(I’m sorry that I’m a bit late to this. I moved my comment from your newer post back to this one.)
I really appreciate your work :) I used to consider myself socialist, and I’ve read all the authors that you recommend and more (Cohen, Piketty, Rawls, Wright, Hickel, Harrington, Russell, Hobsbawm, Eagleton, Davis, Robinson, heapsofChomsky, Scott, Harvey, Fisher, Burgis, Torres). I ran a leftist book club in Brisbane for a couple years. I spent most of my philosophy undergrad writing essays defending socialism—even anarchism. Eventually, I realised a few things about what I was doing:
Nirvana fallacy: I was looking for what seemed like the best possible version of socialism, and comparing it to really existing capitalism. I did not think about the best possible versions of capitalism, really existing versions of socialism, or broaden my scope to other alternatives. I loved Cohen’s Why Not Socialism, and I was disappointed when Jason Brennan correctly pointed out that the whole essay is an exercise in nirvana-reasoning that does not ask remotely the same question of each system (roughly: does capitalism have major flaws? does socialism have major appeals? can we conceive of a plausible way to make socialism viable?).
Planner’s fallacy: I was highly attentive to the potential benefits of my socialism that hadn’t been tried yet, without being sensitive to the costs and enormous risks of transformative departures from the current system that has been serving humans much better than previous systems. I would not have had this double standard for projects under any other labels, let alone ideas that were centuries old.
No true scottsman: I rejected all previous major socialist projects, with extremely niche exceptions like Catalonia, Mondragon, or Sweden in the 1970s. Crucially, the projects I rejected (Soviets, Cuba, China, Venezuela) are exactly the projects that we can properly evaluate with full information, unlike exciting proposals. I somehow had so much confidence even though I had such tiny or short-lived examples. This is particularly limiting for conclusions about international socialism and global cooperation, since we have no examples to work with. It’s also nearly impossible to disentangle what is causing outcomes when you change an entire complex system quickly, or even gradually. My definition of socialism, then, became basically private—even semantic. The line between myself and non-socialist left-liberals was blurry to non-existent, but it was an important part of my identity that I was socialist, while others were not. I should have taken comfort that, under such a broad and flexible definition, the world was already socialist. For ~untested proposals, I don’t think we should treat the ones labeled socialist as somehow warranting our attention before the randomly selected/​generated non-socialist ones.
Throwing the baby out with the bathwater: It’s absolutely true that capitalism is flawed and causes serious problems. Every system will have flaws, harms, and trade-offs. For each of the problems prominently and plausibly attributed to capitalism, I think it’s the case that (1) any given socialism would either perform only marginally better, or possibly worse, and/​or (2) there is a much more direct policy solution with far fewer risks and costs, that is much more likely to succeed and much more likely to be implemented. For example, even though you can make an excellent case that capitalism is responsible for factory farming (even though socialists/​communists have factory farms, too), it does not follow that we must abolish capitalism rather than regulate it. Even after a socialist election/​revolution, you would still need to fight for animal protection policies anyway, so socialism is a high-risk scenic route at best. For these reasons, I think it’s better to directly address problems with the scalpel of evidence-based policy, rather than indirectly influencing them through the sledgehammer of transformative political economy. The latter approach, and socialism in general, is rooted in conflict theory, where problems are seen as being caused by certain groups of people that must be disenfranchised, rather than illnesses that we can treat for everyone’s benefit. Conflict theory, in my view, reliably leads to bad outcomes, and makes it nearly impossible to embrace reasoned politics.
Unreasoned politics: In sum, I was giving socialism special treatment, including essentially all of my attention. I would now encourage people to instead embrace scout mindset, and reasoned politics as a priority over any of my own political conclusions. Like Chomsky, I think that we should test plausible-sounding reforms on a small scale, carefully monitor the effects, and carefully scale up the most successful ones. Unlike Chomsky, I don’t reject charter cities, or fields of study I don’t like (e.g., economics) and what their insights reveal about my ideology.
After spending this much time thinking about socialism, I eventually came to the conclusion that the best arguments against the right (e.g., confidence =/​= supporting evidence; old rigidities don’t work for current or future problems; we shouldn’t play russian roulette with society to test an educated wish) were also defeaters for socialism. I also think that socialism is probably optimising for the wrong things in the first place. I should say that I think that Erik Olin Wright and Thomas Piketty are well within the zone of reasonable disagreement. I hope that this is reassuring (in a weird way); there are EAs who have extensively engaged with socialism, given it years of more than fair consideration, and reached a conclusion that’s as informed as one could (reasonably) ask for. I hope that, like me, you don’t discount that someone could go through the process you recommend and reach the opposite conclusion. I doubt that socialism (especially any kind incompatible with liberalism) makes sense as a pressing cause area, even for longtermists.
