The Black Swan Event – One Small Reason For Optimism

Yesterday I posted a rather dour essay about the difficulties of social change. Today I offer a somewhat more hopeful viewpoint – the very uncertainty that makes us question the possibility of change is also something that may allow for that change.

We are living in the bleakest time in human history. In case this sounds extreme, consider that all the great horrors of the past, such as the two world wars, did not threaten the lives of everyone on the planet the way climate change does. But in the midst of this gloom there is a ray of light.

The world and its many problems are not determined in a clanking, inevitable, mechanical way. Everything clanks along for a long while, and all of a sudden a Black Swan Event (BSE). A BSE seemingly comes out of nowhere and has a paradigm-altering impact. (The term BSE comes from the fact that until the "discovery" of Australia all Europeans though swans were only white in color) A good example would be the French Revolution of 1789. [Indeed, most revolutions, both attempted and victorious, are BSE's)

If you could hop in a time machine and go back to 1788, they would think you were crazy if you said that next year both the monarchy and feudalism would be overthrown. Of course, after the fact, historians can come up with evidence as to why the revolution happened, but at the time no one saw it coming. In the case of France prior to the uprising, there were decades of pamphleteering, small discussion groups, the persecution of dissidents, occasional riots, a rise in government debt and crop failures. In 1789 a tipping point had been reached, one small event was like the tiny salt crystal added to a supersaturated solution that causes the entire solution to crystallize. The thing about BSE's is they cannot be artificially created or planned for. They just happen when they happen.

Though not as dramatic as the French Revolution, there are contemporary Black Swan Events, such as the Battle of Seattle aftermath, the Arab Spring and Occupy. No one saw them coming, they could have just as easily ended up as quickly forgotten, if recognized at all minor protests – as there were all throughout the benighted 1990s. But again, a tipping point had been reached in each situation, and researchers can give you all the after-the fact explanations you could ever want. These BSE's did not become social revolutions, in spite of the participants wishes, because their support was limited to a minority of the population. A tipping point had arisen to create these movements, but not the tipping point to mobilize the bulk of the population for broad social change.

The tipping point is a key to understanding the BSE's that cause rapid change. It can arise when as little as 10% of the population strongly believe in something and the next most politically aware and more numerous sector of the population is somewhat open, or at least not hostile, to their ideas. [While anti-abortionists make up about 10% of the Canadian population, they will never cause a tipping point in their favour, because the vast majority of Canadians are openly pro-choice.] All of a sudden the minority viewpoint makes sense and the mass of the population adopts it as their own.

What really helps the development of tipping points is the existence of a multitude of small groups attempting to deal with a common problem. Many groups allows for creativity and new ideas to emerge. If everyone was in a single large group they would be subject to pressures to conform to an ideology or theory. There would also be bureaucratic pressure to conform to certain tactics and the inevitable squabbles over who was to lead the movement.

Small is the important operating word. Study after study shows that humans can only relate closely with about 150 individuals. (this is our pre- tribal heritage) These bonds of friendship and comradeship, help create the energy that is needed to promote change, to fire up a movement. Each of the 150 will have friends and family, many of whom will be sympathetic, and thus news of the movement travels via word of mouth, which is still the best form of communication. [I am not, however, fetishizing the small group, people also need to come together through mass assemblies and delegate-based federations, it is just that the small group lies at the foundation of movements toward a tipping point.]

BSE's come out of nowhere. This gives us hope. At any moment there could be a tipping point, as years of climate and living condition degradation combined with decades of small group activism produce a BSE that catches the oligarchs completely off guard and begins the transformation to an environmentally sane, egalitarian and democratic social system.

** Note that neither the BSE nor the "tipping point" are my ideas. Both were subjects of pop sociology books, "The Black Swan – A Theory of the Highly Improbable" by Nassim Taleb and "The Tipping Point" by Malcolm Gladwell. Like pop sociology generally, these books take one idea and beat it to death, but this does not mean these simple ideas do not have some valid application. (It should also be noted that both concepts can be found with earlier thinkers, the Surrealists for the BSE and Engel's concept of "quantity changes into quality" can be seen as a tipping point.

The Problem of Revolutionary Change

Revolutionaries face a virtually insurmountable problem. Only a minority of the population has ever favoured revolutionary social change. This did not matter in earlier times when revolutions were armed insurrections – the revolutionary minority would seize power, and as long as a significant number of people were not overtly hostile, they could impose their program. However, the combination of constitutional governments and a fear of mutually destructive civil wars due to the rapid advances in weaponry, have made the old fashioned insurrection unlikely. (Does anyone really want to turn Canada into a snow-bound version of Syria?) Furthermore, few people today wish to be dictated to by a minority, they have enough of that already. 

So other means have been sought; the general strike, the ballot box, building an alternative society, a mass non-violent uprising, or electoralism backed by direct action. In all cases there is a similar problem – the revolutionaries are in a minority. A significant minority support most of their program, and in many circumstances, a majority of the population support at least SOME of their ideas. Note that any one of the suggested means of social change would probably work if enthusiastically supported by the overwhelming majority – the problem is, the lack of that majority.

What can revolutionaries do? They can pretend that it doesn't matter and beat their heads against the wall in futility. Or they can do what usually happens, and bow their heads to the reality principle, opting for reform within the existing system. They will be roundly cursed by the remaining true-blue revolutionaries. This is all very well, but the true blues don't have an answer to this conundrum either. Hence you get splits within the movement for social change, causing divisions, which in their mutual animosity last for decades, and prevent any unified action. 

