A Theory of Society

The classical economists - Smith, Ricardo, and Marx - had great insight into the workings of economics. Nowadays they are mainly remembered for certain iconic ideas: Ricardo (if at all) for comparative advantage, Smith for the "invisible hand," and Marx for Communism. However, all three were fairly close theoretically.

Each took as the starting point for their analysis the basic and startling idea that economic value comes from labor. This is startling, because one is used to thinking that value is based on some objective worth - for example, tiramisu is more valuable than barley soup because it is much tastier. It is impossible to recognize the fact that value comes from labor if you simply look at what is in front of you. It is necessary to situate these items - the barley soup and tiramisu - in the determining context of economic competition.

Within the context of economic competition, the idea that value comes from labor shows its merit. Everyone is bound to work for the highest wages they can get. Therefore, if people are not willing to pay for something in proportion with the labor given to create it, then the industry which creates that product will be unable to attract workers. The market as a whole tends towards an equilibrium in which every laborer is working as efficiently as possible in terms of satisfying human desires - therefore the particulars of what they are making are mostly irrelevant from an economic point of view.

The above analysis simplifies considerably, because it is not my main point of interest in writing today. I will be writing more about economics once I've learned more about economics. For now, I'd like to outline a new social theory, which is analogous to the classical economic theory of labor and value.

I would like to propose that learning is an originary concern in social matters, analogous to how labor is originary in economic matters.

I think it is safe to say that most current social theories, insofar as they attempt to be deductive and universal, are based on the idea of choice, or preference. For example, modern microeconomics takes choice as an axiom, and derives theories from there. Political science also seems to come from a basis of choice. Liberal political philosophy is also based on the idea of choice, and uses one's ability to do as they choose given their circumstances, and to be governed by officials of their choice, as the definition of political freedom.

I don't think that these ideas are very successful. People are mostly not in control of their social circumstances. In the modern world, people are born into a huge infrastructure of social systems. Their choices lie mostly outside these systems (hobbies, etc) or are defined by these systems (Should we invade this country? Should we go through with this merger?). Someone's action in a particular situation can be explained, perhaps, by preference - wherever preference comes from - but how they got in that situation certainly can not be so explained.

A perhaps more perceptive line of social thought focuses on power. If the theorists of choice come from liberalism and the right wing, then the theorists of power come from socialism and the left wing. Marx is a thinker in this group: he located the problems of the proletariat in their alienation, their non-ownership of the means of production. Other left-wing thinkers, including Chomsky, Foucault, etc., have developed other theories based on power.

The power theories are more convincing to me than the choice theories. For example, it offers a much better perspective on the phenomenon of inequality. Choice theorists are more or less forced to conclude that global inequality is caused by personal or cultural differences, and has no global component. Power theorists are able to view inequality as a real global situation on the level of power relationships.

However, power theories are limited in their own way. The question is why are some groups in power and others not. Choice theorists answer this by saying that some people have personal or cultural characteristics which allow them to attain power. Power theorists disagree with this incorrect analysis, and point to the wide array of social and economic tools used by those in power to hold on to power and to disenfranchise other groups. However, this analysis leaves no room for an alternative answer to the question of why the powerful groups are powerful. It reduces this fact of power inequality to a transhistorical coincidence, essentially an axiom. This is unacceptable.

My own theory is that the power theorists are right about global inequality being a real global situation, but wrong about the a priori nature of it. Interestingly, these left-wing and right-wing theories tend to agree on one thing, which is the idea of 'indoctrination.' Indoctrination is the notion that a belief system can be forced on someone through coercion and propaganda, and that this belief system will subsequently determine the person's actions to a considerable extent. Indoctrination is a basic component of many modern theories, implicitly or explicitly, as an explanation for why those who are disadvantaged, and theoretically are capable of reversing their disadvantage, do not do so. For example, why does the laborer support capitalism? Why does the dictator's subject support dictatorship? Why don't the people revolt? The solution of depressingly many theorists is that the common person has been indoctrinated into the current system, and is mostly incapable of escaping this indoctrination.

My own solution would be that they don't know how to revolt. Not that it has not occurred to them, but that they do not know the tactics to pull it off. This and many other social equilibria, I believe, are controlled by learning.

I regard all other ideas, notably indoctrination, as psychological pseudo-science. Indoctrination happens to other people, never the essay-writing intellectual. For this reason alone it can be discounted. Indoctrination, as well as other theories, such as theories about moral character or work ethic, fail moreover on the grounds that they inhabit the wrong causal territory. They seem to be aware that the border of causality has been pushed as far as social factors such as effort and belief - but they duck out at this point, taking the easy answer that these social factors are in turn inherent or acausal. The plain fact is that no social phenomenon is acausal.

So viewed from this theoretical perspective, a social theory based on learning is a natural extension of earlier theories based on power or on choice. A theory of learning merely takes it as a given that certain power relations exist in society, and that certain groups therefore have social goals which are determined by these relations. This is an equilibrium position - if a group has power in society, but is not socially determined to maintain power, then they will lose power. The question then is how successfully different groups - including classes, nationalities, religious groups, etc. - will be able to pursue their respective goals.

The answer to this question is determined, generically, by how they are able to overcome the challenges placed in their path by the dynamic evolution of society. And this in turn is determined by what they do in response to these challenges. However, this is to some extent determined - as I have outlined above, it doesn't make sense to say that they choose not to pursue the maintenance of their social position, from an equilibrium point of view. Therefore, the sole remaining determinant is how well they know how to maintain their social position.

This process I would outline as follows: a group has certain objective conditions in which they must perform. They have certain resources at their disposal, including social, economic, and theoretical resources. But their exact performance remains underdetermined. They will not make the best use of their resources, because this would require a perfect theory. Therefore, they will act according to a dynamic process, in which they make various attempts using their resources, and use human intelligence to respond to the unexpected in their objective environment. This is the process of learning - and I am arguing that from it comes the dynamic evolution of social relations.

In other words, history under my program is to be retheorized as the history of techniques. The movement of knowledge, power, and wealth, then, are just particular equilibria which shift as society progresses technically on many fronts.

I was originally planning to write down some preliminary thoughts on the state of learning in modern society - but this post is already long. Some other time, then.