I've been reading that book on Stalin, and it brought up a bunch of other things that I decided to type out here... hoping to untangle the complex muddle.
As usual, there are about a million caveats to everything, and I'm only doing a superficial look at some pretty deep topics.
Guess it's a good thing I'm writing this in a semi-obscure corner of the internet. ;)
Okay... where was I?
So this history book was talking about some of the factions within Russia's revolutionary movement (i.e. Bolsheviks vs Mensheviks), as well as the cultural support for autocracy, and various other things that I really don't have the cultural context to understand. (Autocracy? Really? I don't see why you would dismiss the hundreds of years of history we have proving what a bad idea this is... but okay. Seems plenty of Americans today agree, given that they seem bound and determined to recreate a strong authoritarian figure with few checks and balances on their power. More fools they.)
Anyways. Lenin (and Stalin) seemed to support the idea of some sort of technocratic elite guiding the peasantry... which, honestly, is part of why far right and far left are sometimes not very different from each other. I mean, when you propose a strong central authority that 'knows better' than the ignorant masses... it's pretty much the same sort of system no matter what fancy labels you put on things. You just get a different group at the top of the heap. (Like the 'children's book' I keep mentioning, Hope for the Flowers.)
I say contradiction, because we were founded as a republic... with the belief that 'all men are created equal', and yet many of our Founding Fathers were slaveowners who clearly did not believe that lofty ideal. And we created a system where the masses could vote, except that we actually restricted voting rights to land-owning white men, and put in place the electoral college and Senate to help counterbalance the masses.
Do we believe that average citizens can make wise decisions, should have a say in their government, and should be represented by said government? Or do we really believe that there are people who 'know better', and should guide us to the 'right' decisions even when the 'ignorant masses' disagree?
Yes, I put single quotes around those things to highlight the phrases that generally embody an elitist attitude.
There are times when I get... well, both points of view, tbh. We - fallible human beings that we are - have a tendency to get into fads and things, and can sometimes be very foolish indeed. I don't think I even have to use political examples for this - just look at business, and the various fads that sweep through corporate America, like Lean Six Sigma. (Which is not to say the fads are bad, necessarily, but all too often businesses seem to jump on the bandwagon because that's what all the other cool businesses are doing, and they aren't actually doing the work to manage change effectively, so no matter how good these ideas are they become yet another 'check the box to keep the boss happy' kind of thing.) Or businesses decide to sell the physical assets they own, because that's what the cool accounting strategies say to do... and then some years later we can't get the addition or upgrade to our warehouse because now we're renting it from someone else, and that owner doesn't support doing so. (An oversimplification.)
Consider economic bubbles, and how every Christmas some toy is the latest craze. Tickle Me Elmo, anyone?
And yet, despite the craziness of humanity en masse, there are problems with letting a 'technocratic elite' make all the decisions.
First and foremost, the tendency to grow arrogant and dismissive of views that don't agree with yours. After all, you know better. It happens so much so that the Law of Unintended Consequences shows what a powerful force it can be. The tendency to live in a bubble, where you only see a narrow view of an issue, and thus have trouble coming up with real solutions.
Then there's all the usual problems of groupthink and whatnot - if your technocratic elite all go to the same sorts of schools, and all get trained to think the same way, then you don't have a very diverse body of thought... and tend to dismiss the out-of-the-box thinking that comes from those who don't have the same background.
Which almost inevitably seems to happen. I don't know why it is, but God (or evolution) seems to love putting talent and creativity in out-of-the-way places. So much so that I tend to think this is more firmly on the 'nurture' side of the nature-vs-nurture debate. As soon as one group gains control and manages to shunt out competition in one area, it stagnates and stultifies and some completely different area starts flourishing almost as a counterpoint. (i.e. Hollywood started as a place for creatives to make movies... then when it got locked down and commodified to the point where it became formulaic and less creative, we got the growth of indie films. YouTube... well, you have to wade through a lot of crap and mediocrity, but you can also find golden nuggets of creativity there. This is part of why I say that any time you hear complaints about a 'talent shortage' what you really have is a pipeline problem. We are bursting with talent and creativity, and if you struggle to find it you should take a long, hard look at your recruiting system.)
