Dimensions of Value: Socialism and Capitalism

Socialism and Capitalism are both ways of combining theories of value with practices "on the ground" which purportedly reflect these perceived values.

SOCIALISM

It seems that Socialism pays special attention to three value-related concepts:

• "Fairness" in the system of allocating things of value. This needs to be unpacked a bit since there is a different concept, also called "fairness" in capitalism. The two concepts are so different that we can see part of the dispute as encouraged by a problem of language. The same word used in opposite senses, as in "newspeak".
• Equal influence on public policy. The "government" should act on behalf of all citizens and not be dominated by a certain segment. Being "rich" should not equate to being politically powerful. One person, one vote, not one dollar one vote.
• Since "Socialism" is fundamentally a political world view, "socialists" are, of course, willing to stretch the truth, sweep details under the rug and ally themselves with the devil to "win power for the people". This process often seems to throw the baby out with the bathwater, as with the Canadian NDP, who seems to totally accept the capitalist lexicon in an attempt to grab power. The ultimate value with any political party is political power itself.
• "Socialist" countries are willing to sacrifice the lives of their citizens for the sake of "society". I regard the willingness to do so on a spectrum. At one end are the "democratic socialists" who will fight to preserve general welfare. At the other end are "communists" who regard "society" as an abstract entity that has little do do with the actual welfare of actual citizens. Actual citizens are expendable. Dissent is to be suppressed to preserve the illusion of "society" as a "thing" worth defending. I regard "society" to be an illusion - a fiction - quite like the "Invisible hand" of the market so popular on the right.

CAPITALISM

• "Fairness" in capitalism boils down to holding property rights sacred - baked into the constitution. Any re-distribution of property, especially by the Government in (for example) taxes is "unfair". Morally wrong.
• In Marxist terms, those who own the "means of production" are entitled to all profits that arise from the use of those means of production. Profits, as well as the means themselves (industry), are private property. Re-distrubtion of these is morally wrong.
• Modern capitalist thinking makes room for "middlemen" - merchants and "platforms" such as Amazon, to have a moral right to their profits. It's a simple matter of arithmetic to see that the allocation of such profits is a zero-sum game between labor and capital. Therefore, the capitalist (valuing property rights) sees the suppression of wages (and therefore the value of life itself) as an "externality".  "Culture" or "society" is meant to deal with these "externalities" but not by means of expropriating of capital, especially through taxation.
• Capitalistic rhetoric often features "jobs" as a substitute for the value of human life. "Jobs" are the rabbit pulled out of the hat that, mysteriously, leads us to think of people as raw material for capitalistic production and therefore profits. The purpose of society, in general, is to provide "inputs" to industry and consumers for its outputs.
• Capitalists tend to treat "money" as the measure of all things. The entire discipline of "economics" is an effort to reduce all human value to money. If there is anything such as "socialist economics" I have failed to find it.
• To the capitalist, political power, like everything else, is to be purchased and owned. The capitalist loves to risk other people's money and other people's lives. You often see this attitude emerging in claims that the rich "own" the country because "they" built it. "They" own the real estate, the factories, the banks. They, therefore, have the moral right to "run the country". This is a claim that is rarely challenged in open debate. We tend to forget that their claim to ownership extends beyond the borders of our country (including Canada), resulting in "shooting wars" and the deaths of hundreds of thousands of politically misguided peasants in "other" countries. "Ownership" is everywhere achieved, maintained and defended at the point of a gun.

BETWEEN THE CRACKS

Both of these worldviews tend to systematically ignore whole categories of value. At bottom, they represent different worldviews along with different ideas about the way political power should be allocated in a "fair" way. Mostly economic power. Money power. Jobs. Taxes. GDP. 

We all seem to agree that political power is a value worth fighting for. In personalities likeMitch McDonnell, we see people who are willing to sacrifice anything to gain power, even allowing the country to be ruled by Russia rather than the Democrats. In every "political" struggle, it is power itself, rather than "values" of any type that are being fought over.

