Ryan and Marx. Together in fantasyland.

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.