Sniffing Out Pseudo-Science: Including Among Fellow Leftists
Posted by Mike E on October 3, 2010
“…a good authority supports a position because that position has been shown to be otherwise justified or evidenced, not the other way around. If you say that scientists support Theory X, are those scientists claiming that Theory X is true because they believe it? No, good scientists attach no significance at all to their own authority. Theory X needs to stand on its own; an appeal to authority does not provide any useful support.”
Last week, I was reading a piece of leftist pseudoscience — rolling my eyes as I ground painfully through a long, windy document that simply didn’t connect with reality. It made grandious claims it didn’t back up. I won’t name names, — the particular document or author is not the issue. This would apply to many documents unfortunately.
But reading it, I thought to myself: there is a real need for a “bullshit detector” that calls out the gimmicks and techniques of pseudo-science — whenever false logic is used to proclaim intelligent design, holocaust denial, 9/11 conspiracy “proofs,” or even more communist versions of fake analysis.
Then yesterday, over dinner, R. showed me the following essay. It is a resource used in a graduate course on teaching critical thinking.
I’m hoping this will be raise the antennae on all of us. Certainly the document I was reading crudely displayed at least six or seven of the logical errors listed — and deployed them over and over at the core of its argument.
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An examination of many of the most common logical fallacies
If you’ve ever had a conversation with anyone about their supernatural or pseudoscientific beliefs, you’ve almost certainly been slapped in the face with a logical fallacy or two. Non-scientific belief systems cannot be defended or supported by the scientific method, by definition, and so their advocates turn elsewhere for their support. In this episode, we’re going to examine a whole bunch of the most common logical fallacies that you hear in reference to various pseudosciences. When you hear one that you recognize, be sure to wave and say hello.
Let’s begin with:
1) The Straw Man Argument
We’re starting with this one because it’s the most common and also one of the easiest to spot. This is where you state your position, and your opponent replies not to what you said, but to an exaggerated and distorted caricature of what you said that’s obviously harder to defend.
Starling says: “People who commit minor offenses should be let out of jail sooner.”
Bombo replies: “Emptying out all the jails would create havoc in society.”
Well, maybe Bombo’s right, but that’s not relevant, because “emptying the jails” is not what Starling advocated. In fact Bombo did not refute Starling’s point at all — he invented a different point that was easier to argue against. He created a straw man — one of those dummies stuffed with straw that soldiers use for bayonet practice. It’s too weak to fight back. And Bombo can then take satisfaction in having made a point that no reasonable person would argue with, and he appears to have successfully defeated Starling’s argument, when in fact he dodged it.
2) Ad Hominem
From the Latin for “to the person”, an ad hominem is an attack against the arguer rather than the argument. This doesn’t mean that you simply call the person a jerk; rather, it means that you use some weakness or characteristic of the arguer to imply a weakness of the argument.
Starling: “I think Volvos are fine automobiles.”
Bombo: “Of course you’d say that; you’re from Sweden.”
Starling’s Swedish heritage has nothing to do with the quality of Volvo automobiles, so Bombo’s is an attempt to change the subject and is an avoidance of the issue at hand. Bombo is trying to imply that Starling’s Swedish heritage biases, and thus invalidates, his statement. In fact, one thing has nothing to do with the other. Ad hominem arguments try to point out fault with the arguer, instead of with the argument.
3) Appeal to Authority
This type of argument refers to a special authoritative source as validation for the claim being made. Every time you see an advertisement featuring someone wearing a white lab coat, or telling you what 4 out of 5 dentists surveyed said, you’re seeing an appeal to authority.
“Acupuncture is valid because it’s based on centuries-old Chinese knowledge.”
“This article in a peer-reviewed scientific journal says that people are getting fatter.”
“A growing number of scientists say that evolution is too improbable.”
“Wired Magazine says that Skeptoid is an awesome podcast.”
An appeal to authority is the opposite of an ad hominem attack, because here we are referring to some positive characteristic of the source, such as its perceived authority, as support for the argument. But a good authority supports a position because that position has been shown to be otherwise justified or evidenced, not the other way around. If you say that scientists support Theory X, are those scientists claiming that Theory X is true because they believe it? No, good scientists attach no significance at all to their own authority. Theory X needs to stand on its own; an appeal to authority does not provide any useful support.
4) Special Pleading
An argument by special pleading states that the justification for some claim is on a higher level of knowledge than your opponent can comprehend, and thus he is not qualified to argue against it. The most common case of special pleading refers to God’s will, stating that we are not qualified to understand his reasons for doing whatever he does. Special pleadings grant a sort of get-out-of-jail-free exemption to whatever higher power lies behind a claim:
Starling: “Homeopathy should be tested with clinical trials.”
Bombo: “Clinical trials are not adequate to test the true nature of homeopathy.”
No matter what Starling says, Bombo can claim that there is knowledge outside of Starling’s experience or at a level that Starling cannot comprehend, and the argument is therefore ended. Bombo might also point out that Starling lacks some professional qualification to discuss the topic, thus placing the topic out of Starling’s reach.
Bombo: “You’re not a trained homeopath, so you shouldn’t be expected to understand it.”
A special pleading makes no attempt to address the opponent’s point; it is just another diversionary tactic.
5) Anecdotal Evidence
One of the most common ways to support just about any non-evidence based phenomenon is through the fallacious misuse of anecdotal evidence. Anecdotal evidence is information that cannot be tested scientifically. In practice this usually refers to personal testimonials and verbal reports. Anecdotal evidence often sounds compelling because it can be more personal and captivating than cold, uninteresting factual evidence.
Anecdotal evidence is not completely useless. You could say “We saw the Bigfoot corpse at such a location”, and if that information helps with the recovery of an actual body, then the anecdotal evidence was of tremendous value. But, note that it’s the Bigfoot corpse itself that comprises scientific evidence, not the story of where it was seen.
“I know for a fact that ghosts exist. My friend, who is a very reliable person, has seen ghosts on many occasions.”
Anecdotal evidence is great for suggesting new directions in research, but by itself it is not evidence. When it is presented as evidence or in place of evidence, you have very good reason to be skeptical.
6) Observational Selection
Observational selection is the process of keeping the sample of data that agrees with your premise, and ignoring the sample of data that does not. Observational selection is the fallacy behind such phenomena as the Bible Code, psychic readings, the Global Consciousness Project, and faith healing. Observational selection is also a tool used by pollsters to produce desired survey results, by surveying only people who are predisposed to answer the poll the way the pollster wants.
Bombo: “The face of Satan is clearly visible in the smoke billowing from the World Trade Center.”
Starling: “And in one of the other 950,000 frames of film, the smoke looks like J. Edgar Hoover; in another, it looks like a Windows XP icon; and in another it looks like a map of Paris.”
