Hi Platt and David
NEWS FLASH! I am actually writing a post that discusses Pirsig for a change!
DMB:
> Pirsig puts socialism at
> the intellectual level, but you call it fundamentalism and thereby put it
> at the social level.
PLATT:
Perhaps I failed to make myself clear. I agree that according to the
MOQ socialism fits in the intellectual level. I have no argument with
Pirsig's placement. I call it" fundamentalism" because the proponents of
the Principles of International Socialism are often just as rabid in the
defense of their beliefs as Christian fundamentalists, and, if given half a
chance, would be willing to impose their beliefs on others via a police
state. Never forget that what the majority of Germans voted into power in
the 1930s was the National SOCIALIST German Workers party.
ROG:
Allow me to quibble with both views a bit (you can each decide how much). My
knowledge of socialism is that if it is indeed intellectual at all, it is
very, very low grade intellectual thought (unlike Platt, I am quite willing
to flat out disagree with Pirsig, though I may not be here-- again, you all
decide). My understanding of socialism/marxism:
It was an outcome of mixing French Enlightenment philosophy and the idealism
of EQUALITY with Hegelian concepts of the German idealism of some kind of
inevitable perfectabilty of man.
A central hypothesis of "scientific socialism" was that capitalism would
inevitably lead to concenteration of wealth into a very few hands,
eliminating the middle class and impoverishing the poor and increasing their
number and plight to the point that revolution would be certain. Marxism was
kind of like Malthusianism. Both start with a common assumption and project
the assumption out over time with the further assumption that nothing changes
due to the movement until it self destructs. Malthus projected endless
geometric growth in population and linear growth in food, Marx projected
endless concentration of wealth due to competition.
If this was the extent of socialism, I would probably agree that it was just
a bad hypothesis. And, bad hypotheses are scientific if approached in a
scientific pattern. However, marxism also involved the ascendency of man
from "the kingdom of necessity to the kingdom of freedom." Although i can't
prove it, one can certainly see elements of 19th century atheists replacing
their need in belief in the bible with belief in Marx's deep, philosophical
brand of manifest earthly bliss.
In addition, the concept proved extremely resistant to empirical evaluation.
It became dogma. The heir to Marx and Engel -- Eduard Bernstein -- was one
of the first to encounter this resistance. He noted that in the 50 years
since the ideas were first drafted that the exact opposite was actually
occuring. Capitalism was leading to more wealthy rather than fewer, more
middle class and to better standards of living for the poor. Subsequent data
shows that per capita incomes doubled in Germany and England during this
phase. Bernstein noticed that the liberal tradition in Britain led more to
empowerment of workers than the opposite and that even in Germany that
workers were granted social insurance and that the Bismark would often side
with trade unions.
The response of the Socialist movement was to oppose any revision to the
theory though. When Bernstein pointed out pragmatically that if the goal was
to improve the lives of workers that the best thing socialists could do was
to support unions and democracy and such, his suggestions were rejected.
Socialism depended upon capitalism being hopelessly flawed for socialism to
be manifest destiny. Lenin and others saw that revolution was the whole
point of socialism.
Further, Socialism never payed any heed to how it actually worked. Robert
Owen's experimental communes ended in failure, but were widely ignored or
dismissed. The same pattern was repeated hundreds of times across as much as
60% of the earths population, but it never once delivered the results people
wanted absent modifications that looked uncannily like...CAPITALISM!
So, I suggest that socialism wasn't even close to scientific. It was
certainly philosophical, but in a dogmatic way that was the antithesis of
objectivity or empiricism or experimentation and theoretical testing and
revision. The goal was some kind of ill defined utopia (with the leader of
the revolution as the stand in for God).
Personally, I think I am saying about the same thing as Platt above, but that
I think that this negates Pirsig's compliment of the semi-religious movement
that led to 100 million deaths.
PIRSIG:
> Communism and socialism, programs for intellectual control over society,
> were confronted by the reactionary forces of fascism, a program for the
> social control of intellect. ... The gigantic power of socialism and
> fascism, which have overwhelmed this century, is explained by a conflict of
> levels of evolution.
ROG:
Again I am not sure I agree with Pirsig. Fascism was a pro-war leftist
philosophy adpoted by Mussolini and Hitler. Both versions included most of
socialist thought overlayed with nationalistic and racial superiority. In
Germany and Italy, these were basically versions of socialism advocating
worker and peasant empowerment, expropriation of land and factories,
confiscation of profits. Mussolini jumped back and forth as the head of both
socialist and fascist movements depending upon his ability to be in charge.
If anything, it seems that Hitler and Musslini were just trying to find the
right combo of social, religious and intellectual dogma to incite popular
revolution to set them in charge. Lenin was only different in that he
implemented the concept with less revision (with the notable exception that
russia wasn't even a capitalist country and hence skipped the supposedly
critical capitalist stage).
To characterize the fascist and socialist movements as a battle between
society and intellect seems to be a gross distortion. I would suggest that
both were attempts to establish control of society. One leaned more toward
national pride and rascism (complete with colored uniforms, roman salutes and
neat ways of marching) and the other leaned more toward deep Hegelian
philosophical banalities and pseudoscientific teleological mysticism.
Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin, Lenin and gang were not intellectuals.
I guess my point here is that if socialism was pseudo-intellectual, then this
struggle was at best a social struggle between pseudo-intellectual
totalitarians and nationalistic totalitarians.
Pirsig:
"What makes the free-enterprise system superior is that the socialists,
reasoning intelligently and objectively, have inadvertently closed the
door to Dynamic Quality in the buying and selling of things. They closed
it because the metaphysical structure of their objectivity never told them
Dynamic Quality exists."
ROG:
I find very little evidence that the early socialists ever reasoned
intelligently and objectively. The problem wasn't just that they missed the
dynamicness of capitalism and democracy, it was that they built a dogmatic
theory that rejected any concept of dynamism as its core. And Pirsig goes on
to state that what makes intellect so moral is its dynamicness.
My point here is that Pirsig again overstates the morality of socialism. It
was at best, a very low grade intellectual pattern that rejected dynamicness
at its core.
To now loop back to the title of the post, creationism is another low grade,
non dynamic, pseudo-scientific social idea dressed up as science. Socialism
and creationism are both science gone bad. Both are immoral, and if Pirsig
states otherwise, I think he is... (no, don't say it)... wrong.
Let me know your thoughts....As usual, trhere is a good chance I AM WRONG!
Rog
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