Musings on Racism

Recently I took part in a very interesting conversation about racism (tribalism, factionism, whatever it is that makes people pick a side to defend or attack in social situations where something important seems to be at stake).  Here are some scraps of ideas I was not willing to throw away into the dark bowels of the NSA's storage crypts.  Comments adapted from people other than me are in bold.

[A] Some amount of inter-tribal animosity is human nature: we can't change that, and thinking we can is a dangerous utopian illusion (that plays out badly in history, as people claim to transcend their tribalism only to come up very short). On the other hand, the harm and injustice caused by this unfortunate trait is magnified hugely if there's a macro-level system in which some tribes hold disproportionate amounts of power.

[B] As one who typically has no answers, I must wonder about education.  But I am not sure what that means. The phrase walk a mile in another's shoes rings in my mind, but I am tilting at windmills. 

Walking in another's shoes is a good exercise, until one thinks one has done it and discovered the one true road for someone else to walk.

The problem I see with all "naive" attempts at liberalism is that they fail to see how they set themselves up to devolve into more and more restrictive tyranny (as the people's champions encounter tribalism and fight to eradicate it rather than minimize its capacity to do damage). Any attempt to build a heaven in which humanity responds to one good (one universal Platonic Form of goodness) in one way (the way of the philosopher-king) will always produce damaging authoritarianism, even when we call that one good "liberty" and the way we choose to pursue it "democracy" (vel sim.). The words don't matter as much as what they signify, and that is always going to be something bad to the extent that we imagine situations in which I tell you what to do, how to behave, etc., without leaving you clear, legal, respectable options for protest, rebellion, and dissent. Every person is tribalist. Every person will reach a point at which she breaks and goes for the jugular. The utopians (liberals, Marxists, religious fundamentalists, supremacists, fascists, it matters not what they call themselves) who imagine that this can be bred out of us, that we can be effectively broken and domesticated out of our humanity, are dangerous lunatics--most especially when they manage to appear sane.

What is dangerous is not their individual motives, which may be excellent (indeed it is always best to give them the benefit of the doubt here), but the dangerous practical imbalance these motives historically create when they become implemented as public policy.

I can learn to suppress my tribalism where it appears obnoxious to me and society. I cannot learn to unmake it (and transform myself into the holy saint that the utopians require to make their pie in the sky edible). Note that tribalism as I use it here is more than any historical instance of racism: it is the general category behind all particular instances of racism. Human beings have always been divided into competing hostile factions. We can improve relations between factions, enlarge factions, redefine factions, etc., and we have done so repeatedly in history. We cannot erase the faction as the bedrock of humanity--a source of both good and evil, both of which are requisite for our survival. Another way to say this: the evil that we call "racism" (or "tribalism" or "faction") is the same thing as the good that we call "community" (or "family" or "tribe" or "culture"). We can get better at prescribing the drug of culture (modifying its content and varying the dosage with historical circumstances), but we cannot engineer it to be utterly non-lethal. That would destroy its utility (and doom us to destruction).

[A] On a genetic level, ideas of "race" are pretty much noise. In terms of cultural and historical identities, however, they are very relevant. My appearance does affect how people will react to me on an everyday basis, and the appearance of my ancestors affected the future opportunities of their progeny since it was a factor in what society gave them economically.

Whether it's "socially programmed" or not doesn't matter, because whether I personally ignore people's "race" or not does not change that there existed at some point biases and chain-reactions (their parents were given less opportunity, so they themselves grew up less affluent) with a significant influence on where they stand now.

There are males who see "us and them" when it comes to females. But I call BS on "male culture" as something coherent. Of course hormones influence behavior (in generically categorizable ways even), but I don't share any meaningful culture with some other dude merely because we both have balls (and/or elevated testosterone levels).

Talking about "male culture" as something particularly real--something responsible for coherent causes operating on a discrete individual, such that my opening the door for somebody with a vagina means that I must endorse your intention of raping her--is ludicrous, obscene, and the opposite of empowering (for anyone). "Black culture" is the same. As is "white culture." (I utterly reject the idea that I must share sympathy with someone because we both have relatively low melanin levels. How are Beethoven and Eminem alike? How is their likeness more important, more real, than their unlikeness?) And of course "American culture" (vomit). These are words people like to burp out, words that occasionally even seem to mean something--an unfortunate semblance when we confuse it with verity (enshrining it in statistics, where it can live on in the mind of the faithful determined to see me as nothing more than a pawn in the invisible hand of "the media" or "the neo-con movement" or "the Tea Party" or "corporate Mormonism" or "right-wing America" or some other impossible chimaera). 

