The following comments have been generated by discussions and observations following the publication of the book. The comments have given rise to a new book - A Socialists Guide for the 21st Century. |
| Capital Social & Evolutionary Politics Existentialist Politics Chaos Theory and Socio-economics Postmodern Politics References Join the debate Capital It would seem that while Marx’s predictive powers were faulty his analytical strength has been validated. Indeed it has been argued that his analysis of the nature of capital has been, ironically, the source of its survival. Francis Fukuyama, the Japanese/American philosopher, has famously announced the 'end of history'. By this he meant not the end of national/religious wars, but the end of political ideological conflict. Political history has ended, he claims, with the collapse of communism and the emergence of liberal social democrat/democratic socialist societies in a free market economy. (The forces of capital cannot be controlled for social ends but only managed, at the margins, for ends consistant with its own dynamic - profit.) If this is indeed the end of (political) history then the events of the 60s and 70s represent the last widespread direct confrontation between capital and labour although sporadic isolated events continue to occur. The questions remain - is this indeed the end of history? And, if not, what is the new political grand narrative? top On the other hand the political right have used evolutionary theory to defend attitudes ranging from free market economics to racism, elitism, and the defence of the social status quo. More recently sociobiologists have sought to express a more complex evolutionary view by reognising that our genetic inheritance both leads to the transormation of our social enviroment and is transformed by it - a complex dynamic feedback system. Anthropologists have identified universal patterns of human behaviour. Sociobiologists have described how genes (or more likely groups of genes) can predispose the human species to adopt these behaviour patterns called ‘epigenic rules.’ most suited to survival in the then environment. These epigenic rules have been shown to relate to contemporary human social behaviour, e.g., altruistic behaviour, patriotism, territorial defence, etc. Robert M Young, of the Open University, addresses the political signifiance of these "epigenic rules" when expressed in conventions and traditions (although he does not recognise them as such and refers instead to "refactoriness" which he says "signifies how hard it is to change a feature of convention… deeply embedded as a patriarchal social order)": "In my own subculture, the people who were politicised in the 1960s, and called for total transformation in 1968, tried to overthrow all sorts of bourgeois institutions from the univerities and the Pentagon to their own ways of living in nuclear families. All these were supposed to be paper tigers, easily seen through and cast aside. The [subsequent] return of these arrangements and the personal and institutional maulings which occurred have led many of us to a much more temporate and gradualists strategy, including more communication between would-be subversive groups and activities and the more progressive aspects of existing society." The current socialist model postulates a society where self- interest is best served by expression of the social. Indeed the extreme socialist paradigm presumes that the personal will be entirely subsumed in the social. The social interest precedes the personal. The capitalist system assumes that social interest will be best served by the expression of self- interest in the search for profit. The personal interest precedes the social. Current sociobiological theory suggests that our behaviour is based on the necessity of genetic survival (the "selfish gene") and can thus be seen as an expression of an imperative to first protect the self and immediate kin, then to look to the wider kin community. This view can be seen to be closer to the capitalist view than the socialist. Clearly the socialist and the capitalist ideologies have something in common - the expression of self interest and social interest. It just depends on which end we enter the equation. Nevertheless, it would seem that to date the capitalist view connects most closely to the sociobiological paradigm, and that popular political choice supports that view. However, there is the question of the permenance of our genetic structure and the current sociobiological paradigm which arises from it. As Young says: "Finally,for better or for worse, we are currently on the threshold of direct control of both evolution and whole departments of human nature… So it is not on to say that human history is itself a product of evolution in any simple sense, since we are shaping evolution and even have the power to end it in a thermonuclear holocaust." The genetic argument introduces the question of "determinism" - and half a dozen other philosophical positions. Perhaps it is most useful to take the existential position that “we must choose, even if we have no choice.” top As defined by Sartre, existential philosophy places ‘choice’ and ‘action’ as the defining characteristics of human nature. The ability to choose our actions (or to think we choose!) is what makes us human. In technical terms Sartre says that, for humans, ‘existence comes before essence’ i.e. human essence can only be defined after human action. (As opposed to other animals, say, who are what they are at birth; for them ‘essence precedes existence’). Sartre couples this need to choose with a secular relatavism which means that we have no external reference to guide our choice. Hence the famous existential angst - we must choose; but what? Existentialist writer Simone de Beavoir has her leading character (All Men Are Mortal) saying:- “It’s never what they receive that matters to them; ‘it’s what they do. If they can’t create they must destroy. But in any case they must rebel against what is, otherwise they wouldn’t be men’. Evolutionary sociologists and psychologists now seek to place the existential need to choose, act and rebel in an evolutionary genetic context. And with an understanding of our genetic inheritance comes the ability to determine our genetic future. The political questions now are: Now that we understand (and will shortly control) our genetic structure in what direction should we point our evolutionary future? top One view is that what we have witnessed to date in the global economic system is the operation of this binary instability - the so called “booms and busts”. This unpredictable and “uncaused” effect would then explain the behavior of the unregulated free market with its internal contradictions predicted by Marx. If this thesis is valid it would mean that small changes [“tinkering at the margins”] could result in unpredictable changes in the socio- economic system and that the fate of the human race is in the hands of blind chance. Perhaps it is. However, recent action by such bodies the IMF, the WTO and the World Bank would seem to indicate that the international community has learned to intervene to dampen down the system and to iron-out the wilder fluctuations. [viz.the 1998-99 Asian stock market crisis]. Further, the international financial institutions now claim to want to intervene for social ends. It can be argued that this intervention would be entirely consistent with the needs of capital exploitation of human resources which needs a well educated, healthy, well paid international community with universal standard condiditions to maximize competition, growth and profits. Capital, it would seem, at least in the short term, could be on the side of the people. The question arises as to whether this is the end of the story- Fukuyama’s “end of history?” If not, where lies the next “grand narrative?” top With Neitzsche's “death of god” and with a dominant materialism all ideological “grand narratives” were exposed as human constructs without the possibility of external validation. In philosophy this was expressed by Wittgenstein in his questioning of the existence of objective “truth” (except as a tautology), and in the popularity of existential perspectives in the written and dramatic arts. In the visual arts relativism was manifest by an explosion of diversity and by the appearance of “conceptual art”. In science it was expressed in the relativity of Einstein and in the “uncertainty” of quantum mechanics and the chaos theory. In politics it appeared as disillusionment with Utopian ideologies (particularly Soviet communism and the unregulated free market) and with the emergence of a pragmatic social democracy - the Clinton/Blair Third Way. Denied both by the possibility of a transcendent vision and an accessible determinism we are faced in the 21st century not with competing grand narratives, or even with the absence of grand narratives, but with the concept that there can be no grand narratives. top Murdock, G.P.
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