The lasting appeal of extreme leftism
Commenter “DNW” quotes me, and then asks some questions:
[neo]:“I think that one of the basic reasons that socialism and Communism are such difficult ideas to kill is that they appeal to something universally idealistic in regular people”
[DNW]: What is that something, that ideal , which socialism offers which universally appeals to regular people?
And does ” regular” mean psychologically normal people, or something along the lines of “yer average Joe around the world”?
I’ve written a number of posts on that very subject, so the rest of this post will just be a recycling of this, which appeared in January of 2019 and was entitled, “The enduring appeal of extreme leftism.”
Communism/Socialism is an idea whose time has always come, ever-fresh and ever-new. It keeps rearing its ugly head wearing a new mask, like some vampire returning in a new guise. But can’t we finally drive a stake through its wretched heart?
In 2014 (but still quite relevant today, if not more so), Robert Stacy McCain wrote an essay describing the latest renaissance of the idea that persists in the face of all empirical evidence to the contrary, and which was correctly critiqued by the economist Ludwig von Mises not long after the Soviets came to power:
In his classic work Socialism, Mises explained that the attempt to replace the market system with central economic planning could not succeed, because the planners could not possibly have the information necessary to make all the decisions which, in a market economy, are made by individuals whose needs and desires are reflected in prices: “The problem of economic calculation is the fundamental problem of Socialism.”
“Everything brought forward in favour of Socialism during the last hundred years,” Mises wrote in 1922, “in thousands of writings and speeches, all the blood which has been spilt by the supporters of Socialism, cannot make Socialism workable. …. Socialist writers may continue to publish books about the decay of Capitalism and the coming of the socialist millennium; they may paint the evils of Capitalism in lurid colours and contrast with them an enticing picture of the blessings of a socialist society; their writings may continue to impress the thoughtless — but all this cannot alter the fate of the socialist idea.”
The rest of the McCain article is worth reading. My response is that this persistence of the idea of socialism/Communism despite evidence of its awfulness when put into practice in the real world should not be at all surprising. And I don’t think we’ll ever find the proper stake to drive into its still-beating heart, because the nature of this beast is that it represents an idea with strong appeal to a vast number of human beings. No amount of empirical or historical evidence can permanently teach enough people otherwise.
The rhetoric of Socialism/Communism has intrinsic appeal to certain groups of people and some members of each group are always likely to fall under its spell: the guilt-ridden wealthy and/or their even-more-guilt-ridden spawn, the poor who feel they’ve been screwed by society, the politically and economically naive intelligentsia who feel they know better than others, the religious and/or idealistic who want everyone to be loving and good and selfless, and those who just like the idea of power and control over others and plan to be the ones in charge.
Combine all that natural appeal with the undeniable propagandist skill of the left—including their willingness to lie in the most brazen manner—and you have an even greater effect. And then combine all of that with ignorance of history and economics, our culture’s reluctance to teach the young our good points and its eagerness to harp on our bad ones, and the fact that people only tend to really learn something through bitter and personal experience.
The wonder is that more people don’t believe that socialism/Commmunism is the answer to the world’s prayers, not that so many succumb to it in the first place. Never imagine that the fight, especially in the intellectual and educational and propaganda spheres, can be over. It would be too bad if each generation had to learn the lesson through personal suffering rather than in the realm of ideas.
I think what it comes down to is that extreme leftism has an appeal to anyone who perceives themselves as “abnormal” or having some sort of “abnormality”. Rather than work through whatever issues they have on their own or with help, which can be difficult, many would rather take the easier path and strive to make the people around them that they feel have it better than them, or that they feel they are better than, suffer and feel some misery themselves.
Every human being wants stuff without having to work for it. The difference between young people and older people is the latter know how the world really works.
People under 30 probably shouldn’t be allowed to vote in an ideal world. We give them the right at age 18 but without the education to use it with wisdom.
I’m not seeing that as the correct frame for what bedevils us right now.
Yancey,
Agreed, although I would add a few exceptions. Those under 30 would be allowed to vote if:
1. They were active duty military and had been for at least two years…
OR
They were honorably discharged from active duty military
OR they were active duty military who had seen combat, regardless of their time in the military.
2. They had paid federal income taxes for at least five years and were not a dependent on anyone else’s income taxes.
Voting should be reserved to the emotionally and financially mature. Of course, we have to impose an arbitrary age qualification somewhere. 30 seems about right. With some exceptions (most of whom would fall into one of the above categories), 20somethings are neither.
And, lest anyone accuse me of bias…under those standards, I would have been ineligible to vote when in my 20s. I never served in the military and I definitely did not pay federal income taxes for five years (I spent much of my 20s as a full-time student). I freely admit I was immature, and probably should not have been voting. Not surprisingly, I was also a die-hard Democrat.
Art Deco:
Just to make it clear – in this post I am not talking about the motives of most of the leaders of the extreme left, except for this part: “those who just like the idea of power and control over others and plan to be the ones in charge” (third paragraph from bottom).
And by the way, if you want to get rid of the plus in your name, just get rid of it one time in the autofill and it should disappear after that.
Communism is to economics as creationism is to biology.
It’s one of three leftist creationisms. The right gets by with one.
The second is the Magic Dirt theory that if you replace humans in one physical location, such as an affluent public school district or a nation such as the United States, the humans new to the area will take on all the positive behaviors (however defined) that the humans originally in the area had.
The third doesn’t have a name that I know of, but it states that humans, like all other animals, evolved right up to a certain point and but at some point, unlike all other animals, became blank slates with no essential differences related to sex or genetic inheritance.
