Self-organizing systems are understood to consist of lower-level component parts that interact to produce system-wide order. "
Self-organization is a process where some form of overall
order
or coordination arises out of the local interactions between smaller
component parts of an initially disordered system."
One point of interest is how simple rules or limited stimuli and input at the local level produce the complex behavior of the whole system.
A classic example of this would be the simple reactions of fish within a school. As a body, they move with dazzling dexterity and apparent coordination.
Could ideologies provide such simple rules? From these rules, complex societal outcomes through local interactions would arise?
Perhaps one ideology would supply the rules. But could the basic principles of several ideologies supply the rules simultaneously?
(Ideologies understood as such would be explicit normative systems that could be imposed, as distinct from the standard, popular notion of cultures as tacit, unconscious systems of values and attitudes.)
Within the liberal tradition, libertarian thought offers a minimalist role for government as the enforcer of strictly proscriptive or prohibitive rights that protect individuals from one another and from the state, as opposed to the prescriptive rights found in socialistic ideologies that seek to solve social problems.
Libertarianism (Latin: liber, "free") is a political philosophy that upholds liberty as its principal objective. Libertarians seek to maximize autonomy and freedom of choice, emphasizing political freedom, voluntary association, and the primacy of individual judgment.
Some libertarians advocate laissez-faire capitalism and strong private property rights,[3] such as in land, infrastructure, and natural resources. Others, notably libertarian socialists,[4] seek to abolish capitalism and private ownership of the means of production in favor of their common or cooperative ownership and management.[5][6] An additional line of division is between minarchists and anarchists. While minarchists think that a minimal centralized government is necessary, anarchists propose to completely eliminate the state.
The term libertarianism originally referred to a philosophical belief in free will but later became associated with anti-state socialism and Enlightenment-influenced[9][10] political movements
critical of institutional authority believed to serve forms of social
domination and injustice. While it has generally retained its earlier
political usage as a synonym for either social or individualist anarchism through much of the world, in the United States it has since come to describe pro-capitalist economic liberalism more so than radical, anti-capitalist egalitarianism. In the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, libertarianism is defined as the moral view that agents initially fully own themselves and have certain moral powers to acquire property rights in external things.[11] As individualist opponents of social liberalism embraced the label and distanced themselves from the word liberal, American writers, political parties, and think tanks adopted the word libertarian to describe advocacy of capitalist free market economics and a night-watchman state.
The
night-watchman state deserves a closer look.
A night-watchman state, or a minimal state, is variously defined by sources. In the strictest sense, it is a form of government in political philosophy where the state's only legitimate function is the protection of individuals from assault, theft, breach of contract, and fraud, and the only legitimate governmental institutions are the military, police, and courts. In the broadest sense, it also includes various civil service and emergency-rescue departments (such as the fire departments), prisons, the executive, the judiciary, and the legislatures as legitimate government functions.[1][2][3]
Advocacy of a night-watchman state is known as minarchism.
Minarchists argue that the state has no right to use its monopoly on
the use of force to interfere with free transactions between people, and
see the state's sole responsibility as ensuring that transactions
between private individuals are free. As such, minarchists generally
believe in a laissez-faire
approach to the economy. The rationale for this belief may be economic
prosperity, moral limitations on the use of state force, or both.
Libertarian socialism is likewise an exotic term.
Libertarian socialism (sometimes called social anarchism,[1][2] left-libertarianism[3][4] and socialist libertarianism[5]) is a group of anti-authoritarian[6] political philosophies inside the socialist movement that rejects socialism as centralized state ownership and control of the economy,[7] as well as the state itself.[8] It criticizes wage labour relationships within the workplace,[9] instead emphasizing workers' self-management of the workplace[8] and decentralized structures of political organization,[10] asserting that a society based on freedom and equality can be achieved through abolishing authoritarian institutions that control certain means of production and subordinate the majority to an owning class or political and economic elite.[11] Libertarian socialists generally place their hopes in decentralized means of direct democracy and federal or confederal associations[12] such as libertarian municipalism, citizens' assemblies, trade unions, and workers' councils.[13][14] All of this is generally done within a general call for libertarian[15] and voluntary human relationships[16] through the identification, criticism, and practical dismantling of illegitimate authority in all aspects of human life.[17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24]
Past and present political philosophies and movements commonly described as libertarian socialist include anarchism (especially anarchist communism, anarchist collectivism, anarcho-syndicalism,[25] and mutualism[26]) as well as autonomism, communalism, participism, revolutionary syndicalism, and libertarian Marxist philosophies such as council communism and Luxemburgism;[27] as well as some versions of "utopian socialism"[28] and individualist anarchism.
The libertarian perspective is of great interest because it is minimalist political philosophy and, as explained above, minimalism would be a feature of a self-organizing system. (In fact, libertarianism is the ideology of preference in Silicon Valley because engineers consider the simplest solutions to be the best solutions.)
However, libertarian socialism confounds the conflation in the popular mind of socialism with state socialism, and in this way libertarian socialism might have a complicating influence if it were adopted widely (cooperatives would be tasked with what are now considered typical governmental and corporate functions).
