On 'Social Darwinism'

Christian writes:

Are you not hearing pundits associating a liberal society, free trade, and generally ‘the market’ to Social Darwinism? The latest example comes from no less than the President of the United States. In a speech to a gathering of newspaper editors last week, President Obama accused his opponents of “thinly veiled Social Darwinism”. The theory teaches that evolution is a cosmic struggle in which the strong overcome the weak. As human generations unfold, the unfit among us get no chance to reproduce, whilst the strong survive, have progeny, and ensure our species’ gradual progress. To aid the poor, the weak and the disabled, distorts that healthy and natural selection. What claptrap! As David Gordon, the author of An Introduction to Economic Reasoning, notes (after Kropotkin and others): “Darwin did not teach that human evolution depends on ruthless struggle. To the contrary, he emphasized the importance of social unity and collaboration. ‘Selfish and contentious people will not cohere,’ Darwin declared, and without coherence, what could be effected?”

You won’t find a more radical herald of free markets than Murray Rothbard. “If the Social Darwinists’ idea,” wrote this outspoken libertarian economist and philosopher, “is that the unfit are being protected by modern medicine and philanthropy, and are debilitating the race by being permitted to live and have children… the mere statement of it exposes it as obvious bilge.”

Let’s push the reasoning further. Even if all that discourse about survival of the fittest and rugged individualism accurately described evolution, and it doesn’t, why should it guide our behaviour? Even if we knew the aim of biological evolution, and we don’t (assuming it exists), what is the value in attaining it? Sheer luck played the biggest part in determining who survived since the beginning of life; and mere survival is hardly evidence of high moral qualities.

Darwin held Malthus’s views on the struggle for existence in high regard. Not so Malthus’s friend and critic, David Ricardo. The law of comparative advantage, which Ricardo identified, one of the few valid ones in economics, confirms not only the benefits of the division of labour, but adds a twist Adam Smith had missed: Even those who are the most productive in every field (the ‘fittest’ and ‘strongest’) have interest in an association with the less able. A baker takes an assistant; a dentist hires a secretary; a company outsources its textile manufacturing in a poor country. The baker, the dentist, the company, could perform the less skilled work themselves, obviously. But they want to concentrate on high-value tasks. The market’s incentive is not to seek a profit, but the maximum profit. And for that reason, everyone is needed and invited to cooperate.
Christian
12 july

Choice and Future

Dear Philosophers,

You have probably made resolutions for the New Year. We all do, or we ought to. Resolutions manifest that we take our happiness seriously and stir our lives in the direction we choose rather than allow it to drift aimlessly. Is it a choice, though? Our personal stories appear as series of crossroads, from which paths opened up, and we went down this one and that one, not knowing where they ultimately led and forfeiting the opportunities that the other destinations might have offered. Because no map shows the journeys ends, and our bodies, our education, our circumstances restrict our possibilities, many thinkers claim we didnt choose. We lacked the necessary information. Our decisions were the mechanical results of a concatenation of previous events and social constraints.

It is a rather incoherent way of reading our lives narratives, is it not? The only information we would need to make secure life choices is knowledge of the future, and that will forever be lacking. In the Hassidic tradition the past is spatially represented in front of the subject, where she can see it; the future is in her back, invisible an accurate depiction of our human condition. If the future were knowable, we would not be making choices; we would let ourselves be unfailingly guided by our interest.

And the reason we can make choices at all is because our possibilities are restricted. Imagine that out of the blue a voice commanded you Choose! Your reaction would be: between what? Tea or coffee? Stay or leave? Hang on or dump my partner? Chamonix or the Maldives? Take the job or keep searching? The blue one or the red one? Without a given historical context decisions are impossible. There must be a menu for us to choose from. So the issue is not whether we make choices, but rather that certain menus are less palatable than we would like. It may be the consequence of wrong turns at previous crossroads, or physical and social limitations, but, however restricted, choices still are possible.

Lets choose the right resolutions for the New Year. It is about our happiness, after all.

