Communitar Fools

This article first appeared in J’Accuse Magazine when it first came out. They are frends and you should subscribe to them too:

I once argue long time ago with moron who comment on science fictions, who claimed worlds imagined by Star Wars and Dune were “betrayals” of science fiction as a genre because reactionary. Science fiction future is supposed to be rid of any mythic, aristocratic or monarchic or heroic even archetypes, except maybe to show them in limited or distorted form as antagonists. His alternative was Star Trek which for some reason he insisted depicted a “diamond-shaped society” as opposed to the “pyramid-shaped” “traditional” one depicted in those corruptions of the Reddit promise of science fiction utopia. He wanted to see a future rationalist, egalitarian, ethical, and scientific. It’s useful to think about some images of utopia and dystopia from imagination modern man.

You consider a few observation on science fictions: in movie Interstellar there is a communitarian soft tyranny of women; teacher decides course of life in service to community—female permission and approval for path of life is said to be necessary to survival. Man’s historical desires for space travel and out-reaching technological progress are rewritten as vicious and as cause of crisis. Life becomes mere survival and therefore falls into the spiritual clutch of women, community, and administrative consensus behavior. Faced with slow-moving extinction crisis, mankind cowers in defensive coil: the behavior of another man faced with mere survival, of a Crusoe, who is his own island and reason, who transcends and conquers a much starker condition of mere survival, this image becomes alien and hated. Man’s Faustian and aristocratic aloneness and longing for space, in this case literal space travel, is deemed immoral and in conflict with social existence and community demand: “we need you here as agriculture scientists, extending this bare existence by a little bit. We are a society. No man is an island.” And they might add—and no man has the right to tame an island by himself.

An equivalent dystopia is in episode of Star Trek Next Generation where Captain Picard is stranded on planet with a village ruled by matriarchal society that has abandoned technology—but maybe not really abandoned it. It has kept enough to allow for relatively comfortable agricultural life under rule of a woman, without war or its needs. Enough technology existed at the time of spacecraft crash to preserve it in stasis under the unnatural rule of woman: this has always been one of my biggest concerns about all so-called “traditionalist” and communitarian solutions to modern dissatisfaction by the way. That it would identify the wrong cause and freeze a state precisely into those aspects most abhorrent about modern life. This is a return to tradition where you could say liberal individualism has been completely abandoned for the needs of the community. Picard’s desire to search for scientific solutions and a way out is seen, again, as threatening to the community consensus and the daily work of mere life necessary for survival; when he rebels, he is put in hot torture room like POW in Bridge Over the River Kwai.

The moral code of this Star Trek village on planet is similar to the society in Interstellar and both I think reflect not only the most likely dystopia toward which man is headed, but already how things mostly are. Another example of this dystopia is in movie The Beach with Leonardo DiCaprio and middle-aged hippie woman with rough pussy. This is not science fiction but is nice half-fantasy utopia revealed as dystopia, but where the same woman-led social-based existence smothers men, aloneness, and any longing for greatness: here in the name of a communitarian hedonism, but it was never clear why the communitarian “traditionalist” critics of liberal individualist hedonism believe that there can’t exist an equally empty community-based version of the same.

In our day the rationalist leftists who were hoping for a Star Trek future maybe see themselves that the greatest danger to its unfolding isn’t a “mythical, religious or aristocratic” reactionary fascism, but just this small-time Rousseauean communitarianism which has already deemed science, mathematics and science itself white supremacist constructs. For all the foot-stomping about “belief in Science,” this communitarian anti-scientific bent has been inherent in the left at least from the time of Rousseau: and Rousseau himself of course was only trying to find modern and sophisticated reasons to support the Republic of Pigs from Plato’s Republic, which of course is the “real Republic” of that book; it is abandoned early in the dialogue only because of Plato’s aristocratic interlocutors, who no longer exist today. But anyway: I watch also movie First Man recently and there they depict chant of minority BIPOC, about how space race and whitey on the Moon is incompatible with dem programs and more food for struggling nonwhites. When I saw this I thought it was an unambiguously white supremacist scene, to contrast in explicit racial terms the white man’s Faustian longing and scientific progress with minorities’ earthbound desire merely to fill belly. But of course that’s not how the scene was intended. It was, at least, lip service to the ruling morality of our time, which is already, in full bloom, that depicted in Interstellar and in the dystopias described above. When Bezos or Musk want to go to space, they are confronted with the same outrage about the immorality of space travel in view of the suffering of trans people of color—from their side, not from Heideggerians who worry about technological progress or about “denaturing of substance,” or whatever else the left rationalists imagined about the supposed opposition to Science. In this not to speak of the biological sciences and genetics, where even liberals are united in being retrograde, the left finds that opposition to one of its utopian futures comes from one of its other left-utopian factions; and as always happens, this internal incoherence and struggle is then blamed on a retrograde reactionary right. It’s amusing this is happening too now in vaccine and WuhanBATGRIDS debates: the majority of abstainers are blacks possessed by grotesque conspiracy theories, but this is blamed on something else.

