Implosion Of The European Paradigm

The process of globalization, it can be argued, is now the most important development in world affairs. It marks the end of the world order dominated by nation states (or countries) and the beginning of an era in which national governments have to share their power with other entities, most notably transnational corporations, intergovernmental organisations and non- governmental organisations.

Note the following bullet points of the Westphalian System and globalization's effect on it:

1 ­ National governments are the sole holders of (legal) sovereignty.    
 ->Effect : Legal sovereignty is now no longer the monopoly of national governments.

2 ­ Sovereignty is exercised over physical territory
 -->Effect : The control of physical territory is much less meaningful today both as a source and domain of power.

3 ­ National governments are not only legally sovereign but are also the most powerful players of the world system.
 -->Effect : non-state actors are emerging as the new stars of the global order

4 ­ The only enforceable international law is that based on treaties between sovereign countries.
 -->Effect: International law is beginning to challenge the supremacy of state sovereignty .

5 ­ War Is A Legitimate Instrument of International Relations
-->Effect : "Westphalian" wars are in decline. Non­-Westphalian conflicts are on the rise.

For more than 360 years, the state system created by the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 AD determined relations among states and their peoples. Under its terms, the devastating Thirty Years‟ War of 17th Century Europe was ended and the territorial sovereignty of the states of the Holy Roman Empire was recognised and the 300 princes of the Empire became absolute sovereigns in their own dominions.
                   
In the 21st Century, such is no longer the case, with the form of the nation-state weakening and once all-powerful governments being obliged to reluctantly share their former unrivalled dominion with Trans National Corporations (or TNCs), International Government Organisations (or IGOs) and Non Governmental Organisations (or NGOs.)

The resulting decline of nation-state rule and its implications for the resultant, changed international order and populations most directly affected. I conclude that the post-Westphalian state system will have a variety of potential forms and manifestations and that new political institutions and practices are needed to enable the world's people to cope with altered international society and to govern their own, increasingly interdependent, affairs.
           
In the final analysis, the emerging governance vacuum is essentially the result of two opposite trends. On the one hand economic and technological trends are eliminating borders and abolishing distance. On the other, the global political system still continues to consider chunks of territory as appropriate domains for the exercise of power, ignoring the death of distance and the high mobility of factors of production and destruction. As a result we have, in the World Public Sector a proliferation of national and subnational governments with decreasing and fragmented policy capacity while in the World Private Sector, giant mergers and alliances wield immense power and play one jurisdiction against the other. This resulting imbalance of power is the final nail in the coffin of the Old Westphalian System. The Old Westphalian players are reduced to bit players while the new non­-state actors are grabbing center stage.    

THAT brings me to my premise - that what we are witnessing is, of course, the gradual dissolution of the Westphalian System, but the cause may be disturbing for some - globalization, the rise of “non-state” players, the rise of NGOs and NPOs, are ALL contributing to the acceleration of the META/META/META process, which is the implosion of the European Paradigm, or the white, eurocentric, post-colonial global governance system. IOW, the global white power structure template is breaking down, and is being replaced by...what?            
               
It is, therefore, MY contention that the acceleration of "globalization" in the late twentieth century has severely destabilized the Westphalian Order by weakening the authority of national governments. An increasing number of human activities are now escaping national regulation and spinning out of control. The emerging cracks in the global governance META-structure are deepening to the point where the whole system could break down within the next ten years.
                           
The increasing importance of the global economy and global interdependence, combined with the heightened power of domestic interests, have forced developed states to abandon territorial expansion and military conquest as means of accumulating relative gains. Instead these trading states have concentrated on increasing their share of the world economy. Only states whose economic output is based on the production of goods from land seem to retain territorial ambition. But in states where capital, labour and technology are mobile, and where they dominate the economy, the urge to increase the market share has supplanted that of territorial acquisition.        
                   
In the post-World War II era, nation-states have been effectively curbed in their individualistic pursuit of goals and payoffs by the proliferation of International Organisations and regimes and the internalisation of international norms and rules by domestic societies. The modern nation-state has undergone significant changes both in terms of its purpose and sovereignty. States have traditionally been based on territorial factors. Increasingly, however, state participation in the global economy has led to the former‟s integration with the latter and, consequently, an increased degree of interdependence among states. The result has been the rise of trading states which measure themselves by their relative shares of the global economy and not by territorial size or military power.
               
The weakening of my “bullet points” of the Westphalian System, is creating a growing governance vacuum. globalization is making political borders irrelevant and this borderless world is also becoming a ruleless world. The transnational mobility of factors of production (such as corporations, entrepreneurs, investors and inventors) is accompanied by a parallel mobility of the factors of destruction (malcontents, terrorists, organized crime etc.). Both groups are now in a position to escape national regulation by pitting one jurisdiction against the others in order to obtain maximum advantage. Whatever international rules exist take the form of voluntary guidelines with doubtful enforcement capability by national governments. As a result an increasing number of sectors of human activity are now escaping any form of control such that a visiting Martian may well conclude that on Planet Earth, no one's in charge! Here are some illustrative examples:

Global commerce is becoming a free for all. Although the World Trade Organization was created to consolidate global trade rules and achieve the proverbial "level playing field" the thrust of its action so far has been to disallow national policies considered to be protectionist without replacing them by common international rules. There is no competition law at the global level and no anti­trust legislation. Mergers and acquisitions can occur at will at the global level. For instance, there is nothing to prevent Microsoft Corporation, if split up in the US to reconstitute itself elsewhere. As to "corporate governance" which describes the internal accountability of corporations to their shareholders and stakeholders, it varies from country to country. There are no global bankruptcy laws; no enforceable property protection or deterrence against corrupt practices beyond "voluntary guidelines." In addition there is no globally enforceable legislation to protect consumers. Overall the global economy is beginning to resemble the Olympic Games but with a twist : there are high rewards for the medalists and very little for the also rans but, in the economic olympics there are no rules and no referees with true clout.

