The Left continues all-victorious because the serious issues were conceded long ago. “Inclusiveness” and “tolerance,” taken seriously, radically weaken all institutions other than universal markets and universal rational bureaucracies. Nonetheless, it is now fundamental that they are necessary basic standards for any tolerable society. Rejecting them has become unspeakable, and for most people unthinkable; all resistance anywhere must be abolished in the name of human rights.

The question we are left with is whether the victory has led to something that can be stable, or whether the Left still depends on the things it destroys. Are markets, bureaucracies and individual taste enough for a society? Can comprehensive social management really replace particular loyalties and attachments? The Left itself seems doubtful. Their hysteria over Le Pen, for example, and their inability to discuss the issues he raises, suggests that at bottom they realize things aren’t at all secure and have no idea what to do about it.

The fundamental question is whether technology, which works by concentrating on issues that can be isolated and manipulated, can manage all things comprehensively. In a nutshell, is strong AI—reduction of human things to specifiable rules that enable modelling and control—possible? If it is, the triumph of the Left will endure and man will be abolished. I don’t see any reason to believe such a thing though. The exact sciences depend on things that are far less exact, so precision can be only partial. It’s impossible in principle to manage the weather. How can it be possible to manage human society? And it it can’t, the project of the Left fails.
Posted by Jim Kalb at April 30, 2002 11:32 AM | Send