Perhaps the inherent appeal of Communism and Socialism and all the other collectivist systems is our attraction to the concept of fairness. The concept of “fairness” is pretty deeply seated in the human brain and there’s a great deal of evidence that it exists as a concept even in nonhuman primates. (https://www.pnas.org/content/110/Supplement_2/10416.short)
By fairness I mean a sense that everyone ends up with an equal amount of resources regardless of circumstances. Collectivism promises an equality of outcomes. It doesn’t matter that such a system isn’t actually realistic in its implimentation due to a fundemntal incongruency with human nature, it’s the promise itself that is alluring.
Of course sensible people understand that human beings are different from one another, with different levels of ability and ambition, and that if you artificially force equality of outcomes you end up destroying hope. If there’s a ceiling on how much you can achieve, if no matter how hard you work you’ll still get the same outcome as the guy who just does the bare minimum, what’s the point in ever putting any more effort than the bare minimum into any activity?
But the problem is that for whatever reason these concepts are often difficult to communicate clearly and concisely in ways that are appealing for young and naive people. They only hear the promises of Utopia, they can’t or won’t believe that it’s unrealistic.
A kind of memory about dystopia or utopia, in previous life times and eras.
Yes, LOL, but what IS the “socialist ideal”? What life style vision has the socialist in its head, that it finds so alluring that collectivization seems a worthy price to pay, or, even as a worthy end-in-itself?
“Satisfying and delicious … la la”
When I read socialist literature, I find two elements only that really stand out as socialist per se, as opposed to simple ideals of sufficient food and shelter that can be satisfied by any number of exchange arrangements.
The first element/impulse is that famously resentment-based idea of complete material equality: As if you would naturally want to wear the same clothes I do, spend your allowance on the same things I do, and move about in the same square footage; with the only substantive differences being something along the lines of ” ‘artistic’ expressions” and the fatuous from each according to his special abilities (unearned and undeserved talents as the socialist sees them of course), to those needy who deserve … because … something.
The second is a combination of vaguely homoerotic and clearly neurotic impulses; a great almost passionate desire to belong, projecting a view of the world which sees “alienation” as one of mankind’s greatest problems, and a strange focus on achieving “man’s love for man” through social management regimes as the attainment of some kind of nirvana-like state.
Now, I admit, that as one who not only does not get the circle dance, and who thinks it laughable and slightly pathetic – if anthropologically comprehensible given the evolutionary history of some human sub-groups – it could be that I am such an outlier that I am missing something else. What it might be, I don’t know.
Which is why I asked.
But when people start yammering on about the joy’s of inclusion, and unity, and shuffling around in a circle per se****, they might as well be trying to induce hunger in me by holding a plate of dog turds under my nose; or, at least trying to sell the attractions of a crowded subway filled with vagrants who are extremely “comfortable with their own bodies” and not very much concerned with interpersonal boundaries.
So I just don’t see it, whatever it is. And I have not seen a even semi-modern formulation of “the vision”.
There must be a “vision” of what such a society would look like. Just as there is an architect’s vision in a blueprint where you see the roofing materials specified, an elevation plan, and the size and layout of the rooms.
In socialism as an “ideal”, one would expect to see the “attractions” specified and clearly laid out; and so see exactly how people would exchange and what they would strive for, and how and why. But what little we get, all seems very, very, vague and abstract.
What is it you are selling again? “Oh!!! Something really really satisfying. But you have to buy it, before you can see what’s inside”
Where have we heard the like of that before?
The few times, such as with Engels, or the German Reds in the 60’s they actually do start to lay out some substantive aspects of their vision, such as the abolition of the nuclear family, their affinity for pansexuality, a collective decision making process with regard to access to or utilization of virtually any part of the material world, then it looks like an outright horror show; attractive only to human monstrosities. Or, at least as a commenter noted above, only to the “abnormal” who are seeking to direct social relations in such a way as to have their perversity and abnormalities accommodated by the normal, rather than the other way around.
So what do they see? Clean and well lit streets devoid of polluting traffic? A 300 square foot cinder block apartment for every family and a pail of millet for every meal? Children as sex toys for “artistic” males? The spiritual joys of an endless “Bunny Hop”? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZ6kpvfxrNE
Or maybe The Hokey Pokey is more to your taste. After all, socialism promises even greater choice and self-expression than we have ever known thus far.
What exactly we get to choose and express, is not so clear, and they will very seldom say.
I wish they would. That’s why I ask.
***As opposed to “mere” tolerance, as Obama complained, or as opposed to the “mere” indifferent application of the law, and fair and scrupulous and non prejudicial dealing.
Belief in “socialism” is belief in a magical fairly tale that all the a$$holes and gangsters will suddenly smile and become useful and productive at dull jobs so as to provide the socialist with all he/she desires without any effort on the true believers part. They are blind to the violence, terror, and death that is required since the magic spell will protect “them”. “They” will never be looted or sent to an elder care facility to die “for the cause”.
The socialist magic will protect them and provide food, warmth, and their “simple” necessities. Someone else will take care of all the difficult labor. That is what the original Bolsheviks thought, even after the cell door locked them into their fate.
The “true believers” expect the magic to make it all happen and refuse to see the scam they are walking into. Somehow, the great machine will see that they are worthy, “special”, and will be be provided for. Momma and Daddy took care of them, kept the ‘fridge full, and they never even had to carry out the trash or clean their room. Why would socialism be any different?
The other guy will be the Kulak or the “Zek”.
