So far, plutocrats haven't shown much willingness to compromise. Image: Propaganda Remix Project.
Few would disagree that the contemporary capitalist societies of the Western world are in crisis. The crisis takes the form of a syndrome — a condition made up of a variety of symptoms that relate to each other in complex ways — including economic collapse, endless wars, climate chaos and energy depletion.
The symptom most likely to affect the lives of significant portions of the population in the near-term is the economic crisis, the jobs crisis, or, to put it more specifically, the inability of the financial management authorities to “grow the economy” sufficiently to ensure everyone has access to food, clothing, shelter and the basic respect required for democracy.
As I see it, the economic crisis is really a crisis of plutocratic governance and resource depletion. At this point in our history, capital, and the social power defined by capital, have become so concentrated in the hands of a minority, an overclass driven by self-interest, that a growing percentage of the population is in real danger of falling out the bottom of the mainstream society held together by capital-power.
So what happens from here?
Noblesse oblige
It is possible the plutocrats will seek to enact reform, as FDR did in the New Deal, introducing new programs and regulations and laws intended to effect some degree of sharing of the wealth produced by the growth society. This approach starts from the insight that if the money economy does not provide more or less everyone with food and shelter and a bit of free time, people will fall out of the money economy and no longer be integrated into the social system that produces profit for the wealth holders.
Ultimately, real “share the wealth” reform would have to be aimed at something like what the corporate pundits derisively call the “European model” in which tax policy is used to ensure the rich don’t get too rich and the poor don’t get too poor. But even if the plutocracy seeks the path of reform, it seems likely to be much harder to pull off now than in the 1930s, at least in part because of the intensified globalization of wealth accumulation, and in part because capitalism’s founding myth of infinite growth is running out of steam.
In the 1930s, the smarter plutocrats understood that keeping everyone on the inside of the system helped ensure the system’s continuation, a longer-term goal worth giving up some wealth-power to achieve. Of course, even back then there were strident opponents to reform among the economic elites, and today’s plutocrats don’t seem as smart as their ancestors. It is easy to imagine the plutocrats of the Fox News Era rejecting the idea of reform (“socialism!”) until it’s too late and the whole thing – capitalist modernity as a society and way of life – will burn itself out.
To me, this seems like the more likely scenario, especially considering the largely-ignored, happening-now consequences of climate chaos, caused (it is reasonable to believe) by the very lifeblood of modern capitalist society – the burning of fossil fuels. Throw in the impending crisis of increasing oil scarcity and it appears the whole modern capitalist Ponzi scheme – rooted in the delusion of infinite growth – has run its course – the bubble at the bottom of all the other bubbles appears to have burst.
So maybe the plutocrats will attempt reform, or maybe they’ll go down like the power-mad captain of a sinking ship. But no matter what, we shouldn’t be waiting around to see how they play the collapse. We should be asserting and enacting our basic democratic right to have a say in how our societies and lives are organized. The question for us, it seems to me, is which approach to pursue: reform or regroup.
Again, reform may not be possible, depending on how the plutocrats proceed. But if possible, some significant democratic reforms could include much more sharing of the wealth of society, the end of corporate personhood, proportional representation, cooperative nonprofit management of vital community resources, and other policies.
But can anyone really see this happening? In this society, at this time?
See you in hell first
Congress is holding out against taxes on the rich, come what may. Image: Propaganda Remix Project.
My sense is that some significant percentage of the wealthy, their lackeys, and minions would resist this kind of reform to the point of violence, willing to bring down everything rather than share power. Further, even if successful, it has to be noted that the power that would be shared is the power to manage a complex, centralized social system based on materialist consumption and profit, a social system on the brink of collapse.
Do we really want to share that power? Or should we do something different? Wouldn’t it be a better strategy, for future generations and our own peace of mind, to move past the idea of reform and head straight to “regroup”?
The crisis of capitalist modernity – the sudden shakiness of what had seemed so powerful and secure – provides an opportunity to regroup: to rethink and reorganize the ways we live our lives.
Through the cracks of our crumbling society we can glimpse the profound human truth underlying every society: the truth that we, as members of groups, create the reality of our societies and everyday lives. You can think – you can use language to communicate – you can work with others to get things done and make things happen; those capacities, those powers, those freedoms are the root of society and reality – it all comes from there, from us.
