Table
of Contents
Preface
1. Introduction
2.
Dichotomies, Duopolies, and False Choices
3. To Do Philosophy is to Be Haunted (and Hunted) by Thought-Spirits
4. Government Failure Exacerbates Philosophical Failure
5. Introduction to the Fichtean-Hegelian Dialectic
6. The Application of the Dialectic Method to Economics
7. Synthesizing Socialism and Capitalism
8. Social Threefolding and Overcoming Trichotomies
9. Creating Antisynthesis Through Negation of the Synthesis
10.
Conclusion
Content
Preface
It
is my intention and hope that this article will aid those unfamiliar
with either the political spectrum or the dialectic method, in coming
to understand both; through the lens of how the dialectic may
be applied to political and economic issues, and as a way of
“graphing” the dialectical method by “projecting” its
components (thesis, antithesis, synthesis) onto ideological space.
1.
Introduction
In
his song “Rising Sun”, George Harrison wrote, “Every word
you've uttered, and every thought you've had, is all inside the
files, the good and the bad.” But unlike the printed word, the
world is not always so black-and-white.
Not
everything can be easily lumped into the good-vs.-evil
dichotomy. As time has gone by, we have learned, more and more, that
many things we once thought were polar opposites, actually exist on a
spectrum or a continuum.
That's
why, in modern times, we should hope and expect dichotomies, binary
opposition, and binary choices, to go the way of the Dodo.
2.
Dichotomies, Duopolies, and False Choices
The
Greek word dichotomia refers to a cutting-in-half, and to
something being torn asunder. In the
two major American political parties, a false
dichotomy has arisen.
Duopoly
– distinct from, but not dissimilar to, dichotomy -
refers to a state of two sellers. What's being sold is, of course,
security, or fear and control
(depending on how you look at it). But most importantly, what a
politician or a party is trying to sell to you is the truth; their
version of what the facts are. What they need is a public who's
willing to buy it.
The two major parties, Democrat and Republican, have been
incorrectly characterized as “left” and “right”. The
Republicans are farther to the Left than many people think, because
they betray conservatives' desire for free markets and limited
government; while the Democrats are actually
right-of-center,
because they betray liberals' and progressives' desire for a viable
organized labor movement. During Bernie Sanders's presidential run,
former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi even described herself and the
Democratic Party as
capitalist; not socialist. Additionally,
the extent to which these two parties disagree has been exaggerated,
in order to give the impression that, as has been said, they are
anything other than the left and right wing of the same fascist,
imperialist war-hawk.
In
truth, the leadership of the Democratic Party is comprised of
neoliberal corporatists, while the leadership of the Republican Party
is comprised of progressive neoconservatives. To anyone outside the
Beltway, these political ideologies are virtually indistinguishable.
Each values interference in trade, as well as imperialism and a
surveillance state. Neither seems to value liberty, equality,
constitutional legitimacy, or budgetary solvency. The political
ideology that governs America is neoliberal-neocorporatism; this is
the country's true
political center, which is to the right of absolute political center.
Contrary
to popular opinion, the Democratic Party is not
actually on the Left; in reality, both
parties
self-describe as capitalist, and are thus on the Right. If the
Democratic Party truly represented the “Left”, then those who
feel that the Democrats do not represent their ideals, would not
flock towards progressivism, the Green Party, socialism, communism,
and left-wing anarchism. If the Republican Party truly represented
the “Right”, then those disappointed by the Republicans would not
be drawn to ultra-nationalism, constitutional conservatism,
libertarianism, and market-anarchism.
The controllers of the two wings of this jointly-wielded duopoly –
the former heads of each major party, through the “corporate
personage” of the Commission on Presidential Debates – has come
to control even the very rules for debate and inclusion themselves.
Complicity with that commission's wresting of control of that process
from the League of Women Voters in the 1990s – as well as
complicity with the basic mode of American governance outlined in the
Constitution (in particular, the “first-past-the-post” system and
the Electoral College) – have assisted both major parties in
creating an illusion of disagreement and difference.
The fact that each major party wants to reign-in the other, is
downplayed. That each major party practices “gate-keeping”
tactics, is kept hidden. Thus, few members of the public ever find
out that each party wants to keep the other in-line as its
“controlled opposition”, and wants to vet their candidates to
ensure that their positions lie within the narrow “Overton Window”,
the range of opinions which is endorsed and approved by government
and the business community.
