[January 2004]
A New
Manifesto
of
Marxist
Ethics and Economics
New
Gnosis Publications
© 2003
£ 6.50
Paperback
103 pages
"The
philosophers have only interpreted the world.
The
point, however, is to change it."
- Karl
Marx
___________________________
______________________
PUBLISHER’S
SYNOPSIS
DEEP SOCIALISM is a Marxist Manifesto for the 21st
Century – a radical critique, not only of the capitalist market economy but of
the cynical and ethically corrupting culture of capitalist consumer marketing.
It extends Marx’s
profound analysis of economic value to ethical values, showing how the modern
corporation, far from ‘valuing’ people, actually devalues the real individual
qualities of its employees – whilst at the same time relying on them as a
source of surplus value and profit.
____________
Capitalist freedom and
individualism is a spurious freedom
and individualism – the freedom
of the consumer to spend money
only earned through compulsory
wage-slavery. Real communism is
authentic individualism
– a society in which, as Marx himself defined it
“the free development of each
is the condition for the free development of all.”
____________
DEEP SOCIALISM is without a doubt a New & Gnostic
Manifesto of Marxism.
At a time when The New Rome
(Corporate State Capitalist Imperialism) is drawing the noose ever closer
around the throats of the Working Class & other World Citizens, DEEP
SOCIALISM appears on the scene as a Gnostic Revolutionary Text of the greatest
significance to all who would rationally oppose The New World Order.
____________
DEEP SOCIALISM, in the tradition
of Marxist literature, predicates one debatable assumption: the average person
(Marx’s “Proletariat” or Working Class) is not only capable of, but actually
concerned about creating a better world (Marx would call this “class
consciousness” and “class struggle”). Most people are either so over worked or,
conversely, underemployed that they feel they have little or no time or are too
stressed out for self-education or political activism.
This is understandable.
And what about the masses of
beer guzzling, sexist, female-abusing boneheads or Rodeo Drive, liposuctioned,
Botox®-brained spoiled princesses oblivious of all except a narrow, egocentric
reality?
DEEP SOCIALISM speaks to the first
group with clarity and honesty. As for the self-involved &
self-destructive, readers are cautioned to recognize those aspects in
our-Selves before throwing stones. The Social Revolution involves a deep
revolutionary process, a radical transformation of both the inner
and the outer reality that affirms both personal relational change & the
global transition to socialism.
____________
Author Peter Wilberg has an
impressive talent for communicating extensive increments of potentially complex
information in a non-intimidating format that is both motivating and readily
accessible to the general reader. Although building upon a traditional Marxist
structure, he not only explains that structure to non-students of Marxism, but
also expands & revitalizes that structure to make it relevant to the
current era. The author’s analysis & renovation in this regard recommend
his work as must-read material to all committed Marxists as well. Wilberg
demonstrated this literary ability in FROM NEW AGE TO NEW GNOSIS,
and proves it again with DEEP SOCIALISM.
____________
In the PREFACE (page ix) Wilberg defines the central
thesis of Marxist Socialism:
This ethic was based on the
understanding that each person’s labour
has the same worth as every
other’s, and went together with the vision of a
communist society in which work,
instead of being a means to an end, would be
an intrinsic source of deep
value fulfillment.
On pages x – xi the author
presents his own view of a newly defined Deep Socialism:
The first part of this manifesto
presents a new critique not just of the ethics and
economics of the market but of
its culture – the culture of marketing – one which transforms
all deep human values and
cultural symbols into commodities…
Deep Socialism is fulfilled
individualism – a social individualism in which
deep relational value
fulfillment replaces the purely symbolic value fulfillment
of atomized individuals and
groups in the market economy.
This parallels The Gnostic Pagan School
concept of individual & collective Transfiguration, a 21° interpretation of
THE GREAT WORK.
____________
DEEP SOCIALISM is divided into 3 sections, the first
titled: FROM EQUALITY TO QUALITY OF LIFE (Beyond the Ethics and Economics of
the Market).
The material is not as daunting to the novice Gnostic and
Socialist reader as the title may suggest.
The author continues the Modern
Gnostic spiritual socio-political critique that characterizes FROM NEW AGE TO NEW GNOSIS.
He goes behind & beyond the words & popular buzzwords that define &
form the parameters of the world we all must learn to share. His analysis
transcends the appearance into the essence, the inner meaning behind the word.
In the opening article (P.3) A New Communist Manifesto?
Peter Wilberg deftly illustrates the crucial political issue of the current
epoch:
With the collapse of
Soviet-style “communism” many believed Marxism to be dead…
In fact, the last decades of the
twentieth century saw Marx’s theory
of capitalist development
confirmed in every respect.
The phenomenon of
“globalisation” fully bears out Marx’s understanding
that not only with the
establishment of a totally globalised corporate market economy
would the inherent
contradictions of capitalism come to a head…a huge global “underclass”
including the under-nourished,
under-paid, under-employed and unemployed.
