We're pleased to feature a guest article today from best-selling author (and CRN Task Force member) David Brin. He writes:
Over on the Lifeboat Foundation discussion list, Ben Goertzel, a rising star in artificial intelligence theory, recently expressed skepticism that we could keep maintaining a "modern large-scale capitalist representative democracy cum welfare state cum corporate oligopoly" for much longer.Something would have to give, Ben thought. Indeed, this complex civilization we live in does seem to be under a lot of stress, right now.
Following are some of my thoughts on the topic...
THE UNLIKELINESS OF A POSITIVE SUM SOCIETYToday’s “modern large-scale capitalist representative democracy cum welfare state cum corporate oligopoly” works largely because the systems envisioned by John Locke and Adam Smith have burgeoned fantastically, producing synergies in highly nonlinear ways that another prominent social philosopher -- Karl Marx -- never imagined. Ways that neither Marx nor the ruling castes of prior cultures even could imagine.
Through processes of competitive creativity and reciprocal accountability, the game long ago stopped being zero-sum -- I can only win if you lose -- and became prodigiously positive-sum -- we all win, though I'd still like to win a little more than you. (See Robert Wright's excellent book Non-Zero.)
Yes, if you read over the previous paragraph, I sound a lot like some of the boosters of FIBM (Faith In Blind Markets) among whom you'll find the very same neocons and conspiratorial kleptocrats whom I often accuse of ruining markets! Is that a contradiction?
Not at all. Just as soviet commissars recited egalitarian nostrums, while relentlessly quashing freedom in the USSR, many of our own right-wing lords mouth "pro-enterprise" lip service, while doing everything they can to cheat and foil competitive markets. To kill the golden goose that gave them everything.
The problem is that our recent, synergistic system has always had to push uphill against a perilous slope of human nature. The Enlightenment is just a couple of centuries old. Tribalism/feudalism had many millennia longer to work a selfish, predatory logic into our genes, our brains. We are all descended from insatiable men, who found countless excuses for cheating, or preserving their power against challenges from below. Not even the wisest of us could guarantee we'd be immune from temptation to abuse power, if we had it.
Some, like George Washington, have set a pretty good example. They recognize these backsliding trends in themselves. Others perform that lip service, then go on to display every dismal trait that Karl Marx attributed to shortsighted bourgeois "exploiters." Moreover, if the human behavior traits described by Marx ever do come roaring back, to take hold in big ways (and they are always threatening to do so), then so might some of the social scenarios that he described.
SHOULD WE -- SERIOUSLY -- HAVE A FRESH LOOK AT OLD KARL MARX?
Do you, as an educated 21st Century man or woman, know very much about the argument that transfixed western civilization for close to a century and a half? A furious argument, sparked by a couple of dense books, written by a strange little bearded man? Or do you shrug off Marx as an historical oddity? Perhaps a cousin of Groucho?
Were our ancestors -- both those who followed Marx and those who opposed him -- stupid to have found him interesting or to have fretted over the scenarios he told?
I often refer to Marx as the greatest of all science fiction authors, because -- while his long-range forecasts nearly all failed, and some of his premises (like the labor theory of value) were pure fantasy -- he nevertheless shed heaps of new light and focused the attention of millions upon many basics of both economics and human nature. As a story-spinner, Marx laid down some "if this goes on" thought-experiments that seemed vividly plausible to people of his time, and for a century afterwards. People who were far more intimate with the consequences of social stratification that we have been, in recent generations.
As virtually the inventor of the term "capitalism," he ought to be studied (and criticized) by anyone who wants to understand our way of life.
What's been forgotten, since the fall of communism, is that the USSR's 'experiment' was never even remotely "Marxism." And, hence, we cannot simply read (or watch) The Hunt for Red October and then shrug away the entire set of mental and historical challenges. By my own estimate, he was only 50% a deluded loon -- a pretty good ratio, actually. (I cannot prove that I'm any better!) The other half was brilliant (ask any economist) and still a powerful caution. Moreover, anyone who claims to be a thinker about our civilization should be able to argue which half was which.
Marx's forecasts seem to have failed not because they were off-base in extrapolating the trends of 19th Century bourgeois capitalism. He extrapolated fine. But what he never imagined was that human beings might intelligently perceive, and act to alter, those selfsame powerful trends! While living amid the Anglo Saxon Enlightenment, he never grasped its potential for self-criticism and generating positive-sum alternatives. For changing or outgrowing patterns that he considered locked, in stone.
We did not escape his scenarios through laissez-faire indolence. To a large degree, his forecasts failed -- ironically -- because people read and studied Karl Marx.
HUMAN NATURE ALWAYS CONSPIRES AGAINST ENLIGHTENMENT
This much is basic. We are all descended from rapacious, insatiable cheaters and (far worse) rationalizers. Every generation of aristocrats (by whatever surface definition you use, from soviet nomenklatura, theocrats, or royalty, to top CEOs) will come up with marvelous excuses for why they should be allowed to go back to oligarchic rule-by-cabal and “guided allocation of resources” (GAR), instead of allowing open competition/cooperation to put their high status under threat. Indeed, those who most stridently tout faith in blind markets are often among the worst addicts of GAR.
In particular, it is the most natural thing in the world for capital owners and GAR-masters to behave in the way that Karl Marx modeled. His forecast path of an ever-narrowing oligarchy -- followed ultimately by revolution -- had solid historical grounding and seemed well on its way to playing out.
What prevented that from happening was large numbers of western elites and commonfolk deciding to weigh alternatives, to SEE these natural human failure modes, and to act intelligently against them -- a phenomenon that would have boggled poor old K.M. He certainly never envisioned a smart society that extended bourgeois rights and social mobility to underclasses. Nor that societies might set up institutions that would break entirely from his model, by keeping things open, dynamic, competitive, and reciprocally accountable, allowing the nonlinear fecundity of markets and science and democracy to do their positive-sum thing.