Remember that one out of every million samples of anything is an incredible one-in-a-million rarity. This is a mere inevitability, but if observational selection compels you to ignore the other 999,999 samples, you’re very easily impressed.
7) Appeal to Ignorance
Argumentum ad ignorantiam considers ignorance of something to be evidence that it does not exist.
If I do not understand the mechanism of the Big Bang, that proves that there is no knowledge that supports it as a possibility and it therefore did not happen. Anything that is insufficiently explained or insufficiently understood is thus impossible.
Starling: “It is amazing that life arose through the fortuitous formation of amino acids in the primordial goo.”
Bombo: “A little too amazing. I can’t imagine how such a thing could happen; creationism is the only possibility.”
Using the absence of evidence as evidence of absence is a common appeal to ignorance. People who believe the Phoenix Lights could not have been simple flares generally don’t understand, or won’t listen to, the thorough evidence of that. Their glib layman’s understanding of what a flare might look like is inconsistent with their interpretation of the photographs, so they use an appeal to ignorance as proof that flares were not the cause.
8) Non-Sequitur
From the Latin for “It does not follow”, a non-sequitur is an obvious and stupid attempt to justify one claim using an irrelevant premise. Non-sequiturs work by starting with a reasonable sounding premise that it’s hoped you will agree with, and attaching it (like a rider to a bill in Congress) to a conclusion that has nothing to do with it. The sentence is phrased in such a way to make it sound like you have to accept both or neither:
“Corporations are evil, thus acupuncture is good.”
“The government is evil, thus UFOs are alien spacecraft.”
“Allah is great, thus all Christians should be killed.”
When we do science, it takes more than simply connecting two phrases with the word “thus” to draw a valid relationship. Thus, non-sequiturs are not valid devices to prove a point scientifically.
9) Post Hoc
The idea that some event must have been caused by a given earlier event, simply because it happened later, is post hoc ergo propter hoc — “It happened later so it was caused by”. The assumption of cause and effect is the type of pattern that our brains are hardwired to find, and so we find them everywhere. He took a homeopathic remedy, and his cancer was cured — one happened after the other, and so the faulty assumption is that the homeopathy caused the remission.
Starling: “I bought this car from you, and the heater is broken.”
Bombo: “It worked before you bought it, so you must have broken it yourself.”
Bombo sees that the breakage happened after Starling made the purchase, so he assumes that one caused the other. In fact there are no grounds for such a correlation. Combined with observational selection, faulty post hoc assumptions account almost entirely for the proliferation of alternative therapies and widespread belief in psychic powers.
10) Confusion of Correlation and Causation
Closely related to post hoc, but a little bit different, is the confusion of correlation and causation. Post hoc assumptions do not necessarily include any correlation between the two observations. When there is a correlation, but still no valid causation, we have a more convincing confusion.
Starling: “Chinese people eat a lot of rice.”
Bombo: “Therefore the consumption of rice must cause black hair.”
Due to the nature of Chinese agriculture, there is indeed a worldwide correlation between rice consumption and hair color. This is a perfect example of how causation can be invalidly inferred from a simple correlation.
11) Slippery Slope
A slippery slope argument presumes that some change will inevitably result in extreme exaggerated consequences. If I give you a cookie now, you’ll expect a cookie every five minutes, so I shouldn’t give you a cookie.
Starling: “It should be illegal to sell alternative therapies that don’t work.”
Bombo: “If that happened, any minority group could make it illegal to sell anything they don’t happen to like.”
No matter what Starling suggests, multiplying it by ten or a hundred is probably a poor proposition. Bombo can use a slippery slope argument to exaggerate any suggestion Starling makes into a recipe for disaster. The slippery slope is probably the most common subset of the larger fallacy, argument from adverse consequences, which is the practice of inventing almost any dire consequences to your opponent’s argument:
Starling: “They should remove ‘Under God’ from the Pledge of Allegiance.”
Bombo: “If that happened, all hell would break loose. Students would have sex in the hallways, school shootings would skyrocket, and we would become a nation of Satan worshippers.”
12) Excluded Middle
The excluded middle assumes that only one of two ridiculous extremes is possible, when in fact a much more moderate middle-of-the-road result is more likely and desirable.
An example of an excluded middle would be an argument that either every possible creation story should be taught in schools, or none of them. These two possibilities sound frightening, and may persuade people to choose the lesser of two evils and allow religious creation stories to be taught alongside science. In fact, the much more reasonable excluded middle, which is to teach science in science classes and religion in religion classes, is not offered. The excluded middle is formally called reductio ad absurdum, reduction to the absurd. Bertrand Russell famously illustrated how an absurd premise can be fallaciously used to support an argument:
Starling says: “Given that 1 = 0, prove that you are the Pope.”
Bombo replies: “Add 1 to both sides of the equation: then we have 2 = 1. The set containing just me and the Pope has 2 members. But 2 = 1, so it has only 1 member; therefore, I am the Pope.”
Just keep in mind that if your opponent is presuming extremes that are absurd, he is excluding the less absurd middle. Don’t fall for it.
13) Statistics of Small Numbers
You really have to take a statistics class to understand statistics, and I think the part that would surprise most people is the stuff about sample sizes. Given a population of a certain size, how many people do you have to survey before your results are meaningful? I took half of a statistics class once and learned just enough to realize that practically every online poll you see on the web, or survey you hear on the news or read about in the newspaper, is mathematically worthless. But it extends much deeper than surveys. Drawing conclusions from data sets that are too small to be meaningful is common in pseudoscience. Listen to Bombo make a couple of bad conclusions from invalid sample sizes:
“I just threw double sixes. These dice are hot.”
“My neighbor’s a Mormon and he drinks wine, so I guess most Mormons don’t really follow the no-alcohol tradition.”
“I went to a chiropractor and I feel better, so chiropractic does work after all.”
14) Weasel Words
Giving a controversial concept like creationism a new, more palatable name like Intelligent Design is what’s called the use of weasel words.
Calling 9/11 conspiracies “9/11 Truth” is a weasel word; clearly their movement has nothing to do with truth, yet they give it a name that claims that’s what it’s all about. Weasel words are a favorite of politicians. Witness the names of government programs that mean essentially the opposite of what they’re named: the Patriot Act, No Child Left Behind, Affirmative Action. By the way certain programs are named, it sounds like it would virtually be criminal to disagree with them. Weasel words can also refer to sneaky wording in a sentence, like “It has been determined”, or “It is obvious that”, suggesting that some claim has support without actually indicating anything about the nature of such support.
15) Fallacy of the Consequent
Drawing invalid subset relationships in the wrong direction is called the fallacy of the consequent. Cancers are all considered diseases, but not all diseases are cancers. Stating that if you have a disease it must be cancer is a fallacy of the consequent. Listen to how Bombo blames Starling’s failure to heal upon his failure to take one particular treatment, without regard for whether that treatment is a valid one for Starling’s particular condition:
Starling: “I am dying of bubonic plague.”