In
1962, John F. Kennedy said, “Those who make peaceful revolution
impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.” And the only
way to make peaceful revolution possible is to leave people free to
engage in peaceful, respectful discourse. However, that type of real
debate is, more or less,
impossible, under the
current conditions. Fortunately, some people have woken up to that
fact.
But
the important thing for our controllers is that a false
dichotomy has been created in the minds of the majority. There exists
an illusion of disagreement,
alongside an illusion
of agreement. The
appearance of disagreement makes us look weak, and emboldens our
enemies. On the other hand, the illusion of agreement is
manufactured (through vetting to within the range of acceptable
choices), in order to make political compromise continue. This is
essential to upholding the power and apparent legitimacy of the
state, because that compromise can be made to appear as though it
were preventing the nation from falling apart. What's being
compromised, unfortunately, is not usually
the things we're most willing
to give up in negotiation; instead, we're allowing the things we
value most, to be
compromised-away in the name of progress.
What
matters to our controllers is that we keep perceiving our
government as, at once, united and divided; united in the name of
progress, while divided formally and constitutionally into a
separation of powers. That's because, if it were ever revealed how
monistic and
monolithic government is, and how different people
and parties are, then our controllers' whole narrative would
collapse; exposed as a brittle, dead, unyielding shell, which is
propped-up under the pretense that what actually upholds it is a
living, breathing document.
And with that collapse would come the collapse of their control
systems (the media and the educational system), as well as the
legitimacy of their control, and even of the legitimacy of the
political ideologies which shape those control systems.
A
“binary choice” is no true choice. A binary choice is nothing
more than an ultimatum; it's a false choice between “my way or the
highway”, or “your money or your life”. To present a binary
choice is to take away all other viable alternatives for no reason,
and to contrast what you want,
with a fabricated strawman argument that sounds terrible. This is the
illusion of choice,
which should never
pretend to serve as a rightful substitute for real choice and real
freedom. That's why it's essential to call-out elections as rigged
when voters are faced with two (or more) terrible, strikingly similar
alternatives.
To
call these elections as shams, and to call-out these ultimatums for
what they are – examples manipulation by politically well-connected
pathological narcissists - are essential to preserving a real
multiplicity of
choices. Democracy and markets can neither thrive, nor create
conditions of freedom and openness, unless the people can prevent
choices from being taken and withheld from them without cause.
3.
To Do Philosophy is to Be
Haunted (and Hunted) by Thought-Spirits
It
is only natural that the lumbering, faltering dinosaur, which we call
the modern bourgeois Westphalian nation-state, should fall prey to
the mass delusion that there is no such thing as “grey area” (I
think of it as sort of a selective color-blindness). And so, these
dichotomies and duopolies are to be expected
in partisan politics.
In
“All I Really Want to Do”, Bob Dylan wrote, “I ain't lookin'
to... simplify you, classify you... analyze you, categorize you,
finalize you, or advertise you.” Indeed, this is the approach we
should take to ideas.
We should wish to merely make friends with them,
rather than to categorize them and put them into a system, lest we
fall victim to the same delusions which, through thought, we are
trying to avoid.
And
so, we think, like Howard Beale in Network: “At least we are safe in our philosophy;
at least we are safe in our minds.”
However, although ideas and thoughts have no real
body - and
cannot “chase us down”, as it were – we mustn't be so foolish
as to believe we can run away from ideas. Remember: “What
is dead may never die, but rises
again harder and stronger.”
As
Max Stirner wrote, “In the time of spirits[,] thoughts grew [until]
they overtopped my head, whose offspring they yet were; they hovered
about me and convulsed like fever-phantasies – an awful power. The
thoughts has become corporeal on
their own account, were ghosts, such as God, Emperor, Pope,
Fatherland, etc. If I destroy their corporeity, then I take them back
into mine, and say: [']I alone am corporeal.[']”
We
must approach people as we approach thoughts and ideas; just as the
tiger approaches Stirner, “to rend... or befriend”. Another
person, a foreign thought, a new idea: each is a geist
(ghost, spirit, phantasm, spook) which may come, just like the tiger,
to hunt us down and devour us. This is to say that we must treat
others, and their ideas, as realities equal to ourselves and our own
(that is, our own reality), with which we must contend, and from
which we might be able to learn. Unless we do that, then we cannot
decisively confront the issue at hand. Thus, we become frustrated,
and confused about whether to keep our weltanschauung
(world-view) open or closed, and if so, how.
