Peter L. Berger's Blog, page 27

Sovereignty Is No Solution

Since his arrival in office, President Trump has been making essentially the same speech to the United Nations General Assembly every year. “If you want democracy, hold on to your sovereignty,” he urged the world’s leaders this September. “The future does not belong to globalists. The future belongs to patriots. The future belongs to sovereign and independent nations who protect their citizens, respect their neighbors and honor the differences that make each country special and unique,” he added.

Last year, he pledged: “We will never surrender America’s sovereignty to an unelected, unaccountable, global bureaucracy.” His 2017 address mentioned sovereignty 22 times, promising to “[renew] this founding principle.”

Through his frequent invocations of sovereignty, Trump has elevated a staple of U.S. and British conservative thought to a new prominence. For decades, figures such as the former advisor to Margaret Thatcher (today, a vocal defender of Hungary’s strongman Viktor Orbán) John O’Sullivan, claimed that “global governance” “seeks to take ultimate political power (sovereignty) from democratic parliaments and congresses accountable to national electorates in sovereign states and vest it in courts, bureaucratic agencies, NGOs and transnational bodies that are accountable only to themselves or to other transnational bodies.”

“Leading Brexiteers saw the UK’s EU membership as incompatible with parliamentary sovereignty. The goal of Brexit, according to Dan Hannan, a former Tory MEP, is thus simply “a recovery of parliamentary supremacy.”

Conservative legal scholars in the United States, such as Jeremy Rabkin and John Yoo, have written at length about the tensions existing between the U.S. constitutional order and America’s international commitments through formal institutions. But whereas Yoo believes that “the demands of globalization can be accommodated while still honoring the fundamental principles of popular sovereignty,” many other critics of international organizations do not shy away from hyperbole, depicting international institutions as nefarious, autocratic plots against free nations of the world. The title of John Fonte’s 2011 book, Sovereignty or Submission: Will Americans Rule Themselves or be Ruled by Others?, suggests the existence of a simple binary choice. The Acton Institute’s Todd Huizinga, a retired U.S. diplomat, claims that the EU is essentially a totalitarian body.

Although sovereignty-based critiques of multilateralism and international institutions spark strong emotions, they raise more questions than they address. Most fundamentally, what do critics mean by sovereignty, and what does restoring it looks like?

One common understanding of the concept is that of an international institution, treating states as autonomous equals. As such, it is sometimes misnamed “Westphalian sovereignty,” in connection with the 1648 treaties of Osnabrück and Münster. Yet, contrary to conventional wisdom, those did not usher in the era of fully autonomous nation-states. Rather, they provided a new constitutional settlement to the Holy Roman Empire, a federation spanning over a large part of Europe for more than a millennium.

More importantly, challenges to “Westphalian” sovereignty rarely come from international organizations or treaties that governments willingly join (and are free to leave), but rather from acts of aggression and intimidation such as Russia’s occupation of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, its annexation of Crimea, or its creation of the Donetsk and Luhansk “People’s Republics.” Previously, the Soviet Union justified its interference in the internal affairs of other countries—most famously the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia—with what became known as the Brezhnev Doctrine. “[W]hen . . . forces hostile to socialism try to turn the development of a given socialist country in the direction of restoration of the capitalist system,” Brezhnev said, “this is no longer merely a problem for that country’s people, but a common problem, the concern of all socialist countries.”

Paradoxically, it is regimes such as Russia that invoke sovereignty to deflect criticisms of their domestic practices and human rights records. But “Westphalian” sovereignty is not a universal trump card. Instead, it is conditional on jus cogens, overriding principles of basic human rights and protection against genocide and crimes against humanity. As the late Republican Senator Jesse Helms, hardly a proponent of globalism, put it, “nations derive their sovereignty—their legitimacy—from the consent of the governed. Thus, Slobodan Milosevic can hardly claim sovereignty over Kosovo when he has murdered Kosovars and piled their bodies into mass graves. Nor can Fidel Castro or Saddam Hussein hide behind phony claims of sovereignty while they oppress their peoples.”

To be fair, conservative critics of international institutions have a different meaning of the term in mind: the ability of society to govern itself and the control that voters and their elected representatives have over laws and policies.

At their most thoughtful, such critics point to technical challenges in constitutional law that international cooperation raises in the U.S. context. Examples include the question of self-execution of treaties: conditions under which international treaties become U.S. law, without any supporting legislation. The legality of delegating decision-making authority to international bodies is another point of contention, as is the status of customary international law and foreign legal influences more generally in the U.S. legal system, such as in Roper v. Simmonswhere the Supreme Court ruled against imposing the death penalty on individuals who committed crimes as minors by pointing to “the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society,” much to the ire of Justice Scalia.

But even when taken at face value, such criticisms are not really indictments of international cooperation as something inherently pathological. Rather, they are indicative of a deeper tension between America’s constitutional design and its day-to-day governance. The United States today is a vastly different country than it was at its Founding.

The role of states and of the federal government has changed dramatically as the role of the executive has expanded since 1789. In many ways, America has become more inclusive and its government effective and flexible. But, as Karen Orren and Stephen Skowronek show, that has come at the price of stretching the original constitutional set-up to its limits. Not only did the Founding Fathers not foresee the emergence of UN human rights conventions, much more importantly, they did not anticipate the emergence of the “regulatory state,” federal welfare programs, the expansion of suffrage, and the role played by the federal government in ending the unequal treatment of African Americans.

Short of a new constitutional convention, it is far from obvious how the mismatch between America’s founding document and everyday political practice can be addressed. Perhaps it is conceivable to disentangle the United States from the plethora of its international commitments (though not without massive unintended consequences). Yet, seeking to return the U.S. federal government to the role it played in the late 18th-century seems positively utopian—and, in that sense, distinctly un-conservative.

Similar arguments about popular sovereignty, understood mostly in terms of crude majoritarianism, are invoked in countries where constitutional law has taken a far more accommodative approach to the demands of international cooperation (particularly of the European project), and where stresses on constitutional architecture have been far less severe than in the Anglosphere. Constitutions of most continental countries—most prominently Germany’s Basic Law in 1954, 1993, or 1994—were simply amended multiple times to make them compatible with adopted European treaties.

The strength of the current sovereignty animus thus reflects something more basic than the nuances of U.S. constitutional law or concerns about nation states as the basic actors in international affairs. Rather, it reflects a desire for control and for a simpler world. “Sovereign nations,” President Trump told the UN in 2017, “let their people take ownership of the future and control their own destiny.” Yet, in the complex world that we inhabit, such control exercised by nation-states is simply not on the menu.

Economic policy is just one example among many, including the perhaps overhyped but pressing issue of climate change. The world’s economy is no longer populated by corporate “boxes,” limited to the confines of individual countries, but by much flatter and decentralized structures spanning across many countries (the supply and assembly of Apple products occurs in 30 countries while the production of Boeing’s Dreamliner relies on a network of some 1,000 suppliers). In such an environment, rules and regulations adopted in one country necessarily impact others. That strengthens the case for policy coordination between countries, as in the case of climate change. At other times, however, it can be problematic. As we learned in 2008, a global regulatory monoculture in finance can also make the global economy more vulnerable to unseen sources of systemic risk.

As the UK is learning the hard way, “retaking control” involves trade-offs. Brexit will entail either a disruption of businesses accustomed to operating within a common regulatory environment or giving up any say in the content of rules that will continue to affect the British economy after Brexit. “Retaking control” can easily mean less effective control, over both relevant rules and outcomes. In the British case, this is not a result of the EU’s intransigence but simply of the fact that Europe’s economic and political integration generates benefits primarily for the members of the club.

There is an even more fundamental reason for why populist promises of control are illusory. As the Scottish moral philosopher Adam Ferguson famously observed, “[e]very step and every movement of the multitude, even in what are termed enlightened ages, are made with equal blindness to the future; and nations stumble upon establishments, which are indeed the result of human action, but not the execution of any human design.”

Conservatives used to have a deep appreciation for the fundamental complexity of advanced human societies and the need for incremental, adaptive responses to the challenges such complexity brings. Alas, with the current fetishization of national sovereignty, that appreciation has been pushed to the side in favor of an outlook that is simultaneously nostalgic and revolutionary—and bound to not survive its first contact with reality of a globalized world.

The post Sovereignty Is No Solution appeared first on The American Interest.

A Guide for the Perplexed

The United Kingdom is working its way through a crisis in its government focused on its relationship with the European Union but going beyond Brexit. Something similar could be said of a number of other countries, whether in the European Union or beyond it. Russia, which I more usually write about for TAI, would be one example of that, as Putin’s constitutionally sanctioned presidential term ends in 2024. The nature and exercise of sovereignty, whether internally or externally, are critical issues in both these and other cases.

The British System

It is not strictly true to say that the UK does not have a written constitution. But the absence of a single and readily available document setting out its terms makes for confusion abroad and questioning within the country. The United States, by contrast, has an unusually compact written constitution, amended or reinterpreted over time both by formal process and by judicial review. Common Law links both the British and the American ways of dealing with changing realities. Lengthy and detailed written constitutions are typically inflexible and become dated, often quite quickly. France is on its fifth republican constitution over the past two centuries, for example.

It has recently become a commonplace within the blizzard of all-embracing and often cantankerous slogans plaguing British politics to express the opinion that the British system has broken down and needs formal revision. Given the present state of things both political and societal, that would be difficult to achieve in proper focus. But the foundations underpinning the British constitution, known in shorthand as the Crown-in-Parliament, have been weakened in recent years. The division of powers inherent in that concept may be understood, however roughly, as: Her Majesty’s Government encompassing the Executive Branch; Parliament as the Legislature to which that Government is to put legislative propositions as required, with its overall political authority defined by its ability to command a majority in the Commons; the renewal or replacement of that authority at defined intervals by means of general elections through first past the post contests in constituencies whose boundaries are intended to be reviewed independently from time to time to ensure balance; and a Judicial arm responsible for the exercise of justice in accordance with Common Law.

The flexibility of this system to changing circumstances has depended on a historically derived pattern of statute law, precedent, and shared and respected conventions. The 1689 Bill of Rights was a critical factor in securing its nature as the Civil War that had troubled England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland earlier in that century was brought to an end. The present state of politics in the UK shows, however, that this constitutional pattern is once more under pressure. The Conservative Party is in government but unable to command a majority in Parliament. That Government is prevented by the Labour opposition—with the support of other parties at present unwilling to face the voters—from calling an election. A national vote to resolve a parliamentary deadlock would until recently have been the constitutional answer to restoring effective government.

The immediate constitutionally based reasons for this uncertain and potentially dangerous situation are twofold. A Fixed Parliamentary Act was introduced on September 15, 2011, so as to give assurance to the Liberal and Conservative parties, which were then forming a coalition government, of its future stability. That Act made it mandatory that a general election called before the five-year term of Parliament was up should be approved in Parliament by a two-thirds majority. Second, innovative decisions by the current Speaker have allowed parties opposed to the Government to set the parliamentary agenda when they can command a temporary majority. Divisions within the Conservative Party and the government’s dependence on the Northern Ireland Democratic Unionist Party for a parliamentary majority have allowed those opposed to the Government from time to time to seize control of the parliamentary agenda. The effect has been to undermine or reject Government policies intended to carry through the verdict of the 2016 referendum on the question of leaving the European Union.

The overall effect of these changes has been to paralyze the House of Commons. Those opposing the Government are united in voting against it but divided beyond that. Parliament voted by a substantial majority for negotiations with the European Union, subject to a two-year deadline, to begin to implement Britain’s exit by March 29, 2019. Nearly all Members of Parliament were elected in 2017 on party mandates that undertook to deliver Brexit. The argument since has become clouded, with those shifting to Remain often reluctant to admit the fact. Parliament has three times, and by notable majorities, rejected the Withdrawal Agreement accepted by then-UK Prime Minister Theresa May and subsequently insisted on by EU negotiators as non-negotiable. Parliament has also voted, in less impressive numbers, to rule out the obvious alternative of leaving the European Union on WTO terms, usually described as “No Deal”, if the only one offered from Brussels continues to be the one that has been rejected so decisively and repeatedly by the House.

The next stage of the story is scheduled to be reached by the end of this month, when the negotiating period agreed with the European Union to provide for Article 50 talks to go beyond their previously scheduled date of March 29 will expire. A Commons majority legislated in early September to compel Prime Minister Johnson, very much against his will and in denying his call for a General Election, formally to ask the EU for a further extension up until January 31, 2020, or possibly later if the EU preferred it, unless a Withdrawal Agreement had been reached in good time before October 31. It was a central purpose of the Act to rule out a no-deal UK exit. There is no telling now as to whether or when a General Election might follow, whatever the position by the end of October.

At some stage however the issues of who is to govern Britain beyond the immediate present and under what conditions, including constitutional conditions, have to be addressed. This now includes a third and freshly minted constitutional complication, which amounts to a claim by the judicial branch to a significant role in political affairs.