Marx created his masterpieces of
economic & political analysis during the darkest days of the Industrial
Revolution. Then Capitalism had recently emerged triumphant from the widespread
social upheaval of various nationalist Bourgeois Revolutions (United States,
France, etc.) that overthrew that basis of the reactionary Feudal Monarchies
aligned with the Religious Establishment. Although an historic progression from
the old system, already by Marx’s time Capitalism was revealing deep
contradictions within itself, promoting the self-serving value of the profit
motive over human value. The result was a horrific living standard for the poor
(including child labor & generally deplorable working conditions for those
who could find work) & an unrestrained degradation of the environment.
It was the great Worker’s &
Democratic struggles (largely inspired by Socialism) that began to enforce the
(rapidly eroding) safeguards against Capitalism still enjoyed today.
However, with the ascent of
Corporate State Capitalism an International Oligarchy emerged that has derailed
the Unions & Social Democracy. This Oligarchy has cleverly devised to
dismantle compassionate social programs & is in the process of rewriting
history in its own image. Now basic social & democratic benefits, rather
than being hard won through political struggle, are “granted” or taken away by
the Oligarchs riding roughshod over a passive, compliant population. In a very
short period of time, Capitalism has degenerated into an International
Autocracy.
DEEP SOCIALISM not only explains how that happened, but
also indicates remedies for the situation.
There is, however, one obvious
omission in the text; that is the failure to address the pragmatic contemporary
issue of Class Struggle and Worker’s Solidarity. Wilberg seems to take what can
only be described as an “ultra-reformist” position vis-à-vis Class Struggle,
even a denial of its existence. This issue will be examined in the concluding
section of the review.
____________
Peter Wilberg describes the technological failure of the
Soviet planned economy, resulting in the contemporary attacks against
International Socialism:
The economic attack on socialism
overlooks the fact that modern information technology
now makes possible a devolved,
efficient and ecologically balanced planned economy free of the sort of bureaucratic waste, inefficiency
and privilege associated with the now defunct Soviet economies.Their problems
were partly due to the massive and long-term diversion of resources into
military-industrial production, and partly also to a plain lack of computing
power.
[Pgs. 4-5]
No doubt about that “lack of computing power.”
As a matter fact, the successful
final stage of the Yeltsin-led Capitalist counter-revolution against the
politically degenerated Soviet Union was primarily engineered on-line,
directing whom to go when & where. The adaptation of advanced technology by
Socialism has been termed Trans-humanist Socialism. Advanced technology will
not only lay the foundation for an expanded expression of democratic
International Socialism, but will also be instrumental in the overthrow of The
New Rome.
There is now no way to go back
to the social market that post-war political conditions
made possible for a while in West
Germany – a form of capitalism which US fund managers
regarded as a neo-socialist
aberration, giving them a poor return on capital.
There is only one way forward –
to a fully socialist economy.
[P. 5]
____________
On Pgs. 10-11, Peter Wilberg indicates how the current
stage of decaying Capitalism sets the brakes on cultural innovation,
suppressing and/or corrupting creativity & originality:
All individuals and groups who seek to restore or
renew traditional values,
or to affirm new ones, must, in order to reach
their audience, first bow down to
the demands of the market place and become
consumers of symbolic values – must
devalue the very values they seek to promote by
marketing them as symbols and commodities. The growth of cultural diversity,
the proliferation of alternative life-styles, religions, world outlooks and
therapies in our “post-modern” world poses no essential challenge to the
capitalist value system so long as their advocates heed the call of the market
and reduce the deep values they seek to embody to symbolic ones acceptable to
the modern-day spiritual consumer.
Revolutionary playwright Bertolt
Brecht expressed this idea a little more graphically when he wrote, “Under
Capitalism you sell your piss to the urinal.”
This is not to say that
“counter-culture” or even “mainstream” creativity is non-existent; but the more
anti-Capitalist in nature, the less socially effective or popular it will be.
Capitalist society only really feels comfortable with innovative creators
(particularly artists) when they’re dead. The price of their work goes up &
there’s no “disruptive” living personality to deal with.
Another example is U.S. Public
Broadcasting Stations (PBS).
With the massive subsidy
cutbacks to PBS, local stations are forced into ever more desperate &
annoying “pledge breaks.” Additionally, PBS now has commercials (disguised as
“sponsor announcements”) just like any other Capitalist station—albeit it fewer
in number & duration than the mainstream stations. The result is a subtle,
yet steady, rightward shift of PBS priorities. If it weren’t for the excellent
recycled British Broadcasting (BBC) programs, American Public Broadcasting,
particularly its news programs, might be confused with other bourgeois channels--with
the added attraction of pledge breaks.
__________________
Just as Capitalism distorts creativity & spirituality,
it oppresses & exploits manual labor, establishing a false dichotomy
between manual and mental labor.