Taking to heart this profound truth about what it means to be human opens the beginning of a path to creating whole new societies, new voluntarily-associating, self-governing groups – “neopublics” whose ongoing democratic processes will lead to ideas and practices and ways of living we cannot even imagine from where we are now. In other words, for those of us who would go for regrouping rather than reform, the capitalist crisis presents an opportunity to start down a new, (r)evolutionary path of freedom and responsibility – the path of true democracy.
I would almost always support people using opportunities to fight for a more fair share of power, or better working conditions, or any issues involving the advance of democracy over plutocracy.
But I would also assert that the better longer term goal is not a fair share of the plutocrat’s power, but new ways of doing things, new democratic societies in which the kind of power plutocrats wield (power related to the elite management of a complex, highly-stratified, centralized society) does not exist.
— Art Martin
Thanks. Great work.
A couple of things:
First..much of the ‘wealth’ is simply numbers and the ‘accumulated’ wealth, as we are seeing with housing, will simply disappear because it never really existed in the first place as real value. It was just an inflated perception.
Poor people don’t see this like the ‘middle’ class, which perceives its wealth as a fraction of the rich’s wealth. Poor people see wealth in more real terms: “Can I buy food with this? Can I eat this? Can I live here?”, etc.
So, in that sense, I thing Regroup is the only viable answer. Regrouping from the bottom, especially including people who are accustomed to being poor. Rebuilding from the soil up, with skills, tools and recreating agreements about rights, civilization, and what it means to be human in a real universe (rather than the self-centered one with anthropocentric fantasies of an afterlife, etc.). No jobs. Just work that needs to be done and people to do that work. From there, you build community and dependencies that are not based on false value or inflated profits.
Risk distribution needs to be real risk and real, logical responses. (If a town gets flooded, you rebuild on higher ground, if tornadoes are a risk, you build underground or domes.)
This leads to different ideas of what ‘property ownership’ is, and whether you have the ‘right’ to inflict your ‘pursuit of happiness’ upon others.
Good points all, AG — I especially appreciate your pointing out the phantasm-like nature of much of capitalist “wealth,” the necessity of building up from the bottom, and the idea that we don’t need “jobs,” just the ability to make lives for ourselves.
My proposal for an agreement about rights, society, morality, and what it means to be human is here: http://democracylight.blogspot.com/2011/04/path-to-utopia-of-true-democracy.html
That was a really great article, but it contained perhaps too much optimism or faith in people to do things in an orderly, peaceful fashion. I think this ship will go down like any other plutocracy – with a lot of violence and aggression from the people who represent those who suffer the most.
DeChristopher, that brave fellow who will now spend considerable time behind bars, has reinforced through words, actions, and results what I have often suspected – that real change only ever comes when the people are fed up enough and suffering enough to stand up and do something. The “peaceful uprising” only takes a fellow so far, as Tim has discovered. The same sorts of revolutions that took place in the era of Socialist uprising will take place again, here. Look what has happened and is happening in the Middle East most recently. There is not enough of a difference between plutocracy and dictatorship to matter in the long run.
I won’t ramble further in this little response. I will just say I believe the future will look less like a “regroup” and more like a capricious usurpation. At least, in the interest of proper risk management, we should be prepared for the worst.
-S
I hear what you’re saying Shawn, and actually don’t foresee a particularly orderly and peaceful process on a society-wide scale. I imagine pockets of people will create increasingly autonomous, localized ways of life, mostly under the radar of the people with power, who will be distracted by natural and social disasters of all sorts, especially post peak oil, since the depletion of oil will sap the plutocracy of the primary source of it power. (Capitalism is bringing itself down; we don’t really have to do much in that regard.) In many places, new, emerging communities will probably have to defend themselves from outlaws and perhaps, eventually, when the relative success of the “Transition communities” starts to serve as an example to others, paramilitary forces representing the plutocrats who cannot stand the existence of viable alternatives over which they have no power. Hopefully the transition communities will have developed successful ways to defend themselves and resist interlopers, but who knows what will happen. Two things I am pretty sure of: (1) to have good societies — societies based on democracy — we need to exorcise the kind of power that holds together modern capitalist society; and (2) some percentage of people will decide it’s democracy or bust — it’s better to die free than live as the dupes of an immoral ruling class or totalitarian thugs.
