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The new Utopia

by chumchu Thu Jul 2nd, 2015 at 08:38:43 AM EST

I believe that a fundamental problem for the left after the fall of the Soviet Union is the lack of a common utopia to strive towards for three reasons. Without a long-term goal the left has become reactive. Without grand visions for the future, the differences in rhetoric between political parties decreases and elections seem like contests in looking statesmanlike. Without a hope in a better future it is hard motivate people to engage in politics and to act altruistically. The last two points, together with individualism and workers rising into the middle class,  are important in explaining the declining engagement in mass parties and unions. With declining engagement, their competence and influence wanes.

I want to ask you if you share this analysis and, if so, what you think the long-term goal or utopia of the left should be. There are a number of candidates that I can think of at the moment listed below. These are not mutually exclusive but to avoid complicating things, let us just say that you have to emphasise one idea. Further, how should one work with utopia and political reality. I believe that slow, careful reform works, if you always have an end goal in mind and do not get lost in rhetoric and sacrifice to much trying to win elections.

  • spreading human civilisation in space for preservation or exploration
  • a sustainable society living within the planetary boundaries
  • breaking through limitations in production and energy to create an abundance, rendering property rights moot and giving people freedom from work
  • uniting humanity politically in a world-state
  •  a global federation of national welfare states, well-functioning and peaceful
  • benevolent AI
  • something else

Display:
The new Utopia | 59 comments (59 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)
Re: The new Utopia (4.00 / 3)
Free time. And it does not have to be through abundance.

There wass recently some links to a blog called "Communism is about free time and nothing else" and while I tend to disagree with much of what I read I liked the title and the approach to time.

A gradual approach would (perhaps counter-intuitively) include full employment, as that gives the employees power.

Some suggestions for full employment:

  • Remove inflation targets for central banks, give them full employment targets if they don't have it.
  • Remove silly monetary limitations on government and put in place a full employment target.

Still got unemployment?

Fine:

  • Rebuild infrastructure to eliminate carbon emissions. Trains, light rail, electric cars, bikes, you name it.
  • Build the renewable electric production to power to rebuild.
  • Build the grid that can handle that electric production.
  • Reconfigure material flows in society to eliminate waste. This can probably be done in a number of ways, step one is find the good examples that already exist.

Still got unemployment?

Fine:
* Limit the number of government employed nurses, doctors, teachers and researchers only by availability, not silly monetary concerns.

Still got unemployment?

Fine:
* Pay a student-salary for learning new professions.

Still got unemployment?

Fine:
* Pay a artist-salary for practising art (music, sculpture, whatever). Be liberal, arts are supposed to be anyway.

Still got unemployment?

Fine:
* Pay a citizen salary.

Oh, look at that, now we have arrived at citizens not having to sell their time. Free time!

by fjallstrom on Thu Jul 2nd, 2015 at 05:39:29 PM EST
Re: The new Utopia (4.00 / 2)
Much to agree with, esp this:

Rebuild infrastructure to eliminate carbon emissions. Trains, light rail, electric cars, bikes, you name it.

Build the renewable electric production to power to rebuild.

Build the grid that can handle that electric production.

Reconfigure material flows in society to eliminate waste. This can probably be done in a number of ways, step one is find the good examples that already exist.

Unfortunately there are already a great many people who have abundant spare time on their hands and spend most of it causing trouble.

As for the arts, I agree with Henry Miller. There should be subsidies for the arts, but they should be given out at random.

Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other. -- Dr Johnson

by melvin (melvingladys at or near yahoo.com) on Thu Jul 2nd, 2015 at 05:52:33 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: The new Utopia (4.00 / 2)
melvin:
Unfortunately there are already a great many people who have abundant spare time on their hands and spend most of it causing trouble.

I think we are essentially at the production stage Marx envisioned as the basis for communism - we produce everything we need at a small portion of our time. And robotisation will make that even more so. The benefits are just not spread nearly far enough, as doing so unravels the power structures based on need.

by fjallstrom on Thu Jul 2nd, 2015 at 06:00:53 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: The new Utopia (none / 0)
I am in full agreement with this. As you note this can be approached with gradual reforms. The twist about full employment is new to me as it usually discussed in terms of arbetskritik, and that bit makes it much more viable politically. If you want to formulate it as an utopia you might call it the state maximal self-actualisation.
by chumchu on Sat Jul 4th, 2015 at 08:37:39 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: The new Utopia (4.00 / 3)
I think dystopias are better motivators.

The left in the US - such as it is - hasn't looked to Stalin et al for a long time. since well before the wall fell over. Surley this is largely true elsewhere as well. One looks to little pieces here and there: Cuba's accomplishments in health care, etc. And it's relative. To us, Scandinavia is "left" in many ways.

Utopias are better off imaginary, glimpsed on the periphery of vision, hiding in the interstices.

Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other. -- Dr Johnson

by melvin (melvingladys at or near yahoo.com) on Thu Jul 2nd, 2015 at 05:59:26 PM EST
Re: The new Utopia (4.00 / 3)
melvin:

Utopias are better off imaginary, glimpsed on the periphery of vision, hiding in the interstices.

I read Catch 22 and wanted to travel from real, existing Sweden to the Sweden described there: the rational utopia beyond the war.

On the larger point, I think both dystopias and utopias has there place. Dystopias are good for whipping out reaction, but some form of utopia - or to be less definitive: constructive targets - are needed once in the longer run.

For example if you manage to whip out reaction towards horrible laws coming down the pipeline, and yet they pass. Then - after the bitterness, accusations of betrayal and lack of purity and all the recriminations - a target of what should be instead is needed.

by fjallstrom on Thu Jul 2nd, 2015 at 06:07:09 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: The new Utopia (none / 1)
Constructive targets, yes. It is always better to offer an attractive alternative people can say yes to.

Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other. -- Dr Johnson
by melvin (melvingladys at or near yahoo.com) on Thu Jul 2nd, 2015 at 06:09:27 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: The new Utopia (4.00 / 2)
There are two words that bring voters out in hives, 'Left' and 'Utopia'.

Left has been 3rd-wayed into meaninglessness, utopia might as well have the word 'naive' preceding it, so tainted it has become!

It's a pity because all your options add up to a fine platform. Reframing vitally needed... People need to be led to believing in something politics could achieve without absolutist buzzwords or partisan flagwaving.

Unions have mostly died the death, heavy industry has moved to the BRICS along with investment, where would the base for an old-school left party come from?

Workers have been 'competivised' and thus fragmented into precarious 'independent contractors'. The old Keir Hardie solidarity has left the building.

L-R has become a kabuki duality, time to transcend this obsolete terminology as the choice has been reduced to between Fake Left (crap) and Real Right (worse crap).

Utopia is something to believe in, but it takes a level of imagination few have so the concept has become cheapened by ancient bloated rhetoric.

It has become a synonym for unrealism, childishness.

It could be redeemed, but by concentrating on hard facts and evidence rather than encouraging people to believe in a coming paradise ours by right of intelligence.

In other words focus on the means of incremental improvements rather than unreachable ends that then are traditionally used to justify the worst of means. 'Our goal is so perfect that even .... (fill in space) can be seen to be necessary.

People have been under absolutist spells like religion for millennia. We need to absorb the lessons of relativity on a cultural level, breaking free from Newtonian/Cartesian linear forms of thought.

People are tired of ersatz, we want real now.

'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty

by melo (melometa4(at)gmail.com) on Thu Jul 2nd, 2015 at 06:09:54 PM EST
Re: The new Utopia (4.00 / 4)
Well, so much for the warm and fuzzy.

The major problem in the US is a captive media and a population that does not read and not enough of whom educate themselves vie alternate media. This to me is the thing that has to be surmounted somehow. I can't tell you how many old warriors have given up and are tending their gardens - and doing great things in their tiny local communities, but that don't butter the parsnips when it comes to the defense budget bleeding us dry, for instance.

All this is why I am so much behind the Sanders campaigns, to get some of these things on the table. And no, Don Quixote doesn't draw crowds of 10K plus, as Sanders did yesterday.

Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other. -- Dr Johnson

by melvin (melvingladys at or near yahoo.com) on Thu Jul 2nd, 2015 at 06:20:16 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: The new Utopia (none / 1)
This reminds me of peasant protest in early modern Europe. The odds were always heavily stacked against them. But they were animated by a ideas of justice and salvation which was to be realised in just pious, society. They often demanded limited reforms, what could be said in "the public transcript", trying to win by being both threatening and reasonable at the same time. They were mostly put down or cut down but they managed to lay the foundation for the much better society we have today.
by chumchu on Sat Jul 4th, 2015 at 08:49:39 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: The new Utopia (4.00 / 3)
Which peasant uprisings and which countries do you have in mind? I'm not excluding that some did work like that, but I don't think say the big peasant revolt in Germany managed to effect any progressive historical result, while those further east only resulted in the second serfdom. (The communist regimes put a strong focus on these rebellions in history education, but that was more the result of digging in history books for inspirational precedents than the continuation of a living tradition.)

*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.
by DoDo on Sun Jul 5th, 2015 at 02:06:22 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: The new Utopia (4.00 / 4)
First of all I'm understanding this from a resistance perspective: a superficially failed rebellion still mattered as it put the fear of more and bloodier uprisings in the minds of the elite. Apart from the rebellions there many kinds of non-compliance, for instance by the peasants arguing that they were to stupid to understand the new tax directive. This encouraged states to negotiate with the people and give them representation to avoid disturbances and get compliance or even support out of the people.

