Mencius Moldbug proposes to explain what is wrong with the current political order by pointing out what it has in common with communism, thus he proposes to call the current regime communist, in that genuine opposition is for the most part successfully repressed. According to Moldbug Communism is “Democracy without authentic political oppositionâ€.
Not so. Communism is primarily an economic system.
I would call the current regime the Cathedral, and its ideology universalism. There are important differences between communism and the present social order.
The biggest and most dramatic is the economy: Communists implement a government owned command economy. Universalism aims at a nominally private economy subject to government command, similar to that implemented by the German Nazi Party, and the Cathedral has not yet entirely achieved this goal, though it is well on the way.
Communists imprison or shoot their opponents. The Cathedral quietly blights the careers of its opponents and destroys their good name. Communism is totalitarian, while the Cathedral applies repressive mock tolerance. Thus a lot more opposition persists under the Cathedral than persisted under communism.
Communists implement tyranny, where every commissar is even more terrorized than those he terrorizes. Universalism seeks to implement anarcho tyranny, where Cathedral members have vast power over non Cathedral members, but the president cannot fire a bureaucrat, let alone shut down a department, no matter how spectacularly that bureaucrat messes up. Universalist governments are incohesive. Communist governments are cohesive till they collapse.
Communists claimed to rule on behalf of the working class, claimed to be the working class, and if any worker doubted it, he was likely to be shot. Universalists claim to be such wonderful nice guys that they rule on behalf of everyone, except perhaps white males, and deserve to rule because they are so very nice.
Communists strongly believed in economic development. Whenever the proles could not get jam today, that was because the communists were investing in a brighter tomorrow, though when I went to Cuba, it looked like no one had built anything since communists took power: all the facilities were old, and in dire need repairs, maintenance, and paint. When East Germany fell, and west Germany attempted to privatize the factories, the factories were still largely World War II era, despite all this supposed investment.
Universalists, on the other hand, are so very nice that increasingly they claim to rule on behalf of the trees, rather than human beings, which unfortunately necessitates the suppression of evil factories, evil mining, and so forth, measures that are causing the death of millions through famine, poverty, and disease, and may well cause the death of billions. Songbirds eat mosquitoes, so, since universalists care so much for songbirds, cannot permit people to use excessively deadly poisons against mosquitoes. In this they are direct opposite of communists, who casually spewed poisons over the land in their efforts to develop economically.
Our progressives built a lot of useful stuff before the 70s. Damns, bridges, roads, rockets. All things that boosted American economic power. And they still seem to love and support centralized planing in places like Cuba and Venezuela. And FDR’s rule of America sounded like centralized planning in all but name. Progressives also seem to be fine with polluting china, Mexico, ect as long as it promotes economic development in those countries.
So I’m not sure you can say they never had an economic program. Though you are correct they don’t seem to have one today beyond some left over stuff from FDR.
Other interesting fact is once Russia moved beyond Stalinism they lost the ability to fire bureaucrats.
Before the fifties, progressives were much more similar to communists, and were pro growth. They wanted to raise the living standards of people, rather than the spotted owls. They became less so after anglo soviet split, and markedly less so after 1970 or so.
That’s only a cosmetic difference.
Progressives view industry as the enemy not because industry is the enemy but for the same reason that they deindustrialized post war Germany – because they don’t control industry and because industrial power is major power and a rival to the progressive state. I’ve come to view all the “accidental” effects that cause American businesses to hire foreigners as intentional.
Unions? Basically they’re the socialization of any business that has physical capital. Wages are ultimately going to equal marginal product – wages above marginal product are actually a share of profits. Start a manufacturing business? If you fail it’s on you and if you succeed you’re now partners with the UAW or some other organization. In the short run that means the unions support progressives and the businesses pay them off and in the long run it means they go somewhere where there are property rights – like China.
Environmental regs? Same deal. Businesses lobby to have them applied to their competitors and not themselves. In the long run they drive businesses out of the country. All the while the regulations produce some environmental good but aren’t even close to optimal. That’s because their purpose is actually to drive industry out of the country.
What changed? Well, progressives used to rely on white working class votes then they relied on white working class votes and black votes now they (a) don’t really need votes (controlling the permanent government is handy that way) and (b) rely on all the dependent business sectors (HR departments, lawyers, consultants on regulation, etc.), (more importantly) the votes of Mexicans, and the votes of the permanent bureaucracy. Government spends half of GDP – that’s an awful lot of people who have a stake.
Although it looks like a change of goals (outgrow capitalists) it’s actually not – it’s more of the same (more power to us).
Chomsky also claims the US has no political opposition. Turns out all he actually means is merely that there isn’t an opposition that agrees with him. He’s outside the Overton window, so he feels disenfranchised.
Well, right: There’s substantial broad agreement about fundamentals, and Moldbug and Chomsky have enough views outside that broad agreement that the conflicts within it look like petty bullshit to them. Well, that’s democracy. If you don’t like the broad agreement, you have to work for a few decades to move the window, the way the lefties have. It’s a slow process, and on the whole that’s for the best. Sudden radical changes in policy usually don’t turn out well. I guess I’m more a conservative than a radical reactionary. Comes of being one of the poor saps who’ll get it good and hard when Utopia suddenly appears.
