The Last Refuge

[ecosophia]

I was delighted yesterday to learn from a reader that CounterPunch, one of the leading periodicals of the radical Left in the US, took the time out of its busy schedule to post a fine tirade by one Craig Collins insisting that modern industrial civilization won't decline -- it will collapse. What's more, it did me the courtesy of citing me as one of the leading figures among those wrongheaded people who suggest that our civilization will end the way every other civilization in human history has ended. 

Yes, I found this delightful, for two reasons. First -- well, do you recall Gandhi's famous quote? "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." For many years now the radical Left has treated the ongoing decline of industrial civilization as a temporary irrelevance, just another set of proofs that late capitalism was about to fall over dead to be replaced by some imaginary socialist paradise or other. More recently, a certain amount of shrill mockery has come from the radical Left when the reality of decline gets pointed out -- the phrase "declinism" got a certain amount of use in that context. Now, though, they're fighting; the next stage will follow in due time. 

You might be surprised, dear reader, that an article in a publication such as CounterPunch would insist on sudden collapse rather than, say, rallying yet again around the shopworn fantasy of proletarian revolution or what have you. You might be surprised, for that matter, that Collins proceeded to trot out the same talking points that apocalyptic fantasists have been using to insist on the imminence of sudden collapse since long before I started writing about the ongoing decline we're in. (Those of my readers who've been around since the days of The Archdruid Report already know all of Collins' four arguments well enough to repeat them in your sleep.) Still, that's to be expected at this point in the historical cycle. 

The reason why Collins and so many other people insist that we have to collapse -- we can't possibly decline like every other civilization in human history -- is that the ongoing reality of decline challenges the core act of faith at the heart of the modern mythology of progress: the belief that our civilization is unique and thus can ignore the lessons of history. (All four of Collins' arguments predictably boil down to exactly this:  "But we're special!")  A sudden cataclysmic collapse leaves the fantasy of progress intact; in a sick way, it can even feed into that fantasy -- "Look at us, we've progressed so far and so fast that we can even destroy ourselves!"  The process of decline that's going on all around us right now, by contrast, drives a stake through the heart of the fantasy and shows that despite our toys, we're following a historical arc that was old when bronze was the latest thing in high tech. 

There's another factor at work here, though. Follow the trajectory of apocalyptic fantasies through the history of ideas and you'll find that down through the centuries, in the Western world, belief in apocalypse is an admission of defeat. Social movements that are on the upside of their arc convince themselves that the world will improve, especially once they take control of as much of it as they can; it's when those hopes are blighted and the arc slopes downward that daydreams of imminent doom exert a potent emotional attraction. It's not quite true to say that it's all over for the American radical Left but the shouting, but it's heading in that direction -- and those of my readers who've watched the way that so many supposed liberals have rallied around the senile gerontocracy in DC in recent years, ditching their ideals right and left in order to concentrate on hating a populist movement that's actually improving the condition of working class Americans...well, let's just say that this latest bit is definitely writing on the wall. 

Comments

[booklover1973]

And then there are the much resented Hartz IV reforms, to do with combining welfare and unemployment money into a stricter welfare system with micromanagement of supplicants and related costs to the country (for example, a bloated bureaucracy), from the 90s, which were done by the SPD; the spiritual father of these forms was Peter Hartz. In Germany, depending in which state you are, the SPD is in bad shape or in freefall.

[(Anonymous)]

Some years ago, I watched a political talkshow during a boring evening at a hotel. They featured former red-sock-campaigning anti-communist Heiner Geissler (CDU) and Hans-Jochen Vogel (SPD). Both agreed whole-heartily that the SPD had betrayed its own soul (or what people thought and hoped was the sould of the party) under Schröder and that Oskar Lafontaine was one of the best guys the party ever had since he was one of the very few who took the statements prior to the federal elections serious and was consequent in his actions moreover.

It is very (!) informative to watch interviews and speeches, especially from Gysi and Lafontaine dating roughly 20 years back. One particularly interesting speech is that of Gysi in the Bundestag prior to the introduction of the Euro. I'd say the accuracy of his predictions is at least level with that of our host!

Cheers,
Nachtgurke