What shall we have in 2008? Warmed over Neoliberalism from the 20th century or should we look for ideas more appropriate for the 21st century and the immense challenges we are facing?

Do we want more of the politics that produced the WTO, “a neoliberal fantasy that fails to take into account the real factors that go along with “trade” like environment, workers rights, local politics, etc.” To the WTO, these other factors are merely externalities to be ignored — never “priced”. It is now all too unfortunately clear how neoiberalism’s unregulated free market capitalism helped fuel the current global climate change crisis.

If not Neoliberalism, or radical unregulated free market capitalism, then what? Certainly we need to move beyond the notion of the Internet as one giant money machine for political power. This only reduces politics to a simplistic externality with the status of entertainment — ala the very popular “American Idol” program. But is American Idol, a plebiscite if ever there was one, and just as easily manipulated, the best sort of Democracy to restore power to We, the people? Can we afford to treat politics as merely an entertaining externality we can safely ignore? Not if we want to have a democracy for, of and by the people.

I am very interested, thanks to Mike McDonald, in the word “resilience”. Here is one definition from the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction: 

The capacity of a system, community or society potentially exposed to hazards to adapt, by resisting or changing in order to reach and maintain an acceptable level of functioning and structure. This is determined by the degree to which the social system is capable of organizing itself to increase its capacity for learning from past disasters for better future protection and to improve risk reduction measures.

What would a Politics of Resilience look like? How would it be different from warmed over Neoliberalism? How about a Resilient Economy that brooked no “externalities”? What would mean to us if America were a “Resilient Society”, unafraid of the future?

The truth of the matter is that We, the people, will NOT have the power for a honest and resilient Democracy if we only have the internet. For a true bottom up power paradigm and a true Democracy, we, the people, need to make sure that we directly control all of our:

1. Communications — the Internet may do this, we all have a printing press;

2. Energy — this is made possible by micro-CHP based upon locally produced renewable biofuels. When we all have power, and can participate as equals in the “electranet“, only then will we be liberated from the embedded organizational limits on our freedoms inherent the current the top down paradigm. The electricity we make ourselves can even power most of our transportation needs, providing us with another degree of freedom. What will the Resilient Energy Commons look like?

3. Food — freedom from the tyranny of the top down, fossil fuel dependent, corporate food distribution system — CSAs can help here.

4. Drinking water?

5. Other?

Not only must we have the security of owning and controlling the means of production of the basics in our lives, we must also work to make them all be resilient in the face of constant change. Just how resilient is our current basic infrastructure? It too has been treated as an externality whose maintenance can be safely deffered to maximize short term profits. We see this in the condition of our roads, our public buildings, schools, in rolling black outs in summer heat, and in the inadequate broadband services we are held hostage in.

Remember Gandhi used simple things like spinning your own cloth and making your own salt to help drive the British out India. Why did the Colonial masters want to control the supply of salt and cloth? Look how the WTO has killed off essentially all of the native food production in Jamaica. Who does this benefit? The democratic independence of Jamaicans or the remote colonial powers? Are Jamaicans better off for being treated as externalities by Neoliberalism?

We here in the United States, in fact, are already, in the name of Neoliberalism, being treated as externalites in our own country. One look at the grotesque inequality in the distribution of wealth, education, healthcare, jobs, the erosion of our constitutional rights in the name of “security”, much less our inability to rebuild major cities such as Detroit or New Orleans, to name but a few examples, should be proof enough.

So what shall we have in 2008? Warmed over Neo-Liberalism from the 20th century, a politics for, of and by the money, or shall we invent a Politics of Resilience for the 21st century to restore the notion that our government is for, of and by the people?

A good place to start looking is Tom Wessels’ book “The Myth of Progress“.
Wessels offers a powerful critique of “progress”, in the Neoliberal sense, that is NOT based on any of the usual suspects on the Left: Communism, Marxism, Socialism, Utopianism etc. Very refreshing. From the Amazon book description:

In this compelling and cogently argued book, Tom Wessels demonstrates how our current path toward progress, based on continual economic expansion and inefficient use of resources, runs absolutely contrary to three foundational scientific laws that govern all complex natural systems. It is a myth, he contends, that progress depends on a growing economy.

Wessels explains his theory with his three Laws of Sustainability: (1) the law of limits to growth, (2) the second law of thermodynamics, which exposes the dangers of increased energy consumption, and (3) the law of self-organization, which results in the marvelous diversity of such highly evolved systems as the human body and complex ecosystems. These laws, scientifically proven to sustain life in its myriad forms, have been cast aside since the eighteenth century, first by western economists, political pragmatists, and governments attracted by the idea of unlimited growth, and more recently by a global economy dominated by large corporations, in which consolidation and oversimplification create large-scale inefficiencies in material and energy usage.

Wessels makes scientific theory readily accessible by offering examples of how the Laws of Sustainability function in the complex systems we can observe in the natural world around us. He shows how systems such as forests can be templates for developing sustainable economic practices that will allow true progress. Demonstrating that all environmental problems have their source in the Myth of Progress’s disregard for the Laws of Sustainability, he concludes with an impassioned argument for cultural change.

Can Wessels’ critique form the basis for creating a Politics of Resilience?

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