[A] I agree with some of your points, but I'm wondering if you're suggesting that all distinctive cultures are bullshit.

I don't think they are. But I do think people mischaracterize (misgeneralize, jump from true particular instances to false general conclusions). When people say the words "white culture" or "male culture" or "black culture," they are referring to something individually, particularly real (something they know from their experience). When they look at me as a stranger and assume I must match their experience (i.e. when they generalize from the particular), they go wrong. Attempts to correct what is wrong with their particular experience via generic conversations that rely on unexamined false identities are doomed (when blacks aren't black, whites aren't white, and I am not a male). 

To me it seems that many invocations of racism (whether by proud neo-Nazis or penitent progressives) come from a perspective antithetical to justice.

It isn't unjust if 100% of prison inmates in some random locale are white, or Irish, or Catholic, or left-handed, or male, or 6 feet tall, or illiterate, or whatever. It is unjust if one of those inmates is falsely accused, negligently tried, and fraudulently convicted--no matter what he looks like and/or who finds him creepy (criminal: "kill the creeps!") or socially maladjusted (pitiful: "but this little guy was only a small boy looking for some harmless fun!").

That said, people who cry "racism!" are not always bad (working against justice) or wrong (misperceiving what justice should be): there are legitimate times to push back against people making unfair and unnecessary generalizations, generalizations that hurt innocent individuals.

Rosa Parks had a point, a good one, and she made it well. I hope I would have been brave enough back in the day to stand with her when idiots made the argument that black people (or brown people or yellow people or tall people or short people or skinny people or fat people, etc. ad nauseam) should be refused common human courtesy (e.g. a seat on the bus that you pay for and occupy peacefully to the obvious pain and detriment of nobody who isn't perfectly willing and able to bear it) merely because they carry some external characteristic (melanin, a tattoo, a turban, a mustache, balls, birth defects, etc.) that some fool associates with criminal activity or social ickiness ("You're on your period? Unclean! No menstruating women allowed in grocery stores! Where's my congressman! Where's the police! Somebody pass a law and give me the hand-cuffs!").

The Civil Rights Movement, in my eyes, was about pushing past stupid barriers blocking our political and civil discourse--stupid barriers like the idea that all black people are evil hooligans and/or lesser forms of life that shouldn't be allowed to mingle peacefully with "decent folk" (as though such a category were clearly defined in reality: "Please collect your 'decent human being badge' at Window 8, citizen, and remember to display it prominently on your person at all times!"). The Civil Rights Movement aimed to get us past seeing a guy and thinking, "Ooh! He's wearing a turban! Must be an evil Arab terrorist! Attack!" It was about process (treating all folk as equally innocent until proven guilty), not results (counting up the 'proven guilty' at the end of the day and making sure each demographic in society is appropriately represented: we all know that criminals get together with Satan every Tuesday down at Larry's nightclub and determine how many blacks, Latinos, and whites are going to commit felonies that week, making sure that there are no communities where any single 'race' is ever responsible for a disproportionate amount of crime).

I support the Civil Rights Movement (as outlined above). I do not support people whose idea of it is diametrically opposed to mine, such that we become more focused on results than process, more keen to entrench stupid notions of collective culture as something permanent--and diagnosable: "I see you have some white culture there, my friend! Let me help you carry this burden!" The point is that the burden is impossible, idiotic, and immoral. There is no white culture that applies universally to all of us (Irish, Scottish, English, French, German: my ancestors hated each other every bit as much as competing African tribes). There never was, not even when a bunch of nitwits got together recently in the Deep South and tried to claim "the Bible says so!" (my Bible says you are full of crap, idiots). There should not be. Individual people should not be presumed guilty because of some random characteristic they share with other people whom somebody else finds threatening (for whatever reason: some reasons are good, and some are total garbage).

[C] There is no white culture but there is undeniable white privilege. As long as you "pass" you are afforded it. 

I think we should make a point of sending young people abroad somewhere they cannot pass. I spent two years in northern Spain doing obnoxious door-to-door saleswork at a time when many people over there were very angry at Americans. My skin color was not an issue, but I did not pass, and it was not fun. It was a really good learning experience. 