Revolutionaries like to pride themselves in being philosophical materialists and indeed some are, but I suspect most are not. While they may talk about economic forces and the contradictions of capitalism, most are really philosophical idealists and moralists. They seek an ideal version of socialism for society, albeit imposed democratically by the workers themselves, and those who question their idealism are criticized in moralistic terms as sell-outs and weak-kneed reformists. The workers however, are faced with a variety of immediate pressing problems, and are also conditioned by the limited life span of the human being. Essentially they want "jam today" and not jam 50 years from now. The workers are the real materialists, even though the vulgar kind. 

The working population is thus divided in three groups – the revolutionary minority, a majority who want some level of reform and a reactionary minority, ready and eager to suppress the other two tendencies at the behest of their masters. Do not interpret this condition as agreement with the Kautsky-Lenin view that workers are incapable of socialist consciousness and hence need an elite to bring them The Word from on high. We have seen from those rare revolutionary moments during the Mexican, Russian and Spanish revolutions, of great masses of working people expropriating the land and work-places and instituting forms of direct-democratic governance. The rub is, these mass uprisings had little to do with most of the revolutionaries, who were often as suprised by these events as the bourgeoisie. Revolutions it seems, are not really made by revolutionaries. 

So what is the answer? Wish I had one, but I don't. Sitting around and waiting for a "spontaneous" revolution is obviously not an option. A population that is more empowered, that has more experience of direct action and direct democracy is much more likely to opt for revolutionary social change than one that is completely dis-empowered. All actions and reforms in this direction ought to be supported. We also face the system's ultimate contradiction – climate change, and this may well be the force that pushes people over the edge into radically changing the system.

Notes on "The Corruption of Capitalism" by Guy Standing,

The Corruption of Capitalism by Guy Standing, Biteback Books, 2017

First a definition – that of "rentier capitalism." According to Standing - income from "control of assets that are scarce or artificially made scarce" such as rental income from land, resources, finance, debt interest, patents, govt. subsidies and capital gains. p. 3

How neoliberalism has effected us - Labour's share of wealth (of USA GDP) 1970 was 53% by 2012 this had decreased to 43.5%. Real wages (USA) 1947-1975 grew 75%, from 1975-2007 fell 4.4%. Profits, however rose from 7.6% global GDP to 10% in 2013. pps. 20,21.

Worker income decline rooted in de-industrialization. In 1950 in the USA manufacturing was 28% of GDP, by 2008 this had shrunk to 11% Even by 1985 FIRE (Finance, Insurance, real estate) was larger than manufacturing in the USA. Today it is 40% of national profits p. 24 In the crisis period 2008-2014 the USA lost 6 million manufacturing jobs. p. 14. Manufacturing is only 9% of the British GDP today (compared with 21% in Germany) and two thirds of manufacturing companies in the UK employing 500 plus employees are owned by foreign companies. p. 38

China is now moving toward rentier capitalism. Half the Chinese economy is now services and the country has foreign currency reserves worth $ 4 trillion. p. 14. By 2015 China had invested $20 billion in Europe, 70% of this from state enterprises. Helped by the EU austerity China bought ports and other infrastructure in Poland, Greece, Italy, and Portugal. State enterprises bought Motorola, Pirelli, Volvo and Club Med as well as buying into North Sea oil and British nuclear industry. As well, $150 billion in illegal money left China though Macao in 2015. pps. 15, 16.

I will now explore some of the various means by which rentier capitalism feeds on the public.

Patents – According to the Carnegie Institute only 10% of patents "had any real economic value" and the rest is to create monopolies or prevent competition. P 54 Companies find ways of extending patent monopolies by "evergreening" – making insignificant changes to a product or process. They also lobby govts to extend "market exclusivity." Big Pharma spends more on advertising and marketing than R and D – so much the argument that these monopolies are needed for development of new products. Pps 57-58

Subsidies - 6% of GDP of most developed countries eaten up by these. 90% of exports from poor countries must compete with subsidized products from rich nations. Pps 85, 87 EU CAP subsidies account for 3.6 billion pounds in the UK and 90% of these go to richest 10% of "farmers" including the Queen and Duke of Westminster. p. 104. Direct US federal govt subsidies to corporations = $100 billion. p. 105 Worst subsidy of all is fossil fuel costing $550 billion worldwide or 4X the subsidy for renewables, according to International Energy Association. p. 107 Welfare subsidy to corporations for low wage workers (food stamps, tax credits) costs $153 billion p.a.

Tax breaks - Income from dividends and capital gains taxed much lower than income in UK and USA. Removing this subsidy would add $53 billion to US govt coffers p.a. p. 88 Low inheritance taxes – cutting in at $5 million in USA – none in Australia. Corporate tax cuts - corporate tax in UK 1980 53% , 2015 – 20% p. 89 Tax breaks altogether account for 7% GDP, USA, 6% UK, 8% Italy and Australia. p. 93 Tax breaks from state and local govts in USA cost 7% of income or about $80 billion p.96

Off-shore tax havens – some two million companies – many "shell" companies – use them. Up to $20 trillion hidden there. p. 100 US only taxes profits from overseas if repatriated. Thus US corporations keep profits overseas in low tax regions, which equals $2 trillion. Pps. 101, 102 Profit shifting generally worth $600 says IMF, p. 103

