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Fordism is a heavy-handed metaphor, not an actual religion with historical nuance. Huxley’s metaphors are obvious as semaphores, even naming his main character Bernard Marx. He wasn’t a socialist, himself, too wrapped up in ideology and esoterism. But he did openly show sympathies to leftist philosophers like Kropotkin, and characterized his collectivist utopian society in The Island as being encroached upon by capitalist oil barons. Characterizing him as pro-modern-economy completely overlooks his drug-influenced orientalist utopian values.
Can you name a socialist state that doesn’t do mass production, however?
Mass production itself is not at issue. Mass production is necessary to maintain modern population density. The issue is in profits, how profits influence resource distribution in a society, excessive waste of goods which are not profitable (mass transit) or cannot reach profitable markets (30% of our food supply goes to waste despite a large portion of the world population suffering from food insecurity), and the accumulation of profits by individuals.
if someone is telling you that there aren’t castes in socialist states, they’re selling you a pack of lies.
I’m not naive enough to believe complete egalitarianism is possible in a transitionary state. But the most powerful ‘despotic’ heads of state in socialist countries have(/had) salaries comparable to the President of the US. Whereas the actual seat of power in western countries, the capitalist class, far outearn public employees to the point of holding 50% of the world’s wealth. Joesph Stalin had nothing on Rockefeller or Bezos. This doesn’t even go into the profit-motive of unpaid labor and slavery which still persist in many supplychains.
Or do you, to bring in Orwell, believe that in a socialist state a university professor will hang out with coal miners?
Would you? I have done both.
That’s ur-consumerism rearing its ugly head.
You’re looking at this from a specifically western point of view. While capitalist-style markets are an outgrowth of feudal economies (particularly the economic philosophy of 16th century Italy), market economies are not the only type of economy. There are numerous archaeological and ethnographic studies showing that this diversity was much greater in Sub-Saharan Africa, Oceania, and the Americas pre-colonization. Asserting that modern economics is a crucible of universal truths is a myth invented by modern ideologues with no imaginations.
The underlying political structures are, in both cases, almost, but not quite, completely out of scope.
Ideas do not come out of a contextless aether. They come out of real places. These men wrote about the societies that they lived in based on their lived experience. Neither of them lived in soviets.
Mass production itself is not at issue. Mass production is necessary to maintain modern population density. The issue is in profits, how profits influence resource distribution in a society, excessive waste of goods which are not profitable (mass transit) or cannot reach profitable markets (30% of our food supply goes to waste despite a large portion of the world population suffering from food insecurity), and the accumulation of profits by individuals.
Absolutely agreed. Now re-read Brave New World and note the following:
While there was money, it acted more as a way to induce consumerism (the real target of Huxley’s ire). As I noted earlier, Huxley’s beef was with hedonism and how it dehumanizes. He lampoons the capitalist-adjacent (but not capitalist-exclusive) focus on consumerism as it leads to empty hedonism.
But at the same time the economy was strongly central-controlled which is pretty much the precise opposite of capitalism. (This is why I repeated several times ‘there are no capitalist countries’ and ‘there are no socialist countries’ in my earlier rant: there is not a society on the planet that’s pure-anything.)
Huxley’s satire is far more subtle and more pointed than ideologues who read it seem to be able to perceive. Right-wing types read it as a condemnation of socialism because they see the command economy. Left-wing types read it as a condemnation of capitalism because they see the consumerism. The truth is he sticks a shiv into both systems while working at his main thesis: that the best means to control is hedonism.
Ideas do not come out of a contextless aether.
Of course they don’t! Which is why, as I pointed out above, the right and left both read both books and see something completely different. From their respective contexts Orwell and Huxley are lampooning socialism (the right’s readers) and capitalism/fascism (the left’s readers). And the reason is that Orwell and Huxley both lampoon either hedonism (Huxley) or authoritarianism (Orwell) without explicit reference to actual political or economic systems. They are doing the 禅 thing of overturning the question of which political or economic system is best by answering 无: in effect “unasking” the question by pointing to the things they thought were the real concerns.
Orwell’s and Huxley’s worlds both are strongly centrally-planned economies. Socialist, in a word. Huxley’s world, however, is rooted in consumerism, castes, and hedonism, very strongly capitalist-adjacent with a smattering of feudal or worse (via the castes). Orwell’s is rooted in intense, iron-fisted control of information and, by extension people, which is primarily fascist (a.k.a. hyper-capitalist) in model. So it is hyper-simplistic to say that they’re criticising ‘capitalism’ when at the core of both stories is a strongly socialist feature, don’t you think?
If we’re going to be honest. I don’t really care what either of them wrote about. They were both cranks whose works became enshrined by neoliberals and then led to nothing of note. I only talked about them to stay in context.
The reason I think this whole conversation is silly is that you’re attempting to steer it toward these model societies that a. don’t exist b. by your word are complete fabrications of the authors.
In following this assertion, one cannot examine the intrinsic and inseperable social relationship between an economy and the political system that supports it. You call dialectical materialism pure ideology, yet this thought experiment is like examining the power structures in Harry Potter. It’s a complete waste of time.
The only “steering” I’m doing is away from the nonsense that dystopias are intrinsically based on capitalist futures. That is all. The two biggest names in dystopia aren’t capitalist futures in any meaningful sense. (Neither are they socialist nor communist nor … they are as, to use your lovely simile, real-world as the power structures in the Potterverse.) This makes a claim that dystopias are “believable” because they are “capitalist futures” ludicrous on the face of it.
