We Need A Liberal "Resistance" Movement
I was having a chat today with two friends about the nature of a market society. Both guys are intelligent, open minded and lacking ideological zeal. After talking about this and that, the discussion turned into me defending the free market of commerce and culture. Neither of them are heavily interested in politics, however they both articulated their positions with cognisance and we had a good discussion.
Because of the above discussion and the assumptions my friends held of the free market, I came to realise that - as enthusiasts of the free market - we do very little to actively promote the cause and its benefits. We hope our continually improving lives do the talking for us. Trouble is, these benefits can be twisted by people who don't agree with us. We're getting rich, says Green Left, at the expense of those in the third world and/or in our underclass. This is rubbish, of course, but it's easily grasped logic, no matter how misguided. A group like Resistance goes out to a lot of schools to talk to students about the beauty of socialism. It's rich pickings for them there, because the simplistic truths of socialism appeal to minds that aren't sullied with the realities of human nature and being a self-supporting adult. It's not hard to make a teenager feel bad about our society. Ask them if they lead a comfortable life. Show them a few pictures of starving African children. Let them join the dots. Child's play. Trouble is, as we all know, widespread socialism was a dismal failure, and the few countries that continue to fly the banner are collapsing failures. However kids - especially compassionate kids - are still easily conned. Okay, maybe conned is the wrong word. They're just not offered an alternative point of view, and what they're being shown by our leftist friends is easy to understand and makes sense prima facie. I was a high-minded socialist back in the day, and I believed a whole manner of things that I find utterly repugnant today. For example, I considered that an absolute majority was always right. Someone backed me into a corner once and posed the following scenario - if an absolute majority decided that it was okay to kill me, would I have a problem with that. I sacrificed sanity for consistency and answered, no, I wouldn't, if that's what the majority wanted.
I've found that this kind of woolly thinking is common in politically aware teenagers, and I believe it's because they're never offered an alternative. Socialism appears to make sense. No one tells them how it produces undesirable outcomes. Even when the aforementioned teenagers embrace adult reality and do away with socialism and the chimeric solutions it offers, most still retain a general distrust of free markets into their adulthood, even though they more often than not have trouble justifying their position if prodded. In regards to my friends, I was presenting a model that they didn't know a great deal about. They knew its ostensible failings, but knew little of its strengths. They'd possibly never considered, and certainly never accepted, the moral argument for a free market. They knew my case was logical, however the conditioned response of the average young adult to free markets made them still suspect that "something was wrong" with capitalism, free markets, individual responsibility etc. even though more often than not they couldn't put their finger on what it was. This syndrome is politically important, because when multiplied across society, it has implications on policy and how far the remaining vestiges of the socialist state can be rolled back - for the good of all.
If someone had have presented me with the case for free markets when I was in high school, I would have probably dismissed it out of hand. However, planting the seed is half the job done. As it happened, I changed my stance a couple of years after graduation. It took about one and a half years of a relentless bombardment of logic from a bunch of Objectivists to bring me round. I'm not an Objectivist myself, however they certainly influenced my current liberal outlook. The people I was talking to earlier today are probably where I was when I encountered the Randroids. Those guys took a year and a half to convince me; I wouldn't have even started to turn my friends around. On the whole, people don't radically alter their views easily. However, this process would be a lot easier and quicker if the pre-existing cynicism towards the free market that my friends held wasn't there.
Which is where we free market enthusiasts come in. The morality of Adam Smith's invisible hand is more sophisticated and isn't as easily digested as the ostensibly moral "perfect equality" socialist model, however Free Marketeers should debate Green Left, Resistance and those of their ilk at schools or wherever they appear. Just taking a quick peek at their publications and arguments, it's quite obvious that anyone with even a thimble of debating flair could wipe the floor with these lefty halfwits and their demented, unreal truisms. Their creed is barren, it lost its dynamism long ago. However, it could rear its ugly head again with enough support. There are signs that it's happening already with governments across the world reversing the Thatcherite/Reaganite trend towards smaller government. I believe this has something to do with the fact that socialism's pallbearers are much better at spreading their message than the unknowing footsoldiers of capitalism toiling in banks, brothels, barnyards or any business large and small. The beneficiaries of the free market - that is pretty much everyone, even though realistically I could only expect enthusiasts to rally - need to understand that their right to trade freely is not inextinguishable. We should be making a stronger effort to communicate the superior free market message to the youth, if only to ensure that our way of living continues. The free market system is the hope of the world. Those who understand that should spruik its benefits to the neutrals and unbelievers. We should try much harder to sign up the former and sway the latter.
