"And although I am also pessimistic about the re-emergence
of community as the primary social, political and economic
unit of our society, just because of the enormous amount of
re-learning and practice (and making monumental mistakes) it
will entail, I also sense that we have no other choice."
I'm glad to see someone has reached the same
conclusion I have. Localization is indeed the
only path that can save the world, based on
systems considerations, historical observation,
and the dynamics of economics.
"We have reached the paradoxical point where the
nation-state has probably outlived its usefulness, but we
face global challenges that dwarf anything we have had to
face since civilization and the idea of the nation-state
began. "
The collapse of the nation state is more a matter
of elite design than inherent failure, but again
I'm glad to see someone else realizes that our
challenge can only be understood on an historical
canvas on the scale of millennia.
"Downshifting to anarchy or self-managed community models is
likely to be just as tumultuous. For one thing, most of the
world no longer has genuine communities, and to create them
would require a lot of large-scale musical chairs as people
sought others with whom they could hope, and want, to create
community."
Here Dave makes an unwarranted assumption.
Community must and can be created 'in place',
where people already share a space. Community is
not about the like-minded gathering together; it
is about people learning to work together to deal
with their common problems.
rkm
____________________
Original source URL:
http://blogs.salon.com/0002007/2007/07/17.html#a1926
IS MEXICO ABOUT TO FAIL?
by Dave Pollard
The sign (erected by Zapatista rebels in México)
says "Here the people lead and the government
follows." It prohibits the sale of arms, drugs
and unlicensed logging and concludes "No to the
destruction of nature". Image from Wikipedia.
Over at the Oil Drum, Jeff Vail has been
predicting that México, as a functioning
nation-state, may not survive the year. He cites
the collapse in that country of oil production (a
Peak Oil phenomenon), attacks by anti-government
forces on oil infrastructure, growing poverty and
inequality, inability of the state to provide for
the essential needs of the nation, growing power
of organized crime, corruption and desertion of
police forces, the assassination of judges and
officials with impunity, and the growing
bankruptcy of farmers due to the distortions of
subsidized globalization and phony 'free' trade.
Jeff argues that the very existence of
functioning nation-states (in contrast to
non-functioning, nominal nation-states like
Afghanistan) depends upon their ability to meet
the needs of the people, to a degree sufficient
for the people to continue to support (with their
political and military allegiance, their
willingness to respect and uphold the law, and
their willingness to pay taxes) the nation-state.
Nation-states that are struggling to do so will
often try to create a need, and a sense of
urgency, for the nation-state to continue, by
conjuring up an imaginary crisis (e.g. weapons of
mass destruction) or an imaginary enemy ( e.g.
immigrants, or unstable or covetous neighbours).
If the people are sufficiently ill-informed,
governments of nation-states can keep the country
together, and ravage its wealth for the personal
gain of themselves and their supporters, for a
long period of time by doing this.
It is much easier to create a sense of urgency
for self-defence, especially as the world becomes
geopolitically and economically smaller every
day, than it is to create a sense of urgency for,
say, decent health care or equitable distribution
of wealth, particularly in large nation-states
where the lack of the latter can be blamed on
'bureaucracy' and 'inefficiency'.
As Jeff points out, nation-states don't collapse
suddenly. They erode, bit by bit, until you wake
up one day and find that you live in a country
where:
* almost all the wealth and power is held by a
small, powerful elite that uses propaganda and
political muscle to keep it that way
* voting and other acts of citizenry don't make any difference
* the majority of people say they want much
less government, even if that means much less, or
no, government services
* the corruption of the police and politicians
is rampant, to the point neither is any longer
interested in upholding the law or looking after
the needs of citizens, but rather their own
self-interest, financially, security-wise and/or
ideologically
* organized crime is rampant, to the point it
has and exerts more power at the local level than
does the government
* the government is under enormous pressure to
devolve authority to regional and/or local
governments, in the probably naive hope that this
will lead to greater effectiveness and
responsibility
* acts of sabotage, suicide and/or attempted secession are on the upswing
* what is keeping the nation-state together is
mostly manufactured fear of some outside enemy
We have reached the paradoxical point where the
nation-state has probably outlived its
usefulness, but we face global challenges that
dwarf anything we have had to face since
civilization and the idea of the nation-state
began.
Those who have not paid attention to the lessons
of history would have us believe the answer is
one global government, that will take away the
manufactured outside enemy because there will no
longer be an outside. There is no reason to
believe that a single global nation-state would
succeed any better than the balkanizing, mostly
struggling nation-states of today. In fact,
without an outside enemy (and, no, we cannot
convince people that global poverty or global
warming is the enemy; we've tried that), it is
unlikely such a global nation-state would last as
long as it would take to put it together.
Devolution of power to provinces, counties, or
regional states has also been tried, and while it
generally has the advantage of ethnic, linguistic
and/or cultural homogeneity of population (and
hence less likelihood of civil war), there is no
history or reason to believe it can be any more
responsive and able to meet the needs of the
citizens than larger nation-states, and there is
every reason to believe it will be less able to
cope with any real outside enemy, should one
emerge (and because of the growing inequality of
wealth and resources between regions, and general
overpopulation, ecological devastation and
resource scarcities, they are more than likely to
emerge).
That leaves us with more old-fashioned
alternatives: anarchy or self-managed
communities. These models both worked for
millennia, but we have long forgotten how they
worked. It took centuries and staggering
bloodshed for us to make nation-states work, in
some places, for awhile. Downshifting to anarchy
or self-managed community models is likely to be
just as tumultuous. For one thing, most of the
world no longer has genuine communities, and to
create them would require a lot of large-scale
musical chairs as people sought others with whom
they could hope, and want, to create community.
In areas that have, or can find, real community
(including, as I reported yesterday, some areas
of México), this model is already working to some
extent, and can work in more places, especially
if and when nation-states and their regional
surrogates collapse for lack of support from the
people that once made them work, and give up
trying to suppress community-based 'independence'
movements.
I am less optimistic about anarchy (by which I
mean not the propagandized version of endless
chaos and violence, but the libertarian ideal of
no government at all, where people agree to get
along with, and work with, their neighbours
because it is in their interests to do so). My
pessimism is due in part to the fact that such a
model takes a lot of practice to get right, and
in part to the fact that it takes a lot of room
and other abundance of resources, to preclude our
all-too-human predilection to resort to gang
behaviour and banditry at the first sign of
resource scarcity. There are just too many of us,
and we have used up too much of the Earth's
abundance, for this model to work.
And although I am also pessimistic about the
re-emergence of community as the primary social,
political and economic unit of our society, just
because of the enormous amount of re-learning and
practice (and making monumental mistakes) it will
entail, I also sense that we have no other choice.
When the circumstances described in the bullet
points above prevail in more and more countries
(and this is well underway), I think Jeff is
right to predict that we will see the
(agonizingly slow, but steady and irreversible)
collapse of the nation-state, and in the vacuum
that this collapse produces, the only viable
're-placement' for conducting social, political
and economic activity I can foresee are
self-managed communities. Jeff even wryly
suggests that this relocalization may help us
cope better after the End of Oil.
The process of getting there, alas, is not going to be pretty.
And I wonder what the collapse of México means for NAFTA and the SPP?
Category: The Political Process
© Copyright 2007 Dave Pollard.
Last update: 18/07/2007; 7:04:00 PM.
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