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Musings Report 2020-27 7-4-20 Could America Have a French-Style Revolution?
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Could America Have a French-Style Revolution?
As it's July 4, it seems appropriate to consider the possibility of another American Revolution.
This idea is so farfetched at the moment that it is not even on the windowsill of the Overton Window, the publicly accepted range of possibilities.
Civil war in America, yes, that is routinely discussed; an overthrow of the nation's institutions, not yet.
When I read a financial pundit predicting a bull market in stocks through 2024, I wonder: what makes you think the stock market will even exist in 2024, at least in its current form?
For just as Communism was a god that failed, finance capitalism is also a god that failed, an extreme version of capitalism that is little more than a mechanism for concentrating wealth and power at the expense of everyone toiling in the real-world economy.
And if we understand this, then we also understand that the stock market, with its stock buybacks, high-frequency trading and after-hours manipulation, is little more than a mechanism for increasing the concentration of wealth.
Should this awareness move from the 4% who understand the depravity and unsustainability of finance capitalism to 64% of the general public, why would they allow the skimming machine of the stock market to continue pillaging the nation?
(Following the Pareto Distribution of 80/20 to 80% of 80% and 20%, we get 64% and 4%. The expansion from the influential 4% to the majority 64% can be quite rapid.)
Setting aside the horrors of the guillotine, the French Revolution was many things unfolding at once. It was:
-- The failure of the Monarchy's money system, as inflation soared to the point commoners could no longer afford bread. (The price of bread peaked the week that the Bastille was torn down by mobs.)
-- The overthrow of the state-religion nexus in favor of Enlightenment rationalism.
-- The romantic ascent of liberty as the rallying cry against an oppressive feudal hierarchy.
-- The fragmentation of the social and political orders into warring factions.
-- The failure of the Monarchy's institutions to recognize and understand the potentially fatal challenges and institute reforms that addressed the problems.
-- The failure of the French economy, which was plagued by poor roads and communication lines, limited trade due to regional fragmentation and low levels of productive investment.
-- Geopolitical rivalries with Great Britain, the rising power of the Germanic states and other continental European powers (Russia, Austria, Sweden).
In sum, institutions that had failed collapsed and were replaced, first by Napoleon's centralized bureaucracies and later by political reforms, a process that took much of the 19th century to play out.
I think the parallels to America in 2020 are obvious, if inexact.
Most importantly, America's core institutions have failed: the financial system, healthcare, higher education, the political process and the national defense/intelligence complex.
In every case, a class of insiders has come to dominate each centralized hierarchy for its own benefit. Blinded by their greed and hubris, they cannot recognize or understand the systemic failure they inhabit because their attachment to their position, privilege and power is blindingly strong.
Reform is impossible, for as with the French Monarchy, the existing system is the wrong structure and unit size, to borrow a phrase from Peter Drucker. Reforms profound enough to actually repair what's broken would require the insiders surrender much of their position, privilege and power, which they will never do.
As I have taken pains to explain, finance capitalism has fatally distorted the American economy in ways that few understand (or want to understand, since it's so disturbing).
The resulting concentration of wealth and power has also fatally distorted the political process of governance.
As I explained in my book Resistance, Revolution, Liberation, America's systems only function when there is more of everything to distribute, i.e. "growth": more money, more goods and services, more political power.
When there is less of everything, America's institutions fail because they have no mechanisms for DeGrowth / contraction.
This is the result of their systemic structure as centralized hierarchies. Expansion is effortless, contraction breaks the system.
Much is being made of the fragmentation of American society into so-called progressive-conservative camps, and perhaps the best way to understand this fragmentation is that both camps recognize the failure of American institutions but differ on how to reform them.
Given that America's institutions only function with "more of everything," a reality that aligns with America's zeitgeist of "there's always more of everything," I consider it inevitable that whomever is in power will enthusiastically embrace the illusory "solution" of printing trillions of dollars out of thin air, in the delusional confidence that the world's appetite for dollars is essentially infinite.
Put another way: America finds it comforting to assume that it will always be able to digitally create "money" out of thin air and trade this "nothing" for real goods, i.e. "something."
That America has gotten away with this magic for decades only fuels the confidence of those who reckon the way to "get more of everything" is so easy and simple: just create another few trillion dollars out of thin air and buy the world's resources with this "free money."
Eventually the rest of the world will tire of this fraud, and America will face the loss of its magic printing press.
At that point, inflation will destroy the purchasing power of the US dollar and commoners will be unable to afford the cost of living.
As with the French Revolution, that will be the trigger for a wholesale replacement of our failed institutions. Whether that replacement can be accomplished within the existing political system will depend on a great many factors that will be unfolding simultaneously and interacting with each other in unpredictable, nonlinear ways.
My work is all about sketching out alternative systems that are non-hierarchical, opt-in, decentralized, adaptive, self-organizing and anti-fragile--everything that our current systems are not.
How do we get from "there"--failed, centralized hierarchies dominated by self-serving insiders--to "here"--opt-in, decentralized, adaptive, self-organizing and anti-fragile institutions?
Nobody knows, but I suspect the decay of our failed institutions will accelerate rapidly, and we won't have to wait very long to witness the messy transition to new institutional models.
Highlights of the Blog
New Podcasts:
AxisOfEasy Salon #11: Revolutions, Power Plays and Authoritative Reality
Posts:
How We Got Here: the Global Economy's 75-Year Stumble to the Precipice 7/4/20
Dancing Through the Geopolitical Minefield 7/2/20
An Interesting Juncture in History 7/1/20
The New Normal: Extremes of Neofeudalism, Incompetence, Authoritarianism and Relocalization 6/30/20
Forget the V, W or L Recovery: Focus on N-P-B 2/29/20
Best Thing That Happened To Me This Week
Delivered the first of the lychee harvest to my niece and her husband, who shared some with colleagues. Share the wealth in action...
From Left Field
Chinese Dynasties (2 min) --oops, Tibet ruled much of China... that's inconvenient....
An Unsung Hero in the Story of Interracial Marriage--something we take for granted....
Safe New Mushroom-Based Biopesticides Could Spell the End for GMO Foods-- I hope this scales / pans out....
COVID-19 Sparks a Rebirth of the Local Farm Movement--some good news...
Finland Will Become The First Country In The World To Get Rid Of All School Subjects
Here Come The Bourgeois Bolsheviks: As with the Weather Underground, America's privileged are now lashing out at their own self-loathing.
The Revolution Comforts the Comfortable
Liberalism Is as Bad as the Economist Makes It Sound
The latest figures are a wake-up call: the global Covid-19 crisis isn't close to over
QE Unwinds: Fed's Assets Drop for 3rd Week, Another -$76 Billion. 3-Week Total: -$163 Billion
Did a volcanic eruption in Alaska help end the Roman republic? (via James D.)
"Society cares for the individual only so far as he is profitable." Simone de Beauvoir
Thanks for reading--
charles |
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