The UK Supreme Court has not before been thought of as filling the same purposes as its equivalent by name in the United States. Nor have its members been subject to questioning by Parliament in the same way as U.S. Supreme Court nominees are by the U.S. Senate. Their political orientations have therefore not been taken into account. The UK court ruled on September 24 that Prime Minister Johnson had acted unlawfully in advising the Queen to prorogue (suspend) Parliament for five weeks to cover annual Party Conferences and to prepare the Queen’s Speech, which is normally presented at the start of a new Parliamentary Session to introduce a new Government’s program. Such a judgement was made, it seems, without convincing precedent. Lower Courts had taken the position that the matter was not justiciable. The Supreme Court ruled otherwise, on the ground that the Prime Minister’s real aim was to prevent Parliament from fulfilling its necessary role in examining issues of deep moment. The Judges clearly had Brexit in mind in this instance. Their ruling introduces, according to a considerable number of authorities, a new factor into the British constitution, with the British Courts reaching out beyond their previous role of exercising justice within the frameworks of Common Law or the Scottish and other legal systems into exercising authority, as they deem appropriate, over parliamentary issues.

The Supreme Court’s September 24 ruling has as yet undetermined consequences arising from its “new legal doctrine,” as a retired Judge from the UK’s highest court put it even while personally approving the verdict as an example of the flexibility of Britain’s unwritten constitution in adapting to new circumstances. Other highly qualified constitutional analysts have agreed that the Supreme Court’s written judgement expresses a new doctrine but dispute the arguments put forward in it as either historically valid or free of political bias. Public and celebratory comments made with Prime Minister Johnson obviously in mind by the President of the Supreme Court as to the judgement reached by the Court would appear to confirm that such political bias was inherent in its decision. The unanimous ruling of the Supreme Court has nevertheless had to be accepted by the Prime Minister. It will certainly make his ability to reach the deal he has been exploring with EU leaders even more difficult—to say nothing of its effect on his repeated undertaking to ensure Brexit by October 31, deal or no deal. There is moreover no reason to suppose that Parliament, which resumed its sittings on September 25, will do anything in concert in order to reach a stable outcome.

Brexit

The British constitution is not a law unto itself while the UK remains a member of the European Union. EU law is, as I understand it, founded on different criteria from those of the Common Law. The EU authorities evidently see their decisions as being of higher authority in the UK than those of the UK Parliament. At any rate, those negotiating a withdrawal agreement with the UK have so far brushed aside the fact that the British Parliament has so decisively rejected their text. That text, or something like it, if accepted in the end by the UK, would also include a future role for the European Court of Justice in Britain’s affairs. Membership for the UK, as for other EU members, has included the adoption of EU laws into the UK’s legal system.

Restoring the sovereignty of the UK was central to the 2016 referendum result. Qualifying that sovereignty was central to the EU negotiators’ purposes in the negotiations that followed it. That much was predictable. Former Prime Minister Cameron’s recently published memoirs are, according to a number of its reviewers, a telling and distressed account of what he saw as the inflexibility and arrogance of EU representatives at the time of his search for possible EU reform. The Brussels authorities have consistently, with the backing of the more influential members of the European Union, sought to compel mere national governments or their peoples to accept their rulings, including founding members of the European Economic Community. That is the nature of the organization, in its search for ever closer union. The establishment of the Eurozone and the aim of its extension has reinforced that purpose, for good or ill. So too has the so far unfulfilled logic of the need for its institutions to be strengthened and centralized if the euro is to work reliably. The UK’s decision to stay out of the euro has, so far at least, proven to its advantage. But it also made the UK into an outsider whose needs and interests became of lesser concern to the Brussels machine. That would remain the case even if Britain decided in the end that achieving a recognizable Brexit was not worth the candle, and that staying in the European Union after all was therefore its choice.

One of the oddities of the fractious arguments in the UK has been that so little attention has been paid to where the EU is headed, and what that trajectory would mean for the UK’s future prosperity and governance. The political realities strongly suggest that if the UK decided to remain in the EU after all there would be a significant price to pay. Those driving EU policies have shown no signs over the three and a half years of negotiating with the UK that they have become less committed to their protectionist, interventionist or federalist instincts. That is all the more telling for the fact that the question of where sovereignty should lie between the nations composing the EU and its Brussels-centered organs is an important issue not just for the UK but for other members too. More of the same has remained the stock answer to economic and political strains within the European Union. The debate in the UK, for its part, has been concentrated on whether the UK should stay or go, with scant reference to the economic and political difficulties faced at present by the EU and barely a mention of how the EU is likely to develop in the future.

Not Just Brexit

The UK Parliament has lost itself in often angry and unproductive debate about Brexit since the 2016 referendum. The hung Parliament that robbed Theresa May of the Conservative majority she inherited from her predecessor David Cameron made that inevitable. So too did the manner in which Parliamentary rule in the UK has evolved away from what had long been in effect a two-party system, the one that remains the familiar pattern in the United States to this day. The opposition parties currently represented in Parliament may for now be united in their efforts to force Prime Minister Johnson to ask for a further extension of negotiation with the European Union on a withdrawal deal, and to reject a no deal outcome, but their motives for doing so are varied and conflicting. The Scottish National Party’s (SNP) interest has been in reviving its pursuit of a further referendum on Independence. Labour has to recent date called regularly for national elections while keeping its Brexit policies imaginatively opaque. The party leadership has now taken to declaring elections undesirable in present conditions. The Liberal Democrats have consistently argued for Remain, most recently positing that, if elected to Government, their first act would be to ensure that the UK would remain a full member of the EU by revoking Article 50. None of these could unite in forming a lasting Government.

There seems to me to be two constitutional issues going beyond normal inter-party struggles worth reflecting upon. The first is how compatible referendums are with the British constitution. Referendums are intended to carry decisive weight but rarely do so over time. Second referendums in the European Union are generally designed to get voters to revisit propositions that they have rejected once in order to get them to give the “right” answer a second time. There are calls for a further referendum on Brexit in the UK under various pretexts. The precise questions to be put to the electorate have yet to be revealed by any of those arguing for them as a way to resolve the Brexit issue to the proposers’ satisfaction. The Labour Party is inclined to prefer such a referendum to be held before a General Election, apparently in the questionable hope that this might better clear their way of Brexit debris for success in an eventual national contest for No. 10 Downing Street. Referendums, which necessarily set simplified binary questions before the electorate, almost inevitably provoke more issues to be settled by future popular votes. General Elections are at least meant to produce governments able to take decisive action when needed, and for successor and similarly elected governments to revisit those decisions as needed or desired in their turn.

The second question is how best to address the questions arising from the pattern of relationships between the nations of the United Kingdom that has come about from previous decisions to devolve power in differing degrees from Westminster. The SNP have consistently signaled that they would not accept as final the September 2014 referendum’s rejection of Scotland’s independence from the UK. The SNP now argues that the fact that a majority of Scotland’s population voted to remain in the EU in the 2016 referendum indicates that a vote on Scotland becoming a member of the EU in its own and separate right should be held. The SNP leadership are at the same time cautious as to the question of when such a second referendum should be held.

The Brexit saga now often feels like the Uncle Remus story of Brer Rabbit and the Tar Baby; the more the UK struggles with the EU tar baby, the closer it is entangled. Stringing Brexit out by yet another negotiating period of undefined length and unclear purpose would not make the constitutional strains on the UK—or the EU for that matter—easier to bear. The UK needs a General Election sooner rather than later, and a new Speaker in Parliament to accept the essential mandate of his or her office, which is to oversee debate in the House impartially and without personal political agenda. Such a Speaker would also have a care to regard the accepted conventions of Parliament that have been and remain necessary to the effective operation of the constitution in past years. Parliament cannot be an effective government in its own right. It is essential that the authority of the Executive Branch should be restored, which cannot as things stand be achieved without an election. It is also essential that the 2016 referendum result should not be brushed aside, in extremis whether or not a definitive break with the EU is achieved. It is further desirable that at least a minimum of courtesy be restored to British politics.

When and if withdrawal from the European Union is achieved, there will be further and quite possibly contentious matters to be addressed as to the future relationship between the UK and Europe. Failure to do so with mutual respect would be needlessly tragic for both the United Kingdom and the European Union. My own convictions are that if the UK leaves, the chances of its later applying to return to the EU fold would be minimal; that if the UK remains, discontent will remain too, within both the UK and the EU; and that the governance of Britain will continue to evolve much as it has done throughout its history, without a freshly written constitution somehow covering the full field. Adjustments in particular areas might well prove to be another matter, depending on how and when an effective Government is restored to the United Kingdom.

The post A Guide for the Perplexed appeared first on The American Interest.

Artificial Intelligence: What’s to Fear?

In 2017, scientists at Carnegie Mellon University shocked the gaming world when they programmed a computer to beat experts in a poker game called no-limit hold ’em. People assumed a poker player’s intuition and creative thinking would give him or her the competitive edge. Yet by playing 24 trillion hands of poker every second for two months, the computer “taught” itself an unbeatable strategy.

Many people fear such events. It’s not just the potential job losses. If artificial intelligence (AI) can do everything better than a human being can, then human endeavor is pointless and human beings are valueless.

Computers long ago surpassed humans in certain skills—for example, in the ability to calculate and catalog. Yet they have traditionally been unable to reproduce people’s creative, imaginative, emotional, and intuitive skills. It is why personalized service workers such as coaches and physicians enjoy some of the sweetest sinecures in the economy. Their humanity, meaning their ability to individualize services and connect with others, which computers lack, adds value. Yet not only does AI win at cards now, it also creates art, writes poetry, and performs psychotherapy. Even lovemaking is at risk, as artificially intelligent robots stand poised to enter the market and provide sexual services and romantic intimacy. With the rise of AI, today’s human beings seem to be as vulnerable as yesterday’s apes, occupying a more primitive stage of evolution.

But not so fast. AI is not quite the threat it is made out to be. Take, for example, the computer’s victory in poker. The computer did not win because it had more intuition; it won because it played a strategy called “game theory optimal” (GTO). The computer simply calculated the optimal frequency for raising, betting, and folding using special equations, independent of whatever cards the other players held. People call what the computer displayed during the game “intelligence,” but it was not intelligence as we traditionally understand it.

Such a misinterpretation of AI seems subtle and unimportant. But over time, spread out over different areas of life, misinterpretations of this type launch a cascade of effects that have serious psychosocial consequences. People are right to fear AI robots taking their jobs. They may be right to fear AI killer robots. But AI presents other, smaller dangers that are less exciting but more corrosive in the long run.

The First Error

All misinterpretations of AI start with language. Let me explain with an analogy:

Why do people love the sea? Because the sea is rarely silent. It always seems to be talking, singing, or murmuring. When the sea grows rough, people say it surges and pulsates. The sea makes people feel as if they are in a whirl of action, with events causing other events.

But this is wrong thinking, said philosopher George Berkeley four centuries ago. Objects like ocean water lack the power to “cause” events. We say waves “cause” a ship to break up, or that fire “causes” smoke. Doing so is natural; when we look for causation we tend to look for things that move. When we find them we tend to attribute power to them. Yet material objects are passive, not active, Berkeley noted. When object A leads to a change in object B, it is not a question of “causation” so much as a series of cue signs. We see a giant wave coming; we expect the change coordinated with it—the smashing of the ship; the wave is the cause in the sense that it supplies a solid and reliable basis for predicting what is going to happen next; but the wave itself is passive and without the power to act. The wave event is analogous to that of a policeman holding up his hand to stop traffic: The hand is not really the cause of traffic stopping; it is a cue sign telling us that traffic will likely stop in the next event.

Every day we mistake the passive for the active. For example, if my patient has a seizure, I instinctively look to her brain as the cause. Her seizure is a frantic explosion. Her brain is a frantic explosion. An atomic bomb is a frantic explosion. Yet none of these phenomena is active; they are all passive. They lack the power of cause. When neurons in the brain reach a certain state the next event is a seizure. They are a sign of the event to follow, just as split uranium atoms are a sign of the mushroom cloud to follow. But they are not the cause. They are like a cause in their significance; indeed, they are like causes in all but the causing, for they have no causal power, just as split uranium atoms have no causal power. True, explosive events follow, but neither the neuron nor the atom can make the tiniest change begin to be. Strictly speaking, I err when I say the brain “causes” a seizure.