[C] Agreed. I spent a very uncomfortable week in the West Bank and not knowing the language, looking different (and evil), can definitely afford some perspective.

Personally, I think outcomes are most likely to improve systemically as we consciously refute and throw mud on the human tendency to draw lines in the sand that are unnecessarily harmful.

The existence of "black culture" as something actionable, something that sets "young blacks" apart from the rest of America (with whatever intention), seems to me fundamentally evil. Sure, some people will separate them. Some people will say they are creeps who should be shunned (or shot when seen "acting suspicious" and/or physically confronting somebody in a threatening way). Others will say they are poor persecuted infants who should be kissed and hugged and cradled. I say no to both parties. If I were black, I wouldn't want your irrational hatred or your irrational love: I would want the freedom to live as free of you and your misconceived notions about me as possible. Keep your love and your hate, and let me be. I would want some human decency, some respect, something more than a beat-down or a hand-out "because you're black." This, incidentally, is precisely what I wanted from the Spanish people, in real time. I don't care if they hate Americans or love them, personally: all I want is the freedom to do my work in their society without having to be the poster-boy for America (whether that means taking a physical beating because of my Americanism or getting a pat on the back and a rousing speech about how great George W. Bush is). 

[D]  Personally, I found out rather late in life that I had a black great-grandfather. Does this mean that I'm "black"? Does this mean that I'm not "white"? The reality is that I was brought up thinking I was entirely white (inspite of only having to look at my mother and grandfather to see the obvious), when I really am partially black.  I think that we're talking about random, irrationally created thought constructs that have nothing to do with reality. Why can't we allow each individual's experience to be their own?  

People will profile you. They have to. Life has built profiling into our DNA (with good reason: I fear gangs of young people hanging about in public places to this day because I was physically assaulted by one such mob and threatened by others). But this reality doesn't have to be destructive. I can learn to hold back my feelings of irrational anger when I see teenagers together at the mall. I can refrain from following them around waiting for something, with a gun in my pocket. I can even be nice to them when occasion offers (as I was, in fact, when attacked: I think that may be part of what saved me from getting some serious injuries).

PTSD is real. People who are raped or otherwise violated have issues, justifiably and unavoidably. But the solution is not to mark and remove anything that might be a trigger to those issues. We have to deal with them--as individuals more than as communities, it seems to me. The community helps best when it emphasizes solidarity ("we are all in this together!") rather than factionism ("look at those awful/pitiful weirdos over there! kill/kiss them!"), and process ("you do X in this town, and the result is Y--no ifs ands or buts") over results ("well, you are a special case, since people take a shine to you: the rules don't apply any more!"). That is my opinion, which I don't expect anyone else to hold (necessarily) or blame anyone else for not holding. Life would be boring if we all thought the same way. 

[A] How can the individual feel that society denies him access to his own identity? 

In Spain, I was an American. In Spain, all Americans hate Iraq. That's why we all got together and appointed Bush II absolute dictator and then took voluntary tours of duty with the Army to kill Iraqi babies. People didn't see me. They saw this thuggish G.I. Joe stereotype and reacted with disgust, hatred, and occasionally violence.

(And of course not all Spaniards saw me this way. Far from it! I would go back if given the chance, and I find many things to love about Spanish culture, not least among them the fact that there is no such thing that all legal Spaniards agree on.) 

[D] Personal experience is all we have and the only thing that counts. Everything else is the narrative fallacy. We have to get back to this ultimate reality, since that's the only thing that really matters. All of this discussion of how many angels can dance on the head of a pin doesn't matter at all. 

Brujo Encadenado

Robert M. Pirsig. Lila: An Inquiry into Morals. New York: Bantam, 1992.  ISBN: 0553299611.

This book is as interesting (to me) as Pirsig's other one, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.  Where the earlier book sees reality existing outside our ability to understand it, this one talks about different ways that we respond to our historical inability to grasp reality wholly.  The earlier book sees an indefinite (and humanly undefinable) quality as the foundation of reality: the word quality points toward the reality that is too big to understand, too irregular and dynamic to be contained by our limited intelligence.  The second book talks about different manifestations of this quality in human life.

According to Pirsig, quality as we experience it comes in two kinds: (1) static quality and (2) dynamic quality.  Lila is an extended portrait of these two different kinds of quality. 