II

The internal debates of the left’s factions—liberals, left-rationalist industrialist Marxists, communitarian social-supremacist hive matriarchalists (they go by other names, but this is what they are)—are interesting, but it’s not my part to argue for one of them. I am just concerned that some of my friends on the right don’t see clearly the danger some of the older left itself sees (though it is forced to distort it for popular viewing). The likely if not the necessary future of mankind is held within the dominant morality of the present, and this is very much the kind of small-time woman-centered communitarianism depicted in these utopias or dystopias, where man uses technology already available to fix himself to a survival-based way of life close to his imagined “animal self” and then freezes there. I am much more concerned about this than about fantasies of “hypercapitalism” and the evils of “liberal individualism,” which this communitarianism also rejects. The dystopia of Elysium is far less likely—Haiti worldwide without any orbital stations is more likely—and the dystopia of Blade Runner is in my view a utopia of freedom and possibility compared to what we already have right now. I am even more concerned about an “orderly, clean and prosperous Haiti,” however, and at least since 2017 but actually from long before, there are factions on the right who unfortunately believe that small-time communitarian “social-based” existence is the most anti-establishment thing imaginable, that all that would be necessary for it to qualify as “right wing” or “traditionalist” would be to make it have an ethnic character, or to put some religious bells and whistles on this kind of primitive socialism. For example, during this pandemic there have been outspoken “traditionalists” who have, without giving any further reason, invoked “the herd” or man’s innate “social duties” as justification for restriction of freedom and imposition of what looks like medical tyranny in the name of safety and continuation of mere life: significant factions on the right, or who impersonate the right, are poisoned by the same mammy “social” morality briefly described above. I am writing this short essay in part to warn frends—there is no destination on this path but a spiritual Haiti.

The economic sides of this argument are too long to address here; I never thought problem of modernity or problem of man in general is primarily economic or will ever have economic solution. But I will say brief: that America or the West is “hypercapitalist” is one of the most absurd claims floating around now. I don’t want to enter these debates very much because it would make me take, however temporarily, the side of “classical liberals.” I don’t believe in liberalism of whatever kind because it is, as Nietzsche say, itself a path to the herd-animalization of man. I believe in Fascism or “something worse” and I can say so unambiguously because, unlike others, I have given up long ago all hope of being part of the respectable world or winning a respectable audience. I have said for a long time that I believe in rule by a military caste of men who would be able to guide society toward a morality of eugenics. I am indifferent to economics as long as economic activity is subordinate to the interest of this caste and their project. In pure capitalism, state and society are subordinate to “the economy,” which is probably borderless; but in socialism also the state and society are subordinate to the economy, which is simply restructured as the administrative meeting of material needs rather than something based on profit. Schopenhauer understood very well the end-goals of socialists:

“…the State is essentially a mere institution for protecting all from external attacks and individuals from attacks within its borders. It follows from this that the necessity of the State rests ultimately on the acknowledged injustice and unfairness of the human race. In the absence of injustice, no one would think of a State, for none would need to fear any encroachment of his rights and a mere union against the attacks of wild animals or the elements would bear only a feeble resemblance to the State. From this point of view, we clearly see the narrow-mindedness and shallowness of the philosophasters who in pompous phrases represent the State as the highest purpose and the flower of human existence and thus furnish an apotheosis of Philistinism…But never has this false delusion been made more mendaciously and impudently than by the demagogues of the present day… They think that, if only governments did their duty, there would be heaven on earth, in other words, that all could gorge, guzzle, propagate, and die without effort and anxiety. For this is the paraphrase of their “end in itself”; this is the goal of the “endless progress of mankind” which they are never tired of proclaiming in pompous phrases.”

