goods and diffusion of power (Figure 1).

Figure 1 Classification of political regimes

0= low; 1 = high


The four corners in Figure 1 represent hypothetical (i.e. not actually existing) regimes representing four ideological archetypes.  The hypothetical libertarianism is characterized by the virtual absence of public goods (near 0 on the horizontal axis) and the diffusion of power among individuals (near 1 on the vertical axis).  Hypothetical communism falls on the polar opposite to libertarianism on the share of public good scale, but on the same side of the diffusion of power axis.  Hypothetical corporatism is characterized high concentration of power and absence of public goods (near 0 on both scales).  Finally, hypothetical statism scores as low as corporatism on the diffusion of power scale, and as high as communism on the share of public goods scale.
Real economies fall in the middle among these hypothetical regime types.  The ex-USSR, former Eastern Bloc countries, and the US fall within the same range of the distribution of power dimension, but far apart on the share of public god dimension.  The low diffusion of power in the US is due largely to the two party monopoly that effectively excludes all other forms of political participation (cf. Walter Karp, Indispensable Enemies: The Politics of Misrule in America, Harper’s Magazine Foundation, 2011), and the domination of the political institutions by elite interest groups (cf. Gilens and Page, “Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens” https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/testing-theories-of-american-politics-elites-interest-groups-and-average-citizens/62327F513959D0A304D4893B382B992B ).  Western European and Scandinavian countries score higher than both the US and former eastern Bloc countries on the diffusion of power scale thanks to their multi-party parliamentary systems (cf. Lijphart, Patterns of Democracy: Government Forms and Performance in Thirty Six Countries. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999).  They also score higher than the US on the share of public goods scale thanks to their social welfare systems, but not as high as the former Eastern European countries, thanks to their predominantly market economies. 

The main conclusion of this brief comparison is that differences among political-economic regimes of actually existing countries are the matter of degree, different shades of grey rather than contrasting black/white images favored by ideological narratives.  It illustrates the main claim of this article, that socialism (or capitalism) is not a country or a place, but a set of principles that are implemented, in varying degrees, in different countries and different areas of the economy.

6. In Lieu of Conclusion
This paper proposes a novel conceptualization of democratic socialism that goes beyond the historical conceptualizations equating socialism with common ownership of the means of production.  The concept of the ownership of the means of production evolved, and today most of the economic activity is conducted by joint stock corporations whose key feature is separation of ownership from control.  As a consequence, ownership of the means of production cannot guarantee the attainment of the key socialist goal – the satisfaction of all human needs through fair sharing of all resources produced by the economy. 

The proposed conceptualization of democratic socialism emphasizes the same goal as that sought by the historical socialism, but proposes a different set of means to attain it.  First is public policy prioritizing public goods in various combinations with market mechanisms to satisfy diverse demands.  Second is the democratic political and economic decision making on the one person one vote principle.  Unlike doctrinaire approaches insisting on a single solution with little regard to the circumstances (e.g. market only or nationalization only approaches), the proposed conceptualization calls for flexibility in crafting the right balance of private and market goods, and the right combination of centralized and decentralized decision making structure that is suitable to a particular area of the economy.

The intended purpose of this article is to facilitate public discussion about democratic socialism in an objective, free of ideological distortions manner.


Thursday, September 6, 2018

Stability and freedom


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A spectre is haunting the world— the spectre of authoritarian nationalism. All the powers of old neoliberal order have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: Democrats and Republicans, Koch brothers and Soros, French socialists and American conservatives, Silicon Valley technocrats and Hollywood actors.  Two things result from this fact:

1. Authoritarian nationalism is already acknowledged by all world powers to be itself a power; and
2. It is widely perceived as a threat to democracy and the liberal order, only 20 or so years after democracy and liberalism had been proclaimed the end of history to which there was no alternative.

How can we explain this sudden shift in the winds of history? 

If we were to believe the American political establishment, the Washington Post, the New York Times, CNN, NPR and the American and British intelligence services, this shift has been orchestrated by a small group of Russian internet trolls personally directed by Putin.  In this narrative, most people are incorrigible dupes unable to think on their own and easily manipulated by professional advertisers and opinion leaders.  The emergence of the social media created an opportunity for the Russian trolls who upstaged the professional advertisers and opinion manipulators by a sneak attack consisting of spreading fake news on the internet.  And voila, here goes the democracy, courtesy of Mr. Putin. 