Capitalism cannot boast of a
culture, which acknowledges the equal spiritual worth
of each individual whilst
denying the equal value of different types of labour…It is the
under-valuation and
overvaluation of different types of work, irrespective of quality…
that leads to the progressive
demoralization of individuals and society.
[P. 11]
It is precisely this type of
demoralization and social stultification that appears as a recurrent theme in
the works of “naturalist” Russian playwright Anton Chekhov [1860-1904.] Writing
at a time when Czarist Russia was in many ways sub-capitalist (that is, the
social structure remained entrenched in a feudal economic structure despite the
“freeing” of the serfs), Chekhov’s plays anticipate the impending revolutionary
events of 1905 and 1917. The characters in his plays long for change &
meaningful control over their lives, but find themselves trapped by social
conformity and an economic system mired in caste & privilege; and
subsequently Chekhov’s often sensitive & intelligent protagonists are
unable to change in a positive direction or find creative outlets for their
personal frustrations.
[Refer to The Cherry Orchard, Three Sisters
and Uncle Vanya, plays by Anton Chekhov.]
Pre-revolutionary Russian society also mirrored social conditions
not that much different from our own times in which Mediocrity is King and
Banality Rules.
Other similarities between
modern Capitalist society and that of pre-revolutionary Russia include a
profound sense of individual alienation & hopelessness expressed as apathy
and both self & social destructiveness; a conservative stranglehold over
the media & cultural institutions; and, perhaps most strikingly, an
insidious and pervasive miasma of religious obscurantism & superstition. It
was the latter, personified in the “Mad Monk” Rasputin & his influence on
the Imperial Family, which proved to be the last straw for political Moderates
(and in some cases even Monarchists), and fueled the flames of Social
Revolution.
[As stated in other GNOSTICS
& THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION articles, Marx predicted that a true Socialist
Revolution in a country as economically backward as Czarist Russia would
ultimately fail. See also, NEW AEON
SOCIALIST JOURNAL.]
Regarding the artificial split
between mental & manual labor, a good case scenario of this can be seen in
the pay structure of nursing facilities. At the top of the pay scale are the
administrators and their various personal “assistants,” while at the bottom are
the employees who actually engage in those activities the business was created
for—patient care. Management enjoys many “perks” while those who provide care
have none.
…Why should a corporate boss
earn hundreds more per hour
than a hard-working secretary,
cleaner or assembly-line worker?
Apologists for capitalism claim
that only in this way are incentives provided
for people to work harder…
[P. 14]
In the nursing home scenario, the personal care providers
couldn’t possibly work harder than they usually do—while at the same time the
Administration & Management positions are often the “cushiest” around.
Peter Wilberg presents aspects of the Socialist
alternative to this common type of inequity:
In a socialist economy, all
workers would be paid the same basic hourly rate – not in money
but in “smart card” entitlements
to whatever products and services they choose to obtain. Systems of earning
differentials would be based solely on distinctions in the quality of the time
and work that individuals put in. These quality differentials would be decided
democratically. Individuals who preferred to work at the minimum quality level
established by a collective would be under no pressure to raise their
productivity – they would simply get the basic rate.
The establishment of a
democratic, planned economy, and the phasing out of money
in favour of labour
time-and-quality credits recorded on smart cards would take advantage
of the enormous developments in
information and communications technology brought about by computers and
microchips. In this way the basic Marxist theory of social development and
transformation would be fulfilled: namely that it is development in the
technology of production that makes changes in the economic structure of
society both necessary and possible.
[Pgs. 14-15]
And, as though anticipating the inevitable reactionary
argument that Socialism represents a “leveling-down” or authoritarian concept,
Wilberg writes:
The model of human relations on
which socialism is based is a cooperative one,
based on acknowledging that it
precisely in those ways in which other individuals and groups
appear most different to us that
our deepest value kinships become symbolically manifest.
[P. 16]
The Social Revolution represents an ELEVATION of society
from its current depths of alienation to a higher, creative—and, yes, EXCITING
level of proactive manifestation. One of the favorite Capitalist arguments
against Socialism is the thread-bare “human nature” theory that implies that
Capitalism is the best system possible since people are by nature too selfish
to create anything better to replace it with. Time and time again this fallacy
has been exposed by the myriad anti-colonial and worker’s struggles in which
the heroic nature of the “common man” has been demonstrated.
DEEP SOCIALISM
contradicts the Oligarch’s anti-worker disinformation by replacing it with a
fundamental belief in human decency & creativity.
__________________
Addressing the crucial issue of healthcare, we find:
Stress is embodied in sickness
and poor working relationships
and materialised in poor quality
products, industrial accidents, etc.
Because, in a socialist economy,
labour time would be measured and
recompensed according to its
quality as well as its quantity – all individuals
would be ensured of sufficient
compensation in labour time-and-quality credits
to allow the quality time
necessary to maintain their well-being, sustain their health
and replenish their creative
powers.
