Beware The American Right’s Reversion To Biformist Ideals

Part One: Tribalism and monarchism begin to suborn market values

[Aargh. Once again I’ve written too long, don’t know what to cut, and have only fragments ready for the final sections. So, for everybody’s sake, I’m splitting this into a two-part post. This Part One contains a lot of recapping about TIMN. Part Two will provide meatier sections on “Russian antipathy to political democracy and free markets” and “Reorientation (Russianization?) of the American Right’s Dreams.” Onward we go.]

Just as I was drafting a new post about the prospects for quadriformism, I happened across a few articles that verified my mounting anxiety that parts of the American Right are falling for authoritarian ideals that characterized medieval systems ages ago. The American Right has begun to exalt T/tribal and +I/institutional principles of governance much as medieval rulers did centuries ago, long before +M/market principles gained sway and fueled the rise of liberal democracy.

If this trend advances, leaders on the American Right, including in the GOP, will surely backpedal from favoring a market economy and market-like democracy. Their value orientations and public behaviors will fall more in line with medieval Eurasian (Russian) rather than stay with modern Western (American) ideals, though U.S. politicians may continue giving lip-service to the latter.

I’m feeling alarmed. Hence this side-trip of a post or two.

The Problem And Its Implications

I first wrote about America eventually evolving from a triform (T+I+M) to a quadriform (T+I+M+N) society in 1996. I figured signs of it would emerge in the next 25-30 years. Yet here we are, and I still see no sure signs. I’ve even begun to doubt I’ll see them in my lifetime — though I remain sure that this next-stage transition will eventually occur, as last discussed in my post on “Looking for a better ideology? Quadriformism can help.”

Our society is sliding further and further away from having a healthy stable well-balanced properly-functioning triform system. Too many matters are out of whack and in bad shape in all three realms — civil society, government, and market economy — and so are the interactions among the three realms. Many Americans appear to be giving up on reforming it; they seem less committed than ever to upholding a balanced triform orientation toward civil society, government, and market economy — realms of the T, +I, and +M forms, respectively.

Instead, many Americans seem increasingly susceptible to dark sides of the T and +I forms — political and cultural tribalism, authoritarian leadership, fascist-like ideas, etc. They’ve become vulnerable to information-age modes of psychological-cognitive-ideational-political-cultural conflict that suits non-military actors: i.e., social-movement activists, ideological extremists, political subversives, media pundits and warriors, propaganda experts, narrative strategists, government operatives, etc. This mode of conflict goes by various names, the most common one during the Cold War years being “political warfare” per George Kennan’s advice. But the most accurate name for what’s going on now is a mouthful: “noöpolitical netwar.”

I’ll explain netwar and noöpolitics better in a later post. But for now be aware that John Arguilla and I fielded these concepts years ago to identify information-age conflicts waged by actors who are adept at organizing into sprawling networks (hence the term netwar) and who fight primarily over “whose story wins,” not whose weaponry wins; for main arena of conflict is the world’s emerging noosphere (“realm of the mind,” “global thinking circuit”). Netwar is often conducted with coordinated swarming attacks, sometimes quickly and confrontationally, but often so slow-moving over time as to be barely noticeable. I’m pretty sure netwar measures are being used to disorient and subvert American society today, contributing to the ideological shifts that appear to be underway in parts of the American Right.

A number of exemplary netwars have occurred since the 1990s, when we first began to forecast their rise as an information-age mode of conflict. But today it’s networked activists on the Far Right at home and abroad, some seemingly with Russian support and participation, who have become particularly effective at noöpolitical netwar against the U.S. and the West more generally (a concern I hope to elaborate in a Part Two Part Three post in this series about biform vs. triform societies).

That said, I initially figured that most Republicans, libertarians, and other conservatives on the American Right would stay true to their traditional triformist ideas about civil society, government, and the economy. What I did not expect is what I now see happening: a widespread reversion toward biform (T+I) ideals and mindsets whose orientations are more medieval than modern.

In TIMN terms, these conservatives(?) are increasingly echoing autocratic aspects of the Tribes and Institutions forms favored by their latest leaders. They are ignoring that free-market pro-democracy aspects of the Market form are being targeted and eroded. One leader after another on the Right is turning to favor tribal loyalty and king-like governance over democratic market-system values and practices. They are coming to view markets more as vehicles for making deals than as systems for assuring freedom and liberty — which is far more a medieval Russian than a modern American view of +M.

This has two sets of implications for my efforts.

• One is for TIMN as a nascent theory of evolution: As discussed before, TIMN involves a host of system dynamics that recur every time a next-new TIMN form emerges, takes hold, and induces a restructuring of society. The trends noted above suggest a system dynamic I’d not spotted until now.