I'm most familiar with Swedish history where the medieval peasant uprisings (see: Engelbrekt Engelbrektson, Sten Sture, Gustav I, Nils Dacke) secured the free peasantry representation in the Swedish diet and a long-term alliance with the monarchy . The monarchy used this position to demand unusually high taxes and frequent conscriptions (see: Jan Glete) while the peasants used this position to secure their ownership of the land and limit the power and wealth of the nobility as well as push for equal tax burden. In the nineteenth century the peasant estate was instrumental in the liberal reforms that set stage for the industrialisation of Sweden.

We can just as well turn it the other way around. In western Europe the peasantry managed to secure a relatively free position compared to the middle ages by resisting, both in uprising like the Peasant's revolt in England and by moving to cities and peasant communes or just noble lands where the conditions were better. Speaking more broadly, the Crisis of the Late Middle Ages broke the Papacy's intellectual dominance, empowered parliaments and monarchs over local feudal lords and saw an improvement in the living standards of poor people which started a substitution of labor for capital in the economy.

by chumchu on Wed Jul 8th, 2015 at 08:24:53 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: The new Utopia (none / 1)
We can just as well turn it the other way around. In western Europe the peasantry managed to secure a relatively free position compared to the middle ages by resisting, both in uprising like the Peasant's revolt in England and by moving to cities and peasant communes or just noble lands where the conditions were better.

I think that may be applicable to Sweden, but not to England or Germany. In England, the only achievement of the Peasant Revolt was a three-decade lull in the 100 Year' War (no poll tax), and moving to the cities wasn't the result of peasants seeking a better life but the result of the Enclosures. In France, the Jacquerie wasn't just drowned in mass slaughter but made aristocrats think that any sign of rebellion should be ruthlessly suppressed lest it develops into a real threat. The big peasant revolt in Germany caused such destruction before of its even more bloody repression that later Catholics used it to smear Protestants by association, and there were no positive social changes (in general I think the first few decades for Protestantism were anything but enlightened, the positive effects a century or two later were more a result of neither side managing to achieve total victory in Europe and creating a disillusionment with religion). As for the Peasants' War in Upper Austria, which like most peasant revolts was religiously motivated but this in the framework of Catholicism vs. Protestantism, only resulted in the full victory of Counter-Reformation.

*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.

by DoDo on Wed Jul 8th, 2015 at 09:46:01 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: The new Utopia (none / 0)
We should not mix up the enclosures with the urban migration during the late middle ages. After the plague there was a long economic upturn as the best farmlands could be used by the remaining people and real wages were high. The movement to the cities during this period was people successfully seeking freedom, better wages and moving up in society. From about 1550 until 1830 real wages were declining and working hours increasing as Europe became overpopulated. This is when the pauperisation sets in.

I think your view is commonly accepted but flawed in that it does not see beyond the events. Uprising was an integral part of popular resistance, it often led to harsh punishments for the leaders but also to negotiations and concessions from the lords, it also constituted the people as a political actor, it made the lords afraid and in large rebellion it could disrupt the state which meant less or no taxes.

The best example I can think of is once again from Sweden but I do not think it is that unique from the rest of Europe west of Elbe. Think of the more marginal areas like Scotland, Switzerland, Schwarzwald or the Ditmarsch. In the Engelbrekt rebellion 1434-1436 the peasants succeeded in their immediate goal, deposing the King who had built a effective/brutal bailiff network and levied high taxes. They lost out military to the nobility after Engelbrekt was assassinated but they established themselves as a political force and disrupted central power which made the tax burden by 50-80% for the next hundred years.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/wdzpn0mtrs3exzn/The%20late-medieval%20crisis%20quantified.pdf?dl=0
 

by chumchu on Fri Jul 17th, 2015 at 07:14:18 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: The new Utopia (none / 0)
Americans are notoriously impatient with theory you know



Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other. -- Dr Johnson

by melvin (melvingladys at or near yahoo.com) on Fri Jul 3rd, 2015 at 04:43:56 AM EST
Fuck it. let's come out of the closet (4.00 / 2)
I remain after all this time an anarchist, firmly in opposition to the chaos we have now. Most people stop speaking to me at this point.

Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other. -- Dr Johnson
by melvin (melvingladys at or near yahoo.com) on Fri Jul 3rd, 2015 at 04:58:59 AM EST
Re: Fuck it. let's come out of the closet (4.00 / 2)
... you want a better quality of chaos, eh?
Anarchism is fine on paper, and needs to stay there. Practical outcomes would be no different from the wet dreams of small-government libertarians.


It is rightly acknowledged that people of faith have no monopoly of virtue - Queen Elizabeth II
by eurogreen on Fri Jul 3rd, 2015 at 05:17:33 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Fuck it. let's come out of the closet (4.00 / 2)
Yes, the neoliberal dream on the other hand has led us to within sight of paradise.

Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other. -- Dr Johnson
by melvin (melvingladys at or near yahoo.com) on Fri Jul 3rd, 2015 at 05:21:47 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Fuck it. let's come out of the closet (none / 0)
It... actually has.

(Embiggen)

With the sole exception of (sub-Saharan) Africa, by now pretty much everywhere there is humans, there is light in the night. Every single one of those little lit-up pixels is a hundred thousand people living twice as long as they would if it had been dark.

Of course, "within sight of" and "actually there" are not, quite, the same thing:
(Embiggen)

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Fri Jul 3rd, 2015 at 06:43:02 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Fuck it. let's come out of the closet (none / 0)
Not at all sure I accept the causal connection between the inability to see the Milky Way and the constellations that originally helped inspire us to start down this road and life expectancy. Logical fallacy.

Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other. -- Dr Johnson
by melvin (melvingladys at or near yahoo.com) on Fri Jul 3rd, 2015 at 08:20:45 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Fuck it. let's come out of the closet (none / 1)
The first use people make of electricity after they have refrigerated their food is usually to light up the night.

Because light is useful and, once you have a functioning electricity infrastructure in place, very, very cheap.

So yes, light in the night pretty much means "people here can now reliably cool and cook their food."

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Fri Jul 3rd, 2015 at 10:48:48 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Light pollution (4.00 / 3)
As a side note: not many people realise that the current switch from classic streetlights to LED lamps is bringing a great increase of light pollution, this time also as health risk. The lesser reason is that, while one can still achieve a massive reduction in energy consumption, the replacement new lamps are usually much brighter (emit more on visible wavelengths). The greater is that the new lamps usually emit white light, meaning a very different spectrum. This results in more up-scattered light even with more optimal lamp cover, it disturbs the seasonal and daily growth of plants nearby, and it disturbs sleeping patterns (see melanopsin) [the same effect watching LED monitors has but with potentially stronger light].

Incidentally, the streetlight opposite my home has been replaced with a new LED light a few days ago, and I have to consider all of the above negative effects: it is subjectively much brighter, the light is scattered strongly both outside from external walls and inside from internal walls across the rooms, there are plants on the lamp pole and along the sidewalk below it, and I really fully wake up and lose sleepiness even past midnight if I pass an open window with the light shining in. So now I now have to sleep in the current heatwave (it will last until Wednesday where I live) without fully open windows and doors on the street side.

*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.

by DoDo on Mon Jul 6th, 2015 at 06:11:26 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Fuck it. let's come out of the closet (none / 1)
Here is the enlarged (and readable) version of the second image.

*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.
by DoDo on Mon Jul 6th, 2015 at 05:12:44 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Fuck it. let's come out of the closet (4.00 / 3)
But neoliberalism is only the last step in a long sequence producing those lights. And neoliberalism hardly is the fastest mode of producing those lights.

Remember: Communism is Soviet power plus the electrification of the entire country!

by fjallstrom on Tue Jul 7th, 2015 at 08:59:43 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Fuck it. let's come out of the closet (4.00 / 3)
Liberals in Central European countries tended to scoff at this electrification campaign as something annoyingly propagandistic, I never understood why. (Well, I do understand it in terms of coming from urban people living in cities that had electric lights for at least half a century by then.)

*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.
by DoDo on Tue Jul 7th, 2015 at 10:34:09 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Fuck it. let's come out of the closet (4.00 / 2)
I think anarchism can (and should) be approached as iterative goal of less hierarchy. Removing the current order does not on its own produce an anarchic order (and for those seeing that as a contradiction in terms, anarcishm as an ideology is about an absense of leaders, not absence of order). And that takes work, and has many pitfalls.

So anarchic evolution, not revolution, is my recepy.

by fjallstrom on Fri Jul 3rd, 2015 at 05:38:42 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Fuck it. let's come out of the closet (none / 0)
Exactly. We're not moving to 30's Catalonia tomorrow. But we can start at for instance getting rid of the death penalty. If you grant the state the power of life and death, nothing else much matters.

Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other. -- Dr Johnson
by melvin (melvingladys at or near yahoo.com) on Fri Jul 3rd, 2015 at 05:43:14 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Fuck it. let's come out of the closet (4.00 / 2)
30's Catalonia was a reaction to a failed state. I hope we're not moving there any time soon.

Watch out for Greece next week.

A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn't have to be that way. — Paul Krugman

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Fri Jul 3rd, 2015 at 06:36:04 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Fuck it. let's come out of the closet (none / 1)
Death penalty is long gone in civilised areas.
by Colman (colman at eurotrib.com) on Fri Jul 3rd, 2015 at 08:30:30 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Fuck it. let's come out of the closet (none / 1)
I know. I raised it as a measure of how backward the US is. Don't know if the rest of the world realizes these things.

Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other. -- Dr Johnson
by melvin (melvingladys at or near yahoo.com) on Fri Jul 3rd, 2015 at 08:35:42 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Fuck it. let's come out of the closet (4.00 / 2)
The absence of hierarchy is not, in my experience, an unqualified positive. Bureaucracy is arguably the single most important technological advancement humanity has made since the domestication of cereal crops. Dismantling that requires in my view a reasonably tangible justification that we can do better (as opposed to just regressing to feudalism, which is what usually happens when you dismantle bureaucracies).

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Fri Jul 3rd, 2015 at 06:48:31 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Fuck it. let's come out of the closet (4.00 / 4)
I like Graeber's view of bureacracy: it is power differential made predictable.  And indeed that is better then unpredictable power.

A common mistake in anarchic experiments (collectives and such) is pretending that there is no power differential by abolisihing its outer trappings, ie abolishing bureacracy. And then you get The Tyranny of Structurelessness. Which is something that should be avoided, it is not the trappings but the actual power that needs to be adressed. And in collectives and such I think a related common mistake is the belief that one can just cast away societal roles, upbringing and position in society outside the collective.

So perhaps I can make myself clearer by stating the goal as iterativ decrease of power differentials, by step by step finding better and more equal structures for society.

To answer something not brought up, but often is in discussions about anarchism, I don't think it is important for such a process if a point of  absolute equality can be found, there is enough inequality that can be abolished to last a lifetime.

by fjallstrom on Fri Jul 3rd, 2015 at 10:38:48 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Fuck it. let's come out of the closet (4.00 / 4)
These all suffer from absolutism. The better answer is ad hocracy.

Sometimes you want a single point of leadership. Sometimes you want consensus. Sometimes you want enlightened despotism. Sometimes you want democracy.

What you always want to minimise are the political effects of:

  1. People who lie and manipulate for personal advantage.
  2. People whose sole motivation is personal advantage.
  3. People who don't understand that we're all living in systems, and actions have physical, ecological and social consequences.
  4. People whose status is either inherited and unearned, and/or based on caste, and/or family connections.
  5. Reality-based thinking, instead of narrative logic and mythological thinking.

If you look at the Right, they value none of the above. A typical right-winger believes in:

  1. Self interest for self first, then maybe family, then some vague nation of state and patriotism.
  2. Approval of the use of violence for personal and social ends.
  3. An inability to understand systems thinking of any kind.
  4. Respect for unearned status, or status earned by exploitation and violence.
... And so on.

In fact. right wing values are the default basis of economic and political morality. We like to think we're living in social democracies, but in reality we're living under jungle law.

Full utopia probably isn't possible, but any move towards the first value cluster can only improve things.

The biggest problem is there's a huge opportunity cost in carrying on as normal. Supporting right-wing values is incredibly expensive in every possible way, and nothing does more to damage long term prosperity.

by ThatBritGuy (thatbritguy (at) googlemail.com) on Fri Jul 3rd, 2015 at 01:38:02 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Fuck it. let's come out of the closet (none / 1)
This can be integrated to larger point about the legitimation of power and then bureaucracy is not as central. Building on Beetham, not Weber, power is legitimised by subjecting its use to rules and limitations and showing how it can serve common goals of the dominant and the subjugated.

This applies to bureaucracy as well as to law, parliaments and religion. If talk about bureaucracies in specific rather than the principle of a rules-based hierarchical organisation, I see them as less important than the other three in creating good societies. Bureaucracies mostly focused on war and the funding of it until the 19:th century.

by chumchu on Sat Jul 4th, 2015 at 09:06:31 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Fuck it. let's come out of the closet (4.00 / 3)
Be fair: So was parliaments, law, and religion.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Sat Jul 4th, 2015 at 09:38:45 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Fuck it. let's come out of the closet (none / 1)
Parliaments was were the leaders of bureaucracies, often the king, went to get support and funding for a war in return for concessions if they had a weak position, or in return for promises if they had a strong position.

The catholic church was against war within Christendom and for war on heretics and infidels. It countered the militaristic ideals of the nobility with intellectual and peaceful ones.

The law was not much concerned with war, it filled an entirely different role for the legitimisation of the rulers and societal cohesion.
(see: Neveux & Österberg Norms and Values of the Peasantry in the Period of State Formation)

by chumchu on Wed Jul 8th, 2015 at 08:39:37 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Fuck it. let's come out of the closet (4.00 / 2)
The catholic church was against war within Christendom and for war on heretics and infidels.

But that was more than plenty.

*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.

by DoDo on Wed Jul 8th, 2015 at 10:16:40 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Fuck it. let's come out of the closet (none / 1)
It is a thread headlined "Utopia."

Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other. -- Dr Johnson
by melvin (melvingladys at or near yahoo.com) on Fri Jul 3rd, 2015 at 08:38:37 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: The new Utopia (none / 1)
Well let's all describe what our private Utopia would be then see if we can cobble up a public version.

Mine could be summed up in three words: 12 volt planet.

'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty

by melo (melometa4(at)gmail.com) on Fri Jul 3rd, 2015 at 09:05:36 AM EST
Re: The new Utopia (none / 1)
USB is 5 volt.

A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn't have to be that way. — Paul Krugman
by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Fri Jul 3rd, 2015 at 09:08:31 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: The new Utopia (none / 0)
So there's your vigorous undergrowth a healthy 12V forest can sustain.

Ten years from now USB may be .00005V. The Moore the merrier.

'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty

by melo (melometa4(at)gmail.com) on Fri Jul 3rd, 2015 at 09:11:52 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: The new Utopia (none / 0)
No More Pollution would be fine too...

'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty
by melo (melometa4(at)gmail.com) on Fri Jul 3rd, 2015 at 09:09:39 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: The new Utopia (4.00 / 2)
Yes, yes, yes.

One of the reasons that people have been able to say that the left has no ideas (aside from self-interested mendacity and spite) is that the vision of a better society has withered on the vine in too many walks of life.  In the American context, the leftist dream most common was "everybody has an equal chance to be a middle class professional," and by the 60's it seemed like too many people were willing to declare mission accomplished.  Obviously it wasn't, but things were close enough - for already affluent white people at any rate.  The focus shifted to making this dream of college and professionalism open to women and minorities.  These are highly worthy and valuable goals, in and of themselves, and revolutionary in their own way.

But for a lot of white people, it came to seem like the left had nothing to offer.  Mission accomplished ten years ago is hardly a compelling campaign slogan, after all.

The problem is, once there are enough of them, college educated professionals are just another form of proletariat, with nothing to sell but their knowledge and their labor.  Being highly skilled and highly productive does not save you from being coerced by the power of capital into working 70 hours a week as a salaried employee.

It may now be the time when a new generation of professional-level proles are willing to listen to the true complaint against the wealthy - they monopolize everything to beggar everyone, for no purpose but their own perverse sadistic satisfaction.  The only way to end this is to end their existence as a class, and to reorganize work and wealth and property so as to minimize overproduction and maximize individual freedom of choice and freedom of time.

A truly ambitious energy program needs to be taken up as soon as possible, and a series of truly ambitious ecological balancing and restoration projects are also pressing - reforestation, habitat recreation, wetlands expansion, fresh water drainage restoration, coastal cleanup, and ocean cleanup. These are concrete goals that are compelling in their own right, and tying them to the revolutionary message, and showing how they are better and more easily accomplished without paying blood tribute to the owners can only help the cause.

An ambitious space program, though near and dear to my heart, has to take a backseat to preserving the Earth as a functional ecosphere.  And AI is so terrifying that I'm not sure it's worth supporting or pursuing in any form.

by Zwackus on Sun Jul 5th, 2015 at 12:01:26 AM EST
Re: The new Utopia (none / 0)
RE: AI - Advances in it follows from better electronics, better math and our general understanding of cognition.

All of which are immensely valuable in their own right, and will continue to be pursued as long as there are still living humans. Not developing AI is thus not a choice which is on the table. It's going to happen, and mostly I just hope that whoever gets there first gets it right, or at least, gets it wrong in a way that doesn't end the world.

by Thomas on Sun Jul 5th, 2015 at 05:33:48 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: The new Utopia (none / 0)
I don't think that's right, actually.

AI research, such as it presently is, is in the business of building ever more clever expert systems. It is not in the business of building anything that is even going in the direction of true AI.

Which is probably not an altogether bad thing.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Sun Jul 5th, 2015 at 12:58:38 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: The new Utopia (none / 0)
Zwackus:
A truly ambitious energy program needs to be taken up as soon as possible, and a series of truly ambitious ecological balancing and restoration projects are also pressing - reforestation, habitat recreation, wetlands expansion, fresh water drainage restoration, coastal cleanup, and ocean cleanup. These are concrete goals that are compelling in their own right, and tying them to the revolutionary message, and showing how they are better and more easily accomplished without paying blood tribute to the owners can only help the cause.

This as fine a summary of what's so sorely needed -and conspicuously absent- in political discourse at present as could be.

I treasure a belief that Zwackus speaks for all of us here, and that it sums up in one short para what ET stands for. It will take a revolution even more historically significant than any so far which have served to untilt the social gameboard, or re-arrange societies.

This goes way deeper...

People are terrifying, not AI per se. When you see the advertising/propaganda tool TV has been made into compared to what it could -and sometimes does- achieve, it's not TV's fault.

We are all surrounded by the fruits of AI, like it or not. Mostly I do, while remaining cognizant that every new invention in the wrong hands is a new nightmare.