That
is when the truth becomes veiled with clouds; and confirmation bias,
cognitive dissonance, and obscurantism set in, even evolving into
consideration as full-fledged philosophies in and of themselves. This
is a breeding ground for nihilism and self-doubt, but even these
can be overcome (or
sublated) as long as they're used as tools for self-critique and for
maintaining neutrality. This holds true as long as the fog of
cognitive dissonance can be penetrated; with a wide beam of
interrogating light, shone onto the cracked-mirror disco-ball of
understanding. Being that fracture, factionalism, feud, difference,
and discord are hard truths of life; sometimes yielding to them is
not only easier than fighting or resisting them, but also wiser.
Still,
it's only natural for a person to desire to reclaim one's reality –
one's own world-view - as one's own property, and
to challenge and defeat mere idées
fixe and
“ideas-as-we-know-them”. However, ideas are so sacrosanct to
some, that the punishment which is meted out for their destruction,
is the destruction of the very person who who challenged it; albeit a
person who destroyed nothing except our delusions, who simply
tore-away the outermost layer of the onion. Hence, it seems that to
destroy an idea is to
risk destroying yourself.
However, this punishment mechanism exists through control and by
design; it is only the desire of
our controllers that
we continue to perceive this risk-reward relationship as natural and
inevitable.
4.
Government Failure Exacerbates Philosophical Failure
It
is no surprise that philosophy has evaded the state. Nor is it any
surprise that our masters have failed to consider even the most basic
rational and logical points about how to run an efficient
man-devouring mechanical tiger, which we have been foolish enough to
call “the economy”. But freedom-lovers still want to believe that
if the state, or democracy, or markets fail, then the
people will fill-in the gaps.
However,
the state's untruths, and propagandist distortions, have become so
pervasive, that they have begun to poison the well of philosophy
itself. This confounds our tongues, changes our semiotics, and
reduces the various schools and tendencies of political thought into
a mutually-incomprehensible Tower of Babel. I'm speaking, of course,
about the perpetual disagreements between the Left and Right
concerning the meanings of words like “property”, “private”,
“public”, “socialist”, “capitalist”, “free market”,
etc.. As if speech and debate were not already closed and unfree enough, gag
orders, rejections of F.O.I.A. requests, and conspiracies of silence make communication more difficult in general, and philosophic discourse and education on political and economic topics practically impossible.
Today,
thanks to modern conceptions and laws concerning intellectual
property rights, people who have made no discoveries are termed
“innovators”, even if all they have done was to merely apply laws
of physics to already existing inventions. So too do we apply the
word “idealist” to most if not all thinkers,
even though they may solely challenge or re-combine existing ideas,
yet formulate no original thoughts of their own. Rather than applying
the term “idealists” to people who continuously seek to perform
the impossible task of rebuilding the world in their own images, we
have chosen to call them “realists”. This fact ought to help
demonstrate that those who challenge the system with philosophy, all
too often fall victim to its lies, even if all they are trying to do
is describe (rather
than proscribe) human
nature.
This
is why it is so unnerving when our ideological philosophy
– our very ways and methods of looking at, thinking about, and
applying our own ways
of systematizing and categorizing political, social, economic, and
cultural arrangements – falters in the same manner as the state.
The
cause of this is overzealousness. First, an overzealous desire to
systematize and categorize – a desire to make a thought-friend
into a thought-girlfriend
- in the first place. Continuing along this line of “reasoning” –
and to be perfectly crass - ideological philosophy is an attempt by
the thought-cucked to
escape the thought-friendzone.
It is to attempt to find not just an idea, but a system
of ideation, with which we can mate for life, and through this union,
formulate lots of little baby ideas.
For some people, the affairs of a distant government are so far from
their minds, that refraining from allowing oneself to worry about
them, gives one at least the illusion of freedom. Indeed, “freedom
from worry” was one of Franklin D. Roosevelt's “Four Freedoms”.
