Nikhil! I am very glad you wrote this post! I read this post not as a we should, as EA, advocate socialism, but more as a EA should have more socialists, or people looking into socialism. I want to discuss two ways of pushing back against that particular claim.
Insofar as people decide what to look into, I think the justificatory basis for looking into socialism (as opposed to e.g. standard economic theory, market economy, trade policy) remains somewhat slim.
You give a first-principle argument that seems neutral between real socialism and a somewhat interventionist market economy a la Europe. Insofar as the latter counts, my sense is that there is quite significant EA research on state interventions and how to support them (e.g. Lead removal projects trying to empower state actors to curb lead), as well as on broader political change (e.g. Social Change Lab is EA-affiliated IIRC) or heterodox economy (e.g. LEP). So for non-hardcore interpretations of socialism, I do see a fair amount of engagement.
You give some examples where somewhat more hardcore socialist countries had positive results—but I think that for at least some of them, e.g. Chinese poverty eradication, the orthodoxy is to understand them as having worked because of a change towards a less socialist system, rather than a more socialist system. So on a loose understanding of socialism, I feel like there’s a fair amount of engagement. On a strict understanding of socialism, I feel like there’s too thin an evidence base to justify focusing on it over e.g. orthodox economics. This may be because I do not know all examples well enough.
A second way of pushing back against your claims is that I think you may be simply wrong that there is not a significant amount of socialists in EA. Left seems to be the second-most popular position in EA after center left ( https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/AJDgnPXqZ48eSCjEQ/ea-survey-2022-demographics#Politics ). While EA is often painted as libertarian, there seem to be 7 times as many leftists as libertarians doing the EA survey. I myself had many interesting and insightful conversations with socialists I met in EA (you among them!). I think the impression that EA is very libertarian or neoliberal in membership is wrong. I think it may arise from the fact that in university contexts, those positions are simply so rare that a handful of vocal neoliberal EAs give the impression that EA is hyper-neoliberal.
Anyways, these are two ways in which I’d like to push back against the central claim. I enjoy you push towards thinking more about overlap between socialist and EA thought, and find it productive.
I’m taking socialism to be a movement as much as an end-state—a movement towards a more altruistic economy. The interpretation of the historical economic evidence is of course very controversial. What I hope to do (and where my expertise lies) is give an a priori case that we should expect some kind of socialism to be good, on the kind of metrics EA endorses.
The point about leftists in EA is interesting. I knew the figures skewed left but it’s greater than I recalled. I guess what I see is people who are EA and, say, vote for Bernie Sanders, but not so much people whose EA work itself engages with socialist thought or movements. That’s where I think we could move the dial.
On the second point again: it seems like almost 30 people have commented on this post so far. Only 2, as far as I can tell, are sympathetic to socialism. The same number have made eugenicist arguments against me. This is kind of hard to reconcile with the survey numbers.
Out of 35 comments so far I count 21 commenters, with 5 sounding particularly sympathetic to socialism, in my subjective view. Most of the rest seem neutral or ambivalent rather than strongly opposed, and the 2 eugenicists have both been severely downvoted.
The downvoting is good. On any other forum that was close to 80% leftists, though, I would expect zero eugenicists and a majority in sympathy with a pretty broad description of socialism. I’m not saying this post deserves more sympathy—I’m saying the survey results still seem strange to me
My evidence is all anecdotal, so I could be wrong, but I think the discrepancy between outside impression of EA/EA Forum behavior and the survey comes from two things:
The EA “populace” who responds to the survey has quite different views than EA leadership. EA is very top down behind the scenes. So despite relatively high degrees of lefti-ness in the populace, the money and “vibe” is very neolib to libertarian. E.g., public figures like Rob Wiblin have done neolib-signalling stuff in the past, I expect some people at the top at OP are more centrist/neoliberal than lefty, etc.
The EA Forum commentariat leans more neolib/libertarian and has more people espousing racist views, when compared to EA forum lurkers (who do fill out the survey). I and most of the EA-ish folks I know in person are more left than center-left politically, and we all complain a lot about the racism in EA. But it feels uncorrectable and most of us aren’t comment-y type people who want to get into arguments on the internet, so we’re underrepresented in the Forum.
Though 80% of EAs are left-leaning, the plurality of about 40% of EAs are centre-left, and only 37% classified themselves as left. Most likely the centre-left are social liberals and left-leaning centrists, while a good chunk of the left are social democrats and progressives. Actual leftists in the sense of democratic socialists/anarchists/Marxists/etc. are probably much less than that. 5 out of 21 is about 24%, which would be 65% of the 37% that are generally left-wing.
I am similarly unenthused about the weird geneticism.
Insofar as somewhat more altruism in the economy is the aim, sure, why not! I’m not opposed to that, and you may think that e.g. giving pledges or founders pledge are already steps in that direction. But that seems different from what most people think of when you say socialism, which they associate with ownership of means of production, or very heavy state interventionism and planned economy! It feels a tiny bit bailey and motte ish.
To give a bit of a hooray for the survey numbers—at the German unconference, I organized a fishbowl-style debate on economic systems. I was pretty much the only person defending a free market economy, with maybe 3-5 people silently supportive and a good 25 or so folks arguing for strong interventionism and socialism. I think this is pretty representative of the German EA community at least, so there may be country differences.
I also want to point out that many of the EAs sympathetic to socialism might have better judgment than people like me and not want to out themselves publicly on the forums, just in case it might affect future chances at things like funding. We’d like to think that it shouldn’t matter, but it may just be prudent not to take the risk.