[P. 20]
And pertaining to the type of care patients receive under
the Capitalist System:
The few minutes available for each patient do not
encourage people to speak intimately.
[P. 21]
Patients are not alone in their frustration over the
present healthcare status quo. The ever-changing reimbursement scales &
medical restrictions imposed by the callous Capitalist Oligarchy equally
frustrate the myriad levels of service providers. For example, the recent 2003
recall election of “action hero” actor Arnold Schwarzennegger in California
that tossed out the craven Democrat Governor Gray Davis resulted in an
unprecedented slash in human services. The program In-Home-Support Services
that provided a few hours of care for disabled & HIV patients was
completely gutted. This cruel budget cut clearly illustrates the Marxist
position that the proof of a society’s evolution is reflected in the way it
treats its most vulnerable citizens.
Working class & poor patients are not the only ones to
suffer.
Even the wealthy (particularly the elderly) have little or
no control over their care in comparison to those members of the Oligarchy who
actively control the system.
__________________
In the section “Work, Jobs and Deep Employment” Wilberg
states:
What most people seek is deep
employment. This does not mean
simply having a “job”, even a
“good job”. It means doing a good job—
one in which they embody and
fulfill their human qualities to the utmost in their work.
The number of people willing to
commit themselves to unpaid voluntary work and “do gooding” is a symbol of this
basic desire. The search for deep employment is dampened less by no-pay
than by low-pay, low-recognition jobs of the sort that the labour market offers
the unemployed and social security agencies pressure them to take up. The
reduction of unemployment statistics that come about in this way, irrespective
of how they are calculated, is a symbolic one only.
[P. 25]
Capitalist politicians & corporations perennially
screech the mantra, “Jobs, jobs & more jobs!” They are usually referring to
crappy jobs the Capitalists themselves wouldn’t dream of doing, but they go on
screaming “More Jobs!”
THERE ARE TOO MANY PEOPLE DOING CRAPPY JOBS ALREADY.
Not only is it a drag to slave for Capitalism, it is also
a horrible drain on the environment. The desire to work, to “do”, to create is
intrinsic to human nature. The problem is how that desire manifests in society.
UNDER CAPITALISM THE PRIMARY ORIGINAL SIN IS NOT TO WORK
FOR THE SYSTEM.
It doesn’t matter if the work you do is unsatisfying
and/or fundamentally at odds with the worker’s nature, or if it’s just designed
to take up time. Bob Dylan expressed this perfectly in his song Ain’t Gonna
Work On Maggie’s Farm No More:
They say sing while you slave, I just get bored…
Regimentation of workers is essential
to Capitalism. This is a major reason why the USA is so totally wacked out
over the issue of drugs, particularly psychedelics & marijuana. The
Oligarchy doesn’t want these Awareness Enhancing Substances (Gnostic Pagan
Sacraments) available to the Working Class because these chemicals & herbs
have the revolutionary potentiality to open both the psychic & political
eye—and reveal multidimensional levels of consciousness that deeply threatens
the status quo. Marijuana is particularly abhorred because if
"legalized" pot is an inexpensive relaxant, without the devastating
health & sociological effects of alcohol. The discriminate use of pot could
also replace a multitude of therapeutic drugs including anti-depressants,
barbiturates & analgesics—minus their often-debilitating side effects.
[NOTE: DEEP SOCIALISM neither refutes or affirms the use
of A.E.S.]
“Education” is another form of worker regimentation.
To develop a socialist education
policy and system is impossible without
radically questioning the
essential nature of education in capitalist society, and
the way it privileges symbolic
knowledge for its own purposes. The “life-long learning”
vaunted by advocates of
short-term “flexible” employment means, in reality, life-long dependency on
academic concepts and vocational skills handed down from above; life-long
educational value exploitation designed to serve the market exploitation of
labour.
[P. 29]
Few workers are spared the endless job seminars, required
“learning credits” or forced “team player” encounter groups.
Regarding the Socialist alternative to this mind-numbing
“education”, on P. 29 Wilberg states:
Socialist education is deep
education with a…long-term value,
rather than purely symbolic
education…Its aim is to develop what Marx
called a “human science of
nature” and a “natural science of man”, one which
does not demand that children –
or adults – devalue their living experience of the world
and surrender it to symbols that
have no living relation to this experience and which does not
help them to articulate or learn
from it…an education that encourages learners to explore their own human,
bodily experience of natural phenomena and their own sensual bodily experience
of human phenomena – of human relationships, qualities, values and ideas.
__________________
DEEP SOCIALISM continues with PART 2: MORAL EDUCATION OR
RELATIONAL LEARNING?/The Dialectics of Value(s).