Moreover, to some, political ideas and theories seem unreachable,
unattainable, even lofty and poetic. However, as Marshall McLuhan
reasoned, people must be able to understand how the law affects them
on a day-to-day basis - in their normal, everyday lives - if problems
are to be confronted and solved.
This
is a perfectly practical and practicable idea, which McLuhan called
“making the political personal”. Unfortunately, the second
cause of philosophical failure,
has been the overzealous desire to apply that idea everywhere.
This has resulted in a
distortion of the concept, such that politicizing the
personal is the order of the
day, rather than personalizing the political,
which is quite the opposite.
That
is why we must set out a course by which, through philosophy, we can
make the political personal, without accidentally politicizing human
beings, and everything else,
in the process. To fail to do this is to risk normalizing arrest and
brutal treatment of people suspected of even the most minor and
trivial, and often victimless, crimes. As they say in Harvard Law
School, “Don't support a law unless you're willing to kill in order
to enforce it.”
5. Introduction to the
Fichtean-Hegelian Dialectic
If
- in the course of developing each of our own unique, personalized
ideological philosophies - it is impossible to avoid systematically
and methodically categorizing ideas, then the categorization system
should at least make sense; should be neither too grandiose, nor too
simplistic.
People living in wealthy, industrialized market economies may be
familiar with the term “affluenza”, which refers to the feeling
of being burdened by privilege. One way to experience affluenza is to suffer from "choice overload" - also known as "overchoice" or "analysis paralysis" - the feeling of being overwhelmed with choices while trying to decide what to buy.
However, having “too many choices” is not a real problem; it's an
example of what some call “white people problems”. The real issue
with choice overload is not that there are too many choices, but too many
similar choices (e.g., Hershey's vs. Ovaltine
vs. Nestlé Qwik).
Just as we should not be satisfied with one or two “choices”, we
should also not be satisfied with a multiplicity of choices when all
the choices are virtually the same. As Jesse Ventura said, “I love
that we have two parties in America, that's one more than they have
in Communist China.” So at least we can say that the American
people are not overwhelmed with political choices.
In geometry and physics, in order to create a line or a line
segment, it is necessary to connect at least two points. However, as
we have seen, two is too simplistic; too reductionist, too
black-and-white. Just as not everything is good or evil, not
everything fits easily into the false dichotomy between the Left and
Right, which originated in modern times in the French National
Assembly. This “Left-vs.-Right” thinking is, pure and
simple, one-dimensional thinking.
Creating
a plane,
however, is more complex than creating a line. In order to create a
plane, you need to connect no fewer than three
points. Thus, connecting, comparing, and contrasting three
ideas,
is the smallest number necessary to perform what we shall call
“two-dimensional
thinking”.
The works of Fichte, Hegel, Rudolf Steiner, and Hannah Arendt, all
exemplify radically self-aware attempts to overcome dichotomies
through philosophical reasoning, leading to the creation of a third
solution or proposition, and even additional ones.
Probably the most famous of these methods of reasoning, is the
so-called “Hegelian dialectic”, named for German philosopher
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is known for having employed in
his writing a “dialectical method” which was developed by earlier
(and equally German) philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte.
Dialectic
- which
refers to “talking, speaking, or conversing, across or between” -
is a method of philosophical discourse. Its objective is to expose a
contradiction (or apparent
contradiction) between ideas, and hopefully merging, resolving, or
otherwise transcending that contradiction. The dialectical method has
been successfully used by many philosophers as a tool for overcoming
false dichotomies.
Fichte
coined the series of terms “thesis, antithesis, synthesis”
(these, antithese,
synthese).
The thesis and antithesis are two ideas which form a binary pair. The
antithesis “sublates” (or overcomes) the thesis, while the
antithesis is itself
sublated
by the synthesis. The goal of the dialectic is a sort of alchemy; it
is to create an idea which simultaneously preserves
yet abolishes the
thesis and
the antithesis, in order to overcome the false dichotomy. It is to
destroy an idea as
we know it,
while leaving the original idea untouched.