Christian

Some thoughts on Freedom of Information

Dear Philosophers,

We are told that rights should apply equally to all human beings, and if one of them is allowed an action it would be illicit to deny another the same action. Except, of course, that the people who are supposed to guarantee our rights government officials are the ones who claim exemption from this rule of universality. The Wikileaks affair reveals strikingly how rights don't apply equally. Forget taxes, pension differentials, life employment and impunity from prosecution in many countries, and other markers of the difference between government and the governed. It is now the most immaterial of goods, information, that is at stake. Governments collect it in all possible forms, requiring records of all bank transactions, credit card payments and airline reservations, ordering Microsoft and other companies to give them backdoor entries into software systems, tracking all phone and internet conversations, and making it illegal to protect your privacy by encrypting your correspondence or keeping your assets invisible.

The fury when the table is turned and when some people do to a government what it does to all of us (spying) is the great entertainment of these last days of 2010. And these could well be the first days of a new era.

Christian

Asker or Guesser?

I republish this cute little essay from Christian’s e-mail as an addendum to our debate on “Etiquette”:



"Dear Philosophers,

Are you an Asker or a Guesser? The question was going round the internet a few years ago following an insightful post on the Metafilter community forum. The theory runs like this. If you have been brought up in an Ask culture your role models encouraged you to be straightforward and to declare candidly what you wanted, a piece of cake, a present; later on, a date, a pay rise, a favour – fully accepting that the answer may be negative. You don’t take a ‘no’ personally, and you believe the people who turn down your requests don’t mean it that way.

If you shy away from boldly asking, however, you may be a product of the Guess culture. You avoid “putting a request into words unless you're pretty sure the answer will be yes… A key skill is putting out delicate feelers. If you do this with enough subtlety, you won't have to make the request directly; you'll get an offer. Even then, the offer may be genuine or pro forma; it takes yet more skill and delicacy to discern whether you should accept."

As a boy I once spent a few days with a family where you didn’t ask for anything at the dinner table. It certainly trained you to anticipate the other guests’ needs: salt, a piece of bread, more water. It probably taught me too much, actually. I tend to be a Guesser when the time comes for asking favours. On the other hand I am hopeless at reading clues and deciphering hints. I was at ease in Russia, where people routinely and peremptorily demand your time, efforts and money, only to smile graciously if you tell them to get lost. Nice try.

Misunderstandings arise when Guessers meet Askers. The former view the latter as boor; the latter don’t perceive convoluted approaches, leaving Guessers in the agony of having to be more direct, or desist.

This country used to be part of the Guess universe, at least its elite were. Is it changing? I was having sushi the other day with a young student. He nonchalantly grabbed the last piece.

— What? he asked, seeing me rather indignant
— Shouldn’t you ask before taking the last piece?
— You wanted it?
— No

— So?



Maybe that’s the solution. Don’t ask. Don’t guess. Just grab.

Christian"

Essay: Sainthood and Conscience

Dear Philosophers,

Our meetings are more about wisdom than sainthood, but let me invoke Saint Martin here. He ranks among Christianity’s most popular figures. Opulent churches across Europe and America are dedicated to his veneration, and yet most people have only a trivial anecdote to quote about his life: As he was on patrol with his legionnaires Centurion Martin came across a beggar, half-naked and shivering in a biting winter day. Moved by compassion Martin took off his ample army cloak, slashed it, and gave the beggar half. Isn’t that a generous move? Martin suffered more from the cold, but the poor man suffered less. That’s solidarity.

Rewind the film and twist the story. Imagine the general ordered a subordinate to share his coat with the beggar. The result would look exactly the same: a half-freezing soldier, a half-warmed up pauper. But who is generous now? Who is showing solidarity? The general, who keeps comfortably clothed? The soldier, who can only obey orders? And ought the poor man to accept an object from someone who didn’t want to give it? The poor have their pride too, and if the general had to intervene it must be because the soldier was reluctant. Should the receiver thank the general, who deprived somebody else, not himself, or thank the unwilling soldier?

