6 November 2008

I read an article today about how our drift strongly resembles that espoused by Fabian Socialism, and looked it up: essentially a slow and steady drift toward, rather than through radical action.

That got me to thinking of something I read several weeks ago.   It was a study (that I unfortunately can  no longer attribute) using questions about employment for college students.  They were given a choice between working for a company that paid high wages, but where they would earn less than their peers; and one where the actual pay level was lower, but they would be paid better than their peers.  The preference was for the latter.  Presumably, better to be a big frog in a small pond than a small frog in a big pond, or something similar.

This fits comfortably with what we all see every day and that is keeping up with the Jones - success respect.  A little bigger house, a "nice" car and enough of whatever to brag about; but not so much more as to be reviled for it.

Thus Socialism - that is, philosophical Socialism as opposed to traditional Socialism - not necessarily government ownership, but government control.  Eliminate poverty but also egregious riches, even if that slows down the engine of progress.  Put bluntly that suggests we might not be so uncomfortable with legislated medicocrity as long as we were all roughly equal.  Or as they used to see about Eastern  Europe: shared poverty.  As long as everyone is poor, it's endurable, "poor" of course being relative.

I also note (regularly) that election results show socialist tendencies strongest in urban areas.  That makes sense too, when you think about it.  And since urbanization is on the increase, so is the tendency toward philosophical socialism; or what is evident in most of the East: paternal democracy.

And under the Fabian plan it happens slowly over time.  In fact one of the reasons Fabian Socialism per se disappeared is that most of their goals were incorporated into the British Labor Party platform and came to pass, so their mission could be called completed.  It has also been pointed out that most of the platform planks of the American Socialist Party have also now been incorporated into our culture.

Perhaps this is the true will of the people, and will be accepted easily as long as it doesn't happen too radically.  We call it egalitarianism and it seems to be our most favored goal, so maybe we're almost there.