“we need to exorcise the kind of power that holds together modern capitalist society”
Though this sounds good at first glance, it is simply the same ole story: fight the power with power ‘somehow’.
When we recognize that capitalism is a system that gets its power from the flow of money, there is a simple solution: tax the flow of money at the source in order to moderate how much is available as ‘free money’. When people make promises to work in exchange for products (debts), they indenture themselves to a system which promises to be there for them. If the costs at the point of purchase are too high, then they hesitate. (see “Limits to Growth”)
The capitalist powers that be have used debt, coercion, fear, and many other tools to eliminate that hesitation at the point of purchase so that people don’t realize they are “signing their life away” in exchange for nothing valuable.
I think the randomness of human nature is basically harvested by capitalism. The belief that we are going to all of a sudden become a different species without our animal desires is the type of belief that religions are made of.
As with most risk-based endeavors, the reliable solution for the species is to reduce exposure to big risks so that the day to day business of living can continue. In order to reduce the big risks of capitalism (and democracy, too), we have to reduce the big rewards which coerce people to take big risks, and we have to get people to live local lives which are less exposed to global politics and nationalist obsessions of ‘security’ that comes from wasting resources.
I think John Michael Greer gets it right that we will see a stair-stepping down of human activities. How large the steps are and when will be unpredictable, but the collapse will probably not happen all at once. Each step will be a regrouping based on available resources and fickle human desires and random leadership opportunities.
AuntyGrav, what do you think is possible in terms of disconnecting from money (as we know it) altogether? It seems to me the only way to pull the rug out from under all this destruction, and to stop the global casino in its tracks is to stop playing the game.
There are many alternatives, from LETS to Time Dollars (with mixed results) and even people working on ‘open source’ currency. Maybe finding other means of exchange will just happen as things break down, but the experience of the Great Depression would seem to say maybe not.
Is breaking people’s hypnosis a start? We are planning to ‘interrupt the signal’ with http://www.freemoneyday.org, as a little social experiment.
The belief in money is really the root of the problem, I think. This blind faith in economics has led the majority to a Promised Land that turns out to be filled with debts accumulated on the way to fight in the name of the money God.
Will people shed their belief that money comes from above? Maybe. When the money coming from above becomes worthless snow that buries them under drifting intentions. When they realize that there just isn’t any value coming along with the promises, and the only way they can get real value (food, etc) is to produce it or trade locally for it.
Meanwhile, there is a huge system of systems to keep people from realizing the true state of affairs. It just isn’t profitable to tell people that We Don’t Need Them.
http://dissidentvoice.org/Nov05/Carpenter1102.htm
Arthur, you stated, “…it’s better to die free than live as the dupes of an immoral ruling class or totalitarian thugs.”
Amen to that, my good man.
-S
Reading through the article by ABM, the subsequent comments and attached websites, there seems to be a general agreement amongst us that ‘regrouping’ is the preferred, or possibly the only available option. There also appear to be plenty of ideas about how to do this. The next question is “how do we make it happen?”
What are the next steps beyond talking about it? How do we convince others that transition is in their interests? How did the Transition Initiative kick off in the UK?
As for the U.K., we have a different culture. The U.K. has cultivated a culture of knowledge as well as leaving the spectacle of money partially to the Noble class.
As for making it happen, I also misspoke when I said “we have to get people to live local lives”.
The relocalization will come as the globalization fails to acquire enough resources to maintain itself. Regrouping now is a matter of knowledge, preparation, cooperation, and inevitability.
In other words, we don’t have to ‘make’ it happen: we simply accept it and then act as though we will be living with less from generation to generation.
If a miracle happens, and new energy sources or magical governments come into power that cooperate with reality, then those who are prepared for less will simply not have taken the risks and invested, but they will still benefit to some degree.
The biggest problem is with people believing these miracles will happen, investing our collective resources toward nonexistent futures, and then finding out they can no longer survive even with downsizing and regrouping.