Bombo: “You did not drink enough wheatgrass juice.”
Even assuming that wheatgrass juice was a suitable treatment for anything, it would still not be a suitable treatment for everything, so Bombo’s suggestion that Starling’s illness is a fallacious consequence for his failure to drink wheatgrass juice.
16) Loaded Question
A loaded question is also known as the fallacy of multiple questions rolled into one, or plurium interrogationum. If I want to force you to answer one question in a certain way, I can roll that question up with another that offers you two choices, both of which require my desired answer to the first question. For example:
“Is this the first time you’ve killed anyone?”
“Have you always doubted the truth of the Bible?”
“Is it nice to never have to hassle with taking a shower?”
Any answer given forces you to give me the answer I was looking for: That you have killed someone, that you doubt the truth of the Bible, or that you don’t shower or bathe. Loaded questions should not be tolerated and certainly should never be answered.
16) Red Herring
A red herring is a diversion inserted into an argument to distract attention away from the real point. Supposedly, dragging a smelly herring across the track of a hunted fox would save him from the dogs by diverting their attention away from the real quarry. Red herrings are a favorite device of those who argue conspiracy theories:
Starling: “Man landed on the moon in 1969.”
Bombo: “But don’t you think it’s strange that Werner von Braun went rock hunting in Antarctica only a few years before?”
Starling: “9/11 was perpetrated by Islamic terrorists.”
Bombo: “But don’t you think it’s strange that Dick Cheney had business contacts in the middle east?”
Red herrings are fallacious because they do not address the point under discussion, they merely distract from it; but in doing so, they give the impression that the true cause lies elsewhere. The wrongful use of red herrings as a substitute for evidence is rampant, absolutely rampant, in conspiracy theory arguments.
17) Proof by Verbosity
The practice of burying you with so much information and misinformation that you cannot possibly respond to it all is called proof by verbosity, or argumentum verbosium. To win a debate, I need not have any support for my position if I can simply throw so many things at you that you can’t respond to all of them. This is the favorite device of conspiracy theorists. The sheer volume of random tidbits that they throw out there gives the impression of their position having been thoroughly researched and well supported by many pillars of evidence. Any given tidbit is probably a red herring, but since there are so many of them, it would be hopeless (and fruitless) to respond intelligently to each and every one of them. Thus the argument appears to be impregnable and bulletproof. It may not be possible to construct a cogent argument using proof by verbosity, but it is very easy to construct an irrefutable argument.
18) Poisoning the Well
When you preface your comments by casually slipping in a derogatory adjective about your opponent or his position, you’re doing what’s called poisoning the well. A familiar example is the way Intelligent Design advocates poison the well by referring to evolution as Darwinism, as if it’s about devotion to one particular researcher. Or:
“And now, let’s hear the same old arguments about why we should believe UFOs come from outer space.”
“Celebrity television psychic Sylvia Browne tells us in her new book.”
If you listen to this podcast, you know that I poison the well all the time. It’s one of my favorite devices. But I do it obviously, for the entertainment value, and not as a serious attempt at argument.
19) Bandwagon Fallacy
Also known as argumentum ad populum (appeal to the masses) or argument by consensus, the bandwagon fallacy states that if everyone else is doing it, so should you. If most people believe something or act a certain way, it must be correct.
“Everyone knows that O.J. Simpson was guilty; so he should be in jail.”
“Over 700 scientists have signed Dissent from Darwin, so you should reconsider your belief in evolution.” The bandwagon fallacy can also be used in reverse: If very few people believe something, then it can’t be true.
Starling: “Firefly was a really cool show.”
Bombo: “Are you kidding? Almost nobody watched it.”
Consider how many supernatural beliefs are firmly held by a majority of the world’s population, and the lameness of the bandwagon fallacy comes into pretty sharp focus. The majority might sometimes be right, but they’re hardly reliable.
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That concludes our look at logical fallacies. There are certainly many others, but these are the big ones and then some, and most of the others are just subcategories of some of these. Learn these fallacies, and become handy with them. You’ll find that you can easily recognize them in almost every argument someone makes, and then you’re well equipped to stop them in their tracks, and require them to instead make a non-fallacious argument. Doing so strips away the bulk of the meat from the arguments of most people who advocate things that aren’t evidence-based, and places you handily in a commanding position.
carldavidson said
Very good. I taught these in my ‘Introduction to Logic’ class at the University of Nebraska in 1966. For a final paper, I had the students pick an essay of any sort that they were favorable toward, then go through it, applying these rules and methods of critical thinking. It got some of them outside of their more traditional boxes.
Karl Marx said
A while back, I was playing with an expanded version on Revleft…
http://www.revleft.com/vb/debate-and-common-t129704/index.html?p=1692345
dave x said
While this is an excellent list that everyone should know and be familiar with as a basis for logical argumentation, I want to point out that in reality things are a little more complex. That is this list has a bit of an implied Cartesian solipsistic bias. We are not all trying to argue our way from first principles, knowledge of the world is a fundamentally collective project and science is certainly a collective project. This means that things like ‘ad hominem’ and ‘argument from authority’ can actually be valid arguments depending on context. It In bourgeois science it -means something- if it has been published in a peer reviewed journal (argument from authority) and -it means something- if someone does or does not have appropriate specialist qualifications (ad hominem). They are not considered fallacies but are in fact highly relevant.
Eddy Laing said
Your example of ‘appeal to authority’ sounds like a defense of agnosticism instead. If in fact four out of five experiments find the same result, then why would you not conclude that the result is valid? Or, more to the point, why would you argue that that one should not conclude that the result is valid — which seems to be the point you are in fact arguing in this essay.
Not only is validity produced by the iterative and collaborative process of review, but that is in fact the point of publication, hence its ‘authority.’
EnCee said
Reminds me to step up my game. I have actually been trying to follow most of these rules in engaging with certain issues, but I find myself coming back to some gnawing questions about the nature of truth and knowledge. Maybe it is a symptom of my relative poverty in terms of philosophical readings, but that has been somewhat more disturbing in terms of my reliance on dialectical materialism. I think maybe things are not as simple as I thought, despite how convoluted my thoughts may have been or at least may have been accused of, but I digress. Anyway, thanks for the article.
Mike E said
I don’t think the essay is asserting that ALL appeal to authority is false. It is saying that ‘appeals to authority” can be used as part of the logical fallacies of pseudo science.
