It is often argued that socialism has something called dogma. What’s dogma? A set of rules and ideas that you HAVE to believe in. Just ask anyone in 1934 USSR, or 1953 PRC or today’s PRK (People’s Republic of Korea). Those who argue this argue correctly – blood has been spilt over it, much more blood than should have been over what Buddha would have called needless hair-splitting. Just ask anyone in modern Russia, China or South Korea (you wouldn’t have access to those in the North unfortunately).
There are – and were – various aspects of this dogma. It is not my intention to fill my blog with a study of socialism – there are a good number of studies on that, none of which I can recall right now because it has been such a long time since I studied that topic in detail. Anyways….
What I wish to talk about today is a certain aspect of this dogma that defined what man should be. You could not be just anyone in USSR. If you were, you could be branded a capitalist, a kulak, a petty trader or randomly anyone who was against the revolution. So how do you avoid being called any of these derogatory and dangerous names? You try and pretend – or indeed become – someone whom the Party believes is the “ideal” man.
And how do you define the ideal man ? An ideal man does this, doesn’t do that, looks like this and above all, thinks this. What’s this ? “This” varies in space and time but because we’re speaking of socialists, it generally means something that has been eulogized as ideal to socialist doctrine. So if you’re living in any of these countries, you behave in a certain manner, buy certain goods and do certain things, spend your free time in a certain manner, send your children to certain schools and heck, perhaps even have sex with your wife (socialist regimes typically didn’t tolerate live-ins for some strange reason!) in a certain position. Okay, maybe you had the freedom to have sex any which way you liked as long as the children born of such acts grew up to be ideal citizens who, again, believed in whatever was haute in the ideology books of the time.
(Did you notice I’ve used three words – doctrine, dogma and ideology? What’s the difference between them mate? Tell me?)
To sum up, you became a living breathing mannequin of the party’s ideals.
And if you didn’t want to be that way ? You could protest and be shot (or sent to a gulag) or escape to the West. What did you get in the West ? Freedom to think, freedom to do as you like and freedom, above all, to pursue your ambitions and become, as Mirandola had said, whatever you want to be.
If you did, you were probably soon convinced that you were right. There was no state to tell you what you should do in the minutest detail, inspection squads did not look for minute details and it was fine to protest about anything and everything in the world. Including your dear old country.
But what of the capitalism that you’ve embraced? Does it not create its own dogma? Let’s look at the question in very practical terms.
Say you go to a shop. You’re immediately bombarded with ideas of what you should buy and why you should buy them. Why? Because all the media you’ve been consuming over the past year has told you that to have social status and “be” the person people admire and look up to, you must have a certain set of products. The advertisements and the salespersons only reinforce it.
But haven’t you escaped from a society where such things were enforced? Here it can’t be enforced so you willingly, self-consciously and deliberately reject this idea. You refuse to buy what you are told you should buy. Take that socialism!
Okay, so you come out of the store. Now you’re in the street and you see people wearing and doing just what has been advertised all along. But you have rejected this path right ? Very good, so you are different. But are you? You must get new clothes as the old ones wear off, new food as the older stocks run out and new implements with which to do whatever you wish to do. SO you must buy. And you must buy in a manner that sustains your individuality and your rebellion against coerced or persuaded homogeneity.
You go to a store. It’s not the one that has been advertised the most and it isn’t the one that has what you said you wouldn’t buy. What does it have? Clothes, food, implements. Yes, all that you need. You buy happily, ignoring the calls of the salespersons to check out this or that product that is currently selling like hot cakes (or supposedly selling like hot cakes).
You come out of the store. You come out and realize that what you’ve bought is indeed different, because
- It is made by smaller brands who may sometimes produce inferior goods.
- It is part of last year’s stock (not food though, here you don’t have so much leeway).
You get the distinct feeling that whatever you’re using is of poorer quality or worse, outdated. Mind you, we don’t mean that it’s out of fashion. We mean that you feel that it is not as advanced as the products you could have bought.
Now say you go to your workplace. You’re immediately made aware of the fact that what you’re wearing or using is outdated and out of fashion. Does it suggest that you’re in hard financial straits ? Back in the socialist economy, there was no such problem. Everybody earned the same (supposedly) for the same work and got the same tools because the state produced only one or two variants.
SO now you’re acutely aware that what you use not only expresses your taste, but also your status. And in capitalistic society, because you can rise as high as you can (supposedly), status means a lot. It defines where you are on the ladder, how far you have to go, how fast are you moving? And when you come home, your wife, who’s been going around to the homes of all the other wives, reinforces this idea.
But wait, there’s more. Aren’t you that guy who came from that socialist country? Are you trying to tinker with the cherished ideals of the nation, trying to corrupt them? Why else would you want to do what you just did – something nobody else did (apparently). In defence, you fall back on the first justification – you’re probably poor. But you know, inside, that you aren’t. You need to get out of this poor or traitor problem, and fast!
Now you’re in a dilemma. You’ve spent the money you had allocated for the goods and find yourself stuck with stuff that nobody appreciates. What do you do? You do aspire for social respect right? Would you like to live out a whole year or even longer in such a socially depressed status ? Nope. Would your wife be happy if you took money meant for something else just so you could get the “right” stuff ? Nope.
You look for a cheap deal. Something that you can bring home and say – “Honey, I got it at 80% off so I didn’t need to withdraw any money from the bank”. The good news is, there is always a deal.
Not just one, many in fact. They’re advertised in stores, in TV shows, everywhere. In fact, you’d probably found a deal when you decided not to buy what everybody else was buying. Now you need a deal that’s even better than those deals.
Problem is, the deal that’s better than those deals has two pitfalls –
- It sells goods that are defective or are “Refurbished” ie essentially second-hand
- It sells goods of only a particular size and type.
You’d think that the second category would include products that are of rare or unusual types and so if you have a larger shoe size, a bigger waistline or something similar, you could avail yourself of it.
The bad news is, though the sale may deal with products that are a little less than popular (in terms of size, design, etc.) they still fall within a median that eliminates the other sizes and designs as outlier points. Why ? Because the manufacturer probably knew that those special types wouldn’t sell well and didn’t produce them in the first place.
What do you do? Simple – you adjust your body and your tastes to fit that median. A median, probably, that is narrower than the median which you were initially offered when you rejected those very goods because you’re now looking for a better price. You have little choice now – you buy the goods, adjust yourself and become the mean of the median of society. The conformist….
….you’d sworn you wouldn’t be.
So you see, capitalism has its own way of creating the “perfect” man, one who fits into everything and in doing so, can save the maximum amount of money. The farther away you are from this median, the more you spend and the more you stick out in society. And when you stick out, you appear to be falling behind in the race to achieve the perfect status and position in society.
In other words, what socialism makes you do through state fiat, capitalism forces you to do by manipulating your ambitions and dreams.