Nikhil! I am very glad you wrote this post!
I read this post not as a we should, as EA, advocate socialism, but more as a EA should have more socialists, or people looking into socialism. I want to discuss two ways of pushing back against that particular claim.
Insofar as people decide what to look into, I think the justificatory basis for looking into socialism (as opposed to e.g. standard economic theory, market economy, trade policy) remains somewhat slim.
You give a first-principle argument that seems neutral between real socialism and a somewhat interventionist market economy a la Europe. Insofar as the latter counts, my sense is that there is quite significant EA research on state interventions and how to support them (e.g. Lead removal projects trying to empower state actors to curb lead), as well as on broader political change (e.g. Social Change Lab is EA-affiliated IIRC) or heterodox economy (e.g. LEP). So for non-hardcore interpretations of socialism, I do see a fair amount of engagement.
You give some examples where somewhat more hardcore socialist countries had positive results—but I think that for at least some of them, e.g. Chinese poverty eradication, the orthodoxy is to understand them as having worked because of a change towards a less socialist system, rather than a more socialist system. So on a loose understanding of socialism, I feel like there’s a fair amount of engagement. On a strict understanding of socialism, I feel like there’s too thin an evidence base to justify focusing on it over e.g. orthodox economics. This may be because I do not know all examples well enough.
A second way of pushing back against your claims is that I think you may be simply wrong that there is not a significant amount of socialists in EA. Left seems to be the second-most popular position in EA after center left ( https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/AJDgnPXqZ48eSCjEQ/ea-survey-2022-demographics#Politics ). While EA is often painted as libertarian, there seem to be 7 times as many leftists as libertarians doing the EA survey. I myself had many interesting and insightful conversations with socialists I met in EA (you among them!). I think the impression that EA is very libertarian or neoliberal in membership is wrong. I think it may arise from the fact that in university contexts, those positions are simply so rare that a handful of vocal neoliberal EAs give the impression that EA is hyper-neoliberal.
Anyways, these are two ways in which I’d like to push back against the central claim. I enjoy you push towards thinking more about overlap between socialist and EA thought, and find it productive.
Very fair points.
I’m taking socialism to be a movement as much as an end-state—a movement towards a more altruistic economy. The interpretation of the historical economic evidence is of course very controversial. What I hope to do (and where my expertise lies) is give an a priori case that we should expect some kind of socialism to be good, on the kind of metrics EA endorses.
The point about leftists in EA is interesting. I knew the figures skewed left but it’s greater than I recalled. I guess what I see is people who are EA and, say, vote for Bernie Sanders, but not so much people whose EA work itself engages with socialist thought or movements. That’s where I think we could move the dial.
On the second point again: it seems like almost 30 people have commented on this post so far. Only 2, as far as I can tell, are sympathetic to socialism. The same number have made eugenicist arguments against me. This is kind of hard to reconcile with the survey numbers.
Out of 35 comments so far I count 21 commenters, with 5 sounding particularly sympathetic to socialism, in my subjective view. Most of the rest seem neutral or ambivalent rather than strongly opposed, and the 2 eugenicists have both been severely downvoted.
The downvoting is good. On any other forum that was close to 80% leftists, though, I would expect zero eugenicists and a majority in sympathy with a pretty broad description of socialism. I’m not saying this post deserves more sympathy—I’m saying the survey results still seem strange to me
My evidence is all anecdotal, so I could be wrong, but I think the discrepancy between outside impression of EA/EA Forum behavior and the survey comes from two things:
The EA “populace” who responds to the survey has quite different views than EA leadership. EA is very top down behind the scenes. So despite relatively high degrees of lefti-ness in the populace, the money and “vibe” is very neolib to libertarian. E.g., public figures like Rob Wiblin have done neolib-signalling stuff in the past, I expect some people at the top at OP are more centrist/neoliberal than lefty, etc.
The EA Forum commentariat leans more neolib/libertarian and has more people espousing racist views, when compared to EA forum lurkers (who do fill out the survey). I and most of the EA-ish folks I know in person are more left than center-left politically, and we all complain a lot about the racism in EA. But it feels uncorrectable and most of us aren’t comment-y type people who want to get into arguments on the internet, so we’re underrepresented in the Forum.
Though 80% of EAs are left-leaning, the plurality of about 40% of EAs are centre-left, and only 37% classified themselves as left. Most likely the centre-left are social liberals and left-leaning centrists, while a good chunk of the left are social democrats and progressives. Actual leftists in the sense of democratic socialists/anarchists/Marxists/etc. are probably much less than that. 5 out of 21 is about 24%, which would be 65% of the 37% that are generally left-wing.
Source: (Survey Data)
I am similarly unenthused about the weird geneticism.
Insofar as somewhat more altruism in the economy is the aim, sure, why not! I’m not opposed to that, and you may think that e.g. giving pledges or founders pledge are already steps in that direction. But that seems different from what most people think of when you say socialism, which they associate with ownership of means of production, or very heavy state interventionism and planned economy! It feels a tiny bit bailey and motte ish.
To give a bit of a hooray for the survey numbers—at the German unconference, I organized a fishbowl-style debate on economic systems. I was pretty much the only person defending a free market economy, with maybe 3-5 people silently supportive and a good 25 or so folks arguing for strong interventionism and socialism. I think this is pretty representative of the German EA community at least, so there may be country differences.
I also want to point out that many of the EAs sympathetic to socialism might have better judgment than people like me and not want to out themselves publicly on the forums, just in case it might affect future chances at things like funding. We’d like to think that it shouldn’t matter, but it may just be prudent not to take the risk.