Change. Over several millennia, very great change, all the way from hunting and gathering to saturation bombing and climate catastrophe.
Stability. Periods of relative stability when life becomes routine and seems not to change except in unimportant details. The life of an individual changes all the way from birth to death but, at any given time, many individuals are alive at every intermediate stage. Thus, it seems that nothing really changes.
A future history series has to show both aspects.
Robert Heinlein's Future History, Volumes I-IV
I: technological change in the second half of the twentieth century.
II: daily life in the interplanetary period.
III and IV: social regression and political revolution.
Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History
Between World War III and the Second Dark Ages:
world government and reconstruction.
Between the Second and Third Dark Ages:
interstellar government and coordination.
Poul Anderson's Technic History
To be continued.
31 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Another thing that has not changed from before the Old Stone Age onward is competition and rivalry between individuals, families, clans, tribes, nations, etc. And that is something I do not believe will ever stop. It's a condition which can only be managed, not "solved."
Ad astra! Sean
And I disagree.
Kaor, Paul!
And the actual evidence, as seen in real history and real life, shows you to be gravely in error.
Ad astra! Seajn
Sean,
And the evidence shows that people can change their conditions.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
No, all that changes are merely material or technological conditions. Those changes have not made humans less quarrelsome, violent, strife torn, or prone to folly.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
I am not saying that it has happened yet. Technology controlled democratically for the good of all will certainly end quarrelsomeness, violence, strife and folly. The material and the technological are not "mere." They are the basis of life. Why any violence when (as can happen) everyone is well fed, housed, educated, not discriminated against, able to develop freely, not denied opportunities because of who or what they are, no longer able to impose limits on the development of others, in fact growing up in a society where equality and mutual respect have become the norm so that young people are surprised to learn that things were ever any different?
Paul.
Paul: people can change their conditions.
They can't change their -nature-.
We are the product of an evolutionary history which produced certain inclinations and characteristic interactions.
These are coded into our genes. Short of genetic engineering, there's no way to get them out.
Kaor, Paul!
Because, like it or not, it's part our nature to be competitive, even aggressive. It does not matter if we all became de facto billionaires, many would still compete in other ways, such as for power, status, mates.
So I agree with Stirling and not you.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
And I don't think that society needs to have relationships of "power" indefinitely but we have said it all before.
Look at how many of our interactions are not aggressive, then think about how to extend that. It is just as true to say that our nature is cooperative. I have taken on board that the earliest human groups cooperated internally but competed externally but we are no longer those earliest groups.
Paul.
Paul: inter-group competition is based on cooperation -within- the group.
This is probably why human beings out-competed all other forms of hominid, after the emergence of behaviorally modern humans about 80K years ago.
We became better able to cooperate -within- groups; that made us better able to compete -between- groups.
Armies are the only really successful socialist organizations... 8-).
Seriously. They are absolutely dependent on individual willingness to sacrifice for the group.
Though as my father commented to me, after telling the story of how he met and wooed my mother, you could trust your army comrades with your life -- but not with a bottle or a girl.
Sean,
We cannot all become billionaires because to be a billionaire is to sit at the top of an economic pyramid, to have a lot of money in the bank because of investments in the labour of others. We have to conceive of vast shared wealth. No one now knows the details of how this will work. It can only come about if and when large numbers of people want it and take action to bring it about. But many of the necessary conditions are already in place: technology; dissatisfaction with the status quo; motivation to bring about change etc. What is in fact going to happen no one knows. But there is no shortage of horrific scenarios.
Paul.
"Armies are the only really successful socialist organizations"
I will quibble about that.
However, the exceptions I have in mind groups like Hutterite colonies & Kubutzes that keep their numbers small. Under "Dunbar's number" so it is possible to remember who in the group pulls their own weight & who is a slacker.
Some of us mean by "socialism" a much fuller form of democracy which, of course, armies can't be.
Kaor, Paul!
Have to leave soon.
Not possible, you cannot have socialism without the State and using the coercive powers of the State to enforce its decrees on how to run an economy. That means arbitrary rule, top heavy bureaucracy, and secret police terror and gulags.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
It does not mean any of those things.
I am talking about democracy, not bureaucracy. The only people coerced will be a recently dispossessed minority.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Disagree. Socialism means attempted control of an economy by politicians and bureaucrats. And that inevitably means secret police and gulags, to crush all opposition. Every single Marxist regime has been exactly like that.
