Dave Pollard on the collapse of the nation state

2007-07-19

Richard Moore

Friends,

Dave gives us an interesting analysis below.

        "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 and politics.

        "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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