Yep. Magic.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYQTL-ws6p4
One of my favorite songs – Always the Sun.
“I was always told in school, everybody should get the same…”
Yes to the desire for “fairness”.
But it’s not really “Collectivism promises an equality of outcomes. ”
No.
It promises Everybody gets their fair share
Because the “fair share” is not exactly equality, the anti-collectivist critique targeting equal shares is not quite on target.
“…according to his need”.
Collectivism promises that everybody will be “taken care of”.
Security.
Plus Belonging.
As long as there are some people who are not being taken care of, there will be calls for more collectivism.
Can it ever be ended?
I think so, tho not with UBI (Universal Basic Income = money for nothing)
…
We need Guaranteed Job Offers – everybody gets from society, everybody contributes. Everybody works – and does their “fair share” of work.
In many marginal cases this would be gov’t offers a lousy, easy job, like cleaning up a street or sorting recyclable garbage, for a small wage enough to live on. With freedom to leave for a better job whenever such a better job is found.
Some places have tried small UBI type experiments. Not quite successful. I don’t yet know of any Guaranteed Job programs.
Tho there may be some fear of too many of
“those who just like the idea of power and control over others and plan to be the ones in charge.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGCdLKXNF3w&list=RDcYQTL-ws6p4&index=4
Everybody Wants To Rule The World
(my mix as I write comments … why did the 80s music have to end?)
There was a local official–the type who dealt with the public as the primary part of his job. He died recently and his funeral procession was extremely long. Apparently, a lot of people wanted to make sure he was dead.
How ordinary people can put up with the constant shortfalls of government planning–reduced speed in a work zone complete with traffic cones and no work for a month. Mixed up tax bills. Health inspectors on the take. Recall the 73 oil embargo…. Over and over and…somebody thinks if the government runs everything, things will work out just fine.
It’s not as if everything worked fine in their life’s experience. It didn’t. But…if the government just had…..something or other, probably more power over those Bad People we’re instructed to hate…. Everything would work fine.
DNW – have you never been to a sports event where you are rooting for “your team”, along with hundreds, or thousands, of others?
Socialists don’t “see” a socialist vision. They “long for the feeling”. Of being together, in the group. Often especially “in with the in-crowd”.
Never been to a concert, rock or other music, where you felt “as one” with your unknown neighbor who was enjoying the moments as you?
Never been singing a song along with friends, and enjoying being a part of a group “greater than yourself”?
Never been in a group dance, moving in unison (almost) to some music?
I have. I’ve liked it. I’ve been able to lose “myself”, my self-consciousness, for awhile. Booze helps, but music more so, both dancing and singing.
So I can’t speak for those really longing for the circle dance, since I don’t, yet I imagine that they long for great feelings of belonging, of joining a group; such togetherness that can’t be known by yourself. I understand the circle dance longing as a togetherness longing. I think this happens with those who are lonely, and I’ve almost never been lonely (even when alone; I’m happy alone, but happier with my wife.)
Which reminds me that, despite the greater communication possible with digital tools, more young people are reporting more loneliness. Lonely people are more willing to support totalitarians.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NXnxTNIWkc&list=RDcYQTL-ws6p4&index=9
“Oh my God do I pray.
I pray every single day*
For a revolution.”
I’m sure the desire to be part of the circle dance is some kind of real, even if it’s a reality not quite for me.
The anti-War Vietnam protesters didn’t need a “vision” of post-war Vietnam. Stopping the (US part of the) war was enough.
Always far easier to get agreement on something being bad, than getting agreement on what, exactly, would be better. One of the reasons private property and private decision makers produce more good stuff.
My theory is very basic.
I commented to my grandchildren in a vain effort to focus their thinking, that a big part of the reason that the country is drifting leftward is that living free, with responsibility for yourself, is hard. Precedent notwithstanding, there is a recurring appeal to letting someone make the decisions and provide for your needs; and that people are often willing to sacrifice some freedom in return. But, there is a term in the commercial world for this process; it is called “bait and switch”. In this case, the sucker doesn’t realize it but there is another term from the commercial world that also applies; “balloon mortgage”.
There is no need to beat the drum for this forum.
Unfortunately, the country entered a pandemic of ignorance several decades back; and it has led to an appalling level of national naivete.
To quote an anonymous philosopher: “It is impossible to over estimate the gullibility of the American public.”
“From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” describes the nuclear family, often the extended family, most religious organizations and all volunteer programs. This is why communism appeals to women, religiously inclined individuals and do-gooders everywhere. The only difference between this ancient principle of human organization and communism is that communism perverts this impulse by making the participation compulsory.
The lasting appeal of extreme leftism = the dream that will not die
Jewish World Review
The Dems flirt with an old fantasy
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/pruden062918.php3
It’s the dream that will not die, but can never become more than a dream.
the two meanings…
The greeks had two meanings for it, utopos- meaning the good place, and utopos- meaning the place that cannot be.
The Dream We Lost – Freda Utley
(but forget that one, you never cared to read it)
The Dream We Lost: Soviet Russia, Then and Now {very small excerpt}
By Freda Utley
https://www.questia.com/library/76885193/the-dream-we-lost-soviet-russia-then-and-now
No one listens, despite her fame and Ronald Reagan, no one is even mildly curious enough to remember the erased, resurrect them, and learn from those who know it better than anyone now could..
