The Political Physicist

This was slightly edited in December 2017 to reflect a slightly more sophisticated approach to politics and, well, changes in my facial hair.

As you might have gathered from my blog posts here, I am pretty left wing. You know you’re pretty radical when you have to preface any explanation of your beliefs with “Well, I would not consider myself a communist.” And, while I am quite confidant in the validity of my beliefs, there are days when I really wish that I didn’t have them. So, without further ado, here are the top 10 reasons I wish I wasn’t a socialist.

1. The exhaustion of trying to stick to the moral high-ground.

No one would ever be a socialist in the West if they didn’t believe that there was a moral force behind it, backed up by a material analysis of society. Not only does socialism mean that you end up fighting a thankless, apparently losing battle, but also that you’re trying to live by a set of principles that can seem impossible under our current system. For example, how am I supposed to find clothes that I know weren’t made in sweatshops? How do you live an environmentally-friendly lifestyle in cities designed around the car? How do you fight patriarchy when even your friends sometimes say derogatory things about women?

On the more abstract level, it’s exhausting trying to explain all of this to friends. And what do you do about that slight feeling of disapproval when they don’t live up to your moral standards? Judging people is not only unpleasant, but also quite tiresome as well.

2. I am perpetually angry.

Sticking to your moral principles also tends to make you distinctly unhappy about the state of the world around you. Seeing as socialism has been suffering almost nothing but defeats for the past 30 years, just about anything that happens in politics will be bad news for me. I swear, government policy seems almost specifically tailored to piss me off, whether it’s cuts in services, cuts in taxes, support for foreign interventions, failure to tackle climate change, rolling back of labour rights, privatization, or what. The wonderfully pessimistic left-wing British comedian Jeremy Hardy sums it up well:

All socialists have bad backs because we slouch—except when we’re watching the news when we sit on the edge of our seats, shout, and wave our arms. Generally we sit hunched, arms crossed in a judgemental way, the whole of our bodies pulled into a frown.

3. I get to listen to people’s ignorant statements about socialism.

Because of the horrors inflicted in Eastern Europe in the name of socialism, various people will insist that socialism is an inherently bloody and evil philosophy or that when I advocate something like redistributive taxes (let alone start talking about the long list of industries that I’d like to see nationalized) I am advocating gulags.¹ No less irritating are people who say that socialism inevitably leads to a situation like the one in Greece. Don’t these people realize that Greece is an example of a welfare state (albeit a highly dysfunctional one), not a socialist economy in which the means of production are held in common?

4. Having to hold back when discussing politics.

Well, as those who know me well can attest, I’m not actually very good at this. But there are many situations in which I do try because, if I were to say what I actually thought, people would think that I was crazy. When I do fully speak my mind, at least to someone who is also political, I will often end up in arguments. Which is never a fun thing and tends to leave me feeling perturbed for a day or two.

5. Looking at the world in a fundamentally different way than others.

One of the things which makes political discussions so difficult for me is that the set of assumptions I go in with are different from those of just about everyone else. Of course, the main one is that I don’t assume that capitalism is the only option out there. This means that the range of policies I consider are not as constrained as for most people. For example, if someone argues that we can’t pursue some regulation because it would cause investment to dry up, then I’d suggest nationalizing the banks so that there is public control over investment. If a policy has the risk of causing a business to leave the country, then place the business under worker’s control.

But there are also more subtle things at play here. Socialists often have a different interpretation of history than the conventional one. While I think that this is a more accurate interpretation and provides a much better explanation of the world, it does make discussing history with other people more difficult because there is less common ground between us.

6. The difficulty introduced when trying to date.

Of course, none of this makes meeting people any easier. It can make things awkward enough among friends. But when you’re trying to date it makes things harder still. Politics, after all, are not make a great thing to discuss on a date, especially when your politics are rather unusual. But there’s also the fact that if I’m in a relationship I’d like it to be with someone who broadly shares the same values that I do. I don’t think this is unreasonable, surely? The problem is, most people are either apolitical (in which case one of my major interests is off the table to talk about) or have considerably more moderate views than mine. Oh well, probably someday I’ll meet a nice liberal or social democrat who can put up with my radicalism. Because that seems considerably more likely than my finding another socialist that I’d get along with well enough to want to date.² Which leads on to my next point…

7. Having to put up with other socialists.

Well, there’s a whole article’s worth of stuff I could say about this one. There’s the fact that most socialists seem to end up taking irrational views on things like nuclear energy, genetically modified foods, and any number of other topics. Similarly, there’s the general lack of knowledge about science and critical thinking, the consequent inability to come to informed conclusions, and the stupidity that results when dealing with many contemporary issues (although, in fairness, I think that most ideological groups are guilty of this). There’s the sectarianism which means that, in many countries, you have nearly as many socialist parties as there are socialists. And finally there is the bohemian weirdness and alternative lifestyle BS that seems so pervasive. You know what? I don’t particularly want to live in a commune! I admit that I’m sexually repressed and I don’t have a problem with that! I’m happy being constrained to a monogamistic paradigm within relationships! I don’t think that marriage is has to be inherently patriarchal and, yes, I would even like to get married myself some day! I don’t feel the need to take mind-altering drugs, smoke pot, dye my hair a funny colour, grow a scraggly beard, eschew going to the barber’s shop, get piercings, or have sex with anyone I find remotely attractive! I know that not all socialists correspond to the straw-man that I’ve constructed, but enough of them do for me to find it off-putting.

I guess my feelings can be summed up quite well by something that Orwell³ wrote in The Road to Wigan Pier:

In addition to this there is the horrible—the really disquieting—prevalence of cranks wherever Socialists are gathered together. One sometimes gets the impression that the mere words “Socialism” and “Communism” draw towards them with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, … [and] “Nature Cure” quack … in England.

8. Feeling faintly embarrassed of my beliefs.

Because there are so many socialists that display the (in my mind) disreputable qualities listed above, I find myself feeling embarrassed to be associated with them. How can socialism ever be taken seriously if these are the sorts of people representing it? Once again, I think Orwell says it best when he wrote that “As with the Christian religion, the worst advertisement for Socialism is its adherents.”

9. Not being politically “out” to my family.

Nowhere is this embarrassment more apparent than when it comes to my family. I’d never feel comfortable showing them the sort of people and writings produced by many in the socialist movement. And this certainly isn’t helped by the fact that my family is a good deal more conservative than me.⁴ My parents are essentially small-l liberals. On the one hand they support regulation and things like universal health care, but on the other they certainly wouldn’t be in favour of the sorts of nationalizations that I call for and they are vehemently anti-union. What’s more, my dad is a business owner. These are hardly people that I can talk to about the ills of capitalism. So I’m never entirely honest with them when it comes to politics and I end up hiding this part of myself from them.

10. Always being on the losing side.

As I’ve stated above, the last thirty years have seen little but defeat for socialist ideas. One only needs to look at the recent Ontario election to see how far to the right things have shifted: the Conservatives were advocating massive tax cuts and the laying-off of 100 thousand public-sector workers, yet they were taken seriously! Meanwhile, the NDP was essentially campaigning on anti-tax policies! How does the Left even begin to fight when even our more moderate ideas, like tax-and-spend policies, seem so alien to the electorate? How do we keep going when we are shunned by the NDP, ignored by the Liberals, and taunted by the Conservatives? How do you keep fighting when every left-wing government seems to end up giving in, at least partially, to capitalism? How do you retain hope as things seem to get inexorably worse?⁵

I don’t have the answers to all of that. But I still feel that humanity must be capable of something better than what we have right now. If no one fights for that then it definitely won’t happen. If we do fight, then at least we stand a chance.