Dialogue with a “Realist”
1,000 words
The following dialogue is based on a conversation I had recently with a self-described political “realist.”
The Realist: I’m sick of ideological debates. We don’t need the perfect ideology. We just need power.
GJ: I don’t have any interest in political ideas that don’t lead to power. I am interested in political ideologies because that’s how we get power. Even if you think you are going to get a hundred guys in rubber rafts and seize control of a tiny island in the Caribbean, you’re going to have to be on the same page with them about what you are doing and why.
The Realist: Not if they are mercenaries. Mercenaries work for money.
GJ: Even the idea that men will do anything and everything for money is an ideology, of course. That particular value system only became dominant in modernity.
If the men in your boats are selling their services to the highest bidder, is it your plan to be the highest bidder? Is that “realistic”?
The Realist: Of course not.
GJ: So are you counting on something besides money to bind the men to you? If so, what is it?
The Realist: Friendship? Honor?
GJ: You can’t even make a band of mercenaries function on purely mercenary grounds. You can’t be the master of men whose only loyalty is to money. Even a band of thieves need honor among them to work together.
What is honor in this situation? At the very least, it is the willingness to work together past the point when a purely self-interested man would quit. At this point, we arrive at the sort of “idealist” motives that you think are politically meaningless.
The Realist: But honor isn’t an ideology.
GJ: It is certainly an idealistic motivation, as opposed to the mercenary realism you were advocating. And yes, an ethics of honor is an ideology. Of course, the mercenary realism you count on is actually an ideology as well. You can formulate both of them in terms of principles and subject them to criticism, even though this isn’t how people actually learn an ethic.
The Realist: You can’t talk your way into power.
GJ: Actually, no, talking is the only way we will get into power. Even if you think you can seize power by force, the men who seize power alongside you must be bound together by more than force or money. They must be bound by honor. But beyond that, they must have some sort of shared goal, a vision of what they are after. That means a shared ideology. How do men come to share an ideology? They are talked into it. So even with a violent seizure of power, ideas must come first.
The Realist: But Greg, be realistic. Our enemies have all the cards. All the money. All the power. Most people are on their side.
GJ: Yes, that’s correct. But that’s not why you are despondent, is it?
The Realist: Then why?
GJ: You are despondent because you don’t think we can wrest their money and power away from them.
The Realist: Well, it takes money to make money. It takes power to check power.
GJ: And that’s why you are despondent. Because if that is true, then we really are in trouble, because you basically think that you can only beat power if you already have it. And since we don’t already have power, we can’t get it. If only power can beget power, then it is a circuit, a circle, and there’s no way to jump into the circle. You have defined the political problem in such a way that you can only lose. So of course you feel despondent.
But you are trapped by your materialist premises, which are ideas, by the way. You have thought yourself into thinking that thinking is impotent. Let’s see if we can think your way out of this trap.
My question to you is: “What dictates how our rulers use their money and power?”
The Realist: Their interests, obviously.
GJ: What interests?
The Realist: They want more money and more power.
GJ: That’s what Thomas Hobbes would say. But money and power are means. You are treating them as ends in themselves. Do you only want money and power as ends in themselves? Or do you want to do something with them?
Because if you only want money and power as ends in themselves, you have joined the wrong crowd. You should go to work for the establishment. You should be like Richard Spencer or Patrick Casey or Matt Forney. You should suck up to the powers that be, in the silly hope that they’ll find you useful.
The Realist: But the powers that be are evil. They’re wrong.
GJ: So you think that truth and morality are more important than money and power?
The Realist: I guess so.
GJ: Would you extend the same courtesy to our enemies? Do they think that matters of truth and morality are more important to them than money and power, meaning that they spend their money and power to do what they think is true and good?
The Realist: Maybe.
GJ: And if they shared your views of the true and the good, would their money and power be problems?
The Realist: Obviously not.
GJ: Then our struggle isn’t against mere flesh and blood. It isn’t against mere money and power. It is against the principles, and the implications of the principles, that hold sway over our world. What defeats bad ideas?
The Realist: Better ideas, obviously.
GJ: Do we have better ideas?
The Realist: Yes, obviously.
GJ: Then we have the means to beat them. We have the means to talk our way into power.
The Realist: We aren’t going to be able to persuade everyone.
GJ: Obviously not. But we don’t need to. We just need to persuade enough people, the right people, the people who matter. Then the rest will come along through conformity, cooption, or compulsion. But in the beginning is the word.
Heavy
I can’t figure out whether you are making fun of Plato or not