The fact that otherwise serious and respectable media outlets stoop to such way-out-in-left-field conspiracy theories tells us something very important – that the professional and managerial classes that form the backbone of the neoliberal political establishment have a hard time to accept that this shift is a response to popular demand.  After all, there was supposed be no alternative to the brave new neoliberal world, so what we see must be the work of some clever manipulators trying to stop the clock. 

However, if we acknowledge that this recourse to illiberal authoritarian nationalism meets popular demand, we are back to our original question “How can we explain this sudden shift in public sentiments?” 

To answer this question, a good place to start is to listen to what the authoritarian nationally are actually saying to their supporters.  Since authoritarian nationalism has established itself in a number of culturally diverse countries across the world, from Turkey, to Russia, to the Philippines, to Israel, to Poland, to Hungary to Austria, and to the United States, and it made substantial advancement in most other European countries, the key task is to uncover commonalities beneath this cultural diversity.  This common theme is the promise of stability amidst chaos unleashed by the neoliberal globalization.  The call for stability frequently appears in messages form authoritarian nationalistic leaders, Putin in Russia, Karimov in Uzbekistan, Orban in Hungary, Duarte in the Philippines, Erdogan in Turkey, and Trump in the US, as well as prominent right wing intellectuals (cf. Jordan Peterson, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos). 

How can we explain this emergence of popular demand for stability? It turns out that sociology has an answer to this question.  Karl Polanyi (The Great Transformation) argued that industrialization and the laissez faire market economy it unleashed in the 19th century uprooted the traditional social order and social institutions, and social dislocation of a great mass of people.  In response to this upheaval, social movements emerged to counteract this upheaval and re-establish social order and stability.  This resulted in the popular demand for social protections, which socialist and social democratic parties promised to deliver.
 
This argument is the core of current narratives, popular especially on the Left, explaining the raise of authoritarian nationalism.  The neoliberal market model, this argument goes, reduced a vast number of people to the precariat status, producing anxiety about uncertain future and a demand for stability.  The traditional socialist and social democratic parties, which had embraced the neoliberal model, were unable to effectively respond to this popular demand.  This created a window of opportunity for right wing and nationalist parties that offered a promise of stability in exchange for accepting their xenophobic, misogynist, racist and authoritarian ideology. 

However, this argument tells only half of the story.  The part that is left untold is the enormous popularity of liberal ideologies promising personal liberty and freedom in the 1960s and 1970s, which, according to David Harvey (A Brief History of Neoliberalism) was the popular force behind the growth of neoliberalism in the 1980s.  If we take the second half of the story into account, a picture that emerges is that of cyclical changes in demand for freedom followed by demand for stability. 
This tension between freedom and social stability was first introduced by Emile Durkheim (Suicide) to explain variations in suicide rates in different countries.  In Durkheim’s explanation, suicide results from an imbalance of two social forces: social integration and moral regulation.  Too much integration and regulation can lead to individuals committing suicide for altruistic (sacrifice for the group) or fatalistic (despair caused by excessive regulation and oppressive discipline).  Too little integration and regulation can lead to egoistic or anomic suicide, or (respectively) suicide in response to despair produced by a sense of not belonging or being integrated in a community, or moral confusion and lack of social direction related to dramatic social changes and economic upheaval.  While Durkheim’s argument has been criticized on various grounds, its lasting contribution is the conceptual framework positioning societies and communities on a continuum ranging from “too little” to “too much” social integration.

Within this conceptual framework, modern history can be portrayed as a movement away from excessive social integration (pre-industrial society), toward excessive liberalization (19th century industrialization), and then back toward stability and integration (welfare state in the mid 20th century), than again back toward liberalization (the 1960s countercultural evolution and 1980s neoliberalism) and then back again toward demands for greater security and integration (the emergence or authoritarian nationalism in the 21st century).  An important takeaway from this conceptualization is that the political party that senses which way the wind is blowing and is able to meet popular demand for freedom or stability wins the day.  The party that fails to see the change or is unable to meet the popular demand gets kicked out from the halls of power.

The second important takeaway from this conceptualization is that not every party that promises deliverance from the current excesses of liberalization or stability can carry the day.  That promise has to be credible i.e. offer a genuine alternative to the status quo, and legitimate i.e. consistent with fundamental norms and values shared in a society or community.  A promise that is not credible i.e. too incoherent or insufficiently different from the status quo, or illegitimate i.e. too inconsistent or contradicting the shared norms and values has little chance of gaining popular support.