Global finance is increasingly chaotic. The sheer volume of short term speculative capital seeking quick profits tends to decouple the financial from the real economy. As the financier George Soros has pointed out the global financial system is in structural disequilibrium. Feedback loops create self­ fulfilling prophecies. Decisions are made in the financial economy, which defy traditional macroeconomic theory. Countries with heavy balance of payments deficits like the United States paradoxically see their currency appreciate rather than depreciate. Exaggerated price earnings ratios create overvalued corporations vulnerable to bursting bubbles etc. Exchange rates are very far from their purchasing power parities. Yet no central bank, acting on its own, is powerful enough to resist speculative attacks on its currency. The collective action by the G­7 central banks to shore up a currency is a step in the right direction, but overall there is no global overseeing financial institution comparable to what exists within nation­-states.

The ability of governments to choose and implement their own social and cultural policies is now limited by the constraints of "competitiveness." Competition across different social spaces is becoming very difficult. Assume two identical countries competing with each other for footloose investment. The first one offers its labor force shorter hours and high wages while the second one imposes long hours and low wages what is likely to happen? The threat of corporate relocation will force the generous country to lower its social standards to compete with the less generous one. Shorter workweeks with higher pay in France are tempting corporations to move elsewhere. German firms are relocating to Eastern Europe to avoid the heavy burden of social charges in Germany itself. The absence of enforceable social clauses in international trade agreements is accelerating this race for the bottom, as it is now called, thus increasing inequalities and widening the gaps between rich and poor.

The Internet is a global technology par excellence. This means that attempts to regulate it will either have to be global or totally ineffective. The Internet's overall impact of governance is likely to be enormous because of its inherent ability to frustrate national rules. Privacy protection, intellectual property protection, the exclusion of pornographic or hate mail, even the prevention of premature publication of election results in a country with many time zones like the United States can only be achieved through global regulation of the Internet. Otherwise national rules can easily be circumvented extra­territorially. Anything short of a concerted effort by all the governments in the world to declare certain practices illegal is unlikely to succeed because the Internet has no fixed geographical base. It is in some senses the ultimate global challenge to national governance.

Environmental problems are in most cases beyond national control. Global warming, acid rain, transborder pollution flows all reflect increasing global interdependence. Collective action is required to manage that interdependence. At present there are very few universal agreements on environmental issues and even when a vague consensus exists there are no clear enforcement provisions. The Global Warming issue is the foremost example. In the first place the national governments of the world cannot agree on what to do about global warning. In the second place, even if they were to agree the implementation of that agreement would involve a considerable degree of intergovernmental cooperation and concerted action which is not  practical, given today's institutions.

Finally, the control of epidemics, the spread of viruses, (biological or electronic) and the potential for mass destruction coming from foreign terrorists or malcontents underscores the point that we are living in a very small planet where no man is an island and no country a fortress. Whether it is mad cow disease or the I love you internet virus, the spread of destructive forces is no longer limited by national borders. We are all on the same Spaceship Earth . Yet there is no captain on board. Victims of mounting interdependence we have yet to devise a practical system to manage that interdependence.

   

What Are The Options?          
                       
Governance by non-state Actors
                       
The Status Quo if left unattended will progressively transfer most governance functions to the non-state actors. As we have seen, the present world stage is made up of a motley group of players some advancing and some in full flight. In retreat are the 200 odd nation­ state governments especially when they act individually. In that group we have one superpower, a dozen or so "great powers" another 50 countries with a certain degree of real internal autonomy and the rest who exercise sovereignty in name only. The only superpower, the United States is strong enough to impact upon all areas of the global system yet not powerful enough to impose a hegemonic pax romana (and not particularly interested in doing so even if it could). Torn by the opposing forces of globalism and isolationism, the United States has yet to offer a coherent global view beyond the liberalisation of markets (which is itself challenged internally within the United States, both by the extreme Left and the extreme Right).
                       
The advancing players are the non-state actors. A first group has emerged from the market system itself: multinational corporations, nouveaux riches entrepreneurs, inventors and investors. A second group has emanated from more traditional special interest groups, labor, consumer groups, religious organisations etc. The third group, composed of NGOs, purports to represent the elusive Civil Society. These non-stae actors are now able to exert pressure and assume de facto governance functions either implicitly or explicitly
                       
What form could the full privatisation of governance take? The most probable initial scenario would be governance by markets where the forces of supply and demand will make the political decisions as well as the economic. Political democracy is normally based on the principle of "one ­person one vote." Markets function under the rule of "one dollar one vote" expressed through the price mechanism. In highly competitive markets "consumer sovereignty" gives some power to solvent consumers who can back their needs with effective demand and dollar votes. However when global markets are monopolistic we end up having "producer sovereignty" where the sole or principal producer makes the rules. Most corporations dream of becoming monopolists. In the absence of global anti­trust legislation, the move towards monopoly power is enhanced by the ease of mergers and acquisitions. As one CEO put it, "why try and beat them when you can buy them ­ or be bought by them." When profits and market control are at stake, a strategy of cooperation and alliance is more rational than cutthroat competition. If governance is left to monopolistic markets, then serious democratic deficits will arise with a handful of oligarchs making crucial decisions affecting everybody. This is a clearly undesirable scenario for all except perhaps the putative monopolist.
                       
