Totalitarianism Now
Communism is not dead. Communism will not die. The basic principles of it are too appealing, too seductive to stay beaten for long. Hugo Chavez’ increasing forays into autocratic rule in
Totalitarian rule of any kind is anathema to me. Fascism terrifies me. Communism terrifies me. What does this leave? The market? The market is impure, unreliable, amoral, and slow (look at the electric car, or public transportation). The market is subject to manipulation by forces visible and hidden (look at advertising, or lobby groups). The market drove the world to where it is today. And we expect it to drive us out, as well? Someone once said that the first sign of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result each time. But no, this post isn’t about the market.
This post is about the paradox I am trapped in.
The world is in terrible shape. If you don’t believe that, you’re wearing blinders. It is largely agreed that we gained the ability to obliterate life as we know it when that first atomic bomb went off in
The market drove us here. Not democracy, exactly – democracy has never really been in play. Not really. Nobody really wants the rainforest destroyed (though people do want farmland, people do want beef). Nobody really wants the oceans to be emptied of fish (though people do want sushi). Nobody wants smog to blanket their cities (though people do want to get to work from their quiet suburban home). People want it both ways, and the short-term always wins.
So where does this leave us? How do we solve this problem?
I believe that we are in very big trouble. I am having a hell of a time planning for the future, because I don’t really believe there will be one. Even if people do smarten up (and they are starting to), the institutions around us are too old and creaking to do us much good. Those in power have too many interests to follow (none of which are in the interest of the planet). The market is still moving slower than the Himalayan glaciers are melting.
Herein lies my paradox.
The systems in place throughout the world are not equipped to handle the disasters we are bringing upon ourselves. I can’t help but feel that only a totalitarian rule – a global rule – can really truly save us. A total global “reset,” with a set of leaders to rebuild the institutions from the ground up. Rule that will remake factories the world over. Law that will replace our moribund infrastructure and end our slavish lifestyles. Order that will stop genocides.
Totalitarianism terrifies me.
And here I am considering it as our best option.
Someone please save me from this line of thought.
January 14th, 2008 at 2:38 pm
Re: “Hugo Chavez’ increasing forays into autocratic rule in Venezuela are a testament to the temptation of power used for a ‘greater good’.”
Venezuela under Hugo Chavez is a much more functional democracy than what we have in the US, regardless of how many times the US media calls him a dictator.
Here’s a good place to start: http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/15754
The media on Chavez in the US gets more extreme all the time. Here’s a recent favorite. Check out the headline vs the content there.
Here’s a little more food for thought: http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/2914
We could learn a lot from Venezuela, which is exactly why they are being bashed at every turn. They are the classic “threat of a good example”. Is it a perfect situation there? Hell no, but it puts us to shame. The constitution that they now have since Chavez guarantees them freedoms we are still not likely to win for ourselves (in the US) anytime soon.
January 14th, 2008 at 2:47 pm
Re: “Someone please save me from this line of thought.”
Well, here’s my favorite counterpoint to fascism and totalitarianism…
http://www.infoshop.org/faq/index.html
January 14th, 2008 at 8:48 pm
Thanks for your interest!
And thanks for calling me on Chavez. In fact, I think that I read that Znet article you linked shortly after the referendum fell through.
I agree that Chavez’ Venezuela is actually setting a pretty good example. And yes, he’s got some pretty brilliant (if blatantly political) policies in place too. The one that comes to mind first is his plan (I’m not sure if it actually went through) to sell cheap energy to poor inner city dwellers in US cities like Detroit.
The reason I mentioned Chavez is because… well, maybe mentioning him was a misstep. But as you said, the situation there isn’t perfect either. I seem to remember hearing a bunch about Chavez shutting down some media groups. I know the bulk of the media is anti-government, but still. I have a friend from Venezuela who lives here who can’t actually return, because he’ll be thrown in jail (I didn’t pry into the ‘why’, but I got the sense that it wasn’t exactly just cause).
He’s actually been really informative, since he represents neither the mainstream media, nor the standard lefty press. He spoke a bit about Chavez’ land expropriation. The bulk of what he told me about was the idea that if someone owns a property that goes unoccupied for a certain time span (I forget whether it was two weeks, or two months, whatever) - for example, a beach cabin owned by a retired couple - that land (and any structures on it) would be given to someone else. This isn’t a situation where the land is being rented out unfairly (or rented at all), and it isn’t even land that is necessarily in a useful or productive area. I’m ambivalent on land-grabs. There are some cases when I’m all for it, but this is one where I think he’s overstepping a few boundaries.
