Optimistic Leftist Book Club Alert: Steven Pinker's Enlightenment Now

Steven Pinker has a new book coming out, Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism and Progress. The book will be released February 27 and may achieve the coveted status of an official Optimistic Leftist Book Club selection. In the meantime, here's an excerpt from an interesting exchange the New York Times published last Sunday between Bill Gates and Pinker. Gates incidentally has already said that Pinker's new book is his "new favorite book of all time". 

I liked this bit from the conversation:

Interviewer: Steven’s new book tells us we’re living longer, with greater wealth, peace and equality, and less racism and sexism. It’s so counterintuitive to the feeling in the air. What’s the value in correcting that? Will it change behavior?...

Pinker: There’s a tendency in journalism and political debates to assume that it’s easy to achieve a perfect society: “Good people would do that.” The fact that we don’t means that evil people must be running the system: “Let’s throw them out and find nobler ones.” This leads to empowering charismatic despots and destroying institutions that have done a lot of good. But we have no right to expect perfection. We should appreciate how much better off we are and try to improve our institutions guided by what works and what doesn’t. I’m sure Bill gets this all the time: “Why throw money at the developing world? They’re just going to have more babies and be just as poor.”

Gates: “It’s always been bad, always will be bad.”

Pinker: It’s just not true.

Interviewer: But can’t overstating problems energize us in terms of solving them?

Gates: There’s a paradox in letting yourself be very, very upset about what remains to be done. What indicator improves even faster than reduction in violence? Our distaste for violence. We’re more upset about it today. If I see someone spanking a kid — I’m stealing from Steven’s book — I might get up and say: “Hey, wait a minute!” Forty years ago, it might have been more like: “Do you want to borrow my belt?” There are parts of the world that are still like 40 years ago. But to read Steven’s book and think it says, “Don’t worry, be happy,” is to misread it. Because seeing the world through the eyes of that poor kid ideally wants to make you give some money, even though there are many fewer such kids than 50 years ago.

Pinker: You can say the same fact two ways. Extreme global poverty has been reduced from 90 percent 200 years ago to 10 percent today. That’s great! Or you can say: More than 700 million people in the world live in extreme poverty today. They’re the same fact, and you have to be able to describe them to yourself both ways.

Aye, that's the trick. A lot of folks have great difficulty with that. Hopefully, his book will help.

Can the JuSos Stop Another Grand Coalition in Germany?

Guest post by Judith Meyer

The SPD youth (JuSos) is trying to imitate Momentum and overtake the SPD ahead of its members' vote by gathering lots of new short-term sign-ups for the sole purpose of voting against the Grand Coalition (GroKo). There are few numbers available, but within less than 48 hours they had had 1500 membership applications made centrally, and nobody knows how many applications were made via the local groups. Still, the task isn't easy, in 2013, 370,000 members had cast their vote about the coalition.

In any case they did enough to worry Merkel (whom Schulz may have told up-to-date figures?). Merkel is now insisting that the negotiations must conclude by February 4 already, which is unheard of in the history of coalition talks, and quite unlikely for a 200-page document. The SPD's General Secretary has noticed this possibility of putting the pressure on CDU to reach a deal quickly and he publicly affirmed today that new members shall have the right to vote. There will have to be a cut-off date of course (it has been set for February 6, 6 pm) for logistical reasons, but it won't be retroactive.

The coalition treaty is unlikely to contain anything new about Europe because the CDU/CSU leaders withdrew from the workgroup on Europe and Martin Schulz had to follow suit in order not to lose standing. It is said that Merkel doesn't want too much detail in the treaty on Europe so that she has more room to maneuver. While SPD affirmed that there would be no revelation of who will become minister of what until after the members' vote, it is an open secret that Schulz is coveting the position of foreign minister for himself, which would probably mean that CDU/CSU will claim the finance ministry for themselves - they would put Peter Altmaier.

I still give it better than even odds that the SPD base will reject the coalition.

The Math Is Clear: Democrats Need to Win More Working-Class White Votes

My new article on Vox is out, debunking the ridiculous idea that the Democrats can achieve the electoral success they're looking for without more white working class votes. Here's the beginning of the article, but I hope you'll read the whole thing!

Following the noteworthy Democratic successes in the 2017 elections, we’re once again hearing that Democrats can achieve their electoral goals without any greater success among the white working class. Indeed, some on the left seem to feel that Democratic gestures toward the white working class would not only be ineffective but are politically suspect.

“There’s always been something problematic about the Democratic Party’s fixation on white working-class voters,” writes Sally Kohn at the Daily Beast. “After Alabama, it’s clear that obsession isn’t just fraught with bias. It’s also dumb.”

Steve Phillips of Democracy in Color remarked in a New York Times op-ed: “The country is under conservative assault because Democrats mistakenly sought support from conservative white working-class voters susceptible to racially charged appeals. Replicating that strategy would be another catastrophic blunder.”

“The ceiling with the white working class is what it is,” Phillips adds with a shrug in The Nation.

However popular, the view that Democrats can get along without working-class white voters is simply wrong. It reflects wishful thinking and a rigid set of political priors — namely, that Democrats’ political problems always stem from insufficient motivation of base voters — more than a cold, hard look at what the electoral and demographic data say.

Youth Revolt!