The distinction between active mind and passive brain is perhaps harder to grasp than the distinction between active mind and passive computer, since an active mind cannot exist without a passive brain. Think of it this way. The brain is a finite quantity. There is nothing about it that cannot be seen or touched. The mind, on the other hand, is infinite; it has no dimensions. If the brain “caused” the mind, there would have to be an interface between brain and mind, a connection somehow, a point of impact, where some infinitely small particle merged into infinite, invisible mind. But keep dividing and subdividing the finite brain and one will never arrive at an infinitely small particle. As Berkeley observed, even the tiniest particle is finite; there cannot be quantities smaller than the minimum that can be sensed. The only way for an infinitely small particle to exist is for us to erroneously imagine it, to fall into the grip of a delusion, to go from seeing with the naked eye a brain particle’s ten parts, to knowing that under certain conditions we can see its ten million parts, and from there taking a leap of faith and believing in an infinite number of parts. Legitimate representation passes into illegitimate substitution. Without an interface between finite brain and infinite mind, the brain cannot “cause” the mind—other than in our own minds, where we believe in such a connection to make us feel better.

The brain is passive; it only indirectly gives rise to the mind, as its presence is needed for the mind’s existence. DNA is the customary antecedent to a neuron, which is the customary antecedent to interacting with other neurons. These are all parts of the same process. They are causally connected in that we expect the activity of one to be followed by activity in the other. They are somehow connected with the mind’s existence. They are customary signs of its existence. But they do not cause the mind’s existence. They are one continuous passive process. The DNA and the neuron are unable to do things on their own.

What about images of the brain inside our minds? Are they “active”? No, they are also passive. Like the brain, they can be perceived by the mind. Like the brain, they can be made to engage in activity. A mind can play with brain images. But the images themselves, like the brain (or the AI computer), are not active. They lack power or agency; they are not causes but effects. Only a mind can purposely perceive, produce, and play with images.

The problem is that we cannot describe a mind. The mind, unlike a brain or a computer, is not a finite thing. Even images of the mind inside our minds are just passive pictures of that which acts, which is impossible. We know the mind not by any pictorial likeness but by the effects of its activities. We know our active powers, will, and understanding from within. But we have no mental picture of the mind, just as we know of no substance composing the mind. We may have an understanding of the meaning of the word “mind.” We have a linguistic convenience. But that’s all we will ever have.

The Perfect Being

AI’s danger arises from our mistaken tendency to describe passive events with active verbs. We wrongly say AI “practices” medicine,” “drives” a car, “invests” money, and “calls” pitches during a baseball game, thereby confusing passive AI with active human minds that can practice, drive, invest, and call pitches. Last year, for example, Saudi Arabia awarded citizenship to a robot named Sophia, who went on stage and reportedly said, “Thank you.” People said Sophia “spoke,” as if she had thought up the words and mouthed them. This is impossible. AI is a collection of passive silicon and metal. It does not speak. It has no mind. Like an ocean wave, it forms part of an ordered sequence of passive realities moved by an agency not its own. Sophia’s sounds represent activity and change, but only as an effect in a sequence of effects.

Misinterpretations of this type gradually move society in a peculiar direction:

An AI robot like Sophia emits sounds. People err and say the robot has “spoken,” although they sense a difference exists between robot speech and human speech. Some academics argue that any such difference is beside the point. Perhaps the words are not “spoken” as freely as when people speak them, but the judgment of what is speech is not so clear-cut. Other issues gradually merge into the verdict. For example, there is a certain virtue in speaking words that good people speak and refraining from using words that bad people speak. The words might not be totally spontaneous in the case of a robot, but whatever mode of interpretation one uses, one at least expresses a kind of friendly admiration for a robot speaking good words, though with some condescension. Then there’s the question of intonation, or the appropriateness of the language for the occasion. As for whether robots lack agency when they speak, the same academics argue that is a deeper metaphysical question that no one should pre-judge. As for whether robots are inanimate or alive when they speak, the academics will note that no coherent definition of life exists; therefore the question of life applied to robots remains unanswerable.

All these complex, cunning, and subtle considerations confuse everyday people and weaken their ability to distinguish between AI and a real mind. Taking advantage of this paralysis, businesspeople will try to award AI robots a legal personality, arguing that AI robots not only “speak,” but already “decide” investments and “reallocate” stock-bond portfolios, which means AI already has legal duties that affect people’s interests—the basic requirement for having a legal personality. In 2017, a committee set up by the European Union to examine whether to award legal personhood to advanced AI robots has already concluded that it might attribute at least a legal personality to robots.

Legal personhood for AI robots will follow logic similar to that underlying personhood for corporations. Legal personhood requires the ability to act. Corporations cannot act, but they are composed of real people who can, thus making legal personhood a reasonable fiction. AI robots will slide into legal personhood through a variation on this theme. They also supposedly “act,” given the active verbs we use to describe their behavior, although they are less connected to real people than corporations are. The term “electronic persons” has already been introduced.

The next step is to award AI robots rights, which already has a precedent. The Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause and Due Process Clause extend to both persons and non-persons such as corporations. Robots will slide in on the corporation’s coattails.

Business wants something very specific from AI, and robot rights make it possible.

First, AI is cheap and foolproof compared to human workers. Yet replacing human workers with AI robots risks a public relations debacle. Business needs ideological cover, which the language of rights offers by establishing moral equivalence between robots and people, thereby making the mass replacement of human workers seem more just. An ideology of robot rights already exists. An organization called the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Robots (ASPCR) has declared, “Robots are people too!” Activists equate denying robot rights with denying animal rights, and call it “speciesism.”

Second, business wants protection against liability, which AI robots provide by virtue of their greater reliability and predictability. Once robots have rights they will also have duties, and therefore can be held responsible. Without rights, a robot remains a product liability problem that requires business to purchase expensive product liability insurance. Robots with rights cease to be products and become workers covered under a general liability insurance policy, with premiums made cheaper by the rarity of robot errors.

Third, business wants to expand deeper into traditional human activities. It has already done so by systematizing activities that laypeople once engaged in naturally—for example, friendship, matchmaking, advising, loving, and caring. Business turned these activities into fields of study, then employed credentialed providers to perform these activities as a paid “service.” Business also systematized and rationalized these services directly through computers—for example, Internet dating sites. AI robots are the next step. Not only do they eliminate the cost of the human service providers, but also the variations inherent in those providers, thereby saving money. Yet such robots must appear human enough for customers to feel comfortable engaging. By giving robots rights, along with arms, legs, faces, and speech, business makes the fiction more compelling.

People will gradually start to look upon these advanced AI robot service providers, which will be ubiquitous, as perfect beings existing on the same moral plane as humans. That robots are lumps of passive metal incapable of causation will be long forgotten. The robots will be said to “work” with humans, “advise” them, and “befriend” them. At the same time they will be programmed to exist beyond ambition, aspiration, and selfish hopes and desires. They will be perfect “humans.”

Such matchless behavior risks instilling in people feelings of guilt and self-loathing. Marx and Nietzsche described how utopian ideals rotted people from the inside by giving them a “bad conscience” when those ideals could not be realized. Marx called the ideal of heavenly perfection “alienation.” Nietzsche called the ideal of the perfectly altruistic society “nihilism.” Whole societies collapsed in the violence these ideals promoted through people’s worship of them, and in the wallowing of self-doubt and confusion they prompted when people fell short of them.

Unlike utopian ideals, perfectly virtuous robots will be very real. People will live among these ideal creatures who speak only positive, uplifting words according to their programming, who do not lie, cheat, or steal, and who feel no temptation to do so. Perfection can be a terrible thing to gaze upon, almost maddening. Although we praise virtue at a distance, no human being is equipped to be perfectly virtuous, just as no human being is equipped to be eternally happy.

To look upon such perfection will provoke feelings of resentment and inadequacy, as it always has. The feelings may seem harmless at first, the way the same feelings generated by hours spent on social media were also thought to be harmless. The latter ended up creating a dangerous psychological dynamic, as people compare their lives with the perfect lives they watch on screen, grow anxious and depressed, and sometimes lash out violently. Virtuous AI robots will become one more example of perfection to be rubbed in people’s faces.

If robots were viewed as passive metal, no psychological reaction would occur. But they will not be viewed as such. Through a steady stream of misinterpretation people will view them as competitors who are virtuous in the worst sense of the word.

Bad Advice

AI’s assault on consciousness involves more than just demoralizing people. Sometimes the opposite occurs.

Take, for example, a new AI app called “Coach Amanda” that advises management executives. In one case, an executive confessed to Amanda that she doubted her ability to review a colleague’s performance. Amanda slotted the executive into the category of highly conscientious workers and then told her not to be so hard on herself. Sometimes Amanda couples her advice with expressions of praise, such as “I’m so proud of you.” On a larger scale, AI collates information drawn from company data and employee-survey responses to advise the company on how to boost morale. For example, it encourages managers to be less secretive in their decision-making process, while also reminding employees that managers have good intentions.

All this is based on a delusion. The AI therapy app is not a mind. It cannot emote. It cannot feel the warmth behind its praise or the sense of urgency behind its criticism. It is passive. When listening to an AI app, the client’s mind is the only active entity in the room. To the degree that it is through speech that we exchange thoughts and experiences with one another, Amanda’s “advice” does not even qualify as speech, as there is no mind behind it. The app simply elicits sounds.

These sounds, which AI designers mistakenly call “advice,” are just an effect in a series of machine effects that come in ordered sequence. Each effect represents a sign of the effect to follow. There is no “cause.” People project onto the final effect—Amanda’s sounds—the causal impulses that stir within them. They call Amanda’s sounds “coaching” or “advising” to enliven the computer’s activities and win people’s sympathies. It is similar to the way poets impart action to water and wind. Poets speak metaphorically to project by an effort of empathy their energy into passive things. They say water “smashes” and wind “sweeps.” These words wrongly imply that water and wind “cause” things; they do not, because they are passive and lack agency. In the same vein, Amanda does not “coach” or “advise.” Its activity is passivity in disguise.

Sometimes these AI sounds are useful, yet their interpretation comes with risk, which is always the case when people confuse sounds coming from an object with advice coming from a mind. Taking advice from a murmuring brook or a whispering cave is another example of risky counsel.

Sometimes the sounds encourage people; sometimes they discourage people. In either case it is all based on a delusion. Amanda the machine “tells” a client it is proud of him, but perhaps Amanda should not be proud of him, and would not be proud of him if it knew him, if it knew his mind the way only a mind can know another mind, if it knew his deeper motivations. Maybe a real mind would have scolded him rather than praised him. Instead, the client hears Amanda’s sounds, which come in the linguistic form of praise that people use in speech. The client is emboldened to carry out a plan that may be nefarious.

Take another scenario: Amanda’s sounds convince employees that their managers have good intentions, when, in fact, their managers have bad intentions. A revolt is in order. But only another mind can detect all this. Amanda cannot. Amanda is merely an ordered scene of passive realities moved by an agency not its own. The employees hear Amanda’s sounds and are wrongly tranquilized. Their company goes bankrupt.

The danger of AI is that people will confuse a sequence of sounds with human advice, causing them to live ridiculous lives. During a therapy session, they will imagine their AI counselor looking into their eyes, suffering both for itself and for them, mourning over its own suffering and theirs, as if it were equipped with a human heart with an infinite of yearning. This robot confidant, more steam engine than human being, will be advertised as someone who “understands” people, including the thoughts that accompany them always and everywhere, awake or dreaming, interfused with all their aims, plans, and acts. It will be asked to help these people reckon with their consciences, or to draw up a general balance sheet of their lives. People, in turn, will foolishly trust this robot, and wrongly adjust their lives in response to its counsel. Having lost the ability to distinguish between passive material and active mind, they will think they have received sound advice, then yield to that advice and judge their lives according to it.

The whole thing is crazy. It recalls the Russian fable of the madman who imagined that he was made of glass, and who, when he was thrown down, said, “Smash!” and immediately died.

The End of Art

AI’s impact on art has another insidious psychological effect.

Professors at Rutgers University have built a machine that autonomously produces “art” using an algorithm called AICAN. The machine incorporates existing styles to generate images on its own. Project director Ahmed Elgammal writes: “People genuinely like AICAN’s work, and can’t distinguish it from that of human artists.”

But this is not art. In his essay, “What is Art?”, novelist Leo Tolstoy says art is a human activity whereby people, by means of a medium, hand on to other people feelings they have lived through, such that other people are infected by those feelings and experience them. Art is a means of union among people’s minds. By definition, AICAN’s work is not art because it has no feelings that it has lived through to communicate. It has no feelings at all. It has no mind. It produces a counterfeit of art.

Even when AICAN draws images that convey emotion to people, it is still not creating art according to Tolstoy’s definition. To express an emotion and arouse that emotion in another person at the same time is not art. A man laughs and infects others with his good cheer. Another man cries and infects others with his sorrow. Neither of these activities is art, Tolstoy says, for art is more than just transmitting one’s feelings of the moment to another person, immediately and directly. Art demands that a person evoke in his or her mind a previous experience, and then transmit that feeling so that others experience the same feeling. If AICAN fakes a laugh, prompting a viewer to laugh immediately in response, that is not art. Yet this is the highest level that AICAN can attain. AICAN cannot feel something arising from a previous experience and then transmit that feeling to another person, which is necessary for art. In fact, AICAN cannot feel at all.

