THE PRICE OF CONFORMITY
The collapse of the Soviet Union has been attributed to a range of factors, including a failure to resolve what Kremlinologists called the “red versus expert” dilemma.
By “red versus expert” was meant the tension between ideological reliability (in this case fealty to Marxism-Leninism) on the one hand and the kind of expertise necessary for economic development on the other. In short, do you promote people on the basis of their conformity to the official ideology or on the basis of their talent, given that the two are unlikely to co-exist in many cases?
As communist states attempted to move from industrial to post-industrial status, the need for technocratic expertise became more pressing, creating greater conflict between the goals of ideological stability and scientific/technological innovation. Either the regime relaxed its ideological orthodoxy, and thus risked subversion, or maintained it at the cost of increasingly dismal economic performance.
All of this flows to mind because of what occurred at Google involving James Damore, the software engineer who challenged the reigning ideology of “diversity” at Google with a memo that made three generally unobjectionable points — that promoting people on the basis of merit (“expertise”) might ensure the company’s success to a greater extent than promotion on the basis of race or gender; that diversity of ideas might be more important than other, more superficial kinds; and that not all discrepancies between men and women are necessarily caused by sexism (gender differences can also influence career decisions). None of this is or should be at all controversial; but it was too much for Google, which concisely proved Damore’s points about its intolerance and ideological echo chamber by firing him.
About all of which, a number of additional observations.
First, that great irony is found in the claim that Silicon Valley has become an ideological bubble with an official ideology. It was, after all, Silicon Valley which inspired and became the symbol for post-industrialism.
Second, that corporate America might soon, like communist regimes did, begin to pay the price for too often elevating ideology over merit. Conformity and competence rarely go together, and the creative people who propel technological innovation to the benefit of the rest of us require the free flow of information and the ability to question things without fear of reprisals.
Third, that the concept of diversity based purely on race and gender embraced by Google is incompatible with the diversity of ideas because supporters of racial/gender diversity won’t allow any ideas that contain any criticism of it. As with Marxism-Leninism, Google’s official ideology can be maintained only by punishing dissent.
Finally, that the most appalling thing about coerced ideological conformity (whether called the “party line” in communist states or “political correctness” on our college campuses and at Google) is the manner in which it forces ordinary people to pretend to believe in lies; to, in essence, become complicit over time in deceit.
Few people believed in Marxism-Leninism by the end of the Soviet experiment. But everyone had to at least pretend to believe, as Damore’s more craven critics apparently believe he should have done. They went along to get along.
Communist states were built on lies that everyone knew were lies.
One suspects that, so too, are the ideological echo chambers at our universities and Google.
Andrew Sullivan nicely captured this suffocating conformity by noting that, “A man [Damore] has been demonized and fired solely for expressing his views in civil language backed up by facts. He used no slurs. He discriminated against no one in the workplace. He was great at his job. Worse, anyone who might share these views now knows they have to keep silent at Google or be terminated. This atmosphere in the American workplace — now backed by some of the most powerful companies on Earth—is thereby increasingly totalitarian.”
So who, other than creepy little apparatchiks, would want to work at such a place?
Bradley R. Gitz lives and teaches in Batesville, Ark.