Ideologies are vulnerable to outside subversion—inside subversion, too, but the focus here is on threats from the outside. Let’s take the practical case of entryism. It’s not hard to come up with a half decent definition: whether consciously or unconsciously executed, the paradigmatic example of entryism is where one group is watered down and subverted by the ‘entry’ of others who pass through the gates in Trojan Horse.
Ideological Trojan Horses aren’t physical, animal-like structures. Beware Greeks bearing gifts, or beware entryists signaling ingroup affiliation using linguistic tools invented or used by the ingroup. I’m definitely patting myself on the back for how unsexy that sounded. The tools are just convenient facades to trick the group into lowering the drawbridge, and once the bridge is lowered, the tools are twisted, and the ideology is slowly perverted by ideas antithetical to the original ideology.
Entryism can be stemmed through passive selection effects, like overly obscure and lengthy and high-brow discourse. Endurance and intelligence. Sure, that’ll screen out weak-willed, dull subversives. But it won’t screen out well-moxied intellectual subversives, who like to try their fancy at the new ideology on the block. Everyone wants to take a shot at the discourse which goes into defining what makes X, X.
“Don’t lower the drawbridge” is simplistic. The ‘how’ question is the million dollar question (and don’t forget the who question). The problem, of course, comes in response to the answer. This is what I meant when I mentioned toxic memes in the title. Returning to the drawbridge example, sometimes, sometimes, elements in the ingroup ideology are used to prevent attempts to raise the drawbridge, to prevent attempts to keep the barbarians out.
The primary motivation should be getting the damn drawbridge up. Blindly sticking to principles reminds me of the folks who have blanket rules: “Never go into debt,” “Don’t drink alcohol. You might become an alcoholic,” etc. It might be useful for them in the case that they can’t adequately discriminate and apply abstract principles to concrete scenarios to determine when the (generally good good) principle no longer serves its purpose. So they adopt the blanket principle—which is probably best for them. It’s a good thing. If they can’t perform the calculations, it’s wise to play it safe. But a lot of folks can discriminate. They know when to go into debt, i.e. when it confers a distinct advantage.
Knee-jerking as a principled reaction to purging is similar. The word purge evinces rabbity, self-cannibalizing behavior. It’s not pleasant, and no one wants to dirty their hands, even if there’s under-the-table acknowledgement of the problem. But inaction allows the wound to fester—a typical collective action problem. “You go first—no, you go first.” As I’ve said before, if the rules of the game are such that it leads to losses after each iteration, repeatedly, then you might just want to re-examine the game on a structural level. If you don’t purge because of an aesthetic distaste and this results in a loss of the game, then you should rethink your aesthetic sensibilities. As I’ve talked about this sort of moral pragmatism before, if your moral rules necessitate you flinging the borders wide open and experiencing the bountiful blessings of cultural diversity in the fullest, then you might want to rethink the rules of the game. And so on.
The real objection might go something like this: “Purging is either a progressive mainstay or demotism, which frankly, is progressivism anyway.”
What’s wrong about this approach is that it prioritizes demarcating thede boundaries over raising the drawbridge–over doing what works. This is actually an incredibly important point. The reason why most thede-thede arguments are just strawmen is because the purpose isn’t refutation, but rather demarcation. That’s why the first and foremost criticism of libertarianism is that they’re all just selfish, individualist, atomistic little bastard children of the unholy union between Nietzsche and Rand. This is wrong and right. It’s wrong because the personal traits of individuals have nothing to do with the tenets of the ideology as such. You can be a selfish libertarian, or an unselfish libertarian. This particular criticism of libertarianism masquerades as a criticism of libertarianism as such, when it almost never is. It’s an assessment of the average internal thede behaviors of libertarianism.
It’s actually a good thing that most people default to attacking thede dynamics over the philosophy as such—thin libertarianism, in this case. Thede dynamics matter more. Most people won’t be able to live in accordance with or even discern ideological deductions. It’s a survival mechanism. What’s more important? Understanding the behavioral tendencies of individuals in group X, or understanding the abstract ideology of group X? The answer is in the question.
With this distinction in mind, there’s really not much wrong with the classical criticism of libertarians, so long as you’re aware it’s a criticism of the thede. Generic statements of a group are fine even if not all of them believe X, or if X isn’t even an essential tenet. Characterizing thede beliefs or dynamics is different than characterizing philosophy. And this is yet another reason why entryism isn’t only a problem on an ideological level. It’s not just about the ideas. It’s about the persons holding the ideas and how they express them, and how they live their lives. Their whole being in totality is relevant to how outsiders assess the thede.
“But we can’t raise the drawbridge. That’s purging, which is demotist, which is progressive.”
A distaste for demotism or democracy is practically a single-shot indicator of high-cultured intellects who hold opinions not held by the public—at least in the here and now. Demotism degrades, destroys. Demotism is rule in the name of the people: democracy and communism are two of its horsemen. And yet, there are real instances in which we look the other way. For good reason.
There is no contradiction in using demotism to proper effect, despite the fact that it remains a despised element. If it works, it works. Appropriate what works and use it. Ignore the thede associations. Appropriate the concept and use it to your own ends.
Consensus-building, whether crafted through formal or informal mechanisms, is often times easier in the advent of a loose association, particularly where no leaders spontaneously emerge. That may partly be due to socialization. It eases angst because that’s how decision-making is done, or at least supposed to be done. That’s where legitimacy comes from, right?—consent of the governed, the supposed pre-requisite for rendering liberal democracy morally superior than other systems. And if those other systems have any moral weight behind them whatsoever, they better fulfill the minimum Rawlsian conditions of a common good idea of justice, decent consultation, limited respect for human rights, etc. That’s all poppycock—the legitimacy part, I mean.
