A neo-fascist has been elected as prime minister in Italy.
A racist anti-democratic party is a big part of Netanyahu’s winning coalition. In
America many Republicans are openly working against democracy. That
Trump-backed candidates did worse than expected in the midterm elections gives only
little comfort. US politicians and voters are still split by an antagonism which
often amounts to mutual hatred. Bad times indeed for mature politics.
In earlier posts I have talked about the political decline
characterising the present stage of late modernity. The preceding stage of
mature modernity forms the background to
this. As written earlier, the modernities of civilisations are inherently
unstable periods filled with conflicts in and between the nations of the
civilization. Nevertheless we see parts of a modernity which can be termed
mature or at least as more mature than the other parts of this period. These mature
stages are naturally often found around the middle of the roughly three
centuries a modernity lasts. Thus we can conceptualise a modernity as a curve
with the degree of maturity rising from a low point to a maximum and then
falling back.
A mature political system can be defined as a type of rule
where the rulers are subject to surveillance and control by institutions and by
politicians and people with differing opinions. Generalized we can talk about checks
and balances. In this way a government does not get almighty and it can be
stopped if it’s policies are perceived as wrong. We can call a such political
system pluralistic. Importantly, another criterion for maturity is that the controls
are not so interfering that it results in instability or in inaction. A mature
political system like this can be implemented in the form of a democracy built
on the partitioning of three powers proposed by Montesquieu. But it can also be
implemented in other political systems.
Of course a symmetric curve rising to political maturity
and then falling again is a highly idealised picture and a gross oversimplification.
There are big variations between different nations, and there are marked
discontinuities caused by events like revolutions, coup d’états, economic
crises and devastating wars. But despite this the curve gives a good overview and
permits comparisons between regions and countries.
The central nations and the surrounding nations and the
periphery of a civilization all develop in different paces and reach different levels
of maturity. If we draw the idealised curve mentioned above for the three
different cases it may look like this:
The uppermost curve could represent North Europe. The
middle curve could be South Europe. The United States would then be somewhere
between these two. The curve at the bottom is the third world. The nations on
the lower curves never achieve the highest possible level of maturity before it
all reverts again. The downward trend which has begun now ends the maturation in
the south before it reaches the level of Scandinavia and West Germany. This is
because this trend characterizes the whole of the civilization and chokes the
maturation process everywhere no matter how high or low levels were achieved.
But does it have to end like this? No not necessarily. If
we look at the modernities of the two civilizations which most closely resemble
our, we see two possibilities. In the Greco-Roman world the trend after the reform-attempts
by Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus around 130 BC only went downwards. But in the
second Chinese modernity in the Song Dynasty the developments went both down and
up again. During this time there was a carefully elaborated system of checks
and balances which controlled the government and made sure that there always
were political opponents involved in decision making and rule. Criticism was encouraged
and was both institutionalised and emerging from an open public debate. But
around 1070 the reform politician Wang Anshi and his followers concentrated almost
all power in their hands and thereby for a time neutralized the controlling of
the government. Like in today’s world the polarization between left and right was
enormous. Here we can indeed talk about a decline of politics. But somehow the
country found its way back to a balance between government and controls. Thus
the declining trend was reverted, probably because of the stabilizing power of
a very deep state. This example shows that the fall of the curve is not a law.
But in our case the development begins to look more like the one in Rome.
To take a modern European example, the tragic turn of
events is clear in present Italy. This country never became as politically
stable as the countries to the north, and in the last decades it’s political
landscape is dominated by populist parties from left to right. For the third
world the situation is even worse. Latin America had just left the long era of
military dictatorships behind, and for a couple of decades it has enjoyed more
mature political conditions. But now populism and polarization threatens to ruin
this again. Just look at Brazil. In Latin America like elsewhere economic
problems accelerate the process of decline. Matters are even worse in Africa.
Parts of this continent will never reach even a small degree of maturity before
it is already over again.
But also if we look at nations in the central parts of our
civilization, things look gloomy. France has for a long time been plagued by
the right-wing populist Front National and now it’s voters are dominated by
right and left-wing populist parties poised to ruin the necessary reforms wanted
by Macron.
Communist East Europe is a special case as it’s countries
went from foreign dominance to a high level of maturity in the northern parts,
but now these countries too are in political
decay.
The United Kingdom has seen an unbelievably rapid decline with
the help of UKIP and other demagogues, not least Boris Johnson. Even more
tragic, the United States thanks to polarizing rhetoric and policies from both
political parties, but above all because of Donald Trump and his supporters in
the Republican party, will descend into violent upheavals alternating with
periods of dictatorship. Thus even though the central nations of the Western civilization
have experienced high degrees of maturation, their present fall is dramatic.