(I’m sorry that I’m a bit late to this. I moved my comment from your newer post back to this one.)
I really appreciate your work :) I used to consider myself socialist, and I’ve read all the authors that you recommend and more (Cohen, Piketty, Rawls, Wright, Hickel, Harrington, Russell, Hobsbawm, Eagleton, Davis, Robinson, heaps of Chomsky, Scott, Harvey, Fisher, Burgis, Torres). I ran a leftist book club in Brisbane for a couple years. I spent most of my philosophy undergrad writing essays defending socialism—even anarchism. Eventually, I realised a few things about what I was doing:
Nirvana fallacy: I was looking for what seemed like the best possible version of socialism, and comparing it to really existing capitalism. I did not think about the best possible versions of capitalism, really existing versions of socialism, or broaden my scope to other alternatives. I loved Cohen’s Why Not Socialism, and I was disappointed when Jason Brennan correctly pointed out that the whole essay is an exercise in nirvana-reasoning that does not ask remotely the same question of each system (roughly: does capitalism have major flaws? does socialism have major appeals? can we conceive of a plausible way to make socialism viable?).
Planner’s fallacy: I was highly attentive to the potential benefits of my socialism that hadn’t been tried yet, without being sensitive to the costs and enormous risks of transformative departures from the current system that has been serving humans much better than previous systems. I would not have had this double standard for projects under any other labels, let alone ideas that were centuries old.
No true scottsman: I rejected all previous major socialist projects, with extremely niche exceptions like Catalonia, Mondragon, or Sweden in the 1970s. Crucially, the projects I rejected (Soviets, Cuba, China, Venezuela) are exactly the projects that we can properly evaluate with full information, unlike exciting proposals. I somehow had so much confidence even though I had such tiny or short-lived examples. This is particularly limiting for conclusions about international socialism and global cooperation, since we have no examples to work with. It’s also nearly impossible to disentangle what is causing outcomes when you change an entire complex system quickly, or even gradually. My definition of socialism, then, became basically private—even semantic. The line between myself and non-socialist left-liberals was blurry to non-existent, but it was an important part of my identity that I was socialist, while others were not. I should have taken comfort that, under such a broad and flexible definition, the world was already socialist. For ~untested proposals, I don’t think we should treat the ones labeled socialist as somehow warranting our attention before the randomly selected/​generated non-socialist ones.
Throwing the baby out with the bathwater: It’s absolutely true that capitalism is flawed and causes serious problems. Every system will have flaws, harms, and trade-offs. For each of the problems prominently and plausibly attributed to capitalism, I think it’s the case that (1) any given socialism would either perform only marginally better, or possibly worse, and/​or (2) there is a much more direct policy solution with far fewer risks and costs, that is much more likely to succeed and much more likely to be implemented. For example, even though you can make an excellent case that capitalism is responsible for factory farming (even though socialists/​communists have factory farms, too), it does not follow that we must abolish capitalism rather than regulate it. Even after a socialist election/​revolution, you would still need to fight for animal protection policies anyway, so socialism is a high-risk scenic route at best. For these reasons, I think it’s better to directly address problems with the scalpel of evidence-based policy, rather than indirectly influencing them through the sledgehammer of transformative political economy. The latter approach, and socialism in general, is rooted in conflict theory, where problems are seen as being caused by certain groups of people that must be disenfranchised, rather than illnesses that we can treat for everyone’s benefit. Conflict theory, in my view, reliably leads to bad outcomes, and makes it nearly impossible to embrace reasoned politics.
Unreasoned politics: In sum, I was giving socialism special treatment, including essentially all of my attention. I would now encourage people to instead embrace scout mindset, and reasoned politics as a priority over any of my own political conclusions. Like Chomsky, I think that we should test plausible-sounding reforms on a small scale, carefully monitor the effects, and carefully scale up the most successful ones. Unlike Chomsky, I don’t reject charter cities, or fields of study I don’t like (e.g., economics) and what their insights reveal about my ideology.
After spending this much time thinking about socialism, I eventually came to the conclusion that the best arguments against the right (e.g., confidence =/​= supporting evidence; old rigidities don’t work for current or future problems; we shouldn’t play russian roulette with society to test an educated wish) were also defeaters for socialism. I also think that socialism is probably optimising for the wrong things in the first place. I should say that I think that Erik Olin Wright and Thomas Piketty are well within the zone of reasonable disagreement. I hope that this is reassuring (in a weird way); there are EAs who have extensively engaged with socialism, given it years of more than fair consideration, and reached a conclusion that’s as informed as one could (reasonably) ask for. I hope that, like me, you don’t discount that someone could go through the process you recommend and reach the opposite conclusion. I doubt that socialism (especially any kind incompatible with liberalism) makes sense as a pressing cause area, even for longtermists.