This is the first of two conclusions whence the theory draws new explanations and conclusions, unlike standard arguments from intelligent design, in three steps:
- Deducing the intent to maximize free will
- Linking biological and political evolution
- Integrating the theory of dialectical materialism.
Deducing the Intent to Maximize Free Will
If put aside how we perceive God, and instead consider what a Creator who uses evolution as a tool would want to create:
- We first can notice that a Divine Being would have spectacular cosmological phenomena to enjoy, but the laws of physics are predictably mechanical, so after a while, it would not continue to be interesting. We can’t know if a Creator could get bored, which would be the human reaction.
- Regardless what one thinks a Creator might experience, we can be certain a Creator wants to experience something different from the Creation, otherwise, there would be no reason to make it. After a while, the rules of physics would not make anything different by themselves alone.
- Therefore, a Creator wants the existence of free will.
- Further, we know that if the Creator has any preference in what we do, there cannot be indisputable evidence of a Creator’s existence, for that would force us to act with respect to knowing of the Creator’s existence.
The creation of free will within material physicality requires not only the creation of a physical mechanism to enable reasoning, but also, an environment where personal choices resulting from the ability to reason are possible, leading to political considerations, on which much knowledge already exists, as follows.
Linking Political with Biological Evolution
Part of the Creator’s choice was that there would not be a single individual with free will, but many. That raises the question, how would many people together let each other make free choices? For if we were all enslaved to one ruler, then a Creator would not find total free will more interesting than a single individual with the same complexity.
That introduces social evolution’s most powerful theory, advanced as ‘dialectical materialism’ by Marx and Engels.
Engels’ “Dialectics of Nature” (1925) included an earlier Engels essay that established the connection between dialectical materialism and evolution:
“By the combined functioning of hand, speech organs and brain, not only in each individual but also in society, men became capable of executing more and more complicated operations, and were able to set themselves, and achieve, higher and higher aims. The work of each generation itself became different, more perfect and more diversified.” Frierdrich Engels, “Dialectics of Nature: the Part played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man (1876)” Marxist Internet Archive. The Part Played by Labor in the Transition From Ape to Man
Once a social organism has hands and a brain, it organizes itself to control its environment as best it can in a progressively better manner, increasing freedom over successive generations in the same autonomous manner as selection forces advance biological evolution. Greater cooperation improves the quality of life, which enables new power structures to provide more freedom.
Engels thus pointed to the connection between biological evolution and political evolution a very long time ago. Marx held that increasing freedom is the purpose of political evolution:
“The realm of freedom actually begins only where labour which is determined by necessity and mundane considerations ceases; thus in the very nature of things it lies beyond the sphere of actual material production. Just as the savage must wrestle with Nature to satisfy his wants, to maintain and reproduce life, so must civilised man, and he must do so in all social formations and under all possible modes of production. With his development this realm of physical necessity expands as a result of his wants; but, at the same time, the forces of production which satisfy these wants also increase. Freedom in this field can only consist in socialised man, the associated producers, rationally regulating their interchange with Nature, bringing it under their common control, instead of being ruled by it as by the blind forces of Nature; and achieving this with the least expenditure of energy and under conditions most favourable to, and worthy of, their human nature. But it nonetheless still remains a realm of necessity. Beyond it begins that development of human energy which is an end in itself, the true realm of freedom, which, however, can blossom forth only with this realm of necessity as its basis. The shortening of the working-day is its basic prerequisite.” Karl Marx, Das Kapital (1867)
[F1] Integrating Dialectical Materialism
Similar to biological evolution, Marx’s system models how society evolves to increase the amount of free will, starting from a tribal culture, passing through feudalism, to capitalism and socialism.
*Ideal and Corrupted States: Marx and Aristtole
From the theory of dialectical materialism, Marx inferred a new political ideology that could eliminate illiteracy in the Plebeian class, called socialism.
- Socialism is an ideal, the practical implementation of which is called communism when it runs a state, with authoritarianism as its corruption. The ideal extends beyond communist implementations into all nations now, to varying degrees, as forms of socialist republics (which one could equate to omnivores in biology).
- The exact form of the culture is immaterial to dialectical materialism. The study of actual political systems, as opposed to their ideologies, is called historical materialism. Marx’s sponsor, Engels, was more interested in historical materialism. Engels’ objective was to establish that communism is better than democracy, so his work is focused on the product of labor.
Dialectical materialism’s distinction between ideal, actual, and corrupted states parallels Aristotle’s notion of democracy as a practical implementation of the ideal of timocracy (rule of the ambitious), with its corruption as plutocracy (rule of the rich):
“There are three kinds of constitution, and an equal number of deviation-forms–perversions, as it were, of them…The constitutions are monarchy, aristocracy, and…timocratic, though most people are wont to call it polity. The best of these is monarchy, the worst timocracy. The deviation from monarchy is tyranny…Aristocracy passes over into oligarchy by the badness of the rulers…Timocracy passes over into democracy…Democracy is the least bad of the deviations…” Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics, 1:10 (~400 BC).
- Note: In Aristotle’s era, “timocracy’” referred more to “rule of the ambitious,” although even then, some cynically used the term to refer to a “plutocracy,” rule of the rich. In the same way as the word “charity” has devolved from referring to Christian love to donation of money, “plutocracy” has devolved further.
Originally, Aristotle concluded that contemplation is the most virtuous objective of society, from which Marx inferred that socialism would be superior to timocracy in a largely uneducated nation. Marx inferred that socialism could eliminate the Plebeian class, renaming it to the Proletariat.
- The term “plebeian” had similarly devolved in Marx’s time to refer to idiots. It also sometimes refers to a class that has no right to vote, although in Roman times, only Plebeians who were freed slaves and their descendants had no right to vote. During the early Roman empire, so many slaves had been freed that almost all the Plebeians couldn’t vote, and the law was changed so that descendants of Plebeians could vote. But at that time the Roman emperors hadn’t left much power to the Senate, so it didn’t make much difference to Marx’s perspective on Plegeians.
- The Plebeian class in Russia couldn’t vote either, so Marx bridged the gap between Russia’s aristocratic rule and democracies in other countries by referring to the working class in both as the proletariat, with the common factor that they mostly couldn’t read.
Since Trump was elected, the general public has decided it knows much better than Aristotle what is good for democracy.
- Aristotle considered the cardinal virtues of self-restraint, prudence, respect for justice, and courage as especially important for political leaders in a democracy. From the perspective of TTE, the increasing absence of Aristotle’s cardinal virtues is increasing the partisan divide, exacerbating violence, and causing a deeper decline of democracy into plutocracy.
- From the perspective of dialectical materialism, the continuing collapse of Aristotelian virtues with greater wealth inequity will be eventually recertified by civil or world war, after which a better social order will emerge.
TTE thus considers the collapse of corrupted states an obvious prediction in accordance with wise design. They rise in power and destroy themselves with their own power, more than any outside influence, which was an intended part of the design of the universe and life, just as much as atoms and biological evolution were intended. From that, explanations and predictions can be derived for the past, current, and future evolution of politics and ethics. The value of the theory is in its explanations and predictions, which if found helpful strengthen the meaningfulness of the premise, regardless of one’s preferred personal belief. Just as biological evolution is ‘fairly automatic,’ Marx held that political evolution is also fairly automatic Neither system is perfect in prediction because intervening events, such as asteroids, can divert natural courses of development, for example, wiping out dinosaurs.