In his contempt for human reasoning ability (except his own), Marx neglected to consider that smart men and women would actually read his books and decide to remodel society, so that his scenario would not happen; so that revolution, when it came, would be gradual, ongoing, moderate, lawful, and generally non-confiscatory, especially since the positive sum game lets the whole pie grow, while giving bigger slices to all.
In fact, I think the last 90 years may be partly modeled according to how societies responded to the Marxian meme. First, in 1917, came the outrageously stupid Soviet experiment, which simply replaced Czarist monsters with another clade of oppressors who mouthed different slogans. Then the fascist response, which was a deadly counter-fever, fostered by even more-stupid European elites. Things were looking pretty bleak.
THE ENLIGHTENMENT STRIKES BACK
Only then this amazing thing that happened -- especially in America -- where a subset of wealthy people, like FDR, actually read Marx, saw the potential pathway into spirals of crude capital formation, monopolization, oppression, and revolution... and decided to do something about it, by reforming the whole scenario away! By following Henry Ford's maxim and giving all classes a stake -- which also meant ceding them a genuine share of power.
Those elites who called FDR a “traitor to his class” were fools. The smart ones knew that he saved their class, and enabled them to enjoy wealth in a society that would be vastly more successful, vibrant, fun, fair, stable, safe and fantastically more interesting.
I believe we now can see the recent attempted putsch by a neocon-kleptocrat aristocratic cabal in broad but simple -- and on-target -- context. We now have a generation of wealthy elites who, for the most part, have never read Marx! Who haven’t a clue how chillingly plausible his scenarios might be if enlightenment systems did not provide an alternative to revolution. And who blithely assume that they are in no danger, whatsoever, of those scenarios ever playing out.
Shortsightedly free from any thought or worry about the thing that fretted other aristocracies -- revolution -- they feel no compunction or deterrence from trying to do the old/boring thing... giving in to the ancient habit... using influence and power to gather MORE influence and power at the expense of regular people, all with the aim of diminishing the threat of competition from below.
What we would call “cheating,” they rationalize as preserving and enhancing a natural social order. Rule by those best suited for the high calling of rulership. Those born to it. Or Platonic philosopher kings. Or believers in the right set of incantations.
REVENGE OF THE DARKSIDE LORDS
Whatever the rationalizations, it boils down to the same old pyramid that failed the test of governance in 100% of previous civilizations, always and invariably stifling creativity while guiding societies to delusion and ruin. Of course, it also means a return to zero-sum logic, zero-sum economics, zero-sum leadership thinking, a quashing of nonlinear synergies... the death of the Enlightenment.
Mind you! I am describing only a fraction of today’s aristocracy of wealth or corporate power. I know half a dozen billionaires, personally, and I’d wager none of them are in on this klepto-raid thing! They are all lively, energetic, modernistic, competitive and fizzing with enthusiasm for a progressive, dynamic civilization. One that’s (after all) been very good to them.
They may not have read Marx (in this generation, who has?), but self-made guys like Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Larry Page, etc., share the basic values of an Enlightenment. One in which some child from a poor family may out-compete overprivileged children of the rich, by delivering better goods, innovations or services. And if the same thing happens to their own privileged kids? That is fine by them! Terrific.
When the chips come down, these better billionaires may wind up on our side, weighing the balance and perceiving enlightened, long range self-interest, just the way FDR and his smart-elite friends did, in the 1930s.
But till then, the good guy (or, at least with-it) billionaires are distracted, busy doing cool things, while the more old-fashioned kind -- our would-be lords -- are clustering together in tight circles, obeying 4,000 years of ingrained instinct, whispering and pulling strings, appointing each other to directorships, awarding golden parachutes, conniving for sweetheart deals, and meddling in national policy...
...doing the same boring thing that human beings will always do -- what you and I would be tempted to do -- whenever you mix un-curbed ego with unaccountable privilege, plus a deficit of brains.
Thanks, David, for the thought-provoking input!
Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology ethics blog
Why did Marx fail to predict the course which would be taken by laissez faire? Because if you buy a thing, you increase the price of that thing. This is basic supply and demand.
Marx saw a world in which capitalism was 75 years old, and therefore jobs were few and labor cheap, and thought that a liniar extrapolation of trends would provide him with the answers of the universe. He was a damn fool. He might have been right, if there was a way to "make" more workers quickly and easily. Maybe if one could throw a one-cell clone in the microwave and pull out a full grown worker, stocked with enough information to do some industrial job, Marx would have been somewhere.
As for studying Marx solving the problems he forsaw, sorry, wrong answer.
The leftover Marxian delusions have moved us away from free markets. This has slowed economic growth. This has caused slow growth in demand for labor. This has caused slow growth in wages.
If we had established a real gold standard, eliminated fractional reserve banking, and eliminated business regulation (except requiring that they, live everyone else, respect property and refrain from violence), we could well have had 10% economic growth per anum, instead of 3%. And since the population would have grown much more slowly, wages would have risen. As a matter of fact, they may have risen even faster than this simple model would predict, because rich, educated people have fewer children than the poor, ignorant ones who flow from our socialist public schools, frequently with their first and second attempts at reproduction already in tow.
The only way to avoid increases in wealth, across the whole society, is to grown government and provide privlege. Note that wealth is not privlege. Privlege is from latin: privis, meaning private, and legis, meaning law. Privlege is what happens when the law treats different people differently. Of course, this becomes inevitable, once the law starts mucking about in the economy.
Trying to find redeeming value in Marx is hopeless.
Posted by: Rich Paul | December 28, 2007 at 05:17 AM