There are many circumstances where “appeal to authority” is valid and justified. (“The theater commander says that now is the time for your unit to move.”) Not all situations call for independent investigation of assertions. And human organizations need structures of authority. (In other words, this is not a criticism of authority per se, or of the appeal to authority per se, this essay simply reveals that appeals to authority can be used to promote a logical fallacy.)
similarly there are cases where ad hominem examinatin is necessary and appropriate:
Ifs, a speaker is asserting evidence or events that have no independent corroboration, and in those cases the credibility of that speaker can become an issue — and the validity of their idea rests not on mutually-available evidence, but on their assertion of special evidence (“Believe it or not, I personally saw XXX do YYY in ZZZ, so your assertion of GGG can’t possibly be valid.”)
(The RCP fumed that Mike Ely was claiming to have information on changes in what the RCP believed — and, in fact, I did.)
But if we are seeking to be more conscious of critical and materialist thinking, then in our investigations of ideas and events we really should recognize both ad hominem attacks and appeals to authority as methods often designed to dampen critical evaluation, and push a collective uncritically toward an idea.
Consider the state of the left:
We just had an election exchange where some people pointed out that Lenin didn’t generally support the Cadets in Duma elections, and argued that revealed a principle by which we should not support Democrats.
It was an appeal to authority, in this case a false and illogical one, because the argument rested on a linear sense of Lenin’s applicability to our actions.
In other words, rather than discussing the pros and cons of supporting Democrats (which can be discussed richly in its own right), some choose to switch the terrain to discussing the pros and cons of early Bolshevik practices and an assertion of their authority over our actions.
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There are circumstances where the character of a person become an issue in a debate — but rarely in our cases. Ad hominem arguing is a huge problem (over and over) and it is tied to authoritarian thinking.
Some people seek to find the correct idea by seeking out the authority figure they trust and then believing what that authority figure says. They don’t investigate the ideas (in depth), but only investigate the person who they are going to trust. I have watched christian fundamentalists up close who have an extreme form of this (since they don’t advocate critical or rational analysis, have a very conservative respect for those with official status and often believe in divine revelations).
But among communists too, I have seen a lot of “believing whatever the respected leadership tells you” and I have seen “whateverism” promoted. And (ironically) if someone speak up (in a contrarian way) in that kind of an environment, the response is not to question their thesis rationally, but to question their right to speak (i.e. degrade any claim they might have to authority).
The ad hominem attacks (attacking the speaker, not the idea) arise where “appeals to authority” have played a huge role in the acceptance of ideas (and where critical thinking and detailed independent evaluation of ideas have been discouraged.)
When we were writing the 9 Letters and circulating them for criticism — some people specifically argued that they did not contain enough personal “dirt” on Avakian — and that there should be a great deal more exposure of him personally. (For example, some suggested we discuss his mental state.) We rejected that advice, and made the polemic about line (about the direction and policy and outlook that will lead to radical change), not about personal details (psychology, personal accomplishments or non-accomplishments, anecdotes about personal behavior etc.)
Then, on the contary, the main response of the RCP to my 2007 criticisms of Avakian’s New Synthesis, was a very stark example of adhominem offensive — they did not want to even acknowledge the criticisms we made, or explore them seriously. And so they responded to the 9 Letters to Our Comrades with a whisper campaign of accusations against me personally (that i was dishonest, that i had secret intentions to capitulate, that i had not followed procedures inside the RCP, that I was politically “parasitic,” etc.) They organized “shunning” of anyone leaving their ranks — as if this political organization were a small rural sect.
And that method of ad hominem response, in itself, was evidence of the degree to which the RCP has shifted from critical and materialist thinking to a rather enclosed form of “whateverism” — because when our polemic undermined their rigidly practiced “appeal to authority” (of their Chairman) they were no longer structurally respond by considering the content of our criticism, but had to respond by declaring that we had no authority and so were not to be believed. This is literally the mindset of small fundamentalist groups who missed the scientific afterglow from the Enlightenment.
Even here on Kasama, It has been an ongoing struggle within our debates, to make the discussion over the various lines and ideas. There are sections of leftist people (a minority but real nonetheless) who explicitly think that the issue in any dispute is the motives and class character of the speaker — and so any idea they don’t like leads to an attempt to run down the flaws and history of the speaker (whether those flaws are real or not). An example is the recent injection by Tom Brass,
PatrickSMcNally said
> In bourgeois science it -means something- if it has been published in a peer reviewed journal (argument from authority) and -it means something- if someone does or does not have appropriate specialist qualifications (ad hominem).
One should more clearly distinguish the “hard” sciences from “soft” fields in such a comment. If someone claims that Fermat’s Last Theorem or the Poincare Conjecture has been “proven” or that all finite simple groups have been classified then there is no way for the non-specialist to test this. It would require a lifetime of highly specialized study for someone to build up the expertise where they could evaluate such claims. So we learn to trust the experts on things like this.
When one moves away from hard science (e.g. mathematics, physics, engineering, chemistry) and over to soft fields such as social sciences, history, economics, then the wall dividing the specialist from the non-specialist is not so impenetrable. There is still a difference there, and people should be aware that sometimes the avowed expert who reaches an opinion which you don’t like may simply have consulted more documentation than you have when reaching that opinion. But at the same time one should be aware that these types of “soft” sociology fields are subject to ideological influences which do not have much direct influence on a branch of science like mathematics. That can easily result in academics presenting claims which are at a grade-school level.
I think a classic example of that is the way that R. J. Rummel has made a reputation for himself with claiming things like that allegedly “61 million” people were murdered by the Soviet state, most of them under Stalin. If you actually try taking a look at the source-base which Rummel claims to be citing you find that he references Robert Conquest very readily, but none of the works which have been done off of the archives since 1991 by Archibald Getty, Mark Tauger, and others.
Although NKVD records show many brutal, arbitrary executions having taken place, the documentable numbers are in the hundreds of thousands, not tens of millions. A similar point would apply to documentable deaths taking place in the Gulag. The general demographic data support the picture of a broad general decline in mortality rates from pre-WWI Czarist Russia down to the late 1950s, with stagnation setting in during the 1960s at around the same time the Liberman reforms were introduced. Not the picture we would expect to see in an environment where 61 million people were dying abnormally on top of some expected “normal” rate of death.
That’s an important difference between political and social sciences versus mathematical and physical sciences. One can be more willing to accept some degree of authority from the latter than the former.
Mike E said
great example of the logical fallacy using appeal to authority:
At the same time, I don’t fully agree (with Patrick) with this kind of distinction between hard and soft science (which is so often made in a positivist view of science). Nor to I think appeals to authority are somehow more justified in hard science than in (say) history.
And even in matters of hard sciences (say debate over evolution) “appeal to authority” can be an attempt at a logical fallacy.
For examples, many creationist document i’ve read tried to “appeal to authority” by listing the academic credentials of its author (which are often inflated for obvious reasons).
This kind of argument by authority is very effective among fundamentalists, but less so among the scientifically inclined.