Socialism has failed every time it's been tried. Enough with all these failed "noble experiments"!!!
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Socialism as many of us use the word does not mean attempted control of an economy by politicians and bureaucrats. Regimes have claimed the title "Marxist" just as they have claimed other titles.
Socialism has hardly ever been tried yet. "Noble experiment" is not a phrase that we use.
A proper discussion has not even begun yet.
Paul.
Sean,
The problem as I see it is that, when certain sorts of ideas - about whether and how to change society -, come on the agenda, you seem not to be able simply to discuss, debate and disagree. Instead, you feel obliged (so it seems) to annihilate an alternative point of view in a few words without first checking with the other person whether you have correctly understood what he is trying to say. You can annihilate a point of view to your own satisfaction, of course...
And, if you are right, then you are right, of course.
If I thought that "socialism" meant nothing but an attempt by a gang of bureaucrats to order everyone else (including me) around, then of course I would oppose it. But we are left with this oppressive global economic system breeding wars and destroying the environment. I do not want to support that either.
The debate about a way forward has to remain open, not to be closed off.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Disagree, every definition I've seen of "socialism" agrees that it means control of the economy by the State, meaning politicians and bureaucrats. You need to concede that before we can move forward.
I have seen leftists using "noble experiment" for socialist regimes, most recently for the horrendous Chavista regime in Venezuela, years ago.
Free enterprise economics is not oppressive, it is based precisely on what you dream of, "cooperation."
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
I do not concede that. You are telling me what I must think, not asking me what I think. There is an entire tradition of socialism as the working class democratically controlling the means of production through work-place committees and elected workers' councils. Anyone who talks about an "experiment" is talking about a party imposing its own policies on society.
Free enterprise is based on coercion of the majority of the population who must work for a minority in order to survive economically.
We have been through this before. Of course you do not agree with workers' democracy as described here and of course you think that any attempt to bring about such a democracy will in practice degenerate into a bureaucratic dictatorship but that is a different matter from simply defining "socialism" as such a dictatorship in the first place. That is a falsification.
The present system is destroying the environment. We must at least discuss alternatives.
Paul.
Paul: the problem with syndicalism like that you describe is that there has never been an example of it actually working for any extended period.
The Soviet system worked, after a fashion. Capitalism works. Syndicalism in practice = zero examples, so far.
The ability to -imagine- something does not mean that it can actually be -done-.
Incidentally, I think that the first thing a 'worker's committee' of the type you describe would do is decide that the members should be able to work a lot less and get more and that stranges should pay for it.
A little after that, the committees would cease to be democratically chosen and their members and flunkies would become the new 'owners', in fact if not in name.
"Meet the new boss/Same as the old boss", as the song's chorus goes.
The Old Adam present in all of us guarantees it.
I agree with some of this. Working examples are needed. But we have a whole future ahead of us (if we survive). Once it was possible to argue that men will never land on the moon because men have never landed on the moon.
There is an argument which says that: the "working class," those who are employed in exchange for a wage or salary, are a growing global majority; it is both in their interests and in their power to take collective control of production. Therefore, this CAN, not necessarily WILL, happen. A nuclear war, an ecological breakdown or another brutal, even genocidal, dictatorship also CAN happen. The biggest obstacle to "syndicalism," to use that phrase, is that it has been put into all our heads that it CANNOT happen. Ideas serve interests. People are empowered by realizing their power. Small actions can grow.
Kaor, Paul!
And Stirling beat me to making some of the points he made, albeit I would have been less clear. I simply don't believe in anything you hope for, as regards socialism/syndicalism, because your dreams goes against the grain of human nature and the facts of actual life and history.
And I don't believe one bit that salaried global working "class" will take "collective control of production." Why on Earth should they.? It would mean taking on more work besides ordinary shop floor/factory floor work. They would have to do managerial/administrative work, taking care managing purchases, pay, taking care of the bills, and so on and on.
You are not going to see ordinary workers, after eight or nine hours of their regular work, also doing another eight or nine hours of administrative/financial work.
And why should anyone build new businesses offering new goods and services if they can't profit from it because the "workers" would kick them out? All you are going to get from socialism/syndicalism, besides tyranny, is stagnation.