Preparedness and localization are simply a matter of living according to sensible reality, rather than belief in unsubstantiated fantasies. Information plays a huge role. As long as there are so many secretive avenues of research and politics, we don’t know if any of the promises for future resources are viable. With the tipping points of climate and energy so close to destroying our food sources and economy, then the most likely path is the relocalization path. Perhaps those in the U.K. who give so much to Transition Towns were able to do so quickly because they have a vulnerable island to live on.
Regrouping:
http://smlxtralarge.com/2009/11/04/the-quiet-revolution-of-cooperation/
A good article with much to ponder. I would like to focus my comments on the “regroup” solution. If the center (Washington) doesn’t hold, then regroup may be the only response we have. This may not be as easy as mentioned, because over the years we have stressed the individual over the group, and in the process have lost the sense of the “common good.” Many have also lost the belief that they can make a difference in the affairs of man. Complex societies leave us with a sense of being overwhelmed, and incapable of controlling our own destiny. There are some who believe that real change comes from the fringe, and this is where the regroup concept may have a better chance of success, but isn’t this what relocalization is all about anyway?
Good point about individualism. Individualism is more profitable than cooperative living, so we have much more of it than is prudent.
I think that relocalization is more about establishing new anchors for the ‘norm’ than it is about fringe behaviors.
We tend to think that ‘normal’ is established by the majority, but that isn’t necessarily so if the majority is freakin’ crazy. The regrouping occurs when the deluded majority realize they can’t vote stable normality into existence.
Establishing normality based on real, rather than imagined value, is the key. When value is grounded in solid facts, then complexity is manageable to some extent through systems that have reference points for value and usefulness.
Good points Stephen. I think you’re right that relocalization IS regrouping — working with others to create new ways of life. And I think that’s the best path forward, or at least the one where we take responsibility for own lives rather than wait for the “leaders” to do it.
I also agree that the whole transition process requires a grand de- and re-programming of people’s ideas about what it means to be human and have a good life. On some level that seems impossible, but two things occur to me: (1) our path forward does not and probably should not purport to encompass everyone. In other words, transition is inevitably not a society-wide reform; it will be a migration of a certain self-defining segment of the population into a new sociocultural frontier. It’s true that the more of us the better — for the earth, for us, for everyone — but we shouldn’t proceed as if we need everyone to come along with us — we should start heading out. (2) De/re-programming people is not an insurmountable hurdle. It requires, it seems to me, that we create infectious languages of value, the logics of which guide people through the individual/society thicket (transformed by modernity into the nightmare of corporate-orchestrated consumer culture) and into democracy, responsibility, and freedom.
My attempt to think such a language was first developed with the idea of ‘deprogramming’ some know-nothing “conservatives” whose inane comments appeared on the website of the local paper. I think the five steps are hard to disagree with — I wonder what others think…
Step 1) HUMAN DECENCY
At birth, every human being is equally deserving of respect and equally deserving of a society where she or he can live a good life.
Step 2) THE GOLDEN RULE / MORALITY
Good citizens and decent people live by the following principle of morality and freedom: do unto others as you would have them do unto you, or your children or mother or whoever you care most about in the world. The golden rule demonstrates that morality (“the way a person should act”) is SOCIAL; it’s about how you treat other people and the extent to which you consider how your actions will affect other people.
Step 3) DEMOCRACY
With golden rule-morality as the starting point, the ideal political form is what can be called “true democracy,” which is to say that people govern themselves – any governing is by and for the people being governed in any particular situation. Wouldn’t you want the opportunity to participate in any decision that affects you? The golden rule demands we extend that right to all. And that is true democracy.
Step 4) JUSTICE
Within the open-honest-thoughtful discussions that make up the political process of true democracy, good citizens and decent people will consider the good of everyone affected by the decision to be made, as called for by the golden rule. If people try to argue for a course of action based on selfish self-interest, good citizens and decent people will recognize and critique such positions as anti-democratic.
Step 5) FREEDOM
Live and let live; look kindly on people, both generally and specifically; feel free to find and create ways to be happy and enjoy life any way you can without hurting or infringing on others.
I think of these principles as the first five steps on a path to true democracy.