Reclaiming the Battle of Ideas

The Only Lens In Town

Can we do better in society? We should at least be able to talk about it—argue about it.

I keep feeling like liberals have largely ceded the ground to an anointed idea of free-markets, so much so that any discussion about capitalism invariably attracts an assertion of the failure of the left’s ideas. Such prominent supposedly-progressive politicians such as Massachusetts Senator Liz Warren call themselves capitalists¹, and do so with gusto². I’m late to the party³ on this, I know. I forgive you for skipping this post if you know Naomi Klein’s work and are bored seeing me try to catch up.

I’m not a political scientist, and economic ideologies are the thing that people put you into when you say you support this or that. I have not embraced an -ism. As a respected researcher once said to me about choosing theories: “you’re not picking a religion⁴.” Like healthy scientific research, playfulness and a diversity of thinking helps you to find better ideas. Dogmatic adherence is a narrow lens that clarifies a bunch of things in a very consistent way, but comes with blinders. I get why some like consistency, but that’s a crappy tradeoff.

So, when it’s END STAGE CAPITALISM OR THE HIGHWAY, that seems like someone has rigged the discussion on purpose, and sold me a set of blinders at a really inflated price because they were the only lens manufacturer in town. Or, at least, they said they were.

Me, Catching Up

I came across a video of Naomi Klein talking about her book The Shock Doctrine, and the first thing that grabbed my attention when I added this video to a Facebook post was her explanation of how shock was used against the people’s interest. And that she came to understand this while reading about CIA interrogation techniques that used shock to regress a subject. And that, scaled up, large shocks made people susceptible to an ideology that could be prepared in advance, waiting in the wings. Because these regressed, childlike, frightened people were too focused on survival to worry about other things⁵.

But later in the video she discusses something that is just as important, even though it’s less shocking. She makes the claim that disaster capitalists used shock to push their ideology, pushing other ideas aside with force rather than winning an argument. But then progressives abandoned those arguments as if they had actually lost them fair and square⁶. And, so, a relatively effective shout-down of any idea critiquing the excesses of capitalism is to point out places other approaches have failed. This has been the case in casual conversations and online for my entire life. Klein says the argument was never lost. I’ll leave you with how she put it because she experienced it as an ultimately hopeful realization. And I’m not very good at that.

I mean, it's, it's, it's horrifying to read about all these moments where people were taken advantage of when they couldn't defend themselves, and just the way in which torture and other forms of extreme violence have been used to impose this ideology. I don't find it completely depressing, and I'll tell you why.

Before I did this research, I accepted, like most people, a large part of the narrative that the triumph of the free market around the world in the '80s and '90s was a largely peaceful process. And that in fact, you know, even though we progressives don't admit that there is no alternative, we lost faith in our alternatives, and we accepted this narrative that there was a great battle of ideas, and that we lost that battle—that we lost that battle.

When we go look back—and this is what I do in the book—I look at key chapters where this free market ideology has had its leaps forward, like the coup in Chile, then the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the breaking apart of the Soviet Union, Poland, then in 1989, Tiananmen Square in 1989. Looking at these key junctures where you had these big leaps forward for Milton Friedman's ideology, what you see at these moments is that it actually never was chosen.

The fact that we can look and say, "Okay, well, what did Polish voters vote for in 1989?" They voted for a party that was promising not to privatize their state companies, but to turn them into workers' co-ops. What did South Africans vote for in 1994? They voted for a party that was promising to take the rich resources of that country that were in the hands of a tiny elite and redistribute them. What did Russians want in 1993? Most of them believed that privatization should also be done through worker ownership.

And these ideas were blasted out of the way through various forms of shock and violence. But it wasn't that we didn't have the ideas, and it wasn't that we ever consented. It wasn't that we were ever convinced of the rightness; we just succumbed at various points.

And I actually think that's quite empowering to realize that we didn't lose this battle of ideas, because I think that a lot of what weakens us on the left is this notion that is repeated again and again—that our ideas have tried and failed, that they're discredited. And that, I think, keeps us from having the strength of our conviction in key moments.

