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.

7. Habituses and absolute-truth (a-t) heuristics.

Our difficulty to live without certainties distorts our perceptions promoting a view that absolute truths govern earthly mundane functioning – this is what I call a scientific approach.  Such a model dominates British intellectual thactivities.  Correspondingly, engineered solutions are seen as dependent on deploying pure mathematical absolute-truth technology.  This is a serious mistake because such technologies of certainty can never fully engage with comparatively uncertain mundane experiences and correspondingly can at best merely mimic them.  Absolute truths are not in evidence anywhere other than people’s minds: God’s Ten Commandments are a matter of faith not fact; logical technique as a means of establishing absolute truths breaks down when the facts have to be taken into account – real triangles are merely modelled by Pythagoras’ theorem as there are no straight lines or perfect 90⁰ angles.  Absolute truths are mental tools or what Tversky & Kahneman (1974) call ‘heuristics’, which do not constitute mundane realities as so many influential people believe.  Techniques for formulating absolute-truth (a-t) heuristics were developed by ancient people to deal with their specific fears and anxieties so that they could function effectively.  We have inherited their words and conventions and continue to apply them uncritically even when they have outlived their usefulness; because like ancient Greeks, absolute truths make us feel safe.

Safety is experienced in various ways, one being self-belief.  By deploying a-t heuristics we are safe in knowing that we can thact with conviction, even when confronted by serious resistance from people with far more influence than ourselves.  Belief in absolute truth will sustain us even during periods of severe social isolation when all seems lost.  Orwell (1989, pp. 92-3) explains this process in his book 1984 when describing what strengthens and motivates Winston Smith to live with desperate isolation and resist Big Brother:

“His heart sank as he thought of the enormous power arrayed against him, the ease with which any Party intellectual would overthrow him in the debate, the subtle arguments which he would not be able to understand, much less answer.  And yet he was in the right!  They were wrong and he was right.  The obvious, the silly and the true had got to be defended.  Truisms are true, hold on to that! ……. Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two makes four.  If that is granted all else follows”.

Ideals can fortify us to take a stand, by providing us with something that is worth fighting and dying for in absolute certainty that we are right and that anyone who disagrees is wrong and should be resisted if not stopped.  Such certainty provides a platform from which we can manage our fear and anxiety so that we can be assertive and live rather than just existing in dissonant apathy as per Mathieu in Sartre’s The Roads to Freedom.  In giving us a definite reason to die a-t heuristics motivate us to live!

However, our factual, mundane experience suggests that such beliefs are illusory as pointed out some 300 years ago by philosopher David Hume.  As far as I can see, certainty is nothing more than a habit learned from previous generations fostered by centuries of commitment to a-t heuristics.  Such a-t heuristical dominance has only recently been seriously challenged as engineers developed more successful yet realistic methods for dealing with human problems.  I want to look at ‘socialism’ as a modern a-t heuristic developed by 18^th and 19^th century theometaphysicians committed to ideals that defend, celebrate and proselytize virtues such as togetherness and limited personal autonomy.  As with other ideals socialism is an ideological weapon, which in grand Socratic dialectical fashion can be used to win an argument and if necessary mobilize an army of people with reason to fight and die in battle with capitalists, who are without doubt wrong.  From a socialist point of view, capitalists are bullies and cheats, who busy themselves exploiting their potential for greater personal autonomy through commercial thactivities.  From an engineering perspective socialism, and capitalism for that matter, are a-t heuristics manufactured by theometaphysicians to help us manage our engagement with comparatively uncertain experiences.

6. Our western habituses are structured by absolute-truth hubs which are very resistant to facts and change.

Those who purvey these profoundest, irrefutable truths, offer up possibilities for thacting with absolute authority, control and security in a world that is always changing.  These absolute truths are located in our habituses as mental hubs and as such are default positions which subconsciously structure our thacting in relation to chaotic life experiences.  Accordingly, they are held in highest regard and accrue serious status, as do those theometaphysicians who supply them, whether priests like St Augustine, philosophers like Michael Sandel or pure mathematicians such as Stephen Hawking.  Even so, whilst absolute truths accrue enormous strength and influence from their capacity to make us feel certain and secure, they fail to engage properly with mundane problems, as with my Obama example above: governing ‘justly’ is not possible.  Such a lack of fit between ideal and mundane experiences is accompanied by feelings of dissonance which can be relieved in two ways:-

1. Abandon a relevant absolute truth belief, or;
2. Translate awkward, uncomfortable mundane experiences as aberrations that overlay and obscure a more profound underpinning reality governed by absolute truths that is beyond everyday perceptions. Such a position is a matter of faith, whether religious or scientific.  This is one way of understanding what a scientist is: they are believers in absolute truths.  Engineers by comparison are more engaged with comparatively uncertain mundane experiences and less prone to flights of fancy.

