In recent weeks I have been developing the idea of the Two Reactions against the modern world, and that is the way to understand the Left. It is the most natural thing in the world that the staggering social and economic changes of the last 200 years has provoked a movement of reaction against the modern phenomenon of wage labor and market capitalism. What I call the Double Revolution is utterly strange and disruptive to the old ways of the world.
So the left has raised the banner of identity politics, a neo-tribalism that reenacts the culture of the tribe that is mobilized forever against the danger of the neighboring tribe that wants "our" land. Naturally, there is in every one of us still the spirit of the hunter-gatherers and their existential need for tribal unity.
And the left has raised the banner of the patron/client relation, symbolized for us by powerful lord and its grateful retainers, a neo-feudalism that reenacts the culture of the agricultural age in which farmers needed military protection from raiders and pirates that might descend on them and steal their grain stores, for every agricultural village must store grain for the next year from the harvest until the next crop is harvested and is therefore always vulnerable to plunderers.
Our lefty friends imagine that their fight against "fascism" is proof enough of their virtue, yet they seem to be utterly blind and deaf to the truth that their identity politics, their encouragement for people to identify themselves by race or gender rather than by citizenship, is pure racism and sexism, the very thing they rail against.
Our lefty friends imagine that their welfare state is the acme of compassion and justice, yet are blind and deaf to the creaking inefficiency and injustice of a system that pays billions out to well-to-do retired folks like me while taxing young and less well-to-do working people to pay for our benefits. Of course they do: they are the guys that get to occupy the commanding heights of the welfare state in comfortable sinecures and pensions that issue from their hard-gained credentials and connections.
There is a spirit in conservatism that longs to roll up tribalism into a global community that gets beyond race or gender or class identity, but I do not think it is practical to expect humans to do that. We humans are tribal; the question is how to channel our tribalism into beneficial channels that don't set us against each other within our current political boundaries.
There is a spirit in conservatism that longs to roll up the welfare state and replace it with a non-governmental system of private charity and mutual-aid societies in which people are responsible for their own social insurance. But I do not think that it is practical to assume that everyone can do that. There is clearly a big part of each human that wants to snuggle up to a powerful lord and have him take care of making us safe.
So my mind proceeds to wonder how we can accommodate our instinctive tribalism but without the bloodthirsty naming and shaming that sometimes escalates into witch hunts and Reigns of Terror. And I wonder how we can accommodate people that do not want to try the rigors of the marketplace but want to live a life of safety.
And I come to this from my recent reading of Jungian psychology that emphasizes the continuing role of the unconscious and its vast underworld of instinctive "archetypes" or scripts for living. Obviously we cannot consign the unconscious to the dust bin of history. It is a vital part of us; indeed recent science says that the brain seems to make decisions about 1.5 seconds before the decision appears in our conscious mind. So what is that all about? Does it mean that our glorious consciousness and rationalism is all a mirage and a delusion?
But then it occurred to me that we have already accommodated the tribal and the feudal impulses in our modern world. After all, we are humans, we are not as dumb as we seem.
In the stead of tribalism we have invented the nation state. Instead of the actual ties of the blood kindred we have the fantasy of a nation united by its language, its culture, its glorious history, and the memory of the Fallen, those who died to Make Us Safe. How cool is that? There are a lot of people that sneer at the nation state. They should cool their jets; it is nothing less that amazing that we could have transformed the culture of the actual tribe into a myth of the imaginary tribe made up out of whole cloth by clever thinkers and propagandists. And that is the problem of the globalists; they have not thought through how to create a transnational demos to which ordinary people can pledge allegiance. Their transnational experiments cannot succeed unless they create a demos for their transnational creations. I like to joke that we humans will not create a global political community until we have to fight a war against the Martians or the Trisolarians from Alpha Centauri.
What we need to work on is how to keep tribalism inside the guardrails. The problem right now is that our global elite has discouraged a nation-level identity politics on the grounds that we must never allow fascism to rear its ugly head. But its strategy to retain its power has encouraged and normalize sub-national identity politics with appeals to labor unions, Black Lives Matter, the Latino La Raza, women's liberation groups, and environmental groups. Hey, groups like that are natural and physical, but should not have special privileges, as unions did for a century. And when the ruling class encourages sub-national identity politics it is playing with fire.
In the stead of feudalism we have invented the corporation. Instead of the subordination to the local lord we have subordination to the corporate hierarchy, with its pretty safe employment prospects, its chance for advancement, and its basket of benefits and pensions. If you don't like the uncertainty of employment at will, you can get yourself into a nice safe corporation with an HR department and a code of conduct. In my view, it is not really safer to work for a corporation than to accept the rigors of employment at will, but it sure feels like it.
What we need to work on is how to keep the neo-feudal baronies from plundering the rest of society. It is clear that the industrial corporations of the 1950s in concert with industrial labor unions were allowed to raise prices and wages above the market level, and this was unjust. But then, in another proof of God's existence, the proud privileged steel and auto industries got soft and entitled, and got sucker-punched by emerging German and Japanese corporations in the 1970s. Then they ran out of money to pay their defined-benefit pensions. We could have avoided that if we had kept the corporations and labor unions honest and written beneficial legislation to prevent labor unions from forming a combination against trade and prevent corporations from getting carve-outs from politicians and regulators. Today we have the scandal of government employees earning way above the levels in the private sector and getting defined-benefit pensions that threaten to bankrupt states like California and Illinois. The truth is that people may run from the market and its prices, but they can't hide, not forever. Eventually everyone of us must surrender to the will of the market and its prices, and it is the job of a good ruling class to teach the people the truth of the emergent phenomenon we call the price system.