(1) Static quality comes in four kinds: (i) inorganic static quality; (ii) biological static quality; (iii) social quality; (iv) intellectual quality.  Life exists as different patterns of these kinds of quality that are related.  Inorganic molecules exist in static patterns that enable static patterns of biological life, which rely on them without being determined by them (the same way computer languages rely on electronic circuits: the circuits make the languages possible, but you could not predict the particular historical development of the languages from the existence of the circuits).  Biological patterns exist in static patterns that enable static patterns of social life, which rely on biology without being determined by it (the same way computer software applications rely on programming languages: the languages make the applications possible, but you could not predict the particular historical developments of the applications from the languages).  Finally, social patterns exist in static patterns that enable static intellectual patterns, which rely on society without being determined by it (the same way a novel in a word-processing application relies on that software to exist without being deducible from it: my knowledge that OpenOffice exists does not tell me what novel you may be using it to write right now).

(2) Dynamic quality is the wildcard, the irregularity that makes quality impossible for us to understand (i.e. the simple quality that Pirsig talks about in his first book).  Dynamic quality is rebellious: for some reason, inorganic molecules decide to work against forces of natural decay in the universe; they join together in ways that allow biological life to exist (against expectations).  Then, for some reason, biological life works against the restrictions of physical reality, fighting against forces of decay to create more and more complex organisms that challenge physical laws (like gravity: all organisms move--crawling, walking, or flying in defiance of the forces pulling them down).  On top of this, organisms come together (for some unknown reason) and create social conventions, taking the biological value known as sex (for example) and overlaying it with rules known as marriage.  Finally, human beings (and maybe other living things too) reflect rationally on the existence of social norms (like marriage) and try to make these rational (e.g. extending the benefits of marriage to different kinds of people who merit them, say homosexuals or people of a different race or creed than the dominant one in a particular culture).  Dynamic quality always bucks the regular systems of static quality, challenging the norms that hold these systems together.  It occasions the transformation of static order, altering the nature of a static system radically and unpredictably.

At one point in the book, the author recounts an anecdote from the modern history of the Zuni people in North America.  In a particular Zuni community, there was an odd man who flouted social norms, peeping in windows without talking to his fellow tribesmen.  The Zuni call such people witches (brujos in Spanish: Pirsig prefers the Spanish term because it carries less problematic baggage than the English witch).  One day, he got drunk and told the local authorities (priests) that they would never control him.  They arrested him and hung him up by his thumbs.  He sent for local Western authorities (off the reservation), who rescued him (and took him to the hospital).  Afterwards, the priests who had disciplined him resigned their authority in the community, and the witch became the community leader.  He ended up leading the Zuni into a new kind of social order, one in which relations with the Westerners was more cordial and open (in part because he made a point of meeting regularly with outsiders and sharing Zuni stories with them).  Western anthropologists had a hard time explaining this event because they wanted to make the brujo a conventional leader in his society.  They tried to understand his rise to prominence in Zuni terms, seeing it as a natural event inside the traditional Zuni culture.  From Pirsig's point of view, this is the wrong approach, precisely because the brujo's power came from outside the Zuni.  He was not traditional.  He was dynamic, innovative, a wild card.  This is why the priests, guardians of traditional Zuni culture, attempted to suppress him.  He represented a dynamic threat to the static quality of their society.

Every social order produces outcasts, people on the fringes who don't exactly belong.  These people can be dangerous.  They represent a challenge to the stability of static quality (which provides some benefits: order, predictability, regularity).  But they are not always dangerous.  No static state is ever perfect.  Each lacks something.  Each is maladapted in some respect.  The outsiders can help here.  Given the chance, they can transform the static quality of an established community so that it survives as circumstances around it alter.  The old Zuni priests were less adept in preserving their society from outside influence.  The brujo became a leader because he was better at dealing with people and culture outside Zuni.  He used his position as an outsider to make the position of the Zuni people safer than it was, insuring the survival of Zuni better than the priests could by changing the nature of the community (in ways that the priests found utterly abhorrent).

