About two weeks ago, I was skimming some material on cargo cult science to prepare a facetious argument on the appropriation of Western Culture, and came across one of those interesting footnotes of history: specifically, the Sokal Affair. This led to a spate of curious clicking, and led me to some interesting thoughts about the future of Leftism.
To summarize briefly for those too lazy to click the link, in 1996 Alan Sokal, an NYU physicist, submitted an outright silly paper to the journal Social Text, purporting that quantum gravity is a social and linguistic construct. There are some allegations that this was not done in good faith (I should hope not!), but the fact that Social Text ran it was pretty alarming even so. Sokal contends that this an example of a larger trend in academia, particularly the liberal arts and humanities, to ignore the fundamental teachings of hard science in favor of their own pet navel gazing fantasies theories, postmodernism and the like being particularly problematic.
This raises larger questions about the Academic Left (their terms, not mine), particularly about their understanding of reality (or lack thereof). When the "intellectuals" who have significant influence in the formative years of a large segment of the electorate can't distinguish between fact and fantasy, it makes one sit up and notice. In particular, the left-leaning academics who can make the distinction (scientists in particular) were quite vocal in their concern.
On this issue, at least, I agree with them. At risk of sounding pedantic, there is a large segment of academia verily seeped in mysticism. Postmodernists, linguistic analysts, and whatever other groups advocating half-baked pseudo-theories are almost always quite literally beyond the reach reason. Their beliefs, based in feeling rather than fact, are almost religiously sacrosanct, and cannot be refuted by scientific or logical argument. Individually they are harmless, but the madness of the 1960s and 1970s suggests that together they have the potential to wreak incredible havoc.
I could argue that this is to be expected of leftism, and to an extent it is, but that overlooks the reasonable leftists, such as Sokal. While they are largely mistaken in their political beliefs, their implicit acceptance of reason means they are at least potentially salvageable. I think there is a major divide in leftist thought, soothed over but still there, between the thinking leftists and the feeling ones. And I think this divide is eventually going to break.
Ultimately, the thinking leftists are going to have to make a choice: do they accept the facts (that socialism has proven itself a failure, that free markets work better than mixed markets, that personal freedom also requires personal responsibility) or follow others' feelings, back into the world of violent revolution, pseudoscientific mysticism, and the eventual collapse into looting thuggery? Which is it going to be? We'll have to wait to find out.
In a convoluted turn of events which began with the politics of Germany (specifically the Christian Democratic Union) with a major stop at political color, I ended up reading about the technocracy movement. Now I've been interested in the idea of technocracy for a long time, particularly because I advocated a similar program long before I ever read the word. By the time I encountered the idea, though, I'd largely abandoned that program in favor of liberal capitalism.
After my first dip into the technocratic pond, I considered the idea of combining the better aspects of technocracy with capitalism, which I termed capital technocracy. Though I didn't get very far along articulating my ideas at the time, I'd now describe the idea of capital technocracy as using the opposing forces of self-interest and competition exemplified in capitalism to achieve technocratic ends. In English, that means that forward-thinking entrepreneurs end up making the best decisions in their pursuit of profit, leading to optimal outcomes. At that time, my understanding of capitalism was primarily based on competition, rather than understanding markets as a whole.
I re-approached the idea of technocracy from a market capitalist perspective, and realized that the idea of integrating capitalism and technocracy is still essentially valid, but requires a different tack. Markets are essential giant organizers, which aggregate the value decisions of millions of actors to result in a price. The technocrats rejected the price system because of the bust in 1929, but I think that central banking deserves more blame than prices (?!) for starting the Great Depression. The technocrats thought that central planners could make economic decisions better than millions of people could for themselves, and that is the fatal conceit, isn't it? In 1935 I can understand that position; having seen the abject failure of the Soviet Union compared to market economies, I can not.
Ultimately, though, I'd say that the market performs the technocratic function far better than socialism ever could, and for that reason I may start advocating for the free market under the label market technocracy. My main reason is simply that the term "capitalism" comes with so terribly much baggage that using it often does more harm than good. I've thought about using other terms, but only liberalism seemed to fit, and that would only serve to confuse.
In addition, technocracy can be marketed with social reform towards a rational society. Capitalism is usually linked, both when it is and isn't warranted, to the various forms of conservatism, particularly social conservatism and traditionalism in general. I find many traditional ways of doing things (the English system of measurement, the Gregorian Calendar, contemporary public education) quite abhorrent for various reasons. Integrating reforms away from those into my political platform wouldn't be exactly distasteful.
Last thing tonight: would ordoliberalism be considered comparable to market technocracy?
