7 March 2009

I suggest we need new terminology.

A socialist, by definition, is one who believes the government needs to own and manage the means of production.  A communist is one who believes that a temporary dictatorship of the prolotariat should create a total and complete egalitarian society.  Both forms of governing - socialism and communism, have been attempted (sort of) and proven unsuccessful.  But the egalitarian furor that they generated has not died, at least among intellectuals.  And the direction of drift is government control (but not ownership) of the means of production - and most everything else for that matter.  Daddy (paternalism from a previous post) knows best.

So what is it now that they espouse?  I want to call them SocioComs, since they seem to espouse government control, not ownership of the means of production to achieve spreading the wealth from the top to the bottom.  In that sense both can claim adherence to basic capitalist principles, albeit conveniently modified.   I think they mean well, but they are theorists that overlook that time-worm shibboleth, human nature.

Some people are more talented, more motivated, more willing to take risks and more energetic.  Some people are inclined to look for the easy way and prefer to expend as little effort as possible.  In between those extremes are all the rest of us, shaped, of course, in a normal distribution, if it could be measured.  When the government aggressively spreads the wealth there is a tendency (the strength of which depends on how aggressively the spreading is pursued) for the wealthy to sit on their wealth and the users to sit on their posteriors.  Thus the challenge of the governors is to find a sweet spot between the two extremes.

Governing in a republic is very challenging as there are a plethora - a mega plethoria, in fact -  of different views, with strong influence from those who would defend the extremes.  The strong influence is a direct result of rhetoric: extremes are more easily defined, discussed and propagandized.  All the rest is complicated, technically demanding and require both knowledge and ability to think, which tend to be in short supply in a culture that has been entertainment surfeited and thus real-learning impaired.  We are also much more comfortable issuing damning but fact-limited broadsides of emotional criticism; it feels so good.

And the standard distribution is skewed: there seem to be more of those willing to use than there are willing to risk and create.  There are, however, many more that are neither, but tend toward one or the other less radically.  Those "tenders" once upon a time were referred to as the silent majority; they are in fact the critical middle class that makes a republican form of government possible - and successful.

Once more we are being challenged, as is rather normal in our form of government.  Which way will it go?  Neither, although surprisingly enough the extremes on both ends tend to be very similar: a capitalist dictatorship or a social dictatorship - both controlling capital.  We will struggle; we always struggle, we always have.  And unless something very unusual happens, which is unlikely - but possible, if only remotely - we will swing back toward center equalibrium again sooner than later.

The admonition?  Keep the faith, be informed, and think outside the box.  Which box?  The flickering one of pseudo-savant propagandist savvy, entertainment gifted SocioComs that always, always have their own agenda, which is very unlikely to have much in common with what is ultimately in the best interests of the bulk of us, whether we realize it or not.