There are at least a couple of reasons for failure of a leader to emerge. In effect, there may be a withholding, a hesitation to acknowledge leadership. Herding cats, and all that. Cats don’t care for it. The second reason is that a demand may exist without supply.
Whence commeth supply? Bad question. Why doesn’t supply make itself available? Better question. Take the example of the expressed desire of multiple individuals to engage in some activity together which will ex-ante provide a hefty dose of utility.
Problem: How do we move from the expressed desire of individuals to actually planning, organizing, and implementing the structure?
It might be solved by a single individual playing the role of the entrepreneur, which is the more efficient route if the structure is relatively small. If the structure is larger, retain the single individual, add others, but only in a hierarchical setup. Democratic decision-making in these cases leads to preference stalemates and delays because of participation requirements. But in the case of most structures, the returns aren’t great enough to justify investment—that is, with the time and effort required for an ‘entrepreneur’ to coordinate resources, the party would have to have very high ex-ante utility returns in order to justify the cost, which is why most structures either do not get off the ground, or tend to attract the wrong folks. It’s essentially the problem of one individual having to over-invest probably beyond the rate of return, so that other individuals can free ride off the utility created by the entrepreneur’s gathering-coordination efforts. I said wrong folks. Who are they? They’re the people who are fine accommodating the parasitical free-riders. Because they like power. They like to be in charge, even if they have to put in a lot of work.
This way of looking at it helps to explain why ‘good people’ don’t often come into positions of power. Put simply, the good-hearted don’t gain much psychic income from domination, relative to the amount of investment required. In short, they’re normal. I call it the collective action problem of good leadership—CAPL, for ease of use.
Yet, “Demotism, therefore bad” is still a toxic meme, if applied incorrectly. Democracy/consensus-building is the key route in certain circumstances. That doesn’t mean in an office you ought to extend the right to vote to workers. That’s the most banal and overly obvious form of democracy. Almost no one is stupid enough to advocate for that arrangement. Rather, in the case of a partnership of three or perhaps even four individuals, consensus-building is a necessity to avoid rift. Give and take, give and take. That works. But it isn’t stable in the long run in the case that one individual perceives himself as always giving and never taking, always giving and his partner never conceding. Hippy anarchists are right: wide scale withdrawal of consent is disastrous to a regime, and that regime almost inevitably is forced to violent heights, at which point it’s dashed on the rocks of its own frenetic, unstable momentum.
But there’s also a world of difference between demotism there/then and demotism here/now. First, in identifying cases of demotism-gone-wrong, sure it’s instructive to point to demotism as such, but it’s not hard to point to other cases where demotism actually works, and works nicely. “But those are smaller cases, and blah blah.” That’s precisely what I mean. That’s exactly it. ‘As such’ corruptions can be mitigated by differing support factors of, say, limited suffrage, homogeneity of temperament and values (e.g. corporate-mindedness, or good friends), different incentive structures (to combat rational ignorance and rational irrationality), small decisions in size and scope, expertise, small populations, agenda-setters, and no elections to determine leaders. This makes the trade-off worth it.
There are a couple problems with the concept of “demotism, eww” besides. The first is that demotism is a pretty new word, and like many other neologisms, it’s never been (to my knowledge) fully fleshed out. “Rule in the name of the people,” plus one or two examples, and then you’re on your own.
Demotism is a toxic meme, particularly in the case that it functions as a blocker. “Oh, we can’t do X. That’s demotism.” Not much thought goes into it other than a weak association cropped up in the mind instantaneously. It appears to have the trappings of demotism, so it in fact is demotism, which means X is auto-dropped from the mind.
In short, purging is sometimes appropriate to stem entryism, regardless of its erstwhile associations–demotism in particular. And about demotism, I think it’s appropriate in a lot of non-governmental structures–part of it, anyway. There’s no need to absorb all of it. Pragmatism first. We default to some sort of demotism (while noting the irony, mind you, which is not a good sign) in small groups because of the collective action problem of good leadership (CAPL). This problem, however, also states that it’s the bad folks who tend to climb to the top because of how they calculate rates of return. That’s why it’s necessary to be wary of entryism, and why you need mechanisms to close the gate, and if those mechanisms are derided as demotist, well, then you’re in the uncomfortable position of participating in a demotist structure with all of the costs and none of the benefits.
Some ideological movements, like Anonymous or Occupy Wall Street, have decided not to have any leaders at all, but maybe that’s a bad way to conceive of things. Instead of leaders vs. no leaders, what if we used the model of influence vs. no influence? We’d start to see a very different picture emerge, I think. Influence is concentrated in Occupy Wall Street (OWS). It isn’t apportioned equally, by any means. What this creates is a dynamic of informal elites vs. non-elites, where the informal elites usually gain their community-bestowed status from agenda-setting, manipulation of social dynamics, demagoguery, and yes, merit-based contributions, too. The real conflict arises between the informal elites, who have different visions for OWS: what values should be held, what should be done, and where, and when.
The whole damn thing is a quagmire without any easy solution, but that shouldn’t prevent us from thinking carefully about it.
…why are we talking about purges? It’s never going to happen in an intellectual movement on the Internet, unless it means removing people from your blogroll. Toxic memes allowing for subversion is a great title; sounds kind of like 4chan subverting everything with imagemacros and copypasta (like )
OWS didn’t have leaders because it didn’t need leaders. Their goal was to raise awareness of the lack of consequences to the bank failures and the state of the economy that left many of them unemployed and able to spend all day hanging out protesting. You don’t need leaders for that, and leaders might have imposed more stupidity on them than the whole preferred gender pronoun thing or the irrelevant march protesting the execution of convicted cop killer Troy Davis.