Political Thoughts: From the ALP to Transylvania and Beyond

[tcpip]

Capturing the attention of the public and media in Australia over the past week has been the challenge to the current Prime Minister by the former Prime Minister who was challenged by the current Prime Minister. Various opinion polls have shown that Rudd is considered far more popular among the general public, whereas Gillard is far more popular among Labor MPs. Despite some pretty grubby personal attacks, many of the MPs have taken the opportunity to herald the government's achievments over the past few years with positive results. Both are good leaders for different reasons; Rudd is the ideas man, a popularist, public figure, and the polls reflect that. Gillard is a manager, a negotiator and the results reflect that is well. If something is unpopular she waters it down in order to partially succeed; but it also means there is a loss of sense of leadership. The polls reflect that as well.

On other political matters was delighted by an address given by Rev. Jozsef Kaszoni on the contemporary development of Unitarianism in his native Transylvania, especially the difficulties under the former communist regime, accurately described as a police-state where personal mail was always opened, 'phone calls were routinely monitored and people lacked the basic freedom to express critical opinion (those that did found themselves in prisons fairly quickly). The regime also continued the racist "Romanianization" policy towards the numerous ethnic Hungarians and Germans who have lived in Transylvania for hundreds of years. Even in my days as a fairly orthodox (albeit Trotskyist) Marxist in my teenaged years, I throughly disliked such left-wing fascist states. Now that the public record is even clearer about the crimes against humanity perpetrated by such regimes. I can only hope that the direct and personal illustration will help those continue who have irrational idealistic attachments to such places. After all, it is never too late to learn.

With the experience of "actually existing socialism", as such dreadful regimes were known, and the inevitable collapse of eastern bloc, there were many apologists for who were crowing about the success of democratic capitalism. More considered arguments (such as Fukuyama's), are worthy of more serious consideration. For those who do not think that we have reached the highest political and economic level of social relations, the only realistic progessive opposition to democratic capitalism (democracy imposed on civil life, private corporations) is libertarian socialism (liberty in civil issues, worker's cooperatives), of which the Isocracy Network provides a nascent social theory that is in greater accord to our contemporary circumstances and the universal trajectory of the human story. On the latter point, next Sunday at the Philosophy Forum (12.30pm Unitarian Church hall), I'll be presenting on The Philosophy of History: Metanarratives and Hermeneutics.

Comments

[zenicurean.livejournal.com]

This actually reminds me -- at some point I am probably going to have to jot down a post somewhere detailing my not inconsiderable problems with (what I've actually read of) Fukuyama. As you can probably imagine I do not especially mind anyone dancing on the shallow grave of realkommunismus, but there's a fair number of things in his views that strike me as immensely and glaringly problematic.

(I suppose I also should take the opportunity to flesh out some of my own philosophical tensions while I'm at it; no point just being a news outlet, I suppose.)

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Of course Fukuyama is problematic but he does present a worthy argument with a historico-teleogical orientation from a liberal-democratic perspective. Such an orientation was almost entirely the domain of the Marxists for most of the twentieth century, to the point that liberal theorists actually started to argue against historical trajectories (e.g., Karl Popper's The Poverty of Historicism).

I think in order for historicism to be true there must be innate and universal in order for their to be telos and that it is possible to discern what those tendencies are, and that it is possible to test the hypothesis. Fukuyama, for example, would argue that there is an innate human desire towards liberalism and democracy - and a technical orientation that will result in transhumanism.

[zenicurean.livejournal.com]

I confess I have a fair bit of trouble attaching the word "worthy" to this sort of historico-teleological view-point -- and not merely due to Popper -- but I'll take your word for it. But, incidentally, I think that last item on your list should already by itself be counted as a powerful stab into the heart of Mr Fukuyama's thesis. It is fairly trivial to discover circumstantial evidence of human propensities towards whatever and whichever form of existence the theorist finds a fashionable topic of discussion in his circles at any particular time; it's an entirely different matter to sort out what such a notion as testing this particular kind of hypothesis should even mean in a historical framework. It's not as if the planet has a control group.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Well, that third point is very much taken from Popper, who argued instead in favour of "piecemeal social engineering" as an alternative to grand history-changing experiments.