The concept of DIALECTICS is
central to “orthodox” Marxism and Peter Wilberg’s Gnostic interpretation of
Socialism. Dialectics is the philosophy of revolutionary transformation
expressed in a semantic process of understanding how Premise A through
interaction with Premise B leads to practical or scientific change represented
in a new form, Premise C. According to Marxism, Premise A = Global Capitalism,
Premise B = The Antagonistic Contradictions Inherent in Capitalism vs. The
Majority of People On The Planet, the resulting Premise C is Social Revolution,
the democratic transformation of Capitalist Society into Socialist Society.
[Wilberg rejects the idea that the transformation will be based on the Leninist
doctrine of the Vanguard Party. While we are not convinced the process can be
achieved without a “world party of revolution” or a revitalized &
democratic Socialist Internationale; Gnostics & The Social Revolution does
reject the doctrine of “the dictatorship of the proletariat” as being, at the
very least, misleading & open to political abuse.]
Wilberg’s philosophical
innovation of Marxian Socialism is based on his Gnostic/spiritual perception
that the social reality, based on “the Word” or semantics is a falsified
version of deep or actual reality. This is a subtle point & crucial one.
What this perspective does is to reveal the similarities & differences
between positions that superficially—or even deeply—appear at total variance
with each other. Wilberg calls this “simference.”
It’s been pretty well understood
by many people that the majority of organized Marxist groupings tend to have
rather severe communication & public relational problems owing to their
dependency on “orthodox” Marxist terminology and by an outmoded, 19°,
mechanistic world-view. A lot of it also has to do with collective
over-compensation.
Many people are working to address this problem & to
create a revitalized Marxist Philosophy of Economic Transformation for the 21°.
Peter Wilberg is one of them.
____________
Wilberg establishes the basis for his examination of
relational values in the opening article, “Individuality and the Market in
Values”:
In cultures dominated by
symbolic values, people value their individual qualities
and those of others only as an
expression of shared values. They value others for doing it
“their” way, whether “their” way
means “our” way or “my” way. People’s behaviour is seen
as either conforming to or
defying the symbolic behaviour valued by that culture…For the truism that “we
all need to be valued” only becomes true because people do not fully
value their own individual qualities and way of doing things, but instead
surrender them to the desire for symbolic value recognition and reward from
others – for “success”.
[P. 42]
Money is the medium of commercial exchange.
Language is the medium of communicative exchange.
Currencies are the languages of commercial
exchange.
Languages are the currencies of “communicative
exchange”.
When relationships operate merely at the level of
communicative exchange,
people tend to devalue each other’s individual
qualities if they are not offered for sale
in the right currency, do not conform to their own
behavioural symbolism and language.
People confront each other like buyers willing to
purchase each other’s goods,
but only if they are made to their own
specifications and can be paid in their currency…
They do not value each other’s embodied qualities
except as the embodied
reflection of their own…value system, they evaluate
each other’s symbolic
behaviour, judging its conformity to their own.
[P. 43]
Excerpts from “The Dialectical Principle of Simference”:
Though each person wants others
to see through their own outward,
symbolic behaviour and “be
valued for who they are”, their embodied qualities,
each looks to the other for a
reflection of their own symbolic values – for what they are.
An intrinsic dependency on
others for basic value recognition, the acknowledgement of their
self-worth, goes hand in hand
with an inverted narcissism – a deficient self-esteem and self-love. People do
not use each other as a mirror of themselves. They use each other as a mirror
of the symbolic values in which they clothe themselves. They do not seek a
reflection of their self-worth but of their symbolic worth.
This power and these
qualities…do not lend themselves to expression through the
common currencies of religious,
moral and business language. They are neither private
property nor common property,
for they are relational qualities. They can be understood
dialectically, not as
similarities or differences between people but as “similarities-in-difference”
– simferences. Neither the traditional moral cliché that as human beings
“we’re all the same underneath”, Nor the fashionable “post-modern” emphasis on
the Difference and Otherness of others acknowledge the dialectics of simference
in human relations.
The principle of simference
explains why the fiercest rows often take place in couples,
families and communities with
the strongest relationships and most intense bonds. It also
explains why religious and
political organisations, despite their moral principles and symbolic
values, often split into warring
factions which hate each other more than their joint opponents. So long as
relationships, groups and organisations are formed only the basis of shared
values, or of opposition to groups…with different values, they will…come
up against the reality of simference – discovering ignored differences amongst
themselves and ignored
similarities with their
opponents.
Moral education based on shared
symbolic value systems competes with a
shallow and inverted
“individualism” based on freely selecting one’s own symbolic
values from the market place.
“Do what we do” and “I’ll do what I want” are not…
contradictory moral positions.
They are the twin expressions of the market economy.
“Do what we do” is the message
of symbolic value consumers. It reads “Buy what we sell –
our goods are the only true
Good.” “I’ll do what I want” is the message of symbolic value
consumers. It reads “I’ll buy
what I want – and make a new good to sell to others.”
The bourgeois “crisis of moral
values” is a haggle in values.