Bailouts and cheap money – Cost $4.6 trillion to bail out 1000 banks and insurance companies in USA. Artificially low interest money a $70 billion subsidy in USA and $300 billion in EU p. 121 Much of this money went to property speculation. London became centre for laundering billions through property buying. 30% of houses bought in Central London by foreigners – driving prices up 50% pps 122, 126, 127. Most bank lending is for property, and that for existing dwellings, not new ones. 1928 borrowing for housing 30% by 2007, 60% p. 140

Result? A global debt of $199 trillion or 3X global income. 33% of this debt is in or held by China. p. 138

Thoughts on the BC Referendum

Many of who are radical or anarchistic regret the failure of the latest attempt to extend democracy in BC. We do so, not out of any naive faith in the parliamentary system. Rather, we wish that the alleviation of the deadly serious social, environmental and economic problems occur with the minimum of disruption and violence. While some of us wish for peaceful solutions for moral reasons – and these must be respected – I do so for pragmatic reasons – the more peaceful social change, the less likely the lasting bitterness that poisons the social body and the less harm that will occur to my friends and myself.

The kleptocrat, dominator minority plainly do not want peaceful change, and thus have struggled successfully to prevent the installation of a system that would make such change more likely. As our socio-economic-environmental problems mount, so too will the pressure for change. The parliamentary road, while perhaps not totally blocked, will continue to face serious obstructions. What must we do? 

We must acknowledge the problems with the parliamentary route without taking the dogmatic stance of throwing the baby out with the bath. The semi-democracy which is the parliamentary system evolved out of a system of oligarchic rule 200 years ago. It is essentially the Dominator System's adaptation to the growing desire for democracy that arose in the 19th and 20th Centuries. The focus of this evolution was to allow for a certain amount of change without uprooting the dominator class. The ideology of neoliberalism imposed post-1980s seeks to make change impossible and thus helps create and maintain an essentially klepocratic dominator system.

The parliamentary struggle is therefore essentially on the dominator system's terrain.
Centuries of domination can only have an important psychological impact upon the populace. This results in a combination of servility and a mixture of ignorance and acceptance. The former will believe whatever their masters tell them, the latter will be oblivious, with few if any political ideas, motivated more by a fear of change or an attitude of "yeah, there are problems, just don't bother me about them." Taken together, these groups can be a majority, or a minority large enough, given our FPTP system, to allow the formation of right-wing governments.

This is the social base from which the klepotcrats draw support and prevent change. There is a difficulty for the dominator system, in that its supporters are largely passive – voting for them and not much else. (there are the fascists, but they remain a tiny ineffective minority) Let's just say that direct action is not their terrain. 

Direct action, is OUR terrain, whether that action takes the form of building cooperative alternatives, strikes, civil disobedience, blockades etc. (And it goes without saying, given our cultural-historical background that such direct action must be non-violent) Some 1,017,00 people voted for the Greens, and the NDP. If only 10% of those people were to engage in direct action, we could bring the system to its knees should the kleptocrats regain power.

Unmask Ideology

You should no more take an ideology at face value than you would an individual person. What applies to the individual, does, in this instance, apply to the group. A person lacking self-awareness constructs a character structure, persona or mask, and presents this as the real person. Underlying this construction lies someone altogther different, and they are they not conscious of this fact. The ideology of a political party or tendency, is much the same and is probably just as much lacking in awareness , though conscious manipulation can also be a factor. Thus, we have self-styled conservatives who have few aspects in common with conservatism, self-styled classical liberals who would give Adam Smith apoplexy, self- styled liberrtarians who are the rankest authoritarians, self-styled social democrats who are really neoliberals, self-styled marxists who are really mechanical materialists and so forth.

The left often fails miserably, fighting the masks rather than the persons underneath them. One sad example dates all the way back to the beginning of neoliberalism in the 1980s. Everyone nattered on and on about how the right was forcing us into "free markets" and was "anti-government". Other than Noam Chomsky, who saw behind the mask, few pointed out that the corporation was the greatest enemy of any "free market" and that the "free market" requires the iron fist of the state. And as we know so well today, the right's "anti-statism" consisted of shifting social wealth away from helping people and towards war and corporate welfare. For the left, it should have been like shooting fish in a barrel, but they continued to attack the mask instead. Any talk of "free markets" and "getting the state of our backs", should have been greeted with hoots of derision and raucous laughter at the hypocrisy of it all, not cries of horror. Even today, people still talk about the "free market" right and their supposed "anti-statism."

We need more materialism and less moralism, more dialectics and less dogma. Contradiction is the fire in the boiler of change. Everything has its limitations, its contradictions. Our job as "social changers" is to discover those contradictions and exacerbate them to the enth degree. (I am referring to dealing with our opponents, of course. Contradictions "among the people" are not to be exacerbated, but resolved to build a greater unity.)

By taking ideologies at face value, we are actually aiding what we seek to criticize. Critics must get beneath the surface and see what is really going on. We must endlessly and ruthlessly torment our opponents with their hypocrisies, ignorance of their own alleged positions, their irrationality, their denial, their foolishness. Rather than positional warfare, guerrilla warfare! Nor should it always be done with a long face. We need to revive some of the Yippie and Situationist spirit. Endless ridicule and scandal! And hit them where they are weakest. On the ideological front, one of their greatest weaknesses is their lack of understanding of the very beliefs they claim to uphold.

The Demise of Authentic Conservatism

The true conservative is among the damned, not just for what we find objectionable in their beliefs, but perhaps more so, those aspects that ring true. No progressive person wants to read or hear paeans to inequality and authoritarianism, but even less so, do present day self-styled conservatives wish to hear criticism of their tin god capitalism. So the authentic conservative is double-damned – by the left who sees only the vicious aspects and by their self-styled adherents.

