On Enquires After The Author's Ideology.

[danieldwilliam]

Enquiries have been made about my ideology. Am I ideologically pure? It strikes me as a very sixties sort of question to ask. But here goes.


First and foremost I’m a pragmatist.

What works? Let’s do that then.

This includes working with people as they are, not as we would wish them to be.

I also think things are probably pretty complicated. Whatever the question, I’m certainly that the answer is that it is probably more complicated than it first appears.

Secondly, I’m an ideological non-purest. I think if you could get the entire population to agree to a particular ideology and agree to virulently brainwash themselves and all their offspring then that might work. But that’s not going to happen so we have to find a way to deal with significant differences of opinion about what the Good Life is and how to move our society to a situation where more of us can live the Good Life. Or A Good Life – other Lives are available.

I’m a dynamic equilibriumist. I don’t think we can create a perfect economic and political set up that will endure for all time. Things change, people change, technology changes. Attempts to permanently fix the system end up concentrating power in the hands of those most willing and able to game the existing system. I think we need a system that is in constant revolution. Where things change constantly but in such a way that each change triggers a counter move that keeps the balance of power and influence approximately where we would like it to be.

So what do we do with complex situations, that are constantly changing and where opinions differ on both the best way to effect a solution and what the best solution is? So called wicked problems. Mmmh, tricky. Probably part of the answer is about ensuring people are able to solve the problems that appear in front of them.

I’m a democratic decentralist. I think most Western democracies don’t work as well as they could. Ours is a particularly bad example of weak democratic institutions, weak participation and centralisation of power far beyond what is needed for effective large group actions.

I’m very sceptical about the concentration of power in either state or private hands.

So I’m favour of significant constitutional structural change with a different electoral system, an elected and more powerful revising chamber, a reduction of the power of the Prime Minister and more devolution. I’d prefer to see much more powerful local government and for local government to start at a much finer level of community, with decisions taken much closer to the people affected.

I’d also favour a change in our democratic process towards a more direct, participative and deliberative way of reaching decisions.

Basically, representative democracy as we currently operate it takes power and decisions away from people. I’d like to move them closer. I want politics to be something that people do on a daily basis rather than something that is done to them.

This is the part of our politics that currently most excites me. It’s why I’m a member of Unlock Democracy and the Electoral Reform Society and why I’m a political activist in the way I am.

I think we’ll get a better understanding of what works if we do our politics better. Quality as defined by the user.


It was through reading the Culture novels of Iain M Banks that I twigged to the idea that left-wing politics would be a lot easier if we were all really rich and if the production of basic necessities could sit in the hands of ordinary people unmediated by concentrations of capital in either state or private hands. It’s easier to be good if everyone around you is rich and has control over their own lives. The threat of being on the wrong side of absolute scarcity or even relative scarcity seems to me to the primary driver of most conflict in the world.

So I’m in favour of finding ways to remove human labour from production and in favour of finding ways to place control of production in to the hands of whoever has the gumption to pick up the tools. Whatever the question is I think the answer is likely to involve doing it with robots. We live in the science fictional future of our grandparents and in the science fictional past of our grandchildren. I think science and technology are a potent force for political as well as economic change. I don’t mean the ability of the internet to connect us politically. I am thinking more of the political change that comes from being able to produce abundance locally.

I am a liberal. I’m more or less in favour of not telling other people what’s good for them and letting people get on and work out their own lives in a way that suits them. I also think that individuals have rights and these rights ought to be firmly protected and promoted.

I am in favour of the group intervening to ensure that each individual has a fair go at making the best of themselves. I’m in favour of the group pooling risks so that we can all enjoy a life free the anxiety that really bad things might happen to us. I include in those risks the risk of being born to parents who were stupid, feckless or lazy, or who were unlucky, or who were ground down by the oppression of the capitalist system. So, I’m in favour of relatively high levels of taxation to fund high quality education and health services and to provide social security. In this I’m a fairly standard social democrat. Everyone puts in, everyone takes out.

There seems to me to be a balance to be struck between the individual and the community. I don’t know where this balance ought to rest in practise. I’m more in favour of getting the process that determines where the balance lies right.

I’m not a libertarian. I am generally sceptical of the “right” of other people to stick their noses into my business or my right to stick my nose in to the business of other people. I do think the rights of individuals need to be balanced against each other and also with group, collective or community rights. I also think, that economics is not the best mechanism for mediating these conflicts of rights. Also, the more I think about a non-state libertarian set up the more Ronald Choase tells me we would have to re-invent the state.

I’d like to be an anarchist but I fear that if the state didn’t exist it would be necessary to invent it in order to prevent the wrong people doing so.

So I turn out to be a pragmatic liberal decentralist social democrat Banksian. I’m not sure that is an ideology.

Comments

[widgetfox.livejournal.com]

I found it completely inappropriate and unnecessary. It really did put me off the whole book. And I kept thinking "this is obviously my closed-mindedness" so was very pleased indeed to read your comment.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

I’m sorry it ruined it for you. I think I just glossed over the Turing characterisation.