Why Ideological Populism Is a Dead End

The politics of ideas -- conservative vs. liberal -- and the notion of popular sovereignty persist to this day. We need to understand why populism is a political dead end.

158. Why Ideological Populism Is a Dead End

In Canada, populism is nothing new. “Prairie populism” was tried with John Diefenbaker. He won an election. That was pretty much it. The Laurentians just waited him out and went back to business as usual. You might be tempted to argue back that he and his party did not have control of the administrative mechanisms. What we need is a long march through the institutions but from the ideological right. But that isn’t going to work either. Let’s take a look at why this is the case.

Populism is a form of peaceful revolt by the citizenry that says, “Stop!” It wants to work through the mechanisms granted by the systems of governance for the peaceful airing of grievances. But it can never achieve its goals by working through the system. This dynamic is not well understood, in part because the arguments made by Jacques Ellul in Autopsy of Revolution are not well known and the implications of what he says are not fully considered. Too many tend to believe the illusions that the system puts forward as to how it works. People tend to believe in popular sovereignty. People tend to also believe that having better ideas can make the system run better. What they don’t understand is that fundamental to making the system work is the notion that if we have the correct ideas about how the world works, we can apply those ideas to the writing of policy that can be enacted through society’s governing institutions for the improvement of society. Using the right ideas, we can use policy and institutions to fix the things that are wrong with society. Another term for this is, “social engineering.”

“Social engineering” is inherently a liberal and modernist idea that is rooted in the conception of humanity coming out of Rousseau, that human beings are born good or “blank slates.” The idea is that if we can get society, if we can properly manage all of the mechanisms of economics, education, social policy, law and so forth, we can create a context within which people, as blank slates, will now just naturally and effortlessly flourish. As Canadian philosopher Marshall McLuhan asserted, “the medium is the message.” The modern state system — this includes the worlds of corporate administration and the governance of non-profits — is inherently built around this notion of social engineering. In this regard, all of our systems of governance, in the public and the private sector together, are fundamentally instruments of social engineering. At their core, institutionally and structurally, they are liberal in nature. This is the telos of the system. This is its meaning. The system is a technology built to implement ideas. This is what it is irrespective of whatever intellectual content we try to convey through it. All television shows are television shows. All car rides are car rides. All tweets are tweets. All technocratic, managerial governance is technocratic managerial governance. Changing the channel on which party is in government does not change the way things are governed. The content of technocratic managerial government does not change the nature of technocratic managerial government.

“Conservatism” or “traditionalism” — there is no such thing as ideological conservatism, as we will see shortly — has always understood that human beings are flawed, sinful, or tragic in their nature. The “conservative” knows that any attempt to “save” humanity by human effort is ultimately doomed to failure because all of the efforts of mankind to save himself will also be flawed. Whatever structures are built, whatever policies are enacted, all of them will be flawed. Thus, from the outset, these efforts to fix society, while they might do some good, are always inherently flawed, often tragically so and in way that are unexpected. As these “solutions” are implemented, even when they are doing something positive, they are also at the same time making them worse, or, at the very least, generating new problems that now have to be “solved.” Additionally, the growth in problems is generally exponential as as the complexity of society increases. It gives modernity a Ponzi Scheme feel to it. One we begin the process of social engineering, we must continue to fix every new problem, often caused by the introduction of technique based solutions to some problem or another, with more technology, exacerbating the problem. We are juggling more and more balls. Thus is the promise of so-called “artificial intelligence” technologies, that if we can just manage all the problems in real time, we can finally escape this trap. But this invention too is flawed and bring will unintended negative effects.

Understanding this, “conservatives” or “traditionalists” — most of whom are Christian — know that the only way to deal with a flawed humanity is to cultivate virtue within themselves as best they can, and leave the rest up to God [or, as with the pagans, to the fickle and capricious nature of the gods]. The highest aspiration was to be a godly man or woman. In society, one didn’t try to fix humanity, or society itself as a system, one left saving humanity up to God. You were given certain tools of coercion to help mitigate some of the worst evil excesses of humanity, but society became better as the downstream effect of the people being more virtuous.

Why is this important to understand? We need to recognize the transition that happens with liberal modernity — and there is no other form of modernity — is that it has endeavoured to analyze the traits of the virtuous, abstracting them into a set of principles, a set of “values,” that can then be developed into a set of policy proscriptions that will dictate and enforce good behaviour on people. No longer are these “virtues.” Rather, they are now “best practices.” You might be wondering how this is different from the older forms of morality? It can be subtle, if one isn’t paying intention closely. The cultivation of virtue involves me identifying within myself my own flaws and applying my own effort to effect change in my own behaviour, reinforced by people in the community. With social engineering, no actual moral demands are placed on me personally. Nothing is seemingly demanded of me. All the weight is placed on the system. There is a system of policies that are applied which, if followed, make everyone better people, but without then having to expend any effort.