Conservatism, let me remind you, grew out of a reaction against many of the ideas and practices of the 18^th Century Enlightenment and the subsequent development of liberal capitalism. Some of these views were reactionary; a fear of democracy and the masses, of 'too much freedom'. But their critique could not be reduced to just reaction. The conservatives could see the destructiveness of capitalism and the ideological dogmatism and coarse inhumanity of its proponents. They railed against a society that was only concerned with money and was destructive of community and traditions. George Grant, a Canadian conservative philosopher, laid out the conservatives dilemma and a possible solution;

“The truth of conservatism is the truth of order and limit, both in social and personal life. But conservatism by itself will not do. For it can say nothing about the overcoming of evil... Yet to express conservatism in Canada means de facto to justify the... right of the greedy... Their economic policy has been the denial of order and form... they stand condemned for their denial of the law. Thus it is almost impossible to express the truth of conservatism in our society without seeming to justify capitalism. To avoid this, a careful theory is needed in which the idea of limit includes within itself a doctrine of history as the sphere for the overcoming of evil” pps, 108,109, George Grant, Philosophy in A Mass Age, Copp Clark, 1959

Critique of Rationalism

A central element of the conservative outlook is the skeptical denial that a political philosophy of that universal and rationalist sort can be anything other than an illusion. p. 47, John Gray, Beyond the New Right, Routledge, 1993 The Rationalist is obsessed with technique because of a desire for certainty. p. 111, Rationalism effects politics more than any area. Its politics seeks uniformity and is highly ideological (the politics of the book) p. 112. But its incompetence increases as it destroys the only knowledge which could save it – practical knowledge. p. 113, Paul Franco, The Political Philosophy of Micheal Oakshott, Yale, 1990

For Oakshott, there are two types of knowledge. One is technical knowledge gleaned from books, the other is practical or traditional knowledge which exists only in use and is not formulated in rules. This knowledge is similar to Polyani's 'tacit knowledge'. Oakshott says that Rationalism denies the validity of practical knowledge. p. 110, Paul Franco, The Political Philosophy of Micheal Oakshott, Yale, 1990

The remaking of the world by a simplistic doctrine derived from political economy and an ethics based upon utilitarian and nationalist principles is the outcome of capitalist rationalism. This doctrine sweeps away the wisdom of the past and with it “ a sense of man's limitations... is the necessary correlative against megalomaniac efforts to remake the world by force.” The late 19th Century “ethical revolution replaced both individual and universal ethics with national ethics.” The misuse of Darwin gave this ruthlessness a scientific gloss. p. 80, 82, Peter Viereck, Shame and Glory of The Intellectuals, Beacon Press, 1953

The liberal rationalist concept of society is an aggregate of individuals, or as an infamous anti-conservative female British Prime Minster once snorted, “There is no such thing as society!” The essential conservative view is that society is a kind of organism in which everyone plays a role. Let's see what Edmund Burke said; “A nation is not... a momentary aggregation, but it is an idea of continuity... a deliberate election of the ages and generations... made by the peculiar circumstances, occasions, tempers, dispositions, and moral, civil and social habits of the people...” Edmund Burke, p. 30, Raymond Williams, Culture and Society, Penguin, 1976 As Raymond Williams points out on the same page, Burke “established the idea of what has been called an 'organic society' , where the emphasis is on the interrelation and continuity of human activities rather than on separation...” Enlightenment critic, and otherwise thorough-going reactionary, Joseph DeMaistre rejected its individualism. For him society was not a collection of individuals united by a social contract, but part of an organic unity. Pps 3, 4, Copelston, History of Philosophy, Vol IX

Modern conservative Roger Scruton, “A society or a nation is a kind of organism [my italics, LG] (and also very much more than an organism.)” p. 21, The individual exists and acts not in isolation, but “only because he can first identify himself as something greater, as a member of society...” p. 34, “Conservatism arises directly from the sense that one belongs to some continuing, and pre-existing social order, and that this fact is all important in determining what to do. The 'order' may be a club, class, community, society, community, church... In so far as people love life, they will love what has given them life...” p. 21, Roger Scruton, The Meaning of Conservatism, MacMillan, 1984

Another modern conservative, John Gray; “Among conservatives... market exchange and rational argument are... necessary conditions of their way of life. They are not the whole of that way of life that they inherit, and they cannot hope to flourish or survive, if the common culture of liberty and responsibility is eroded... p. 53, “Liberal individualism... with society as a contract among strangers is a one generation philosophy... we are au fond social and historical creatures...” p. 136 John Gray, Beyond the New Right, Routledge, 1993

The morality of Rationalists is one of “moral ideals.” But these ideals are not independent and self-contained, but rooted in a religious or social tradition. By destroying these, the Rationalists have “destroyed the only living root of moral behaviour.” p. 114, Paul Franco, The Political Philosophy of Micheal Oakshott, Yale, 1990 A good point is made here, ethics do grow from, and are maintained by, society and when you try to impose a different ethic from outside, you have conflict. (think of Prohibition) The destruction of community by Rationalist capitalism has certainly undermined ethics, as people have no higher calling than to shop. The problem is Oakshott's use of the singular. There is not 'tradition' but traditions.

