Guest post by Brudder Snoobler
“It has undoubtedly been correct to emphasize the ethical
demands that form the basis of the Marxist dream. It must, in all fairness, be
said, before examining the check to Marxism, that in them lies the real
greatness of Marx. The very core of his theory was that work is profoundly
dignified and unjustly despised. He rebelled against the degradation of work to
the level of a commodity and of the worker to the level of an object. He
reminded the privileged that their privileges were not divine and that property
was not an eternal right. He gave a bad conscience to those who had no right to
a clear conscience, and denounced with unparalleled profundity a class whose
crime is not so much having had power as having used it to advance the ends of
a mediocre society deprived of any real nobility. To him we owe the idea which
is the despair of our times – but here despair is worth more than any hope –
that when work is a degradation, it is not life, even though it occupies every
moment of a life. Who, despite the pretensions of this society, can sleep in it
in peace when they know that it derives its mediocre pleasures from the work of
millions of dead souls? By demanding for the worker real riches, which are not
the riches of money but of leisure and creation, he has reclaimed, despite all
appearance to the contrary, the dignity of man. In doing so, and this can be
said with conviction, he never wanted the additional degradation that has been
imposed on man in his name. One of his phrases, which for once is clear and
trenchant, forever withholds from his triumphant disciples the greatness and
the humanity which once were his: “An end that requires unjust means is not a
just end.” Albert Camus on Karl Marx
To many, the failure of Soviet Communism, begs the question
of why Communism ever held any allure; bereft as it was of a realistic
understanding of human nature. Who today
would believe that political apparatchiks would use their power wisely and
fairly instead of using it to feather their own nests? So State Communism died as an ideal, if not as an idea. Corruption, buttressed by the extreme power of the state, caused the
system to atrophy and decay from the inside out. Hope in Lenin’s revolution turned to a
fearful acquiescence to Stalin’s excesses which finally settled into an
exhausted resignation of the way things were.
Those outside the cocoon of the party’s monopoly on the fruits of
society’s labor were forced to grin and bear it, or participate in black market
activities. Ultimately the system
collapsed on itself, weighed down by a race it couldn’t win against the West
and its need to keep its restive empire passive. It all came apart rather quickly and drearily,
as if throwing in the towel on this failed experiment in social engineering
reflected more melancholy and regret than joy.
Of course the West did not have so subdued a reaction. Instead we rejoiced in our triumph as we
debated what we were going to do with a “peace dividend” which would never
materialize. We used the
opportunity to reassure ourselves that we had been right all along; that our
capitalist democratic systems were, to paraphrase Churchill “the worst form of
government except all the others that have been tried” and that Communism had
been exposed as a naïve and cruel hoax.
The naiveté angle was one that enjoyed particular resonance in many
articles around that time. How could a
society which had attempted to divide things equitably amongst its citizens
work? Surely, the power to marshal the
state’s resources would lead to corruption and downright theft given man’s
proclivity to become intoxicated by its exercise.
And so the world left communism behind; even most of the
left has given up thinking about it; truly, the “God that Died”, as Gide had put
it. We forgot the fact that Marxism
existed as a reaction and a proposed solution to real world problems. The fact that it failed didn’t in any way
mean that the problems had all been eliminated. In fact many of them are still
with us. Class warfare has not, after
all disappeared. And yet, in the ensuing years the West,
prideful of its superiority, would begin to erect its own God; a God of
individual achievement for the me generation and its handmaidens “Laissez Faire” capitalism, free markets, deregulation
and tax shifting.
The new religion was founded in the bitter wake of Barry Goldwater’s
electoral defeat; it became a vibrant flowering movement under Ronald
Reagan and has reached its apex with the ascendency of people like Paul Ryan. It claims to be about liberation and freedom but its outcomes are profoundly reactionary. How can one claim otherwise when the implementation of its policies have resulted in ever growing stratification of wealth in fewer hands.
It
really is about preserving wealth and privilege, but it hides behind an
individualist, meritocratic veneer that promises “if you work hard and take
risks, you too can be one of us”, despite copious statistical evidence to the contrary. Once you are in the club, you can feel free
to look down from Olympus and congratulate yourself that it was well deserved;
more pluck than luck.
Paul Ryan represents the current high priest of this new religion, which gives
permission to forget or at very least to downplay society’s role in one’s
success. Of course moving up to the upper
1% is more difficult than all that, unless of course you are born into it, at
which point it is quite easy and vastly more common. Certainly
there are many more instances of people working hard and failing than there are
people who make it into the upper tier. To listen to Free Market ideologues like Ryan,
you may come to the conclusion that simply taking the risk is enough and that your failure in spite of the risks is your own fault alone. But taking risks is inherently; how shall we say
it; risky. The chance of success is
often very small and unless one is financially well endowed, little safety net awaits
to cushion the blow for those whose risk taking goes bad. For people like Paul Ryan, this is the way of things. While decrying Darwin's science in nature, they adopt it whole cloth when it comes to human interaction.