I’ve previously relayed that societies may regress as well as progress in TIMN terms. When people become increasingly negative about their society’s institutions and markets, many revert to clannish and other old tribal ways of surviving. I’ve also relayed that new information technology revolutions are what enable the TIMN forms to arise, each in turn — oral storytelling in ancient T/tribal times, then mechanical printing in +I times, electrical telegraphs and telephones in +M times, and digital devices in today’s emerging +N times. Plus I’ve relayed that each step in the TIMN progression leads to new political ideologies — new isms and ocracies based on the hopes and fears that the latest form and its technologies arouse.

What I missed spotting until now is that some actors — like today’s billionaire “tech-bros” — may view their era’s new technologies not as inspirations for new ideologies but instead as tools for reviving and reasserting the appeal of old ideologies and ways of life. I vaguely recall this occurred during past information technology revolutions. But I didn’t think of it as a recurrent system dynamic until I now see it happening in real time — as I explain better below.

• Another set of implications pertains to TIMN as a potentially practical guide to strategy. If the above trends sharpen, then +M is in trouble. Vigorous efforts will be needed to defend market-system ideals and practices, including democratic freedom, from being devalued and distorted more than they already are. These efforts should include gaining a better understanding of how deeply intertwined are market principles and political democracy. According to my sense of TIMN, as the market system goes, so goes social, political, economic, and cultural democracy. Uphold one, and you uphold the other; corrupt one, and you corrupt, the other — maybe not right away, but over time for sure.

The challenge may well arise through rhetoric about reinvigorating capitalism, thereby appearing to value the market system. People generally conflate the two. Yet in reality many kinds of capitalism — the kinds apparently favored by current leaders of the American Right — are designed to bias market conditions, say by favoring specific companies, rigging certain sectors, and enabling massive monopolies. These kinds of capitalism serve to contain and abase +M; they don’t uphold it as a cardinal component of long-range social evolution. By subordinating +M to T+I principles, leaders may make an economy compatible with tendencies toward oligarchy, plutocracy, and autocracy, not to mention fascism.

I see warning signs that this is underway — bad news for American-style democracy. The more our economy is obliged to depart from +M — it’s already departed a lot — the more difficult it will be to defend political democracy as a hybrid form that bridges +I and +M. America’s prospects for continued successful evolvability as a triform system may depend on recognizing this (though not necessarily in TIMN lingo). I explain more below.

Recap: Ideological Evolution And Devolution In TIMN Terms

I never know to what extent readers may be familiar with TIMN, or if once familiar some time ago, whether they remember much about it. If you feel familiar, I’d advise skipping this wordy section and jumping to the later (now postponed) sections about “Russian antipathy to political democracy and free markets” and “Reorientation (Russianization?) of the American Right’s Dreams.”

Otherwise, here’s a brief-ish recap from those parts of TIMN that can help with understanding the matter at hand: ideological backsliding among elements of the American Right that bodes ill for America’s future as a modern triform and prospective quadriform society.

• Recapping the nature of TIMN’s four forms: First, let’s recall some fundamentals about TIMN’s cardinal forms of organization and evolution — those Tribes + Institutions + Markets + Networks I keep harking about:

Remember, each of TIMN’s four forms, writ large, embodies a distinctive set of structures, processes, beliefs, and dynamics about how society should be organized — about who gets to achieve what, why, and how. Each involves different codes and standards about how people should treat each other. Each prioritizes some values and behaviors over others. Each enables people to do something — to address some problem — better than they could by using another form. Each attracts and energizes different kinds of actors (and personalities). Each has different ideational and material bases. Each has both bright and dark sides, strengths and weaknesses. And each can be gotten “right” or “wrong,” depending on people’s motivations and circumstances.

Once a form is subscribed to by many interconnected actors, it becomes more than a mere form. It swells into a realm of thought and behavior — a collective action system — whose rise spells an ideational and structural revolution. Each is thus a generator of order, because each defines a set of interactions that are attractive, powerful, and useful enough to create a distinct realm of activity, or at least its core. Each becomes the basis for a governance system that is self-regulating and, ultimately, self-limiting. Plus, each tends to foster a different kind of worldview, for each orients people differently toward social space, time, and action. What is deemed rational — how a “rational actor” should behave — is different for each form; no single “utility function” suits them all.

While each form becomes associated with high ideals and new capabilities, all four are ethically neutral — as neutral as technologies — in that they can be used for good or ill. The tribal form, which should foster communal solidarity and mutual caring, may also breed a narrow bitter clannishness that can justify anything from nepotism to murder in order to shield and strengthen a clan (or other T-type form) and its leaders. The hierarchical institutional form, which should lead to professional rule and regulation, may also be used to uphold corrupt arbitrary dictators. The market form, which should bring free fair open exchanges, may also be rigged to allow unbridled piracy, speculation, and profiteering. And the network form, which can empower civil-society actors to serve public interests, may also be used to strengthen “uncivil society” — say, by enabling terrorist groups and crime syndicates.