Capitalist rationalism has had a very detrimental effect upon education. As opposed to the Utilitarian concept of education which involved training to carry out a task, S. T. Coleridge and Matthew Arnold saw; “the harmonious development of those qualities and faculties that characterize our humanity.” p. 121, Raymond Williams, Culture and Society, Penguin, 1976 Coleridge's critique - “Against mechanism, the amassing of fortunes and... utility as the source of value, it offered a different and superior social ideal... the harmonious development of those qualities and faculties that characterize our humanity.” p. 77, Raymond Williams, Culture and Society, Penguin, 1976 By rejecting the broad humanistic culture proposed by these critics we have, in the 21^st Century ended up with a host of technically well trained barbarians. (No wonder Trump!)

Suspicion of Ideology

Conservatives in their distrust of capitalist rationalism, very naturally looked askance at ideology. What agitated them was doctrinalism, abstraction (one size fits all) and again the complete rejection of methods and ideas rooted in history and communities. “Violent indignation with the past, abstract systems of renovation applied wholesale, a new doctrine drawn up in black and white for elaborating down to the smallest details a rational society of the future – these are the ways of Jacobinism.” Matthew Arnold, p. 128, Raymond Williams, Culture and Society, Penguin, 1976

But ideology was not to be rejected in total. It is useful in “giving sharpness of outline.” but not enough for conducting activities, for this you need tradition. With ideology, society and its aspects appear like bits of machinery to be moved around at will. p. 131, Paul Franco, The Political Philosophy of Micheal Oakshott, Yale, 1990 “Conservatism does not normally exhibit itself as a 'position' or system of ideas, but remains implicit, unarticulated, relying on various understandings and intuitions upon which an actual civilization is based...” p. 26, Jeffery Hart, The American Dissent, Doubleday, 1966.

Taken to its logical extreme ideology, leads to terrorist regimes. “From the idea of possessing the ultimate truth there follows eventually not only the idea of justification, but the necessity of self-deceit and of persecution and terror in order to make the idea finally prevail” Karl Dietrich Brachter, in Bruce Lawrence, Defenders of God, p. 72

Natural Law

The conservative sees ethics and practices rooted in Natural Law. Depending on whether the given conservative is a theist or not, this law will come either from God or Nature. We have seen in the earlier chapter dealing with ethics, that the ethical grows out of existence. Ethics do not come from outside existence, nor do we create them in some Utilitarian or Social Contract fashion. Hence we can give credence to the concept of Natural Law.

“The assumption [behind natural law] is that the universe is a cosmos and not a chaos.” p. 29, “In natural law theory, it is clear that man is not finally responsible for what happens in the world.” p. 39, George Grant, Philosophy in A Mass Age, Copp Clark, 1959“The theory of natural law is the assertion that there is an order in the universe and that right action... consists in attuning ourselves to that order. It is the most influential theory of morality in the history of the human race... only in the last two hundred years has it ceased to be the generally assumed theory from which moral judgment proceeds. It is popular to speak of a crisis in our standards and values. This... arises above all from the fact that the doctrine of natural law no longer hold the minds of modern men, and no alternative theory has its universal power. George Grant, Philosophy in A Mass Age, Copp Clark, 1959 “A law is only a law when it is a just law, mirroring the divine law of justice.” 34, George Grant, Philosophy in A Mass Age, Copp Clark, 1959

What Grant says is very true. In the 20^th century Natural Law was replaced by the Law of Power or statute law. Any group could cobble together a majority in Parliament and force its prejudices or misguided ideas of reform upon the populace. Practices deemed innocuous, or at worst minor sins, such as the consumption of alcohol or smoking cannabis, got the full force of the Law of Power. Political groups like the socialists, left alone in the 19^th Century, were persecuted using statute law in the 20^th. And just try building a house on your own and ignoring the plethora of bylaws, none of which existed 100 years ago. The flaw in the conservative view of Natural Law, is of course, deciding what is 'natural.” The argument from nature (“unnatural practices) was long used to oppress women and gay people.

Critique of Capitalism

Conservatives see a need for a market economy, but the economy is there to serve a function. The economy should serve society and society is not there to serve the economy. Hence, conservatives have been among the harshest critics of the effects of capitalism.

Robert Southey, poet and conservative; “The immediate effect of the manufacturing system...is to produce physical and moral evil, in proportion to the wealth it creates.... the poverty of one part of the people seems to increase in the same ratio as the riches of another.” p. 41, Raymond Williams, Culture and Society, Penguin, 1976 Southey supported Robert Owen's idea of cooperative communities as a way of overcoming the destructive nature of capitalism. p. 43, Raymond Williams, Culture and Society, Penguin, 1976

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “Has the national welfare... advanced with circumstantial prosperity? Is the increasing number of wealthy individuals that which ought to be understood by the wealth of nations.” Samuel Taylor Coleridge, p. 72, Raymond Williams, Culture and Society, Penguin, 1976 “It is not uncommon for 100,000 operatives (mark this word, for words in this sense are things.) to be out of employment at once in the cotton districts, and thrown on parochial relief, to be dependent upon hard hearted taskmasters for food. If when you say to a man... [according to Malthus] 'You must starve. You came into the world when it could not sustain you'. What would be this man's answer? 'You may disclaim all connection with me... I can then have no duties to you, and this pistol shall put me in possession of your wealth... what man who saw assured starvation before him, ever feared hanging?' Samuel Taylor Coleridge, p. 73, Raymond Williams, Culture and Society, Penguin, 1976