There was also some bait and switch going on as well. People were sold on this idea of abandoning the older religious demands for us to apply personal effort to strive for virtue, by offering them the carrot of loosening up the restrictions in the area of sexual immorality and the enjoyment of other vices. Also, people would be allowed to be as greedy, covetous and ambitious for the accumulation of wealth. Additionally, the people towards whom social engineering would be directed were those on the margins of society: the poor and the criminal. But soon the social engineers were managing pretty much every aspect of your life. Your work was subjected to time and motion studies, you filled out your TPS reports and you were sorting your garbage into waste, recyclables and organic waste. As long as no one told you that promiscuity was bad and made sure you had your edibles, you didn’t pay attention to the smothering totalitarian system of regulations that had completely re-engineered your life.

Virtue is no longer something anyone has to cultivate within themselves. Rather, it has been technologized and is imposed upon people through inch thick policy manuals, through plans, visioning processes, laws, and guides for best practices. Your life is now ISO 9001 certified. This is the essence of what is meant by “the rule of law.” It is the transposition of morality into law, into system, into policy, that is then instantiated within institutions of government, of business and of the non-profits, like churches. Instead of sexual morality, we now have DEI and METOO policy guides. But the idea is that if we can get this right, if we can properly engineer society as a system, it will generate a context within which people will just naturally be good without any effort on their part, or any need to confront their own flaws or engage in any of the strenuous moral or spiritual disciplines — what a killjoy that would be, right? — that are at the heart of cultivating virtue.

So where does this leave “conservatism?” No where. There is no such thing in modernity. It is vital that we understand that liberal modernity is already the attempt to strip Christianity of its religious beliefs so as to pull out of Christianity its moral system that can then be used to build a new morality by converting the essential elements into law and policy for the new age of the open society. “Conservatism” within the context of liberal modernity is merely the argument for abstracting a different mix of morals and virtues to be used as the material for social engineering.

Yes, the “free market” is not “conservative.” It is a form of social engineering. The argument is that if we take away all notions of virtue, all rules, all policies that might limit economic activity, that a good, moral society will just happen as an “emerging property” of competition. This only works if you assume people are good — or blank slates — and if left to their own devices, will naturally produce good outcomes. The idea of “the free market” as a political program is thoroughgoingly liberal because of the view you must have of human anthropology necessary to make it work. The Christian, on the other hand, knows that human beings are flawed, sinful and tragic and therefore must exercise virtue to limit and regulate economic activity.

Additionally, it must be understood that these two modes of society are fundamentally incompatible with each other because they begin with two different foundational views of the human condition. More so, liberalism, and its impulse towards the perfecting of society through the institutions, laws and policies of society have a corrosive effect on the cultivation of virtue. The cultivation of virtue is hard and requires a commitment from the whole community, the whole of society to make it work. And you cannot separate it from the fundamental religious and metaphysical framework that gives virtue its meaning. Without this, why would you do something this hard? If you don’t believe and the community is not there to reinforce and encourage good behaviour as a positive expression of the beliefs of the society, why would you do it? Instrumental morality is not really a thing. Once society puts its faith in technical solutions, all solutions, in every situation will gravitate towards technical solutions that involve changes in the external situation while demanding nothing from you as an individual person. This is why almost all church renewal processes today are systemic in nature, involving changes in music, staffing, programming, branding and so forth instead of making calls for genuine spiritual conversion and change. Jesus is your wingman, there to help you live your fabulous life. He isn’t calling you to repentance. And church is there to make you feel comfortable and energize you for all the demands of life. Nothing in our society is about virtue. Its all about technical solutions.

What this means, when you see the white papers and the policy platforms of so called “conservatives,” is that you are merely seeing a different form of liberalism. All political parties that operate within the realm of the modern administrative state are all variations on the same phenomenon. Whether it is a hard power dictatorship that uses social engineering or a soft power “democracy” that uses social engineering, they are all using social engineering. The medium is the message. They all have the same aspirations: to use the power and mechanisms of state to enact ideas, that is ideology, by means of policies that are then instantiated through the various institutions — in government, business or non-profits — to shape society in certain ways.

Knowing this, how should we understand “populism?” Jacques Ellul, in his book Autopsy of Revolution, argues that all ruling elites in every society down through history have always tried to build and shape their societies. They are fighting wars, building legacies, engaging in public works programs. He makes the point that the ruling elite are trying to drive “forward” the “history” of the people, in the sense that they are trying to enact some grand purpose or meaning. Typically, the costs, the price, of plans of the elites are born by the common man. Even when they are trying to fix problems within society, the cost of this typically falls on the backs of the people. The industrial economy of liberal modernity has managed to produce such excesses that they were able to indulge in their fantasies of fixing society without having to impose any cost on the people at all. But this was an illusion. Just because your life was getting better, it did not mean that there was no price to be paid for liberal modernity. Although for a time we convinced ourselves — or let ourselves believe the propaganda — that this was not the case.