Thus it is not just the bright sides of each form that foster new values and actors; their dark sides may do so as well. As Jane Jacobs (Systems of Survival, 1992, esp. p. 151) observed about what she called the guardian (i.e., +I) and commercial (i.e., +M) syndromes, “monstrous moral hybrids” can take shape if they are mingled improperly.

I worry that elements of the American Right are headed in “monstrous” directions. Maybe in American Left circles as well, but they currently seem too stuck, and too struck, to come with anything effective. Besides, they’re not in power. The Right is, and it seems hell-bent on capturing more power.

• Recap of TIMN’s ideological points: Next, let’s recall some of TIMN’s implications for thinking about political philosophy and ideology:

As I’ve argued before (2009), all political philosophies and ideologies fit somewhere in the TIMN framework. It can be used to analyze — dissect, categorize, evaluate, pass judgement on — most (all?) political philosophies and ideologies across the ages. The shapes that societies have taken (e.g., monarchies, empires, nation-states), and the isms and ocracies that leaders have created (e.g., feudalism, absolutism, nationalism, mercantilism, capitalism, fascism, socialism, liberalism, theocracy, monarchy, aristocracy, democracy) can all be reduced to particular configurations of, approaches to, or variations on the bright and dark sides of TIMN’s four forms. They are the paradigmatic nuclear forms for designing all political ideologies — isms and ocracies are built around and atop them.

TIMN itself is not an ideological framework. It implies precepts — such as respect the limits of each form, keep them in rough balance, etc. — that seem scientifically centrist. But TIMN is not a right- or left-leaning framework, at least not in today’s terms. Extreme ideologies of all sorts, including on the Right and Left, normally exalt one TIMN form above the others; they do not seek balanced combinations and interactions. In that sense, TIMN is an evaluative tool; it can provide guidance for assessing the ways and extents to which a particular ideological orientation is in keeping with what appear to be the dynamics of long-range societal evolution. To be a quadriformist, then, is to take an evolutionary stance toward ideology, but not to become an ideologue of the left, right, center, or something else, like religion.

In sum, the key isms and ocracies scattered across the history of political evolution all amount to expressions of one or more of the TIMN forms. And that will be the case far into the future as well. Quadriform societies will generate new ones. Figure out TIMN and you figure out the past, present, and future of political philosophy and ideology. Meanwhile, to see voices of the American Right revert to exalting a kind of biforism after two centuries of triiformsim looks suspect and questionable to this quadriformista.

• Recap about TIMN’s +M stance: Finally, let’s recall some basic points about the effects and implications of the M/market form, since it seems headed for political distortion and neglect:

As an example of how TIMN illuminates key differences among history’s isms and ocracies, consider mercantilism and capitalism. Mercantilism (not to mention fascism too) reflects efforts by government (+I) to control business (+M) actors. In contrast, capitalism means that the +I and +M realms operate apart, with +M potentially outweighing +I. From a TIMN viewpoint, mercantilism arose centuries ago as a transitional phase in the evolution of biform (T+I) into triform (T+I+M) societies. In contrast, capitalism grew as an achievement of triform systems that idealized free fair open economic exchanges and accepted the rise of political democracy with competitive political parties.

Electoral democracy is not a practice invented out of the blue by pundits and politicians. It’s the result of centuries of systemic interaction and feedback loops within a society whereby +M principles and practices, such as open competition and freedom of choice, spread across the realms of civil society (as a T-based realm) and government (+I) during the 17th-19th centuries.

The pro-democracy revolutions of the 18th-21st centuries — notably, Europe’s “Revolutions of 1848” — involved political demands for individual rights to free speech and suffrage, party representation, popular assembly, and governmental accountability. These democratic challenges to the traditions of top-down hierarchy and absolutist rule have since become mainstays of political philosophy. Yet, from a TIMN perspective, these democratic ideas came as well if not more from economic philosophy. Their vigor derived from and depended on the victory of the market system and the increasing power of its participants, particularly commercial traders, merchants, and other business and property owners representing rising middle classes. It is no wonder that political democracy and free-market economics arose together, or that people speak of legislative and electoral processes as a “political market.

Indeed, of TIMN’s forms, +M values freedom, competition, individuality, and a level playing field more than any of the other forms. No wonder freedom and democracy go hand in hand with the spread of the market form. As Charles Lindblom once wrote:

“However poorly the market is harnessed to democratic purposes, only within market-oriented systems does political democracy arise. Not all market-oriented systems are democratic, but every democratic system is also a market-oriented system. Apparently, for reasons not wholly understood, political democracy has been unable to exist except when coupled with the market. An extraordinary proposition, it has so far held without exception.” (Lindblom, 1977, p.116)

This is why I sometimes say that TIMN is pro-market but not necessarily pro-capitalist; for overweening capitalist practices may turn out to contradict the best of +M.