Stalin was the ultimate capitalist, clothed in Socialist rhetoric. Stalin owned the country. Its wealth was his to distribute. Every citizen lived and died at his whim. He starved millions to death to build up a modern industrial economy (capital). Individual citizens had zero political power and zero value in themselves. They lived in fear of their lives. Allowing millions to starve and millions of others to be imprisoned or exiled represents the logical end of a system of thought that attaches no significance to any human value. Yet, "right wing" rhetoric paints Stalin as the "ultimate socialist".

I tend to see the "Nordic" countries as examples of socialism at work. Everyone is guaranteed access to the necessities of life. Such values as a good education are taken for granted and "fairly" distributed. Major resources (such as fossil fuels) and the revenue from them are owned by the state. There are instructive differences between these countries. Iceland is not Sweden. Denmark is not Finland. But you see a commonality of assumptions - how people think of value. I call this system of values "democratic socialism". It is not even a close relative to "communism" - a totally different animal which I may come back to at some point. 

America is a country without a coherent system of values. "Capitalist" assumptions fill the vacuum, resulting in an atmosphere of false alternatives and alienation. Ignorance of the population (itself a consequence of education being a "commodity" to be bought and sold) leaves America open to almost any rhetoric. There are no accepted values worth defending. The American voter is effectively for sale, resulting in de facto rule by the rich. 

Even in this brief introduction, we see that our left wing/right wing assumptions place us with a false alternative. Socialism seems to cast a wider net than traditional capitalism and it seems to attract those who want to make the net bigger, such as "environmentalists". Even so, Socialists seem

to find it hard to admit to any concern that is not fundamentally economic. Who pays for health care? Why do the rich not pay their fair share of taxes? Why do a small number of people own the lion's share of wealth? The "left" cedes the floor to the capitalist "right wing" by treating these sorts of issues and this dimension as fundamental.

Climate change is an example of an issue "falling between the cracks". Both sides struggle to find an economic reason to avoid destroying the planet. Both sides manage to find the logic that supports massive investment in weapons that will if used, destroy us all. Both sides have trouble seeing over their borders to the suffering created for the masses who "fall between the cracks" as they arm wrestle for power within their borders and struggle to expand their domination at the expense of actual people.

The most glaring example of this is the USA, which makes laws for the entire planet, assumes the right to invade any country, kill anyone, destroy any economy but claims no responsibility whatsoever for the catastrophe it leaves behind for "others". There is a large aspect of "entropy" in this project. The USA doesn't leave "order" behind (such as tame capitalist economies). It leaves chaos behind. Ruined economies. Impoverished political debate. Kleptocracies. We need to step back and see the entropy in this situation. We can see it also in pictures of Europe in the aftermath of World War II. We can see it in failed nuclear reactors and the unrecoverable environmental mess that military activities leave behind in their wake.

MORALITY

Both "sides" of the political debate regard the "other side" as morally corrupt. Yet, in private, the individual is rudderless when it comes to defining what is or is not "moral". It seems arbitrary. It's in the "eye of the beholder". Yet, our "eye" is being steered in definite directions and away from the horrible truth.

Pope Paul's encyclical (on Human Life) points the way to a moral issue that both sides skip over. Are we morally obligated to leave an inhabitable planet for our descendants? Is it morally right to steal that planet for the benefit of people now living? Pope Paul attempts to expand orthodox Catholic theology to include a few "new sins". He also makes a brave attempt to convince non-Catholics that they need to re-assess their view of morality even if they reject "religion". There is a troubling connection between the Catholic concern for the "unborn" fetus and the welfare of the people who do actually get born. Most non-Catholics don't want to go anywhere near this way of seeing things.

I maintain that "morality" reflects the way we see (or fail to see) "dimensions of value". It boils down to how we see (or fail to see) the world with the full range of dimensions of value. Similarly, we see (or are made to see) certain aspects of value (such as money and the "good life") as the only values worth attention.

To a certain extent, we are free to challenge the way we see things. To exactly the same extent, morality is a matter of choice. But all of these frameworks of value are sold to us like Corn Flakes. They are woven into the very language we use. We can't address the question without figuring in the way that humans are "programmed" to see things a certain way, just as our biology programs us to see light in certain wavelengths and hear certain sounds but not others.