Can the other non-state actors check the power of monopolistic markets in the absence of governments? In our view the influence of Group 3 the NGOs would decrease while that of Group 2, the covert Special Interest Groups would increase. The NGOs principal weapon is appeal to public opinion. But public opinion is itself only relevant if decisions are made on the "one person - one vote" system. If democracy is no longer in the picture with decisions being taken exclusively via dollar votes, the NGOs' relevance and the power of Civil Society itself would diminish. Civil Society needs receptive ears. The most receptive ears are those of democratic governments seeking to be re­elected. As governments lose their power, so in the long run will the NGOs.
                       
The opposite is true for the militant SIGs (Special Interest Groups) especially those willing to use force. If there are no longer any rule makers or rule enforcers, who will prevent cheating and criminal activities? The very notion of crime will have to be redefined. The economic analysis of organized crime suggests that as legitimate power weakens, "mafias" i.e. structured gangs, develop and thrive. In the absence of strong ethical constraints, if it is determined that it is cheaper to take rather than to sell or intimidate rather than market, strong arm techniques will replace normal commercial practices. The Market System would then become a Mafia System with warlords competing for economic territory. Even legitimate corporations will have to arm themselves to protect their property and their profits. In failed states such as some of the republics of the ex Soviet Union and in some countries of Africa and Asia, conditions are already rife for mafia economies.
                       
It must be noted that mafias must be seen not only as outlaw corporations with a CEO at their head but also as primitive governance structures establishing a new order. In fact many of the existing legitimate power structures began as primitive clans, establishing military superiority and then stabilizing into orderly dynasties. The legitimation of military dynasties has been a recurring feature of human history. The contemporary danger is that, as globalization proceeds unchecked and unregulated, the breakdown of the rule of law will lead to a global mafia economy ­ which will presumably bring a new order but not one that is particularly desirable or stable.
                       
Westphalia II?
                       
The dangers associated with a global governance entirely in the hands of non-state actors is the best argument in favour of reforming the present international system which, on analysis suggests is based on an antiquated system of distribution of sovereignty. To abandon sovereignty altogether would be a mistake because behind sovereignty lies democracy. By neutralizing sovereignty one also neutralizes democracy. But since national sovereignty, in its Westphalia I form is becoming obsolete, the task of the negotiators of a Westphalia II will be to redefine and redistribute sovereignty to make it both efficient and legitimate.
                       
The ultimate contours of Westphalia II cannot be guessed at this early stage but what can already be identified are the broad objectives of the negotiation:
                       
1. Promote a more Human Centred Globalization. Design systems and tools which will promote the spreading of prosperity in a win­-/-win fashion. This will involve reducing the gaps between winners and losers to acceptable levels and inventing compensation mechanisms to allow the benefits of economic expansion to accrue to all, in varying degrees.
                       
2. Establish an optimum balance between market based decisions (one dollar, one vote) and political decisions (in the noble sense of political). A determination will have to be made as to which activities should be decided by dollar votes (one dollar=one vote) by democratic election (one person = one vote), inter­state agreements (one state= one vote) and by the Old Westphalian criterion (one state = one veto).
                       
3. Redesign the notion of "sovereignty" itself in terms of (a) its sources and legitimacy and (b) the actual distribution of power between levels of government from the lowest (municipal) all the way to the highest (global) via the intermediate levels of regional, national and continental levels.
                       
4. Define new principles of enforceable international law which could be based on a minimum set of globally accepted values, such as democracy, human rights, the management of interdependence, the maintenance of cultural specificity etc. One of the most important consequences of this new international law could be the prevention of war as a means of settling disputes.
                       
5. Redesign the Multilateral System of IGOs to reflect these changes and be much more inclusive and representative that it is now. The hundreds of IGOs should be rationalized and restructured to reflect the new realities. In addition the creation of a coordinating IGO involving heads of government could be envisioned. At this stage the only effective IGO functioning at the summit level of heads of governments is the G­7. A much larger G­7 type organisation could be explored.
                       
Who is likely to negotiate Westphalia II? Ultimately of course the existing legitimate holders of power, i.e. the Westphalian national governments will have to sign an eventual Westphalia II. But we believe that it would be a mistake to attempt such negotiation in the existing IGOs without careful prior preparation through one or more pre-­negotiating forums. Intergovernmental organisations are not designed to support meaningful debate for the following reasons.
                       
First, their present architecture is haphazard and messy. There is no clear division of labor and significant overlaps. Sectoral interdependence means that trade ministers at the WTO, environmental ministers at the Climate Change meetings, central bankers at the IMF and World Bank meetings etc. tend to deal with linked issues. Trade has an impact on environment, investment codes on social policies, competitiveness on culture etc. As we have seen there is no summit level IGO other than the G­8 to deal with and arbitrate on questions of sectoral interdependence.
                       