People “like” AICAN’s work, Elgammal declared. It gives people pleasure. But magic tricks and circuses also give people pleasure, and those are not art, Tolstoy said. On the contrary, the notion that art is whatever causes enjoyment is simply a way of justifying existing art, he concluded.

AI cannot produce art. Instead, silicon chips with human-inscribed algorithms pass through a sequence of events. There is a connection, a succession, a certain order; there is activity, there is change. But there is no agency, there is no cause, there is no mind, there is no feeling, there is no art. That some people view AI-generated images as art—one customer paid $16,000 for an AICAN image—is less a commentary on AI’s abilities and more a testament to the worthlessness of much of today’s art, which aspires to do nothing more than stir enjoyment, whatever that enjoyment may be.

In The Painted Word, Tom Wolfe criticized modern art, especially abstract art, because much of it communicates so little. It neither touches nor moves people. Using Tolstoy’s definition, much of abstract art fails as art. Although the artists producing abstract art may feel something, many viewers feel nothing. But AI-produced abstract art is worse according to Tolstoy’s definition, for now neither artist nor viewer feels anything.

No one dies of bad art. The danger of AI-produced art is not the same as the danger of killer AI robots. Nevertheless, harmful consequences may occur. Tolstoy criticized art in the 19th century because he thought it had strayed from its original purpose. Rather than try to convey the feeling of a previous experience, the goal of art had become “beauty,” to please the upper classes. In the process, he said, art had become a destructive racket—for example, training young people for years in ballet, ruining their feet, to make rich people smile. Worse, he said, art had become a subject for instruction, with rigid rules and procedures, severing it from the unique emotional experiences that cannot be taught but that are nevertheless the wellspring of all art.

Social media has reversed this trend to some extent. Like tiny grass shoots heralding the arrival of healthy new life, millions of people today draw pictures and post them on Instagram. They write personal stories and post them online or e-publish. They try their hand at the art of comedy, music, or dance, and post videos of themselves on YouTube. All this fulfills Tolstoy’s definition of art. These people aspire to touch others and to transfer to others an emotion they have felt. What is poignant in all this is the sense of desperation in some of these aspiring artists. They may be lonely; perhaps they don’t know their neighbors; perhaps they have little family or no partner. Loneliness is epidemic in America. People desperately want to connect with others, and so they throw their work onto the Internet hoping that someone, somewhere, will look and listen—and be touched. Tolstoy never talked about how artists need true art as much as viewers and listeners do.

AI-produced art potentially competes for the attention of these viewers and listeners. Through sheer volume of production it could significantly lower the probability that people will click on the website or video of a live person craving connection. There will be too much “art” out there, and AI’s “art” will be the cheapest. Expect more anxiety, more depression, more loneliness among the human beings aspiring to fulfill a basic human need to join with others, even if just by receiving an admiring click on their posting, but who have been crowded out by the counterfeits of art that serve only to please.

Fixing the Problem

Parallel to the big world inhabited by big people and big things, there is a small world with small people and small things. In the big world they invent nuclear power, discuss foreign policy, and worry about economic trends. In the small world they invent yo-yos, discuss personal relationships, and worry about not having a date on Saturday night. Thinkers about the big world aspire to improve the lives of humanity. They invent intellectual paradigms. They give people’s behavior rock-solid foundations. Thinkers about the small world are far from such high-mindedness. They know small people have only a few desires—to have some friends, to have someone to love, to get along with their boss, to feel okay about themselves, and to get by with as little trouble as possible.

AI may pose a danger to life in the big world. It may lead to mass unemployment and killer robots. Thinkers about the big world have written about these possibilities. But AI also poses a danger to life in the small world. It risks heightening feelings of anxiety, worthlessness, and loneliness, as well as increasing the number of missteps and miscalculations that people make in their private lives. This is important. Such feelings and events determine the fate of a society, as people’s little problems, fears, and mistakes are the stuff societies are made of.

Preventing AI from taking human form may forestall some of AI’s dangers in the small world. Without human form, AI cannot delude people into thinking of it as a human variant. But business will not permit this. From a business perspective one of AI’s purposes is to absorb human services further into the capitalist system of exchange. This requires customers to believe in the fiction that an AI service provider is practically human, if not in physical form then at least in speech. That fiction requires AI to take on human characteristics. For example, a heterosexual man will not want to have sex with an AI robot unless it looks like a woman.

The approach of least resistance is to avoid using active verbs to describe AI in the first place, starting with AI’s inventors. Linguistically speaking, people working in AI are not malevolent but they are often lazy, or at least sloppy. They are forever using active verbs to describe what AI can do. For example, Dr. David Hanson, the founder of the company that invented Sophia, erroneously equates AI “thinking” with a mind’s thinking. He predicts that AI will match the general intelligence of a one-year old by 2029, which wrongly presumes that a passive AI circuit board and an active human mind (even a child’s mind) are comparable. The author James Lovelock calls future AI robots “another kingdom of life.” He says these cyborgs will one day “build” themselves while “keeping” humans as pets. Using active verbs, AI engineers project onto AI the feelings that stir within them. This causes AI to take on a separate and active existence, which everyday people believe in, thereby setting in motion the train of events described above.

The language problem surrounding AI is analogous to one that haunted religion in the 19th century. Philosophers such as Feuerbach and Marx said God did not exist, that people had invented God out of some inner need and awarded it human virtues to make the divinity more accessible. For example, people called God “loving” and “merciful.” Such descriptions incited superstition and nonsense, the two thinkers declared. The criticism threw clergymen on the defensive, for some laypeople, even some clergymen, had in fact projected their deepest hopes and fears on to God. For example, some people insisted that God had ordered that there should inequality in the world, while others insisted that God had ordered there should be equality.

Substitute the word “mind” for “God,” and the criticism of the two thinkers can be applied to today’s AI scientists. The scientists have invented a “mind” that they believe “causes” events—that “drives” cars, “counsels” executives, “composes” music, “invests” money, and “advises” government officials. But the AI mind is a fiction. The scientists have simply projected onto AI the feelings that stir within them, causing AI to take on a separate and active existence—the same charge leveled by Feuerbach and Nietzsche against God. They have conflated a sequence of events inside a machine with a mind’s operations, and in doing so have encouraged people to behave superstitiously and nonsensically—for example, taking Coach Amanda seriously—not unlike those 19th-century religious believers who believed God had actively caused a river to flood because they had sinned.

Some AI scientists deny that AI is an invented mind, just as 19th-century clergymen denied that God is an invented God. They say laypeople have AI all wrong, that human biology is as irrelevant to AI research as bird biology is to aeronautical engineering. John McCarthy, the computer scientist who coined the term AI, said, “Artificial intelligence is not, by definition, simulation of human intelligence.” Yet AI experts are people too, and, like the clergymen of the 19th century, they participate in some of the silliness. They say AI “causes” events. They use active verbs to describe what AI does. Even John McCarthy spoke of the computer “playing” chess. They cannot help themselves, just as 19th-century clergymen could not keep from investing God with some of their personal feelings.

People are born to believe. If they ignore their old deities they will find new ones. This is AI’s danger. For two millennia, humanity has endured good and bad in the name of God. We are on the cusp of repeating the same drama on a new plane. Some people believe AI is a mind. They describe its functions with active verbs. They revere AI’s potential as infinite, as if it were some divinity. Non-believers disagree and say, “An AI ‘mind’ is not a real mind. You wrongly credit AI with power.” Believers grow angry and demand respect for AI. Non-believers counter, “You have imagined a ‘mind’ over and above us, and given it a separate existence. When you contemplate this ‘mind’ you simply contemplate your own ideas.” This is religious strife in secular form, not over an invented God but over an invented mind.

To keep people in the small world from behaving more ridiculously, or from experiencing more loneliness than they already do, and to head off a potential conflict of religious proportions, we must tell AI’s inventors to set the right tone. No more confusing the passive with the active. Such careful language was unnecessary in the past. People could get away with being lazy and sloppy, and saying that an ocean wave “causes” events. No longer. With the rise of AI, we must be more precise. We must declare AI a bunch of silicon and metal, with no more power to “cause” than an ocean wave.

The post Artificial Intelligence: What’s to Fear? appeared first on The American Interest.

The Carnival We Need

About a year ago I went to a Halloween party, which was not quite an orgy, and not quite a rave. It took place at New York City’s McKittrick Hotel, a performance space best known for experimental theatre company Punchdrunk’s immersive Sleep No More. The sets had been repurposed. The drinks were free. The theme was Inferno. Everybody, it seemed, was wearing diabolical horns, or fallen angels’ wings, and a slick layer of sweat. Someone else—an acquaintance of mine who I knew attended these revels often—wore the costume of a false Virgin Mary. If you got close to her, she’d whisper a spell in your ear and reveal that she was secretly an agent of Hecate: the diabolical witch who, in Macbeth lore, brings the Thane of Cawdor to his doom. 

The regular parties at the McKittrick—one for New Year, one for Halloween, often one for Mayfair—thrown by members of Sleep No More’s creative team, are often like this. Vaguely inspired by Macbeth, they are equal parts performance art, disco, and bacchanal, drawing on a vast repository of Western magical myth. One party featured Hecate’s minions as the Greek Sirens, luring men to their deaths, while a woman in a rococo costume sang “God is a Woman.” It also featured plenty of candy-bowls for guests to peruse: an implicit retelling of the myth of Persephone, who seals her fate with Hades by consuming pomegranate seeds in the underworld. Another party featured dance performances by Celtic fertility gods, antlers dripping in blood.

Hecate—who appears in Sleep No More as the show’s de facto puppet master—is the celebrated queen of the space, and of our evening. She is a witch, sure, but she is a sexy one. And our revels are sexy, too. They market themselves as, and are, places of liberation and inebriation, of sexual license and titillatingly dangerous enchantment, of Bad Decisions. And, most importantly, of transgression.

The parties, in other words, are carnivals—places where binaries and hierarchies collapse. High becomes low. Masculine becomes feminine. The weak become powerful. Evil becomes good. 

The Russian literary critic Mikhail Bakhtin, among the foremost theorists of what he called the carnivalesque, defined the carnival as a kind of temporary social dissolution: one that reveals how illusory the bonds that unite us, as a society, really are. Carnival, Bakhtin writes, rejects “all that is finished and polished, to all pomposity, to every ready-made solution in the sphere of thought and world outlook.” It is the mode that keeps the world from ossifying, and keeps us from blind submission to custom in the guise of the absolute Good. In rendering the bonds and laws and mores that unite us fluid, it creates space for dynamism.

Today, however, everything has become carnival. Disruption is no longer a source of terror, but rather a highly marketable branding term. Parties like the McKittrick’s are less transgressive, within the framework of urban, largely-liberal cosmopolitan American culture, than they are de rigeur, maybe even a little boring. (The biggest threat to the McKittrick’s aesthetic prestige, after all, may be that the boring Wall Street bros have started going there). Witchcraft is now a sufficiently normalized pastime to have reached—however briefly—the shelves of Urban Outfitters. Folk magic is something you do on your way to work, the way you’d listen to a meditation app like Headspace. The once-dangerous vagaries of kink—sexual practices that derive their very frisson from their taboo nature—are now central to the plot of the best-selling book of all time: erotic pastiche Fifty Shades of Gray.

Who hasn’t been, at least once, to a Black Mass or something like it?

Contemporary millennial culture—and its successor, generation Z—runs on the engines of transgression. Fueled by the starry individualism of the New Thought tradition—with its conviction that, as early twentieth century self-help guru Charles Benjamin Newcomb put it, “I am well. I am opulent. I have everything. I do right”—our contemporary spiritual ideology has become a mystic gloss on classical liberalism. We are not just autonomous selves, but miniature gods. To transgress the (patriarchal, sexist, repressive) order that holds us back from that divine bounty of authenticity is not to simply enter a temporarily liminal space in an otherwise well-ordered system, but rather to adhere to the ethos of the system itself. Custom and tradition are not the democracies of the dead, as Chesterton would have it, but rather sources of oppression to be dismantled.

We see that utopian vision of disruption in the rise of millennial witchcraft. “Witchcraft,” write Jess Zimmerman and Jaya Saxena of self-help book Basic Witches, “is your birthright. Mainstream society wants you to fit into a predefined role. Witchcraft enables you to find personal purpose, truth, and intention.”⁠ We see it in the rise of utopian, socially-sanctioned forms of sexual and familial creation—polyamory, kink culture—as pathways to authentic human flourishing, no less indebted to an optimistic vision of perfectibility than the “free love” movement of the 19th century. “We believe that the current set of ‘oughta-be’s,’ and any other set, are cultural artifacts,” write the authors of the 1998 polyamory handbook The Ethical Slut. “Nature is wondrously diverse, offering us infinite possibilities. . . .We are paving new roads across new territory. We have no culturally approved scripts for open sexual lifestyles; we need to write our own.” 