'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty

by melo (melometa4(at)gmail.com) on Thu Jul 9th, 2015 at 08:38:47 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: The new Utopia (none / 1)
The root of my problem with your analysis is that it threats "the left" as a monolithic body. Different strands of the Left always had different visions of the future (say compare the back-to-nature hippie vision with the techno-industrial vision of planned economy adherents), and not all of them lost this vision after 1991. I think the leadership and (crucially) most of the voting base of Social Democratic strands of the Left in Europe did lose the utopian vision, but that wasn't strictly linked to the Soviet Union, much more to something you view as an independent factor: the rise of the voting base into the middle class. The middle class is normally not desperate enough to aim for a radically better future, and can be made concerned about losing the little it does have. (What IMO was linked to the Soviet Union was the Western European Right's fear of ultimate defeat and its resulting acceptance of a class war armistice; which lulled in Social Democrat leaders and voters alike, making them incapable of even recognising the pushback when it came, much less fight against it.)

Now for my take on your utopia:

  • I am all for space exploration and, on the long term, human spaceflight, to widen our knowledge and horizons. (I watch the ever wider use of mobile devices and social sites with a growing unease that humanity is moving towards a collective autism, where the only "real" is other humans.) But I don't see any point in making the spreading of human civilisation a goal in itself. For me that would be just as brainless as making the spreading of our genes a goal.

  • OK on sustainability.

  • I don't think "abundance" is an absolute term and I don't think that's how human notions of property rights and contentedness work. You can define a minimum need of nutrients and drinking water, but not for others others like living space, heating, water for other uses, paper, electricity, electronic devices, transport infrastructure etc. If you increase potential supply, you may find demand will skyrocket, too. Meanwhile, people will count themselves as poor relative to others, not relative to some absolute level. If there is scarcity in anything, people with access will strive to defend their access and that births property rights. Here I am for the old leftist ideal of counter-acting wealth concentration with redistribution. Or the even older égalité and fraternité parts.
  • I am for the world state, with the important qualification that it be federal at multiple levels, democratic at all levels and also socialist at all levels. This also means that I see a federation of national states as too weak a structure, there has to be re-distribution at a higher level, too.
  • I don't see how you can create th potential for benevolent AI without the potential for malevolent, creator-disillusioned, stupid or plain indifferent AI. While I a fed up with the religious overtone of discussions of creating AI, I do think creating one should not be approached as merely a thrilling scientific prospect but one that should assume parental responsibility.


*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.
by DoDo on Sun Jul 5th, 2015 at 01:57:43 PM EST
Re: The new Utopia (4.00 / 3)
And the trains should run on time, going to places I want to go, at reasonable frequencies and speed to make use of them.

{sigh} which is not a Utopian vision here in China, but certainly would be one in most of the US.

I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.

by BruceMcF (agila61 at netscape dot net) on Sun Jul 5th, 2015 at 09:35:52 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: The new Utopia (none / 0)
Treating the left as unit is of course a simplification but it has a point apart from it being easier. I have a hard time seeing a left that can withstand the push back you speak if it is not organised into some kind of monolithic body, a mass movement or a party for example.

If we take the green movement(s) as counter example example: I see a lot of good ideas and technologies being developed but most of them are only ever applied in small scale as the greens are far from the levers of power. To put it bluntly, it is not the lack of possible solutions to global warming and sustainability that is the problem.

I meant it more like a menu of discussion points rather than a program and in that it reflects how far my thinking on the matter have progressed. I have some utopian ideas but i am not sure of how they would fit together, if they are good goals to aim for and which are more important than the others. How would your utopian program look like or what are your long term goal?

by chumchu on Wed Jul 8th, 2015 at 08:56:20 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Utopia Now! (none / 1)
Welcome to Blackswansville -- Clusterfuck Nation
One thing we ought to know: both sides in the current skirmish are fighting reality. The Germans foolishly insist that the Greek's meet their debt obligations. The German's are just pissing into the wind on that one, a hazardous business for a nation of beer drinkers. The Greeks insist on living the 20th century deluxe industrial age lifestyle, complete with 24/7 electricity, cheap groceries, cushy office jobs, early retirement, and plenty of walking-around money. They'll be lucky if they land back in the 1800s, comfort-wise.

The Greeks may not recognize this, but they are in the vanguard of a movement that is wrenching the techno-industrial nations back to much older, more local, and simpler living arrangements [...]

The failure of the European experiment will be extremely demoralizing to the hopeful citizens of that continent, who emerged from the bloodbath of the early 20th century to become the world's premier peaceful tourist theme park [...]