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We forget because we dont want to make the effort to remember
and because we dont, we lose all we have to those who not only remember
but study, employ, have helpers, and are coordinated…
It was lost the minute the old knowledge was not respected enough to be known
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The appeal is not natural… IF we were not taught to love it we would not love it
you would know this if you knew its early history, and its continued existence being supported by regimes whose goal is ownership of all…
It took using the womens movement, and more to change what was being taught and brick by brick remove things that were in the way… it was not taken up by people who liked it or wanted it… the whole of the point neo makes is a farce as it would die in a heartbeat if its manipulators that seek to gain from it and act with it and use it, ceased to do so…
thats the funny joke of it all..
and no one gets it because no one wants to learn the truth about it
they are so captured by the idea that these drives are natural that it comes up over and over… and so they ignore all the societies, fundings, operatives, and more that feed its fire and keep moving it on…
and by doing, they fail to stop it…
because you cant stop a natural thing
nor can you stop a unnatural thing posing as natural
the very method disarms its enemies
it makes them blind to the Kuroko in the Bunraku theater
blind to the invisible demons that shape our actions
funny how neo will refer to kabuki, and ignore the kuroko..
In kabuki, the kuroko serve many of the same purposes as running crew. They move scenery and props on stage, aiding in scene changes and costume changes. They will also often play the role of animals, will-o-the-wisps, or other roles which are played not by an actor in full costume, but by holding a prop. Kuroko wear all black, head to toe, in order to imply that they are invisible and not part of the action onstage.
We choose not to see..
unlike the child who cries out that the emperor wears no clothes
we refuse to know what we need to know to stop what we think cant be stopped
a tragic comedy of cosmic proportions
Obviously socialism appeals to those who believe they should be in charge — with varying rationales about how that will be better for everyone.
For ordinary people I think socialism’s appeal is partly based on the brain’s wiring for fairness in small groups — the family and the tribe — going back to prehistoric times.
Then there’s Jordan Peterson’s “resentment” explanation, that the less successful resent the more successful.
I’d say socialism plays into deep human drives, which is why it keeps reappearing.
On the other hand, capitalism cuts right across people’s innate sense of fairness — like having members of the tribe compete to hog as much of the tribe’s resources as possible.
I’m not saying that’s the way capitalism is, but the way it feels for many people. It’s a shame capitalism works so well!
The main complaint about Capitalism so that it doesn’t erase poverty. And that is true. However, what Communism brings is equality of misery. Everyone lives pretty close to poverty.
Why does Capitalism work? Well, we all know that markets and freedom bring the blessings of creativity, the miracle of supply and demand, as well as pricing mechanisms that work. But some people will; due to bad luck, bad decisions, or poor choice; end up in poverty. Capitalist systems have tried to care for those people with charity and government welfare. (Itself a small form of socialism.)
If capitalism could solve the poverty problem would the Communist dream die? I doubt it, as there will always be envy and people’s desire to get even. Or, the belief that central planning is better. (All evidence to the contrary.) But certainly one aim of a Capitalist society should be the minimization of poverty.
What to do to minimize poverty in a capitalist society? I like the way the Mormons do things. Don’t know if it could work on a nationwide basis. They help the downtrodden, but insist on work of some kind in return. Unless the person is unable to work. When charity is local and personal, this can work. Obviously, the Federal welfare system is too impersonal and too easily gamed. Also, the problems of drug addiction ad mental illness contribute greatly to the problem of poverty that we see today. How does a Capitalist system deal with those people who are unable/unwilling to work? I have my ideas but don’t think they would be acceptable in today’s society.
The poor will always be with us is a truism. Maybe we’re doing about as good as it’s possible to, given human nature.
Collectivist supporters come in two flavors; those who embrace it and those who see it as a path to power. The latter’s motivation is self-explanatory.
Those who embrace it invest themselves “in a magical fairly tale” as a means of escaping the facts of life. At base, they in effect have rejected fundamental aspects of reality.
Eva Marie,
Yes, which is why I view communism, in its compulsory participation… as a perversion of communion. Christianity invites us, as God’s children into communion with the divine. It suggests that refusal to do so carries the inherent consequence of separation. But God does not insist upon it.
“capitalism cuts right across people’s innate sense of fairness” huxley
Absent corruption, capitalism is supremely fair. If you invent a better mousetrap, the degree of benefit determines the commensurate reward. Anything less is theft.
The main complaint about Capitalism so that it doesn’t erase poverty.
J.J.: Not to be contentious, but capitalism has basically erased real poverty in America. That’s why leftist rhetoric is no longer about poverty, but “wealth inequality.” A very different animal.
Those in American ghettos today have a higher standard of living than most Africans and a fair number of Europeans.
It’s worth taking a look back at James Agee’s and Walker Evan’s classic, “Let Us Now Praise Men” (1941) about Southern tenant farmers during the Depression. Walker Evans’ photos of these farmers and their families — gaunt, wearing dirty rags and living in bare shacks — can tear your heart out.
–Source: Agee, James, and Walker Evans. Let Us Now Praise Famous
Men: the American Classic, in Words and Pictures, of Three Tenant
Families in the Deep South.
https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/anthropology/21a-348-photography-and-truth-spring-2008/photos/MIT21A_348S08_praise.pdf.
Also, James Agee writes like an angel.
Capitalism is a system by which people are able to voluntarily, according to their ability, give to those in need in the most efficient way possible.
Geoffrey Britain – that’s well said. And that message of Christ’s is so appealing that Christianity spread throughout the world. It’s no wonder that Marx and all the commies after him bent it for their own purposes.
It’s no wonder that Marx and all the commies after him bent it for their own purposes.
Eva Marie: Everyone wants Jesus on their side!