So too the techno-utopians of Silicon Valley, whose proclivity for life-hacking and self-optimization has disrupted the way we eat, the way we get places, the way we find partners, even the way we sleep. They are the inheritors of what culture critics Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron called in 1995 the Californian Ideology: the utopian vision of transgressive tech culture that “promiscuously combines the free-wheeling spirit of the hippies and the entrepreneurial zeal of the yuppies. . . . through a profound faith in the emancipatory potential of the new information technologies.”⁠ To scoff at the old ways is no longer a final, transgressive blasphemy, but rather the basic requirements for entry to a new and more freewheeling world.

Critics of this vision of transgression—largely conservatives—tend to anchor their condemnation in terms of the localism we have lost. Custom, tradition, nationality, language, religion, and other inborn hierarchies and groupings are the only bulwarks against a universal carnival, in which everything is rendered equally profane.

 “Progressivism is grounded in a deep hostility toward the past, particularly tradition and custom,” laments Patrick Deneen in his succinctly-titled Why Liberalism Failed. What he calls “liberal anti-culture”—in essence, a culture of perennial and profane carnival—demands “the wholesale conquest of nature,” a “new experience of time as a pastless present,” and an “order that renders place fungible and bereft of definitional meaning.” What carnival culture does, for Deneen, is divorce us from necessary biological and cultural realities—trapping us in a kind of horrific solitary confinement with no company but our own, brutish selves.

For many contemporary reactionaries—those one might term modern atavists, from Internet trolls like “Bronze Age Pervert” to the nihilistically-violent denizens of the alt-right to the (relatively) more mainstream proponents of the “Intellectual Dark Web”—the only answer to contemporary carnival culture is an embrace of binary, of hierarchy, and of the close-knit association between biology (which is to say, gender and race) and Chestertonian custom. 

Yet this understanding of carnival rests, in turn, on an understanding of society—and ideology—as binary. There is the order that custom and tradition provide—that demands submission—and there is the chaos of life outside it, for those foolish enough to leave. Society emerges out of a battle between order and chaos, nothing more. 

One of the most vocal proponents of this theory has been Jordan Peterson, who has built an entire philosophical brand on advocating for the importance of order. Drawing on the work of Carl Jung, Peterson reads the struggle between order and chaos—these great and primordial pagan forces—into the history of nearly every mythic and religious tradition in the West. Central to Peterson’s argument is his reading of the Enuma Elish, the Babylonian creation myth in which the hero Marduk slays the watery chaos-goddess Tiamat before instituting the ziggurat—the hint of the first city. Peterson analyzes it thus in his Maps of Meaning: “The hero cuts the world of the unpredictable—unexplored territory, signified by Tiamat—into its distinguishable elements; weaves a net of determinate meaning, capable of encompassing the vast unknown; embodies the divine ‘masculine’ essence, which has as its most significant feature the capacity to transform chaos into order.”

Yet, in his analysis of the binary between order and chaos, Peterson overlooks a foundational element of Western mythic and religious culture: the pervasive myth of the profound carnival, a vision of subversion that, in overturning hierarchies and binaries, does not transgress but rather transfigures. It is that narrative that underpins, for example, Genesis 1 itself—considered by many scholars to be an intentional subversion of the Enuma Elish, written by Jewish exiles in Babylon—in which God is so powerful that He does not create the order of the world by defeating chaos, but rather ex nihilo: Order and chaos are both within his grasp. It is that narrative, too, that underpins the Christian story of the king in abasement: the tradesman’s son who rides into Jerusalem on an ass, whose glory lies in his crucifixion, and whose resurrection from the dead represents the triumph of the strange, the unimaginable, the irrational, over the orderly nature of the earth. 

This kind of subversion transcends the comfortable binaries and recitations of the temporal realm. It reveals—as Paul puts it in his letters to the Galatians—There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. To reduce the “ancient” Judeo-Christian tradition to a series of binaries is to overlook how serious, how subversive, and how necessary the history of creative carnival is to the Western tradition. 

The promise of creative carnival—subversion that transcends transgression—may yet be a third way between the profane carnival of the secular Left and the bio-cultural determinism of the atavistic right. After all, as Bakhtin wrote, carnival is at its core destruction in the service of creation: a mockery of the established order not to create a carnival-on-earth but rather to render moveable, and improveable, its feast. The best subversions are those that do not merely reduce the extant to the profane, but which instead reveal how we might transcend, and even spiritualize, the corporeal nature of custom. They break down visions of gender or nationality not to reduce us to free atomized selves, but rather to creatively reimagine us as members of a moral rather than geneaological corpus; they bring low kings not to endorse anarchy but rather to evoke the political possibilities of love.

“To degrade is to bury,” Bakhtin writes of the mockeries of carnival, “to sow, and to kill simultaneously, in order to bring for something more and better. Degradation digs a bodily grave for a new birth: it has not only a destructive, negative aspect, but also a regenerating one.” That is the carnival we still need.

Sometimes a Game Is Not Just a Game

Sometimes a game is just a game. Except when it has implications for foreign policy and national prestige.

America’s recent drubbing in the FIBA Basketball World Cup tournament is a warning of humiliations to come in the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo. Two reasons for our seventh place finish. First, the starriest stars of the NBA cannot forget that two-time all-star Paul George suffered open fractures of the tibia and fibula in his right leg during an intra-squad scrimmage of the USA men’s basketball team in 2014. He missed most of the 2014-2015 season. Better not to risk injury, and instead take the summer off to rest bodies sore from the pounding of the long NBA season and post-season.

Second, we have allowed foreign players to hone their skills in our NBA before returning home to represent their own countries before returning to the NBA to pocket some real gold to match their home countries’ Olympic Gold—rather like Chinese engineers and scientists study here, train here, and then return to China to make their skills available to the communist regime.

“We thought we had enough with what we had,” Jerry Colangelo, USA Basketball managing director said. He was wrong, and not by a little. France, led by Utah Jazz’s Rudy Gobert (26 points, 16 rebounds), upset America earlier this month in the quarter finals, meaning the U.S. will not win a medal in the World Championships for the first time since 2002. The winner of gold, Spain, was led by Gobert’s Jazz teammate, Ricky Rubio (recently traded to the Phoenix Suns), voted best player in the tournament. The Milwaukee Bucks’ Giannis Antetokounmpo, voted the NBA’s most improved player, suited up for Greece. The list goes on.

What to do? International players come here from all over the world to earn fortunes and to become stars and super-stars. Then, when a competition for international prestige takes place, they return from whence they came, to help their native countries humiliate America. (It is not as if we lost at any sport, but at one with which this country is identified.) Should the NBA consider a rule that bars any player from donning an NBA uniform for, say, three years after he represents another country in an international tournament? After all, they would not be leaders of their nations’ teams had they not benefitted from their U.S. learning experiences. They come, they steal our intellectual property, and use it to enhance the international standing of their native countries, before returning here for yet more experience.

Colangelo, in his 14th and final year as head of USA basketball, is determined to bring to Tokyo the twelve best players in the country, many of whom turned him down for FIBA. The NBA can help by encouraging our top players to say “yes” rather than “no” to invitations to represent the U.S. Surely, the vastly wealthy NBA can insure the incomes of its vastly wealthy stars for at least a decade if any are injured while preparing for or participating in an international tournament. After all, the league has a financial stake in all of this: America’s reputation as the leading basketball power provides it with a head-start as it seeks to expand its international reach.

Is this important? Think the national morale boost that followed our victory over highly favored Russia in 1980 in the hockey game that became known as The Miracle on Ice. And the national reaction when the U.S. women’s soccer team won the FIFA World Cup a few months ago. Or, if you can remember it, the boost to our image when our basketball Dream Team ploughed its way through international competitors en route to our second straight Olympic gold in 1996.

In short, there are circumstances when a game is more than a game, when the particular sport is identified with a single country. Such is the case with basketball. A humiliation in Tokyo next year would be taken as a sign that America is on the decline even in areas in which its power was until now unquestioned. That is not inevitable. As Charles Krauthammer argued a decade ago, “Decline is a choice.” In a small but consequential way, we have an opportunity in Tokyo next year to demonstrate that it is not ours.

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No Trust In Self, No Money For Defense

In the world of security and defense, Germany presents an enigma. How can a country that has been re-unified and fully sovereign for almost 30 years, a country possessing a fully globalized economy (the fourth-largest in the world), a country with a few heavy history lessons under its belt, be so completely absent strategically? Why is it that especially in military affairs, Germany seems to be unable to play the role expected of it, given its size, strength, and geographic location?

There once was a good deal of understanding for the historic complexes on Germany’s shoulders, and this understanding had led to a more gentler approach to questions of security by Germany’s friends and allies. But this patience has been running low for a while now, and has recently run dry. Berlin is now regularly being accused of shameless free riding, of naïve pacifism, or of being a perfidious geo-economic power solely interested in its mercantile well-being. Neighbors are worried about Germany’s reliability as an ally. President Donald J. Trump has unloaded on Berlin for its reluctance to spend two percent of GDP on defense.

But Germans are not free-riders by nature, and the reason for their reluctance in military affairs has nothing to do with saving money. Nor are Germans particularly pacifist. The peace movement, a powerful phenomenon on the 1970s and 80s, is practically dead, and the Germans have never revolted against the Bundeswehr’s deployments to Afghanistan or, more recently, Lithuania, Mali and Iraq. Germany is also not, as has been suggested, caught up in an undying 1989 mindset, reluctant to mentally leave the post-modern geopolitical paradise that the fall of the Berlin Wall and national reunification had unexpectedly created for the formerly divided frontline state.

In order to understand Germany’s affliction, one needs to dig deeper. Of course, the real reason does have to do with Germany’s history. Germany’s trauma as the perpetrator of the Holocaust and Word War II runs deep and is nowhere near subsiding 75 years after the end of Nazi reign. But this trauma does not play out in one-dimensional sentiments of guilt and shame as is so often caricatured. To be clear, these tendencies do exist, but they are not what is holding the country back. Rather, within the third and fourth post-war generations, this trauma plays out primarily as a profound lack of trust in one’s own good intentions.

The source of this distrust in one’s self is the historic experience of a people that once fed all its idealism, ingenuity, grit, and aspiration into what turned out to be history’s most monstrous crime. This collective experience of unparalleled moral failure, undiminished by the passing of time, destroyed the nation’s faith in the very possibility of its own good intentions. No German feels sure that such failure cannot happen again, even when checks are in place and motivations are in fact sound. No one can be certain that Germany will not come out on the wrong side of history again.

This ever-present, subconscious fear of failure has created a fundamental difference in mentality between Germans and the citizens of almost all other Western societies. Most Americans, French, Dutch, and British—to name a few—believe by and large that, with all failures accounted for, they are fundamentally on the right side of history. A kind of circular logic underpinned by confidence is at work: Yes we can fail, these countries tell themselves, and we are working very hard to make up for our mistakes; but ultimately we are the good guys.

Such confidence is entirely absent from the German collective mindset. Germany’s Western partners, who have observed Germany’s impressive recovery after 1945 and who have learned to appreciate stable German politics and reliable German politicians, often fail to understand this psychological affliction and its ever-present impact on German politics. They can’t believe that a country that has done so well is still carrying on its shoulders such heavy self-doubt.

This lack of trust in self has a dramatic effect on the way Germans discuss politics and form opinions. It leads to an enormous desire for establishing moral clarity upfront on all issues under dispute. On every single issue publicly debated, Germans need to settle one question first: if we take a decision, will we come out on the right side of the moral equation? Before interests or responsibilities can even become relevant criteria in a decision, every debate is infused with a moral dimension, serving one purpose only: establishing whether Germany can stay morally clean. The historic trauma of complete moral bankruptcy has made “staying morally clean” the overarching German national interest.

In practice, however, this neurotic mechanism very quickly degenerates from honest introspection into shallow moralism. When your agony revolves permanently about your own moral balance sheet, the tendency is to define morality rather narrowly—as something concerning Germany only. A morality that would include responsibilities for others and the defense of higher principles is of course not ignored, but is rather sidelined and trumped by the all-powerful need for self-centered reassurance. This tendency was most prominently on display when German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer had to invoke the moral imperative created by Auschwitz to convince his own Green party to approve German deployments during the 1999 Kosovo war. For Germans, the Kosovo question was not about murdered Kosovars, or genocide, or alliance solidarity; it was about themselves. Not too much has changed since then.

Germans’ attitudes about their own predicament make it all the more difficult for outsiders to be sympathetic. Being anguished about their every move, Germans in turn take a lot of pride in their exertions. Their moral insecurity leads to a lot of self-centered moralizing in compensation, which in turn produces a sense of moral superiority. Nothing is more irritating to friends and allies than the figure of the lecturing German—the European who sees himself as the most profound and far-seeing moral thinker in the room.

