Peter Emmerson

8. Socialism as an a-t heuristic: a scientific tool for domination and genocide.

By committing ourselves to a-t heuristics (ideals) such as social justice and equality we are made resistant to life’s grinding hardship and unfairness, knowing that if we go about it in a certain way a utopian tomorrow can be realized, epitomized in modern times by Marx’ scientific dialectical class model: a piece of pseudo-engineering.  As such both socialism and capitalism are a-t heuristics that provide idealistic, definitive answers to what is going wrong in people’s lives and what needs to be done, opening up possibilities of achieving levels of self-belief (that illusion of conviction) needed to push on at all costs even in the face of serious resistance that may well end in martyrdom or killing others.  As an a-t heuristic socialism offered justification for Stalinist and Maoist figurations to sanction genocidal killing and forced migration of large numbers of people who threatened their revolutionary ideals.  On a less murderous scale, a belief in socialism authorized Attlee’s figuration to re-balance responsibility for managing personal welfare, giving government officials much more influence.  These fore-mentioned changes were done with conviction, conviction driven by self-belief in an a-t heuristic – socialism.  In fact, as with other a-t heuristics, socialism is an over-simplification of what actually goes on, high on ideals/science, low on facts/engineering, patterned according to theometaphysical rules, in Marx’ case dialectical materialism.  Such a-t heuristics developed by modern specialists such as Marx provide certainties which can be deployed to control our fear of comparatively uncertain mundane experiences.  Rather than engaging more fully with mundane experiences by deploying engineering techniques that should make us wary of anything ending in ‘ism’, we continue to believe in illusions such as socialism to justify our thactions and supply us with sufficient safe conviction, to fight, dominate and if necessary kill those with whom we disagree.  In this way a-t heuristics offload personal responsibility for killing and dying by giving us reason to believe.