Attendant on abandoning an absolute truth are increased feelings of dissonance which can be so serious as to demand re-assembly of a mental default hub which may have been in place since childhood.  Such hub modification can have wider implications as mental default hubs operate interdependently with each other – a change in functioning of one may well require revising another.  If for example we are confronted with evidence that contradicts our feelings on an ideal such as equality our other ideals may come under scrutiny too: if equality is impossible what about justice?  In extreme circumstances total hub reconstruction may be necessary, which is likely to be seriously disorientating as it involves significant engagement with comparatively uncertain mundanities making self-assurance and control very difficult if not impossible to attain.  I think it’s fair to say that many, perhaps a significant majority of people, will find this experience intolerable and are likely to restore all default absolute-truth hubs and carry on regardless of contradiction even when an absolute-truth belief becomes completely untenable: a recognition that God’s Ten Commandments cannot work in practice does not lead people to abandon their religious faith.  Our unquestioned belief in equality is a secular example.  If we take a verb-oriented approach we might ask ourselves on what grounds can people be equal?  This may evoke answers such as height, weight etc.  Such questions are for engineers and are quantifiable.  However, conventionally equality is a noun, but not in a material sense – equality is metaphysical, it is an ideal most prominently espoused as part of French revolutionary politics.  Equality is a fanciful noun developed by theometaphysicians, an a-t heuristic.  Equality is something existing only in a Cartesian mind, something dreamed up by homo clausus beyond ordinary facts: equality is something super-human, something we can know absolutely through logical analysis.  As a mental ‘thing’, an a-t heuristic, equality forms part of our cognitive absolute truth technology that structures our habitus.  In fact ‘equality’ does not exist at all and cannot be understood as part of our mundane experiences; equality cannot be engineered.  It is a mental construction that offers hope to dispossessed people who need a reason to carry on – who need control.   Equality can never be measured.  It is impossible to assess and yet we continue to pursue it in important contexts such as sexual and ethnic relationships.  Our long-term and continued adherence to ideals such equality not only distorts our perceptions, it impedes our capacity to develop and apply engineering approaches to our problems, especially those of a figurational nature where our emotional well-being is threatened to a serious degree by comparative uncertainties.  However, if we can take a verbal approach then we may find benefits to sorting out how equal we can be, which  may compensate for our feelings of dissonance.

Equality is a concept derived from theometaphysical techniques that have become conventions in what might be termed ‘western’ thacting.  Equality is a noun that makes a human experience look like an object.  Using such a concept concomitantly disengages us from our mundane experience creating a distance sufficient to allow us to thact in ideal, scientific ways and dream up all sorts of fantastic possibilities that can never be realized.  If we keep to verb-oriented language we get a very different impression – how can a person be equal with another?  Verbal analyses engage us with down to earth, mundane, engineering ways of judging: height, weight, money, housing ………  Sociologists are too often working with implicit scientific theometaphysical notions such as equality, justice, modernity, democracy etc. that automatically disengage them from those mundane situations they are trying to analyse.  If they were to abandon these conventions and use verb-oriented language they could engage much more effectively with that evidence they are seeking to engineer.

5. Certainty and Security: absolute-truth finders – theometaphysicians (priests, philosophers and pure mathematicians).

In part, as discussed above, our reliance on these conventions is about security and habit.  Mundane truths rather than absolute truths come to us from previous generations as tried and tested, ready-made proverbial guides for managing day to day ups and downs.  An example would be fatalistic beliefs, which allow us to offload responsibility for what happens onto something or someone else – ‘what will be, will be’: another belief contradictory to fatalism involves adherence to rationalistic convictions that motivate us to take responsibility and plan – ‘your fate is in your own hands’.  Whilst these maxims of every day conduct are gathered informally from mundane experience, higher order absolute truths are developed by professional truth-finders who have honed their techniques since ancient times in an attempt to manufacture certainties that immunise us from perfidious profane experiences.  Traditionally this formal work has been carried out by two figurations of theometaphysicians operating interdependently: priests (theologians) who oversee supernatural (religious) truths and philosophers/pure mathematicians (metaphysicians) who formulate reasoned/logical (secular) truths.

Their programme of absolute-truth finding has been very influential.  Moses gave us God’s word as Ten Commandments that have been adopted by enormous numbers of people as well as Jews.  These Commandments being God’s word are absolutely true by definition.  In a secular search for absolute truths, ancient Greek philosophers such as Plato developed logical methods which have governed western ways of thacting, both religious and secular, ever since.  Pure mathematicians such as Pythagoras continue to influence contemporary mathematicians and engineers.  These formal truths are absolute and cannot be disproven.  This is their great attraction.  They provide security by reassuring us that certain knowledge and stability persists beyond our sensory perceptions, guiding our every day, comparatively uncertain experiences.  Knowing with certainty offers absolute control over our fears and anxieties about earthly volatilities: martyrs are ready to go through tortuous deaths for their religious truths.  Metaphysical truths such as justice, equality and pure mathematical theorems have tremendous force and must not be underestimated as human motivators – as Liam Fox, Secretary of State for International Trade, said this morning (1/9/17) business needs ‘certainty’ if we are to benefit from Brexit.