So that's part of the reason why I wrote the book: to say it actually wasn't a battle of ideas, it was a real battle. It was a real war with real casualties. So we came up against brutal forces and we lost, but we didn't lose the argument.

— Naomi Klein, YouTube interview clip of her speaking about her book The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism

Watch the whole thing here, if you’re interested:

AI Disclosure: I used AI to double-check my punctuation. The writing is all mine.

1. I saw Candidate Warren speak at UMass Dartmouth when she battled Scott Brown for what some called “Ted Kennedy’s senate seat.” I’d been chosen to prepare a question for her, and then was not asked to present the question. So, instead, I rushed the stage at the end of the event to shake her hand and tell her that I appreciated her work on the problem of Wall Street corruption and urged her to continue her strong support for education. I’ve voted for her enthusiastically. And in her declarations and writings, she is firmly a free-market capitalist who wants to save the system, not replace it. ↩

2. If you think this saves them from being called communists, you don’t understand why people are calling them communists. Hint: it’s because, historically in the USA, “communist” polls badly. Really badly. Otherwise, people with other-than-capitalist ideas might conclude: “If they’re going to call me a communist, what’s the point of embracing capitalism all the time?” In other words, even being a full-throated capitalist doesn’t save you from one of the most damaging labels in politics. So why chase capitalism, or put any work into defending yourself on that front? Seems like there are better fronts to fight on. ↩

3. No pun intended. ↩

4. The researcher was Marty Simon of NYU, and I always took what he was saying as in harmony with my affinity for playfulness in thinking. That is, play with the ideas and see where they lead you. His metaphor of religion represented something dogmatic: a serious choice. His point was probably meant to be practical⁷: that good researchers use theories as tools (lenses, more properly) rather than being used by the theory. So, yes, my closest claim to an “ism” is that I believe having a strong set of principles helps you practically make decisions aligned with your values, rather than what just seems best for you at the time. Don’t worry; someone will eventually come along and attach an -ism to you. But if you start with the -ism, you’d at least better learn a whole lot about it and the alternatives. I’m endlessly intellectually curious but don’t have the time for that. Just being honest. ↩

5. When people say “easy to manipulate,” I think it comes off sounding crazy. Well, that’s what it sounds to me a lot of time when people say “the media is trying to manipulate you.” First of all, of course they are; why are you even saying that? Secondly, did your parents not teach you to listen carefully to advertising? Thirdly, most people are trying to sound superior when they’re telling you that you’re being manipulated. I’m not saying they’re wrong, but I’m saying that they are also being manipulated. SO, what’s the point of pointing it out? The point is to know and say more about how you’re being manipulated. Because just saying it sounds crazy, dopey, superior, or some combination. Vagueness in any political or social discussion is not a virtue. If you do it just to keep friends, well…⁸. So why is it OK to say it here? Klein writes about a theory of manipulation. SHe’s not posting a vague social media post that everyone will ignore because they’ll assume it applies to those other people, not them. I guess read her book if you want more; this post is actually about something else. ↩

6. I’ve heard political analysts and consultants talk about how bad certain ideas poll. Disaster capitalists have been working on making those ideas political pariahs for my entire life. So, when current politicians look at the polls, they say “if I’m going to get elected, there’s no way I’m going to talk about that.” Which is why Democrats, or others, with progressive social policies are frightening for the propagandists. Because they have a chance to create a policy that both works and is well-liked. They argue that we can’t have these policies because they don’t work. But they’re afraid to death of them as if they know they’ll be proven wrong. In any event, this is a good reasons why polls are a self-fulfilling prophecy in the face of decades of propaganda. Progressive policies that people have never directly experienced are hated because someone told them to hate them. ↩

7. In research, you had better choose theories that could answer the kind of questions that interest you and are compatible with the kind of data you have or are willing to gather. And how you gather it. ↩

8. “So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth.” Revelation 3:16 ↩