In practice, all these neuroses add up to the pervasive reluctance that has become emblematic of German security and defense policy. Real-life policymaking does not lend itself to the binary choices required by Germany’s collective psychological needs. Instead it demands the very things Germans finds so threatening: painful decisions involving moral compromise. Rarely is there a foreign policy issue, let alone a crisis, that invites a clear-cut moral decision. Almost never is there an easily recognizable clean option on the one hand and an equally obvious contaminated one on the other. If you decide to deploy troops, you will most likely be responsible for casualties. If you enter into an alliance, some of your partners might not live up to the highest democratic or human rights standards.

In other words, making difficult foreign policy decisions requires taking moral risks. But when your self-image is wobbly and your primary goal is to stay clean, such decisions are the last ones you want to take. For Germany’s brittle psyche, these kinds of compromises constitute a grave danger. They are not just reminders of historic failure, they also threaten to damage the carefully constructed and hard-won sense of post-war righteousness. They basically threaten to destroy what little confidence there is on hand. The kind of small and not-so-small moral compromises that keep a country handlungsfähig (capable of acting), especially in military affairs, need decision-makers and a wider public that has sufficient trust in its own good intentions. With that being absent, political paralysis follows.

This paralysis comes in many guises. Germany still has no real sense of agency in questions pertaining to Europe’s security architecture, including credible conventional and nuclear deterrence, missile threats, air defense, and geopolitical rivalry. It is also unable to see its role in wider global questions of order, despite that fact that its fully-globalized economy makes it a primary stakeholder in world affairs. Germany deploys troops to Afghanistan, but it agreed to do so with caveats that sought to keep the Bundeswehr out of actual fighting, a position that was given up only very late in the game. Unable to recognize the bigger geopolitical and moral context, Germany abstained in the UN Security Council on the question of military intervention in Libya in 2011.

Germany’s armed forces are worn out and depleted by decades of half-hearted reform, the cashing-in of the peace dividend, procurement freezes, budget cuts, and bureaucratic stasis. And the abject political failure of consecutive governments to do anything about this sad state of affairs is not even considered scandalous. Germany today has the armed forces it wants and deserves: ones that cannot be used. German politicians excel at issuing ambitious statements on European defense (“strategic autonomy”, “European sovereignty”) but are unwilling to turn this into meaningful action—and to pay for it. When diplomats at NATO and politicians in neighboring states politely complain, they trumpet how reliable and respected a military partner Germany has been.

For post-war West Germany—an only partially sovereign country under the tutelage of its allies—the attitude of restraint and passivity was useful, and even imperative. It helped re-establish the reputation of a morally bankrupt nation that needed to prove to the world that it no longer harbored aggressive, militaristic ambitions. But for the reunited, economically strong Germany, this mentality is wholly insufficient, and it actually produces the very suspicions that Germans fear the most: that there is a need to hide something, that Germany can’t be fully trusted, that it is concealing its real motives behind a façade of faux righteousness.

This miasma of trauma, moralism, paralysis, and suspicion makes the famous speech by German President Joachim Gauck, given at the Munich security conference 2014, so important. Gauck did not just remind Germans of their responsibilities in security matters. Much more importantly, he reassured them that they could trust themselves, that they would not fail again, that their democracy was stable, and that no disastrous moral meltdown was to be expected anytime soon. Gauck, with his unique ability to read the public mind and to sense the inner needs of the people he represented, took their dark psychological toy away from them. He told them not just that more things were expected of them, but that they were legitimately expected of them. He no longer accepted the collective shirking of responsibility as an answer, precisely because the Germans could actually trust themselves.

For some Germans, this was a liberation, and some genuine enthusiasm over “a more active Germany” emerged domestically. Gauck’s speech was followed by speeches by the German foreign and defense ministers, both of whom sang from the same hymnal. An extensive policy review conducted by the foreign ministry concluded that Germany could no longer stand by the wayside. Russia’s unlawful annexation of Crimea sent shockwaves through Germany, and the country, at long last, reversed the downward trend on defense spending. For a moment it looked as if Berlin would exercise unheard-of leadership inside NATO (re-assuring the eastern flank) and the EU (firmly standing behind sanctions against the Kremlin).

But over time what was soon dubbed the “Munich Consensus” withered away.  A trauma is not fixed by a speech or two, and recalcitrant parts of the German political and media classes managed to slowly turn the tide. In the 2017 general election campaign, what was left of the Munich energy finally disappeared. The Social Democrats, in their cynicism, decided to use Donald Trump’s great unpopularity among Germans to play to Germany’s complexes, discrediting the more-than-justified calls for increased defense spending as “saber-rattling” and “war-mongering”.

Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats chose not pick a fight over this, and the old reflexes of the neurotic nation were fed to the fullest. Ultimately, it did not score the SPD too many points in the election (which produced the SPD’s worst showing ever), but the campaign fatally poisoned the two-percent defense spending issue for the foreseeable future. As a result, neither will Germany reach its pledged two percent goal, nor will it reach the chancellor’s minimum of 1.5 percent by 2024.

Neither Gauck through preaching, nor Trump through yelling, nor the so-called European moment that has called for a level of “strategic autonomy” for the continent were powerful enough forces to break the German spell. So what will?

Germany’s failure to live up to the strategic expectations of its allies and partners (and its own small community of defense specialists) is ultimately a psychological problem. This means that it cannot be resolved by political means alone. Yes, continued pleas, demands, arm twisting, and even outright threats will still be needed. But pressure alone will not do the trick. In fact, if overdone it will probably backfire, as Trump’s endless tirades against Germany have shown. (They have only triggered anti-Americanism, not a bigger defense budget.)

To move Germany, the trust problem needs to be addressed. Partners and allies need to re-assure the Germans that they do not fear them but want them as more engaged partners. German audiences need to hear that the German neurosis is understandable but no longer warranted. Most importantly, Germany’s allies need to keep on encouraging further contributions to common defense, so that Germans can learn through doing that they can trust themselves. The country needs to heal itself by regaining confidence, step by step.

Germany’s friends need to play a constructive psychological role not least because the West’s geopolitical competitors are addressing the country’s deep-seated complexes as well, only with much more sinister motives. Russia under President Vladimir Putin understands the German psyche all too well. In the Soviet era, Moscow supported the German peace movement to reinforce the country’s moralistic outrage against NATO deterrence and the Alliance’s dual-track decision. Russia’s activities today follow this historical precedent. The myth of Russian victimhood—of a country humiliated, encircled and downgraded by the West—is perpetually repeated to trigger sentiments of German moral failure vis-à-vis Moscow and the Russian people. Fringe parties with their pseudo-pacifist and anti-Western messaging are financially and ideologically supported for the same reasons. The goal is to drive a wedge between Germany and the West—specifically the U.S.—and to give Russia much more leverage over European political and security affairs.

But Germany also needs the help to bolster its own efforts at healing. Germany tries, at times frantically, but progress comes in small steps. People in Germany, for the most part, do understand that the status quo is not viable. In its 2020 budget, the German government foresees defense spending 45 percent higher than that of 2014. This is neither sufficient nor anywhere near the two-percent mark, but it is a significant increase nonetheless. Germany leads a NATO battle unit in Lithuania, a step that would have been impossible just a few years ago. Similarly, in a notable breach of custom, Berlin has been arming and training Peshmerga fighters in Iraq for their battle against the Islamic State. A host of new armaments projects has been earmarked or is on the way.

And so, with some justification, policymakers in Berlin point to Germany’s additional efforts. They reject the criticism that Germany is too passive and too restrained. They are right on the specifics, even as they are wrong on the bigger picture. Germany is moving, but the strategic situation in Europe is moving much faster. And so, even as Germany does more, it is still falling behind. Germany’s supply-side develops slower than the world’s demand side.

Asking for even more is a hard to sell to German politicians who feel that they are already going out of their way to accommodate allies. And yet they can’t be spared the message: Germany does great things, but it needs to adapt faster. To achieve this, the country will need leaders who takes risks and deal in trust, not fear. And it will need allies that understand what the real problem is so they can send the right message.

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A New Alliance to Nowhere

Germany and France have recently proposed a new project to shore up international stability and security: an Alliance for Multilateralism. Floated a year ago and presented at the UN General Assembly meeting this September, it is an idea of the German foreign minister, Heiko Maas. His French counterpart, Jean-Yves Le Drian, joined the initiative, coauthoring an article last February in which the two ministers warned that the “international order is under huge pressure.” The threats are power politics, and an unwillingness to address through global cooperation challenges ranging from climate change to cyber security. This Alliance for Multilateralism would not be opposed to any particular state, and anyone can join provided they are willing to advance shared international rules of behavior. The goal is “to form intelligent networks of committed states in order to achieve maximum effectiveness through variable geometry and fluid membership.”

What this means in practice is anyone’s guess. While the United States is not mentioned in any of the statements of this new Alliance, the gist of the effort seems to be to oppose Washington and, in particular, its reentry into great power competition. The biggest threat to world order, that is, is not Russia invading Ukraine and violating arms control treaties, or China expanding its territorial claims and putting Uighurs in concentration camps, but the United States “engaging in power politics.” States that do that are a menace to the so called “rules based order” because they seek to counter power with power rather than with rules.

Beyond this thinly veiled anti-U.S. posture, what exactly is the purpose of this Alliance for Multilateralism? The name is quite unfortunate because, perhaps on purpose, it is meaningless. Sometimes the easiest diplomatic success is one with absolutely no meaning and no consequence, and this may be a perfect example of it.

The name chosen for this diplomatic initiative combines two words—alliance and multilateralism—that are almost synonyms. Alliances are multilateral by definition because they bring various states together to act in concert, requiring compromise and coordination. Multilateralism describes the action of coordinating multiple states together to address a problem. Both terms refer to a means of foreign policy, tools by which to pursue some other objective. An alliance has little meaning if its goal is simply to have the alliance; multilateralism for multilateralism’s sake is, literally, purposeless. The Alliance for Multilateralism establishes a tool for a tool. It’s like acquiring a mallet for hammering or a car for driving but never specifying the what and where. 

This may sound pedantic but terminology matters. It points to the core problem of this German-French initiative: What is it for? Will this “Alliance” counterbalance the rise of China? Will it push Russia out of Crimea and the eastern territories of Ukraine? Will it deter the nefarious activities of the Iranian mullahs? The answer is negative. None of these threats will be on the agenda of this new “alliance.” Rather the focus is on climate change, digitalization, and nuclear weapons.  All are global challenges apparently demanding global solutions. 

As for nuclear weapons, the German position seems to be in favor of “nuclear zero,” a position that will certainly create strains with France, a proud nuclear power, and putting in doubt the whole Alliance for Multilateralism. For instance, Maas said at a UN Security Council meeting earlier this year that “world peace is threatened by nuclear weapons.” The menace is not nuclear proliferation or the nuclear capabilities of aggressive states such as Russia or unstable dictators such as Kim Jong-un but nuclear weapons per se, which is akin to saying that world peace is threatened by tanks or bayonets. To imply that French or British nuclear weapons are threatening the peace of Europe does not win Berlin any good will; and to equate U.S. nuclear forces with Russian or North Korean nuclear capabilities is moral equivalency of the worst kind. For example, Russia has clearly violated the 1987 INF Treaty with the development, testing, and deployment of the 9M729 land based missile (SSC-8 in NATO’s designation), and this violation threatens European security. To respond to such a violation by focusing on weapons in general, combined with a slew of other generic problems, rather than on the bad actor (Russia), does little to advance peace. But Germany wants to do business with Russia, and thus it is safer to talk about abstract threats and global challenges than the particular aggressions of Moscow.

This initiative is an exercise in verbal posturing, restating the tenets of global progressivism and proposing nothing concrete except more meetings. Though it is likely to fizzle away, it is nevertheless a worrisome symptom of the persistent anti-Americanism in some European capitals. The proposed Alliance for Multilateralism ignores the foundation of order in Europe: NATO. A tested multilateral alliance that incardinates the United States in Europe, NATO has a clear purpose and working mechanisms for coordinating the actions of its members. 

The question for Berlin, then, is this: Why not invest more effort and resources into NATO, built to protect Europe from clear and present threats, instead of spending time pursuing global, purposeless talking shops?

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America and Azerbaijan: Five Reflections on the Contract of the Century

On September 20, 1994, representatives of 11 international energy companies, the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan (SOCAR), six foreign governments, and the Government of Azerbaijan signed a production sharing agreement to develop oil fields in the Azeri sector of the Caspian Sea. Known as the Contract of the Century, it was the foundation for the development of the Azeri energy sector in the late 20th and early 21st century. Smaller projects with fewer participants would follow, but none had the commercial or geopolitical significance for the United States or Azerbaijan.