We arrive at the conclusion (not so surprising) that morality and values are intimately linked. The link is not something "out there" like the laws of physics. Or laid down by some supernatural being. It is the link between the individual and society. The individual sees morality (and therefore value) only through the filter held up by society and the environment. Under the spell of the capitalist, we can be made to "see" the "Invisible Hand" and the "Market" at work.  Under the socialist spell, we are tricked into feeling like we are supporting the "common good" without really knowing what this means.

Break the spell and a whole different world comes into view.

More on "Dimensions" here.

Corruption, Assimilation and Debt

Thieves of State

"Thieves of State" is about a particular form of society - sadly perhaps the most common form of society - a kleptocracy. "Thieves" goes into a lot of detail about how individuals are drawn into (assimilated into) this form of society ("dragon"). The examples allow us to drill down to get a close-up view of how assimilation takes place, how it is almost inevitable and why it is so difficult to resist.

It's hard to find an example of a social form that doesn't feature a "strongman" (usually but not always male) with built-in mechanisms that draw group resources to the strongman and his immediate family. This is as true of a Canadian "first nation" as it is of the Trump administration in the USA.

Chayes describes how this phenomenon permeates the whole society in a kind of fractal structure, with layer upon layer of mini-strongmen paying up to the strongmen above them while extracting resources from humans below them in the pyramid. We may think of this structure as the skeleton of the dragon. Its joints are made strong by the bonds of mutual protection and flow of resources up and down the structure.

Mid-level strongmen (who may be humble officials such as border guards or policemen) are bound to the system by being laughably underpaid (making bribes necessary for daily survival) and the debt incurred by buying the position in the first place (There is an echo here: the theme of "debt strangulation", where 99% of the population is in debt to the top 1%). The exchange involved is not just for money. It involves the tacit assumption that anyone in the structure will be protected by all the others. For example, the corrupt border guard can be assured that nobody in the police force will prosecute him for his involvement in smuggling drugs. In mature kleptocracies, protection of corruption is burned into law, especially protecting individuals from prosecution, stripping debtors of rights, making corrupt courts accessible only to the corrupt. "Freelance corruption" can be framed as "crime", allowing the kleptocracy to attack its rivals with the full force of law.

I wonder if these structures arise out of almost physical or mathematical necessity out of the way that basic human needs are met more efficiently by larger and larger groups of humans. Within these groups networks of control, obligation, power and wealth quickly lead to kleptocracy. Another interesting question is whether the same conditions work in a "free" society to produce dramatic inequality. "Capitalism" tends to give free reign to these forces. Debt is the lifeblood of capitalism, creating "legal" bonds that may be structurally identical to those in more "primitive" kleptocracies.

"Socialism" can be seen as a counter-force against the natural tendency for power and wealth to concentrate whether or not the society can be described as an overt kleptocracy. On the other hand, there is a distressing tendency of even "socialist" governments to be captured by networks of obligation, mutual assistance, and general desperation. From this point of view, we may see all of politics as corruption versus socialism. We see that socialism requires extensive state intervention and strict rule of law since the natural order of society (unregulated) is to slip into kleptocracy. In the US, the key difference between Republicans and Democrats is the Republican insistence that all regulation be dismantled (most recently the EPA and consumer protection), while the Democrats see more and more programs and regulations as needed to create a just society.

This question would seem to be something that could be addressed empirically and historically - perhaps in the form that "Thieves of State" takes. Are there countries that successfully counteract the natural tendency to become "kleptocratic"? In "Thieves", Chayes points out a range of policies (all ignored) the US can employ to avoid support of corruption in states it is trying to "stand up", like Afghanistan. Is there a set of similar policies that could be adopted as part of a political platform of a socialist party, such as the Canadian NDP? Such policies would focus on issues such as undermining the power of the banks and freeing people from the chains of "rents" that flow up the pyramid to the rich and powerful.

I provide a related rant on money and debt in another post.

Emergence - A Different Universe - Robert B. Laughlin

Laughlin's "A Different Universe" provides a sweeping re-examination of the idea of "emergence", along with a telling criticism of the doctrine of reductionism.  Although I'm not sure Daniel Dennett would admit it, he's a poster child of reductionism. He basically claims that the "mind" can be completely understood by examining a subject (i.e., the brain of the subject) from the "outside". The mind is "nothing more" than the activity of neurons in the brain.