Ukraine is about halfway back to being medieval with excellent potential to overshoot even that. The Euroland PIIG(F) nations don't have the energy resources to extend Modernity, even if the banking system wasn't terminally ill ....

by das monde on Mon Jul 6th, 2015 at 08:31:42 PM EST
Re: Utopia Now! (4.00 / 5)
das monde:
The Euroland PIIG(F) nations don't have the energy resources to extend Modernity, even if the banking system wasn't terminally ill

Europe has fresh wind coming in from the Atlantic every day. And the south has a ton of sunshine too.

This isn't an energy crisis, it is a political crisis in the shape of a currency crisis.

by fjallstrom on Tue Jul 7th, 2015 at 08:52:26 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Utopia Now! (none / 0)
If an energy crisis would be upcoming, masking political and financial crises would pop up "preemptively". How much did energy demand increase in the 300 years since the wooden windmills?
by das monde on Tue Jul 7th, 2015 at 10:43:27 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Utopia Now! (4.00 / 2)
I would say that that is a testable hypothesis that you would need to prove with historical data.

Except it's a moot point, because even if you showed a full Granger analysis with all the bells and whistles, your hypothesis would still be idiocy for one simple reason:

Like all paranoid conspiracy theories it presumes a level of coordination and forethought which is implausible both in light of the magnitude of the problem it would be covering up, and in light of the displayed competence of the people you postulate are in on it.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Tue Jul 7th, 2015 at 11:43:33 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Utopia Now! (none / 0)
Compartmentalized coordination to address possibility of tough times, bad crops, overpopulation has been used for ages, from small Pacific islands to the Roman empire, using anything from social games on scrubs to wealth hierarchy, from tribal shamans to modern bank analysts. The the magnitude of the problem is too serious to leave it to public discourse. The cultures, religions, military histories definitely make a lot more sense with the imperative to control the crowd size in the spotlight.

If we do not believe in society wide coordination, what the heck we are discussing right here: Keynesian economics, sustainability and energy abundance for all societies, uniting humanity to a global federation of national welfare states? What do we manifestly know about leadership, moving the masses? Don't we agree that the effectiveness of "big government" is a sham, that the EU, global governing works admirably well for the biggest financial interests?

by das monde on Wed Jul 8th, 2015 at 03:39:04 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Utopia Now! (none / 1)
So to boil what I shall generously refer to as your half-assed, specious notion down to its essential essence:

"The Illuminati are able to (a) coordinate events on a scale that would enable them to solve the problem that they are conspiring to escape, (b) keep this conspiracy an absolute secret, and (c) put up a front of total incompetence. And they decide to use these abilities to deliberately make the problem worse."

If you seriously believe any damn thing you just wrote, then you need to either lay off the bad acid or get your doctor to write you up for some antipsychotics. Possibly both.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Wed Jul 8th, 2015 at 04:16:30 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Utopia Now! (none / 0)
What Illuminati? I am talking about ages long evolution of circumventing the problem. The boundaries between natural and logical-structural inevitabilities, primate genetics and sociality rules, elite responsibilities and conspiracies are pretty blurred here.

With the good or terrible living prospects of your descendants in line, conspiracy on this problem is more stable and effective than "nice" public alternatives. That does not guarantee that some acidic Prometheus types will never show up, surely.

Some 10 years ago I had a "funny" verbal conversation with cryptic "prophetic" warnings. If I have to interpret them now, I would guess that there will be one more Chernobyl/Fukushima type event, and this civilization cycle will be done, all Apocalypse horses will be there. And then, after a big selection event, there will be agreeable peace on Earth, with humanity united under a global rational government, with optimal Keynesian economics and sustainable energy production. What else to dream about? There is an airport with apparently the same story artfully depicted.

by das monde on Wed Jul 8th, 2015 at 10:29:27 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Utopia Now! (none / 1)
With the good or terrible living prospects of your descendants in line, conspiracy on this problem is more stable and effective than "nice" public alternatives.
The institutions principally involved leak like sieves whenever the perceived short-term personal advantage of individual members is furthered by leaking.

Ergo, there are no secret conspiracies on the scale you propose. Full stop. End of story.

You can stop JAQing off now.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Thu Jul 9th, 2015 at 10:30:57 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Utopia Now! (4.00 / 5)
But modern wind mills are much better then the wooden ones.

And there were lots and lots of wooden ones. According to Thomas Kåberger - the former head of the Swedish energy authority - if we had the same number of wind mills today - but modern - Europe would cover its electricity needs from wind. Not energy, but electricity.

And then it is the problem of coordinating preemptive political and financial crises. And why? The oil crisis in the 70ies was not masked or preempted.

by fjallstrom on Tue Jul 7th, 2015 at 03:06:59 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Utopia Now! (none / 0)
fjallstrom:
This isn't an energy crisis, it is a political crisis in the shape of a currency crisis.

This...

'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty

by melo (melometa4(at)gmail.com) on Thu Jul 9th, 2015 at 08:42:05 AM EST
[ Parent ]
The new Utopia | 59 comments (59 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)


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