I confess I sometimes feel like a Mormon brujo.  While I have no intention of being a leader, I do value certain things in Mormon culture (the focus on friends and family, the commandment that every man seek his or her own divine revelation, the drive for a community that is something more than just abstract economics seeking to amass the most material wealth possible).  I have always valued these things.  I thought the institutional church valued them the same way I did.  Even when my personal position on certain matters differed from positions held by institutional leaders, I thought we were on the same team, interested in pursuing the same overarching goals.  To some extent, I think we still are.  But I think that many Mormon priesthood leaders have much less sympathy for me than I once believed.  I think they are barely willing that people such as I exist, provided we keep our mouths shut and defer to their judgment without protest (however rational or respectful).  I don't think they should give in to us.  I don't think the church would be better led if they all abdicated and handed power over to folk of the fringe, such as I have been most of my life.  But I wish there was a place for us in Mormon culture, a place for modern backsliders like Sterling McMurrin, who believe in the gospel even if they insist on misunderstanding it (from the point of view of someone like Joseph Fielding Smith or Bruce R. McConkie).  If that place had existed, then I might still be an active Mormon today.  But I am not really the Zuni brujo.  I am not willing to be hung by the thumbs to save the community.  Forced to choose between saving myself and saving Mormonism, I admit I picked me.  No hard feelings, I hope.

In Pirsig's book, he talks about the twentieth century as a war between social quality (the Victorianism of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in the West, especially the USA) and intellectual quality (the drive to make society rational).  He takes the side of intellectual quality against social, arguing that it is more moral for an idea to destroy society than for society to destroy an idea.  I confess I am not convinced he is right.  To me, it seems that ideas are too unpredictable and dangerous to merit that kind of respect.  But I do wish that we could find better ways in the USA of accommodating outsiders (including intellectuals) who want to participate in society in a positive way without crucifying themselves in the process.  While I do not fight with Pirsig in the war, I do think that the war is there, and I do not think we are fighting it in the best manner possible.  There are better ways to deal with me than forcing me to become a liar (heretic) or an apostate (outcast).  Or maybe I just wish there were.  Sometimes, life is just really tough (a problem without happy solution). 

Capitalism vs. Socialism: False Dichotomy

Upton Sinclair.  The Jungle.  Originally published in 1906, with many subsequent editions.  Below, I am citing the 2002 Norton Critical Edition.

I recently read this book for a class I will be teaching in the coming semester.  I found it interesting and disturbing.  In many ways, it embodies a false dichotomy that I see stretching all across the twentieth century (at least) and on into the present.  Here the dichotomy appears as "capitalism" vs. "socialism" -- with the capitalist being a profit-seeking thug and the socialist being a saint who believes in and supports values that cannot be monetized.

The novel's portrait of evil capitalism (profit-seeking by Chicago's ruling business class) is gripping, historically accurate, and very damning:  

It was a war of each against all, and the devil take the hindmost.  You did not give feasts to other people, you waited for them to give feasts to you.  You went about with your soul full of suspicion and hatred; you understood that you were environed by hostile powers that were trying to get your money, and who used all the virtues to bait their traps with.  The storekeepers plastered up their windows with all sorts of lies to entice you; the very fences by the wayside, the lamp-posts and telegraph-poles, were pasted over with lies.  The great corporation which employed you lied to you, and lied to the whole country -- from top to bottom it was nothing but one gigantic lie (74).

There is a good deal of truth here.  I myself have lived out a little, tame version of the monstruous evil that devours Jurgis Rudkus and his family in Sinclair's book.  In the course of scratching other's backs so that they might scratch mine, I have done some things of which I am not altogether proud.  And I have certainly believed the noble lie of Plato, a lie that effaces the bad that our social institutions do so that we may love them -- and the good that they also do -- more.

For me, one of the most painful passages was the one describing how modern food processing works (if you do some research, you will see that while some things have improved since Sinclair's day, the fundamentals have not really altered that much: processed food is still mostly crap that no one should eat as a staple, unless he wants to die early and in pain):

There were many such dangers, in which the odds were all against them.  Their children were not as well as they had been at home [in Lithuania]; but how could they know that there was no sewer to their house, that all the drainage of fifteen years was in a cesspool under it?  How could they know that the pale blue milk that they bought around the corner was watered, and doctored with formaldehyde besides?  When the children were not well at home, Teta Elzbieta would gather herbs and cure them; now she was obliged to go to the drug-store and buy extracts -- and how was she to know that they were all adulterated?  How could they find out that their tea and coffee, their sugar and flour, had been doctored; that their canned peas had been colored with copper salts, and their fruit jams with aniline dyes?  And even if they had known it, what good would it have done them, since there was no place within miles of them where any other sort was to be had?  The bitter winter was coming, and they had to save money to get more clothing and bedding; but it would not matter in the least how much they saved, they could not get anything to keep them warm.  All the clothing that was to be had in the stores was made of cotton and shoddy, which is made by tearing old clothes to pieces and weaving the fibre again.  If they paid higher prices, they might get frills and fanciness, or be cheated; but genuine quality they could not obtain for love or money (75).