Because of the above discussion and the assumptions my friends held of the free market, I came to realise that - as enthusiasts of the free market - we do very little to actively promote the cause and its benefits. We hope our continually improving lives do the talking for us. Trouble is, these benefits can be twisted by people who don't agree with us. We're getting rich, says Green Left, at the expense of those in the third world and/or in our underclass. This is rubbish, of course, but it's easily grasped logic, no matter how misguided. A group like Resistance goes out to a lot of schools to talk to students about the beauty of socialism. It's rich pickings for them there, because the simplistic truths of socialism appeal to minds that aren't sullied with the realities of human nature and being a self-supporting adult. It's not hard to make a teenager feel bad about our society. Ask them if they lead a comfortable life. Show them a few pictures of starving African children. Let them join the dots. Child's play. Trouble is, as we all know, widespread socialism was a dismal failure, and the few countries that continue to fly the banner are collapsing failures. However kids - especially compassionate kids - are still easily conned. Okay, maybe conned is the wrong word. They're just not offered an alternative point of view, and what they're being shown by our leftist friends is easy to understand and makes sense prima facie. I was a high-minded socialist back in the day, and I believed a whole manner of things that I find utterly repugnant today. For example, I considered that an absolute majority was always right. Someone backed me into a corner once and posed the following scenario - if an absolute majority decided that it was okay to kill me, would I have a problem with that. I sacrificed sanity for consistency and answered, no, I wouldn't, if that's what the majority wanted.
I've found that this kind of woolly thinking is common in politically aware teenagers, and I believe it's because they're never offered an alternative. Socialism appears to make sense. No one tells them how it produces undesirable outcomes. Even when the aforementioned teenagers embrace adult reality and do away with socialism and the chimeric solutions it offers, most still retain a general distrust of free markets into their adulthood, even though they more often than not have trouble justifying their position if prodded. In regards to my friends, I was presenting a model that they didn't know a great deal about. They knew its ostensible failings, but knew little of its strengths. They'd possibly never considered, and certainly never accepted, the moral argument for a free market. They knew my case was logical, however the conditioned response of the average young adult to free markets made them still suspect that "something was wrong" with capitalism, free markets, individual responsibility etc. even though more often than not they couldn't put their finger on what it was. This syndrome is politically important, because when multiplied across society, it has implications on policy and how far the remaining vestiges of the socialist state can be rolled back - for the good of all.
If someone had have presented me with the case for free markets when I was in high school, I would have probably dismissed it out of hand. However, planting the seed is half the job done. As it happened, I changed my stance a couple of years after graduation. It took about one and a half years of a relentless bombardment of logic from a bunch of Objectivists to bring me round. I'm not an Objectivist myself, however they certainly influenced my current liberal outlook. The people I was talking to earlier today are probably where I was when I encountered the Randroids. Those guys took a year and a half to convince me; I wouldn't have even started to turn my friends around. On the whole, people don't radically alter their views easily. However, this process would be a lot easier and quicker if the pre-existing cynicism towards the free market that my friends held wasn't there.