Crotchety old Thomas Carlyle; “It is an Age of Machinery, in every outward and inner sense...Nothing is now done directly or by hand; all is by rule and calculated contrivance...Mechanism has now struck its roots into man's most intimate, primary sources of conviction... Religion is now... grounded on mere calculation... whereby some smaller quantum of earthly enjoyment may be exchanged for a far larger quantum of celestial enjoyment. Thus religion too is Profit, a working for wages... Our... 'superior morality' is properly rather an 'inferior criminality' , produced not by a great love of virtue, but by the greater perfection of the Police, and of that far subtler and stronger Police, Public Opinion. In all senses we worship and follow after Power... no man now loves Truth...” Thomas Carlyle, pps. 86, 87, Raymond Williams, Culture and Society, Penguin, 1976 “...with the cash payment as the sole nexus... and there are so many things that cash will not buy.” Thomas Carlyle, p. 89, Raymond Williams, Culture and Society, Penguin, 1976 On the suffering of the working population - “ That self-cancelling Donothingism and Laissez-faire should have got so ingrained into our practice, is the source of all these miseries.” Thomas Carlyle, p. 91, Raymond Williams, Culture and Society, Penguin, 1976

Carlyle approves of the popular discontent over the rule of money and the machine; “Its very unrest, its ceaseless activity, its discontent contains matter of promise. Knowledge, education are opening the eyes of the humblest... only in resolute struggling forward does our life consist...” Thomas Carlyle, p. 88, Raymond Williams, Culture and Society, Penguin, 1976

Benjamin Disraeli, one of the founders of the Conservative Party, “... since the passing of the Reform Act the Altar of Mammon has blazed with triple worship. To acquire, to accumulate, to plunder each other by virtue of philosophic phrases... this has been the breathless business of enfranchised England... until we are startled from our voracious strife by the wail of intolerable serfage.” Benjamin Disraeli, from his popular novel, Sybil, or The Two Nations, p. 108, Raymond Williams, Culture and Society, Penguin, 1976

“There is no community in England only aggregation... In great cities men are brought together by the desire for gain. They are not in a state of cooperation, but of isolation, as to the making of fortunes, and for the rest they are careless of neighbors. Christianity teaches us to love our neighbors as ourselves; modern society acknowledges no neighbors.” Benjamin Disraeli, p. 109, Raymond Williams, Culture and Society, Penguin, 1976

Matthew Arnold on laissez faire capitalist ideology, “... one of the falsest maxims which ever pandered to human selfishness under the name of political wisdom... We stand by and let this most unequal race take its own course, forgetting that the very name of society implies that it shall not be a mere race, but that its object is to provide for the common good.” p. 124, Raymond Williams, Culture and Society, Penguin, 1976

T. S. Eliot weighs in; “Was our society... assembled around anything more permanent than congeries of banks, insurance companies, and industries, and had it any beliefs more essential than a belief in compound interest and the maintenance of dividends?” T.S. Elliot, p. 225, Raymond Williams, Culture and Society, Penguin, 1976 “We are being made aware that the organization of society on the principle of private profit, as well as public destruction, is leading both to the deformation of humanity by unregulated industrialism and the exhaustion of natural resources, and that a good deal of our material progress is a progress for which succeeding generations may have to pay dearly.” T. S. Elliot writing in 1939, p. 226, Raymond Williams, Culture and Society, Penguin, 1976

For Micheal Oakshott, capitalism and the state's concentration of power was a danger to society. “The politics of the diffusion of power are the only guarantee of the most valuable and substantial freedom known to human beings.” Concentration of power anywhere is a threat. p. 144, So too the economy – the widest possible diffusion of economic power, with property widely distributed and an opposition to any monopolies. p. 147, Paul Franco, The Political Philosophy of Micheal Oakshott, Yale, 1990

Roger Scruton, The features of Modernity which negate satisfaction - “... mechanization... the division of labour... commodity fetishism.” p. 129, “The world of commodities is a world of ephemera, whereas man's rational need is to [be] ...part of something lasting...” p. 130. “Alienation is not a condition of society, but the absence of society.” p. 132, Roger Scruton, The Meaning of Conservatism, MacMillan, 1984

Scruton goes beyond critique to a demand for the regulation of the economy in the public interest. The rights of property must be limited by law. While property ownership is “central to conservatism” there is “no logical identity between conservatism and capitalism.” p. 94, “The unbridled law of the market breeds monopoly.” p. 111, “... social and political unity take precedence over the free accumulation of property...” Scruton points out that the Factory Acts, the legalization of trade unions and much social welfare were conservative innovations. p. 116, Roger Scruton, The Meaning of Conservatism, MacMillan, 1984 [ For Scruton order is paramount, ultimately this order is through the state.]

John Gray fears contemporary capitalism with its fetish of cut-backs and privatization. “We do not want to walk the path of privatization if Detroit is at the end of it.” p. 60 The market is only one dimension of society, families, voluntary associations, governments etc are the others. p. 63, “The good life... necessarily presupposes embededness in communities.” p. 137, John Gray, Beyond the New Right, Routledge, 1993

Capitalism in its contemporary and highly brutal form, which has manifested in Gray's warning about Detroit, is called neoliberalism. The godfather of this ideology was Von Hayek. Oakshott sneered at his hypocrisy. [A plan to end all planning] “is of the same style of politics as that which it seeks to resist.” p. ix, John Gray, Beyond the New Right, Routledge, 1993

Decades before it became popular to speak of the environmental crisis and global warming, George Grant, writing in 1959,“Surely the twentieth century has presented us with one question above all: are there limits to history making? … whether man's domination of nature can lead to the end of human life on the planet... [or] perhaps by the slow perversion of the processes of life.” p.78, George Grant, Philosophy in A Mass Age, Copp Clark, 1959

Policies and Ultimate Goals

Conservatism is not reaction according to John Gray, - “A conservative policy... is not one which seeks to renew old traditions by deliberate contrivance... it is one which nurtures the common traditions that are currently shared.” p. 59.John Gray, Beyond the New Right, Routledge, 1993

For Gray as well, “Where change is incessant … human beings will not flourish.” p. 125, John Gray, Beyond the New Right, Routledge, 1993 This is certainly true in a system that is like a giant food processor, grinding up humans, the environment, traditions and customs, cultures into a profitable puree. Mental illness in at epidemic proportions and it is no wonder when nothing is permanent, and nothing is valued by corporate power. .

