{"id":3512801,"date":"2025-05-14T11:14:56","date_gmt":"2025-05-14T11:14:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/?p=3512801"},"modified":"2025-05-14T11:14:56","modified_gmt":"2025-05-14T11:14:56","slug":"off-the-marx-hitler-spectrum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/stories\/2025-05-14\/off-the-marx-hitler-spectrum\/","title":{"rendered":"Off the Marx\u2013Hitler Spectrum"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/dothemath.ucsd.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/EM_spectrumrevised.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-11798 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/dothemath.ucsd.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/EM_spectrumrevised.png\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 960px) 100vw, 960px\" srcset=\"https:\/\/dothemath.ucsd.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/EM_spectrumrevised.png 960w, https:\/\/dothemath.ucsd.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/EM_spectrumrevised-300x161.png 300w, https:\/\/dothemath.ucsd.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/EM_spectrumrevised-768x411.png 768w, https:\/\/dothemath.ucsd.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/EM_spectrumrevised-500x268.png 500w\" alt=\"\" width=\"960\" height=\"514\" \/><\/a><em>The colors blue and red are used in the U.S. to represent political left and right, which at the extremes might be said to run from communism to fascism., Yet even that\u2019s a tiny slice of the whole. (Image by Philip Ronan, Gringer;\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File:EM_spectrumrevised.png\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Wikimedia Commons<\/a>)<\/em><\/p>\n<p>We are accustomed to a left\u2013right political spectrum. But said spectrum is only a tiny corner of the whole space of possibilities, even though practically everyone you know is wedged into it. Similarly, we use the word \u201clight\u201d to implicitly mean the narrow range of radiant energy that\u2019s\u00a0<em>visible<\/em>\u00a0to\u00a0<em>human<\/em>\u00a0eyes, despite its being only a thin sliver of the full electromagnetic spectrum. All modern political schools share and support the context of an aberrant, exploitative modernity, making them real \u201cbirds of a feather.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>One window into political leanings is to elucidate an honest assessment of what one cherishes the most. But be careful about taking at face-value what people\u00a0<em>say<\/em>\u00a0they care most about. Sometimes they might even fool themselves. Below is a list whose scope (number of beneficiaries) increases as one moves down, and which might imperfectly map onto political leanings.<\/p>\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Self\/Ego<\/li>\n<li>Power<\/li>\n<li>Corporations<\/li>\n<li>Market economy<\/li>\n<li>Small businesses<\/li>\n<li>Families<\/li>\n<li>Welfare of all people<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>That\u2019s usually where it stops, in terms of scope. Some might also care for the environment, but only insofar as people have access to clean air, water, food, and don\u2019t suffer health maladies from pollution. The first item on the list doesn\u2019t map cleanly onto left\u2013right (no shortage of self-centered leftists!), but belonged on a list of what people care most about. One form that self-prioritization can take is personal salvation in a religious context.<\/p>\n<p>Megalomaniacs, dictators, oligarchs, and authoritarians populate the top of the scale. Fascists also lean toward that upper end, as do\u2014I would say\u2014many MAGA Republicans in the U.S. Traditional Republicans occupy more of the middle range, while Democrats tilt toward the lower end. Marxists might be said to be all the way down. Yet, the demarcations are not clean, allowing funky mixtures. The overwhelming majority of political parties, for instance, work to support a vibrant market economy.<\/p>\n<p>Ralph Nader ran for president of the U.S. in 2000, far enough to the left of George W. Bush and Al Gore that he characterized the two as \u201cTweedledum and Tweedledee\u201d\u2014implying a nearly inseparable twinness to the two. From far enough away, that\u2019s what it looks like. A radical leftist or rightist will see all establishment politicians as muddled enablers of a dysfunctional system.<\/p>\n<p>Where do I fall on this spectrum\u2014or am I even\u00a0<em>on<\/em>\u00a0it? I\u2019m going to make you wait for a short bit.<\/p>\n<p>We might also try assigning percentages, crudely, to the groups above. If the primary cherished unit is oneself, one out of 8 billion people is the \u201ctop\u201d 0.00000001%. Numero uno! Corporations\u2014the wealthy and powerful\u2014might represent the top 1%. By the time we progress down the list to\u00a0<em>all<\/em>\u00a0people, we might say it\u2019s 100%. End of story, right?