Is this possible? Can we contain the tribal and the feudal impulse within safe channels, with wise recognition of their profound humanness, and cunning strategies to keep them from plundering us all?
We should all hope so.
So the left has raised the banner of identity politics, a neo-tribalism that reenacts the culture of the tribe that is mobilized forever against the danger of the neighboring tribe that wants "our" land. Naturally, there is in every one of us still the spirit of the hunter-gatherers and their existential need for tribal unity.
And the left has raised the banner of the patron/client relation, symbolized for us by powerful lord and its grateful retainers, a neo-feudalism that reenacts the culture of the agricultural age in which farmers needed military protection from raiders and pirates that might descend on them and steal their grain stores, for every agricultural village must store grain for the next year from the harvest until the next crop is harvested and is therefore always vulnerable to plunderers.
Our lefty friends imagine that their fight against "fascism" is proof enough of their virtue, yet they seem to be utterly blind and deaf to the truth that their identity politics, their encouragement for people to identify themselves by race or gender rather than by citizenship, is pure racism and sexism, the very thing they rail against.
Our lefty friends imagine that their welfare state is the acme of compassion and justice, yet are blind and deaf to the creaking inefficiency and injustice of a system that pays billions out to well-to-do retired folks like me while taxing young and less well-to-do working people to pay for our benefits. Of course they do: they are the guys that get to occupy the commanding heights of the welfare state in comfortable sinecures and pensions that issue from their hard-gained credentials and connections.
There is a spirit in conservatism that longs to roll up tribalism into a global community that gets beyond race or gender or class identity, but I do not think it is practical to expect humans to do that. We humans are tribal; the question is how to channel our tribalism into beneficial channels that don't set us against each other within our current political boundaries.
There is a spirit in conservatism that longs to roll up the welfare state and replace it with a non-governmental system of private charity and mutual-aid societies in which people are responsible for their own social insurance. But I do not think that it is practical to assume that everyone can do that. There is clearly a big part of each human that wants to snuggle up to a powerful lord and have him take care of making us safe.
So my mind proceeds to wonder how we can accommodate our instinctive tribalism but without the bloodthirsty naming and shaming that sometimes escalates into witch hunts and Reigns of Terror. And I wonder how we can accommodate people that do not want to try the rigors of the marketplace but want to live a life of safety.
And I come to this from my recent reading of Jungian psychology that emphasizes the continuing role of the unconscious and its vast underworld of instinctive "archetypes" or scripts for living. Obviously we cannot consign the unconscious to the dust bin of history. It is a vital part of us; indeed recent science says that the brain seems to make decisions about 1.5 seconds before the decision appears in our conscious mind. So what is that all about? Does it mean that our glorious consciousness and rationalism is all a mirage and a delusion?
But then it occurred to me that we have already accommodated the tribal and the feudal impulses in our modern world. After all, we are humans, we are not as dumb as we seem.
In the stead of tribalism we have invented the nation state. Instead of the actual ties of the blood kindred we have the fantasy of a nation united by its language, its culture, its glorious history, and the memory of the Fallen, those who died to Make Us Safe. How cool is that? There are a lot of people that sneer at the nation state. They should cool their jets; it is nothing less that amazing that we could have transformed the culture of the actual tribe into a myth of the imaginary tribe made up out of whole cloth by clever thinkers and propagandists. And that is the problem of the globalists; they have not thought through how to create a transnational demos to which ordinary people can pledge allegiance. Their transnational experiments cannot succeed unless they create a demos for their transnational creations. I like to joke that we humans will not create a global political community until we have to fight a war against the Martians or the Trisolarians from Alpha Centauri.
What we need to work on is how to keep tribalism inside the guardrails. The problem right now is that our global elite has discouraged a nation-level identity politics on the grounds that we must never allow fascism to rear its ugly head. But its strategy to retain its power has encouraged and normalize sub-national identity politics with appeals to labor unions, Black Lives Matter, the Latino La Raza, women's liberation groups, and environmental groups. Hey, groups like that are natural and physical, but should not have special privileges, as unions did for a century. And when the ruling class encourages sub-national identity politics it is playing with fire.
In the stead of feudalism we have invented the corporation. Instead of the subordination to the local lord we have subordination to the corporate hierarchy, with its pretty safe employment prospects, its chance for advancement, and its basket of benefits and pensions. If you don't like the uncertainty of employment at will, you can get yourself into a nice safe corporation with an HR department and a code of conduct. In my view, it is not really safer to work for a corporation than to accept the rigors of employment at will, but it sure feels like it.
What we need to work on is how to keep the neo-feudal baronies from plundering the rest of society. It is clear that the industrial corporations of the 1950s in concert with industrial labor unions were allowed to raise prices and wages above the market level, and this was unjust. But then, in another proof of God's existence, the proud privileged steel and auto industries got soft and entitled, and got sucker-punched by emerging German and Japanese corporations in the 1970s. Then they ran out of money to pay their defined-benefit pensions. We could have avoided that if we had kept the corporations and labor unions honest and written beneficial legislation to prevent labor unions from forming a combination against trade and prevent corporations from getting carve-outs from politicians and regulators. Today we have the scandal of government employees earning way above the levels in the private sector and getting defined-benefit pensions that threaten to bankrupt states like California and Illinois. The truth is that people may run from the market and its prices, but they can't hide, not forever. Eventually everyone of us must surrender to the will of the market and its prices, and it is the job of a good ruling class to teach the people the truth of the emergent phenomenon we call the price system.
Is this possible? Can we contain the tribal and the feudal impulse within safe channels, with wise recognition of their profound humanness, and cunning strategies to keep them from plundering us all?
We should all hope so.
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