Here is a neat little illustration of how profit simply does not work as a motivator.  People should make and get food for nourishment, not for money.  When money is the reason for dinner, we forget that quality is actually a concern -- that it cannot be made up for in terms of quantity or cheapness.  (I don't care how cheap wood-shavings are, or how much more I can get if I buy them for my kids instead of real food: they aren't palatable.  They produce death instead of life.  The cheap dinner that they provide isn't worth anything, no matter how much money someone else may make off it.)

Sinclair's description of the jailbirds worn down by society rings true today too, when the USA imprisons more people than any other nation on earth, and will do anything to save its morally bankrupt captains of industry (pillars of society, lords of creation, etc., etc.):

This jail was a Noah's ark of the city's crime --  there were murderers, "hold-up men," and burglars, embezzlers, counterfeiters and forgers, bigamists, "shoplifters," "confidence men," petty thieves and pickpockets, gamblers and procurers, brawlers, beggars, tramps and drunkards; they were black and white, old and young, Americans and natives of every nation under the sun.  There were hardened criminals and innocent men too poor to give bail; old men, and boys not yet in their teens.  They were the drainage of the great festering ulcer of society; they were hideous to look upon, sickening to talk to.  All life had turned to rottenness and stench in them -- love was a beastliness, joy was a snare, and God was an imprecation ... They could tell the whole hateful story of it, set forth the inner soul of a city in which justice and honor, women's bodies and men's souls, were for sale in the market-place, and human beings writhed and fought and fell upon each other like wolves in a pit; in which lusts were raging fires, and men were fuel, and humanity was festering and stewing and wallowing in its own corruption.  Into this wild-beast tangle these men had been born without their consent, they had taken part in it because they could not help it; that they were in jail was no disgrace to them, for the game had never been fair, the dice were loaded.  They were swindlers and thieves of pennies and dimes, and they had been trapped and put out of the way by the swindlers and thieves of millions of dollars (159-160).

In many ways, Sinclair's portrait of Chicago riff-raff reminds me of what many Mormons think about apostates from the faith, who are sometimes caricatured as utterly immoral, dangerous people merely because they are no longer members of the LDS church or do not believe simply in the truth of certain historical and/or intellectual propositions.  But Mormons are by no means the only people to separate the world into good and evil along false fault lines.  Many others among us, including many Americans today, turn a blind eye to immoral behavior when it occurs among "our set" as opposed to "the enemy" (who may be Democrats or Republicans, liberals or conservatives, homosexuals or heterosexuals, wealthy or poor, people of faith or people who explicitly renounce traditional faith).  The fact is that we are all human, and we all behave humanly.  No one is above his own humanity, no matter what group he belongs to.  And dressing crimes up in pretty clothes and legal language doesn't make them less criminal, any more than slandering your enemy with false charges makes him a guilty wretch worthy of whatever vile fate you may wish for him.

Along the way toward redemption (as a Socialist!), Jurgis encounters a preacher, whose spiel puts me in mind of the old Mormon endowment ceremony (before it was changed in 1990):

The evangelist was preaching "sin and redemption," the infinite grace of God and His pardon for human frailty.  He was very much in earnest, and he meant well, but Jurgis, as he listened, found his soul filled with hatred.  What did he know about sin and suffering -- with his smooth, black coat and his neatly starched collar, his body warm, and his belly full, and money in his pocket -- and lecturing men who were struggling for their lives, men at the death-grapple with the demon powers of hunger and cold! -- This, of course, was unfair; but Jurgis felt that these men were out of touch with the life they discussed, that they were unfitted to solve its problems; nay, they themselves were part of the problem -- they were part of the order established that was crushing men down and beating them!  They were of the triumphant and insolent possessors; they had a hall, and a fire, and food and clothing and money, and so they might preach to hungry men, and the hungry men must be humble and listen!  They were trying to save their souls -- and who but a fool could fail to see that all that was the matter with their souls was that they had not been able to get a decent existence for their bodies? (218)

