Socialism is dead!
(These words were first written in November, 2013. Despite the crazy events of 2020-21, I still stand by this statement. Greater changes are developing even as the government pushes its great overreach in the present time. SMC).
This thought has bounced around in my mind for the last 2 years (2010-2012) as I observed current events unfold in both politics and economics. Its signs of decay are evident in several public arenas: the behavior of our politicians in Washington; the failed monetary and fiscal policies of the past two administrations; the heightened gridlock between the two major parties that is more about posture than true substantial difference in policy, and the most obvious piece of evidence: the slow financial collapse of our government as well the entire financial system that dominated the globe for the last one hundred years. But perhaps the best manifestation of the death of socialism is the rising angst among the American populace-an angst that has become a way of life in the last thirteen years (Now almost twenty years). People have lost confidence in the Socialist Utopian vision promised by the 20th century prophets of the Centralized State. Though zealously propagated, all such visions failed to come to pass by the end of the 20th century. All these facts clearly point to the demise of Socialism. But the nagging question that bothered me was WHY? Why was I seeing so many indicators that 20th century Socialism was dying? And then it hit me:
Post-modernism killed it.
The answer was so simple that I had one of those face palm moments. Duh! Why did I not realize this fact before? Political and economic shifts always flow out of the philosophical, religious and theological movements that precede them. I have observed this fact several times during my studies of the history of the last five centuries of Western civilization. Considering what significant changes have occurred in theology and philosophy in the last 15 years (now over 20 years), major shifts in political thought are not at all surprising.
Now, I can see the eyes rolling and hear the sarcastic questions: Has he really lost his mind? What does Post-modernism (and yes, I know my spelling of the term is not according to the dictionary) have to do with the death of Socialism? And why at the height of the debate concerning the implementation of the Affordable Care Act am I writing such words? Believe it or not, the answer is really quite simple: this observation has more to do with logic and the simple flow of ideas through history than anything else.
Why is Post-modern thought killing Socialism? Answer: Post-modernism is logically inconsistent with Socialism. As a political and economic theory, Socialism is actually relatively new, roughly only 150 years old (and regarding the age of ideas, that is a pre-adolescent age). Socialism was the logical political theory of the Modern. The Modern viewed humanity as a collective whole or a unitary organism, moving from the slime of naturalism towards eventual deification as Human kind regained Paradise on purely materialistic terms. But by the year 2000, we got to the “prophesied” end of history, and instead of finding Paradise, we found an empty cancerous Nothing eating out the heart of this organism we called humanity. Humanity had not regained Paradise and Mankind was not becoming a god. Instead, this “unitary organism” was quickly splintering into a million (or dare I say a trillion?) pieces, completely detached from one another, and in either logical or ontological conflict with each other. Now 13 (or 20) years into the third millennium, we have discovered that prophets of the Modern religion were not just incorrect about the historical process, but they were completely wrong about the nature of humanity. Mankind is not a “unitary organism,” but a disjointed collection of subjective individuals “creating” their own “realities” all of which are in conflict with each other. That philosophical paradigm shift killed the Modern religion. And with the religious head cut off from the body of the serpent of the Modern, Socialism like the rest of the snake is twisting and writhing in a slow agonizing death. But the real question is what will be the dominant political theory that the Post-modern will “create” in the coming decades?
That is the question I shall take up next time.
smcope 