It can be difficult to have conversations about socialism without it becoming politically and emotionally charged.
Still, when I have been able to, my experience is that EAs generally share a great deal of the core beliefs that socialists do about what an ideally organised society looks like, and what capitalism gets wrong.
The question is then ‘should (some) EAs advocate for socialism?’ I think I’m rather more uncertain than you are on that front. Some broad intuitions driving my pessimism:
Many dedicated and talented people have tried very hard to advocate for socialism for decades, and I think they haven’t made as much progress as they might (or indeed, as EAs have on their issues of choice in much less time) → i.e. I think tractability is low
I’m pessmistic about moral suasion in general
Revolution is, to put it lightly, a fraught concept
I’m often confused about what precisely people mean when they argue against “individualistic” decision making (this isn’t to say they’re wrong — just that I’ve not yet found the arguments convincing)
I tend to think the question is less ‘should EAs advocate for socialism?’, and more practically, ‘should EAs and socialists collaborate?’. Framing it in the former way is only going to highlight the very real differences between both movements. We can learn from the history of leftist disunity that historically, leftist movements have been strongest when they focus on finding ways to collaborate rather than persuading each other of their exact flavour of the ideology.
I think the collaboration between EA and existing animal welfare ideologies is a great template for what I mean here.
Contra tractability specifically, this depends on a lot on what societies count as ‘socialist’ or not. A lot of European countries, for example, are essentially market socialist or hybrid economies (large social states as in the Nordics, strong or mandatory labour unions as in Germany, large cooperative companies as in Spain, widespread state ownership of industry as in the Nordics or Poland). These countries have the longest histories of socialist movements, and have all achieved these economies through reform.
It can be difficult to have conversations about socialism without it becoming politically and emotionally charged.
Still, when I have been able to, my experience is that EAs generally share a great deal of the core beliefs that socialists do about what an ideally organised society looks like, and what capitalism gets wrong.
The question is then ‘should (some) EAs advocate for socialism?’ I think I’m rather more uncertain than you are on that front. Some broad intuitions driving my pessimism:
Many dedicated and talented people have tried very hard to advocate for socialism for decades, and I think they haven’t made as much progress as they might (or indeed, as EAs have on their issues of choice in much less time) → i.e. I think tractability is low
I’m pessmistic about moral suasion in general
Revolution is, to put it lightly, a fraught concept
I’m often confused about what precisely people mean when they argue against “individualistic” decision making (this isn’t to say they’re wrong — just that I’ve not yet found the arguments convincing)
I tend to think the question is less ‘should EAs advocate for socialism?’, and more practically, ‘should EAs and socialists collaborate?’. Framing it in the former way is only going to highlight the very real differences between both movements. We can learn from the history of leftist disunity that historically, leftist movements have been strongest when they focus on finding ways to collaborate rather than persuading each other of their exact flavour of the ideology.
I think the collaboration between EA and existing animal welfare ideologies is a great template for what I mean here.
Contra tractability specifically, this depends on a lot on what societies count as ‘socialist’ or not. A lot of European countries, for example, are essentially market socialist or hybrid economies (large social states as in the Nordics, strong or mandatory labour unions as in Germany, large cooperative companies as in Spain, widespread state ownership of industry as in the Nordics or Poland). These countries have the longest histories of socialist movements, and have all achieved these economies through reform.