I am dealing with a large corporation that has applied a zero defect manufacturing mentality to the construction process. Although this would seem to make sense in principle, the reality is that machines can’t be stupid, but humans can and often are. If you are tired and hot, you sometimes get sloppy. This does not mean you don’t know what you ought to be doing–most of this is common sense–but that you momentarily forget. Then an accident happens.
This got me to thinking, though, about the difference in mindset between the farmer and the industrialist. Not all seeds sprout. Not very year sees enough rain, or enough sunshine. There is a great deal that you can’t control directly, making it foolish to even contemplate a zero defect strategy. Instead, you develop emotional tenacity, and quite often a strong religious faith. Prayers for the success of crops–or livestock–were very important in almost all known religions, and may well have played a role in the development of formal religious traditions.
The image of the manufacturer, though, is one of an endless series of perfectly conjoined wheels, all operating with perfect precision.
When we say that talents blossom, or speak of something flowering, we are acknowledging that living systems move, and that they have stages. You have the planting in the Spring, the growth in the summer, the harvesting in the Fall, and the surviving in the winter. “To everything there is a season.” (Ecclesiastes, by the way, is my favorite book of the Bible).
There are no seasons in manufacturing. There are production schedules, that can be rationally planned out far in advance, in theory for decades, although of course market demands cannot be mapped out that far, so cycles are likely closer to the year interval or so.
I think this basic metaphor, though, can accurately be mapped on to the difference between true Liberalism, and Leftism, or what I have at times called “gradualism” and “catastrophism”.
One can readily admit that a given social order warrants improvement, without thereby granting that the solution can be planned and imposed.
Leftism is nothing other than the idea that the ideas and methods of manufacturing can be applied to social “engineering”. The use of that word makes this abundantly obvious. The man who began the massive government interference in the economy that has characterized the last 80 years or so of anti-Liberal politics–Herbert Hoover–was nicknamed either “The Great engineer”, or perhaps just the “engineer”.
What is the word we see continually applied by Central Planners of the Nationalistic Fascist and Internationalistic Fascist sort? Rationalization. They assume that human systems can be made to operate like mechanical systems. They even apply manufacturing methods to their repressions. The Nazis developed the poison gas suggested by George Bernard Shaw to efficiently kill their opponents. The Soviets–being Russians–were much less efficient, but no less dedicated to the basic idea. They separated out “ingredients”–dissidents–who did not fit into the slots alloted them in the great machine they were trying to build. They put them in massive camps.
But people are like seeds. They have seasons. They alter as they grow. True, deep rooted social change comes about gradually. The attempt, for example, to impose “equality” on black people has been enormously counter-productive. They tried to erase hundreds of years of tradition overnight. They tried to give money to people to make amends for past wrongs, rather than simply allow them to continue incorporating themselves into the community on their own. The “War On Poverty” not only failed, but it made things much, much worse.
It failed because it used a manufacturing metaphor. As I have said before, Leftism is nothing but the application of the metaphor of the Procrustrean Bed to actual living societies. If you don’t fit, you will be made to fit.
True Liberalism is the antithesis of this, in that we all build our own beds. This is the way of kindness, decency, and moral sustainability.