Again, I dismiss the sheer hopeless futility of socialism!
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
And I think it can be the way forward out of the mess we are in now.
Paul.
Sean,
You continue to think of a profit motive in an economy that would have shifted from profit accumulation to collective, technological satisfaction of human needs. We continue to talk about different things.
Paul.
You also seem to think that a big issue like this is decisively settled by a few remarks! The issues definitely remains open in a lot of minds.
From Sean M. Brooks:
Kaor, Paul!
Why are you so hostile to the profit motive? It's precisely that desire to better one's fortune which stimulated the invention of so many beneficial changes thru out history. The stereotypical example being people willing to pay more to the inventor of a better mouse trap than for an inferior trap.
All you are going to get from alleged "...collective, technological satisfaction of human needs" is a stagnant, sclerotic bureaucracy. Because you cannot have any kind of "collective" political system without politicians and bureaucrats.
Of course combox discussions are unlikely to change the minds of most of us. But I firmly believe economists like Eugen von Bohm-Bawerk, Ludwig von Mises (some of whose works I've read), and their successors definitively demolished Marxism/socialism in both theory and practice. I also believe the bloody history of socialism discredits it.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Then the bloody history of mankind discredits mankind! But you keep using the word "socialism" as if it had one fixed meaning that does not need to be clarified before generalizing about it.
I am not hostile to the desire to better one's fortune or to the invention of beneficial changes but that is hardly what is going on with competition for massive profits by big corporations. The question is what is best for the future of the whole of society.
We can have collectivity without professional politicians and bureaucrats. We can elect and recall all public officials and make them accountable. That requires a culture change but mankind is capable of culture changes.
In any future version of this discussion, will you again insist that your opponent must concede that "socialism" is nothing but bureaucratic dictatorship or will you acknowledge that many people mean something very different by the term even though, of course, you still oppose that "something else"?
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I will try to define what socialism is by quoting THE RANDOM HOUSE DICTIONARY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE (1973) definition of that word:"1. a theory or system of social organization which advocates the vesting of the ownership and control of the means of production, capital, land, etc., in the community as a whole." This simply cannot be done except by using the State and its coercive powers. And that is exactly what has happened in every nation where Marxists have seized power (or installed as traitorous puppets by tyrants like Stalin).
I see nothing wrong, per se, in big corporations. Economies of scale makes it more efficient for many companies to be big if they are to produce and sell their products at prices most people can afford. The real problem comes when such firms try to prevent new firms with new, more advanced technology from offering the same or similar products at lower prices.
Profits is what's left over after all costs (such as salaries for employees) and taxes (including a reasonable working overhead) are deducted from total income. Any funds left over from these deductions rightfully belongs to the owners (a single person, a few, or many stock owners).
It is not possible to have a society or state (I see no need for the word "collectivity") without professional politicians. What are politicians? They are simply the persons who manage the public business of a state/society. It doesn't matter if they are called barons, earls, dukes, or Members of Parliament, Representatives, Senators, whatever. Nor does it matter if some offices are hereditary or elective (so long as the means used for gaining office are believed to be legitimate). They are all politicians. Nor is it possible to do without a civil service for the day to day work of gov't.
Several US states have experimented with recalling politicians, with scant success. It took a huge effort to oust a soft on crime District Attorney in San Francisco a few years ago. And the attempt to recall CA Gov. Newsom failed. I don't expect the kind of culture change you hope for to make "recall" practical because most people don't care that much about politics. All they really want is for the pols to run things well enough for ordinary people to get on with their lives. I do agree many politicians are bunglers or worse.
I will concede people like you can have definitions of socialism different from the one I offered above. But I would disagree that your definition is correct or fits the harsh facts of actual history.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
But I do agree that socialism means ownership of the means of production by the community as a whole. It is whether this necessarily leads to bureaucratic dictatorship that is the issue.
I propose a qualitative social change. You discuss the consequences of that change on the apparent assumption that the change has not in fact occurred! Thus, you continue to imagine a situation in which the majority have to do something to earn a living and a minority does this by running a business and employing others. Imagine instead a situation in which, because of social control of industry and technology, all physical needs are guaranteed and everyone is free to develop and interact in other ways.
Does this not seem repetitive?
Paul.
At some stage, we just have to accept that we continue to disagree.
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