Which is where we free market enthusiasts come in. The morality of Adam Smith's invisible hand is more sophisticated and isn't as easily digested as the ostensibly moral "perfect equality" socialist model, however Free Marketeers should debate Green Left, Resistance and those of their ilk at schools or wherever they appear. Just taking a quick peek at their publications and arguments, it's quite obvious that anyone with even a thimble of debating flair could wipe the floor with these lefty halfwits and their demented, unreal truisms. Their creed is barren, it lost its dynamism long ago. However, it could rear its ugly head again with enough support. There are signs that it's happening already with governments across the world reversing the Thatcherite/Reaganite trend towards smaller government. I believe this has something to do with the fact that socialism's pallbearers are much better at spreading their message than the unknowing footsoldiers of capitalism toiling in banks, brothels, barnyards or any business large and small. The beneficiaries of the free market - that is pretty much everyone, even though realistically I could only expect enthusiasts to rally - need to understand that their right to trade freely is not inextinguishable. We should be making a stronger effort to communicate the superior free market message to the youth, if only to ensure that our way of living continues. The free market system is the hope of the world. Those who understand that should spruik its benefits to the neutrals and unbelievers. We should try much harder to sign up the former and sway the latter.
posted by James Waterton at 1:18 PM
7 Comments:
Rather than high-flying rhetoric, the market can best be defended by appealing to common sense and everyday observations. Do you really think the optimum number of potatoes is produced by a government potato board, or by potato growers selling them at whatever price people are willing to pay for at the Midland Markets? Explain how a government employee knows more about your preferences than you do. There are so many examples of how bureaucracies mismanage resources...
Zactly, Stevo. However, there is no group that actually reaches out to youngsters and gives them the laissez faire message using easily digestable languages and examples. The Left is swimming in such groups, which may explain why so many teens are lefties.
The problem is in your title...
We Need A Liberal "Resistance" Movement
It sounds, ugh, collectivisty.
Actually, I find the problem is one of a prevailing catechism.
Example: An atheist makes little headway with a believer, because believers have a vast list of phrases, concepts, questions, and answers already in mind ready to dismiss any challenge, so the discussion quickly collapses into arguments about trivia and semantics.
It's the same with politico/socio/economics. The audience is never following your argument — they are actively trying to dismiss it with their catechism.
Therefore, I've thought that it might be really useful to have a lefty catechism handout or slide or somesuch, so that any knee-jerk challenge could be shown up as unoriginal and unclever... that what they thought was uber-cool rebellion was, in fact, a bunch of old think.
If anyone knows of a simple lefty chatechism (text or graphic), I'd love to see it.
I agree, a leftist-silencing cheat sheet would be a very handy tool.
The movement doesn't have to be collectivisty. All it takes is for some of the current pro-market/libertarian organisations to start agitating at a grass roots level, as well as pushing the intellectual agenda - which is what they solely focus on at the moment. Their current activities reach a tiny audience consisting of the intellectual elite. They need to simplify the message somewhat to appeal to a much larger audience. This is a far better way of ensuring the message resonates widely.
It is arrogant to immediately dismiss a concept such as socialism. True socialism has never before been attempted. It's always been one mutation or another, instead of the full picture. Free markets are all well and good, indeed, an excellent way to measure what a population really needs, but they give rise to far too much greed. The beauty, the attraction to socialism, is the abandonment of currency. This results in a total lack of influence by those who previously held all the cards. Another key problem with free markets is the distribution of wealth. It is always horribly uneven. Canada's quasi-socialist culture works, better then that of the US because there are more checks and balances in place. Observe the performance of the "free markets" over the next couple months, I foresee some serious problems ahead.
When a system can be tried in various forms in over 80 countries on Earth, in dictatorships, in democracies, in First World, in Third World countries; when it can fail everywhere it is tried, and fail more dramatically the more extremely it is imposed; where, in it's extreme form (communism) it can kill over 100 million people (five times as many as killed by fascism) and STILL people can claim it hasn't "really" been tried...
...it is obvious no amount of evidence can falsify a dogma. But Wolvish's comment proves that we do indeed still need to counter such propaganda with the facts about how free markets perform.
Notice also that although one could argue there has never been a "real" or "pure" free market, it doesn't matter. Even freeing markets a bit from the stranglehold of totalitarian state control starts to show results, as China's growth demonstrates. Nobody has to take it on faith that capitalism works. You can try it and watch it work.
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