Can we talk this week about market utopianism, a notable feature of anti-democracy bad economics in the conservative style that underlies fascist sentiment, and also about utopianism in general, as utopian anarchism or utopian communism? Seems a lot of it about these days.
What got me thinking about it was a quote from some random conservative, Republican voter opining things going south, that is, to hell in a hand basket, didn’t really bother him because, echoing Mr. Musk’s sentiments, things have to get worse before they can get better. Interesting idea. I wrote a storm previously on how, for conservatives, Republicans, failure is their path to success because when faced with difficulties of any sort, most US voters will move reflexively to the right, toward conservatism and the Republican Party. So the worse they can make things, the better. However, I suspect a different and independent mechanism that may play into the conservative, Republican quest to fail is the belief, possibly promoted by them, that things must get worse before they can get better, so the worse they make things, the more on track we are for better things to come. It’s an interesting rejection of what one supposes the more typical thought process, self correcting in the sense if one tries something and it fails, one doesn’t normally carry on heedless, convinced one day it will work, barring solid factual, historical, scientific reasons to think so.
Utopians have an unshakable belief their preferred system leads to good results, even though the evidentiary basis of that belief may be unclear at best, or let’s just say more typically missing entirely. It’s a conviction born and sustained in the mind with no real reference to evidence or fact. So for example, utopian communists suppose communism an ideal system, never mind the documented history of the many nations, brilliant minds, talented and hard working people who tried for so long to make it work. To a utopian communist, they all just didn’t get it right, but he or she surely will. One must wonder the rational basis for the belief. What great genius or insight does that person suppose he or she has that all who previously tried to make it work did not? What changes in technology, modes of production, patterns of ownership suggest different results now? That was a rhetorical question, not an invitation to talk rot. Let’s just say, it seems a bit unlikely to me, leave it at that. Similar for utopian anarchists, who despite the horror of every real anarchy, suppose it will all be different when they do it, create what they see as a “real” anarchy. But of course the most common form of utopian thinking in the USA is surely conservative, right wing, market utopianism, the belief something they call the “free market” will allocate goods and services in the normatively or ethical optimal way and generate the best outcome for everyone in society. No recounting of historical experience, no recitation of facts or figures, no international comparisons, no theoretical explanations, can shake the market utopian’s belief in the importance of preventing voters using democracy to “distort” or “interfere with” markets and market outcomes. Indeed, I would suggest market utopianism and its primary rhetorical justification, bad economics in the conservative style, is the main cause of the rise of anti-democracy, pro-fascist sentiment in the USA today, followed closely by bad religion and racism.
But what manner of belief is utopianism anyway? It has the form of a positive statement predicting objective fact, “this will (in fact) happen,” but the evidence seems dodgy or missing and there is no sense in which the proposition may be refuted in any factual, objective, scientific way. I would suggest utopian thinking is fundamentally a subjective normative, ethical, moral, value mode of thought expressed in a superficially but not really positive, objective, scientific form. It’s not a sincere belief the utopia will appear; it’s the expression of a desire it appear, a wish.
Why would one be content with utopian pipe dreams? Just mind-numbing opiates? No, I propose because of some normative, ethical attraction to the system meant to produce it. One wants to imagine utopian results because one likes the ethics of conservatism, fascism, anarchism, communism, whatever. We arrive back at my overall contention the truly significant issues in economics, the issues that really divide us, do not concern positive economics so much as normative economics. It’s not a question of best policy in the context of shared goals; it’s a question of goals, objectives, values. The response to utopianism must go beyond simply challenging the ostensible factual basis. That will be shrugged off, any possible fact will be found inapplicable or irrelevant. It must involve addressing the normative aspects of the system associated with that form of utopian thinking. In order to address the root causes of our current movement toward fascism, one must go beyond facts, figures, statistics, history to address philosophy, normative beliefs, values, ethics, morals, as those found in anti-democracy bad economics in the conservative style and its sickly sequelae.