There’s also a big motte-and-bailey game going on. The same people who love to talk about smashing capitalism and bankrupting big business and destroying the landlord class* will, when called on it, accuse you of conspiratorial thinking and claim they’re just talking about Euro-style social democracy. And then go back to posting “smash capitalism, hurr hurr hurr” as soon as you turn away.
But people who aren’t in on the conversation just hear the “Euro-style social democracy” part and think “well maybe that wouldn’t be so bad”.
* (Funny, none of these people seem to own property, no matter how old they are. And they’re not all Millennials with unpaid student loan debt, either.)
Tom Grey —
Pretty sure it was
Pray at the sink all day
For a revolution
Because feminism in the ’90s was still about liberating women from the drudgery of housework. Sure.
But on that note, a 40ish woman friend of mine who has a 4-year-old complained recently that adult life seemed to be nothing but “loading and unloading the dishwasher, forever”.
And I thought, “yeah, that’s called taking care of responsibilities, which is what adults actually do even when they’re tedious.”
Absent corruption, capitalism is supremely fair. If you invent a better mousetrap, the degree of benefit determines the commensurate reward. Anything less is theft.
Geoffrey Britain: You did get my point, though? I’m talking about how capitalism feels to many people, not how it actually works. Hence, the problem with socialism never going away.
I remember how the original “Star Trek” was all about having adventures, freeing the captives, defeating the Klingons (Soviets), breaking the Prime Directive, and kissing beautiful green-skinned women.
Then the 80s came along and suddenly we get Star Trek lectures about how in the future they have transcended money, everyone works to contribute, Klingons are our friends and we’ve got to save the whales. Not much kissing either.
What happened?
Bryan Lovely:
Dishwasher? When I was a child, our family had four dishwashers (siblings). It was our job to do the dishes.
How cruel to have a dishwasher without an automatic loading and unloading robot! Well one can dream, and complain until then?
I looked it up, and it is in fact “pray every single day”. Enunciation, madam, enunciation.
Huxley, I get your point. Yes, the poor are much better off today. Except for those homeless now living rough on our streets. (Most of them addicts or mental cases.)
I was alive during the Depression and saw some of its effects.
My great grandparents homesteaded a place on the plains of Eastern Colorado. The dust bowl years of the 1930s. They went bust and were taken in by my grandfather, their son. Their spirits were broken and their last days were spent grateful for family, but mourning their loss of independence. And my grandparents were not so well off either. They ran a small hardware store that barely made ends meet in those days. Money was tight and hard to come by. My parents were both working, unusual in those days, but they barely made enough between the two of them to keep the rent up and buy food. I was a middle son. My first pair of new clothes came when my older brother left home for the Navy. I was 13. We were poor, but had the necessities of life and a work ethic was expected. I hated work as a child. Chopping wood, bringing in coal, washing dishes, cleaning the house, painting the house, digging an ash pit out behind the house, mowing grass, picking dandelions, shaving bark off pine logs, etc. were all jobs I had to do as a child (ages four to sixteen.). And I hated it. When I got old enough at 16 to hold a paid job myself, I was thankful that I had learned to do the work.
The Depression left its mark on many. But you have to realize that there wasn’t really a large middle class in those days. We lived in a small mountain town in Colorado. There were four outside sources of money coming in. The National Park Service payroll, The Forest Service payroll, the CCC camp, and the well-to-do families that had summer homes or vacationed in the area in the summer. Most people made their money between May and September (when everyone worked seven days a week) then held on until the next tourist season. By May, everyone (except the Park and Forest Service people) was broke and waiting for the tourists to show up. Which, because most of them were well enough off, even during the Depression, they did.
The village became prosperous from two things. In 1944 the Bureau of reclamation began building the Alva B,. Adams tunnel to divert water from the wet side of the mountains to the farmers on the plains. Brought lots of money into town. The other thing was the development, after WWII, of motels and touring by car. 4.7 million people visited Rocky Mountain National park last year. Most of them spent money in my old home town, which is now a prosperous tourist destination. Free enterprise has made that possible. Under Communism, the place wouldn’t be any better off today than it was 90 years ago.
capitalism is supremely fair
Yes, it is, in the sense that we get what we pay for. But when a child says, “That’s not fair,” she doesn’t mean, “I didn’t get what I paid for” – she means, at best, “I didn’t get what you said I would get.” And often when an adult says, “That’s not fair,” she means the same: the expected promotion didn’t materialize, the store ran out of the desired item before “everybody” (meaning she) could buy one, things like that. “Fair,” in common parlance, doesn’t have a lot to do with actual fairness; it has more to do with disappointment.
What I have trouble pinning down is whether those who embrace socialism do so because of its false promise that they’ll never be disappointed again, or because of its real effect of guaranteeing everyone (except the rulers) more or less equal disappointment.
What happened?
Gene Roddenberry ran out of seances and Council of 9 channeling sessions, that’s what happened.
Hehe
Ymarsakar: What happened [to Star Trek]?
Socialism!
Nonapod wins!
It’s about fairness – everybody gets the same (virtually nothing). Everybody is truly equal (equally impoverished).
It’s about fairness – everybody gets the same (virtually nothing). Everybody is truly equal (equally impoverished).
Doug+Purdie: The Irish have a wonderful word:
_____________________________________________
begrudgery – (Irish) (informal) resentment of any person who has achieved success or wealth
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/begrudgery
J.J.: Lovingly rendered comment!
I find it sad how much of our past is being washed away. ‘Twas ever thus, I suppose.
