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Politics and the fourth great revolution

By Peter McMahon - posted Tuesday, 26 July 2016


There is a sea change underway in world politics. The basic forms and processes that have dominated politics around the globe for over a century are giving way to new ones under pressure from a fundamental techno-social transformation. This change is most obvious in the countries with the most stable political systems, the rich West.

The change is evidenced by growing dissatisfaction with politics as usual, with the rise of political parties on what were the margins, and with the return of the young to party politics. It is evident in the strange US presidential election where perhaps the least popular candidates in history are vying to run the world’s most powerful nation, and in Europe where parties are fragmenting, including in the UK where a genuine leftist Labour leader emerged.

Meanwhile and outside the West, in the second most powerful nation, the People’s Republic of China, the Communist Party, having steered China through the most astonishing period of economic growth in history, is tightening its hold on power. And in Russia, still the second greatest military power in the world, a kind of despotic quasi-democracy looks entrenched. Nether situation is comforting to the leaders of the West.

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The causes of the great political meltdown are numerous – the shafting of the millennial generation (no job, no home, huge education debt), failure to deal with global warming, the boom generation heading into retirement - but the main factor is much more profound. It is the fourth great techno-social revolution, sometimes known as digitisation. That is to say it is the growing importance of digital technologies, from mobile phones to global telecommunications systems, and all the economic, social, medical, industrial and cultural changes that go with them.

There have been four great revolutions in history that fundamentally changed the way people lived. They are the agricultural revolution that occurred around ten thousand years ago, the urban revolution that began about five thousand years later, the industrial revolution that got under way around the mid-18th century, and the digital revolution that began in the 1950s but is only now really hitting its stride. Each revolution built on what went before but also accelerated change in the way humans ate, built, produced, played, fought and governed themselves.

The first revolution, sometimes called the Neolithic Revolution, began when humans initially settled down and grew crops, resulting in the first surpluses, the first permanent buildings and a dramatic population increase. The first surpluses meant there was something to fight over, and to minimise the damage politics (sometimes defined as the process of deciding who gets what) was invented.

Later urbanisation, the building of cities and towns, brought about the intensification of some existing trends and also some entirely new developments. Domination by men over women and the rich (a few warrior-aristocrats and priests) over the poor (just about everyone else) was consolidated. Hierarchies of all sorts were established and the religious emphasis shifted from female earth goddesses to angry male sky gods. A new phenomenon, imperialism, grew up as some cities banded together to dominate other cities and hinterland regions through military force.

Politics became more complex as social classes and other institutional formations vied with each other to control wealth and power. Imperialism and the constant threat of war introduced new pressures. In particular, there was the question of how the huge expenses of war were  to be paid for. The ancient Greeks tried an interesting experiment by broadening the decision-making to include the whole male, free population, but this ‘democracy’ would eventually fail and not be tried again for about two thousand years.

Rome, the greatest power in history till that time, was where many of the hard facts of modern politics became evident. The use of violence, such as assassination and riots, to pursue political agendas, the need to placate the urban masses through ‘bread and circuses’, the ongoing tensions between social classes and the need to keep the military onside were important aspects of this experience.

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For the millennium or so after Rome fell the power of the Catholic Church, and later Islam, skewed politics in a new direction. Religion played a part in imperialistic expansionism – most notably the rise of Islam, the Crusades and European expansion after 1500 - but what it really focussed on was detailed control over the everyday behaviour of large populations. This emphasis on tight control over behaviour then became a core part of politics as the nation-state arose from the 16th century onwards to take over many of the roles of the Church.

Overall, and despite obvious changes, the basic politics of urban societies remained constrained by the harsh economic facts of agriculturally-based societies. The advent of expanded trade and economic activity generally after 1500 made some difference, but ultimately not that much. Politics was mostly still about the rule of the vast majority by a tiny minority.

By the advent of the 18th century there had been enough political fragmentation (mostly the weakening of the monarchies and the rise of strong merchant classes) to allow the development of increasingly sophisticated daily life in Europe and the Americas. This in turn enabled the development of science and technology which ushered in the Industrial Revolution whereby humans learned to exploit fossil fuels, especially coal, to transform natural resources into useful items on an ever larger scale.

This was all driven by the new ideas of the Enlightenment, which also promoted individual rights and ideas of democracy. We now take these ideas for granted in the West, but they were utterly radical notions when they first appeared.

The Industrial Revolution, especially as it transformed into the mass-Industrial Revolution after the 1870s, gave us our modern, contemporary forms of politics. The rise of two new social classes, the industrial working class and the (increasingly professional) middle class, generated new tensions as they asserted their right to political power. This ultimately resulted in the division of ‘legitimate’ politics into two basic camps, Conservative/Liberal and Labour. In the US the political distortions caused by the Civil War prevented the Democratic Party from becoming the true working/middle class party, but after the late nineteenth century the Republican Party clearly became the party of big business in that country.

A two party system, the most stable form of multi-party politics, vying for power within recognised parliamentary practises became established throughout the West. Other parties, and thus other political ideas, were largely excluded through the ‘barriers to entry’ created by the two-party system. The two major parties achieved both mass membership and general legitimacy.