Second even if a summit meeting of all the world's leaders were scheduled, the assembly would likely meet with failure. The absence (or at least the unsatisfactory representation) of the non-state actors would undermine the credibility and legitimacy of such a meeting. Since the WTO Seattle meetings in 1999 every intergovernmental conference on globalization has met with considerable dissent by the non-state actors purporting to represent civil society. The pre­negotiation forums should include, in some form or another,  all the relevant payers not just the governmental ones.
                       
Third, the very structure of the IGOs makes meaningful negotiation very difficult. Decision making in the IGOs is based on the Westphalian "sovereign equality" principle giving each state the same vote whether big or small, rich or poor. But sovereign equality not only means that Togo and the United States, Costa Rica and Japan have the same voting weight, it also means that they have the same veto. Since no sovereign country can be legally forced to accept decisions it has not consented to, the principal decision making procedure in the IGOs is "consensus" which means that any dissident state can impose a veto. This tends to make any radical restructuring almost impossible since the forces of inertia favor the status quo.
                       
Much more likely to succeed, are pre-negotiating forums of a semi-formal nature. What I mean by "semi­-formal" is a flexible structure which will bring together thinkers and actors. The thinkers coming from universities and leading edge think tanks could confront their views with actors from governments, corporations and civil society in a "club" type formula. One such initiative is the proposed "Club of Athens" piloted by a group of Canadian, European, American and Japanese opinion leaders. The Club would convene meetings of former heads of government and international organisations, CEOs of leading global corporations, labor leaders and representatives of Civil Society, supported by a permanent think tank of world class academics. The purpose of the Club would be to concoct scenarios for better 21st century global governance which would satisfy the double criterion of desirability and feasibility. The Think Tank would really be an "Action Tank" with the blue ribbon panel of actors giving Realpolitik validation to innovative thinking. (Side Note - this will never really happen, but hey! I can dream can't I?). The results of this or other similar pre-­negotiating forums could then be communicated to the world community and serve as an appropriate starting point for the negotiation of Westphalia II. The reference to Athens, in that particular initiative is an allusion to Plato's Republic which used Fifth Century Athens as its model. In a metaphorical sense, what we need to design is "Cosmopolis" or the Global Athens. Whether it is through a club or other formats a preparatory forum is obviously the first step in the fundamental reform of the world system. It is a necessary but by no means sufficient condition for ultimate success.

Of course, this organization, like ALL purpose-built organizations, will probably degenerate into a “Do Nothing” group engaged in the worst kind of mental masturbation and intellectual incest, and will have no REAL power at all. Think, a lot of ex-presidents, prime ministers, African warlords, etc. Think about this - how do you build an innovation-oriented business? So far, companies like Apple, Hewlett-Packard and General Electric have been happy accidents. How do you do it as a primary culture? On a global basis? No one knows...
                   
               
                       
Conclusions
                       
The US presidential election of 2000 revealed the dangers of relying on an electoral system designed in the eighteenth century to designate a president in 2001. At the heart of that crisis was the potential conflict between  the strengths and limitations of technology in counting votes and the influential role of media in influencing and distorting electoral results. The crisis also exposed the complexity in the distribution of power between state and federal authorities and between the legislative, executive and judicial branches of government. It also exposed the dangers of excessive decentralization of authority where no common standards exist and where the vagaries of vote counting in some local precincts could determine who would be President of the United States and the leader of the only global superpower.
                       
If it is anachronistic to elect presidents in 2001 using a system designed in the 1790s it is even more anachronistic to try and govern the world with a system conceived in 1648. In the 21st century the power of national governments to impose the rule of law is inversely proportional to transnational factor mobility. The more corporations, entrepreneurs and technology are geographically mobile, the smaller the influence of territory bound legislators in attempting to regulate them. As that mobility is likely to increase with the improvements of technology the nation­ based rules based system will wither and decline. It must be gradually replaced by something else. Obviously, we are not yet ready for a world government. But more effective and legitimate global governance, especially in the face of mounting interdependence is an urgent imperative. The search for such a system before painful and uncontrolled crises occur, is, in our view, the real millennium challenge. Let us just hope that it won't take a millennium to meet it…

(...to be continued. Someday…)
                   
               
           
       

           
       
   
               
                   
           
       

Bernie Sanders is an idiot, or a manipulative shithead.

Requirements for a working socialist economy (best case)