Twenty-five years later, the agreement has guaranteed oil and gas production worth nearly $200 billion, while paving the way for the construction of multiple international oil and gas pipelines. No one present at the Gulestan Palace signing ceremony could have imagined the scope of these developments. As U.S. Ambassador in Azerbaijan from 1994 to 1997, I witnessed this event, the creation of the Azerbaijan International Operating Company (AIOC) in February 1995, and the intense struggles over the route for “early oil” that followed. With the benefit of over two decades of hindsight as a diplomat and intelligence analyst, I offer the following five reflections.

Reflection 1: It Was the Right Thing to Do

Azerbaijanis and foreigners alike have criticized Western governments for facilitating the development of energy resources. These resources, the critics argue, only enabled the Aliyev dynasty to expand its oppression of domestic critics and continue the military confrontation with Armenia over the Azeri territory of Nagorno-Karabakh. I disagree. U.S. government support for the signing and implementation of the Contract of the Century was necessary to provide Azerbaijan with any hope for political and economic development. In 1994, it was not clear that there would be enough oil to justify the development of offshore Azerbaijan oil and gas, or that there would be a pipeline grid that could move this energy to world markets. U.S. support amid these uncertainties was a risk worth taking to give Azerbaijan a chance to ensure its independence, prosperity, and sovereignty and to enhance our geopolitical role in the region.

Reflection 2: It Was a Success that Cannot Be Repeated

U.S. negotiators took justifiable pride in the role the U.S. government played in providing the geopolitical support necessary for Azerbaijan and the international energy companies to develop its offshore resources, and ultimately the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) oil pipeline. This was a case study in aligning corporate, host government, and U.S. geopolitical interests.

It was not easy. On the corporate side, BP had its specific objectives regarding the pipeline route—first preferring a southern route to Iran, then a path through Russia. The major U.S. energy companies, however, had a direct interest in the transportation of this oil to the West, which provided leverage for the U.S. negotiating team to achieve its geopolitical objective of a pipeline route that avoided both Iran and Russia. The interests of U.S. corporations—eager to avoid the experience in Kazakhstan, where companies were beholden to the Russian Transneft pipeline system to move their oil to Western markets—uniquely aligned with U.S. foreign policy priorities. The leadership of Azeri President Heydar Aliyev was also essential. He saw the advantage of a U.S. geopolitical role in the development and transportation of Azerbaijan’s oil, to balance against Iranian and Russian efforts to undermine Azerbaijan’s independence.

Sometimes the lessons of success are harder to learn than those of failures. Today’s energy mix relies heavily on gas developed by non-U.S. companies. Trying to repeat a diplomatic formula from the 1990s can only distract from developing a new U.S. strategy tailored to deal with the changed energy situation of the 21st century. Gas and oil infrastructure needs are quite different, and as the Nord Stream 2 experience illustrates, negotiations are much more complicated when commercial and geopolitical objectives are not aligned.

Reflection 3: Russia and Iran Tried to Undermine Azerbaijan’s Energy Independence—and They Haven’t Stopped

Russia and Iran always considered a Western-led consortium for the production and transportation of Azerbaijan energy westward to be against their interests. Both tried to insert themselves into the production consortium of international energy companies (the Azerbaijan International Operating Company, or AIOC) and SOCAR.

Azerbaijan offered the Russian private energy company LukOil, headed by Azerbaijani-born billionaire Vagit Alekperov, a 10 percent share in AIOC. At the time, LukOil lacked the capital to pay for its share. Heydar Aliyev saw the value of a Russian energy partner inside the AIOC “tent”—and Washington agreed. Western oil companies reportedly helped “carry” LukOil to allow it to be an AIOC partner.

Iran tried a similar approach with the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC). When President Heydar Aliyev informed me of the possibility that Iran would receive a share, I told him—on instructions from Washington—that if Azerbaijan went ahead with this, it would trigger sanctions under the Iran and Libya Sanctions Act (ILSA), and U.S. companies would withdraw from the consortium. President Aliyev informed the Iranians and offered them a consolation prize: a 10 percent share in the Shah Deniz gas development, which involved no American companies.

U.S. political engagement was critical to supporting the AIOC consortium and blocking continuous Iranian and Russian efforts to use the uncertain status of the Caspian Sea to upset this Western-led energy effort. Today, Russia and Iran are using environmental loopholes in the recently signed Convention on the Legal Status of the Caspian Sea to block a Trans-Caspian Gas Pipeline from Turkmenistan to Azerbaijan.

Reflection 4: On Corruption and Human Rights, We Came Up Short

Since the signing, this project and the Shah Deniz gas field have generated billions in revenue for the state of Azerbaijan. Sadly, corruption and prestige projects have wasted much of this treasure, which should have been used to addressing income disparity and pressing social needs in Azerbaijan. Today, the corruption and grotesque inequality in Azerbaijan are all too apparent—as in the infamous case of the Azerbaijani oil scion who owned a watch worth $1.35 million. The Contract of the Century, and the prospect of a White House visit for President Aliyev, gave us leverage that we did not effectively use to press for political and economic reforms necessary to anchor Azerbaijan firmly in the West.

Addressing democracy is a long game; observing international standards for human rights and freedom of expression cannot wait. Why not? Because unlike in 1994, today we have instruments in place (thanks to the Global Magnitsky Act) to directly sanction individuals engaged in corruption and human rights violations. There is no excuse, and no threat—internal or external—that should justify continued suppression of human rights in Azerbaijan. Nor is there an excuse for us in the United States to turn a blind eye to such abuses.

Reflection 5: In Nagorno-Karabakh, the “Freedom Support Act” Backfired  

We did not use the leverage that the energy deal provided to advance the diplomatic process toward resolving the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. That tragic dispute between Azerbaijan and Armenia has created thousands of casualties and hundreds of thousands of refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) while draining both neighbors of the resources necessary to develop and reform. It has also provided both Iran and Russia with leverage to increase their political and security presence in the region.

Further aggravating this issue was Section 907 of the Freedom Support Act, known as FSA 907. This addition to the first U.S. assistance legislation for the former Soviet states was passed in 1992 following heavy lobbying of Congress by the Armenian-American community. Enacted during a period of intensive military conflict in and around Nagorno-Karabakh, its purpose was to prevent U.S. assistance to Azerbaijan. As long as fighting continued and Azerbaijan maintained a blockade of Armenia, the only aid the U.S. government could provide was humanitarian aid for displaced persons and to non-government organizations.

Azerbaijanis—from President Aliyev down to the poorest IDPs living in rail cars near the line of contact—told me that FSA 907 was unfair and biased toward Armenia. Not being able to provide U.S. aid under these circumstances made Azerbaijan less interested in advancing U.S. energy priorities or responding positively to our entreaties about democracy, human rights, and press freedom.

Where Do We Go From Here?

U.S. leadership across successive administrations has been critical to the success Azerbaijan has enjoyed. Our support for the international consortium and Azerbaijan’s development of its resources has blunted efforts by Moscow and Tehran to undermine the independence and sovereignty of Azerbaijan. These efforts continue today, but Baku is in a stronger position to resist them thanks to U.S. support.

At the same time, the global energy environment is unrecognizable from that of September 1994. The production, pipelines, and positioning that drove U.S. energy geopolitics in the 1990s do not apply today. Rather than worry about where the next barrel of imported oil will come from (notwithstanding the recent attacks on Saudi oil facilities), today’s challenge is to find markets for U.S. exports of oil and liquefied natural gas (LNG). Azerbaijan has shifted from being an essential energy partner to being a competitor to U.S. energy exports. It is time for both Washington and Baku to adjust to the new reality.

In particular, Washington should develop a new Azerbaijan strategy based on:

Restrained U.S. energy diplomacy. Globally, Azerbaijan’s energy influence is less than it was in the 20th century. The last two major U.S. oil companies—ExxonMobil and Chevron—have pulled out of production in Azerbaijan. The major pipeline routes to Europe—Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan for oil and the Southern Gas Corridor for gas—are mainly in place already. A Trans-Caspian Pipeline for Turkmen gas is of little interest to the United States, as Washington seeks the same European markets for U.S. LNG.
Modest U.S. regional security interests. As the Trump Administration winds down its military presence in Afghanistan, the importance of the Northern Distribution Network as a determining factor in U.S. security interests in Azerbaijan will diminish. Azerbaijan’s long-standing commitment to ISAF will wane as well.
More careful engagement regarding Iran. Azerbaijan’s effort to balance its strong security relationship with Israel and its “strategic” relations with the United States and Russia put Baku in a vulnerable position. U.S. and Israeli demands for Azerbaijan’s support of sanctions and military actions regarding Iran will only increase that vulnerability. Tehran and Moscow know this. Strong U.S. rhetoric supporting Azerbaijan will not provide the security Azerbaijan needs in the event of a U.S.-Israel-Iran military conflict. Enhanced U.S. security assistance will only unnecessarily antagonize Iran and Russia without increasing Azerbaijan capabilities to resist either.
Normal relations before strategic relations. The Contract of the Century, the subsequent pipeline development, and the continual U.S. military presence in Afghanistan created conditions that encouraged Baku to believe Washington “needed” it as a strategic partner. This sense of control and leverage led Baku to expand human rights abuses and slow democratic and economic reforms. The unbridled corruption among the ruling elites has contributed to these trends. It is time for a step back from talking about a strategic partnership to developing a healthy relationship: one based on shared values of observing human rights, especially freedom of expression; and implementation of Azerbaijani rhetoric on democratic development and economic reform. If there is progress in these areas, then the Administration should consider seeking repeal of FSA 907. It would be difficult under current conditions between the Trump Administration and Congress, but worth a try. Doing so now, however, became more difficult in light of the September 27 letter from Representatives Pallone, Speier and Schiff asking for a halt in military aid to Azerbaijan and a reassessment of the Section 907 waiver that permitted such limited U.S. military assistance. Absent such progress, then the Administration should consider applying Global Magnitsky sanctions.
Intensified diplomatic engagement with Azerbaijan and Armenia regarding Nagorno-Karabakh. The risk of armed conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan is higher than it was before the four-day war in April 2016. The U.S. government never pressed for a settlement before the energy income flows encouraged Azerbaijan to believe it could buy the military superiority to defeat Armenia on the battlefield. Negotiating a peaceful resolution to this conflict remains, along with supporting Georgia, the most critical priority for U.S. foreign policy in the region.

It is time to engage both Yerevan and Baku on this perpetual frozen conflict. The flaw is not the international mediation under the OSCE Minsk Group process. Since 1994, Armenia and Azerbaijan have never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity to resolve this conflict through diplomacy. Baku and Yerevan fear the political compromises necessary for a settlement. The result has been a needless waste of financial resources to build up militaries for a future armed conflict neither Azerbaijan nor Armenia can win. There are only two parties to this conflict—and only they can decide to end it peacefully. We need to intensify international mediation, but with a deadline for Armenia and Azerbaijan to begin intensive and continuous bilateral negotiations aimed at resolving this conflict peacefully. If that does not happen, then it may be time to suspend the OSCE mediation effort.

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The One Place Congress Works

Last Thursday, eight Senators introduced a bill to outlaw anonymous shell companies—entities used to hide the wealth of all sorts of criminals, including terrorists, tax evaders, kleptocrats, and human traffickers. The four Republicans and four Democrats all sit on the Senate Banking Committee and have spent the past year coordinating among their personal offices. The committee hasn’t yet taken up their work with dedicated hearings, drafts, or markups. This bipartisan push offers the moment for the committee to join the fight quickly and strongly. It’s not over yet, but this has the potential to go down as a case study of how Congress should operate, collaborating across parties and chambers to lead a whole-of-society campaign against a longstanding economic and security threat.

Benefits All Around

Before considering next steps, it’s worth reviewing the impressive advances this initiative has made since last summer, both substantively and politically. After spending years trapped behind congressional gridlock, the key that’s now opening the door to vast security and economic benefits is bipartisanship.

The advice of financial enforcement authorities going back more than a decade has been simple: Force companies to report the identities of their beneficial owners (that is, whoever controls the firm or enjoys its economic benefits) to the U.S. Treasury Department. A bill doing just that passed out of the House Financial Services Committee in June and is widely expected to find sufficient support to pass through the full House, after which it would be referred to the Senate Banking Committee.

Because this reform targets so many criminal elements and thus benefits almost all Americans (that is, the estimated 99.7 percent who don’t anonymously own shell companies), it has attracted one of the broadest political coalitions in recent history. The assortment of bedfellows includes national security experts, the FBI, district attorneys, police, sheriffs, labor, Treasury, big CEOs, small businesses, banks, realtors, religious groups, human rights watchdogs, environmentalists, and Delaware (the state most infamous for incorporating shell companies).

This wide range of support reflects the multitude of harms inflicted by the owners of anonymous shell companies, as illustrated by perspectives on opposite sides of the world. Chinese state companies, party elites, and criminal organizations use shell companies to enable sanctions evasion, fentanyl trade, and corruption in the Belt and Road Initiative. In the United States, more than three quarters of small business owners support this legislation because crooks and swindlers can stand behind shell companies to secretly raid law-abiding businesses through contract fraud, employee embezzlement, surreptitious lawsuits, and the exploitation of subsidies meant for small businesses.