At any rate, Putin. Yeek.
As for Infoshop, I read a bunch of the FAQ a couple years back. I didn’t get through the whole thing (it’s massive!), but I definitely found it useful. I’m not sure how I would go about describing my personal ideology, but it takes a lot of cues from anarchism.
The problem with anarchism in this instance is that it can’t come into being (on a globally useful scale) within the time frame that I’m looking at. At this point I would say that it’s pretty fair to assume that if we don’t clean up our act within the next 15 years, we will be egregiously screwed. Most scientists are talking about minimizing global temperature increases to two degrees as a best case scenario - and that’s more or less if we stopped adding carbon to the atmosphere right now. And that doesn’t even begin to include the myriad other ways that we’re destroying the environment and each other.
Anarchism can’t just pop into existence (I realized sadly). People need to be educated and willing to make sacrifices and changes. That’s why an anarchist “revolution” (in the ‘fast’ sense of the world) can’t happen - it’ll just turn into Lenin’s Vanguard again… and we’ve seen where that got us. It’ll have to be an anarchist “evolution” (if you’ll excuse the crappy pun)… and I’m at a point where I feel that we don’t have time.
After all, if the gradual readjustment of the market to ‘green’ and ‘fair trade’ products is slow (with some big names actually working in favour of them), imagine how hard it would be to get an entirely new political and economic system in place. Even this hippiest of brands (Lululemon? Mountain Equipment Co-op?) might have trouble accepting a system that could cut their bottom line as substantially as anarchy. And forget about the people who actually DO own everything. The only reason anarchy doesn’t keep them awake at night is because they know they could squash anything genuinely threatening in a second.
January 15th, 2008 at 2:28 pm
I’m a little skeptical about being thrown in jail without just cause in Venezuela, but I don’t know what that situation is. I mean, this is a guy (Chavez) who had the folks who tried to have him killed all locked in a room together, and he simply let them go saying also that there “will be no witch hunt”. Now, that may have been a smart political move, since they were 90% sure at that time that these folks were backed by the CIA (100% sure today), but still…
Putin scares me shitless. Any gains for social justice and real democracy in Russia appear to have disappeared pretty quickly and a corrupt authoritarian government is now not even really pretending any different. Now that is a place where questioning the government will get you in big trouble.
As far as anarchism being realized: I’m not holding my breath. It would take a couple of generations for a real cultural change to take place, but I like to think I can only help make the world a tiny bit better by staying an altruist. I look to the “revolutions” in places like Venezuela, Bolivia, and Nicaragua as being helpful experiments and maybe even stepping stones. The shift of power to the common people and the real efforts at direct democracy give me some small hope. Sometimes I think a strong government in those places is the only way to resist the efforts to tear it all to the ground. In that way I really understand the thinking in your original article.
January 15th, 2008 at 10:02 pm
Word.
Another useful example is Argentina, I think. Or, at least, it used to be. I don’t know how things are going at the moment, but there was a whole lot of worker-run factories/clinics/businesses etc. springing up from the ashes of their big economic collapse. I’m not sure if that’s been squelched yet - haven’t heard about it in a while. At any rate, Naomi Klein and Avi Lewis made this documentary a couple years ago called “The Take” about the situation in Argentina. It’s pretty rad. I wonder if it’s floating around Google video or Youtube. Might be hard to find, elsewhere.
January 16th, 2008 at 1:56 pm
Problem: The Environment is in danger.
Reaction: Chris worries (with good cuase) and with no other alternatives viable, suggests some sort of iron fisted Green Government.
Solution: Iron fisted Green Government - operated by the very elite who created the environmental catastrophe - is consented or rationalised to the public. Econonmic slowdown destroys middle class. Global fascists take control. Everyone loses, including the environment, because the cabal in power has no interest in the environment. Al Gore doesn’t care about the environment. He has an agenda. His words are “lip service” not a new, bold policy.
You said that most scientists say that a 2 degree increase in temperature is a best case scenario even after wide spread carbon reduction programs. I assume you meant climate scientists. Anyways, members of the nobel winning IPCC dissented from Al Gore’s take on things. Indeed, who gives a fuck what some computer model (which is designed and funded by those who wish to control our lives) has said? It’s just a computer model. And what if we close all the factories and the earth continues to heat up? Maybe it’s the sun?
Where do you get “15 years” from? That’s an arbitrary number. Why not “This year” or “50 years” - who says 15 years is the breaking point? The new UN president said we have 10 years or we will face catastrophe. That sounds like a threat to me, not a warning. Submit to the new system or die! Right?