[Pgs. 44-46]
We quoted extensively from the text because its
ramifications on the political, social & spirituals levels are so intensely
relevant.
In other words, this creative process represents a modern
day relationship of Gnosis-in-Action.
Clearly Wilberg’s work expands understanding of our
selves.
As regards to Revolutionary Socialist
Organizations, Wilberg’s concept of “simference” has proven true time and time
again in the (at least to outsiders) bewildering “splits” and factions within
those groups. Usually the “impolsions” “explosions” and demise of these
organizations are blamed on “revisionism” “reformism” or other buzzwords meant
to imply an anti-Marxist deceit. However, as Marx himself said (in effect)
toward the end of his career, when confronted by the various manipulations by
people claiming to be “disciples” (a term Marx would surely have abhorred)
exploiting Communism into their own agendas—if this is what it’s come down to
then, “I am no Marxist.”
Unfortunately the lack of
insight by these supposed “revolutionaries” has only aided to prolong the reign
of Corporate State Capitalism and its negative social ramifications.
____________
In the chapter “The Fetishism of Moral Phraseology”
Wilberg remarks:
Value fulfillment is not
achieved by submerging oneself in a group or community
and identifying with its
symbolic values or moral code. Nor is moral character developed
by isolating oneself from
society and disidentifying (sic) from all symbolic values. It is realized
through the capacity to appreciate the deep values underlying the cultural,
verbal and behavioral symbolism of others, even though the latter may be a
disguised or distorted
translation of the former.
[P. 48]
On one level the above statement
stands in contradiction to the traditional Gnostic intent of de-valuing
societal values. According to Gnostic Philosophy, since society’s value reflect
the lies of the Demiurge (Jehovah or the limited Ego), the values of society
are false. Marxists agree in this contention to the extent that contemporary
society mirrors the self-interest of the Bourgeois Oligarchy. However, Marxism
insists that the Social Revolution take what’s best of capitalist society
(after all, it was largely created by the working class from its onset) and
integrate it into socialist society. From this perspective, the ideas expressed
in DEEP SOCIALISM make perfect sense in the context of a Modern Gnostic
Socialism.
As to the concepts of
self-isolation or submergence in a group identity, from a recent historical
perspective, these are problems that emerged primarily in the United States
with the social reaction that set in with the collapse of the 1960’s idealism.
Former or erstwhile social revolutionaries retreated back to
"traditionalist" values and the oppressive structure of the nuclear
family; or substituted political action with lifestylism (neo-paganism, Wicca,
“grunge” etc.) and separatist movements (bourgeois feminism, black nationalism,
etc.); or escaped into "hard" drugs, transcendentalism, religious
cultism, orthodox religion etc. The Gnostic Pagan School is all too familiar
with these potentialities and while this is not the place for a forum on the
practice of earth-based ritualism, The School has always insisted on
integrating individual belief & spiritual practice with collective
social[ist] action.
From the section “Values, Genes and Multiculturalism”:
To talk about “individual
values” or “social values”,
“Judaeo-Christian values” or
“Muslim values”, “English values” or
“German values” is to imply that
such values are the private property of individuals,
groups, ethnic cultures or
nations…pluralism and multi-cultural diversity is…a form of
plural and multi-cultural apartheid
in which each sub-culture exists only to cultivate its “own” values and protect
them from contamination and domination by other value systems…it is not the
free, federal association of regions and states that threatens international
cultural diversity but global capitalism. It is the latter which leads to the
global domination of a single culture of marketing in which all cultural
traditions and values are either sacrificed to commercial values and the
pursuit of profit or turned into tourist commodities…
[P. 48]
[The Romanian entrepreneurial brainstorm of creating a
tourist trap called “Dracula Land” in the heart of Transylvania couldn’t be a
more perfectly ludicrous example of this statement.
On one hand Romanian
nationalists are very touchy about the public persona of the medieval Prince
Vlad Dracul (“Dracul” being an honorary title signifying “Order of the
Dragon”), also known as Vlad the Impaler (so designated because of the Prince’s
penchant for impaling people on stakes as his favorite form of execution); but
on the other hand these capitalist wannabe’s are eager to sell the image of
“Count Dracula” based on the real Vlad in a bizarre Walt Disneyesque version of
Romania’s historic hero, all in a phantasmal scheme to make a $buck or a £euro
or a ¥en.]
Continuing the critique of multiculturalism Wilberg
writes:
From a socialist perspective,
just as individuals can only grow by
relating to each other, so
cultures and value systems only grow through an
interaction with other
cultures and value systems in which each learns to value…the other.
The aim of socialism is to promote
the fulfillment of all…values…through a global trans-culture, linked to the
removal of all restrictions on migration and immigration – restrictions which
stand in stark contrast to the freedom of movement of international capital and
of trans-national corporations.