(Someone told me the funny story that Einstein was informed that a hundred Nazi scientists had denounced his theories as wrong. He reportedly replied, “If they were right, one of them would have sufficed.”)
Again:
The argument above is not that these techniques are always and inherently wrong. (I.e. that the mention of authority is inherently misleading).
It is a list of techniques commonly used to make logical fallacies (often within arguments that are insupportable pseudo-science.)
And again, in our revolutionary theoretical discussions, there is an unfortunate legacy of dogmatism, where quotes from a few classic works are treated as inherently proven and unchallengable truths, and where whole constructs of policy and analysis are built upon such quotes. That kind of “appeal to authority” has not served us well (even if in other contexts there is nothing wrong with mentioning that respected and careful researchers have come to a specific conclusion.)
Mike E said
I’m really tempted to list all the logical fallacies above, and give examples of how they have been used “on the left.” Not because I want to “give lumps” yet again to favorite whipping-boys, but because we need (as a movement, as a collectivity) to raise our common ability to detect bullshit when it is promoted (including by ourselves).
I have to say that a great deal of nonsense has been circulated (in my experience) in the name of Marxist “science” — that was not particularly Marxist or scientific.
In some ways the label of “science” was used as an “appeal to authority.” And I also believe that the theoretical level of many communist cadre, and their critical faculties were kept (actually kept) low, so that appeals to party authority would be more effective. This coincided with a drumbeat of lip service to “critical thinking,” and “lively debate” etc. — but in reality, at the end of the day, critical thinking and lively debate were forbidden and (in fact) punished. (One lively debate, for example, over “why did the RCP hold such an awful position on homosexuality for so long” — was quickly labeled an anti-party “vituperativeness” and everyone accused of participation was targeted (and even mere bystanders were targeted). And the reason for that harsh reaction was obvious: The RCP was involved in a great enterprise of greatly escalating the “authority” of Avakian, and lively debate over “how did the anti-gay line survive so long?” was seen (by him, if not always by those raising the question) as an attack on Avakian and the cult of his authority.
Again: there are a lot of habits (and hardly just among veterans of the RCP experience!) of shoddy analysis, mythological history, cheap polemics, personal attacks, snarky partisan sectarianism, etc. that are embedded in the inherited culture of the revolutionary left. And I think we should take it as a conscious effort to excavate it and create something different in its place.
Adopting the methods of modern science is not possible in revolutionary politics (if we were to be mechanical about it, and seek to demand reproducible experiements, peer review, etc.) But there is much we can learn and appropriate from real-existing science, and much that such a comparison reveals about the weakness of current revolutionary political culture (and its pretenses of science).
I think it is possible to have scientific analysis of objective social conditions (i.e. I don’t agree to the positivist disparagement of “soft” social sciences). But I think that it has been rather rare in some corners.
tellnolies said
First, I think it would be be a real service to give examples of each of theses fallacies from the left and encourage Mike to do so.
Second, the question of authority is really much more complicated than this discussion suggests. Gramsci has what I think is a fascinating discussion of how people generally deal with encountering arguments that they can’t personally refute, which actually happens all the time to all of us. Basically we say to ourselves “I can’t personally refute this argument, but I believe there is a refuation of it that was made by Mr. X that I might have heard before and in any event would be able to understand if it was explained to me.” This is not just how most of think about most of the natural sciences, but also how alost everybody on the left thinks about political economy. Most self-styled Marxists have a pretty superficial understanding of Marx’s critique of capital and know it but are confident anyway that it is essentially sound. While I would like to see a lot more people make the effort to read Capital, which I think is a really a precondition for understanding Marx’s critique, it is a fair question as to whether it is a reasonable expectation that most people on the left actually will do this.
Mike E said
TNL writes:
I agree, and think we should unravel this question of authority.
Proletarian people often rely on such arguments to carry them through confrontations with people much more trained in intellectual debate and argument.
And the authority of Mao helped carry millions through their complex confrontations with very very powerful peole in China (during the Cultural Revolution). And there is nothing wrong with a student or a peasant or a worker saying to some party big-wig “Your argument is directly opposed to what Mao is saying, so i’m not going to accept it.”
It was powerful magic of a very revolutionary kind.
Keith said
Something is “scientific” if it can be proven. So we dont necessarily have to go to peer review or reproducible results. But some things are not capable of being treated “scientifically.”
In the German philosophical tradition, of which Marx is a part, the word “critical” was synonymous with science. Kant called his philosophy “critical philosophy” to distinguish it from dogmatic philosophy (“dogma” means assertion without proof or evidence.) Kant titled his major works “Critique of Pure Reason,” “Critique of Judgement” etc. Marx followed Kant in this calling Das Kapital “A critique of political economy.” Hegel believed in was correcting Kant and also called his philosophy “critical philosophy.” In a sense Marx was also a critical philosopher but not everything he wrote should be considered “scientific.” Clearly his work in political economy is scientific but not much beyond that.
I second TNL’s hope that Mike finds time to put down some instances of the Left using some of these specific fallacies.
On the other hand, it is not all that difficult to find instances of dogma on the left. Dogma is the opposite of science– science is that which can be proven while dogma is assertion without evidence. Lenin’s theory of imperialism, for instance, (along with its related concepts “monopoly capitalism” and “finance capital”) is a longstanding dogma which has only survived because of Lenin’s authority.
G said
Some thought about appeal to authority. It’s one of those fallacies that has a gray area, but properly understood, is not hard to grasp at all.
The first thing to realize that it’s a logic whose defect rests in a fallacy of treating induction as deductive, i.e. this is logic based on evaluative weight, and thus probability (the person has usually been right when it comes to this topic, as they are an expert in the relevant field, trusted, etc), and so the relevant the expertise of an authority, the more compelling the argument, and more likely to be held as correct. So, if the source is actually from an authority in the relevant field, and is properly recognized as an expert authority, that person often has greater experience and knowledge of their field than the average person, so their opinion is more likely than average to be correct. So there is no fallacy involved in simply arguing that the assertion made by an authority is true, and to use that authorities view to bolster ones argument.
But, but…it doesnt make it correct. With deductive inferences, the correct premises in a valid (logical) argument guarantees the conclusion must be correct. When authority which is inductive is set up as a deduction, its false reasoning, as the conclusion may turn out to be FALSE even if the premises are all correct. The truth or falsity of the claim is not necessarily related to the personal qualities of the claimant, and because the premises can be true, and the conclusion false:
1. Source A says that p is true.
2. Source A is authoritative.
3. Therefore, p is true.
But the fallacy only arises when it is claimed or implied that the authority is infallible, and can hence be exempted from criticism, or must be accepted on the basis of their credentials, no questions asked, no scrutiny, no criticism, no possibility of being mistaken, an open an shut case. The error reasoning occurs when claim is treated as correct simply because the statement is made by the authority, as if that premise guarantees the veracity of the claim. It doesn’t. Authority is never absolute, and the idea that it is necessarily infallible is at the basis of this illogical reasoning. In this way its the flip side of the coin of the ad-hominin fallacy.