Moldbug is not nuts. He’s the most sane and most engaging writer on the current scene that I know of. But, tragically, he’s not much closer to the current mainstream than Chomsky is.
I understand what Moldbug means by redefining the word “communist”, but all he’ll accomplish by it is to utterly alienate any reader who doesn’t already agree with him, and many who do. It’s a bizarre act of political suicide. If he’s not writing to persuade the unbelievers, why bother? Well, it’s his life. But his writing was of real value to the goals that I think he and I share, and he’s breaking that for no good reason that I can see.
Let us look at the treatment Chomsky gets, and compare it with the treatment Palin gets. McCarthy was correct about everything, and cannot be forgiven for being correct, Chomsky was wrong about everything, as for example the Khmer Rouge, and is instantly forgiven for being wrong. Chomsky gets money and honors from the state. Palin does not.
People who think stuff that is too conservative for the Overton window are “Neo nazis”. Chomsky and Bill Ayers however, are not commies.
It is pretty obvious that the Overton window is being heavily manipulated in one direction.
Consider global warming. Three quarters of the population believe that scientists were making stuff up, probably because the climategate files and numerous other scandals revealed them making stuff up, cooking their data, cherry picking their data, and over interpreting their data, most infamously on the drowning polar bears. Yet skepticism is not exactly inside the Overton window. Three quarters of the population believe something compellingly supported by the evidence, and they are still arguably outside the Overton window.
This is what Moldbug means by “communist”. I don’t think it is the right word for the job, but it is a job that needs doing.
I know what he means by “communist”, and I’ll concede that the Chomsky/Moldbug analogy breaks down at the point where Chomsky is treated as non-psychotic by the establishment, even though Moldbug’s views are probably closer to those of the average American.
And I absolutely agree that it’s a job that needs doing. I just think “communist” is a spectacularly awful word for the job. If you call John McCain a communist, people stop listening. They think you’re accusing him of advocating total state ownership and control of everything, because that’s what “communist” means in common usage. Well, he obviously isn’t advocating that, so they think you’re crazy.
It’s hard enough convincing people of stuff they need to be convinced of. I see no reason to add an *additional* burden of popularizing a new, unnecessary, and completely counterintuitive definition for the word “communist”.
And furthermore, I left out one point originally: Every culture, everywhere, has an Overton window. That includes any culture Moldbug would approve of as well as any he wouldn’t. If “communist” just means “there’s an Overton window”, the word has no meaning whatsoever. By Moldbug’s definition, he’s a communist too.
Many on the right can see that. But yeah, let’s all fight about that! Let’s start a civil holy war and all fight each other about using the word “communist” to describe everything that isn’t! Yeah, we’ve been so successful we can give up the fight completely and focus instead on petty theological disputes like a bunch of squabbling academic Troskyite groupuscules.
I’m just letting off steam here, of course. I know the right. Moldbug will become an obsessive, isolated crank who devotes his remaining years to telling people that the word “communist” doesn’t mean what it means. “Moldbug cube math is four day simultaneous rotation of Mother Earth!”
Now you can delete my comments and ban me to prove that arguing about imaginary definitions of the word “communism” is the only issue that any rational adult should be devoting any energy to.
This is why we lose. This is why we always lose. Enjoy it.
This is why we lose. This is why we always lose. Enjoy it.
That’s not even close to why we lose. We lose because it’s impossible to win in a democracy. Democracies always end in chaos, anarchy, and ethnic replacement.
Well, right: There’s substantial broad agreement about fundamentals, and Moldbug and Chomsky have enough views outside that broad agreement that the conflicts within it look like petty bullshit to them. Well, that’s democracy. If you don’t like the broad agreement, you have to work for a few decades to move the window, the way the lefties have.
Lefties have a huge edge – every change they make gives a little bit more power to lefties. The only way to beat this in a democracy is to go the route that the Nazi did and grant power to your anti-progessive supporters.
The problem is democracy not the policy window.
It’s a slow process, and on the whole that’s for the best. Sudden radical changes in policy usually don’t turn out well.
And slow radical changes in policy work out so well? Changing back to traditional policies would be an improvement no matter how radical it is because every modern progressive change has been for the worse.
Quite so, and redefining “communism” to focus on the Alinskyite and Gramscian manipulation of the Overton window focuses on a problem that is not the biggest problem.
Democracy does not work, but likely we would be worse off if it did. Redefining communism to refer to manipulation of the Overton window implies that if only we had real democracy, everything would be lovely, the little birdies would sing, and the unicorns would fart rainbows.
Rothbard’s law: Everyone winds up specializing in what he is worst at.
The left is a lot more prone to excommunicate heretics than the right, but the difference is that left wing excommunications actually work, and those excommunicated are forever ignored unless they repent and return to the fold, or unless they become successful rightists, while on the right, those doing excommunications invariably fail, and frequently wind up isolating themselves.
Can’t it just be agreed that communism is the political/economic program of universalism, which is the broad term for the religion favored by progressives? A lot of what you wrote above about communists more aptly describes bolsheviks, or marxists in general.
Communism is not the political/economic program of universalism. Although Obama’s family were communists, and his mentors were communists, he is implementing the fascist economic system, where businessmen remain nominally private, but become minions of the state.