So... sometimes the people who study a topic really do know better, and sometimes they really don't. Which doesn't really help much, does it?
More and more, I keep thinking of something my brother said a long time ago - that the true virtue is wisdom. I forget what philosopher he was drawing on for that, and I'm sure I'm misremembering it, but there's a lot of truth to it. Wisdom is the difference between boldness and foolhardiness, caution and cowardice.
There is never going to be a perfect system. Whatever system you come up with, there will be flaws. And people who will try to exploit those flaws.
The system only works when the majority of people are wise enough to make it work, and to avoid those flaws. (And boy, oh boy, is there a lot of foolishness going around today... as people who really ought to know better are one by one dismantling all the checks and balances and various measures to keep the craziness in check.)
This whole debate is also, in many ways, similar to the debate over whether or not we elect politicians for their judgement or to implement our will.
To which I will say... yes.
Or rather, it is the interaction between the two, the debate as someone 'knowledgeable' tries to persuade others to their point of view (and succeeds or fails) that is important. We shouldn't blindly go with the masses when we truly think their wrong, and we also shouldn't blindly assume we know better and ignore the masses.
It should be a dialogue. And one in which we are open-minded, and continue to evaluate/assess our policies. (This ties back to some earlier posts on whether it's better to have a good plan, poorly executed... or a bad plan, well executed.)
I honestly don't like getting too caught up in any specific ideology, because all of them are short-hand for a complex and messy reality. If that particular way of looking at things is useful, great. If it isn't, try another. (In public policy we called it 'evidence-based practice'. I want what works, not what you've convinced yourself will work. And that again is a very superficial statement on a deep topic, because how do you decide what is a sign something is 'working' or not? Works for who? How?)
So anyways...
Stalin (and Lenin, who led the Bolsheviks initially) made a mistake, to my mind, by deciding that his technocratic elite knew better than the peasant masses. It meant that when the Bolsheviks came to power they also ruled as autocrats. I think. Still reading up on that, ofc.
Which is not to say that the Mensheviks were right, either.
Or rather, to bring in yet another complex subject -
It's a bit about how some change comes from the top down, and some comes from the bottom up...
And the most effective changes really do both. There's support from the top, and support from the bottom. If it's only from the top, it's like all those business fads I talked about earlier - people check the box and mouth the words, but drag their feet and continue to do things their own way... and just sort of wait for the people at the top to leave, or get tired and move on to a new best thing, or whatever.
And if it's from the bottom up, with no support from the top, then it generally doesn't get the support it needs and just makes people frustrated and cynical.
(This also, btw, shifting gears completely because it's my blog and I can do what I want... is part of why Trump has demonstrated what a horrible leader he is. Or maybe the difference between being a founder and taking over a large and complex organization as a CEO well after the organizations history has been established. You see, anybody who has ever taken a leadership position in the latter has had to deal with the sort of resistance I just described. There's organization history. An established way of doing things. And people are resistant to change. You have to convince them that the change you want to make really is for the better... and managing that change is a talent a great CEO will have.
All this talk about a 'deep state' is because Trump doesn't know how to deal with those sorts of problems. I mean... JFK had a fit - iirc, can't find the details online - because he wanted a sign for the CIA headquarters taken down and it took far more work than it should have to find someone in his own government who could get it done. These are the challenges you deal with in any sort of large-scale organization.
But Trump is labeling that sort of leadership challenge as 'traitors' and a 'deep state'... because he really, really, really sucks at leading in any sort of organization where he can't just rule by fiat.
Such a shame his supporters are willing to tear down any such obstacle to doing that. We fought a whole revolution against a king, and made it clear we don't like kings, and these guys are essentially trying to reinstall a de facto king. It's about as un-American as you can get.)
Anyways. Lenin and Stalin's belief in a top-down technocratic elite was wrong.
And I find myself wondering what would have happened if someone wiser had prevailed (and why does so much of this history seem like a horror story, where the worst decisions keep getting made, over and over again? Did someone put a curse on Russia? And why do I keep sensing parallels to our own history today, where I fear we will continue to get people making foolish decisions. I hope I'm wrong, because I don't really want to see what happens if the foolish powers-that-be don't wise up before it's too late.)