There can be no purity, no utopias. “For a conservative, political life is a perpetual choice among necessary evils.”, p. 63, John Gray, Beyond the New Right, Routledge, 1993

George Grant was sympathetic to socialism – he was after all, a mentor to the Canadian New Left – but looked beyond its humanistic ends. While it would be a good thing if socialism's goals of ending exploitation and freeing the workers was attained, once that was done, “... [one] could still ask what is the point of it all, what is the purpose of my existence...It is this truth that is not satisfied in Marxism.” p. 71, George Grant, Philosophy in A Mass Age, Copp Clark, 1959

Where liberal rationalism sees only individuals and their rights, and thus sometimes ends up enabling the enemies of society in such cases as “free speech for Nazis,” the conservative thinks about the need to protect society. “There cannot be freedom of speech... if by freedom is meant the untrammeled right to say what one wishes... Freedom should be qualified only by the possibility that someone might suffer though its exercise.” p. 17, Roger Scruton, The Meaning of Conservatism, MacMillan, 1984 Scruton is opposed to hate speech, Holocaust-denial and supports the Race Relations Act.

Other than a few individuals, there is no conservatism as an organized tendency today. Conservatives are worse off than anarchists and syndicalists were in the late 1950s. The tendency is extinct and the term conservative has been taken over by people whose world view is the direct opposite of those authors quoted here. Conservatism today means rabid ideologues for whom the so-called free market and the corporation are the Alpha and Omega of existence. A sociopathic cult that has completely rejected the old conservative concept of the common good. Then there are the “social conservatives.” For these extremists, the only thing conservative about them is their desire to impose their religious intolerance, environment plundering, militarism, white supremacy, misogyny and homophobia upon the rest of us. These “conservatives” are essentially fascists in jogging suits not jack boots. There is far more real conservatism in the Communist Party than either of these pseudo-conservative tendencies. (You will soon see why below.)

But the dialectic grinds on and has produced its own miracle baby. The socialist movement was born in large measure out Enlightenment Rationalism, and for a long time maintained some of the more odious practices and beliefs of its parent.

One of these was the myth of Progress. Everything from the past was worth chucking out. Pre-capitalist and Aboriginal peoples had nothing to teach us. Imperialism, though regrettable, was needed to industrialize the “backward” areas. Micro-businesses, artisans and small farmers ought to disappear, to be replaced by mechanized latifundia and socialist department stores. (And if need be, like Stalin we will MAKE them disappear) Then there was the cult of centralization and the mega project. Oh, yes, and everything could be planned from the top down.

Anarchists, guild socialists and most syndicalists NEVER bought into this, as did some important socialists like William Morris, Edward Carpenter, Jose Carlos Mariategui and George Orwell. Nor mostly, did Marx. It has to be stressed that the anarchists and socialists who rejected this 'liberal socialism' did not get their ideas from the conservatives, but came to this position independently, by simply observing what was occurring in the society around them. In the English speaking countries, Disraeli and Carlyle were popular writers who had a considerable working class readership. (Marx took the phrase 'cash nexus' from Carlyle) Figures such as John Ruskin and William Cobbett, who in some ways, had a foot in both camps, the conservative and the socialist, were also widely read. There was some influence, but it must not be overstated. Better to regard this as a parallel development of some similar critiques of capitalism and rationalism without forming any strong linkage between conservatism and what was essentially libertarian socialism.

The worst perpetrators of this liberal or rationalist socialism were the Fabians and the Stalinists. The Fabians were a major influence upon social democracy, but even then their hold was never total – The Danish Social Democrats invented both the housing coop and cohousing. The French Socialists encouraged the growth of mutual aid societies. There was always a minority tendency within social democracy that did not glorify centralization and the mega project.

This liberal socialism certainly raised living standards for the poorest levels of the population and introduced a number of important social reforms like public health care. But beyond that, it was not inspiring, an ever growing list of questions began to be asked, and the many people once ignored, such as Aboriginal people, environmentalists and feminists began to be listened to by radicalized youth. The New Left and the resulting counter-culture was the negation of the older socialism.

Youth supported the struggles of the so-called Third World peoples against imperialism and began to see their ways of being – rooted in peasant traditions combined with Marxism - as valuable, as struggles to learn from. The forms of socialism suppressed by the dominant tendencies like anarchism and syndicalism which never accepted the ideas of Progress and centralization found new adherents. The degradation of the environment by both corporate and state capitalism gave rise to the environmental movement with its appreciation of the small and the local. Fifteen thousand year old cultures were now being learned from rather than scorned as 'primitive'. Women discovered that patriarchy had not been the only way, that other cultures were more egalitarian both in the past and Aboriginal cultures. The critique of 'instrumental reason' put forth by the Frankfurt school, the exploration of the subconscious and repression, by Reich, Fromm and Marcuse undermined the faith in liberal Rationalism. Young socialists eagerly reading Kropotkin, Morris, Raymond Williams and E. P. Thompson discovered the long traditions of opposition to domination, the ancient striving for mutual aid and cooperation. Tradition was no longer a dirty word. Neither was the past.

