In his reply to Doug Henwood's article in the Nation, Peter Bohmer makes points that are thought provoking. Confined to my bedroom due to a bad flu, I will share with you some of my misery in the form of lengthy comments on Peter's remarks. Forgive me. I won't happen again anytime soon.
Peter writes:
I believe it is a positive value for people to be able to stay on the land, as is production for local markets. This has been a central value to the majority of the world's population or close to a majority for a very long time including the present.
This is a strong argument. I'll frame it differently:
There are almost 3 billion people in the "developing" countries considered as "rural population" (FAO). That is about half of all humans. If the principle of democracy amounts to anything, then the desires of these people must be taken into account insofar as their living conditions are affected not by chance or natural factors, but by what the rest of the human race does.
I live in a large city so I'll speak of *we* (the urban and rural dwellers in rich countries plus the urban dwellers in the poor countries) versus *they* (the rural dwellers in the poor countries) to whom Peter obviously refers.
Conceivably, they would want to exercise control over the evolution of their lives. Forceful expulsion from the land, sudden changes in their lives, and calamities unleashed by human forces beyond their control (e.g., global markets, capitalism, etc.) would be unacceptable.
My first thought here is that, even among us, there's no individual control over those human forces. They are human. And if there's anybody who can control them such people would be among us. But most of us are also under their spell. There are some among us who are under the impression (illusion?) that they benefit more from these forces than others. Some of us resist the forces and would like to turn things around. But, we haven't managed to do it yet. So, against our deepest wishes, those among us who "benefit" from the status quo are stealing resources from them and dumping on them our garbage. But, I don't want to leave any of us (the "progressives" among us) off the hook, because we also share a bit of the "benefit" that comes from abusing them. So think of us as a homogenous mass facing them -- in fact, threatening them.
Our lives are a mess. But theirs are a bit complicated too. Regarding their lives, there is a host of factors -- of a more local character -- that affect them as well and don't let them fully control the changes in their living conditions: relations of personal and direct political subordination less common in our environs, oppressive traditions peculiar to their rural life, etc. These institutions tend to be closely associated with their connection to the land. (I know because I was born and grew up in a rural, isolated, impoverished area of south-western Mexico: the Tierra Caliente of Guerrero. I wonder where Peter was born and grew up.)
Because of these local factors, the idea that by staying "on the land," staying small, and producing for local markets, they will necessarily be more able to control change in their social environment is far from obvious. But I won't dwell on this argument anymore. What matters most is the implicit idea that by staying on the land, etc. they can participate on similar footing in the conduction of global affairs. And that implicit idea is not persuasive.
When I say "similar footing," I mean "similar footing." I'm not talking of a balance that results from our "compassion" or "generosity" towards them, but from a true balance of power and a mutual interdependence between us and them -- such that we respect them because we have to. Otherwise, the balance would be fragile and subject to our whims. We'd always be the grownups. And they would always be the minors.
The problem here is, how do they enforce their desires -- especially if we are not cooperating with them at all or sufficiently? This is a huge chicken and egg problem.
Key to this is the fact that we are more "productive."
I mean, I'm aware of the fact that along with the massive stuff that we produce, we also produce a lot of garbage, and a lifestyle that drives us nuts and pits us against each other and against them. I know. So, let me assume that, although they produce less stuff, with less "technological sophistication," they produce more human-scale common sense, and a much more sane, cleaner, healthy lifestyle. I'll assume such thing because deep down I don't believe it is accurate. But, let's say they can produce more "good life."
Still, we can easily destroy their "good life" and we tend to do it as we speak. They obviously cannot protect their "good life" from us. They can also destroy or seriously threaten our (less impressive) "good life," but to do it they need to acquire at least a part of what we have -- they have to become a bit like us. If they stay like they are, stick to their land, stay small, mind their own business, produce for local markets, etc., they cannot really threaten us -- we on the other hand can easily wipe them out or abuse them.
Again, it's not that all of us want to threaten them or abuse them. It's that those among us that don't want to do it are not powerful enough to stop those among us who can and will do it. So on average, we can destroy their "good life" and we can upset their "good life" at will. We can steal from them and we can dump garbage on them easily. And they are in no position to reciprocate.
