Wormhole Theory - Why the USSR was an anarcho-capitalist dystopia

 

           “Was that real communism?”

In this article, I will argue that the mainstream “left wing – right wing” axis of economics is obsolete when trying to diagnose the economy of “state communist / state socialist” states: the USSR and the Eastern bloc (Romania, Poland, etc.) before 1989, Mao’s China, etc. I will argue that the attempt at abolishing private propriety was a failed attempt, with its side-effect of creating a dual-economy: a country that managed two different opposite economies at once that lived in constant dialectical tension.

            The first quote that is relevant at here is Jacques Lacan’s “repression is the return of the repressed”. It is pretty much the same thing as Carl Jung’s theory of enantiodromia – the law of action and reaction of the psyche. The more you push something into the unconscious, the stronger it will surface back in the “reaction”. The equivalent of “repression” in political economics is censorship and banning. This was the standard practice in Soviet-style communism: markets were not abolished, but banned, that is, outlawed, which is a very important distinction.

            We can conclude here that markets were “repressed”, so to speak, into the unconscious of the Soviet Union. This split the economy into two: you had the “conscious ego” of the Soviet Union, which was a far-left authoritarian state which controlled every aspect of the economy. The markets did not disappear, instead they turned into black markets. Thus, black markets thrived under communism harder than ever, since the state did not regulate them anymore. Hence, the “unconscious id” of the Soviet Union also included a second “shadow economy”, that lived “behind the scenes”: a far-right libertarian/anarcho-capitalist dystopia where there were no rules and no regulations.

            We see here how the attempt at abolishing markets and private propriety only made them stronger. The question of the economy of the Soviet-style communism is not a question of left and right since it is not a question of “an economy” but of “two economies”: everyone who lived under communism lived under anarcho-capitalism at the same time. And thus, in the most seemingly paradoxical manner, the Soviet Union was as far-right economically as one could ever get, since the state did not get involved in the markets in any way, and it should have been the wet dream of any libertarian. Under your usual “centrist” liberal social democracy, all legal markets are regulated in some way or another by the state, and there are only a few black markets (drugs, prostitution, guns, etc.). Under communism, almost all markets were banned, and there existed black markets with CDs with Western movies and music, Western brand clothing, birth-control and chewing gum. Thus, in the attempt to control everything, the Soviet Union controlled nothing: all markets were unregulated. While in your regular social democracy (Finland, Sweden, Norway, etc.), the markets for brand clothing and chewing gum are regulated (because of being legal), in the Soviet Union, no market was regulated, and thus the “unconscious economy” was far-right libertarianism. Now the libertarians could finally be happy: the state finally got its hands out of the economy!

            This is again why communism was far-left and far-right simultaneously: the economy was split into two, and by the state controlling everything in one economy, it controlled nothing in the second (illegal) black market economy.

            We can also see here the answer to the question of whether “anarcho-capitalism” is an oxymoron or not. Certainly, anarcho-capitalism sounds oxymoronic, because without a state to protect contracts and private propriety, there would be no capitalism. However, this dialectic/contradiction can be sublated in Hegelian fashion through the splitting of the economy in two: who said that the state needs to be part of your economy? Thus, an anarcho-capitalist economy could theoretically exist in a country with no state if and only if it is protected by the state of another country.

            We see something similar happening in the Soviet Union: while we are not dealing with two countries, we are still dealing with two economies, sort of a “two countries living in one”: the establishment of the totalitarian left-wing state was the simulacrum that protected the illusion that there was no private propriety, thus being able to establish not only a “libertarian”/economically far-right unconscious economy, but actually an anarcho-capitalist economy, since the state had absolutely no implication in it, and it had absolutely no implication in it (it = black markets) because it was busy with something else. Hence, we could answer, yes, anarcho-capitalism is oxymoronic, and precisely because of that it is also possible, since all oxymorons/contradictions can be resolved through Hegelian sublation.

            This is why there are two answers to the question “In what economic system did Russians live before 1989?”: you can answer “authoritarian state communism” but you could also answer “anarcho-capitalism” and both would be just as valid, since they lived in two economies at once, where one was illegal, and the legal one existed as a simulacrum whose sole purpose was to hide the fact that the other (anarcho-capitalist) economy existed in the first place.

            Note that I am using simulacrum in the way that Jean Baudrillard describes it in his book “Simulacra and Simulation”:

 

Such is simulation, insofar as it is opposed to representation. Representation stems from the principle of the equivalence of the sign and of the real (even if this equivalence is Utopian, it is a fundamental axiom). Simulation, on the contrary, stems from the Utopia of the principle of equivalence, from the radical negation of the sign as value, from the sign as the reversion and death sentence of every reference. Whereas representation attempts to absorb simulation by interpreting it as a false representation, simulation envelops the whole edifice of representation itself as a simulacrum.

Such would be the successive phases of the image:

 -it is the reflection of a profound reality;

 -it masks and denatures a profound reality;

-it masks the absence of a profound reality;

-it has no relation to any reality whatsoever;

 -it is its own pure simulacrum.