4. Social and personal control: certainty through absolute-truth beliefs – Obama and Atlee.

Our acceptance of this state of affairs is in part explained by resistance to change from those with invested interests in continuing to deploy ideals or absolute-truth beliefs.  Priests, philosophers and pure mathematicians (theometaphysicians) are three such prestigious figurations which have serious influence sufficient to undermine attempts to apply comparatively uncertain engineered approaches to figurational problems, especially where issues of significance to their established allies are concerned such as politics.  Absolute truth beliefs are tactical tools that form part of a strategy used by established figurations to control infiltration of outsiders into positions of influence – by definition an absolute truth is an ideological tool of domination resistant to all attempts at change: see my essay Why You Shouldn’t Believe Anything You’re Told.

However, where more personal aspects of human experience are concerned theometaphysicians and other established figurations have much less direct influence, especially over those outsiders with little social investment, whose meagre educational and/or financial resources leave them at a considerable social distance from established figurational thactivities and with minimal influence.  We can probably understand why someone schooled at Oxford University with a prestigious, highly paid job that facilitates property ownership would be well aware of and likely to deploy ancient absolute-truth beliefs when analysing life’s problems, political or otherwise.  But, it is less obvious as to why outsider figurations with little of what Bourdieu terms ‘culture capital’ should deploy absolute-truth beliefs?  Ideological conditioning can to some extent explain such penetration of these beliefs albeit mitigated by local culture as Gramsci and others have pointed out.  However, a need for ideological tools of domination is not a sole preserve of established figurations: even poor, uneducated people use absolute truths to dominate others, religious doctrine being a prime example.

Nonetheless, members of established and outsider figurations have another thing in common that can account for their receptivity to absolute-truth beliefs; they all need to feel in control of their lives.  When we hold a belief in an absolute-truth it increases our self-assurance sufficient to motivate us to exert our influence – in other words we feel in control of mundane situations and can live rather than merely exist.  To live in this sense is to thact assertively; to exist is to thact defensively.  Control is about self-assurance; in one sense domination is applying that control to others for our own benefit, that is, to retain control.  Maximum control is associated with absolute certainty – absolute certainty is energized and guaranteed by absolute-truth beliefs.  Such beliefs are useful for living at all levels whether we are tackling mundane problems or aiming to achieve high governmental office: listen to Barack Obama’s self-assured inaugural address of 2008 where in stating his impossible utopian vision of ‘change’, he liberally deploys absolute-truth beliefs.  His speech promised a more idealistic America where issues of injustice and inequality would be resolved – you could almost detect a feeling that Americans were about to enter a fabled ‘promised land’.  Such conviction pulsates with energy interdependent with absolute truth beliefs that facilitate sufficient charismatic self-assurance to vindicate running for presidential office in order to deploy serious influence.  Of course, political ideals by definition founder in their encounter with mundane political situations.  However, had Obama stated his case in a more realistic, engineered fashion, he would not have been so convincing and electable as he would not have been able to promise to deliver certainties.  Concomitantly, Obama was elected President on a wave of optimism that quickly dissipated when his team encountered mundane political situations that required thacting according to democratic checks and balances.   Unlike Obama’s people, Attlee’s figuration had a landslide victory to work with in 1945, which provided them with an opportunity to put their socialist absolute-truth beliefs into action and make big changes virtually unrestrained by political opposition.  Absolute-truth beliefs mandate us to thact with absolute certainty and conviction: by definition, we cannot be wrong.

3. Philosophers not Engineers when tackling social problems.

Labour’s willingness in 1945 to construct and put into operation a prototype welfare model grounded in ideals rather than engineering was unfortunately to be expected.  Sadly, this has not changed.  Correspondingly, when dealing with political problems we remain committed to ancient theometaphysical (religious, philosophical and mathematical) conventions and standards.  Oxford University degrees such as Philosophy, Politics & Economics (PPE), so connected with those who achieve political eminence (see Adrian Wooldridge’s article in The Sunday Times, 28/12/14, p22), evidence and reinforce this pattern – why not EPE, Engineering, Politics & Economics?  20/01/15 was Democracy Day on BBC Radio 4.  I listened to a brief debate chaired by Today’s ultimate authority on these issues, ‘the public philosopher’, Michael Sandel of Harvard and LSE.  We could have been in ancient Athens listening to Socrates (Plato).  Contemporary political thactivity is structured according to ancient idealistic rules and is concomitantly shot-through with dream notions like ‘democracy’.  Why is this a problem?