• A culturally homogenous population.
• Consistent baseline of productivity vis-a-vis resources and assets that NEVER goes down, unless the population goes down. IOW, no scarcity... of anything. The success of the Norwegians — the Beverly Hillbillies of Europe — can’t be imitated. Previously a peasant nation, the country now has more wealth than it can spend: Colossal offshore oil deposits spawned a sovereign wealth fund that pays for everything.
• A demographic of "the rich" (however your society defines that) that is willing to give up a significant (80% or more) of their income & wealth to the State for redistribution.
• A democratically elected government that can equitably distribute the surplus of "the rich", on a consistent basis.
• No innovation allowed - this wastes resources and assets best used for redistribution. This is what makes the so-called "Nordic Model" attractive.  \Homogenous population - check. The cultural phenomenon of "Lagom" (pronounced [ˈlɑ̀ːɡɔm]) is a Swedish word with no direct English equivalent, meaning "just the right amount".The Lexin Swedish-English dictionary defines lagom as "enough, sufficient, adequate, just right". - check.
• Many ideas and innovations are international public goods (copyrighted, but not trademarked-again, a cultural tradition). This should make the Nordic model more sustainable over time. 
• Societies differ a great deal in their innate level of cooperativeness.  This is a key to making the Nordic model work.  I wouldn’t try the Nordic Model in France, much less in the United States.
• The Nordic countries generally take a light hand in regulation, capital income taxation, and many of the public welfare programs pay people to work and not to sit at home on their behinds. Furthermore given the extensive subsidies to child care, which encourage female labor force participation, the high marginal tax rates do not discourage labor supply as we might at first think.
• Government policy is often most usefully thought of as socially endogenous. Higher levels of cooperation, and lower levels of corruption, mean that people will choose more government. The government they get will work better than government works elsewhere. The point is not that all choices are efficient, but rather there is a selection bias in the data we observe on government size and performance. Nordic welfare states are large, in part, because they work relatively well.

The long-term consequences of a slightly lower growth rate are in any case troubling, no matter how well a society works at any moment in time. Many prosperous nations in Western Europe have large welfare states. This leads unsophisticated observers to sometimes assume that high tax rates and high levels of government spending do not hinder growth. Indeed, they sometimes even conclude that bigger government somehow facilitates growth. After all, government in Sweden is larger than it is in many nations that have lower living standards.

The Nordic countries maintain their dynamism despite high taxation in several ways. Most important, they spend lavishly on research and development and higher education. All of them, but especially Sweden and Finland, have taken to the sweeping revolution in information and communications technology and leveraged it to gain global competitiveness. Sweden now spends nearly 4 percent of GDP on R&D, the highest ratio in the world today. On average, the Nordic nations spend 3 percent of GDP on R&D, compared with around 2 percent in the English-speaking nations.

The Nordic states have also worked to keep social expenditures compatible with an open, competitive, market-based economic system. Tax rates on capital are relatively low. Labor market policies pay low-skilled and otherwise difficult-to-employ individuals to work in the service sector, in key quality-of-life areas such as child care, health, and support for the elderly and disabled.

This analysis puts the cart before the horse. It is possible for a nation to become rich and then adopt a welfare state. There is even a relationship studied in academic literature, known as Wagner’s Law, which revolves around the tendency for policy makers to expand the size of government once nations obtain a certain degree of prosperity, but for poor nations that adopt the welfare state, however, are unlikely to ever become rich. This sequence is important. Nordic nations became rich, and then government expanded. This expansion of government has slowed growth, but slow growth for a rich nation is much less of a burden than slow growth in a poor nation.

Excessive government diminishes growth with punitive taxation and sucking up capital that should go to the private sector for business development. And although the Nordic countries’ relatively free markets mitigate the damage caused by high taxes and high spending, the burden of government social welfare systems, is hindering economic performance. The Nordic Model is preferable to the Continental or Corporatist Model of nations such as France and Germany, which combines welfare state policies and corporate interventionism. But the Nordic Model does not look very impressive when compared to the United States.

While this system may sound ideal to some, the Nordic model of social capitalism is difficult to export outside of the Nordic countries. It is difficult to export precisely because it is based on a strongly-held set of values by a relatively small, homogenous population. For those fond of the Nordic model, it is unfortunate that the world is a much messier place, comprised of a multitude of cultures that hold very different values, whether based on religion, geography, economics, or history, to name but a few influences. And, when you look at heterogeneous countries like the U.S.A., or even Canada, China or India with multiple cultural influences, the Nordic model becomes even more unsustainable

Footnote-  An aging population puts a serious a strain on the social services available and creates a shortage of working-age contributors to the tax base without immigration. Meanwhile, immigration is eroding the homogenous values of these countries while raising their social costs, and suddenly you have the local population reexamining their attitudes to that Nordic model of social capitalism.

Further footnote - 

The Scandinavian countries have survived Socialism because they are completely homogeneous in an ethnic and cultural sense: remember Lagom! Over 90% of the populations of each Scandinavian nation are made up of people who descend from their home-nation. In other words, they are mostly all on the same page. This is not to mention the fact that they had been some of the wealthiest and healthiest nations in the world for decades before they began implementing Socialist policies around 1970. In terms of global ranking, they were actually better off in most areas before they became more Socialist.

While I understand that Bernie Sanders and most 18-24 year olds are in love with the Aryan culture of Scandinavia, America is a diverse republic founded in rugged individualism. There are nearly 40 different ethnic groups represented by over a million people in America, not to mention the obvious cultural diversity that occurs in each region from sea to shining sea. Scandinavia is made up of about 26 million people in total, and they are essentially clones.

Speaking of Scandinavia in a discussion about America is an apples to oranges logical fallacy.

Lastly, the foolish argument about the variations between Socialism and Communism by citing all of our "social programs" - Theocracies, monarchies, oligarchies, democracies, Capitalist societies, and most others have defense programs (volunteer in free societies, obligatory in Socialist societies), parks, schools, fire departments (which are local in America, not federal), and whatever else. These are not products of Socialism. They are products of society itself in some form or another. All forms of government have some kind of overlap. Socialism is not at all special, new. or "progressive". It's just one of many collectivist "Utopias" that guarantees a bigger government which is just as corruptible as any other government.