As usual, there are about a million caveats to everything, and I'm only doing a superficial look at some pretty deep topics.
Guess it's a good thing I'm writing this in a semi-obscure corner of the internet. ;)
Okay... where was I?
So this history book was talking about some of the factions within Russia's revolutionary movement (i.e. Bolsheviks vs Mensheviks), as well as the cultural support for autocracy, and various other things that I really don't have the cultural context to understand. (Autocracy? Really? I don't see why you would dismiss the hundreds of years of history we have proving what a bad idea this is... but okay. Seems plenty of Americans today agree, given that they seem bound and determined to recreate a strong authoritarian figure with few checks and balances on their power. More fools they.)
Anyways. Lenin (and Stalin) seemed to support the idea of some sort of technocratic elite guiding the peasantry... which, honestly, is part of why far right and far left are sometimes not very different from each other. I mean, when you propose a strong central authority that 'knows better' than the ignorant masses... it's pretty much the same sort of system no matter what fancy labels you put on things. You just get a different group at the top of the heap. (Like the 'children's book' I keep mentioning, Hope for the Flowers.)
I say contradiction, because we were founded as a republic... with the belief that 'all men are created equal', and yet many of our Founding Fathers were slaveowners who clearly did not believe that lofty ideal. And we created a system where the masses could vote, except that we actually restricted voting rights to land-owning white men, and put in place the electoral college and Senate to help counterbalance the masses.
Do we believe that average citizens can make wise decisions, should have a say in their government, and should be represented by said government? Or do we really believe that there are people who 'know better', and should guide us to the 'right' decisions even when the 'ignorant masses' disagree?
Yes, I put single quotes around those things to highlight the phrases that generally embody an elitist attitude.
There are times when I get... well, both points of view, tbh. We - fallible human beings that we are - have a tendency to get into fads and things, and can sometimes be very foolish indeed. I don't think I even have to use political examples for this - just look at business, and the various fads that sweep through corporate America, like Lean Six Sigma. (Which is not to say the fads are bad, necessarily, but all too often businesses seem to jump on the bandwagon because that's what all the other cool businesses are doing, and they aren't actually doing the work to manage change effectively, so no matter how good these ideas are they become yet another 'check the box to keep the boss happy' kind of thing.) Or businesses decide to sell the physical assets they own, because that's what the cool accounting strategies say to do... and then some years later we can't get the addition or upgrade to our warehouse because now we're renting it from someone else, and that owner doesn't support doing so. (An oversimplification.)
Consider economic bubbles, and how every Christmas some toy is the latest craze. Tickle Me Elmo, anyone?
And yet, despite the craziness of humanity en masse, there are problems with letting a 'technocratic elite' make all the decisions.
First and foremost, the tendency to grow arrogant and dismissive of views that don't agree with yours. After all, you know better. It happens so much so that the Law of Unintended Consequences shows what a powerful force it can be. The tendency to live in a bubble, where you only see a narrow view of an issue, and thus have trouble coming up with real solutions.
Then there's all the usual problems of groupthink and whatnot - if your technocratic elite all go to the same sorts of schools, and all get trained to think the same way, then you don't have a very diverse body of thought... and tend to dismiss the out-of-the-box thinking that comes from those who don't have the same background.
Which almost inevitably seems to happen. I don't know why it is, but God (or evolution) seems to love putting talent and creativity in out-of-the-way places. So much so that I tend to think this is more firmly on the 'nurture' side of the nature-vs-nurture debate. As soon as one group gains control and manages to shunt out competition in one area, it stagnates and stultifies and some completely different area starts flourishing almost as a counterpoint. (i.e. Hollywood started as a place for creatives to make movies... then when it got locked down and commodified to the point where it became formulaic and less creative, we got the growth of indie films. YouTube... well, you have to wade through a lot of crap and mediocrity, but you can also find golden nuggets of creativity there. This is part of why I say that any time you hear complaints about a 'talent shortage' what you really have is a pipeline problem. We are bursting with talent and creativity, and if you struggle to find it you should take a long, hard look at your recruiting system.)