It is a problem because these techniques have failed us in understanding and sorting out some of our most pressing human difficulties: just consider our continuing preparedness to resort to serious violence when resolving human conflicts.  In addition, British people face very different problems in 2017AD than did Greek people in 500BC.  We in Britain have benefitted enormously from taking an engineering approach to our material problems.  However, as stated above, we have been much less willing to explore such an approach to our figurational issues.  This limited development is partly explained by our profound security needs that demand our dependence on obsolete, inappropriate ancient habits, which is why BBC producers selected Sandel to chair a debate rather than a political engineer.  Isn’t 2500 years of failure sufficient time to judge such conventions unfit for purpose?  Our willingness to accept such a limited degree of penetration into political analysis by engineering methods is alarming.  Engineers have been extremely successful in dealing with human illness, but in doing so medics had to jettison ancient Hippocratic and Galenic models.  Why do we not carry out a parallel exercise as regards most other figurational issues?

2. Atlee and socialist idealism.

Miliband and co.’s posturing and obfuscation was from my perspective rather predictable.  They were working to a well prepared script indicative of deep long-term flaws in policy that pattern Labour’s ideological message.  These problems have incapacitated even competent Labour governors ever since 1945 when Attlee’s people re-balanced responsibility for personal welfare in favour of governmental functionaries.  Living with this legacy for governors of all persuasions has been tortuous, for what was deemed to be a cure for social injustice, has turned-out to be nothing more than just another great experiment in socialist doctrine.  On reflection this outcome was extremely likely when you realize that Beveridge’s group in developing post-war British welfare provision were as far as I’m concerned, driven more by wish-statements aimed at achieving ideals such as social justice and equality, rather than carefully engineered, practical objectives that could be evaluated and modified.  Concomitantly, politicians since 1945 have been tied up with constant operational tinkering to defend governmentally managed welfare policies that in idealistically promising all, could never deliver.  Interdependently, we have services plagued by insatiable expectation and demand, as people nowadays take much less personal, familial and neighbourhood responsibility for their difficulties than they used to.  Even though governmentally driven welfare provision was checked and in some cases reversed after 1979, centralized control from London has been largely undiminished as local authorities and professional bodies have continued to be undermined.  How could Attlee’s figuration have been so naïve?

Figurations in the Labour Party committed political suicide and let down those who need them: Michael Foot and Ed Miliband?

1. Ed Miliband – what a mess!

You could see and hear in Ed Miliband’s Tuesday speech of Labour’s 2014 party conference why Cameron’s Tory figuration would win in 2015.  Labour leaders seemed paralysed by issues of Scottish independence at referendum time.  For me its later stages were lit up by an old soldier’s return to battle as Gordon Brown threw off his post-prime ministerial anonymity to take on those who wanted independence.  It was great to see him striding around a political platform having licked his wounds for long enough.  There was no posturing or ambiguity here, we could see it mattered.  He came out fighting with a passion, until then, only displayed by Yes campaigners.  His visceral performances arguably stemmed a damaging flow of voters away from saying ‘No’, sufficient to avoid defeat.

Brown’s strident conviction deployed with such effect contrasted markedly with that of his successor.  What I saw from Ed Miliband at Labour’s conference in 2014 was a diffident, unconvincing display of a man totally out of his depth, short on charisma and an ability to put together a team that could develop a set of policies needed to win an election.  Miliband was a man lost, leading a shadow cabinet mostly as inept as he was.  Miliband’s figuration had four years to develop a manifesto fit to send packing a governing coalition formed in 2010 of a defensive, uncosy alliance working with a legacy of banking catastrophes and business collapse.  Subsequently, coalition partners over-borrowed and over-borrowed whilst cutting and cutting and cutting.  Labour was their only substantive alternative and should have been out of sight by September 2014, preparing for electoral victory in May.  Instead they were playing for time, executing what amounted to little more than a tactical defence focussed on exploiting government weaknesses or spewing out tawdry mantras of idealistic nonsense such as ‘togetherness’ which just paraphrased a Tory slogan: ‘we’re all in it together’.  Labour people were working safe NHS ground like a dazed boxer hoping to throw a lucky punch – team Miliband looked beaten.

We are bound to ancient metaphysical conventions that privilege object-oriented language.  Using ‘the’ definite article is a significant part of that style of thacting which I argue obscures much of what we want to understand about psychosocial processes.  Such psychosocial processes need language that will engage with those processes: a verb-oriented language.  This latter point I picked up from Norbert Elias.  In an attempt to extend his project I have been developing a style of writing for some time that does not use ‘the’.