Across the Socialist Divide. Although I would not claim, as a self-professed Social Theocrat, to be a socialist, it is incontrovertible to me that socialism comes in different guises and that it can be as antithetical in character as the southwest and southeast points of the intercardinal axial compass that I am always going on about. By which I mean that socialism can be either bureaucratic or democratic, political or economic, and therefore conditioned either by the equivocal hegemony of chemistry over antiphysics in the one case or by the no-less equivocal hegemony of physics over antichemistry in the other case, so that one is obliged to posit a gender dichotomy between lower-class politics and anti-middleclass anti-economics in the case of the southwest point of the axial compass and, conversely, between middle-class economics and anti-lowerclass antipolitics in the case of the southeast point of the said compass, the former naturally making, in its political bias, for bureaucratic socialism, the latter, in its economic bias, for democratic socialism, whether or not we extrapolate social bureaucracy or social democracy from each of the ethnically antithetical positions. For certainly such extrapolations can be made, if on the paradoxical basis of political vanity taking precedence over anti-economic meekness in the case of social bureaucracy and of economic righteousness taking precedence over antipolitical justice in the case of social democracy. Hence the distinction between the political and economic forms of socialism, the one conditioned by vanity and the other by righteousness, is such that it is inconceivable that they could co-exist in the same party or movement, even if, in practice, vanity is duly overturned by meekness as male values begin to encroach upon the female hegemony the more bureaucratic socialism is displaced by social bureaucracy and, across the axial divide, righteousness is duly overturned by justice as female values begin to encroach upon the male hegemony the more democratic socialism is displaced by social democracy, neither the one nor the other living up or, rather, down to its name but displaying symptoms at cross-purposes with itself in relation to either antidemocracy in the case of social bureaucracy or antibureaucracy in the case of social democracy. Therefore meekness in the former and justice in the latter become the paradoxically totalitarian terms upon which politics and economics rear social bureaucratic and social democratic heads, to the detriment of vanity and righteousness respectively. Each sinks to the lowest-common-denominator, but in diametrically antithetical ways such that display male and female divergences from what, in bureaucratic socialism, would have been a female hegemony and, in democratic socialism, a male one. Bureaucratic politics fuels antidemocratic anti-economics in the one case, while democratic politics fuels antibureaucratic antipolitics in the other case. The antihumanistic meek put on military boots and stomp over their democratic neighbours, while the just don the garments of economic righteousness from a standpoint rooted in proletarian humanism and an antipathy to politics which breeds totalitarian opposition to bureaucratic freedom. Whereas social bureaucracy is the anti-economic corruption of bureaucratic socialism, social democracy is the antipolitical corruption of democratic socialism. The former co-opts politics to an anti-economic crusade against democracy. The latter hijacks economics in its antipolitical struggle with bureaucracy. Neither of them can lead to anything worthy of lasting respect, for they bring politics and economics down to the crass level of their respective forms of anti-economic and antipolitical state totalitarianism, which is the nadir of all things socialist, whether on a nationalistic male basis or on an internationalistic female basis. For, of course, the male is more centripetal than centrifugal in his subjectivity and the female, by contrast, more centrifugal than centripetal in her objectivity. Male subversion of the one (from out a catholic tradition) and female subversion of the other (from out a non-catholic tradition) breeds the respective perversions of bureaucratic socialism and democratic socialism that we have identified with the great totalitarian divide of so-called social bureaucracy and so-called social democracy, neither of which, as we have seen, have anything particularly bureaucratic or democratic to commend them. For, as we have also seen, the eclipse of bureaucracy by antidemocracy and the eclipse of democracy by antibureaucracy is what gives them their respective anti-economic and antipolitical cutting edges, at least until the time those edges blunt themselves on their mutually-assured totalitarian opposition.