As said above, maturity is not necessarily the same as
western style democracy. The two major countries in the northern hemisphere
calling themselves socialist - but which were and when we talk about China, is
an integral part of the Western civilization - also reached higher degrees of
maturity, both in the decades where they had collective leaderships, i.e. the Soviet
Union after Khrushchev and China after Mao. In the first case this ended with
the breakup of the USSR. In modern westernised China the period seems to end with
the present one-man rule and it’s indefinite prolongation.
In the USSR and China under collective Communist party rule
roughly 1965-1990 and 1980-2020 respectively the checks and balances came from
more or less institutionalised groups with differing views within the Communist
parties. This version of pluralist rule functioned with the same stability as
the one which characterized the northern Western type democracies. In China the
system resulted in a long period with a remarkable combination of political stability,
intelligence and adaptability. As said, the system which enabled this seems to be
ending with the new indefinite one-man rule.
A prime minister in a country like Germany can also sit
for several successive periods, but in this case the power-limiting mechanisms
and an opposition is in place. That stability is possible in a democratic
system with power shifts between parties and constantly criticizing oppositions
is by no means obvious. It can only function in a mature manner if and as long as
responsible elites dominate the ruling political parties and guide the voters.
These conditions have ended in several hitherto mature democracies as the
elites mentally degenerate down to the level of the mob (even though they
economically may be well above the people in wealth).
Any end to the characteristics of the two stable pluralistic
types, i.e. the collective Communist and the Western democratic political
systems, are symptoms of the political decline: instability, demagogy,
populism, polarization and authoritarian one-man rule. If necessary, the
authoritarian version can function as a remedy against the more chaotic
versions, but only if it is not installed too early, if the leader makes the
right decisions and if power is not a goal in itself. Otherwise it will sooner
or later be challenged from within. Moreover, a present intelligent leader can
be followed by one who is unworthy but who nevertheless inherits the absolute
power.
By now I see only one major nation still upholding a high
level of mature modernity: Germany. But the quickly shifting patterns of the
German voters is one warning. Worse, certain utterances and obstructive
policies from the present opposition leader do sound unpleasant in content and tone.
It shows that even in this country political maturity is not guaranteed now
where our whole civilization is in free fall. German politicians bear a heavy
responsibility for not letting this last island be inundated too.
But what will the degradation of the political systems
mean for the concept of democracy in itself? In an earlier post I have written that
the Greco-Roman civilization and our Western one are characterized by what may
be termed European democracy, a strong wish for and often also implementation
of direct involvement of the people in rule or the selection of ruling people. Past
and present experience show that even though the modern version of this kind of
rule is presently in crisis, this does not imply that the ideal is also weakened.
Like numerous examples from Burma over Iran to Latin America and Africa show,
the wish for freedom is impossible to extinguish.
That American democracy fails will only strengthen the ideal.
Hitherto democracy is being used as a justification for US dominance just like
economic growth is being used as an argument for Chinese dominance. With the present
and future internal developments in the United States it will be clear to everyone
that this power isn’t any longer synonymous with true democracy. Thus the ideal
will be freed from power-political dirt.
After a sufficiently long time filled with the chaos of late
modernities a civilization is ripe for the final authoritarian rule by emperors
or whichever title they may carry. We are not there yet. It may take at least seven
decades of internal and international troubles before we are ready for our Augustus
or Di.
The strength of European democracy is clear from the
Antique example. Despite the authoritarian rule by the Roman emperors on the
federal level the constituent city states of the empire still had their internal
often democratic constitutions. Just look at the election campaign conserved in
Pompeii. The Roman empire was “One country, several systems”. Our future global
empire(s) must be of the same type to be viable in a world still striving for the
maximally possible degree of freedom: Authoritarian on the federal level and
democratic in the subdued countries.
Epilogue
But to return to the present and coming decades until one
or two or three empires unite the world, isn’t there any hope of escaping the decline?
Well, as stated earlier, history may seem to run in large civilizations
displaced in time repeating overall developments, but especially the specifics
are not determined by law. We still have a degree of freedom to choose. And as
shown by the Song Dynasty a decline can be reversed. On the background of accelerating
climate disasters it is time to pull the brakes on the decay. Now is not
the time for the usual stereotypical
childish games of power between politicians and between countries, games that have
plagued most civilizations in their late phases. Especially not if these games
degrade politicians and peoples to animals for whom power is more important than
humankind. The global consequences of the war in Ukraine have clearly exposed our
vulnerability. These consequences are microscopic in comparison with what
global warming will cause.