I mentioned the writer, James Agee, earlier. His masterpiece was “A Death in the Family,” a novel based on his memories of growing up in Knoxville in the 1910s. The prolog to the book is especially beautiful. Here are the first few sentences:
________________________________________________________
We are talking now of summer evenings in Knoxville, Tennessee, in the time I lived there so successfully disguised to myself as a child. It was a little bit sort of block, fairly solidly lower middle class, with one or two juts apiece on either side of that. The houses corresponded: middlesized gracefully fretted wood houses built in the late nineties and early nineteen hundreds, with small front and side and more spacious back yards, and trees in the yards, and porches. These were softwooded trees, poplars, tulip trees, cottonwoods. There were fences around one or two of the houses, but mainly the yards ran into each other with only now and then a low hedge that wasn’t doing very well….
https://www.davidpaulkirkpatrick.com/2012/06/30/james-agees-masterwork-knoxville-summer-of-1915-written-in-ninety-minutes/
___________________________________________________________
Samuel Barber, the composer, wrote a wonderful piece using portions of the prolog. A YouTuber created a video, a real labor of love, incorporating Barber’s music and scrapbook photos from that time and place:
–Samuel Barber, “Knoxville, Summer of 1915”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U08pqOO3Epk
Collectivism never goes out of fashion because it appeals to people who won’t grow up. They will go to their graves yearning for a milieu in which nothing matters but their needs, which will be painlessly satisfied by others, with no risk and no need to reciprocate. It’s the infant at the eternal teat.
Collectivist societies fail because selfless generosity only works, when it works at all, within a deeply committed personal group. Even those tight-knit small groups work only if at least most of their members step up and reciprocate with their own generosity and trustworthiness. It fails spectacularly when you try to scale it up to include strangers. That road leads straight to eating the zoo animals.
Texan99: Yes, collectivism can work small-scale between committed people — families, tribes and religious communities. And it does fail badly when strangers, lacking sufficient commitment, are brought in. (That’s the story of the overwhelming majority of communes.)
My point here is that our species evolved in families and tribes. Our heritage is collectivism. I’d say it’s hard-wired into us and that’s why the yearning for collectivism will never go away.
An ironic point since conservatives are always criticizing the left for expecting to change human nature…
Huxley: “I’d say it’s hard-wired into us and that’s why the yearning for collectivism will never go away.”
Yep. Our genetic memory tends toward collectivism. In the time of hunter-gatherer tribes, the survival of the tribe was more important than the individual. Conversely, the tribe enhanced the chances of each individual’s survival. To be cast out of the tribe was a near death sentence. (Except for Ayla. 🙂 ) The rise of individualism is relatively recent. We’re still trying to figure that out. But the evidence of the economic success of free markets is so overwhelming: USSR – Western Europe, East Germany-West Germany, Red China-Taiwan, North Korea- South Korea. Only the willfully blind can fail to see the evidence.
Your link to the music of Samuel Barber was interesting. The music evokes a memory of times past. A yearning for those times comes through. Much like the nostalgia I feel for the places of my youth. Ah, that we could relive those days. 🙂
J.J.: Oops! I put up the wrong Barber link. I find this one much more appealing:
“Knoxville: Summer of 1915”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTR3oCCek74
Barber also composed “Adagio for Strings” which has been used all over the place and is quite moving:
–Samuel Barber, “Adagio for Strings”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3MHeNt6Yjs
The rise of individualism is relatively recent. We’re still trying to figure that out.
J.J.: Indeed. I think we are figuring it out.
Just as we have figured out (mostly) that we don’t have to kill the men and enslave the women and children from people who look different or live on the other side of the hill.
Bryan – I thought it was:
I pray to a saint all day*
until I looked it up.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnFy1luxL0A
This video has the lyrics, too. (Now back to Clapton & Knopfler, or other guitar)
JJ – thx for life depression story. I fear that so many of the WW II “greatest generation”, who lived thru the depression, then became too generous with their kids.
Too generous meaning too much spoiling them, and maybe especially with their grandkids, while the Boomer parents were self-actualizing themselves away from marriage commitments that were, as usual, less than dreams come true.
Eva Marie – yes on the key difference between family & voluntary community orgs, that can act socialistically and essentially give each member an equal/fair share, and a forced system. Whenever one is forced, one is a loser. Even if it is for “your own good”, you’ve lost freedom.
Capitalism succeeds because all the deals are voluntary, meaning they are win-win for each side. If one side thinks it would be a loser, that side doesn’t agree, doesn’t make the deal.
…
My reading of commune history has me thinking it’s not strangers coming in, it’s kids. Kids whose parents want their kids to be “more equal”. And kids who, as they become teens and adults, no longer accept the voluntary rules and restrictions of the commune.
Which naturally leads to Marx and his most fervent disciples, the Jewish Zionists, who so far remain the only group to try to raise kids communally, in a kibbutz.
https://www.touristisrael.com/what-is-a-kibbutz/6053/
Jewish intellectuals often supported Socialism and Communism. Since these were also atheist thinkers, they were opposed by Christian theologists. This was not unrelated to anti-Semitism.
Funny sad how so many young BLM atheists are commie supporting but also hating Jews even a bit more than most other successful groups.
Human Rights are Individual Rights …
Some great guitar introductions – 13 min and over 20 great song intros
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UNuqYFP-pM
My reading of commune history has me thinking it’s not strangers coming in, it’s kids. Kids whose parents want their kids to be “more equal”. And kids who, as they become teens and adults, no longer accept the voluntary rules and restrictions of the commune.