Opposed to this view is the idea of emergence: that a system of "simple" components can spontaneously reorganize itself into something new, specifically something with properties and behavour that cannot be derived, even in principal, from laws governing the components. That's Laughlin.

Laughlin's book is a bit of a disorganized mess, but it's possible to glean some very important ideas from it. He makes some powerful general observations about the nature of emergence, along with a host of examples (most of which require a post-doctoral understanding of physics to understand). Let's assume we have a system S (quantum mechanics for example) and an "emergent" system E (classical physics, for example).

• What we know about S will shed little light or no light on phase transitions in E. For example, quantum physics cannot explain why water freezes into 11 different crystal configurations.
• Attempts to "explain" emergent phenomena in E using the laws of S are often wild goose chases. They tend to absorb huge amounts of time and money, yielding nothing useful. Laughlin uses the example of DNA transcription in the ribozom, where the "alphabet" of DNA is magically transcribed into actual proteins, the building blocks of life. This can be seen as an emergent boundary, where admittedly complex but straightforward DNA chemistry is translated into the domain of biochemistry. Laughlin claims that nobody has the foggiest idea how this works and it's such a huge problem that nobody wants to go near it.
• The boundaries between S and E tend to be chaotic, in the sense that, using what we know about S, we can't predict behavour in E. Characteristically, such efforts produce, at best, multiple "explanations" or "explanations" that could equally well describe behavior other than the one observed.
• Laughlin goes further to guess that this "chaotic" boundary is the doorway to the "higher" state. For example, he thinks that the ribozom depends on chaos to work.

Laughlin's theme is to cast doubt on our idea that there are "fundamental" laws in the universe, such as the "Theory of Everything". This is a serious issue since some scientists and a few science writers think we are on the verge of closing the book on new discoveries. To sustain this view, one must arbitrarily classify some discoveries (usually the laws of quantum mechanics) as "fundamental" and the rest as "derived". This ignores the fact that actual derivation of laws describing behavour of emergent systems famously resist "explanation" in terms of more "fundamental" law.

In fact, Laughlin gives many examples of the fact that "fundamental" law is inferred from experiments at the classical, "human" scale (how could it be otherwise?). Strictly speaking, the world of quantum mechanics does not exist except for the effects it supposedly has on systems of vastly greater scale.

I was particularly interested in Laughlin's offhand dismissal of Evolution as a "law" in the emergent world of biology. It's not that he thinks evolution is not real. He's saying that evolution doesn't explain everything and that biologist tend to regard it as the basis for their entire discipline. This is not so far from the teachings of Stephen J. Gould, a Darwinian fundamentalist, who nonetheless insists that there are many reasons other than evolution to "explain" the morphology and behavior of actual animals.  This is to say that evolution is always at work but it's not the only thing at work.

Another one of Laughlin's one-sentence dismissals refers to "socialism". Laughlin treats human society as a system emergent from the nature of individual human beings. Obviously, many different societies can "emerge" from the same group of humans. Just which society emerges is almost impossible to predict (it can depend on one charismatic person, for example). It's also obvious that the form that emerges is insensitive to a vast array of factors, such as the lives and wishes if most of the people involved. This is typical of an emergent system. What Lauglin is claiming is that "socialism" is not one of these possible arrangements of society. He does so without offering the slightest evidence, but he leaves us with the interesting idea that society is, in fact, an emergent system and that some systems will be "stable" and others not. The "laws" governing an emergent society will depend on exactly which society emerges. Interestingly, the "phase change" - the change from one form to another in the same group of people - is bound to be chaotic. For example, the French revolution flipped around through many configurations, eventually returning to a monarchy. Millions died in the process.

Laughlin has few kind words to say about undergraduate education in his own field. He views the common perception of quantum mechanics as a hoax, leading to apparent paradoxes such as Shrodinger's Cat and collapse of the wave function.  Bottom line, matter is not a "wave" and a "particle". It's just a wave.  Particles lack most of the properties we associate with matter, most notably a specific position.His discussion of how quantum events are detected at the human level is instructive, but leaves the reader hungry for more detail.