I tend to agree with you that Huxley and Orwell are both cranks. Huxley had a thing about hedonism and Orwell saw control freaks wherever he turned his head. Their novels are thus constructed around the futures they saw happening based on their hobby horses, not around what J. Random Socialist sees as “evidence” of “capitalist futures”.
Fordism is a heavy-handed metaphor, not an actual religion with historical nuance. Huxley’s metaphors are obvious as semaphores, even naming his main character Bernard Marx. He wasn’t a socialist, himself, too wrapped up in ideology and esoterism. But he did openly show sympathies to leftist philosophers like Kropotkin, and characterized his collectivist utopian society in The Island as being encroached upon by capitalist oil barons. Characterizing him as pro-modern-economy completely overlooks his drug-influenced orientalist utopian values.
Mass production itself is not at issue. Mass production is necessary to maintain modern population density. The issue is in profits, how profits influence resource distribution in a society, excessive waste of goods which are not profitable (mass transit) or cannot reach profitable markets (30% of our food supply goes to waste despite a large portion of the world population suffering from food insecurity), and the accumulation of profits by individuals.
I’m not naive enough to believe complete egalitarianism is possible in a transitionary state. But the most powerful ‘despotic’ heads of state in socialist countries have(/had) salaries comparable to the President of the US. Whereas the actual seat of power in western countries, the capitalist class, far outearn public employees to the point of holding 50% of the world’s wealth. Joesph Stalin had nothing on Rockefeller or Bezos. This doesn’t even go into the profit-motive of unpaid labor and slavery which still persist in many supplychains.
Would you? I have done both.
You’re looking at this from a specifically western point of view. While capitalist-style markets are an outgrowth of feudal economies (particularly the economic philosophy of 16th century Italy), market economies are not the only type of economy. There are numerous archaeological and ethnographic studies showing that this diversity was much greater in Sub-Saharan Africa, Oceania, and the Americas pre-colonization. Asserting that modern economics is a crucible of universal truths is a myth invented by modern ideologues with no imaginations.
Ideas do not come out of a contextless aether. They come out of real places. These men wrote about the societies that they lived in based on their lived experience. Neither of them lived in soviets.
Absolutely agreed. Now re-read Brave New World and note the following:
While there was money, it acted more as a way to induce consumerism (the real target of Huxley’s ire). As I noted earlier, Huxley’s beef was with hedonism and how it dehumanizes. He lampoons the capitalist-adjacent (but not capitalist-exclusive) focus on consumerism as it leads to empty hedonism.
But at the same time the economy was strongly central-controlled which is pretty much the precise opposite of capitalism. (This is why I repeated several times ‘there are no capitalist countries’ and ‘there are no socialist countries’ in my earlier rant: there is not a society on the planet that’s pure-anything.)
Huxley’s satire is far more subtle and more pointed than ideologues who read it seem to be able to perceive. Right-wing types read it as a condemnation of socialism because they see the command economy. Left-wing types read it as a condemnation of capitalism because they see the consumerism. The truth is he sticks a shiv into both systems while working at his main thesis: that the best means to control is hedonism.
Of course they don’t! Which is why, as I pointed out above, the right and left both read both books and see something completely different. From their respective contexts Orwell and Huxley are lampooning socialism (the right’s readers) and capitalism/fascism (the left’s readers). And the reason is that Orwell and Huxley both lampoon either hedonism (Huxley) or authoritarianism (Orwell) without explicit reference to actual political or economic systems. They are doing the 禅 thing of overturning the question of which political or economic system is best by answering 无: in effect “unasking” the question by pointing to the things they thought were the real concerns.
Orwell’s and Huxley’s worlds both are strongly centrally-planned economies. Socialist, in a word. Huxley’s world, however, is rooted in consumerism, castes, and hedonism, very strongly capitalist-adjacent with a smattering of feudal or worse (via the castes). Orwell’s is rooted in intense, iron-fisted control of information and, by extension people, which is primarily fascist (a.k.a. hyper-capitalist) in model. So it is hyper-simplistic to say that they’re criticising ‘capitalism’ when at the core of both stories is a strongly socialist feature, don’t you think?
If we’re going to be honest. I don’t really care what either of them wrote about. They were both cranks whose works became enshrined by neoliberals and then led to nothing of note. I only talked about them to stay in context.
The reason I think this whole conversation is silly is that you’re attempting to steer it toward these model societies that a. don’t exist b. by your word are complete fabrications of the authors.
In following this assertion, one cannot examine the intrinsic and inseperable social relationship between an economy and the political system that supports it. You call dialectical materialism pure ideology, yet this thought experiment is like examining the power structures in Harry Potter. It’s a complete waste of time.
The only “steering” I’m doing is away from the nonsense that dystopias are intrinsically based on capitalist futures. That is all. The two biggest names in dystopia aren’t capitalist futures in any meaningful sense. (Neither are they socialist nor communist nor … they are as, to use your lovely simile, real-world as the power structures in the Potterverse.) This makes a claim that dystopias are “believable” because they are “capitalist futures” ludicrous on the face of it.
I tend to agree with you that Huxley and Orwell are both cranks. Huxley had a thing about hedonism and Orwell saw control freaks wherever he turned his head. Their novels are thus constructed around the futures they saw happening based on their hobby horses, not around what J. Random Socialist sees as “evidence” of “capitalist futures”.