It's
almost like pirating copyrighted material. Pirating,
is, of course, distinct from stealing or theft. If the “thief”
has left the original copy alone and undisturbed, then how may we
rightfully claim that any such “theft” (or, in this case,
destruction) has occurred? How, in any real,
tangible sense,
can an idea
be stolen, when it is no concrete object; when it cannot be
physically moved nor removed?
To
abolish an idea, or to change the way we perceive it, results in no
real loss, nor takings of fairly earned property. True, it may result
in a loss of potential;
that is, a loss of the right to exclude others from their natural
freedom to borrow ideas they've heard about, and to re-combine and
tweek them in order to keep them useful. To prohibit people from
doing so, is to let good ideas go to waste, as history eventually
proves parts of them to be less useful and less valid than others.
6.
The
Application of the Dialectic Method to Economics
To understand the dialectical method of discourse, it will help
to explain thesis, antithesis, and synthesis a bit more clearly, and
to use a real-life example of how the components of a
thesis-and-antithesis pair interact.
The thesis is the beginning
proposition, while the antithesis is the negation
of that thesis. The negation may be absolute, and completely polar,
in its opposition to the original thesis. However, the antithesis
might simply be an “almost-opposite”,
which has been popularly assumed,
wrongly, to
be an exact opposite of the thesis. This gives rise to the false
dichotomy between them. Sadly, this falsehood often quashes hope for
reconciliation, and makes compromise (or even neutrality) seem
impossible.
In the synthesis,
the two conflicting ideas are reconciled and resolved, possibly
through some degree of merging, to form a new proposition. Hegel
called this interaction between thesis and antithesis aufheben
or aufhebung,
usually translated as “sublation”. Through their various
translations and interpretations, these terms have also
been explained as signifying an “abolishing”, “canceling”, or
“suspending” of the thesis and antithesis, but also as a
“preserving” of both.
Aufhebung
has also been described
as a “lifting-up” or “picking-up”. Alternatively, as an act
of moving;
in order to either put away, or else put somewhere else. I think of
it as a sort of “picking up the pieces”; picking out the “good”
(read: “desirable”) parts of the thesis and antithesis, in order
to build a synthesis from those parts. Most importantly, sublation is
a “transcending” of the supposed opposition of the thesis and
antithesis.
Perhaps it will be helpful to
perceive of capitalism as the thesis, and socialism or communism as
the antithesis; capitalism as the socio-economic mode to which we
have become accustomed (to the point of ceasing to question what lies
beyond, as in a goldfish in a fish-bowl), while socialism is defined,
more or less, as whatever is
not capitalism.
However, defining something in
terms of its opposite, however, is no logical way to proceed about
creating a reliable definition. And so, we may, just as well,
conceive of thesis and antithesis in the opposite
fashion; with socialism as the primeval mode of socioeconomic
organization, which has followed mankind through most of its
evolution. And if a form of socialism or communism is the thesis -
that is, a socialism or communism in which land is viewed as part of
the Commons - then the antithesis
of socialism is
capitalism
(with its weakly-founded private property ownership rights claims,
which are so difficult to protect without either a state or else
unanimous popular support).
Whether we take socialism or capitalism as the thesis, the two
systems comprise a binary pairing, and whichever is not the thesis,
we shall call the antithesis. It is out of these two ideas that the
synthesis will emerge.
7. Synthesizing
Socialism and Capitalism
The difficulty of synthesizing socialism and capitalism lies in
the difficulty of “picking-up” the pieces. That's because this need impels us to ask ourselves: Which pieces are we to pick up? That is, which things about socialism
and capitalism do we like best? Perhaps just as importantly, which
socialist ideas are likely to mesh well with which capitalist ideas?
Should we synthesize based on our individual preferences, or based on
an objective analysis of how socialism and capitalism work best
together? It could very well be that an objective analysis is
impossible, and a subjective analysis impractical; only the course of
history and the bearing-out of facts will guide us on this matter.
It
would seem logical that a synthesis of socialism and capitalism
should involve either a reconciliation on economic issues, or a
moderate or centrist stance, or some kind of compromise. If not that,
then it should at least involve a commitment to neutrality, or even
nihilism, on those issues. It could even involve the development of
an “anti-economics” - that is, a system (or anti-system)
which values negation
of
the importance of economics and Left-vs.-Right
issues altogether – one which might treat economic tendencies and
bias as useless or even deviant.