You no need agree with Schopenhauer’s Hobbesian and arguably liberal conception of the origin of the State—it would in any case be a “liberalism” very different from the one now or even that of 1848—to see he’s right about leftoids and socialists of all varieties. For all its glorification of State-being and sociality, the end purposes of all Marxism and leftism is in this material plenty, which is simply to be arrived at in a different way from that promised by capitalist society; but both agree on Homo economicus so both are equivalent in spiritual aims. It is only Nietzsche who in modern world shows a way out of this.

The right-wing critics of “capitalism” now mostly don’t take this approach: they only have criticisms of “hypercapitalism,” but they don’t attack socialism, they even embrace it. They believe the philosophy of every collitch faculty lounge, the thought promoted by media and Hollyweird over decades as anti-establishment is actually anti-establishment. They mainly arrive at this by pointing out that there are big corporations, that these make a lot of profit, and that they often push Wokeness, leftism, anti-whyteness and open borders and other such things. This is so, but the straightforward solution to this isn’t higher corporate tax rates or more redistribution, which these corporations in any case would be able to weather and which wouldn’t affect the crucial question of their power over government: the solution is that of Putin, a champion of the awakened people to humble the oligarchs. For whatever reason, this solution is never entertained. There is only desire to talk about impersonal systems, forces, Capital, Neoliberalism—but never names. Other path to see: these types in their theoretical talk of Capital, international finance, impersonal irresponsible corporations and so forth, never propose the alternative of national economy, only socialist centralized economy. Not once have I seen these types—which includes much of Populist Inc and the Santorum wing of the GOP, which is quite old—never do you see them make sensible proposals like the Japanese law that makes it hard for chains to operate in cities but easy for mom and pop’s to do so. I’ve never seen them propose regulations that would tax, degrade, or make it difficult for large international corporations, but easy for small businesses, family farms, small business that produces material goods nationally, and such. Almost never do they embrace protectionism or tariffs. Their solutions are always on the line of “child tax credits” or “medicare for all”—actually quite old proposals among some parts of the GOP, and which would do nothing whatsoever to address the capture of the economy and the sovereignty by the alliance of particular oligarchs (with particular names) and elements in government and media. I can only draw the conclusion that where these are not actually GOP consultants in disguise—and I know of at least a handful of cases where this is what’s going on—they are sincere socialists in their beliefs, and unsincere in their desire to repackage old Marxism in a pill palatable to what they see as the “altright.”

III

The best way to see the emptiness of the supposedly right-wing critics of capitalism is however in their understanding of “sociality.” Their line of thinking goes somewhat like this: “premodern society placed family, group, tribe, society over the individual. Liberal individualism came along and spoiled this. Its primary method in destroying communities and traditions and in promoting open borders has been economic. It is Capital that destroyed Tradition. Therefore all traditional societies were socialist, and we need to adopt socialist policies to return to tradition. Socialism is right wing. Religious traditionalist socialism is the solution to modern political and spiritual problems.” Once in a bar I told people I was monarchist; I was asked if “this is like Game of Thrones. Is this socialism?” I laughed but this is about the level of thinking also on much of the communitarian “right” today. It’s simply the inverse of Jonah Goldberg who believes De Maistre was left-wing because he opposed the universalism of the French Revolution. It is a professor, or more than one, indignantly informing me that Nietzsche could not have been right wing because he opposed Capitalism. This childish ignorance has been either embraced or capitalized on by much of this communitarian “right”—it’s not even correct to call it populist. To mock its simplifications and distortions would take long time; it’s an old academic trick though. Even before this, Quentin Skinner and that whole school of thought tried to pretend premodern civic republicanism was actually Marxism and democratic socialism in disguise, and to resell these under the name of Machiavelli when the name of Marx had been too tarnished as a prophet. I was surprised but not shocked by libertarians and Kochlings who tried to claim the message of my own book was “tribalism”: everyone has been mindfucked by the “individualism equals free market libertarianism” meme. I suppose it’s enough to say modern intellectual “discourse” is low-IQ pedantry, so ignore it.

