The end of party politics, end
Part three last of a series: first described class struggles in a British context , & then how it behooves us as citizens to do something about it in that context, but current events worldwide appear to reflect similar issues.
This is no small deal, as this may mean the remapping of politics as we know it. It seems that in times of trouble we seek strong(wo)men to steer us through choppy waters. But on the hundredth anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution above — for a day-to-day centennial replay, follow Russian Telegraph’s tweets — the specter of authoritarian leadership ending in disaster is not what we need today. Sarah Kendzior and Amy Siskind, for example, have well documented such perils w.r.t. current US affairs.
I propose that the end of party politics results not only from political malaise, but also from a socio-economic one. I originally titled my first post on this topic as “Capitalism be afraid, very afraid” before settling on the current title — read its URL to find that original title — but in this third installment I’ll return to that important subject.
A post on my old website 12 years ago seems prescient in that regard:
… “When capitalism replaced feudalism, it tended to replace all previous standards of judgment and human activities by the standard of profitability”. This quote suggests how a lot of oppressions (‘isms’ such as racism, etc.) are kept in place, in order to keep the system alive and profitable. Not that capitalism has cornered the market on oppression… and some are far worse as my parents can vouch for! But it’s more sneaky and pervasive than ever before, in the ways that actions or mores that are rationally destructive, become irrationally acceptable (in other words what is destructive when looked at it with a rational eye, seems OK when looked at with an irrational eye — SUVs are a prime example, they guzzle gas but are ‘the’ thing in the US). But what makes it so, at this point in time?
What keeps checks-and-balances in place, I think, are alternative modes of thinking if not regimes… and Capitalism has no serious competition today! There are left- and right-wing regimes (e.g.: Communism and Facism) that have fallen off, and there are more and less progressive parties (Unions and Churches) that are struggling. Noam Chomsky wrote to me once that active Liberalism died over a generation ago with the flagging Civil Rights movement. I replied to him that the confusion around race killed Civil Rights, because people couldn’t separate race issues from economic ones. The poor White competed against the poor non-White (note the color by which we are described). In other words, the fight for the freedom from oppression of non-Whites, got lost in the fight for resources that are portrayed to be scarce.
Scarcity mentality is the sneakiest oppression that keeps everything in place, as it turns allies against each other. By that I mean that we all are afraid that something important might run out — love, money, work, foods, etc. Again, Capitalism is not the only regime to do that. But Capitalism is based on profitability, and market forces are based on the availability of goods and services (prices go up and down as a function of availability, time is even tied to monetary value through interest). The perceived scarcity of goods and services is thus endemic to Capitalism, through the fear of the disappearance of those goods and services. Even when Capitalism achieved excess capacity as it has since the Industrial Revolution, scarcity remained rooted in our collective psyche (war and famine are not soon forgotten). It is also reinforced when catastrophes hit us (hurricanes in the US and tsunamis afar). And fear of it is blasted at us through news of wars and weather near and far…
“Actions […] that are rationally destructive, become irrationally acceptable” pretty well describes the current affairs on both sides of the Atlantic, don’t they? Not only is the division between rational vs. irrational behavior key here, but also the separation of people and their actions. Let me explain:
- The Australian film Breaker Morant depicts the trial of colonial soldiers’ misdeeds against local population during the Boer War: to paraphrase the defense lawyer “horrible acts are not perpetrated by horrible people, but by normal people under horrible circumstances”
- In a poem written twenty years ago, I said likewise: “our behaviour is NOT our selves / one reflects the distress of the day / the other our inherent nature”
- And the Re-evaluation Counseling community I joined over twenty years ago has a one point plan: to recover our inherent intelligence, in order to contradict the confusion between us and our actions
As mentioned in earlier posts, I’m active not only in Quakers and RC, but also in Movement Démocrate, a centrist French party promoting ethics in politics described for example in the English version of this post. I find it very important to “walk the talk” and try to portray what I seek in life. Father to a teen, I found I cannot lecture but I can show by my deeds. And in my previous jobs at ESRI and Halliburton, I made a career out of listening to clients in order to serve them better, across cultures and régimes worldwide. And on my professional Medium Channel I just wrote about getting back to the métier in order to sharpen our business acumen in complex IT.
What I’m trying to say, is that all the rhetoric in the world will serve no purpose, if we as individuals don’t have a grounding to think straight. And that will not only uncover some inconvenient truths, but it will also challenge us in places we likely won’t have thought about. But if we have a good sense of our own values and a confidence to match, it will be hard for opposing forces to unseat our thinking — and opposing there will be, to keep us on the ‘straight & narrow’ routine thus stop our creativity — for nothing less is at stake than the future of capitalism and our role within it.
So here is my five-point plan toward that, please let me know your thoughts:
- recover our intelligence by clearing out our past issues in order to be present all the time — RC offers for me the best framework, but if you read this you must have yours, and no plan is inherently exclusive
- learn about the way our society works, in order to better understand it and help us think critically about the information, which we receive and filter via our education, environment, engagement & media exposure
- organize our own lives to act the best we can and offer a healthy role model — nothing loves company better than misery, and positivism not only promotes alliances but also reinforces collective efforts for the better
- seek our own tribe in order to better effect what we have learned and acted on in our lives, and to spread that web as it will invariably shift over time — but if we have the support we will not be discouraged
- reach out to other groups who may have different agendas but have similar desire for social justice and equality, in order to forge alliances and devise programs for action in increasing circles going down this list