Let's see now....1968 was what,  50 years ago? Seems like it's about time for another: youth revolt! And we may be getting one. The signs have been building for awhile. Corbyn's surge to the leadership of the UK Labor Party and then to a way-better-than-expected electoral performance was driven by young voters. Same thing with Bernie Sanders' primary performances in the US. Podemos in Spain. The Left Bloc in Portugal. Syriza in Greece. 5 Star Movement in Italy. Wherever radicalism of a left coloration has reared its head and insisted that the old ways of doing things were simply not adequate to the current situation, it is the young who have been in the lead.

And now we have the JuSos in Germany, the Young Socialist formation within the German SPD, the mainstream social democratic party, leading the charge against yet another "Grand Coalition" or GroKo between the SPD and Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats. Such a coalition would carry business as usual in Germany to the point of self-parody. The SPD youth are having none of it and are desperately trying to "pull a Corbyn" by encouraging as many people as possible to take out 10 euro party memberships and vote against the GroKo in the upcoming membership referendum ("a tenner against the GroKo").

They may or may not succeed, since their task is probably even more difficult than that faced by the Corbynites. But they are shaking things up and may be a harbinger of trouble to come if German politics settles back in its well-worn grooves. 

The distaste for political business as usual is not confined to young voters of course, as we can see from the wave of right wing populism infecting the western world. But it is most definitely young voters who are driving a rejection of business as usual from the progressive direction. This should be seen as a sign of hope since the contemporary model of capitalism clearly needs major changes to deliver the quality of life and opportunities people are looking for. Tinkering around the edges just isn't going to cut it and it is the young who see this most clearly and are most willing to speak out about it. 

So perhaps we're starting to reach another boiling point. Mainstream left parties in Europe have suffered from aging of their memberships for many years as young voters found other parties to vote for or just weren't interested; that process is only accelerating. Left parties will either change, as the UK Labor Party and, to a lesser extent, our own Democratic Party has, or they will pay a price. 

Am I overestimating the potential importance of these youth-fueled outbreaks on the left, some of which, to be sure, can be a bit strident and unrealistic? Let me quote Arthur Goldhammer, whose excellent article on this topic I commend to you:

Many commentators, myself included, have been quick to fasten on the inadequacies of these youth movements, with their often half-baked ideas, hubristic fantasies of quick revolutionary change, and insufficient appreciation of the complexity and resilience of actually existing economic and social relations. We have tended to interpret the protests as left-wing variants of the right-wing populism we deplore, because like the populists, the young demonstrators, caught up in the contagious enthusiasm of movement politics, mistake their faction for the whole of the body politic. But in making these criticisms we have neglected the flair of the young in sussing out precisely where that body politic has become most sclerotic.

 In other words, "Don't stand in the doorway, don't block up the hall."

Science Fiction Saturday: Ursula K. Le Guin (1929-2018)

With the recent passing of Ursula K. Le Guin, one of the science fiction greats, I would be remiss if I didn't mention her here. Besides being a fine writer, her science fiction was marked by a distinct humanist bent, with an abiding interest in sociological and political speculation about our species' possible futures. I have read and liked many of her books, even though I tend toward the hard SF side of the genre. 

It's worth mentioning that she was on the political left, leaning anarchist, and a great  admirer of Murray Bookchin. You can definitely see that perspective coming out in her novels. I wonder if they read Le Guin in Rojava, ostensibly based around Bookchinite priciples.

As for what to read almost all of her work is at least readable and much is outstanding. The works in her Hainish  future history cycle are all very good, but the standout books are The Dispossessed and The Left Hand of Darkness. Outside of the Hainish cycle, I liked The Lathe of Heaven quite a bit.

Anyway, hard to go wrong with this author. If you haven't yet made an acquaintance with her books, now's an appropriate time.

Obscure Music Friday: The Dawn of Correction

In honor of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moving us to just 2 minutes to midnight, the point of total global annihilation, I considered featuring Barry McGuire's "Eve of Destruction". But it's not really obscure enough to merit inclusion in this highly prestigious series. So instead how about "The Dawn of Correction" by the sadly-forgotten Philadelphia group, The Spokesmen? 

Some sample lyrics:

You missed all the good in your evaluation
What about the things that deserve commendation?
Where there once was no cure, there's vaccination
Where there once was a desert, there's vegetation
Self-government's replacing colonization
What about the Peace Corp. organization?
Don't forget the work of the United Nations

So over and over again, you keep sayin' it's the end
But I say you're wrong, we're just on the dawn of correction
But I say you're wrong, we're just on the dawn of correction

So keep your sunny-side up. And don't forget the work of the United Nations! 

Science Fiction Saturday: Clifford D. Simak

Clifford D. Simak was one of the greats of 1950's and 1960's science fiction. He wrote many fine novels, marked by a pastoral tone and a contemplative attitude toward humanity's future. Some of the best are City, Way Station, Time Is the Simplest Thing and Why Call  Them Back from Heaven. Most are available in inexpensive kindle editions.

Perhaps the most famous of his books was City, which was always one of my personal favorites:

The novel describes a legend consisting of eight tales the pastoral and pacifist Dogs recite as they pass down an oral legend of a creature known as Man. Each tale is preceded by doggish notes and learned discussion.

An editor's preface notes that after each telling of the legend the pups ask many questions:

"What is Man?" they'll ask.

Or perhaps: "What is a city?"

Or: "What is a war?

There is no positive answer to any of these questions."

From the mouths of pups.....