We need, a world view that extends the solidarity of social democracy to the whole of humanity. [sic]A boot . . . made to the specifications of the under-minister for European cobbling . . . and sold with proper labels indicating its point of origin . . . remaining within the pedestrian footpath so as to avoid vehicular traffic . . . forever!
-John Quiggin
It would be easy enough to jape at the idea that "social democracy" is a form of solidarity, so I won't. I would prefer to point out that the vision herein outlined, the future of "progressivism", is totalitarian, literally so, a program whose proposed end is a single, worldwide, political monoculture.
[I]t seems very hard to sell politically.Yuhthink? I suspect that Quiggin used to laugh at the crackpot Hegelian diuretic of Francis Funkyama and the gang that proposed the End of the Cold War as the Beginning of a kind of Messianic political age, and yet here they are, recapitulating an argument whose own original adherents fled as their theses billowed into a cloud of dust in Lower Manhattan. It turns out that Western "cosmopolitan" pronouncements to the contrary, the "whole of humanity" is full of poor, démodé losers not yet convinced that "tribalism . . . belong[s] to the past."
-John Quiggin
There is, I admit, a certain charmingly eggheaded naïveté on display here in the idea that the fairly limited success of a few nominally rightist political factions in the Angloamerosphere represents some kind of shocking political turn, and that the counter to it is to articulate an alternate vision of, in effect, a confederated world goverment, an EU of EUs. How narrow is the mind that sees in a several-decade, post-War, ad hoc, Eurocentric political consensus a model for the future of the species? "Social democracy" was--and remains--a particular response to a particular set of circumstances in a particular set of countries. The notion that it represents a prescriptive solution for the entire species, from the boulevards of Paris to the New Zealand highlands and back again, is woefully impoverished. It hardly qualifies as an ideology; it is dull, technocratic, and managerial in outlook. It lacks the full-throated verve of prophecy, and it consigns the entire future history of humanity to a tepid if-then statement.
22 comments:
It's all so "Eurocratic" and "Captain Picard-ish"... "the future" just has to be orderly, and in the form of some kind of all-world (or better still, pan-Galactic) "federation" of like-minded do-gooding technocrats.
The good news, of course, is that reality will be something different... the "Eurocratic" order requires a great deal of money and energy to operate, and we in the West... just happen to be running out of both at precisely the same time.
What will be left will be a happier, though alas, less affluent world, operating with somewhere around the efficiency of modern-day Cuba (if we're lucky) and the organization of the Iroquois confederation (or perhaps the Hanseatic League... if we're incredibly lucky). A lot of sailboats. And horses. And maybe bicycles, and some zeppelins. (No self-respecting dystopic perspective can miss out on the zeppelins.)
You had me until the last three sentences. Of course it is an ideology, and it's no more impoverished than any other ideology. Like all the rest, Quiggin wants to get other people to agree on stuff, hence wars, public schools, blogs and so on. He is managerial in his outlook only because his ideology happens to have been institutionalized-- if you look back four hundred years its ancestors were anything but. The idea that your ideology is somehow more "vivid," or less "naive" and "eggheaded" is a gas.
We believe in nussing.
This was the laugh line for me: Traditional views of international politics take the nation-state as an immutable atomic constituent of the system that can’t be wished out of existence by idealistic political movements.
What he's missing is a true commitment to his ideas. If wishes were horses then nation states would topple before my standing army.
Reich, Pavlov, and Skinner have already gone over all of this. "If you wanna win people over, you can't just drone on like Ben Stein. You gotta have a little more showmanship. Here, watch": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uylQp08wYeA
At a minimum, you believe in Nothing. But I don't believe that.
The left needs to offer a transformational vision of a better society if it is to motivate the kind of enthusiasm needed to overcome a rightwing politics of tribalism and (often misperceived) self-interest.
Not to mention actual, correctly perceived self-interest! We've to overcome that, too!
Some of us like our "tribes" (nations, to speak truthfully) pretty well as they are. Do I want the USA transformed into the world average? No! Show me a better society, and maybe we can talk, OK pwoggies? Why do you hate America?
Take Leonard here, for example. Does he believe in Nussing?
@1:16
Leonard's more of a Bellequeurve kind of guy, as far as I can tell.
Imagine certain sperm donors being disfavored on the basis of cultural perceptions of given physical traits, forever. Etc.
it is dull, technocratic, and managerial in outlook
Well, there you have it.
"and it consigns the entire future history of humanity..."
We haves a future?
"It is dull, technocratic, and managerial in outlook."
You forgot "bourgeois." Otherwise, perfect.
I'm just glad that in another 50 years or less I'll be dead. And the Dudley Do-Rights of the world can continue building their sick little "Social Cosmopolitan (Pinkies in the Air Please) Democracy" without me. Though current trends indicate they're building on shaky ground at best. At worst it's on a fault line that will open up and sink it deeper than the Mariana Trench. I just feel bad for the innocent suckers that are gonna get dragged down with it.
So, nihilists then?
From years of reading his blog, I get the impression that Quiggen really believes in world government, though I don't think he has ever just come out and stated that. Which is a mind-boggling position for someone who thinks he is on the left. The one thing you can say about a world government, if we ever get one, it certainly won't be social democratic.
August 818, I turned forty last year, but unfortunately it is not going to take thirty to forty years to construct the next dystopia. I don' t think either of us are going to win the death bet.
Can we all agree to meet up somewhere, post-apocalypse? I'll bring a thunderdome, Monsieur can cook.
Call me ... Snake.
The E.U is even a hard sell to Europeans.
IOZ if that's a Chuck Cleaver reference and you're really a Little Bastard, then you'd better saddle up your ass pony.
There is a reason Douglas Adams had the Belgians play the beauracrats in the Hichthiker series. They love that *If-then* shit!
Is New Zealand a Social Democracy, or Australia? If so, that sounds good to me. If you had to choose - not saying you do, Geddy Lee - but if you did, you could do worse.
I don't know about the whole Australia thing, bro. Isn't that sort of the Coetzee dilemma: abandoning a nation that enslaved the natives for one that more nearly eradicated them?
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