Of course, beneficiaries don’t brood moral issues. Not when they are cold and hungry. But their perspective, however emotional, is not the only valid one if you worry about the long term.
For consider the soldier. What can his feelings be towards two individuals, who are causing him misery? He looks askance at his warmly clothed commander, who displays the smug smile of good conscience; and he looks down at the new coat wearer, in whom he sees no merit, for whom he feels no compassion, and he is probably ready to despise both of them equally.

You catch my drift. You are not giving when you are ordered to. The poor surround us, at home and afar, and our generals command us to provide for their care. They even chase aggressively the few who evade the order to “give”, or give less than ordered.

Notwithstanding, of course, their conflicts of interest as whilst they claim the moral high ground, they take their cut before distribution.

Can solidarity be coercive? Interpersonal relationships are based on risk. Professionals won’t turn you down; but when you hope for fraternity, rather than impersonal assistance based on computer entries, only freely given relationships will do. Is the grand ambition to achieve a society of bean counters, where everyone has a cash to check on reluctant payers; or are we aspiring to a more vibrant, generous, and yes, less regulated, community?

Christian

Course: History of Economic Thought

There will be a course on the History of Economic Thought, at the Mary Ward Centre.  It will run every Wednesday, 4 to 6pm, for 11 weeks from the 22nd September. Economic activity has profoundly transformed all societies in unpredictable ways, at different paces and in different directions. From the economics of the Indian caste system, of Taoism and Islam, the early socialist spirit of the Bible, on to mercantilism and the many socialisms, the theories of economic growth and the present debate between Keynesian and Austrian schools, the course will examine how human beings strove to improve their productive powers throughout history and what kind of social cooperation emerged from their economic activities. It will be philosophical, enlightening and fun. (Tutor: Christian Michel.)

Essay: Art and Economics

Dear Philosophers,

Economics has taught me a lot about the arts. For artists are not unlike entrepreneurs. They conceive a progressive idea, and then (that’s the critical part) they cause this figment of their imagination to enter the real world; they realise it, using their skills, talents, know-how and social networks, often against entrenched interests and conservative hostility.

Entrepreneurship was not discussed at the Paris lycée when I first read about art critique. My teachers were Marxists. Art was presented as a product of the folk soul or of class-consciousness. So dispiriting. To my rebellious and adolescent mind the artist as solitary creator was a more powerful and seductive alternative. I wanted to admire the Romantic geniuses, who produced the epoch-making works – alone, unhelped, against the world. These visionaries stood above the masses, mocked the bourgeois and made no compromise. For publishers, merchants and the public, it was ‘buy it, or burn it’. Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead illustrates the notion in all its silliness, when the hero, an architect, blows up the building he was commissioned to design because the promoters dared to adorn the stark features that put the buyers off.

The promoters were right, of course. Architects, like film directors, musicians, and all artists benefit from interacting with a commercial environment. Being of service to others and making money does not imply sacrificing one’s creativity. Entrepreneurs know that. They see no opposition between the individual and the collective. Even illiberal regimes don’t asphyxiate the arts. Think Carlos V, Louis XIV, Franz-Joseph, Stalin... The lack of political freedom as that of economic means becomes a challenge, in Toynbee’s sense. Provided it is not insurmountable (and it seldom is) it starts ingenuity flowing. There are good reasons for opposing dictatorships; art is not one of them.
Economics in its purest, unfettered free-market form, teaches us to live with and affirm the messiness of the world. Don’t fight the flux. Human beings entered History millennia ago – even if a few ethnic groups have not, and a few fundamentalists want to rewind the film, but all others know that equilibrium is not an option. Things change, morph, surprise us, and there are no more potent agents of change than artists and entrepreneurs. The only criminal utopia is the one that would impose a preordained order, and seek harmony and perfection. We will no more find those at the end of History than they existed at the origin. The economist Ludwig von Mises, in his Human Action, expressed it strikingly:
“The living is not perfect because it is liable to change; the dead is not perfect because it does not live”

Christian (29 avril 2010)