The fact is that even the best experts that we expect should know the truth on a matter can still be mistaken, willfully deceptive, subject to pressure from peers or employers, have a vested financial interest in the false statements, within their field. That is why when resting on authority is much stronger when we look at a consensus of authorities in a field, i.e. the results from peer reviews.
The second important point that should be understood is the fact that, objectively, a proposition is in fact true or that it has good unrelated arguments supporting it, will be what makes authorities believe it to be true. The fallacy comes in when the opposite situation occurs, with authority opinions leading to the belief itself. Thus, an appeal to authority confuses cause and effect. It’s line, author. Its the background material, facts, and study, and practice in the field, experience, etc. that give the authority his authority in the first place. The fallacy from authority, instead, treats the person in line with the the old “divine command theory,” as if the truth flows from the person himself, to be worshiped. Even if many authorities believe something is true, it can not be argued that therefore it “must be true.” How reasonable it is to agree with the conclusion depends on the nature of the expert, what other experts say, and the basis for such expertise in the first place, grounded in something other than their own expertise as an individual. Then its a question of how strong is the argument. Like the rest of science, it is logically inductive by nature.
Mike E said
The last years I spent in the RCP were an intense school in enforced authority and then raw appeals to that authority.
The party adopted (in 2003, under pretenses that I can’t discuss) the theory that a deep appreciation of Avakian’s approach, method, body of work and personality were literally the dividing line between revolutionary communism and counterrevolutionary revisionism. Or, what is another way of saying the same thing, that not “appreciating” him and his work would inevitably lead to capitulation to capitalism.
At the time (meaning in 2003) I literally did not comprehend what was being said — I heard the words, but could not believe that anyone meant what they seemed to say. I assumed I was misunderstanding, or mishearing, or that a core truth would eventually be elevated and elaborated in new more nuanced way. This was especially acute because Avakian’s synthesis had not yet been elaborated — and (i believe) its core components did not yet exist. It was literally adopted as “cardinal” without any analysis of what that synthesis was.
People have often asked me how this could happen — how an organization filled with thinking people could degenerate into a mindless personality cult. And it is a good question. Part of it is rooted in years of failure — and accepting cultification in a kind of pessimistic collapse.
It may be valuable to elaborate different ways that (within the RCP) the claim of authority was asserted. It was not claimed that Avakian (or anyone) is literally infallible, but it was demanded that he be treated as if he were so beyond the rest of us that (functionally) this made little difference. He was to be viewed as functionally infallible.
There was a process — where series of specific theories were rammed through to adoption, followed by new theories that took the process further.
Here are a few highlights of that process:
1) The RCP had long had a theory of democratic centralism that was designed to discard ideas and criticisms from below. Democratic centralism was held to be necessary because of the antagonistic conditions of class struggle — which required security, secrecy, “need to know” etc. But it was also held to be necessary for epistemological reasons — meaning that the practice of the party needed to be viewed as a vast experiment the results of which could only be summed if everyone carried out the same approach, and could only be summed up at the heights of the party. In other words, a specific location in the party hierarchy was deemed to be scientifically necessary for a correct summation of practice.
This is wrong because communist policies and summations rarely can be developed simply (or even mainly) from the direct practice of one party’s cadre. And further, it was bullshit because the RCP never did systematic summation of its own practice, and its various brainstorms of “new ideas” were often disconnected with its own experience and problems.
But this epistemological theory of democratic centralism made it possible to dismiss ideas and criticisms from below. If you said (as I sometimes did) “I think there is an important new mood developing among students and we should….” or “I don’t think our approach to this question is connecting well to…” it would get a quick response: what possible epistemological basis did I think I had to reach that kind of summation? I wasn’t reading party reports, was i? I didn’t have an overview of the party’s experience?
This structure of dismissal was not new, but it was greatly consolidated in recent years when the theory of democratic centralism’s epistemological necessity was reaffirmed and further articluated.
2) As part of the assertion of “Avakian as cardinal question,” he personally laid out an argument known as “simple and complex.” This argument said the following: Many people say that they don’t understand what exactly Avakian’s new synthesis is, so how can we (as a party) declare it is essential, and how can we (as individuals) adopt it as our view. Avakian said that people can adopt things on different levels, on a simple level, and on a complex level. He gave the example of new recruits joining the party and accepting key concepts of Marxism (like dictatorship of the proletariat or labor theory of value) without possibly having considered the body of work or all the controversies. They adopted these things on a “simple” basis — meaning trust of those who were leading them together with a very sketchy initial sense of what the concepts were. And then (he said) as time went on, and the person matured they developed more, and were able to embrace these ideas on a more “complex” basis.
This theory of “simple and complex” was really a demand that everyone shut up, and accept Avakian’s new synthesis without vetting it critically. Everyone (meaning the whole party) was supposed to embrace it on the “simple” basis (meaning, essentially, trust and acceptance based on authority).
It was on the basis of such arguments that the RCP initially adopted the “Avakian cardinal question” thesis.
“Simple and Complex” was a theory justifying what Maoists call “whateverism” (accepting whatever the leadership says).
3) Part of that package was a theory of special people playing a special role in history. The RCP didn’t (during time I was in the party) official describe Avakian as a world class genius — but the theory they embraced was in effect a theory of genius. The formulation people were told to embrace, memorize and repeat was that Avakian was a “special, rare, unique and irreplaceable” person” and that he had “intangible” personal qualities that elevated his abilities above anyone else.
Not surprisingly this theory rather quickly collided with a materialist worldview — and in particular the view that the masses of people are the makers of history. Avakian himself ran out a speculation that perhaps revolutions had happened in Russia and China because there emerged a special person in each situation who wouldn’t accept anything less than revolution. Suddenly there was the advocacy of a worldview in which special people could virtually morph the world around them — and even if it didn’t openly reject the idea of “objective conditions” it did assert that the emergence of “special” people was the most important and exciting objective factor favoring revolution.
4) Next came a theory of “racing to catch up.” The great contributions of Avakian were not seen as something that could be mastered or even overseen. He was out there ahead of us, doing the heavy lifting, creating new innovations (“gems”) that so many of us were ignoring, neglecting and even opposing.
How should we (the followers of Avakian in the party of Avakian) relate to him — by “racing to catch up.” We couldn’t hope to ever catch up (of course) — the gap was too wide, the differences in ability were too great, the work was coming to fast and furious. But we could “race to catch up” — and it was a formulation rather sharply opposed to the idea that we (and the party as a whole) should critically assimilate or judge every new utterance by Avakian. No, we were assumed to be barely able to perceive or grasp them in their depth, we were assumed to be (generally) resistant and reluctant to rise to that level.