The “traditionalist” critics of Capitalism miss one important thing about premodern tradition: its “sociality” or whatever resemblance to socialism was a consequence and maybe a tool, but not a cause and not an end goal. You must read Nietzsche “On the Thousand and One Goals” from Zarathustra to understand that premodern peoples were founded by prophets, and were directed each toward a higher task and aim beyond themselves and therefore beyond sociality or mere group-existence: for Persians it was ride well, shoot well, tell the truth (and therefore world-conquest). For Greks it was to excell all other men in conquest personaly; for Jews to honor mother and father. For Germans to command and obey. And many such things. But this implies a hierarchy: all commitment to higher goals will mean some types of men are prized above others, given more honors, given rule, or other kinds of eminence. All premodern tradition is aristocratic and hierarchical, not egalitarian, at least not after it rises above the mammy-village level, at least not once it’s the tradition of any great culture worth emulating: whether it gives eminence to the pious man, or the warrior, and so forth, this is different question. But it is the question. The supposed precedence of the group over the individual, of society over the individual, is a distortion when us moderns, poisoned by liberal economic thought and psychology, look back on those great projects of breeding, the different great world cultures, which didn’t understand themselves in these terms. And which would have shuddered to be called something like “communitarian,” which places simply the benighted village above the man, domestication above freedom, with no justification and no end besides simply just this sociality. Such peoples did exist, but they became slaves and serfs. And the reason modern “traditionalists” who pose as anti-capitalists call themselves “communitarians,” and refuse to place anything other than sociality or “community” as the end aim, is because they know or feel that it would very quickly lead to hierarchy or some form of aristocracy if such aim were genuinely pursued. But their aim is egalitarian in the end. Which is, as I keep say, these are communists in disguise, or maybe even confused communists. Where they pretend to be religious they blaspheme: the purpose of Christianity was not “community” or sociality, but the salvation of the soul, and it placed spiritual men in position of dominion in the feudal military society of the Middle Ages. The “socialist Christian” is a weirdo pervert who needs to repackage his worship of full bellies and momma’s polenta in terms of Christ’s bloody sacrifice, which he can’t begin to understand.

An awakening came to the attention of the world with the campaigns of Brexit and Trump around 2015-6, but this awakening had been happening in secret for some time: it’s not strictly speaking an awakening of youth only, but of all men who wish to think freely. This awakening started some time in the 2000’s on one hand because of the manifest exhaustion of postwar liberalism, but on the other simply because the Internet allowed freedom of speech without scolding gatekeepers for the first time in more than fifty years. World War Two will in some centuries not be remembered as it is now by hysterical people: it will be seen that the Nazis, whatever their value good or bad, were nevertheless by chance the leaders of various European strains and factions. It’s not only Nazis in other words who lost World War Two, but, for better or worse, Europe. And with this loss a variety of ways of thinking, not just Nazi, were thereafter suppressed. In the case of Nietzsche, where his thought had been so influential not only politically but among literary people and artists, and where it was not possible to suppress him, a massive campaign of distortion began in media and academia. With the opening of the Internet, by early 2000’s and very fast after that, these strains of thought, which the “liberal world order” had crushed or lied about for decades, very quickly were rediscovered by free thinkers and lovers of truth, and very quickly made progress. Because their truth is manifest. It is not only the thought of Nietzsche, but Nietzsche, the real Nietzsche was the leader and prophet of all genuinely new thought after 1900 and of all the right wing European factions. A few exceptions like Mishima aside, the awakening since 2005 or so is the first time in decades that free, new thought has existed in the world since 1950 in an explicit and unvarnished way—it would be a shame to throw this away in favour of the exhausted platitudes and lies of the left, promoted by Hollyweird for decades, and repackaged now in an “ethnic” or “traditionalist” brand. I ask frends to reject these mammy-yeast worshippers who come to you selling the same Chomskyite clichees, now with a giant cross for show, now with an “ethnic” cover…