Tom Grey: That’s more for the communes which lasted long enough to have kids…. Not many of those in the most recent Age of Communes.
Tom Grey:
What you wrote about kibbutzim is very misleading. You wrote: “Which naturally leads to Marx and his most fervent disciples, the Jewish Zionists, who so far remain the only group to try to raise kids communally, in a kibbutz.”
First of all, most “Jewish Zionists” are not on kibbutzim. That latter group was only ever a tiny tiny percentage. But more importantly, although long ago at the very beginning they raised kids communally, in fairly short order they realized that was a big big error and they stopped doing it long ago. Now, I suppose there might be one or two kibbutzim where it persists, but I’m not even sure of that. And in fact – even according to the link you provided – kibbutzim in general have become more and more privatized, and not just in raising children but all-around.
Here’s a good look at a couple of kids raised on “The Farm,” the most successful hippie commune (which still exists though not as a collective) who left the Farm, became media types, then returned to the Farm and made a film of their experiences.
–“American Commune”
https://www.amazon.com/American-Commune-Nadine-Mundo/dp/B00RGKOMOM
I tracked the Farm closely since I was deeply impressed by its founder and spiritual leader, Stephen Gaskin. I thought I would eventually end up there. I visited once but never could quite pull the trigger on that decision. I stayed in San Francisco, where I could eat meat, avoid soybeans, and devote my time to poetry and computer programming.
The Farm failed because they allowed hundreds of people to visit and freeload while soaking in Farm life as prospective members. The Farm leadership was also careless about some loans they took on.
Since Gaskin didn’t believe in birth control and even offered, for spiritual reasons, to take in babies from pregnant women who didn’t want to have abortions. So the Farm had plenty of kids — organized into “kid herds” — but the kids weren’t really the problem except for the parents who chose to leave the Farm for the children’s sake. (Farm life was below the official poverty line.)
Neo (I really like your blog, even if I don’t always agree)
I’d say my very short kibbutz note was merely incomplete about facts rather than misleading. When? How many?
You add that it is only a tiny tiny percentage.
To me, two “tinys” means less than 1%.
But to some it could be anything less than 10%.
In Israel, the electoral threshold is now – 3.25%
I think 4% (1960 as linked) is small, but not quite tiny tiny.
https://zionism-israel.com/dic/Kibbutz.htm – in 2005, it’s 2%.
Perhaps more interesting is the 1910-1980 timeframe.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kibbutz_communal_child_rearing_and_collective_education
Communal child rearing was the method of education that prevailed in the collective communities in Israel (kibbutz; plural: kibbutzim), until about the end of the 1980s.
Collective education started on the day of birth and went on until adulthood. At the time it was considered a natural outcome of the principle of equality, which was part and parcel of the kibbutz life.
It took a LONG time, decades, for the kibbutzim to change the excessive equality emphasis. Even longer than Heidegger to renounce Nazism.
I’m pretty sure the leaders most often said
“we’re not doing our theory correctly”.
Until they died.
Intellectuals in love with their own theories, despite real word evidence to the contrary.
Madness.
…
One Step Beyond
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOJSM46nWwo&list=RDcYQTL-ws6p4&index=27
huxley, citing JJ, on October 21, 2020 at 2:28 pm said:
“The rise of individualism is relatively recent. We’re still trying to figure that out.”
I have recently finished the book Inventing the Individual: The Origins of Western Liberalism [2014; 2017] by Larry Siedentop [Oxford professor]. He suggests that hunter gather and later societies, including the Greek and Roman, were very patriarchal, with the husband/father basically having life and death control over his wife and children, with minimal if any push back from the rest of society. Only the man had any human rights and was considered a free citizen. All others (slaves, etc.) did not. The focus was on supporting the city state or tribal equivalent, rather than the individual. I don’t recall that he specifically discussed the situation within Jewish society, but I got the impression a similar view was held there as well since Siedentop did not suggest an alternative “modern” view. He claims it was only with the advent of Pauline ideas of Christianity that the concept of individual human rights (outside of concern for the family/clan/tribe/ city) came into being.
He then discusses how that concept was carried forward thru the “Dark Ages”, Middle Ages legal developments, Church and King contests, and later periods up to Locke, with the concomitant influence on our Founders/Framers. I recommend it to the Neo group for consideration.
I originally learned about this book via an equally interesting item at NRO: https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/08/the-american-misunderstanding-of-natural-rights. If interested, you might start there.
Tom Grey:
I believe it’s at least somewhat misleading for two reasons.
The first is that you wrote “the Jewish Zionists, who so far remain the only group to try to raise kids communally, in a kibbutz.” But it wasn’t “Jewish Zionists” in general, it was a small percentage of the Jewish Zionists who lived in Israel (which is already a small percentage of “Jewish Zionists”). In my opinion, 4% is indeed “tiny tiny” in a country as small as Israel. But at any rate, “Jewish Zionists” as a whole did not raise their children communally at any point; it was always a very small percentage of them.
I believe that although the practice became extinct even on kibbutzim in the 1980s, it began to end long before that. I recall that even in the 1960s it was starting to be abandoned by some kibbutzim. I can’t get any figures on that, though, so I’m not sure.