A
person applying the dialectical method to these economic systems,
might come up with either tyranny or
freedom
as their synthesis. If the person views freedom
as
the desirable feature which both systems share, then that person's
synthesis will reflect a tendency to love and favor liberty, freedom,
and anarchy. If the person views control,
stability,
or social order, as the desirable shared feature, then their
synthesis
will likely tend towards power, authority, and Fascism. But does this
mean that tyranny and freedom are each
rightful syntheses of socialism and capitalism? That is a difficult
question to answer.
Efforts to craft a “Third Position” which overcomes the thesis
and antithesis of capitalism and socialism, have, thus far, only
served to justify economic protectionism, and all types of
isolationism, emboldening ultra-nationalists and racists, and giving
credence to the fascistic tendencies in both major parties. So
too has the “Third Way” “triangulation” strategy between Bill
Clinton and congressional Republicans in the 1990s, only served to
solidify the dichotomous neoliberal-neoconservative power structure,
and its control over our bodies and our thoughts.
Insurrection, and even peaceful resistance, have been maligned to
such an extent that nearly everyone who resists, questions, and
challenges this unauthorized “authority” (read: “domination”),
are labeled “anarchists”, or even “terrorists”. Moreover,
their actions are cited as a reason why the collapse of the state
would lead to a power vacuum where anarchy and fascism would somehow
flourish together.
But is anarchy really “one step
away” from fascism or tyranny, as some suspect? Will they work
together when the “centrist” (read: amoral) state collapses? The
disdain which anarchists and fascists feel towards completely
embracing one economic system or the other, would certainly seem to
point in that direction. Especially in light of some misogynistic,
petit-nationalist,
and even anti-Semitic statements made by prominent anarchist and
left-libertarian theorists (namely, Marx, Proudhon, Bakunin, and
Makhno).
Perhaps the best answer to these
questions, at least for
now,
is that the philosopher
usually stops
synthesizing before the
synthesis has been fully completed.
8. Social Threefolding
and Overcoming Trichotomies
Rudolf Steiner (not to be confused with Max Stirner) proposed a
sociological theory called “social threefolding”. The theory
supports independence of political, economic, and socio-cultural
institutions, alongside freedom, equality, and human rights. Social
threefolding aims to foster cooperation between these types of
institutions, but with minimal interference between them, and without
domination by any of them. In my opinion, it is precisely because of
this interference (this blending-together of politics, economics, and
society and culture), and the domination of one over the others, that
false dichotomies and binary “almost-oppositions” remain so
prevalent.
The
modern, two-dimensional, square political spectrum is modeled after the Pournelle political chart, which resembles the Punnett square, a tool in genetic science. It has only an economic dimension (Left and Right) and a
politico-socio-cultural dimension (up and down). The structure of the
political spectrum – especially evidenced in the manner in which
the dimensions of the Nolan chart are labeled – demonstrate not
only the problem of false dichotomies, but also the need to develop
three-dimensional
models.
To fail to do so is to fail to separate the political from the
socio-cultural, and to fail to utilize all
three dimensions (the
X-, Y-, and Z- axes).
On
the other hand, to use
all
three is to exemplify three-dimensional thinking. Although this is
undoubtedly an improvement over the overly-simplistic Left-vs.-Right
continuum, the most basic three-dimensional
object is a pyramid.
In
geometry, a pyramid requires the connection of four
points;
in philosophy, this corresponds to the need to connect at least four
ideas in
order to provide a full “picture”; at that, a spatial
“picture”.
Unfortunately,
neither Steiner's nor Hegel's works have succeeded in creating an
easy model by which to facilitate the interplay of four
ideas. But they do make room for a third
idea; and in that regard, we should be appreciative, and take what we
can get. However, we must not forget to build
on
that model. Hence, our new
goal now becomes utilizing that space, originally cleared for the
third idea, to making room for the fourth. The fourth “point” (in
more senses of the word than one) may serve as either another point
on the same plane as the other three; or
it
could transcend
those
three points, by rising to a higher level, and utilizing an axis
which had previously been empty and wasted. To fail to give that
point a boost upward, risks allowing yourself to remain on the same
plane as the other points; allowing yourself to “stoop to their
level”.
