Endosocialism

Endosocialism is the ideology rather than the machinery, the position that ordering societies inside endogroup power structures is the right way to do it, and its opposite is exosocialism, the belief in universal freedom to uninhibited exosocial expansion. Marsh's claim about its reach is the important one. Endosocialism is what is currently accepted as universal truth, so the only alternatives on offer are proposed from within it, which is why arguments about how a society should be organized are usually arguments about which endogroup should hold power rather than about whether any should. What follows from adopting it is not incidental. Endosocialism is the natural home of the endoself, so hierarchy is inherent in the structure and so are cruelty and exploitation, which are increasingly encouraged in their own right rather than tolerated as costs. Destruction belongs to the same account. Since endogroups need to maintain an endosocial membrane and to access secondary euphoria, and both are achieved by destroying euphoric sources and conduits, destruction is a component of endosocialism rather than a failure of it. Marsh's example is the noise regulation that permits traffic and white noise while policing music and conversation, despite the evidence running the other way on cognitive effect. The framework does not treat this as two opposing forces in tension. Life has one purpose, exosocial expansion, and one force facilitating it, and endosocialism is what blocks it rather than a rival principle.

The word is Marsh's own construction and does not correspond to any established political label. Its nearest relatives are descriptive rather than prescriptive. Communitarianism defends the priority of the group over the unencumbered individual, corporatism organizes a polity through constituted bodies and the many literatures on tribalism, sectarianism and identity politics describe the phenomenon without endorsing it. Karl Popper's closed society, set against the open one, is probably the closest single parallel in intent. What Marsh's term adds is the claim that this is not one position among several currently contending but the default frame inside which the contending happens, which makes it harder to argue against than any named ideology and is precisely why she names it.