My second objection is the word “remain.” You wrote that the Zionists “so far remain the only group to try to raise kids communally, in a kibbutz.” It sounds like you mean that they still do it. Perhaps that’s not what you meant, but if you didn’t mean they still do it, what was it you were saying? That “Jewish Zionists” are the only group to have ever tried to raise kids communally? I don’t think that’s true. Quite a few communes did it, as far as I know, and the Shakers did it (although strictly speaking, since the Shakers were celibate, their children had no biological parents available). And Spartan children were considered the property of the state from birth. Weak infants were put to death by the state, and at 6 or 7 the boys were put in rigorous schools together and raised to be – well, Spartans.
Come to think of it, that’s a bit like the British “public school” (that is, private boarding school) system, isn’t it?
So that’s what I was referring to. And there may have been some other tribes or cultures, of which I’m not aware, that had some sort of communal child-rearing as well. I agree, though, that during the heyday of the kibbutz, that kibbutzim were seemingly unique in having communal sleeping quarters for infants. Mothers and parents in general did have a lot of access to their children, however.
R2L:
Individuals and individual rights were important to the ancient Israelites. See, for example, this:
Huxley–of course it’s human nature never to want to grow up. It’s painful to realize that we have to become the ones to supply the needs of others, and that we’ll never realize the inborn permanent dream that we can always relax and take. A socio-economic system that indulges this natural human tendency, however, is doomed, because it will lead to desperate poverty and violence far more inexorably that the harshest free-market ethos. Being realistic about human nature doesn’t mean expecting reality to conform to the natural desires of children to remain children; it means forming an economic system that works despite this natural foible.
Part of the issue, it seems, though, is that those whose job it is to mold young minds are themselves besotted with the idea, and don’t teach the idea fully and properly — “warts and all”.
They sell it rosy-eyed and rosy-cheeked and rainbows and moonbeams, not as a system with flaws and (at least some) redeeming values (trust me, I don’t mean enough to make it vaguely workable or sufficiently redeemed for 150m deaths, and 3 billion people left destitute and despondent, in 100 years), enough data for them to think carefully about it and come to their own conclusions as to its workability.
There is the real problem. People taken in by silence of not hearing the whole story.
It is my primary reason for engagement of people whom I have no hope of saving from their stupidity.
I don’t do it to change them. I do it so that said idiots are not allowed to speak unchallenged and undisputed, so that they can take in others with their clueless ignorance.
There are far more lurkers in a conversation than there are debaters. If you are clear and reasonable and use a set of consistent, rational points that make sense, you have a chance of saving those who don’t know better and might be taken in.
Thanks for your pointing out that “remain” is unclear in my quick early comment.
I actually sort of had in mind a ranking of groups who supported communal living, and socialism. Zionists were basically all socialists, even if only a few were so extreme as to support communes for kids.
The socialist Jewish Zionists are at the top of my list of “modern” (post Enlightenment/ gunpowder*) groups working on making socialism work. They could do it and survive, but couldn’t do it and prosper/ advance as fast as the more individualist capitalists.
Your note on Hebrew individualism is important, good, and unfortunately not taught in most gov’t schools.
*God created Man.
Colt made him equal.
I really believe this is true in an important way – democracy requires that the elites respect normals. Those with guns always get respect.
“Who gets the fun?
It’s always the man with a gun …”
My reading of commune history has me thinking it’s not strangers coming in, it’s kids.
Tom Grey: What does your reading of commune history cover? All you’ve mentioned is the kibbutz version. It’s a big subject. There have been a lot of communes with varying degrees of collectivism.
I was a big fan of “The Modern Utopian” magazine which covered American communes during their 70s heyday. One photograph was quite clever — it showed a commune bathroom with a dozen labeled toothbrushes! As in “We don’t share everything.”
Back in the 2000s I was interested in back issues of the magazine, so I contacted its editor. He was happy to hear from me, but then he went straight to Bush Derangement Syndrome. I kept trying to steer the conversation back to the magazine. However, he kept trying to argue me down and I had to break things off.
Sorry to disappoint, huxley, but it was mostly a few magazines from 30+ years ago. It included info on religious Christian communities, as well as the Heinlein libertarian Stranger in a Strange Land magic/tech (=SciFi Fantasy) ideas.
The community needs strong common morals, and the members have to agree to abide by the commune rules. This works until kids are born, and their parents have trouble raising them “fairly” / optimally, and the kids don’t always agree to abide by the commune rules.
Other communes that accept all strangers rapidly go down, but many instead require the strange new members to accept the rules. Those that do then contribute. But it’s always a lot of work to get most middle class comfort.
I was looking briefly for stuff I might have read before, didn’t find it. Did find these Top 10 communes (#3 Israeli Kibbutzim):
https://www.toptenz.net/top-10-experimental-towns-and-communes.php
9. Auroville in India has a really cool top down photo.
This 1 pager on what makes a commune work was good:
https://www.quora.com/What-makes-a-successful-commune?share=1
It includes the “one no vote” idea that anybody can vote no on a potential policy, and it only takes a single “no” for the policy to fail.
A few other links had others say the same thing.
Many of the communes were of the Free Love variety. I remembered reading of some before, and it was cool to read about some again.
http://themovementsite.weebly.com/sex-sense.html
But I was too Libertarian and too horny to go for any such community. Libbers were mostly men, thus no actual Libber commune would likely satisfy my love life; and the Free Love folk’s politics was not at all attractive.
I did have a very short, but intense, affair with a Jewish coed who had already agreed to go to kibbutz, which also piqued my interest about them.
Tom Grey
Auroville…..It includes the “one no vote” idea that anybody can vote no on a potential policy, and it only takes a single “no” for the policy to fail.
The one-vote veto apparently didn’t work well for Poland.Liberum veto
It might work for a commune, but not for a nation of millions.