It is clear that the promise of the authoritarian nationalist parties and their intellectual backers is both credible and legitimate.  Their credibility is achieved by offering solutions that are on the opposite pole to that offered by neoliberalism: nationalism vs. globalism, traditional gender roles vs. sexual liberation, protectionism vs. free market, strengthening vs. weakening of authority, closed borders vs. open society.  Their legitimacy is achieved by portraying their positions as “common sense” and “pragmatic” solutions vs. “radical” proposals of their opposition.  This is further achieved by distancing themselves , at least in appearance, from the radical elements within their own ranks, such as extreme racism, antisemitism, misogyny or calls for violence (c.f. Stefanie Ehmsen and Albert Scharenberg, eds, The Far Right in Government: Six Cases from Across Europe).  
Given the popular demand for stability and the perceived credibility and legitimacy of authoritarian nationalism, it is unreasonable to expect that its appeal will wane, especially is no viable alternatives are present.  Neoliberals may temporarily halt its progress here and there, as Macron did in France, but authoritarian nationalism is here to stay here for a while.  The only question is what can be done about it.

The emergence of democratic socialism as an alternative to both neoliberalism and authoritarian nationalism is a promising sign, but it is not ready for the prime time at the time of this writing.  The chief reason is shortcomings in the credibility and legitimacy areas. 
The credibility of democratic socialism is undermined by the fact that it does not offer a coherent vision that is sufficiently different from both the status quo and the authoritarian nationalist pitch.  A cursory survey of opinions published by self-identified supporters of socialism or democratic socialism reveals a wide range of demands, ranging from very moderate and similar to those proposed by mainstream Democrats (minimum wage, protection of social safety programs, ending racism and police brutality), to somewhat more radical proposed by progressive Democrats (single payer health care system or tuition-free higher education), to supposedly even more radical but vague and nondescript ideas borrowed from socialist programs of the past (e.g. nationalization of the means of production).  It is clear that those most radical but very vague proposals do not appear very credible to anyone but the true believers.  As to the more moderate ones, they are hard to distinguish from those entertained by the Democratic Party.  This also poses a credibility challenge as well, since Democrats are widely perceived as the key architects of the neoliberal order who betrayed the working class.

As to the legitimacy challenge, this mainly comes from the historical baggage associated with the word socialism.  Real or perceived failures of systems labeled ‘socialist’ in countries like Russia, Poland, Hungary, China, Cuba, etc. have been significantly amplified in concert by right-wing, conservative, and neoliberal propaganda and portrayed as fundamentally antithetical to “Western” values (free market, personal liberties, democracy).  As a result, many if not most people would dismiss anything that smacks of socialism without even giving it a serious thought.

To overcome these challenges, democratic socialism must come up with a credible, legitimate and clear message that can appeal to a broad range of people.  “Make America Great Again” is a good example of such a message.  It is clear, it encapsulates the essence of authoritarian nationalist message – “people are suffering from chaos and demand return to earlier, simpler times” – and it is legitimate as it affirms the primacy of the American nation.  It is also hollow, because it says nothing what “great” really means, leaving it to the audience’s imagination.  This message echoes equally hollow messages of other authoritarian nationalist parties, e.g. “Law and Justice” (Poland), “Illiberal democracy” (Hungary), or “Justice and development” (Turkey).

One possible message of the democratic socialism is “Stability and Freedom,”   Bothe concepts well resonate with people, but unlike the hollow and vague promise of “making America great again” they are imbued with concrete meaning.  Stability means stable communities and social protections from negative effects of economic development.  Such protections may range from providing universal healthcare that frees families from the vagaries of employment, to safe and livable neighborhoods, and to communities deciding what kind of economic development they want to have instead of relying on the whims of the wealthy.  Freedom means the absence of unnecessary constraints, government regulations, and police surveillance, as well as the ability to achieve one’s full potential and dreams, instead of following dictates of corporate workplace. 

Even more importantly, a message promising stability and freedom offers a vision of a just society that balances these two social needs instead of pitting one against the other.  The concept of balance is well embedded in the political and moral philosophy, going back to Aristotle.  It also offers an alternative to the extremism of modern political gladiator fights in which people throw mud at each other but nobody listens.