[MD] What the MOQ community can learn from the rise of the neoliberals

Sat Dec 3 16:55:52 PST 2016

The MOQ has little to say directly about the allocation of capital?

There are some pretty direct comments about capitalism and its rivals in LILA. Pirsig talks about the political conflicts of the 20th century in terms of a conflict between social values and intellectual values. He defines socialism as intellectual and fascism as social by using concrete

historical examples. Here are some of the most relevant quotes from Pirsig followed by my reading of them:

"It's not that Victorian social economic patterns are more moral than socialist intellectual economic patterns. Quite the opposite. They are LESS moral as static patterns go. What makes the free-enterprise system superior is that the socialists, reasoning intelligently and objectively have inadvertently closed the door the DQ in the buying and selling of things. They closed it becasue the metaphysical structure of their objectivity never told them DQ exists." P221

"That's what neither the socialists NOR the capitalists ever got figured out. From a static point of view socialism is more moral than capitalism. It's a higher form of evolution. It's an intellectually guided society, not just a society that is guided by mindless traditions. That's what gives socialism its drive. But what the socialist left out and what has all but killed their whole undertaking is an absence of a concept of indefinite Dynamic Quality. ...On the other hand the conservatives who keep trumpeting about the virtues of free enterprise are normally just supporting their own self-interest. They are just doing the usual cover-up for the rich in their age-old exploitation of the poor. Some of them seem to sense there is also something mysteriously virtuous in a free enterprise system and you can see them struggling to put it into words but they don't have the metaphysical vocabulary for it any more than the socialists do." P220-221

"The hurricane of social forces released by the overthrow of [Victorian] society by intellect was most strongly felt in Europe, particularly in Germany, where the effects of WW1 were the most devastating. Communism and socialism, programs for intellectual control over society, were confronted by the reactionary forces of fascism, a program for the social control of intellect. ...Phaedrus thought that no other historical or political analysis explains the enormity of these forces as clearly as does the MOQ. The gigantic power of socialism and fascism, which have overwhelmed this century, is explained by a conflict of levels of evolution. This conflict explains the driving force behind Hitler not as an insane search for power but as an all-consuming glorification of social authority and hatred of intellectualism. His anti-Semitism was fueled by anti-intellectualism. His hatred of communists was fueled by anti-intellectualism. His exaltation of the German volk was fueled by it. His fanatic persecution of any kind of intellectual freedom was driven by it." P274

"Now, it should be stated at this point that the MOQ SUPPORTS this dominance of intellect over society. It says intellect is a higher level of evolution than society: therefore, it is more moral moral level than society. It is better for an idea to destroy a society than it is for a society to destroy an idea. But having said this, the MOQ goes on to say that science, the intellectual patterns that has been appointed to take over society, has a defect in it. the defect is that subject-object science has no provision for morals." P277

"The end of the twentieth century in America seems to be an intellectual, social and economic rust-belt, a whole society that has given up on Dynamic improvement and is slowly trying to slip back to Victorianism, the last static ratchet-latch." -- From LILA Chapter 24:

"By the end of the '60s the intellectualism of the '20s found itself in an impossible trap. If it continued to advocate freedom from Victorian social restraint, all it would get was more Hippies, who were really just carrying its anti-Victorianism to an extreme. If, on the other hand, it advocated more constructive social conformity in opposition to the Hippies, all it would get was more Victorians, in the form of the reactionary right. This political whip-saw was invincible, and in 1968 it cut down one of the
last of the great intellectual liberal leaders of the New Deal Period. 'I've seen enough of this,' Humphrey exclaimed at the disasterous 1968 Democratic National convention, 'I've seen far too much of it!' But he had no explanation for it and no remedy and neither did anyone else. The great intellectual revolution of the first half of the 20th century, the dream of a 'Great Society' made humane by man's intellect, was killed, hoist on its own petard of freedom from social restraint."
 -- LILA, chapter 24, P301-302

And if there is any doubt about where Pirsig himself stands there's a line on page 306 in which, "Phaedrus remembered parties in the fifties and sixties full liberal intellectuals like himself".

And more fully, thanks to Anthony McWatt, we also have Pirsig speaking to Tim Wilson and David Chernick for CBC Radio's "New Ideas" Series, 1975:  'I was very sympathetic to the rebellion of the Sixties because I'd gone through a very similar rebellion [in the Fifties]. My father couldn't understand what it was that made me insist; well, not insist, but feel that I had to get out of this country or go crazy. It - the whole idea - this was back in 1950 - the whole idea that one should become another Ronald Reagan and move up ahead - not Ronald Reagan himself but the roles that he played as the all-American good guy; lives the happy, suburban life - was so expected of people that anyone who felt that was inadequate was regarded as
suspicious, or at least a person with deep personal problems. The fact that the problems might be the problems of the culture rather than the problems of the individual would never have dawned on anybody back in the Fifties.'

As I read the political world, neoliberalism took center stage with Thatcher and Reagan and every American President since then has embraced neoliberalism. This perspective is also known as free-market economics, trickle down economics, supply side economics, right-wing libertarian economics and other such terms. The basic idea is to acknowledge the social problems that socialism aims to solve (poverty, inequality, injustice) but to address these concerns with "free-market" solutions. You see this in the Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. ObamaCare. The GOP has fought it every step of the way and still plan to repeal it but the plan was developed at the Heritage Foundation back in the '90s, a conservative, free-market "think tank", and was offered by the GOP back then as an alternative to a New Deal type of single payer, government run medical insurance program. And that's what neo-liberalism has been doing for the past 40 years or so, dismantling and preventing New Deal Liberalism. That's what Bernie Sanders was selling, New Deal Liberalism, that quasi-socialist democratic socialism of the '30s, '40s, '50s, and '60s. And it was a very popular message, as we all saw, and I'm pretty sure it's because everybody knows on some level that they have been screwed by neoliberalism. That's also why Trump won the election, I think. Bernie and Trump are two very different answers to the same question and that question is "how can we get rid of neoliberals like the Clintons, like the Bushes, like Reagan and Obama?" Bernie was the intellectual level option (socialism) and Trump was the social values option (fascism).

That's probably enough to ponder.

Thanks for your time,

dmb

________________________________
From: Moq_Discuss <moq_discuss-bounces at lists.moqtalk.org> on behalf of David Harding <david at goodmetaphysics.com>
Sent: Friday, December 2, 2016 10:47 PM
To: moq_discuss at moqtalk.org
Subject: [MD] What the MOQ community can learn from the rise of the neoliberals

Hi All,

To speak in dramatic tones - I do not want the MOQ to die and be written off to the history books as a nice idea never seriously considered. That said, it's clear to me that a successful world is one which takes advantage of the ideas and language of the MOQ.

The Effective Altruism community (amongst others) is in a similar conundrum about how to become the common theory amongst intellectuals.

Here's a nicely put together article on how the Neoliberals managed to go from fringe idea to being very powerful within 40 years.  The biggest advantage they had however, were that they had the ideas whose side money was on, whereas the MOQ has little to say directly about the allocation of capital.

Regardless, there's a few ideas in there worth repeating.

https://www.effectivealtruism.org/ea-neoliberal/

Best,

djh
goodmetaphysics.com

Moq_Discuss mailing list
Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc.
http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org
Archives:
http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/
http://moq.org/md/archives.html
MOQ Online - MOQ_Discuss<http://moq.org/md/archives.html>
moq.org
The MOQ_Discuss mailing list has been moved to a new hosting company and a new mailing list server. The old system was becoming more unreliable by the day and the ...