The economic objections to this
ethical stand on immigration stem only from the limitations of the market
economy itself. For, despite the much vaunted “globalisation” brought about by
the trans-national corporations, it is the “free market” itself which, while
allowing the free movement of goods, leads to the restrictions on the free
movement of people. For it creates the global inequalities of wealth which lead
to barriers being set up by wealthier nations.
[P. 49]
In concluding the chapter, the author argues the primacy
of individual value choice over the dogma of genetic determinism:
The activation and embodiment of
our biological potentials,
even in terms of the way our
bodies look and function at different ages and
stages of our lives, is not determined
by our genes or environment, but is influenced
by our value choices. Just as
each of us draws from an inherited gene pool, activating these genes only in
combination with other genes, so each of us draws from an inherited value pool,
embodying different values and combinations of values. We do this not only by
combining different life roles and juggling different elements of our lives,
but by enriching each role we take in life with qualities drawn from others.
This natural potential for “manipulation” of our moral genes is what is symbolically
materialised in gene technology.
[P. 50]
____________
“Dialogical Listening and ‘Communication’” emphasizes a
theme central to Peter Wilburg’s interpretation of both Gnosticism and
Socialism.
This embodied meaning
may be symbolized in words,
but essentially it is
communicated dialogically: through the word.
It derives not from what we say
but from the way we say it, who we say it to
and the context in which we say
it. Embodied meanings can be made explicit in the word,
for example in writing, only in
so far as language itself is, for the speaker,
not a mere set of symbols but a
flexible and expressive body of meaning.
…
The material meaning
of a statement is also a relational meaning – the way it
communicates the real
relationship of the speaker to the matter addressed.
[P. 51]
Among other things this idea indicates why the “Master”
“Disciple” pseudo-relationship is dialogically false. It takes (at least) two
to dialogue; otherwise it’s a monologue.
Only dialogue is truly free
speech. Only dialogical listening allows us to hear
the way in which the
unquestioned use of restrictive or distorting language unconsciously
reproduces restricted or
distorted relationships for people to each other and the world…This
deep speaking is itself
essentially a listening speech, for it is the way we listen to
others, rather than the way we respond to them in words, that…embodies our real
relation to them and communicates through our words. Deep speaking is the
symbolic expression of our deep listening relation to both language and
people, word-things and worldly things.
[P.53]
____________
Among the insights in “Psychoanalysis and the Myth of the
Talking Cure” this:
American style emotional
“honesty” and “sharing” are not the expression of “deep reverence” for human
feelings. Instead, they substitute the symbolic expression of deep feelings
instead of actually feeling them. Feeling joy is reduced to the joy in saying
“I feel joy”; saying “I feel angry” or “I feel sad” becomes a way of not
feeling that anger or sadness deeply. In this way, the rich music of human
feeling is reduced to emotions that can be labeled with words such as “joy”,
“anger” and “sadness”…At the same time a fetish is made of “non-verbal
communication” in counseling and management training where the wordless feelings…are
diminished to a linguistic code…
[P. 55]
Not only is this true on the
basic human day-to-day level, it is overtly expressed in the public
voyeuristic/exhibitionistic “talk shows” like Ophra, Dr. Phil, etc., etc. These
mass media spectacles are sold as “therapy” but make a mockery of such basic
therapeutic principles as confidentiality and intimacy. They pretend to promote
“healing” and that tired Americanism “closure” but what they really do is
demean individual human value for ratings and commercialism. On a par with this
are the “Reality Shows” in which the basest of human nature is exploited. Are
people so bored with the drama in their own lives that they must avidly follow
the idiotic “survival skills” of half-naked, back-stabbing yuppies?
The United States has become a
nation of self-styled victims, addicted as much to “therapy” as to the
over-prescribed medications of that big business industry. The Marxist view of
psychological therapy is that it can be a powerful tool in the treatment for
specific medical or extreme relational dysfunction, but not just another
long-term social pastime. Capitalism has distorted psychiatry into a form of
self-obsessed entertainment.
____________
The concluding third section of DEEP SOCIALISM is
PRINCIPLES and PRAXIS of SOCIALIST POLITICAL EDUCATION – Dialectical Thinking
and Dialogical Ethics.
While much of Part 3 reiterates ideas presented in
previous sections, there are also new insights.
Deep speaking consciously
embodying our own relational qualities
and standpoints in our bodily
demeanor and letting these communicate
through our words as well as in
them. In particular, it means consciously embodying
qualities and relational
standpoints that others devalue or value only symbolically. The best
way to help another person to
embody qualities they undervalue in themselves, or to take stands they find
difficult to embody, is not to argue for them in words or to impose them as
behaviour but to model them ourselves in the way we relate to others.
[P. 67]
In other words, “walk the talk.”
One belief is “If you don’t do
what I do, you’re doing it wrong.”