Complicating things further, libertarian socialism can be seen as one stream in the long tradition of socialism.
Looking at a school of thought or an ideology as a
tradition is not necessarily a conservative move.
Hans-Georg Gadamer in particular looked upon tradition as a creative starting-point, a provocation.
“Tradition,” like “prejudice,” is a term Gadamer develops beyond its
everyday meaning. To affirm, as Gadamer does, that one can never escape
from one’s tradition, does not mean he is insisting we endorse all
traditions writ large. Gadamer is not espousing a conservative approach
to tradition that blindly affirms the whole of a tradition and leaves
one without recourse to critique it. Critics like Habermas and Ricoeur
have faulted Gadamer for failing to insist on a critical response to
tradition. These criticisms miss the mark for two reasons. First,
accepting the fact that we can never entirely reflect oneself out of
tradition does not mean that one cannot change and question one’s
tradition. His point is that in as much as tradition serves as the
condition of one’s knowledge, the background that instigates all
inquiry, one can never start from a tradition-free place. A tradition is
what gives one a question or interest to begin with. Second, all
successful efforts to enliven a tradition require changing it so as to
make it relevant for the current context. To embrace a tradition is to
make it one’s own by altering it. A passive acknowledgment of a
tradition does not allow one to live within it. One must apply the
tradition as one’s own. In other words, the importance of the terms,
“prejudice” and “tradition,” for Gadamer’s hermeneutics lies in the way
they indicate the active nature of understanding that produces something
new. Tradition hands down certain interests, prejudices, questions, and
problems, that incite knowledge. Tradition is less a conserving force
than a provocative one. Even a revolution, Gadamer notes, is a response
to the tradition that nonetheless makes use of that very same tradition.
Here we can also perceive the Hegelian influences on Gadamer to the
extent that even a rejection of some elements of the tradition relies on
the preservation of other elements, which are then understood (that is,
taken up) in new ways. Gadamer desires not to affirm a blind and
passive imitation of tradition, but to show how making tradition our own
means a critical and creative application of it.
Of course, there are conservative notions of tradition, most obviously like those of the political theorist
Michael Oakeshott. Above all else, Oakeshott seems opposed to grand political schemes.
Oakeshott's opposition to what he considered Utopian political projects
is summed by his use of the analogy (possibly borrowed from the Marquess of Halifax,
a 17th-century English author whom he admired) of a ship of state which
has "neither starting-place nor appointed destination...[and where] the
enterprise is to keep afloat on an even keel".
Interestingly, this is a very relativistic, even nihilistic criticism of Utopian tendencies, so different from populist brands of conservatism that one finds in the United States, which so often insist on grounding themselves in teleologies or origin stories of a religious nature. For Oakeshott, to be conservative is to be skeptical of what might be described as an almost mystical, fantasmagoric attitude toward political change.
In his essay "On Being Conservative" (1956),
Oakeshott explained what he regarded as the conservative disposition:
"To be conservative ... is to prefer the familiar to the unknown, to
prefer the tried to the untried, fact to mystery, the actual to the
possible, the limited to the unbounded, the near to the distant, the
sufficient to the superabundant, the convenient to the perfect, present
laughter to utopian bliss."
This is seems more like a contrast of realism versus radicalism, not conservatism with any other ideology. (For example, moderates and liberals in the US are not typically given to the rhetoric of "utopian bliss".) Conservatism might be associated with realism in terms of the attitude of caution towards change and a deep skepticism of idealism, but the deeper core of the conservative attitude would be a desire for continuity. Continuity and change, importantly, are not mutually exclusive when the change is gradual and moderate. Oakeshott distinguishes between political orientations that seek to promote the good versus those that merely seek to prevent the bad.
In his posthumously-published The Politics of Faith and the Politics of Scepticism,
Oakeshott describes enterprise and civil association in different
terms. Here, an enterprise association is seen as based in a fundamental
faith in human ability to ascertain and grasp some universal "good"
(i.e. the Politics of Faith), and civil association is seen as based in a
fundamental scepticism about human ability to either ascertain or
achieve this good (i.e. the Politics of Scepticism). Oakeshott considers
power (especially technological power) as a necessary prerequisite for
the Politics of Faith, because a) it allows people to believe they can
achieve something great (e.g. something universally good), and b) it
allows them to implement the policies necessary to achieve their goal.
The Politics of Scepticism, on the other hand, rests on the idea that
government should concern itself with preventing bad things from
happening rather than enabling ambiguously good events.
Oakeshott employs the analogy of the adverb
to describe the kind of restraint law involves. For example, the law
against murder is not a law against killing as such, but only a law
against killing "murderously". Or, a more trivial example, the law does
not dictate that I have a car, but if I do, I must drive it on the same
side of the road as everybody else. This contrasts with the rules of
enterprise association in which those actions required by the governing
are made compulsory for all.
