They say that Lenin's question -- Who? Whom? (кто, ктого) -- is the central question of politics: who gets to do what to whom?
But let us try to understand this at a higher level. The question for social animals like humans is how disagreements are to be handled, and the basic question is how to minimize the expensive and risky resort to force. That is the meaning of Jordan B. Peterson introducing the lobster into his 12 Rules. The lobster is a creature that goes back 300 million years, yet it is programmed to avoid force by use of the concept of hierarchy. In other words, lobsters know their place in the hierarchy and accept their place most of the time. This means that not every lobster conflict -- usually having to do with sex -- is settled by force.
The same thing, Peterson wanted us to understand, applies to humans. We have hierarchy to minimize the incidence of violence. And incidentally, the incidence of violence has gone down from 500 violent deaths per 100,000 per year in the hunter-gatherer age, to 50 per 100,000 in the high Middle Ages, to 5 per 100,000 today in the US.
But today we have a completely new way of reducing violence than mere hierarchy. It is the market system. Instead of the hierarchy among males in the village, or the hierarchy among landowners in a hierarchy of feudal vassalage, we have the interactions of market buying and selling. The guy that satisfies the demands of the consumers at the sweet spot of price and quality preferred by the consumers makes more profit and gets to mate with a more beautiful girl than the guy that is not quite as attuned to the choices of the consumers. No need to resort to fisticuffs.
We do not appreciate just how much of a staggering revolution this represents in human social cooperation. Let us look at it through the lens of the Indian caste system. Here, everyone inherits the caste status of their parents and their means of livelihood: priest, warrior, merchant and artisans, laborers, and untouchables. But suppose things change and society needs more merchants and artisans and less laborers? Or suppose the prince Gautama Siddhartha wants to become a priest? Sorry, Charlie, no can do. Thus the unfortunates either submit to the caste system or they bust it up.
We moderns would regard such social rigidity as a recipe for revolution. But, most likely, down the centuries of the agricultural age it didn't much matter. Things didn't change much except for the odd invasion and the periodic famine, so what else were we going to do?
But the thing about the market system, we have learned, is constant change and constant economic revolution. This constant change and constant economic revolution, scientists say, is the basis of the extraordinary economic growth of the last two centuries: there has never been anything like it before, not ever.
But think of it. If there is going to be an economic revolution every generation -- machine textiles; steam power; steam transportation; oil illumination; electric power; internal combustion engine transportation; cheap steel; airborne transportation; computers; internet; smartphones -- then in every generation there is going to be an upheaval in the economic lives of the people. And the people that were doing very well just yesterday will find that the new thing has utterly cut their livelihood to ribbons. We know that when this happens to people they are not happy.
In the old days of agriculture there wasn't much the average person could do if the weather or the climate or the ruler changed. You died or survived; if you could you migrated in the knowledge that to stay put meant starvation. If you had a bit of military might you might try to resolve your problem with a spot of conquest and loot and plunder.
But today? Today there are two strategies for dealing with economic change. You can keep your eyes open and respond to the changes in the market for labor and skills by adapting when things go against you. Or you can depend on the political system to bail you out of trouble. You can follow the market or you can follow a political leader.
In my view the strategy of adapting is the new and the revolutionary way of dealing with the world; and the resort to politics is the old and the dysfunctional strategy. If you use the adaptation strategy in your life you are likely to weather the inevitable changes and revolutions in the economy; if you use the political strategy you will likely end up like the white working class that is reported to be dying of despair. If you adopt the adaptation strategy you are surrendering to the verdict of the market and its price system; if you adopt the political strategy you must surrender to some political leader that promises to lead you to safety and justice.
This is why I have declared that the leftist movement is a Great Reaction. It is a reactionary faith in the power of politics and force to put off the challenge of economic change.
It's all very well to allow combinations of workers in restraint of trade. But nothing is going to save a mature corporation where the workers are organized into a labor union and the labor union leaders refuse to countenance pay cuts when a recession bites or the market changes. But if there had not been a labor union then there is a chance that the corporation might have weathered the recession or adapted to a change in the market. The truth is that union workers are trapped in the walled garden of their above-market union wages and benefits. Everything is great until the market rings down the curtain.
It's all very well to legislate a pay-as-you-go old-age pension scheme funded by taxes, but what happens if life expectancy changes? Or the birth rate changes? What happens as, over the years, the politicians rejigger the plan to reward various political supporters? What happens as, year after year, the politicians put off adjusting the workers' contributions to the plan and the beneficiaries' benefits from the plan?
It's all very well to interpret the Civil Rights Acts as demanding Affirmative Action of hiring by race and sex or "diversity and inclusion" which is the same thing by a different name. But how are you ever going to bring the system of reverse discrimination to an end when the people benefiting are going to raise holy hell if you try to cut back on their benefits?
Our lefty friends believe that political power is the way to resolve the problems of the people: legislation to protect workers from the bosses. Government pensions to assist people in old age. Hiring quotas to assist people marginalized in olden times. But I say that this political faith is a reactionary return to a philosophy of force. And I say that the whole point of social cooperation from lobsters to humans is to reduce the costly and destructive incidence of force.
I say that when a new idea comes along that allows the resolution of millions of economic transactions through the market and prices and avoiding the indirect power of hierarchy, it should be understood as an astonishing miracle. And it should be a signal for our modern advanced and evolved citizens to educate the people and lead them to the promised land teach them to worship the new god, and they should be the first to abandon the worship of the graven images of the old god and his philosophy of force.
And my faith is that we are living through the last tempestuous years where the lefty reactionaries are making their last desperate efforts to cling onto their crumbling faith in political power and government force.
Hey, it's not really that surprising. Humans live in the past as much as the present, and many of us long for a return to an imagined golden age. The current market economy is a brutal and unimaginable destruction of all old and venerable customs and culture. Of course there are many of us that long for that wondrous time in the past when everyone lived in communal bliss.
But I am here to say that the left's Great Reaction back to the old faith in political power is a monstrous lie: for socialism is neo-slavery; the welfare state is neo-feudalism; and lefty identity politics is neo-tribalism.
They way to the Promised Land flowing with the milk and honey of the market economy is the way of a new god, and his Ten Commandments begin with the command that thou shalt have no other gods, such as the gods of political power, before him.
Don't doubt me on this.
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