Ideas without a ground

Posted By Mahabodhi on Jul 2, 2024 | 0 comments

Below is an excerpt from my forthcoming book…

© Mahabodhi Burton

7 minute read

This excerpt is from Chapter 4: ‘Postmodernism and the academic mindset’ and follows on from The Academic Mindset.

Ungrounded ideas

I think that all academics do know—on some deep level within their souls—that their academic objectivity is of limited value: in the sense all ideas are useless without ‘a ground’. What I mean is that—respecting the Law of Conditionality—no idea exists in a vacuum. The idea that they do is a dangerous idea in itself—to imagine that ideas can live in a self-referential world of their own (without consequences) itself has negative consequences: ideas must always be tested by their actual effect on the world.

Marxism is a good example: it is based on a simple, appealing, idea about economics:

Marxism seeks to explain social phenomena within any given society by analysing the material conditions and economic activities required to fulfil human material needs. It assumes that the form of economic organisation, or mode of production, influences all other social phenomena, including broader social relations, political institutions, legal systems, cultural systems, aesthetics and ideologies. These social relations and the economic system form a base and superstructure. As forces of production (i.e. technology) improve, existing forms of organizing production become obsolete and hinder further progress. Karl Marx wrote: “At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or—this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms—with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution.”[1]

‘These inefficiencies manifest themselves as social contradictions in society which are, in turn, fought out at the level of class struggle.[2] Under the capitalist mode of production, this struggle materializes between the minority who own the means of production (the bourgeoisie) and the vast majority of the population who produce goods and services (the proletariat). Starting with the conjectural premise that social change occurs due to the struggle between different classes within society who contradict one another, a Marxist would conclude that capitalism exploits and oppresses the proletariat; therefore, capitalism will inevitably lead to a proletarian revolution. In a socialist society, private property—as the means of production—would be replaced by cooperative ownership. A socialist economy would not base production on the creation of private profits but on the criteria of satisfying human needs—that is, production for use.’[3]

We can see how, within the confines of its own argument, much of what Marx says is true. The problem is: what it leaves out: it takes no account of the vagaries of human nature.

When we look at the actual history of Communism, taking just the Soviet Union: between 1920 and 1941 the Soviet population grew from around 140 million to 200 million. Between 1923 and 1961, an estimated 18 million people passed through the Gulag’s camps, of whom 1.6 million died due to detention there.[4] In addition, the Communist focus on ideology led to famine:

‘The Soviet famine of 1930–1933 was a famine in the major grain-producing areas of the Soviet Union, including Ukraine. Estimates conclude that 5.7 to 8.7 million people died of famine across the Soviet Union.

 

‘Major contributing factors to the famine include: the forced collectivization in the Soviet Union of agriculture as a part of the First Five-Year Plan, forced grain procurement, combined with rapid industrialization, a decreasing agricultural workforce, and several severe droughts. During this period the Soviet government escalated its persecution against the kulaks. Soviet Leader Joseph Stalin, had ordered kulaks, who were wealthy, land-owning farmers to be “to be liquidated as a class”, and became a target for the state.’[5]

In China, in 1966, Mao Zedong instigated the Cultural Revolution-a decade-long period of political and social chaos in a bid to use the Chinese masses to reassert his control over the Communist party, which only officially came to an end when Mao died on 9 September 1976 at the age of 82:

‘The party’s official mouthpiece newspaper urged the masses to “clear away the evil habits of the old society” by launching an all-out assault on “monsters and demons”.[6]

The article emphasized state power:

‘In every revolution the basic question is that of state power. In all branches of the superstructure—ideology, religion, art, law, state power—the central issue is state power. State power means everything. Without it, all will be lost. Therefore, no matter how many problems have to be tackled after the conquest of state power, the proletariat must never forget state power, never forget its orientation and never lose sight of the central issue.’

State power supported by zealous youth:

‘Chinese students sprung into action, setting up Red Guard divisions in classrooms and campuses across the country. By August 1966 – so-called Red August – the mayhem was in full swing as Mao’s allies urged Red Guards to destroy the “four olds” – old ideas, old customs, old habits and old culture.

 

‘Schools and universities were closed and churches, shrines, libraries, shops and private homes ransacked or destroyed as the assault on “feudal” traditions began.

 

‘Gangs of teenagers in red armbands and military fatigues roamed the streets of cities such as Beijing and Shanghai setting upon those with “bourgeois” clothes or reactionary haircuts. “Imperialist” street signs were torn down.

 

‘Party officials, teachers and intellectuals also found themselves in the cross-hairs: they were publicly humiliated, beaten and in some cases murdered or driven to suicide after vicious “struggle sessions”.[7]

Historians believe somewhere between 500,000 and two million people lost their lives as a result of the Cultural Revolution. The lives of some of the Communist party’s most powerful figures were upended by the turbulence, including future leader Deng Xiaoping, who was purged in 1967, and Xi Zhongxun, the father of China’s current president, Xi Jinping, who was publicly humiliated, beaten and sent into exile. President Xi’s half-sister, Xi Heping, is said to have taken her own life after being persecuted.[8]

‘Mao had hoped his revolutionary movement would turn China into a beacon of communism. But 50 years on many believe it had the opposite effect, paving the way for China’s embrace of capitalism in the 1980s and its subsequent economic boom.