The Psychology Of The Social Deconstructionist Movement.

The Psychology Of The Social Deconstructionist Movement.

OK, so in a previous post I outlined the most over-arching characteristics of what I call " Social Deconstructionism". Let's go ahead and try to figure out not WHAT these folks believe-that is all too obvious-but WHY they believe such insane rubbish.

People who describe themselves (and are described by others) as "Social Deconstructionists", "leftists", "socialists", "social democrats", "Communists" and (in North America) "liberals" do have some things in common. And that is important. However unsatisfactory and apparently simplistic the Left/Right division of the political world may be, there is any amount of research showing it to be a powerful, ubiquitous and perhaps inescapable way of identifying both people and political parties (e.g. Budge et al., 1987; Ray, 1982; Bobbio, 1996).

An important part of what I proposed was that what Social Deconstructionists basically want does not have to be the exact opposite or mirror-image of what Rightists/Conservatives/Reactionaries/whatever, basically want -- and vice versa. This may seem at first surprising but does have some precedents. Kerlinger (1967) suggested that Social Deconstructionists and Rightists have different "criterial referents" and even thought that he had found in his survey research a complete lack of opposition between Social Deconstructionist and Rightist attitudes. Kerlinger's reasoning is interesting but that he misinterpreted his research results has previously been shown in Ray (1980 & 1982). Whether Social Deconstructionist and Rightist objectives are opposite or just simply different, how Social Deconstructionists and Rightists go about achieving their different basic objectives certainly generates plenty of conflict and opposition between the two sides.

My basic proposal, then, is that most (but not all) Social Deconstructionists/liberals are motivated by strong ego needs -- needs for power, attention, praise and fame. And in the USA and other developed countries they satisfy this need by advocating large changes in the society around them -- thus drawing attention to themselves and hopefully causing themselves to be seen as wise, innovative, caring, noble intellectuals  etc. Rightists by contrast have no need either for change or its opposite and may oppose change if they see it as destructive or favour change if they see it as constructive.

We will see below why one of the most consistent themes to emerge from the Social Deconstructionist's love of change is the claimed need for "equality". And the belief in "equality" also tends to lead to support for such things as redistribution of wealth generally, heavily "progressive" income taxes, inheritance taxes, foreign aid, feminism, gay rights and socialized medicine. Again for reasons explored below, Social Deconstructionists also tend to oppose religion and the churches and this in turn tends to mean that they favor abortion and oppose or obstruct religious schooling in various ways. So let us now briefly look at some of these characteristic Social Deconstructionist/liberal themes to see how they relate to basic Social Deconstructionist motives.

Human Nature

Something that Social Deconstructionists have had in common from the beginning is the rejection of any idea of "human nature". Basically, Social Deconstructionists seem to believe that "education" can change almost anything in human behavior. This root and branch rejection of heredity was of course what underlay Stalin's support of Lysenko's otherwise thoroughly discredited theory of evolution -- the idea that characteristics acquired in one's lifetime can be passed on to one's offspring, something Darwin rejected in toto. So how do such views flow from a yen for change? 

Quite obviously, any idea of human nature says that important things about human beings just CANNOT be changed and that does not suit the change-loving Social Deconstructionists at all. So Social Deconstructionists simply reject what does not suit them -- regardless of the enormous evidence in favor of inherited characteristics. The entire discipline of behavior genetics should not exist from a Social Deconstructionist point of view.

Conservatives, by contrast, not only have the view that there are important and essentially ineradicable inherited human characteristics but they share with Christians the view that those characteristics are of a "fallen" kind: characteristics of selfishness, aggressiveness, untrustworthiness etc. That Christians and conservatives share such a central belief about human nature is of course a large element in the general compatibility between Christianity and conservatism and the frequent opposition between Christians and Social Deconstructionists (e.g. "Godless" Communism versus the Roman Catholic church).

This conservative (and scientific) rejection of the Social Deconstructionist idea that human beings are infinitely malleable AND infinitely predictable ( an assertion Lord Keynes also posits), does of course pose a major threat to the Social Deconstructionist's assumptions, theories and programs and it is one that the Social Deconstructionist cannot really rebut so the usual Social Deconstructionist response is simply an ad hominem one: To abuse and demonize conservatives for lacking "compassion". Abuse, therefore and necessarily, takes the place of argument (Krauthammer, 2002). And in the same sentence, Social Deconstructionists will then accuse any perceived opponent of a total lack of rationality or logical thought! How did they get there?

The United States faces overwhelming fiscal problems. Our current level of government spending and future entitlement obligations are simply unsustainable. However, as concerning as these fiscal matters are, the biggest problem America faces has nothing to do with economics, but rather psychology. The strength of a nation reflects the character of its citizens. While America was once considered a nation of individuals fiercely independent and self-reliant, her citizens are moving closer to a state of dependence, characterized by irresponsibility and ambivalence. This change has been instigated by the politics of collectivism and the growth of the social welfare state. The most important change which extensive government control produces is a psychological change, an alteration in the character of the people.