The call to “race to catch up” was another brick in the wall of whateverism.
What That Looked Like
At one point, someone was assigned to tutor me in intricacies of the RCP’s new approach to Avakian — since this was now a prerequisite for membership.
This person sat me down and explained (in a patronizingly slow step-by-step way) what HE did when he got a new piece by Avakian. He said he sat down and read it over slowly, carefully, many times — and wrote out for himself where he had a different assessment from Avakian (where a point by Avakian surprised him, or where he found himself initially disagreeing).
And then he said, he went over those points, one by one, demanding of himself “How could I have been so wrong? How could I have been so wrong?” And these questions were spoken as outbursts, and he slapped his head each time he spoke the question.
This little exercise was a tutorial in what was now demanded: Avakian’s every utterance was to be accepted as truth — as reasoning that was too advanced for us to question, and perhaps too advanced for us to grasp (except on a “simple” basis of acceptance).
We were not to take his new statements and compare them to reality in a scientific-critical way, we were to compare his new statements to our own previous ideas and constantly (daily) berate ourselves that we could have been so wrong.
I thought this was deeply non-materialist — and insane.
Because I was not making “progress” in my “racing to catch up,” a special little humiliation-lesson was carried out. I have discussed it before:
Avakian has always mispelled Nazi. He think the Germany party’s name is an acronym so in his drafts it is spelled NAZI. It is (in fact) a contraction (like the other German political contractions like Sozis for the socialists). For thirty years, our newspaper staff would routinely (and correctly) fix that typo. No big deal.
But such things were now suddenly suspect. As I proofread one of his articles, I naturally changed “NAZI” to Nazi” and turned it in for publication. A huge incident emerged. “How dare you assume you know better than the Chair?” And I was assigned long hours of investigation and google searches — documenting how Nazi was spelled in a hundred different places, writing a long report criticizing my fundamental error of outlook. And the starting point had to be why I did not start from the assumption that he was right, and that we had been wrong for thirty years in casually correcting his typo. The task ate up many hours….
By the next day, my tutor called off the exercise (he had by then discovered himself that NAZI is actually spelled Nazi), but that just meant that the attack shifted ground (from a controversy over spelling to my “attitude”).
artemi0 said
an anectdotal story-
A good friend of mine who was raised in the roman catholic tradition, including 12 years in parochial school, was trying to quit smoking tobacco. He would say half jokingly that it wasn’t all that bad. One of the things he learned was that sin, or the thought of sin, or the impulse- should be met with pain. There weren’t any nun’s around to help him stop smoking. He tied a rubber band around his wrist. Everytime he thought of smoking or had the desire to smoke- he’d snap the rubber band to disrupt the impulse and remind him why he shouldn’t smoke. On some level’s not a bad idea. On another level- it didn’t work.
CWM said
That’s wild, Mike. What a story!
I have two questions for you. . . First, given that being in the RCP obliged one to accept so many absurdities, and given that no one *had* to remain in the group, and given all the other possible things that one could do with one’s time, why did people stay? Did being in the RCP offer some unique satisfactions or rewards that you couldn’t find elsewhere? Or were most members emotionally screwed up? What kept people? It’s not hard to see why people left–what I don’t get is why people remained.
I know you that left ultimately but, even by your own account, you were there for years after the Avakian worship reached an especially high pitch. So, what kept people?
Second, why do you think the RCP took this route? Was it to compensate for its lack of political success? Or was it a cultish logic that just inevitably grew more intense? Both? Why did this occur?
Thanks
whatever said
Mike said: “And the authority of Mao helped carry millions through their complex confrontations with very very powerful peole in China (during the Cultural Revolution). And there is nothing wrong with a student or a peasant or a worker saying to some party big-wig “Your argument is directly opposed to what Mao is saying, so i’m not going to accept it.”
True. But what the student/worker/peasant does is rejecting the discussion. He’s not really argueing against what the party big-wig said. The appeal to the authority in this case helps to avoid a discussion which the student/worker/peasant doesn’t want or isn’t able to resume. The argument means: I’m not able to answer you right now but I know that Mao would have strong arguments against what you’re saying and if I have to choose between your authority and that of Mao I’ll trust Mao. That’s not the same thing as saying: “what you say is not true SIMPLY BECAUSE Mao said different – end of discussion.”
An appeal to an authority is never an argument per se. It’s just a way to avoid a discussion. And Mike’s example only shows that there can be situations in which this can be justified.
RW Harvey said
When one appeals to (higher) authority to dis (or disengage) from another authority (party big-wig, in Mike’s example), this seems to reinforce a childish impotence in the face of “higher-ups” amongst people. Hey, “my bad” if I can’t struggle forthrightly. Once we open the door to justificaitons at this level, then it becomes easier and easier to let revolutionary consciousness and understanding lag — after all, if I can trump you by attaching my words/actions to a higher authority then I will take this path of least resistance when things get heavy.
This example, undercut some of Mike’s powerful essay on the dangers of citing texts of Lenin, et al., or Leaders/SPecialists as authorities in way that precludes any analysis of contemporary conditions…
Lastly, can anyone really be surprised that people stayed in the RCP (or any group for that matter) for various lengths of time? Read Canetti’s “Crowds and Power”; or Becker’s “Denial of Death”; or any studies on the psychological importance of human attachment…
We tend to stay with the groups we’ve invested our lives long after the expiration date PRECISELY because we’ve invested our lives — it becomes our basis for maing meaning and establishing self-esteem. Hence, the deep alienation, disorientation, anger, plots of revenge, depression after one departs.
It is always easier to wonder after the fact “why.” The trick is to be able to recognize/sense/intuit when it’s actually occurring — this has important ramifications for creating revolutionary organizations and for preventing counter-revolution…
tellnolies said
I don’t really find it that remarkable that clearly intelligent critical minded people can spend their lives in cults. We find meaning in social groups and intense cohort bonding is a powerful things as anybody who knows a little about the Jesuits or the Marines can attest. While the nuttiness of the RCP caused me to always keep my distance, I completely understand how a group that seemed so single-mindedly dedicated to revolution could be very seductive, not just emotionally but intellectually as well. I suspect that any serious revolutionary organization will look at least a little cultish to people who don’t accept its central premises. Some are worse than others and some get worse over time. It seems to me that while the RCP was always pretty bad that cleary it recently got a lot worse. Mike can speak for himself, but there is a certain logic to staying in an encapsulated group as little indicators that something is amiss accumulate. There is the hope that things can be made better, the certainty that there isn’t anything else out there that can easily replace it, and the terrifying prospect of accepting that you’ve wasted an enormous part of your life for nothing. I don’t actually think the latter is neccesarily true, but clearly it is a conclusion that many people do come to after they leave such groups.
