I recently posted about two broad lenses one can use to analyze political activism. Another type I call “activism as production,” which occurs when activists are motivated by a desire to help produce some kind of social good — better environmental health, an improved justice system, and so on. Another type is what I would call “activism as food,” which occurs when activists are motivated by the satisfaction they derive from activism itself – a sense of community, social status, pride in “being part of the solution” or “being in a group. on the right side of history,” and so on. As I said in that post, these are not the only two lenses through which we can view activism, and they are not mutually exclusive. Any given person or organization can be motivated by both, or both to varying degrees. But over time, we should expect to see a trend where it is more prominent.
This is because activism is subject to what Anthony de Jasay has called “The Law of the Gresham Center,” which I have described. before. In economics, Gresham’s Law describes the tendency of bad money to drive good money out of circulation, when there is a fixed exchange rate between the two that prevents the situation from moving towards equilibrium. If exchange rates are allowed to fluctuate freely in the market, the effects of Gresham’s Law are prevented. Anthony de Jasay described Gresham’s Law of Institutions as the tendency for bad institutions to drive out good ones over time.
Institutions that prioritize their own growth and survival over the benefit of the community will drive out institutions that prioritize the benefit of the community over their growth and survival. Unlike money, there is nothing that works as an exchange rate that cannot keep this process in check. As de Jasay says, institutions are chosen by “favorable factors theirs to survive.” Therefore, the pressure to select institutions is not the survival of the fittest. It is what de Jasay calls “survival-of-the-fittest” – meaning the survival of institutions that prioritize their own growth and expansion over other factors such as what is in the best interest of society. As this program continues,
…the survivors [institutions] they may not be the most conducive to making the host civilization flourish and grow…For various reasons, we should expect the survival-of-the-fittest to produce more institutions with more monsters and without bias. in relation to the correctness and efficiency of instruments. In a race for survival, the latter may be outclassed by the former. It is quite consistent with this expectation that there is no notable trend in history for societies equipped with humane institutions to “succeed.”…Institutional Darwinism would work in the noble way associated with it, and a “good” civilization would spread, if the subject chosen by nature for its survival characteristics was the whole collection. -symbiotic of the governing society and its associated institutions. For this to be the case, the single parasitic centers in the set must lose more by weakening the host community than they gain by feeding on it. Gresham’s law would cease to apply, because “bad” institutions would not be able to survive the adverse reactions they face due to their parasitic actions that undermine their self-governing society, or they would change their positions through the selection process. . There is no evidence to prove that assumption.
The same can happen later with activism. Suppose there are two activist organizations dedicated to helping alleviate the same social problem. One is a “good” institution, as described above, and the other is “bad”. Let’s say that over time, the social problem that both of these institutions are meant to solve is greatly reduced, and perhaps it will disappear completely. A “good” activist organization will acknowledge progress, realize that there is little need for what it does, and reduce the scope and level of its activism. A “bad” activist movement can deny that progress has been made, insist that things are worse than ever, and want to continue to expand the scope and scale of their activism. In time, the second movement will completely destroy the first – not because the second is better, but because it is worse. A bad institution has a lot to gain by convincing people that the problem it’s created to fix is big and growing, even if it’s small and shrinking.
This is also true at the individual level. As I said in my first post on this topic, being inspired by “activism as consumption” is a matter of degree, not a dichotomy. But for reasons of Institutional Gresham’s Law, we should expect in the long run to see a large proportion of “activists as edibles” outdo “campaigns as productive.” Paradoxically, those who are motivated by “passion as food” are the type of people who find “involvement” to be the greatest source of meaning, purpose, and satisfaction in their lives. I have certainly never met people who describe themselves this way. As the social crisis develops over time, we should expect to see those who see “involvement” as a means to an end being pushed out by those who see “involvement” as something to be pursued for its own sake.
But how reasonable is it that some people engage in “work as food”? Two researchers (themselves very sensitive to activism) he looked with this question. They begin by recounting Aristotle’s view of “man as a political animal by nature. Another assumption of this theory is that when people get involved in political activities, they express a basic motivation that is important to being human. If this is true, then Aristotle’s reasoning would further suggest that the degree to which people engage in political activism may be positively related to their well-being.” That is, political engagement is a deeply felt need that people feel motivated to pursue for their own sake.
They wanted to measure the extent to which activism provides personal psychological benefits, and under what conditions. What they found should come as no surprise – engaging in activism, in and of itself, provides people with significant personal psychological benefits. As they put it, “well-being was higher in the extent to which people self-identified as an activist, expressed commitment to an activist role, and reported engaging or intending to engage in activist behavior. Results were similar across dimensions of hedonic well-being (eg, life satisfaction and positive affect), eudaimonic well-being (eg, personal growth, purpose in life, power), and social well-being (eg, social integration). The results of both studies also suggest that activists are likely to experience the satisfaction of basic psychological needs, an indicator of the common experience of intrinsic motivation.” Thus, activism-as-consumption has a very fertile ground in which to grow.
The strength of this effect depends on many other factors, such as how strongly people agree with the statement “Being an activist is the core of who I am” – the type of person I had in mind when I described the worst case scenario for those who want it. “activism as consumption.” But even if only a small number of would-be activists fall into that category, because of the Gresham Institute Act, we should expect that there will be selective pressure over time for that group to dominate activist engagement. And if something like Institutional Gresham’s Law applies to political activism, it could explain what Eric Hoffer observed about mass movements — that over time, each mass movement “ends up like a racket, a cult, or a corporation.”
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