The emotional message here is
“If you don’t do what I do, you’re not valuing
me and my way of doing.” People
want to be valued for who they are and the individual way
they do things, but they confuse
this with its behavioural symbol – with what they are (their symbolic
status) and what they do (their symbolic behaviour). Instead of valuing
their own way of doing things and embodying it more fully in their
relationships, they use relationships as a way of gaining symbolic recognition
for what they are and what they do.
The second core belief is “If I
do what you do, I won’t be able to do things my way.”
The emotional message here is “I
fear that if I do what you do, I will lose my way and no longer be who I am.”
People feel that the only way they can value who they are and “be themselves”
is to value what they believe they are, and what they do as a result of these
beliefs. They are “stuck in their ways” without really valuing what is unique
about their way of doing things.
The song of capitalist culture
is “I did it my way.” But why does this song need to be sung? We cannot
do what others do without at the same time doing it our way, imbuing it with
our own individual qualities. To learn from what other people do and how they
do it…presents…no threat of losing our own way of doing things. And yet the
moral conflict in capitalist society between “Doing your own thing” and doing
what others do remains, hindering relational learning through the two core
beliefs on which it rests.
[Pgs. 68-69]
From “Socialist Political Education and Organisation”:
The deep political
transformation of economic relations and the deconstruction
of the market economy, nationally
and internationally, can only come about on the basis of
an educational transformation of
the human relations which the market symbolizes,
and which it in turn reproduces.
Socialist political education must
be deep education as well as symbolic education,
“emotional” as well as
“intellectual” education, cultivating embodied knowledge as well as
symbolic knowledge. But, if it’s
not to degenerate into a cult or sub-culture worshipping its “own” values as symbols
and opposing them to those of others, socialist political education can only
mean relational education…It is not only what socialists do or say, but their
commitment to embodying the principles of relational learning and teaching in
their personal and in the workplace, the community and the home.
[Pgs. 69-70]
____________
As mentioned at the beginning of
this review, we are disappointed that DEEP SOCIALISM does not explore or
analyze the central Marxist tenet of Class Struggle or Working Class Solidarity.
It may well be that Peter Wilberg takes these as givens and so focuses instead
on his excellent presentation of the need for socialism to express relational
values. This is certainly the author’s prerogative—and we agree that the
philosophy of DEEP SOCIALISM needs to be understood and incorporated into the
individual lives of socialists and the international worker’s movement. This
well reasoned philosophy should be an adjunct to, and not substitute for,
worker’s solidarity & political activism. In these days of extreme social
reaction in which “me, me, me” obstructs Union organizing focusing on the
spiritual/psychological plane alone is not enough. As the economic situation
deteriorates more workers will either lose their jobs, or their benefits &
pay scales—or take to the picket lines. When they do take to the picket line,
such an elementary principle of solidarity as PICKET LINES MEAN DON’T CROSS
will be as important as personal deep relational change. In fact, when the
majority of people not only honor, but join picket lines, there will be deep
political change: Social Revolution.
However, if this Social Revolution is to represent
Evolution, the fundamental concepts presented in DEEP SOCIALISM will be
integral to that historic event.
We fully supports the goals listed below (Pgs. 74-75):
Deep Socialism: A Manifesto of Aims
1. A progressive elimination of all pay differentials, except those
based on quality of work, on the basis that no person’s chosen form of labour
is worth more than another’s. This is not the “politics of envy” but the
economics of respect for the worth of each person’s labour and the deep values
it embodies.
2. A progressive elimination of money and its replacement by labour
quality-time-credits.
3. A progressive elimination of shareholdings, dividends and
financial speculation.
4. A progressive elimination of “growth for growth’s” and “profit
for profit’s” sake as aims of national and corporate economic planning, and its
substitution with qualitative growth and deep profit maximisation – value
fulfillment.
5. The progressive elimination of all environmentally damaging
products and industries, and all military industries, products and “services”.
6. The progressive elimination of all marketing which cheapens deep
human values by transforming them into commodities.
7. A progressive introduction of local, national and international
economic planning with the aim of transforming the market economy into a
money-less socialist economy based on equality of labour.
8. A progressive introduction or reintroduction of free health care,
of free nursery, primary, secondary and tertiary education, and free vocational
training.
9. A progressive introduction of deep industrial democracy, and a
culture of cooperation and relational learning in
corporate life.
10. The development of new forms
of health care which do not just provide profits for the health industry but
instead acknowledge the symbolic and socio-somatic dimensions of health
problems.
11. The promotion of the basic
understanding that values and moral qualities are not the private property or
monopoly of any individual, group, race, culture or religion, and that it is
only by valuing other cultures and by learning from them that our own deep
values are fulfilled.
12. The development of new forms
of education, designed not just to provide the “labour market” with skills and
abstract knowledge but to cultivate the deep embodied knowledge of both children
and adults to promote relational learning – learning to value others and
valuing what we learn from others.
Parallel Perspectives
SOCIALIST FORUM INDEX
Review: JEFarrow
Updated 03/09