CWM said
Mike, how do you feel about this? Are you angry at your former comrades in the RCP? Do you feel that they lied to you and deceived you? Do you feel that you were manipulated?
Mike E said
CWM asks:
These are not questions with simple answers.
Mainly I think that Avakian destroyed the RCP in ways that reflect a terrible pessimism and despair on his part, and a tremendous unforgivable delusion about his own role. He really believes that the party, the people, and really the whole world let HIM down. He treated our whole enterprise as something for him (personally) to wear like a glove (or destroy like a toy) — however he wanted.
I don’t feel hostility — but see the narcissism and delusion of his current path as pathetic. It’s like seeing an old friend in the park shooting up.
I feel some personal animosity to a very small number of people (exactly three) who revealed themselves as careerists and bootlickers in the course of the RCPs final turn. I don’t mind people who disagree with me on big things, but I don’t like an eager display of cruelty in the service of frenetic self-promotion.
More broadly, there were leading revolutionaries who caved into this madness rather than fighting it. And i feel disappointment and sadness that they displayed a lack of backbone and alternative communist vision when it counted. It was their responsibility and instead they cowered. And we were not able to launch a common fight together.
But in general, toward my many former comrades, I feel a great deal of affection born in years of common struggle, and sadness at where they now find themselves — running with their hair on fire down a deserted alley. And there are a number of comrades who are now outside the RCP who are finding their way. A few suffer under very desperate personal and financial situations — and it pains me greatly not to be able to rescue them.
As for feelings of being deceived — to be honest, i think there has been a lot of self-deception. I’m a grown and pretty sophisticated person — I take responsibility for what I thought and did. If i believed things that were untrue, well it’s is mainly on me. I honestly don’t think I was particularly deceived by anyone — though many cadre were deceived, and would have reason to resent that. And in some ways, I played a role in convincing others that the RCP had more potential and creativity than it really had — and so perhaps I have some responsibility for spreading my own illusions.
And to be clear: I loved the RCP deeply, and threw my life into it for over thirty years. And I think it was a very positive and important attempt at revolutionary work — and if its many initiatives mainly failed, it is the failure of serious and sincere attempt. And it has value — as experience for the next attempts. I don’t think the RCP was a mistake from the beginning, or a cult all along, etc.
One reason I stayed so long was that I was in a rather special corner of the RCP — the newspaper staff — where there was always a great deal of creative thinking and debate. Where we engaged in interesting issues every day, exploration, research, and attempts to find innovative ways of exposing U.S. imperialism. And where there was (for various reasons) not as heavy a hand of dogmatism and routine (compared to virtually the whole rest of the organization).
If I stayed longer than seems logical now it was in part because i could still imagine the RCP taking off and could still belive that would be a good thing for people. I really loved my work creating a weekly communist newspaper. And, the RCP had not consolidated around complete madness before 2003.
There was a point where I realized that the RCP was dead (without chance of renovation from within). I no longer thought this organization could make a positive contribution if it got more influence and power (I found myself thinking: “These people are crackpots, fools and bootlickers who should never any influence or power.”
It also became clear that if I held onto my own critical and revolutionary views i would be forced into a smaller and smaller box within the RCP. Increasingly I was forbidden to write or speak or act politically. At one point I was forbidden to even attend the memorial of an old comrade from the coalfields. My remarkable and talented spouse was belittled and shamelessly disrespected — in part because of her association with me.
I was being systematically forbidden any political life or activity through which to make a contribution — and was surrounded by an increasingly alien world that just seemed increasingly nuts and truly mean-spirited.
And I’m just not capable of licking boots — and in a way I would never have imagined licking boots of petty superiors became the price of staying inside the RCP.
In other words, I left when it was clearly over, but not before.
CWM said
Thanks for the reply, Mike. Your comments make sense to me.
Given all the effort that you gave to the RCP, do you feel some sense of responsibility for what it became? Are you also culpable to a degree or do you believe that the cultishness and slavishness emerged independently from your efforts?
Avery Ray Colter said
I should note an error in recounting from before Mike. You are right, the RCP hasn’t mentioned anything from Kasama. I actually found this place when, failing to find much on RCP’s site in the way of left-wing music, I hunted the net and found RevLeft, and saw some of Kasama’s posts there.
The pull, let us say, of experiential gerontocracy is a strong one, and one to which I see a lot of self-directed appeals. I recently told a Situationist who despised Maoism as “just another state capitalism” that half of his writings scrambled my brain and amply made the case for anarchists having “a whine for everything and a plan for nothing”. At which point he made it plain that he would never communicate with me again for being so rash as to make such a summation of his “over thirty years of study”. Well hell, does it take that long to understand this shit? Because I’ll be drawing Social Security by then if it still exists!
I think it is tempting to settle. I think one always does. No one is perfect or correct all the time, so the question often is “Does this crowd seem close enough to heading in the right direction? How much gerontocratic arrogance is forgivable?”
Even after hearing all this, I still feel tempted to go to the RevBooks meetings because I don’t know what other group is holding ANY meetings around here right now.
Although the contrarian part of me imagines a comic music video: “You down with APP, YEAH U KNOW ME!” :P
Avery Ray Colter said
By the way, I am in Architects and Engineers for 9-11 Truth. I don’t know if this is necessarily a weasel-word title on its own, so long as one keeps one’s head and admits that some truthers are indeed acting in zany ways. I would say strongly that if there is a need for revolution it existed before 9/11/01 and so I don’t make it the litmus test that some in that movement appear to want to make it. I do however think there is a point to be made that Building 7 came down with nothing having impacted it, and the idea that these kinds of buildings would fall straight down does seem suspect to me. I don’t think I have to rely on some individual’s authority to submit the contention that if a large object impacts the side of a tall building and starts a fire there, that if the impact and fire are enough to sufficiently weaken structural elements, they would do so preferentially on the side of the impacts, and therefore like chopping a tree on one side, such a building should be expected to fall over in the direction of the “chop”.
That has nothing to do with guessing at who really did it of course. But I can tell you that conspiracy theorists often defend themselves – and given, this is a non-sequitur – with the fact that the U.S. federal government itself has a long history of administering official punishments upon individuals on the basis of conspiracy charges. Thus, they argue, one really is choosing between conspiracy theorists.
Zack said
Late to the discussion but just wanted to reiterate the suggestion RW Harvey @18 mentioned, Becker’s “Denial of Death”.
There’s also a great documentary discussing the concepts that can “make smart people do dumb things”… re: “why do seemingly critical thinkers stick around in cultish dead-end organizations for so long?” It’s called Flight From Death.
Here’s a link to a torrent of the movie:
torrents[DOT]sumotorrent[DOT]com/download/3062938/2009-06-09/Flight+from+Death+-+The+Quest+for+Immortality_ST2669038.torrent