To understand how this alteration occurs, one must first understand the psychological concept known as locus of control. In 1954, American psychologist Julian Rotter introduced the concept that describes how individuals could be divided into two basic groups, which represent two ends of a continuum (Figure 1): internals believe that their locus of control is within themselves, and externals believe that they are under the control of outside forces. According to Lee Harris, author of The Next American Civil War:

"[Internals] believe that they are the masters of their own destiny; they tend to be high-achievers, optimistic about their ability to improve their lot, and to discard bad habits. They believe in willpower and positive thinking. They are determined to control their own lives, for better or worse. [Externals] look on themselves as victims of circumstances, the playthings of fate. If they go to bed drunk, light up a cigarette, and burn their house down, they explain the disaster as another instance of their bad luck, and not their poor judgment, much less their bad habits." Based on Harris's description, it is simple to understand why having an internal locus of control is desirable, while having an external locus is not. Furthermore, individuals can move along the continuum in response to external factors. American psychologist Martin Seligman's experiments provided an explanation for why and how movement occurs along the continuum.

This concept came to be known as learned helplessness. Learned helplessness explains how an individual can move from an area on the continuum characterized as internal to one characterized as external, and while this condition can be induced by pain, it can also be induced by many kinder, gentler ways. 

In "The Conscience of a Conservative", Barry Goldwater described what he believed would ultimately be the consequences of social welfare on the psyche of its beneficiaries:

"The effect of welfarism on freedom will be felt later on -- after its beneficiaries have become its victims, after dependence on government has turned into bondage and it is too late to unlock the jail."

Real-world examples of how modern entitlement programs have done harm to their beneficiaries are boldly presented in libertarian political scientist Charles Murray's Losing Ground. What makes this book stand out, according to Brian Doherty, senior editor of Reason magazine and author of Radicals for Capitalism, is that - “Murray does not rely on the 'welfare cheat' rhetoric ... he took a different tone and approach to the free market assault on welfare, speaking in a voice clearly concerned with the fate of the poor and blacks, about incentives and productivity and self-respect ... He uses trendline analyses to show that any improvement in the lives of the poor that happened after [the late 1960s wave of income transfer] programs went into effect was merely a continuation of progress that had begun long before the federal effort did -- and that the progress in most cases stopped as the 1970s began and the program's effects became clear. Crime and unemployment went up for the poor as the welfare state grew in the 1960s; income and educational achievement went down.”According to Charles Murray, the author of "The inspiration for Losing Ground" - 

"grew out of sixteen years of watching people who run social programs ... I was struck by two things. First, the people who were doing the helping did not succeed nearly as often as they deserved to ... Second, the relationship between the ways people were to be helped and the quality of their lives became increasingly confused." Murray's policy recommendation to improve the social condition and self-esteem of America's poor, which emanated from his personal experience and dedicated research, was to eliminate all racial preference programs, institute educational vouchers, and eliminate all income transfer programs, later reinstating short-term unemployment insurance. Murray's research provides compelling evidence that suggests that social welfare programs are harming their recipients via the learned helplessness mechanism. 

However, there is something even worse than creating codependency on government through entitlement programs, according to Lee Harris. "This occurs whenever a deliberate campaign encourages people to think of themselves as victims. Victims are not in charge of their own lives and destinies." The victimization mentality is closely related to having an external locus of control. As a consequence of this mentality, people who consider themselves victims erect invisible barriers around themselves from which they cannot escape. Like Seligman's dogs, they give up trying because they don't believe they are free to succeed.The victimization mentality is advantageous for left-wing politicians, who rely on their constituents' needing government benefits. Remember Hillary Clinton declaring, "I am the candidate for individuals who need government"? Unfortunately, the spread of this mentality foreshadows a poor prognosis for the survival of freedom in America. 

The Making of a Social Deconstructionist

The appeal of Social Deconstruction to the average person is simple: The Social Deconstructionist offers something for nothing. And that is always hard to resist -- fraudulent though it usually is. If the Social Deconstructionist offers to redistribute somebody else's wealth into your pocket, that is one hell of an appealling scam to those who stand to benefit from it.

But the Social Deconstructionist's advocacy of equality is not all it seems. The Social Deconstructionist's passion for equality is only apparently a desire to lift the disadvantaged up. In reality it is a hatred of all those in society who are already in a superior or more powerful or more prosperous position to the Social Deconstructionist and a desire to cut them down to size. Social Deconstructionists really aim at (and sometimes succeed at) the equality of making everyone poor rather than the equality of making everyone rich. 

This explains the common puzzle of why it is that modern-day "liberals" are still indulgent about the old Soviet system. As Amis (2002) points out, the many people in literary and academic circles today who once supported Stalin and his heirs are generally held blameless and may even still be admired whereas anybody who gave the slightest hint of support for the similarly brutal Hitler regime is an utter polecat and pariah. Why? Because Hitler's enemies were "only" the Jews whereas Stalin's enemies were those the modern day Left still hates -- people who are doing well for themselves materially. Actually, in Niall Ferguson's' epic "The War Of The World", he correctly points out that Stalin was persecuting non-Muscovite Russian ethnicities, while working for Lenin! So Stalins' racist policies were staggeringly more encompassing than even the Nazis'!! Modern day Social Deconstructionists understand and excuse Stalin and his supporters because Stalin's hates are their hates. 