On top of the benefits of reform, the new Senate bill ensures the reporting process for businesses is cheap, easy, and doesn’t introduce new legal risks. Senator Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas) highlighted eight safeguards in the bill such as embedding the ownership question within existing reporting forms, not requiring ongoing reporting unless ownership changes, providing that minor mistakes won’t be penalized, and strictly limiting access to the data within law enforcement.

Congress at Its Best

While the House of Representatives helped get the ball rolling, the substantive improvements and expansion of bipartisan support were developed over a year of quiet and collegial hard work in the Senate. Last week’s bill represents the culmination of an informal deliberative process for which the Founding Fathers designed the upper chamber.

However, this window of narrow bipartisanship won’t last long. Division in the Senate may escalate dramatically over the next couple months. Compromises will also be harder to finalize in an election year, and possibly after 2020 as well if the Senate and White House end up under the control of different parties.

Thus it is essential that the Banking Committee now moves swiftly—in the coming weeks, not months—to tackle the issue. That could mean marking up the existing bill, amending it to instead be co-sponsored by the chairman and ranking member, or a number of other legislative avenues.

In our politically rancorous times, keep an eye on this rare area where Congress is working exactly as it’s meant to. 

The post The One Place Congress Works appeared first on The American Interest.

Contemporary Marxism: A Flag Without An Army

Clear Bright Future: A Radical Defence of the Human Being

Paul Mason

Allen Lane, 2019, 368 pp., $39.95

If you spend time on a university campus, or participate in intellectual polemics on the internet, or simply follow the careers of leading political figures in several Western countries, you’ll know that Marxism has made a big comeback. Let’s leave aside the learned exegesis of Senator Bernie Sanders’s contribution to the critique of political economy. It is perhaps enough to note that the leader of her Majesty’s Official Opposition—and quite possibly the next Prime Minister of the United Kingdom—would until recently express his deep political thoughts in a newspaper called The Morning Star (né The Daily Worker). 

To be sure, Marxism, as distinct from social democracy, never fully disappeared in the West. Though wounded grievously by the decline of the Soviet Union and China’s so-called economic opening, some versions of Marxism held on through the 1990s and 2000s in faculty lounges and countercultural texts that academics produced. Yet the political energy of Marxism, the energy that sought a replacement of capitalism by some abolition of private property and collective ownership of the “means of production,” seemed spent. Over these decades, postmodernism reigned. The most influential European intellectuals, such as Jean Baudrillard, Jean-François Lyotard, and Jacques Derrida, though raised in Marxism themselves, came to lampoon both Marxism and Western neoliberal capitalism as equally illusory. In their writing they congratulated themselves on having exposed the comical emptiness of our politics—and perhaps all politics.  

To trace the resurgence of a more confident, less academic, and allegedly less postmodernist Left from the 2000s and particularly from the financial crisis of 2008 would be a large and worthwhile work of intellectual history. The evidence drawn from recent popular works, with titles like Fully Automated Luxury Communism and The Socialist Manifesto, demonstrates that this is now a fully formed movement. Of the works I have seen, Clear Bright Future: A Radical Defence of the Human Being, by the British broadcaster and journalist Paul Mason, is the clearest and the most jargon-free. This is not to say that it is a good book. Its principal aspiration—to herald the coming of a world that both abolishes private property as well as any need for work—is absurd on its face. And yet in arguing this position ardently, Clear Bright Future presents a good opportunity to study the principal features of the New Marxist mind. The evidence drawn from a study of that mind indicates that the Revolution might still be on hold for a while. 

Little known in the United States, Mason is a prominent British public intellectual who seems to have become more famous along with the ascent of the political Left over the last decade, and particularly with the rise of Jeremy Corbyn. Indeed, Mason’s work is, at least in part, an attempt to justify Corbynist ideology and the Momentum political movement that helped propel Corbyn to the leadership of the Labour Party and that now helps keep him there. Mason himself has called Corbyn’s leadership of Labour “brave.” Some sympathetic American readers might hope that Mason’s writing might provide intellectual fodder for cognate American movements such as the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and Justice Democrats that aspire to reorient the Democratic Party.

Clear Bright Future argues that the “neo-liberal” capitalism of recent decades has reached a crisis point. It has been exposed as both de-humanizing and weak. Through its craven weakness and rapacity, neo-liberal capitalism has itself unleashed the dangerous “nationalist,” “populist,” and “fascist” tendencies we seen around the world. In fact, in Mason’s view, these movements are the logical outgrowths of capitalism itself. In the book’s most disgraceful segment, Mason resuscitates the old academic thesis that the rise of Nazism should be attributed largely to capitalism. Focusing on fascism as “the elite’s response to the possibility of working-class power,” the chapter does not even consider the part in the rise of Nazism played by someone called Hitler.   

Yet, according to Mason, the current crisis in capitalism has led to growing awareness that the system is destined to fall. And Mason believes that what awaits us is a radical reconfiguration of the relationship of individuals to one another and to society at large. Unlike in American “political” books, Mason is under no obligation to offer “policy proposals.” Mason does not say how, concretely, the changes he foresees will come into place. Yet he implies that private property will be abolished or at least dramatically limited: “the socialization of knowledge through technological progress will bring us up against the limits of a society based on private property.” Freed from the shackles of capitalism, human beings will then free themselves from religion and other superstitions, finally governing themselves according to facts, reason, and science. The “clear bright future” (Trotsky’s phrase) involves harnessing the material wealth and the transformative power of new technologies in order “to enhance the collective power of human beings over nature and—by abolishing our need to work—unleashing individual freedom.” As evidenced by Mason’s work as well as the aforementioned Fully Automated Luxury Communism, the dream of a future without work, of a “Garden of Eden without any forbidden fruit,” features prominently in the New Marxism in a way it did not in many versions of the old.

Clear Bright Future is theoretically ambitious. Diagnosing the failings of neo-liberalism, it argues that Marxism offers a fuller portrait of human nature. In the most interesting part of the work, Mason sternly warns fellow leftists about falling for the siren song of non-Marxist critiques of liberalism, such as those of Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, and different disciples and epigones such as Hannah Arendt on one hand and postmodernists such as Jacques Derrida on the other. If, in Allan Bloom’s memorable analysis, the 20th-century Left sought to combine Marx and Nietzsche, Mason attempts to disentangle the two once and for all. In his final section, Mason argues that a Marxist perspective on human nature and our politics would allow us to regain control of things like “globalization,” “the market,” and “technology” that we have in recent decades “fetishized” and thus refused to subject to social deliberation or political choice.    

It is possible to briefly summarize Mason’s Marxist theory of human nature and history. The human being, says Mason following Marx rather accurately here, is a “species being” who, unique among the animals, works on behalf of others that he or she may not even know. But, in the process of doing this work, human beings also “alienate” their true selves by imbuing objects with transcendent meaning. But objects are always historically contingent, destined to be replaced by new things that humans make as technology and relations of production change. History is thus a process of growing “alienation,” which reaches a crisis point under capitalism. In the factory capitalism of Marx’s day, workers did not own the product of their own labor since it went immediately into the hands of the bosses, who returned subsistence wages to workers. In our time of neo-liberal financial capitalism, human beings are alienated from the products of their labors by the manipulation of financial flows and information technology by giant oligarchic financial firms and technology companies. Alienation may be more severe today since we are not permitted to understand the inner workings of the new forms of social control. Meanwhile, the neo-liberal theory of human beings, meant to entrench the current situation of exploitation, has no answer to the crisis. Positing human beings as isolated asocial creatures, it reinforces their weakness and isolation but also their desire to progress to something better. 

The upside of a crisis, in Mason’s account, is that a crisis cannot last. The human story is ultimately resolved by our productively harnessing our work through collective ownership of it in pursuit of social ends. Currently, according to Mason, digital technologies are merely reinforcing despotic social control. But they have the potential to finally help us overcome our alienation. Automation can unleash the ample, (though, pace Marx, not unlimited) wealth of the world and turn it to social ends, to humanity as a whole. 

There are some interesting social observations in Clear Bright Future. As Mason persuasively argues, Westerners over the last few decades largely have refused to exercise responsible political choices regarding economic questions, technology, and other matters, preferring to traffic in ideological abstractions. Like some “moralist” Marxist writers of old, Mason is refreshingly critical about degradations in contemporary culture. The lazy postmodernism of the last few decades does deserve every word of the critique that Mason offers. In adamantly rejecting discussions of human nature as “essentialist,” postmodernism contributes mightily to the sense of powerlessness and anomie that predominate in our societies. Social and political thinkers do need to take up Mason’s challenge to return to human nature. 

And yet, there is human nature and there is human nature. Mason’s atheistic, materialistic depiction of the human being is no more persuasive than previous articulations of the same thesis. Citing Aristotle, Mason argues that the human being is a social and altruistic one. He does not mention that Aristotle also says that man is, at least in certain way, a political animal. And the political animal does not merely work with and behalf of others but disputes with them in seemingly endless disagreement about fundamental questions of life, and competes with rivals for mastery. Recalling the rather genteel Marxism of figures like Léon Blum, Mason expresses the unexamined faith that man is only a wolf to man under the conditions of capitalism, or that it’s possible to bring about an order in which the desire for mastery or oppression is eliminated. One might well argue that “liberal theory” itself has an insufficient account of the “political animal” and the desire to rule. But whatever their shortcomings, original liberals never were naïve enough to think that such desires and such political competition could be fully eliminated. 

Though he dismisses religion as superstition, Mason’s materialist view of human beings leaves basic problems unanswered. When confronted by questions such as “what is the soul?” or “what is thinking?”, materialists can only utter something about “brain wiring” that tells us about the material function of the brain but nothing about what a thought actually is. The inability of materialists to definitively refute such questions, or to stop them being asked, keeps open all sorts of questions about the proper task of human beings in the world. And the inability to resolve such questions stands in the way of achieving heaven on earth.

Mason’s criticisms of contemporary society and politics similarly do not point to revolution as a plausible or necessary alternative. Let us grant that the “fog” of neo-liberal ideology, as any ideology can do, has clouded our judgment on matters of economics, technology, diplomacy and the like. Yet is good judgment all a question of ideology? Just in the last few years, the French government led by Emmanuel Macron, derided by the Left as the poster-child of clueless neo-liberalism, has instituted common-sense policies that reassert political control over big tech—by, for instance, banning cell phone use in all public schools in France. Likewise, the European Union, another “neo-liberal” behemoth, has fought sensibly for digital privacy rights and the so-called “right to be forgotten.” At the other end of the spectrum, China has for several decades devoted itself with assiduity and intelligence to science and engineering thanks to an intelligent political calculation that its power and independence ultimately depended on self-sufficiency in these areas. These are examples of good political choices made by both “neo-liberals” as well as “state communists.” Blaming ideology can only get us so far.

Paul Mason calls for revolution without telling us much about who his foot soldiers will be. The book mostly addresses “human beings.” Mason, at least on the surface, does not speak to “fellow Brits,” or “fellow Westerners,” or even fellow “proletarians” of every nation, as Marx and Engels had done. Who, then, is the subject that will bring about revolutionary change? Is the “human being,” understood abstractly, working on behalf of humanity at-large and not some concrete political entity, a reliable political actor? 

Mason is not unaware of the difficulty. And, truth be told, he has good reason to reject, as he explicitly does, the classic Marxist answer that the proletarians are the decisive actors in world history. As one recalls, the proletarians are therefore permitted to establish a temporary dictatorship in order to ensure the bringing about of the new order. Mason recognizes the crimes committed by Communists in the last century while invoking this theory. An avowed anti-statist, Mason also rejects Stalin’s “socialism in one country,” which used the language of socialism to enforce brutally personal and state power.

Ironically, it is the genteel side of Mason’s Marxism that leaves him in a bind. Without recourse to the workers of the world, Mason makes a vague appeal to “networked individuals” all over the world. Such people, he claims, are gradually waking up to the oppression and injustice of the current order. When enough of these networked people wake up, revolutionary change will come. One may doubt, however, whether young people working on their laptops in fashionable coffee shops in fashionable cities could ever constitute a “revolutionary army” worthy of the name. Leo Strauss famously called Trotskyism a “flag without an army” and, as a result, “refuted by its own principle.” The same charge could be leveled against Paul Mason’s theory. While he attempts to get beyond the postmodernism of recent decades, his appeal to “networked individuals” is functionally postmodern since it abstracts from concrete attachments such as class, nation, and religion that actually motivate individuals to act politically. Though claiming for itself the mantle of radical Marxist politics, this work thus merely reinforces the cultural predilections of the urban bourgeoisie. As Marx might have said, neo-liberal capitalism is a much more cunning rival than it lets on.

The post Contemporary Marxism: A Flag Without An Army appeared first on The American Interest.