Don’t you get it? Yes, the environment IS in danger, and yes we must act quickly to prevent further damage to various ecosystems and biospheres.
Nevertheless, those who actualy want totalitarianism are the cause of these calamities. Thusly, they cannot be the solution.
We are the solution. I’m in on your revolution, not an “evolution” (people are products of the system and ideas do not thrive on survival of the fittest). Instead of Lenin’s vanguard it can be yours, and it should be.
Of course, doing anything (such as revolution, or writing a polemic post called “Totalitarnism Now”, you are playing right into the hands of those who created this problem, waited for your reaction, and are soon ready to pounce on the mass of humanity with their final solution…
January 16th, 2008 at 2:07 pm
Hey infoshop used to be our favourite website, eh Chris? I think I read the vast majority of that FAQ back in 2003. Should take another gander.
OK, to the topic:
Thanks to globlam warming environmentalism soon you may no longer have the rigth to answer these questions:
How big should you house be? What kind of car can you have and how much can you drive it? What food to you eat? How many children may you have? What sort of jobs will exist? Are you willing to be taxed just to breathe?
Global warming environmentalism, while an important scientific pursuit, is mostly being driven by an agenda which is diametrically opposed to freedom.
In fact it attempts to show “Freedom can’t be trusted.” - because freedom has lead humanity down a path of environmental destruction.
But it wasn’t freedom’s fault! This is not because of the size of your SUV or the carbon foot print of your house. We are not the ones who created a consumerist, wasteful system. It was intentionally created to disable freedom, and free thinking (a free, free thining society would lead the the anarchism evolution you speak of). Instead people were fed products, advertising, and placed in systems which offer them freedom of choice, but not the freedom to choose the system.
Thus, freedom is not to blame. So keep your hands off the size of my house, the type of car I have, and who gives a fuck about my stinking carbon footprint? Our footprints are very very very tiny, insignificant, compared to the impact WAR ITSELF has. And yet we, the free individual, is being accused, blamed, and threatened.
Look what happened! The Anarchist (you) wished to hand off control of his life to Big Brother - just because you beleive the whole world is at risk.
HA! Just because you beleive it does not make it true.
Phew, I like this debate. I’m late getting back for work.
January 17th, 2008 at 11:49 pm
Oh man, I was waiting for these responses! I saw most of them coming and was looking forward to replying. I left myself open to a few of those attacks on purpose. Awesome.
However. I had a long day at work today and am exhausted. I will have to respond on another day. But I like this debate too!
While I’m at it I’m gonna plug my brother’s blog (but his friend’s post): http://pulltheskydown.com/ideas/208 — talking about the same thing only on a much smaller scale.
I will quickly address (that I may expand on the points later) a couple things:
-I didn’t propose that said Big Brother government would be controlled by the elites that are already in power. That is obviously out of the question. My Vanguard? Maybe. I seriously do believe that the world would be a better place if everyone acted like me.
-If nobody bought SUVs there wouldn’t be any. Same goes with a lot of other things (monster houses, etc. etc.). That’s the market, I guess. The market that (as I said earlier) can’t be trusted. Individual environmental footprints (this goes beyond carbon footprints) are totally important. No, it’s not our fault that we’ve been fed consumerist pap our whole lives, but just because we’ve been manipulated doesn’t make the acts okay. And yes, industry (and the war, holy shit) plays a much bigger role in environmental destruction than people going to work do. But people let it happen. (And here’s where we get into that vicious circle of blamelessness.)
-You’re right, 15 years is an arbitrary number. It’s ALREADY too late to reduce the global temperature below a 2 degree rise (if climate scientists are to be trusted). I chose 15 because that is when we will really start to see some of the damage that’s being done, if things go the way they are expected to. By the time 50 years have passed, the global temperature (again, if things go according to predictions) will have risen by at least 2 degrees. And if it’s just the sun, then hell - it’ll have happened sooner, or maybe it’ll reduce again.
-It will be a bitter victory indeed, but I look forward to the day when I can say, definitively, “I told you so.” (Though I would be even more happy if YOU were the one saying “I told you so” to me. Definitively.)
-Also. People are greedy. Period. The system just takes our greedy disposition and twists it to its needs. It seems that people are also stupid. This is probably an illusion. I hope it is. I would accept the notion that people are not so much stupid (or apathetic) as much as they are too busy dealing with the day to day business of surviving to give a shit about anything else. I have noticed that I get a lot more angry at the state of the world once I am on vacation and have time to think.
Okay, let’s see if more bubbles to the surface at a later date.