And thus, the negation of the negation. But once again, note that this was a parallel development. Other than George Grant in Canada, conservative thinkers had no input into the new movement. Essentially, the synthesis had been made generations previously with the anarchists and the libertarian socialist minority. It was just now that 'their time had come.'

Contemporary leftists – with the exception of Blairite social democrats – who are really neoliberal corporatists anyway – have all been influenced to one degree or another by this development. For the left today, “small is beautiful”, we strive for the local, we love our farmers markets, push for millennia -old “horizontalism” and consensus democracy. We work hard to restore community though our associations, our housing coops, cohousing projects and eco-villages. We protect the old buildings, the forests and the waters against the depredations of capitalism. We are suspicious of fanaticism and dogmatism. (Though sectarians are still with us, unfortunately) We work for 'better' in the here and now and refuse to sacrifice generations for some distant utopia that never arrives. We ally with the Aboriginal peoples struggling to maintain their languages, cultures and traditions. We fight to to maintain the memory of the working class struggles and the traditions of the class. We maintain or revive the ancient traditions of mutual aid and solidarity. To go forward, we must also go back. We are the conservers. We are the ones with the long view.

REVOLUTION IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES

The changes in our understanding of pre-history during the last two decades are really quite astounding. We are undergoing a virtual revolution in thought, greater than anything since the founding of the social sciences 150 years ago.

Denisovians, Hobbits, such complexity of human development, not a single line as once thought. Hominids "out of Africa" 2 million years ago have been discovered on the Caucasus. People may have inhabited Australia as far back as 70,000 years ago, which means homo sapiens migrated from Africa earlier than once thought.

Just recently, Neanderthal cave paintings were discovered, which means symbolic thought preceded homo sapiens. The fact that homo erectus had to have constructed some sort of water craft to have colonized some of the outer islands of Indonesia also points to symbolic thinking occurring in the distant past among other non-sapien hominids. We also know that the people of 30-40,000 BCE had musical instruments, star maps, calendars, tailored leather clothing and hair styling. (So much for the popular image of the cave dwellers as shuffling, unkempt ape men.)

We also now realize that some people were sedentary as far back as 30,000 BCE. It seems there were summer villages and winter was spent in the caves. The gathering, parching and grinding of grain goes back more that 20,000 years. It is quite likely that humans always modified their environment to guarantee a plentiful, local food supply. This involved selective burning, pruning and weeding, a kind of pre-historic permaculture.

I suspect the idea that early humans wandered around looking for food like cattle was a spin-off from the racist assumptions used to dispossess Aboriginal people. ( The imperial rationalization was that since they supposedly wandered around all over the place, they did not actually have title to the land, hence the Europeans could take it and this wasn't stealing) The division of civilized people vs. uncivilized is also fake and another racist rationalization. Without exception, all so-calleed primitive human soceties are ordered, have common customs, rituals, an acknowledged territory, and a vast knowledge of the natural world. What people lack in technology, they make up for in complex customs, rituals and beliefs.

With the discovery of the megalithic architecture of Geza Tepi in Turkey, dated 11,000 BCE we find that, not only did sedentary life preceed agriculture but so did the building of monumental structures.

The "ice free corridor" that supposedly allowed people from Asia to settle in the Americas is now seen an archeological folk tale, not a fact. People were living in ice free areas on the British Columbia coast by at least 13,000 BCE and they must have gotten there by boat. The homeland of these immigrants was recently discovered. They were not Asians as was once thought, but Eurasians, living in an areas straddling the two continents about 40,000 years ago. Some of the early inhabitants of North America seem to be related to the Australian peoples. These people, once thought to have inhabited Australia for "only" 40,000 years now seem to have been there at least 60,000 years, if not longer.

The whole question of when people arrived in the Americas keeps getting pushed back. In the 1920s it was thought to be 4000 years, then the 10,000 BCE dogma with the ice free corridor was the rule for several generations (and worth your academic career to challenge it) The discoveries in Chile and British Columbia finally put the boots to that dogma. But Brazilian archeologists claim to have discovered human remains dating back more than 40,000 years. And, speaking of Brazil, the 'experts' had long denied the existence of anything other than small populations of foragers and slash and burn farmers. It turns out that Amazonia was thickly populated ( at least two million people) with villages using intensive agriculture based upon the use of charcoal. (European diseases killed them off in the mid 16^th century, leaving only remnant populations.

Agriculture and urbanism does not necessarily lead to state formation and the resulting tyranny. Examples of non-statist civilizations include, Catal Huyuk, Old (neolithic) Europe, Tiahaunaco, Amazonia. Nor were all proto states highly inegalitarian dominator societies, Early Sumer, Indus Valley, Teotihuacan. The world is far, far, more complex than once thought.

Climate change has been a driving factor. The Anasazi, Maya, Tiahuanacan and Greenland Viking cultures were all destroyed, at least in part, by climate change, the first three due to persistant dought, the latter by cooling. The violence of Iron Age Europe was largely due to the coming of a cold, wet climate about 1000 BCE. Drying occured 4000-2000 BCE forcing herders into the Nile Valley, Mesopotamia and Old Europe, giving rise to class rule and state formation.

Early writing. Roots may go back to the Mesolithic. Definite writing in Vinca Culture (Old Europe) circa 5000 BCE. But these early forms were elated to spiritual aspects of the culture. (How like the bourgeois to think that writing arose from bookkeeping!)