So... sometimes the people who study a topic really do know better, and sometimes they really don't. Which doesn't really help much, does it?
More and more, I keep thinking of something my brother said a long time ago - that the true virtue is wisdom. I forget what philosopher he was drawing on for that, and I'm sure I'm misremembering it, but there's a lot of truth to it. Wisdom is the difference between boldness and foolhardiness, caution and cowardice.
There is never going to be a perfect system. Whatever system you come up with, there will be flaws. And people who will try to exploit those flaws.
The system only works when the majority of people are wise enough to make it work, and to avoid those flaws. (And boy, oh boy, is there a lot of foolishness going around today... as people who really ought to know better are one by one dismantling all the checks and balances and various measures to keep the craziness in check.)
This whole debate is also, in many ways, similar to the debate over whether or not we elect politicians for their judgement or to implement our will.
To which I will say... yes.
Or rather, it is the interaction between the two, the debate as someone 'knowledgeable' tries to persuade others to their point of view (and succeeds or fails) that is important. We shouldn't blindly go with the masses when we truly think their wrong, and we also shouldn't blindly assume we know better and ignore the masses.
It should be a dialogue. And one in which we are open-minded, and continue to evaluate/assess our policies. (This ties back to some earlier posts on whether it's better to have a good plan, poorly executed... or a bad plan, well executed.)
I honestly don't like getting too caught up in any specific ideology, because all of them are short-hand for a complex and messy reality. If that particular way of looking at things is useful, great. If it isn't, try another. (In public policy we called it 'evidence-based practice'. I want what works, not what you've convinced yourself will work. And that again is a very superficial statement on a deep topic, because how do you decide what is a sign something is 'working' or not? Works for who? How?)
So anyways...
Stalin (and Lenin, who led the Bolsheviks initially) made a mistake, to my mind, by deciding that his technocratic elite knew better than the peasant masses. It meant that when the Bolsheviks came to power they also ruled as autocrats. I think. Still reading up on that, ofc.
Which is not to say that the Mensheviks were right, either.
Or rather, to bring in yet another complex subject -
It's a bit about how some change comes from the top down, and some comes from the bottom up...
And the most effective changes really do both. There's support from the top, and support from the bottom. If it's only from the top, it's like all those business fads I talked about earlier - people check the box and mouth the words, but drag their feet and continue to do things their own way... and just sort of wait for the people at the top to leave, or get tired and move on to a new best thing, or whatever.
And if it's from the bottom up, with no support from the top, then it generally doesn't get the support it needs and just makes people frustrated and cynical.
(This also, btw, shifting gears completely because it's my blog and I can do what I want... is part of why Trump has demonstrated what a horrible leader he is. Or maybe the difference between being a founder and taking over a large and complex organization as a CEO well after the organizations history has been established. You see, anybody who has ever taken a leadership position in the latter has had to deal with the sort of resistance I just described. There's organization history. An established way of doing things. And people are resistant to change. You have to convince them that the change you want to make really is for the better... and managing that change is a talent a great CEO will have.
All this talk about a 'deep state' is because Trump doesn't know how to deal with those sorts of problems. I mean... JFK had a fit - iirc, can't find the details online - because he wanted a sign for the CIA headquarters taken down and it took far more work than it should have to find someone in his own government who could get it done. These are the challenges you deal with in any sort of large-scale organization.
But Trump is labeling that sort of leadership challenge as 'traitors' and a 'deep state'... because he really, really, really sucks at leading in any sort of organization where he can't just rule by fiat.
Such a shame his supporters are willing to tear down any such obstacle to doing that. We fought a whole revolution against a king, and made it clear we don't like kings, and these guys are essentially trying to reinstall a de facto king. It's about as un-American as you can get.)
Anyways. Lenin and Stalin's belief in a top-down technocratic elite was wrong.
And I find myself wondering what would have happened if someone wiser had prevailed (and why does so much of this history seem like a horror story, where the worst decisions keep getting made, over and over again? Did someone put a curse on Russia? And why do I keep sensing parallels to our own history today, where I fear we will continue to get people making foolish decisions. I hope I'm wrong, because I don't really want to see what happens if the foolish powers-that-be don't wise up before it's too late.)
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