Ellul argues that when the costs that the ruling elite impose on society become too high, they risk a popular revolt. This revolt is them saying, “no!” to “history,” to the plans of their rulers. It is the people questioning the legitimacy of their rulers. His argument is that all popular revolts throughout history have this similar character of a people fed up with their rulers, that they have had enough of their plans, their taxes, their violence, their oppression, whatever. They no longer believe in the “glorious future,” or, at the very least, they don’t want to be the one’s paying for it anymore. What typically comes out of popular revolts, either from within the ordinary rules of the system or from outside those rules — even when the revolt is successfully put down or defeated by the rulers — is that a compromise is worked out with the elites, reforms are enacted, the agenda of the elites is pared back or altered and peace is restored in society. Realistically, this should be the goal for populism today: to secure concessions from the current ruling elites that improve the situation of the common man. When the current ruling party in a country steals the agenda of the opposition party and enacts key elements of that platform, this is the activity they are engaging in by “getting ahead of the problem.” They are trying to diffuse a populist uprising.

Alternatively, the populist revolt can get out of hand and the conflagration of violence proceeds unchecked , consuming the society in an orgy of violence. If an elite is truly recalcitrant, this might be the only available path. You simply burn it all down. This is the highest cost that can be paid. Things typically don’t get this far. There are those with enough zeal that they believe that the only way to make things better is to hit the resent button. This is basically a movie villain plot line. Or you are the Unibomber. Generally, most revolts, whether within the system or from without, know what reforms they want enacted and how they want the agenda of the ruling elite pared back. This should be the ordinary goal of all populist movements. A negotiated settlement with the current ruling elite.

You might be thinking, “I thought the point of populism was to ‘drain the swamp’ and clear out the current elites and replace them with our own people or build a better system?” This gets at the core of Ellul’s central thesis about the “revolutionary era.” In order to transform a successful revolt into a revolution, what you must do is transform the ideas that drove the revolt, usually based on a set of grievances, into a workable plan for turning those into a workable system and a set of policy frameworks, that is laws, that can transform those ideas, those grievances, into a set of institutions that are meant to embody the ideas that gave birth to the populist revolt in the first place. We must remember that a populist revolt is not the same thing as a coup where key members of the leadership are replaced, but the systems of power remain largely the same. The populist revolt aims to sweep much of the current order aside so as to replace it with a new, better, more just order with new institutions to embody those ideas.

Ellul argued that there is good reason why the “revolutionary era” begins in the back half of the 1700’s in the 13 colonies and in France. Successful revolutions require a critical mass of people in the population possessing a certain skillset. Basically, you need people who are good at managing and running organizations and are good at turning plans and ideas into workable structures. With the rise of the merchant class in these societies, they began to want to have control of the institutions of government so as to shape it in a way that was more suitable for their interests. Basically, in order to make a successful revolution out of a revolt, you need a sufficient number of elite “managers,” that is people who are adept at turning ideas into law, policy and institutions. This is the kicker and why it was necessary to spend the first half of this piece talking about social engineering. What Ellul argues is that all successful revolutions extend the power and scope of the technocratic state system. Even in the early revolutions, well before social engineering was a mature idea, well before the managerial state was fully formed, you could see the transformation that was taking place. Abstract ideas were being applied to institute new frameworks for governance that would be the embodiment and guardian of the ideas that gave birth to the initial revolt.

Once you cross a certain point in the way things are governed — moving from an emphasis on persons, culture, tradition and custom to ideas, policies, laws and institutional frameworks — anything you do to try to reform the system simply reinforces it, extends it or makes it more powerful. The modern state cannot be reformed. All television is television. This is why Trump was doomed to fail before he even started. Because pretty much every governing institution, whether public sector, private sector or non-profit beyond a certain scale are all managerial institutions and are all an integral part of the state system. This is why Ted Kaczynski advocated burning the whole system to the ground, all of it, not just government. “The system” cannot be saved and it cannot be wielded towards cultivating virtue. At best it can create a simulacrum of a virtuous people who are not actually virtuous. People will imitate virtue without actually cultivating within themselves the habits of soul and spirit that will produce virtue on their own. Again there can be no conservatism within the modern state system of governance.

There is a tentative third way. You, and your community, opt out of the system as much as is possible, resisting its rewards and its punishments, resisting its ways of governing and organizing society in order to cultivate virtue, tradition, customs and people. You govern your community via good, capable people, not policies. Your community exists over time not because of the strength of its institutions, but because you have passed on your faith, your virtues and the customs of your people. You have raised up men who can lead. Will this community be able to challenge the state? Will this lead to the end of the corrupt modern state? [It is corrupt by definition because it denies the need for virtue] The point of your parallel community is not to challenge the state. The point of it is to live virtuous lives and to create a context within which all the ingredients this can be cultivated and encouraged, like a vibrant Christian faith. And then we let what happens, happen. But we are content in knowing that we have done the right thing. Politics does not save us. Neither will overthrowing the current system. Ironically, this community is the truest form of the political because it arises out of our desire to pursue a life of faith and virtue over time together as a community.

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