Interestingly, Oakeshott's Politics of Faith corresponds to the classical tradition of political philosophy (Plato, Aristotle, the Church). Traditional political theorists conceive society as an organic whole, and promote a life of virtue as one that serves the common good. More modern conceptions of the political realm (Hobbes, Locke), in contrast, describe society as a product of a social contract between autonomous, self-interested individuals who seek mutual protection from chaos and strife. This modern attitude corresponds with Oakeshott's Politics of Skepticism.
Back to the socialist tradition. What is
socialism?
Socialism is a range of economic and social systems characterised by social ownership and democratic control of the means of production; as well as the political ideologies, theories, and movements that aim at their establishment. Social ownership may refer to forms of public, cooperative, or collective ownership; to citizen ownership of equity; or to any combination of these. Although there are many varieties of socialism and there is no single definition encapsulating all of them, social ownership is the common element shared by its various forms.
Socialism is all about sharing. But there are different kinds of sharing. "Socialism can be divided into both non-market and
market forms." Non-market socialism sounds like a sophisticated system of bartering, whereas market socialism retains the use of money. "In addition to the debate over markets and planning, the varieties of
socialism differ in their form of social ownership, how management is to
be organized within productive institutions, and the role of the state
in constructing socialism."
Core dichotomies associated with these concerns include reformism versus revolutionary socialism, and state socialism versus libertarian socialism.
Socialist politics has been both centralist and decentralized;
internationalist and nationalist in orientation; organized through
political parties and opposed to party politics; at times overlapping
with trade unions and at other times independent of, and critical of,
unions; and present in both industrialized and developing countries. While all tendencies of socialism consider themselves democratic, the term "democratic socialism" is often used to highlight its advocates' high value for democratic processes and political systems and usually to draw contrast to other socialist tendencies they may perceive to be undemocratic in their approach.
How is this different from
communism? Communism is associated with an extreme egalitarianism.
In political and social sciences, communism (from Latin communis, "common, universal")[1][2] is a social, political, and economic ideology and movement whose ultimate goal is the establishment of the communist society, which is a socioeconomic order structured upon the common ownership of the means of production and the absence of social classes, money,[3][4] and the state.
The different variants of '
communism' maintain a similar critique, that of class exploitation.
Communism includes a variety of schools of thought, which broadly include Marxism, anarchism (anarchist communism),
and the political ideologies grouped around both. All these hold in
common the analysis that the current order of society stems from its
economic system, capitalism, that in this system, there are two major social classes: the working class – who must work to survive, and who make up a majority of society – and the capitalist class – a minority who derive profit from employing the proletariat, through private ownership of the means of production
(the physical and institutional means with which commodities are
produced and distributed), and that political, social and economic conflict between these two classes
will trigger a fundamental change in the economic system, and by
extension a wide-ranging transformation of society. The primary element
which will enable this transformation, according to this analysis, is
the social ownership of the means of production.
After this very brief overview of several ideological traditions, it's important to distinguish between the ideology and the attitude toward tradition itself. From the Wikipedia article on '
conservatism':
There is no single set of policies that are universally regarded as
conservative because the meaning of conservatism depends on what is
considered traditional in a given place and time. Thus conservatives
from different parts of the world—each upholding their respective
traditions—may disagree on a wide range of issues. Edmund Burke,
an 18th-century politician who opposed the French Revolution but
supported the American Revolution, is credited as one of the main
theorists of conservatism in Britain in the 1790s.[4] According to Quintin Hogg, the chairman of the British Conservative Party
in 1959, "Conservatism is not so much a philosophy as an attitude, a
constant force, performing a timeless function in the development of a
free society, and corresponding to a deep and permanent requirement of
human nature itself."
Every tradition has its conservatives and its revolutionaries. In the communist tradition, Stalin was a conservative realist opposed to the revolutionary idealism of Trotsky. Like Oakeshott, Edmund Burke was a conservative realist within the modernist tradition associated with liberal individualism.
The assertion here is, We can distinguish between the formal ideology and the attitude associated with it, even though that attitude is actually found throughout the ideological spectrum.
What about fascism? Can we distinguish between the fascist ideology and the spirit of fascism? If so, can the spirit of fascism be found in other ideologies?
[[[[National Socialism or fascism might be an ideology, but as Umberto Eco pointed out, there is an ur-fascism or spirit of fascism present in all times and places
[[[[what is NatSoc? What is the spirit of fascism? (Related to an 'authoritarian personality', which in a liberal society is often the most rigidly liberal and politically correct person.)
[[[fascism has the spirit of excess (Hitler would always choose the most extreme option or suggestion.) One example of the need to out-do others would be leftism in the 1960s ("Mao-er than thao"), or postmodernism in the 1980s, or rap music in the 1990s, or the Republican party in 2016.
[[[["more is better", which is the mentality of the working class, present in colonial American in an emphasis on quantity and materialism. But it is not just that consumption that is excessive with Americans, there is something else.
[[[[Americans are very moderate in the public realm, but in private they veer toward excess. "The dark night of fascism is always about to touch the ground in America, but it only ever happens in Europe."
[[[[[Fascism celebrates purity and unity, but projects inner deficiencies outward, and externalizes aggression. The puritanism of Americans tends to be inward and individual, and the aggression is channeled into work and recreation.