Now, there is nothing wrong with taking risk in order to achieve great things. From
a societal point of view, it is certainly in everyone’s interest that some people
feel emboldened to take calculated risks as such risks are often necessary to fashion
the next great thing. We wouldn’t want to live in a society where
risk takers had such a clear eyed view of things that they decided that what
they envisioned wasn’t worth chancing; thus a certain balance of mythology is
necessary to promote the common good.
That is hardly a reason, however to continue to promote a Ryan/Rand “you
did it on your own” mystique and if you didnt the fault lies solely with you. Do we really need to live in a society where someone must take monumental and frequently irreversible risks in order to just survive? To strive for greatness yes, to merely live?
The mythology that allows people to believe that they alone
are responsible for their success is of course merely a permission to believe
what they would like to believe about themselves. That is its power and allure. It is certainly more complicated to recognize
the fact that all achievements in life occur as a result of many factors, which
include Franklin’s inspiration and perspiration, as well as timing, market
forces, availability of capital and credit, regulatory change, etc. No one who witnessed the demise of Lehman
Brothers, a 158 year old financial powerhouse only weeks before its implosion,
cannot see how we may all be swept away by a tidal wave of bad circumstances. What was once obvious to ancient man (namely that you can be ruined by circumstances beyond your control and elevated by them as well) is gone. To Ryan, we are all self made, the winner and the loser alike. What about
the deli owner who goes out of business because they opened a new mall down the
road? Unforeseen factors play a huge
role in one’s success or failure. Ryan's fantasy of personaly agency is ascendent in the Republican Party, but it is a fantasy and scizophrenic one at that.
I once had a discussion with what I would call an ultra
conservative Limbaugh style conservative. We
spent a large amount of time on a tit for tat argument about the supposed evils
of government; we even agreed upon a few, but he stuck to his story line until
I asked him this series of questions:
Me: What do you think about
military spending?
Conservative: I think it’s
important to maintain a strong military.
Me: So you are in favor of high defense budgets.
Conservative: Yes the
military keeps us safe.
Me: And what about the
police.
Conservative: Yes of
course. I’m a law and order man.
Me: So let me ask you this,
if Government is dangerous and is about taking away our freedoms, then why do
you support the confiscation of your money (as you call taxation) to pay for the very means with which
the government enforces the authority to take away your freedoms?
After some hemming and hawing he responded with something
about ensuring our borders and protecting our interests abroad but it was
obvious to me that he was dissatisfied with his answer. He
ended the conversation at that point, promising a better answer within the next
few days. Although I never received an
answer from him on this point, I figured it out a few days later. It goes back into something primal from the
earliest days of civilization and it is the key driver of the conservative
agenda; preservation of the status quo. The agents of the state, the Army and the
Police are necessary because they protect the property rights of those with
something to lose from those with nothing to lose. As far back as ancient times, one’s property
was always at risk from seizure by someone with more strength or power. Thus in
order to ensure its protection one had to raise a militia. This is as true of tribal cultures as it is
of more advanced societies and as it developed it became more complex and more
widespread. This dynamic gave rise to
the citizen movement in Ancient Rome just as it gave birth to the feudal system
of fealty and to the enshrinement of property rights in our own
constitution. Without a police force and
an Army, a rich man would have to hire his own army to protect his property; in
fact this state of affairs still exists in many areas of the world. Not so in in the U.S. today; ironically, the
government performs this service for him with mony extracted from his fellow citizens.
Would anyone deny that this service is far more valuable to those with
money than it is to those without it?
It is at this point that we begin to see the unraveling of
the “Ryan/Randian” ideal in a democratic society.
Once one admits the need for a government to do something upon which the
majority agrees (enforce property rights), it opens itself up to all kinds
other things that the majority agrees to do (such as paying for social programs
to help the poor). In fact, both of
these things go hand in hand as part of a social compact. Clearly, on an absolute basis, the wealthy benefit
far more than the poor do from an enforcement of actual property rights (in saying
this I do not discount the effects of poor on poor property rights violations)
just as the poor benefit from social programs designed to help them. This kind of balance is necessary if we
really want to maintain the freedoms that the “Ryan/Randians” call for. If we were to do away with it; tilting
society so much towards the rich that the poor view society as fundamentally
unfair, there is every reason to believe that they, as the vast majority, would
do away with the system altogether?
Don’t believe me? Ask Louis XV
about it. Better yet, ask his son.
In any case, assuming that we continue to go down the
path of rewarding the successful while punishing the unsuccessful; or
consigning them to unabated misery, do we really believe that this will result in more risk
taking and more innovation?
People with power tend to stay in power not because they continue to
work as hard as they did to get it, but because they have more resources at
their disposal to stay there WITHOUT working. They also have more ability
to influence public policy by lobbying public officials, or, as is in fashion
today, by underwriting the election of those who will support tilting the table
even more in their direction. That people use their money and
influence to maintain or augment their power is as predictable as it should
have been to supporters of communism. It
is what we should expect to happen given human nature and the historical
lessons that resound throughout time.
