THE CHOICE: SOCIALISM OR FASCISM
The means of production now
evolving will inevitably outstrip our ability to sustain an environment that
can support us. Economic collapse follows ecological collapse. At the same
time, current means of production will also fail to provide sufficient work to
sustain incomes and employment. Increased productivity and reduced resources
will mean fewer jobs, and particularly living wage jobs.
Insofar as means of
production and distribution largely define societies, one of two means of
organizing society will follow the shortfall in resources and viable labor:
socialism or fascism. This conclusion follows from the apparent failure to meet
the problem with more sharing and efficiency, both of which enjoy little status
in a culture that endorses "making it big" in the money games.
I use the terms, socialism
and fascism, in the broadest sense, as the poles between which social
ideologies fall. Those ideologies have been mortal enemies for over 100 years,
which explains the hostility now evident in American politics. While both sides
claim freedom and equality as their goal, that deception only conceals the
consequences of the on-the-ground policies being advanced by warring
ideologies.
Socialism looks at the proper
relationship between individuals and between individuals and government as a
cooperative effort to provide for all. Individual responsibility includes the
general welfare. The means of supporting safety nets requires a sustainable
economy and broad public support. The question of who pays for what takes a
leading role in politics. Fascism leans more to "winner take all." The
corollary is that losers deserve no support, regardless of their circumstances.
Fascism looks at the proper
relationship between individuals and between individuals and government as a
Darwinian struggle for supremacy, usually for money, first between individuals
and then between tribes. Since even fascists cannot make it alone, belonging to
the most powerful tribe provides the magnet for politics. Insofar as virtual
wealth (money) has gained control of real wealth (resources), the money tribe
enjoys an increasingly powerful magnet. Membership is highly coveted and very
expensive.
Conditions for the rise of
fascism in America have never been better. The ground was laid by decades of
multimillion dollar programs, facilitated by technology, to suppress empathy
and intellectual honesty.
Fascism cannot develop when
people regard each other as equals, when people feel the pain of others, and
when people help rather than take advantage of others' misfortunes.
Well-financed think tanks, talk radio, and managed news reporting blames the
victims and never discusses collective solutions. Even without the animus of
those who believe that God despises those without money, digital production and
distribution isolate people from the kind of contacts that develop empathy.
Shared experience of the workplace revolves around computer programs. If you do
not understand those algorithms, you are just not keeping up. Instead of
sharing the effect of poor weather on crops, we share a war of all against all
for money. If you cannot play that game, you are negligent. The kind of youth
protests that made civil rights happen in the sixties have succumbed to
self-interest and internet gossip. Facebook does not generate change.
The other shoe that is
falling on America's greatness is the ever expanding grip of propaganda that
technology makes possible, along with concentrations of power. In the search
for truth, two diametrically opposed forces compete. One is curiosity that
leads to strategies like the scientific method, an effort to determine facts
and understand relationships. The other is the sanctity of agendas. What serves
the agenda determines the facts and relationships, irregardless of observable
incongruities. Science, ostensibly, avoids agendas. Tribalism lives by them.
Fascism cannot survive
reality. It can only live on propaganda. Hence, the critical role of
intellectual honesty. Without it, we have no means of unmasking propaganda or
designing sustainable means of production and functioning institutions.
Intellectual honesty requires that everyone and every program be judged on the
same bases and employs objective means of verification. There is no truth
absent a system of logic that can describe reality in the context of its
origins--natural selection--and its consequences.
Millions are spent on a
project to eliminate objective facts from consideration in order to enthrone
agendas. Rant, trivia, and deception prevail on the airways. News provides more
distraction than inspiration to think. The facts take a back seat to
entertainment values. The fraud called "balanced news" makes no distinctions,
as if all ideas were equal. Every issue does not have two sides. Some ideas are
lousy and some are worthy of our closest attention. Pretending that everything
has a justifiable basis serves to mask agendas.
The socialist/fascist
dichotomy has its counterpart in the DNA of civilization. Individuals may
engage in cooperative endeavors where divisions of labor are determined on
merit and everyone shares in the product or people may employ force or class
stigma to exploit other people's labor. Abraham Lincoln viewed the distinction
as the never ending struggle between good and evil. The Civil War tested, for
the moment, whether class distinctions as gross as slavery would continue. Slavery was defeated, not evil.
Countless ways of exploiting other people's labor remain. Herein lies the major
building block for fascism. The Civil War merely went underground, as the
backlash from electing a black president reveals.
The Religion of Money
provides another building block. Darwinian Calvinism sanctions whatever it
takes to prove God's love by the simple expedient of conflating the discipline
it takes to love God with the discipline it takes to succeed. The syllogism
goes like this: Making money is the measure of a man; the fittest will acquire
the most; God must love them. Under the Religion of Money, legitimate proof of
God's love requires unrelenting competition. One must succeed by her own
devises without any help from government. Therefore, government must not
interfere with the process of converting anything that can be converted into
money. Institutions like the Environmental Protection Agency defy the proper
order of things. Exploiting the environment goes along with exploiting labor.
Both lie at the heart of capitalism and, as a matter of fact, government does
more for the rich than for the poor.
Fascism embodies a kind of
feudal slavery. A master race, the lords and ladies, hold life and fortunes at
their pleasure. The sanctioning of the Outlaw Gene (exploiting other people's
labor) and the Religion of Money (money as the supreme value and the proof of
God's love) reduces government to the support of an elite class and its
corporate profits. I define elite as those with the power to make the rules or
ignore them. Racism, limiting advanced education to a an elite, justice at the
service of power, huge differences in income, privatization that reduces most
people's access to public services, control of the media by propaganda, taxes
that favor the rich, and a system of logic that turns empathy on its head (pity
the billionaire and his struggle to avoid regulations and taxes), accelerate as
resources dwindle. One morning we wake up and wonder how democracy evolved a
virulent strain of fascism that places democratic institutions at the service
of money and produces an economy that goes from bubble to bubble with no
regulation of fraudulent schemes that cheat most people.
This backdoor approach to
fascism is exactly the program conservative republicans hope to advance. The
core beliefs of the form of conservatism described here resembles the
nineteenth century misapplication of natural selection referenced as social
Darwinism, if not a continuation of that perversion of "survival of the
fittest.'
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