Much the same explanation applies, of course, to the similar puzzle of why the French military dictator, Napoleon, is to this day generally regarded as a hero even though practically every family in the France of his day lost a son in his wars. The figures for Napoleon's Russian campaign alone are horrendous. He took 600,000 men into Russia but brought back only 70,000. In terms of loss of life, Napoleon's wars were every bit as bad for France as Hitler's wars were for Germany but Hitler is universally (and justly) reviled whereas Napoleon is still admired! Napoleon, however, justified all his actions as extending the French revolution to other lands and this explanation still resounds favorably with today's Left-leaning intellectuals. 

Such vast egotism and hunger for power and attention does of course make a mockery of the Social Deconstructionist's claim to be in favor of equality. Like the pigs in George Orwell's "Animal Farm", the Social Deconstructionist wants to be "more equal than others". They want to rule or at least dominate. Beneath the (intentionally) deceptive rhetoric, they are the ultimate elitists. He actually despises most of his fellow men and thinks that only he and his clique are fit to run everything. The last thing he wants is to be lost in a sea of truly equal people. This was of course amply shown in the Soviet Union, where membership of the Communist Party became the only pathway to the good life -- conferring on the member all sorts of privileges and access to goods and services not available to other Soviet citizens.

Another psychological motivation for Social Deconstruction that is sometimes mentioned is one that I have always had severe doubts about: Guilt. Or, more to the point, White Liberal Guilt. The claim is that affluent people feel bad (guilty) when they see how poorly others are doing and want to rectify that by getting handouts for the disadvantaged (but not from their own pockets of course). They are "limousine liberals". I have always seen this as just another Social Deconstructionist hoax: They may sometimes explain their motives in such a high-minded way but if they really felt guilty there is plenty they could do to help others rather than agitating to tax them to the eyeballs. 

The undoubted fact that Left activists and agitators (from the Bolsheviks on) tend to come from affluent families does not to me point to guilt as their motive at all. Rather the "limousine liberal" phenomenon shows me that those who have all that they want materially then seek other luxuries: such as self-righteousness, praise, power and excitement -- particularly the excitement of being demonstrators in the case of "rich kid" Social Deconstructionists. And if the young limousine liberal can have praise and self-righteousness along with his/her excitement what a good deal it is! It is much the same motivation that causes self-made rich men (such as Bill Gates & Steve Jobs) to become highly philanthropic. Bill Gates has power and wealth so he now seeks praise and righteousness.

There are, however, many other reasons for Social Deconstructionism:

Because of its pretensions to standing up heroically for various difficult causes, Social Deconstruction can seem "cool" to many of the unthinking young and not so young. Particularly in the worlds of academe, the media and entertainment, being Social Deconstructionist means being "in" with the "smart" crowd. Not to be Social Deconstructionist is to be left out. How awful! Even if such people can see faults in Social Deconstructionist thinking, they are afraid to come toward the Right for fear of losing the approval of others around them.

Some people become liberals because they are genuinely outraged by things that they do not understand and are unwise enough to want to change those things willy nilly. In particular, they may be genuinely grieved by the unhappy experiences of others and want to fix that ASAP without being wise enough to seek for means of fixing it that have some prospect of working or that are not self-defeating. They might, for instance, be disturbed by the impact of rising rents on the poor and propose rent-control as a quick-fix solution -- though a few minutes of thought or the most elementary inquiry should tell them that rent control will after a time also have the effect of degrading and shrinking the existing stock of rental accommodation and drying up the supply of new rental accommodation, both of which make the poor much worse off in the long run. Some are Social Deconstructionists because they are still young and unaware of most of life's complexities so that the drastically simple "solutions" and mantras proffered by the Left simply seem reasonable. Social Deconstruction has the appeal of simplicity.Some Social Deconstructionists, again particularly the young, are idealists who find the imperfect state of the real world deeply unsatisfying. That there is some genuine idealism even among extreme Social Deconstructionists is shown by the exoduses from Communist Parties in the economically successful "Western" democracies that followed the violent Soviet suppression of the East German, Hungarian and Czechoslovak uprisings against Communist rule in 1953, 1956 and 1968. Once the real nature of Communist regimes became too clear to be denied, honest decent people whose wishful thinking had led them to believe Communist protestations of benevolence and good intentions saw the light and abandoned Communism. In the USA (in New York particularly), some liberal intellectuals even saw enough in the Soviet actions of those times to cause them to abandon "liberalism" and found neo-conservatism. Similarly in Australia of the 1950s and '60s, the Andersonian libertarians of Sydney were also intellectuals who might otherwise have been Social Deconstructionists but who were united by realism about Soviet brutality.

Some Social Deconstructionists know that they themselves are weird by general social standards so preach change towards greater tolerance for all weirdness out of sheer self-interest. As George Orwell said in "The road to Wigan pier":

"One sometimes gets the impression that the mere words socialism and communism draw towards them with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, Nature-cure quack, pacifist and feminist in England...

"We have reached a stage when the very word socialism calls up, on the one hand, a picture of airplanes, tractors and huge glittering factories of glass and concrete; on the other, a picture of vegetarians with wilting beards, of Bolshevik commissars (half gangster, half gramophone), or earnest ladies in sandals, shock-headed Marxists chewing polysyllables, escaped Quakers, birth control fanatics, and Labour Party backstairs-crawlers.

"If only the sandals and pistachio-colored shirts could be put in a pile and burnt, and every vegetarian, teetotaler and creeping Jesus sent home to Welwyn Garden City to do his yoga exercises quietly. As with the Christian religion, the worst advertisement for Socialism is its adherents."