In the first case, the image is a good appearance - representation is of the sacramental order. In the second, it is an evil appearance - it is of the order of maleficence. In the third, it plays at being an appearance - it is of the order of sorcery. In the fourth, it is no longer of the order of appearances, but of simulation. The transition from signs that dissimulate something to signs that dissimulate that there is nothing marks a decisive turning point. The first reflects a theology of truth and secrecy (to which the notion of ideology still belongs). The second inaugurates the era of simulacra and of simulation, in which there is no longer a God to recognize his own, no longer a Last Judgment to separate the false from the true, the real from its artificial resurrection, as everything is already dead and resurrected in advance.

(Jean Baudrillard, “Simulacra and Simulation”, Chapter I: The Precession of Simulacra)

 

            The existence of a “completely” regulated economy, a state that controls everything, was not a “perversion” of a reality that was represented, but an illusion that existed only to hide the fact that capitalism was never stopped in the first place. Thus, in the most ironical way, capitalism thrived on steroids under the rule of Stalin et. al.

            An important note I should make here is that what I am describing is NOT horseshoe theory! Horseshoe theory implies that far-left and far-right extremists are supporting the same thing! But this is not true, I argue here that in fact they supported opposite things, and precisely because they are so different, they could both prosper inside the same country through the process of splitting the economy in two. Far-left and far-right (economic) extremism (here, I am using “left” and “right” to describe only the state’s intervention in the economy, not in regards to social issues) are very different, so I do not agree with horseshoe theory, but because they are so different, they reinforce each other (through the law of “action and reaction” so to speak – the pendulum swings back!). Inside Soviet-style communism, authoritarian state-socialism and anarcho-capitalism were NOT the same, they were “different but co-existent/co-habiting”.

            This is why I refer back to the Hegelian dialectic in order to understand the myth of horseshoe theory: let’s take this question as an example: “When you are at the gym lifting weights, is the weight an obstacle to your goals or an aid?”. On one hand, it is an obstacle in your goal of lifting the weight, but an aid in your goal of gaining muscle, and the more of an obstacle it is (in one sense), the less of an obstacle it is (in the other sense). This does not mean that there is one goal, or one point of convergence, there is a constant tension of opposites, a constant dialectical contradiction, and the only way to resolve it is through the introduction of a third dimension: an aid and an obstacle are not the same, they are opposite but co-existent. A heavy weight increases its status as an aid by increasing its status as an obstacle and vice-versa because it has two statuses at once, not because the two statuses converge in one! And it is the same thing with the human psyche, where conscious contents amplify the opposite unconscious contents, but that does not mean they are the same, it means they are opposite but co-existing in the same mind, and the more you push in one direction, the harder the pendulum swings back in the other.

            I would personally replace horseshoe theory with wormhole theory, a term I invented myself. Imagine that you live in a two-dimensional world: a piece of paper. One way in which you can teleport from one hole to another, is for a three-dimensional human to fold the paper in two such that the two holes overlap – this is what is known as a “wormhole”. We can take the analogy further to say that in cosmic space, wormholes are portals to travel in 3D-space by the flipping of the fourth dimension that humans do not have access to. It is in this way that we can imagine the dialectical tension between opposites (such as the dialectic between “left-wing economic extremism” and “right-wing economic extremism”). It is not that “more state intervention in the economy” and “less state intervention in the economy” are one and the same (such as what horseshoe theory would suggest), in fact, it’s quite the opposite: they are very different, but the more you have of the former, the more you have of the latter in the black markets. The possibility for the two to co-exist in the same country puts them very “close together” inside three-dimensional space, and you could view the “portal” that takes you from the legal left-wing regulated market to the illegal unregulated black market as the wormhole.

            In order to better understand my wormhole theory, I will refer to a new TV show: Severance – the story of “the Severance procedure”, a procedure by which the “Lumon corporation” would induce dissociative amnesia in its employees, splitting their persona into two halves: their work personality and their home personality. Thus, the moment they entered their workplace, they forgot their memories and their identity from home, and when they exit, they forget everything that ever happened at work and they regain their initial memories. Each of their employees lived a dual life, with an “innie” at work and an “outie” outside work. Because of this memory-split, they did not know what they do at work or who they work with when they were at home, and vice-versa: while they were at work, they did not know who they were at home, what kind of life they had, they did not even know whether they were married or had kids outside work. The perspective was split: the “innies” at work would live their entire life at work, and after they would finish their schedule, they would simply perceive starting work the next day, as if they would “time-travel” from the end of work day 1 to work day 2. Similarly for their outies: they would enter work at 9, and the next second they would wake up at 5 in the same elevator.

            Because their home-personalities (“outies”) did not remember anything from work, the company could theoretically get away with shady practices without being reported.

            It is in this exact way that we can understand wormhole theory – the “gateway” or “portal” that teleports you between the two personas that do not remember each other. The economy of the Soviet Union was severed. While “at home” (while under communism), no one remembered what happened “at work” (in the capitalist black markets), which meant that now capitalism could become even stronger, it was unregulated, the state would not intervene in the black markets, people could get away with shady practices, etc…