It's
fine to overcome a dichotomy, but if you're only going to replace it
with a trichotomy
that is equally false, or with an incomplete “three-fold truth”,
then you're only going to end up with a little more than half of the
picture. Simply put, don't replace a false dichotomy with a false
trichotomy, or else you'll give yourself a lobotomy. Nazis,
communists, and anarchists don't belong to the Democratic and
Republican parties, but that doesn't mean we can lump them all
together as one.
9. Creating
Antisynthesis Through Negation of the Synthesis
On the political compass, socialism is positioned on the left,
and capitalism on the right, while tyranny and authority are “on
top” (or “up”), and anarchy and freedom are “on the bottom”
(or “down”). Tyranny and anarchy are positioned opposite
one-another, just like socialism and capitalism, yet they both appear
to be valid syntheses of the two economic systems. How is this
possible? Truth be told, it's as simple as “forgetting to carry the
'1'”; as simple as forgetting to make room for a fourth idea.
The final step of the dialectical
method is not synthesis, but anti-synthesis
(or antisynthese).
Just as the thesis must be anathematized to show the antithesis (and
create a synthesis), so too must the synthesis be anathematized (and
overcome, or
transcended) in order to give rise to a fourth idea and the
“four-fold
truth”. Simply put, if you haven't negated your synthesis, then
you're not done synthesizing yet.
If anarchy and tyranny are your syntheses, and they're opposites -
or, at least, opposites in many or most ways - then it's possible
that one is an antisynthesis of the other. Fascism – just like
anarchism, and, indeed, most political ideologies - was born
out of a desire to reconcile disputes over land and economic issues.
Unlike anarchism, however, the goal of Fascism has been to
unite the features shared by socialism and capitalism which the
Fascists admired; namely, power. In particular, the
command-and-control system of economics, which usually features price
controls and rationing. Even today, scholars are still grappling with
the question of whether fascists, Nazis, and the like, more closely
resemble historical or modern capitalism or socialism.
However,
to reject
command-and-control economics, and other fascist policies, as the
least
desirable things which socialism and capitalism sometimes have in
common, is to negate
the synthesis which
these control freaks have fabricated. To negate the fascist synthesis
to embrace a wide range of equally freeing potential antisyntheses;
for example, “anarchism without adjectives”, the Georgist and
Mutualist schools of economic thought, free and anarchist communism,
libertarian socialism, and many others. Taken together, these tendencies comprise what is known as, appropriately, "synthesis anarchism".
To pursue “Bottom Unity” (that is, cooperation among all the
anarchist and liberty-loving tendencies and schools), and to seek
antisyntheses of fascism among the theorists of the Alliance of the
Libertarian Left, is to send a clear message to the fascists. That
message is that justice is not merely what Thrasymachus argued; “the
advantage of the stronger”. It is to say that we shall not admire,
nor judge, a political ideology (nor party, nor candidate) solely on
its ability to cling to power and throw its weight around.
If
a spirit of moderation (or even, lacking that, neutrality) can foster
an open and peaceful discourse - and make room for third, fourth, and
even more
alternatives – then it is possible that each position may be more
fully and accurately represented, and possible that we might achieve
that multiplicity of choices which is essential for true freedom to
flourish. As long as anarchism can avoid the same pitfalls which led
its critics to decry it as akin to fascism, then anarchism can
provide a framework for such discourse.
It
may well be that anarchism will have to forge a new
path ahead, in order to prevent itself from being perceived as
populated by “scabs” (due to its seemingly halfhearted embrace of
socialism). To fail to chart any
path
forward, or even to “Walk Straight Down the Middle”, could risk
that anarchists be criticized for “kicking the can down the road”,
avoiding taking a stance on economic issues. And to fail to chart the
appropriate
path forward, is to risk making free speech, open debate, and free
choice, all but impossible. That's where the Popperian question of
whether to tolerate intolerance comes in. To
fail to answer the Paradox of Tolerance is to consider criticizing
Nazis on their
own
terms, rather than by any objective criterion.