Jurgis' experience here is an exaggerated version of mine.  He was in desperate physical need.  I had desperate psychological (spiritual) needs.  Neither one of us did very well with the earnest testimony of the preacher who refused to be answerable in practice for the doctrine he preached.  Theory has to evolve with practice, or both become useless.  Really useful doctrine is the kind that evolves when circumstances require it to.  The doctrine of more wood on the fire works fine, until I have exhausted the capacity of my fireplace and am burning down my house.  I hold unshaken faith in that doctrine at my own peril, and whatever short-term warmth I provide in burning my house down by it is insignificant compared with the long-term harm (smoke inhalation, serious burns, homelessness, etc.).  Few successes can compensate for failure to survive.  I confess I don't appreciate commandments from people who have not been where I am and yet presume to dictate to me unilaterally from their experience, as though it were some kind of authoritative blueprint for mine.  My life is not a plan for yours, and yours is no plan for mine.  Don't tell me that I have to live precisely as you would or be damned: that is a lie, no matter how fervently you believe it, and it is also offensive (even when you studiously avoid "strong language" in presenting it to me: nothing says fuck you! like the kind of patronizing condescension that too often passes for Christian charity).  I am not saying that preachers should be rude, only that there is more than one way to be rude -- and that in my view, the greatest rudeness is to assume that other people are helpless morons whose vision of reality will never be worth anything until it coincides perfectly with that of the preacher.

At one point, Sinclair introduces a senator singing the praises of "capitalism" (which Sinclair consistently portrays in a patently demonic light):

The eloquent senator was explaining the system of Protection; an ingenious device whereby the working-man permitted the manufacturer to charge him higher prices, in order that he might receive higher wages; thus taking his money out of his pocket with one hand, and putting a part of it back with the other.  To the senator, this unique arrangement had somehow become identified with the higher verities of the universe.  It was because of it that Columbia was the gem of the ocean; and all her future triumphs, her power and her good repute among the nations, depended upon the zeal and fidelity with which each citizen held up the hands of those who were toiling to maintain it.  The name of this heroic company was "the Grand Old Party" -- and here the band began to play, and Jurgis sat up with a violent start.  Singular as it may seem, Jurgis was making a desperate effort to understand what the senator was saying ... (271)

So capitalists are incoherent morons who advocate eating the poor for breakfast (and tell the poor to get over it and enjoy the process because it's good for them!).  But socialists, in Sinclair's view, are entirely different.  Cue the Socialist orator who converts Jurgis with this speech:

"It will be a movement beginning in the far-off past, a thing easy to ridicule, easy to despise: a thing unlovely, wearing the aspect of vengeance and hate -- but to you, the working-man, the wage-slave, calling with a voice insistent, imperious ... With the voice of all your wrongs, with the voice of all your desires ... The voice of the oppressed, pronouncing the doom of oppression!  The voice of power, wrought out of suffering ... The voice of Labor, despised and outraged; a mighty giant, lying prostrate ... And now a dream of resistance haunts him, and in a flash the dream becomes an act!  He starts, he lifts himself; and the bands are shattered, the burdens roll off him; he rises -- towering, gigantic; he springs to his feet; he shouts in his new-born exultation --" ... The audience came to its feet with a yell.  And Jurgis was with them, he was shouting to tear his throat; shouting because he could not help it, because the stress of his feeling was more than he could bear ... There was an unfolding of vistas before him, a breaking of the ground beneath him, an upheaving, a stirring, a trembling; he felt himself suddenly a mere man no longer -- there were powers within him undreamed of, there were demon forces contending, age-long wonders struggling to be born ... And when he could shout no more he still stood there, gasping, and whispering hoarsely to himself: "By God!  By God!  By God!" (291-292)

This passage describes a patently religious experience (much like many of my own personal religious experiences: here too I can identify with Jurgis, who is utterly swept away by the beautiful words from Sinclair's prophet of Socialism).  Further investigation confirms Jurgis in his new-found faith, whose tenets Sinclair lays out more matter-of-factly later on:

And so all over the world two classes were forming, with an unbridged chasm between them, -- the capitalist class, with its enormous fortunes, and the proletariat, bound into slavery by unseen chains.  The latter were a thousand to one in numbers, but they were ignorant and helpless, and they would remain at the mercy of their exploiters until they were organized -- until they became "class-conscious" ... Every Socialist did his share, and lived upon the vision of the "good time coming," -- when the working-class should go to the polls and seize the powers of government and put an end to private property in the means of production (296-297).