<\/p>\n<p>Not for me. Despite a dangerously swollen population and depleted wildlife, humans are only 3% of animal biomass, 0.01% of living mass, perhaps one ten-millionth of species, and well-less than 0.000000001% (one-billionth) of the living medium (atmosphere, soils, ocean) on the surface of Earth. It gets staggeringly smaller if considering the entire Earth (required for sufficient gravity to hold an atmosphere) or the sun (the energy source for life), and so on.<\/p>\n<p>By these measures, the 100% human focus of even the hard-over Marxist puts them into ultra-elite status: into a tiny corner of the room. And that essentially guides where I landed. On this spectrum model\u2014incomplete and flawed as it is\u2014I might call Hitler and Marx Tweedledum and Tweedledee: both parts of the\u00a0<em>visible<\/em>\u00a0spectrum. Don\u2019t get me wrong: it\u2019s not that I cannot discern a difference between red and blue, or that I would have equal preference for spending time with either Marx or Hitler. But both were committed\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/dothemath.ucsd.edu\/2024\/08\/mm-12-human-supremacy\/\" data-type=\"post\" data-id=\"8529\">human supremacists<\/a>, which I find to be\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/dothemath.ucsd.edu\/2023\/10\/our-ugly-magnificence\/\" data-type=\"post\" data-id=\"4124\">ugly<\/a>. Neither questioned the trajectory of modernity: they wanted more of it, but parceling out the loot differently\u2014among humans, of course. Both sought to perfect the production of goods and services for the benefit of their differently-scoped constituents\u2014through exploitation of \u201cresources\u201d\u2014with no regard for the ecological toll insofar as humans (of\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/dothemath.ucsd.edu\/2025\/03\/ishmael-chapter-2\/\" data-type=\"post\" data-id=\"11126\">Taker culture<\/a>) get what they want in the short term. Workers of the world, unite?<\/p>\n<p>Just imagine asking an isolated hunter-gatherer whether the societies envisioned by Marx or Hitler seemed more similar or more different. From that very different way of living, surely the two would be nearly indistinguishable. Both involve money, manufacturing, mechanization, copious energy, and all those elements wholly familiar to us and wholly alien to other (legitimate; time-tested) ways of living.<\/p>\n<p>In this framing, I am so far left that the left doesn\u2019t recognize me as \u201cleft.\u201d It comes back to what one cherishes and thus favors. To the right fringe, the traditional conservative Republican seems soft and leftish, and even punitive toward the powerful by their support for any regulations at all (food safety, air quality). To the Republican, the Democrats\u2019 focus on equity among all people can seem punitive toward businesses: the\u00a0<em>real<\/em>\u00a0pillars of a functioning modern society. Many traditionally-privileged white straight males feel discriminated against by the \u201cwoke\u201d left. To a leftist cherishing all people above everything else, my focus on the more-than-human world comes off as punitive toward humans (of modernity): \u201cunfair\u201d restrictions and disfavor for the most privileged (and abusive) culture on the planet. Because I view our modern culture as a\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/dothemath.ucsd.edu\/2023\/10\/our-ugly-magnificence\/\" data-type=\"post\" data-id=\"4124\">Human Reich<\/a>, I can\u2019t help but ask: how does one even approach prioritizing welfare for members of a culture complicit in ecocide? True fairness does not always work in our favor, as we rig things to go.<\/p>\n<p>This is what I mean when I say that I can be so far left as to not seem \u201cleft\u201d to a leftist. Because I don\u2019t prioritize issues of equity\u00a0<em>among<\/em>\u00a0humans, I might be wrongly cast into the anti-DEI (diversity, equity, inclusion) camps of the right. But that would be completely inaccurate.<\/p>\n<p>To be clear, I would not call myself anti-DEI. I totally buy the validity of the points,\u00a0<em>within the narrow context<\/em>\u00a0of human-only considerations in an anomalous time of profligate abundance (made possible by a multitude of shameful exploitations). Genuine, unjustifiable barriers exist to under-represented groups. I\u2019m on board with identifying and dismantling these barriers\u2014much as I am on board with improving access to healthy food in inner cities. It\u2019s just not close to my\u00a0<em>top<\/em>\u00a0priority, as few humans or animals on the planet will have access to healthy food if ecological (more-than-human) priorities continue to be ignored\u2014and cities won\u2019t remain viable for very long anyway, so there\u2019s no \u201cgetting them right.