On
the other hand, to succeed
–
if that “success” must involve some degree of synthetic
nationalism - could very well serve but to enable
fascist synthesists; those who believe that nationalism as
it is commonly practiced
(that is, the ultra-nationalism of the bourgeois Westphalian
nation-state) is the only right way forward. That's why it will
likely be necessary for anarchists to wholly refrain from chasing any
form
of petit-nationalism
- such as “organic nationalism”, “social nationalism”, and
“national syndicalism” - because that course might bring them to
the very same coordinates of control which they virulently oppose.
Another quandary with which the pensive anarchist must contend, is
whether to submit to the very same sorts of contractual agreements to
which we currently submit under the state; under conditions of
coercion and pressure. If we believe that all interaction with
government must be voluntary - yet we rely on societal pressure, peer
pressure, and ostracism to pressure people into signing contracts as
a condition of belonging to a political community - then how can we
claim that anyone has real choice in the matter? Is that not the very
same type of coercion from which we are attempting to flee in
opposing the state?
Or
is that the bare minimum amount of vetting and security which are
necessary to take precautions, protect the safety of the community,
and offset potential risks thereto? If nobody agrees on morality,
much less the very definitions of the words we use to debate, then
how can a voluntary civil society exist without philosophy? That is,
if people do not accept, nor even understand,
the norms by which they should still abide, even with the state gone?
Are we to expect that all
criminal
suspects will simply voluntarily
submit to
arrest? And if so, to whom?
If
we fail to conceptualize, and
teach and transmit,
a voluntary basis for the acceptance of what should be widespread
social norms - intended to keep civil society from falling apart
under conditions of total consent – then our ideology (anarchism)
dies, and begins to look even less feasible than it already is.
10. Conclusion
In
political speech, “the public sector” and “the private sector”
are all too often discussed as a binary opposition. That's why many
people think that every mode of running a company, or a government
program, or a charity, or resources, must fall into one of these two
categories. However, the existence of private clubs and club goods,
the distinctions which Pierre-Joseph Proudhon made between personal
possessions and private property, the idea that land and raw natural
resources all fall under “the Commons”, and the existence and
pervasiveness of “private-public partnerships” between government
and businesses, show that this “public-vs.-private”
dichotomy is nothing more than another contrivance.
So
too is the dichotomy between universalism and monism, as far as
cultural, civic, and ethnic sociology is concerned. Multiculturalism
is the third proposition, while pluralism is the fourth. Similarly,
the supposed opposition of statism to chaos, have given rise to the
notions that anarchism is not
about chaos, and that federalism (whose meaning has basically flipped
since the Founding of the nation) is not
about centralized control. Additionally, this false opposition has
been synthesized and antisynthesized into the ideas of minarchism,
libertarianism, decentralization, polycentric and diffused power,
power-sharing, henocentrism, and ambiarchy
The
application of the dialectic method to class theory has advanced the
philosophies of discourse, politics, and economics. Notably, by Karl
Marx, in his suggestion that capitalism
is the synthesis of the thesis-antithesis pair of feudalism
and socialism. Additionally, by Wally Conger, in his synthesis of
Marxism with free-market ideology, in his book Agorist
Class Theory.
Another book on the distinctions and commonalities between
Marxism and free markets - Agorism Contra Marxism - written by the late Samuel E. Konkin III,
was unfinished, yet published.
But
political philosophy is not the only discipline which may benefit
from the application of this full
dialectical method which I have outlined here. While the applications
of the dialectic to economics, sociology, and culture, have been
broadly hinted-at here, other fields of study such as psychology,
theology, and even hard sciences, could benefit just as much from
discourse and antisynthesis.
Even
if we lack
or abhor
a
schema by which to categorize and systematize our modes of thinking
about these concepts, all that is necessary to do this is to apply a
discursive or scientific method to
itself.
This is to say that if we apply a field's traditional methods of
doubt and verification to
itself
– for example, using the scientific method to cast doubt upon the
ontological validity of the scientific method itself – then we may
force what we once believed to be “the hard truth” to face itself
in the mirror. Only then can we discover which synthesis is “the
real synthesis”; that is, which witch is which.
The only thing left to do then, is to figure out which one is
which, and which one we're supposed to shoot.
Originally
Written on January 8th
and 9th,
2018
Originally
Published on January 10th,
2018
Edited and Expanded on January 9th,
10th,
and 12th,
2018
Edited on January 11th,
2018 and January 17th, 2021