Jurgis is swept away with the wash of understanding that frequently accompanies religious conversion (again, in my experience too).  He gets the world now.  Everything makes perfect sense:

Until long after midnight Jurgis sat lost in the conversation of his new acquaintance.  It was a most wonderful experience to him -- an almost supernatural experience.  It was like encountering an inhabitant of the fourth dimension of space, a being who was free from one's own limitations.  For four years now, Jurgis had been wandering and blundering in the depths of a wilderness; and here, suddenly, a hand reached down and seized him, and lifted him out of it, and set him upon a mountain-top, from which he could see it all, -- could see the paths from which he had wandered, the morasses into which he had stumbled, the hiding-places of the beasts of prey that had fallen upon him ... To Jurgis the packers had been equivalent to fate; Ostrinksi showed him that they were the Beef Trust.  They were a gigantic combination of capital, which had crushed all opposition, and overthrown the laws of the land, and was preying upon the people ... What they wanted from a hog was all the profits that could be got out of him; and that was what they wanted from the working-man, and also that was what they wanted from the public.  What the hog thought of it, and what he suffered, were not considered; and no more was it with labor, and no more with the purchaser of the meat.  That was true everywhere in the world, but it was especially true in Packingtown ... it was literally the fact that in the methods of the packers a hundred human lives did not balance a penny of profit (299).

There is much to be said for Sinclair's (and Jurgis') Socialism.  The bit about profiteers devaluing life is demonstrably true (in history).  That "capitalist" society has problems (and had them, in Sinclair's time) is not something I would dispute.  But I am not convinced by the solution.  I instinctively gravitate toward the kind of skepticism exemplified by Jurgis' mother-in-law Elzbieta:

Jurgis was destined to find that Elzbieta's armor was absolutely impervious to Socialism.  Her soul had been baked hard in the fire of adversity, and there was no altering it now; life to her was the hunt for daily bread, and ideas existed for her only as they bore upon that.  All that interested her in regard to this new frenzy that had seized upon her son-in-law was whether or not it had a tendency to make him sober and industrious; and when she found he intended to look for work and to contribute his share to the family fund, she gave him full rein to convince her of anything (301).

I believe in good people, but I don't know about good systems, good dogma, good -isms.  They all sound so good when their most persuasive prophets present them.  Out here in the real world, Socialists aren't the only good speakers, and the rosy portrait Sinclair paints is belied by history, which has crushed every Socialist experiment in the last century with ruthless disregard for the religious fervor of men like Jurgis.  Where was Sinclair's Socialism when the Soviet regime collapsed, when former Yugoslavs began murdering each other pell mell?  These days, Sinclair's book strikes me as rather an accurate portrait of disease than any reliable sort of cure.  (Lewis Mumford comes closer to offering a kind of Socialist cure in Technics and Civilization, but even he was overly optimistic about the Soviet experiment.)

I think it is more useful to consider how capitalism and socialism are the same than to imagine how they are different.  As historical entities, both regimes exist as large organizations of human beings vying for power.  The twentieth century is not the story of how capitalism works and socialism doesn't: it is the story of how large associations of people become fragile and go bust, no matter what kind of -ism they carry around as their one true gospel.  The Soviet regime collapsed, yes, but so did Wall Street -- and the Eurozone is not far behind.  (In my view, the bailouts are all failures: the only safe future for the market is outside of monstruous companies whose survival depends on coerced input from clueless taxpayers, who might as well be held at gunpoint.)  The twentieth century is not about evil socialists losing out to righteous capitalists: it is about companies becoming too big not to fail.  You can call the tendency of companies to outgrow safe bounds whatever you please (capitalism, socialism, crony capitalism, protectionism, monopolism, free market economy, etc.), but it is what it is.  Dame Fortune doesn't care what you call your obese company (be it a government, a multinational, or a church) or what kind of rhetorical mumbo-jumbo you use to sell it to the saps who own shares (because they want to or because you forced them to pony up): she's gunning for you.