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m more concerned with the\u00a0<em>course and speed<\/em>\u00a0of the Titanic (or why there even\u00a0<em>is<\/em>\u00a0a Titanic) than with the proper arrangement of deck chairs. Of course I would much\u00a0<em>prefer<\/em>\u00a0an orderly arrangement of deck chairs rather than a trip-hazard jumble: in the narrower fantasy that they also remain dry and well above sea level. As in\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/dothemath.ucsd.edu\/2025\/05\/ishmael-chapter-12\/\" data-type=\"post\" data-id=\"11676\"><em>Ishmael<\/em>\u00a0Chapter 12<\/a>, my chief aim is not fairness and equity\u00a0<em>within<\/em>\u00a0the prison, but in\u00a0<em>dismantling<\/em>\u00a0the prison altogether\u2014arguing that we oughtn\u2019t be on the Titanic in the first place.<\/p>\n<p>Being so far from the mainstream, how do I know that I\u2019m far to the left of \u201cleft\u201d and not far to the right of \u201cright?\u201d That\u2019s pretty easy, because the left\u2013right distribution can be crudely mapped onto preference for egalitarian arrangements vs. tolerance of hierarchy. My guiding principle is that humans evolved in small tight-knit groups of basically egalitarian people. These successful cultures tend to be very light on power structures and division of labor. In fact, many follow deliberate practices tuned to tamp down power concentration. In those cultures that recognize a leader, the leader does not exert power so much as make sacrifices for the team and offer valued opinions on appropriate actions.<\/p>\n<p>The opposite of hierarchy is, in some sense, anarchy: lack of archy\u2014where the \u201carch\u201d root means \u201crule.\u201d Anarchy has a bad rap for the legitimate reason that it\u2019s a terrible, non-viable way to structure modernity. But I would say modernity is no way to structure ecologically-suitable living. Anarchy works exquisitely well in the community of life. It\u2019s hard to exert power over people who can take care of themselves (including their own access to food).<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s funny that the political left and right both argue endlessly and unproductively about\u00a0<strong>rights<\/strong>\u00a0(for corporations, humans, blastocysts), but I\u2019m so far left that I see \u201crights\u201d as fictional constructs of \u201cthe right\u201d (which includes Marxists for me). Rights are not facts of the universe\u2014thus the inevitable, unresolvable squabbling\u2014but unfounded claims that we might\u00a0<em>wish<\/em>\u00a0to be true geared toward giving us things we want.<\/p>\n<p>Part of the fantasy is that if we just adopt the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/dothemath.ucsd.edu\/2024\/11\/political-perfection\/\" data-type=\"post\" data-id=\"9687\">correct political perspective<\/a>, tune our laws, and dial in our systems, we\u2019ll finally achieve the paradise we deserve\u2014as the irrelevant, obsolete community of life cracks up and disintegrates. Ecological and biophysical considerations over\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/dothemath.ucsd.edu\/2024\/02\/sustainable-timescales\/\" data-type=\"post\" data-id=\"5260\">appropriate timescales<\/a>\u00a0are typically wholly absent from such musings, instantly invalidating them as viable paths.<\/p>\n<p>So, whether we\u2019re talking about Karl Marx, Ayn Rand, Noam Chomsky, or Milton Friedman, they all look strikingly similar from my vantage in the hinterlands. All champion anthropocentric systems doomed to fail by ecological standards on biophysical grounds on the timescales that really count.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019m more concerned with the\u00a0course and speed\u00a0of the Titanic (or why there even\u00a0is\u00a0a Titanic) than with the proper arrangement of deck chairs. As in\u00a0Ishmael\u00a0Chapter 12, my chief aim is not fairness and equity\u00a0within\u00a0the prison, but in\u00a0dismantling\u00a0the prison altogether\u2014arguing that we oughtn\u2019t be on the Titanic in the first place.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":128238,"featured_media":3512807,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[79718,79720,213535],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3512801","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-environment","category-society","category-society-featured"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3512801","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/128238"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3512801"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3512801\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3512852,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3512801\/revisions\/3512852"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3512807"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3512801"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3512801"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3512801"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}