 

‘“A common verdict is: no Cultural Revolution, no economic reform,” Roderick MacFarquhar and Michael Schoenhals write in their book on the period, Mao’s Last Revolution. “The Cultural Revolution was so great a disaster that it provoked an even more profound cultural revolution, precisely the one that Mao intended to forestall.’’[9]

Biden’s administration today stands by as transgender activists harass professors out of their jobs; and as YouTubers are deplatformed for ‘misinformation.’ If we look at the reaction that set in after the Cultural Revolution, we might see it a clear warning to ‘The Woke’ and their allies: maybe watch what you do as you might provoke the exact opposite reaction to that which you intended.

As a young man, Jordan Peterson was attracted to socialism:

‘Economic injustice was at the root of all evil, as far as I was concerned. Such injustice could be rectified, as a consequence of the rearrangement of social organisations. I could play a part in the admirable revolution, carrying out my ideological beliefs. Doubt vanished; My role was clear. Looking back, I’m amazed at how stereotypical my actions—reactions—really were. I could not rationally accept the premises of religion as I understood them. I turned, in consequence, to dreams of political utopia, and personal power. The same ideological trap caught millions of others, in recent centuries.’[10]

Obviously, it is highly desirable to have a more equitable society, but to tear everything down in revolution with no clear plan of how to constructs a workable alternative, is, at the least, ungrounded: there is a kind of pretense involved in the idea that the world can survive ‘in ideas’: ideas that somehow do not need to ‘touch the ground’ in experience.

Peterson was elected to the College Board of governors, which was composed of politically and ideologically conservative people: lawyers, doctors, and businessmen; They had all accomplished something worthwhile and difficult, and he could not help but admire them, even though he did not share their political stance. He had attended several left-wing party congresses, as a student politician and active party worker and hope to emulate the socialist leaders:

‘However, I could not generate much respect for the numerous low-level party activists I encountered at these meetings. They seemed to live to complain. They had no career, frequently, and no family, no completed education—nothing but ideology. They were peevish, irritable, and little, in every sense of the word. I was faced, in consequence, with the mirror image of the problem I encountered on the College Board: I did not admire many of the individuals who believed the same things I did.’[11]

Peterson’s existential confusion was solved when he read George Orwell’s Road to Wigan Pier, which, he says, altogether undermined his faith in ideological stances themselves:

‘Orwell described the great flaw of socialism, and the reason for its frequent failure to attract and maintain democratic power (at least in Britain). Orwell said, essentially, that socialists did not really like the poor. They merely hated the rich. His idea struck home instantly. Socialist ideology served to mask resentment and hatred, bred by failure. Many of the party activists I had encountered were using the ideals of social justice to rationalize their pursuit of personal revenge.

 

‘Of course, my socialist colleagues and I weren’t out to hurt anyone. Quite the reverse. We were out to improve things—but we were going to start with other people. I came to see the temptation in this logic, the obvious flaw, the danger-but could also see that it did not exclusively characterize socialism. Anyone who was out to change the world by changing others was to be regarded with suspicion. The temptations of such a position were too great to be resisted.

 

It was not socialist ideology that posed a problem, then, but ideology as such. Ideology divided the world up simplistically into those who thought and acted properly, and those who did not. Ideology enabled the believer to hide from his own unpleasant and inadmissible fantasies and wishes.’ [12]

Peterson came to view the idea that people were motivated by rational forces—and that human beliefs and actions were determined by economic pressures—was an insufficient explanation: he could not see how commodities had intrinsic and self-evident value:

‘The worth of things had to be socially or culturally (or even individually) determined. This act of determination appeared to me moral—appeared to me to be a consequence of the moral philosophy adopted by the society, culture or person in question. What people valued, economically, merely reflected what they believed to be important. This meant that real motivation had to lie in the domain of value, of morality. The political scientists I studied with did not see this, or did not think it was relevant.’

The chapter goes on to explore Woke as Maoism with American characteristics.

[1] Karl Marx. (1859). “Introduction”. A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy.

[2] Gregory, Paul R.; Stuart, Robert C. (2003). “Marx’s Theory of Change”. Comparing Economic Systems in the Twenty-First Century. South-Western College Publishing. p62.

[3] Marxism. Wikipedia.

[4] Gulag. Wikipedia.

[5] Soviet famine of 1930–1933. Wikipedia.

[6] “Sweep Away All Monsters.’ Peking Review. Vol. 9, #23, 3 June 1966. p4-5.

https://www.marxists.org/subject/china/peking-review/1966/PR1966-23c.htm

[7] Tom Phillips. ‘The Cultural Revolution: all you need to know about China’s political convulsion.’ The Guardian. 11 May 2016.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Ibid.

[10] Jordan B. Peterson. (2002) Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief. Taylor and Francis.

[11] Ibid.

[12] Ibid.