Now, if you cannot preserve and protect your "good life," what kind of "good life" do you really have? I'm not saying protection against natural disasters. I'm saying protection against socially induced disasters. There must be something missing in their "good life." Our "good life" may not be as impressive as theirs, but when we add our ability to make their lives miserable, then we can say (as economists do) that we are overall more "productive."
Ultimately, suppose our "productivity" means that we are able to destroy ourselves and them with the same whack. That's enough to make my point: What kind of "good life" is theirs if they cannot protect against the destruction we may bring to them. If we were just able to commit suicide without affecting them, why would they care? But we can take them down with us and ultimately they have no way to resist that, unless they engage us and become more like us.
In brief, unless something happens that allows them to become effective agents of their own history, they'll be victims of events they don't control. At best, if we were generous and nice to them, they would be the beneficiaries of a global welfare program. Neither of those scenarios is entirely acceptable. But even if the latter (the global welfare program) is clearly better, the progressives among us would have to take charge to implement it, and that may require their help. In any case, they would need to engage us.
Banning miracles and unrealistic scenarios, we have this paradox: they will not acquire the political clout necessary to successfully impose conditions on us or at least defend their living conditions against our threat and abuse unless... their living conditions are dramatically upset and changed. But what could upset and change their living conditions and enable them at the same time to face us on an equal footing? Well, there is nothing else but the same forces that are swaying us -- the capitalist juggernaut or the juggernaut for short. It will be because of juggernaut, empowered by it, and in opposition to its brutality and degradation that they may acquire what it takes to build a true democratic global society.
Don't get me wrong. I don't say the progressives among us should mindlessly contribute to upsetting their living conditions against their consent. That would make the actions of progressives an appendix of the juggernaut. But since the changes induced by the juggernaut have the unintended effect of empowering them, we need to be careful about our approach. I'd think that, to the extent the juggernaut generates direct human suffering among them or us, kill them or us, physically hurt them or us, psychologically degrade them or us, the progressives among us are against it. To the extent the juggernaut places in their hands tools that empower them, progressives welcome such changes in their living conditions. In practice, of course, the good and the bad are glued together and we will argue forever whether the good is more than the bad in any particular instance. But such is life.
The key here is to distinguish as much as we can between the human condition as such and the social conditions in which we/they live. Because we need to concentrate our forces on easing a transition we cannot (and should not) stop, a transition from their current conditions to something similar to what we have here (let's call it "capitalist civilization" without pretense that it is morally better than anything else). We need to focus on helping them as human beings, not necessarily on protecting their social institutions because their social institutions are such that, if retained, they will never be able to defend themselves from us on an equal footing. If they were, they would be doing it already.
Again, if the progressives among us where to impose conditions on the rest of us, then they could be better off. By definition, we progressives are nicer (think of us the progressives as clones of Michael Perelman), and we would try and cooperate with them: the global welfare program would be in place. But that is still because we could do it. Not because they could help it.
How can anybody deny that there are unintended but welcomed consequences of the juggernaut -- elements that come together with the horrors of capitalist civilization that can be used as tools to turn things around? I mean, we're using the -- dubious, if you wish -- achievements of capitalist civilization (internet, computers, logical discourse, etc.) to question it. The juggernaut throws people into situations where they must communicate, cooperate, and educate one another. These are liberating tools. By admitting their existence, we are not sugarcoating the overwhelming ugly side of capitalist civilization. If you wish, make the liberating tools a 0.1% of the total and the shit a 99.9%. Still, how else can we get rid of the 99.9% shit but with an effective use of the 0.1% liberating tools?
If we view things this way, *assuming* (because we really cannot know) that they'd rather stay on the land, small, and confined to local markets is equivalent to being patronizing with them. We are implicitly saying that while we are able to detach ourselves from capitalist civilization and come to the realization that this is 99.9% shit, we have decided to spare them the horrible experience. They should leave it to us. They should stick to the land, do their little thing, while we do the sophisticated work of uncovering the shit and protecting them from it. A nice division of labor, but one in whose making they have not really taken part in. Something that -- I'm afraid -- replicates their vulnerability.
[End of part I]
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