In sum. the future of the market system, not the future of capitalism or socialism, is the crucial stake — getting +M approximately right is essential for societies to evolve from simpler to more complex, capable designs. +M is also essential for liberal democracy to take hold and endure.

TIMN’s implication is not so much that liberal democracy per se makes a nation stronger; it’s that once a level of complexity is reached, a society cannot turn stronger without turning liberal-democratic to some degree. China, as a newly triform system that today is a consultative dictatorship than a democracy, will eventually become a major test of this proposition.

Looking ahead to Part Two (and maybe Part Three)

TIMN’s four cardinal forms never become obsolete — societies always need them. The forms and their realms may morph over time — for example, in modern times the T form is expressed not as tribes per se but as civil society. Each form’s bright and dark sides, its strengths and weaknesses, and other attributes may also vary over time. Moreover, each form may need new energy sources at times, partly to prevent subordination by forces from another form/realm. But total exhaustion and obsolescence are out of the question for the TIMN forms if a society is to continue existing and progressing properly.

Ideological isms and ocracies, on the other hand, can become exhausted and obsolete. Many rise in a particular historical phase, then are superseded by new isms and ocracies that emerge to attend the next phases. I already see signs that both capitalism and socialism are headed for exhaustion and obsolescence in the decades ahead. That too is why a TIMN perspective argues for centering debates about future evolution around the future of the market form, not the future of capitalism vs. socialism, nor of democracy vs. autocracy.

Indeed, the primary international divide in our times is not (and never has been, except rhetorically) between capitalism and socialism, nor between democracy and autocracy. Those divides exist, but they’re secondary — an ideological sheen. The deep primary divide is between those societies that can effectively add a market (+M) system — like Britain and America during the 19th and 20th centuries — and those that repeatedly prove unable to do so because of ingrained resistance from entrenched pro-T and +I actors and cultures, as in Russia and Cuba. By comparison, China has progressed remarkably by evolving from a biform (T+I) into a more-or-less triform (T+I+M) society in recent decades.

All this has cautionary implications for foreign-policy strategists who have pushed to turn other societies into liberal democracies. But it also has cautionary implications for conceding to forces on the American Right, as well as abroad in Eurasia (mostly meaning Russia), who may aim to constrict and undermine all of +M’s political, economic, social, cultural, religious, and other expressions. This would damage my hopes for +N. Even so, in some future scenarios, the ensuing systemic distortion and disarray might lead ultimately to new opportunities for +N — as I’ll explain more fully some other time.

Final point: Tariffs are a timely topic for this post. As a policy instrument, they’re really not +M. They upset market flows and dynamics for statist reasons, usually having to do with protectionism and nationalism — i.e., for reasons that are more about asserting TIMN’s T and +I forms than +M (though +M may conceivably benefit once tariffs are removed). In the hands of hubris-nemesis leaders, tariffs may also help express tendencies toward cruelty and inequity, which are dark aspects of T and +I forms of governance.

Coda: Nightcap Music #3: This post’s topic makes me feel mournful, even funereal. What better way to express this than having Cuco Sanchez sing “Weep, Guitars Weep.” Cuco Sanchez — the early Cuco known as La Voz de Mexico (“The Voice of Mexico”), before he became an off-tune alcoholic — is my favorite of Mexico greatest singers. Mexican music is full of mournful tormented songs, and he wrote and sang some of the best. They all go well with a whiskey nightcap, but this one goes best with this post.

Guitarras, Lloren Guitarras
(lyrics — approximate tran)

Guitars, weep guitars.
Violins, weep the same.
Don't let me go away
with your singing gone silent.

Let's shout with open chest
a song that trembles a world
that’s (like) a great harbor
where some arrive and others go away.

Now it's my turn to leave you all;
now it's my turn to march on.

Guitars, weep guitars,
so that staying there full of love,
attached to each (guitar) string,
(is) my heart weeping oceans.

Weep, guitars weep.

In 1962, finishing up my junior year of college in Mexico City and preparing to return home to Claremont, I wanted to take some records of Mexican music back with me. But I really didn't know exactly what to buy. So I walked into a record store I'd often walked past, told the amiable señorita in charge what I was wanted, and asked for recommendations. She picked four records by artists I didn’t know, and I went into a little old glass booth with a turntable — remember those? — to listen. They were all great, wonderfully great. I bought all four, to her surprise. This song is from one of them. I remember and thank her to this day, eternally.

Adelante / Onward.