The two-party system had other effects. It made it much easier for vested interests, such as the owners of mass media and other powerful corporations, to control governments through funding and positive or negative media exposure. Constant polling and constant media commentary made it very difficult for new issues to get into the political debates.

There is no doubt this consolidation and concentration of politics was a major part in the success of the developed nations of the West in the 20th century because it maximised stability. It survived two world wars and global depression and maintained overall legitimacy, only really challenged by the revolutionary internationalism of Communism or alternatively for a short while Fascism. It even showed a reasonable level of flexibility with the post-war rise of identity politics (gender, race and sexuality issues) and issues related to environmentalism.

However, by the 1990s there were growing signs that the mass-industrial, mass-political system was under stress. The first sign was a growing loss of faith by populations with voter turnout and participation in party politics markedly declining. In particular, there was a feeling among the young that they were not catered to, a sense exacerbated by the US establishment’s harsh response to Vietnam War protests.

The rise of neo-liberal ideas - which focussed on the individual, markets and minimal government - in the 1980s also impacted negatively on the whole notion of politics as a way of deciding core socio-economic issues.

All this was matched by the rise of an increasingly professional political class that thought they should be left to run things unhindered by popular opinion. Basking in the glow of fifty years of sustained growth and relative peace, they felt like they had it pretty much worked out. They became increasingly insular and arrogant, focussing mostly on internal contests as the corporate sector increasingly ran the actual economy. Working in politics became just another career choice, with self-promotion the main aim and a second more lucrative career on the horizon.

Aside from a continuing disaffection on the part of youth, a few problems arose that presented problems for the two-party political system. The worst existential threat, global nuclear war, had rather fortuitously ended when Russia gave up the race to match the US technologically. But just as this happened, scientists began to warn of another such global threat in the form of carbon pollution. Then in 2007 the global finance sector, the most advanced form of what was by then global capitalism, imploded. Governments were forced back into the drivers’ seats, but generally failed to deal with underlying problems, now discussed in terms of gross disparities in wealth, such as ‘the one percent’.

          The underlying shifts that were eroding the mass political system were due to basic changes in the way the day-to-day operations of the world occurred. Since the 1950s the introduction of digital technologies – computers, telecommunications and then silicon chips in just about everything – changed work, play, social relationships and much else. The new technologies had initially been promoted by, and in turn promoted, the big systems players – notably governments, the military and big corporations. They thought digital systems would increase their control over things generally, and for a while they did. The military developed powerful new weapons (like GPS), while the banks and industrial firms also shifted their operations to the global level, and increasingly into cyberspace.

But by the turn of the century new trends were indicating that some basic changes were afoot. Initially digital technologies enabled big systems to operate more efficiently, but the distribution of capability began to erode the advantages of size. In short, digital networks were becoming more efficient than big hierarchies.

Two effects of this were the rise of new kind of terrorism (most obviously Al Qaeda and then ISIS) and a new form of social dissent known as ‘hacktivism’, such as the hacker network known as Anonymous.

The inherent vulnerability of digital systems (basically, if it is online it can be hacked) resulted in the leaking of information at new levels. WikiLeaks, Edward Snowden and most recently the Panama papers showed the big players - governments, corporations and the banking system - to be a bunch of liars at the very least, and certainly unable to keep secrets.

           The Occupy Movement, while genuinely expressing the dissatisfaction of growing numbers of people, was in fact indicative that times had changed. They were easily pushed aside by the old direct control system, cops with batons, and the protest ultimately came to little. In fact it was cyberspace, not real space, that they should have been occupying.

           Although it’s power is now in decline, the US still sets the scene for trends around the world. The current Presidential election has surprised everyone, with maverick billionaire Donald Trump breaking the rules. Meanwhile entrenched insider Hilary Clinton had to work much harder than anyone thought to claim the top job over the most leftist candidate in years, Bernie Sanders. The general view is that the American electorate has had enough of ‘business as usual’ politics. Even if, as seems likely, the establishment’s candidate Clinton wins, she will face an irate population on the right and a very angry population generally. With the Republicans likely to continue their scorched earth approach, there will be little peace and less constructive work in Washington. And this in turn will further weaken US leadership around the world.

The ongoing problems in the EU, Brexit, the mess in the Middle East, the coup attempt in Turkey and even voter frustration in the most stable polities, such as Australia, reflect the changing situation. Whether the major shifts will be rightwards (based in rejection of mass-immigration and possibly economic nationalism) or leftwards (basically redistribution of wealth, possibly more environmentally conscious policies), major changes in economic conditions and possibly international relations seem likely. Certainly the overall project of globalisation and cooperation on global issues like climate change face greater difficulties.

Novel forms of politics, based in digital technologies, might arise, or the new politics might settle back into recognisable party structures, albeit more fluid in form. Either way, the relative political certainties of the last century, and certainly of the last 50 years, seem to be gone.

Right now the world faces enormous problems, ranging from a bankrupt economy to global warming to runaway technology to global terrorism. The old state-based, two-party political system could not deal with such problems, so it had to go. Just how the emerging politics will work, and whether it can actually deal with the underlying challenges, is moot. One thing is for sure: we are in for a wild ride for decades, at least, to come.

The old certainties – the power of states, and of some states over others; the ultimate advantages of size; the insulating powers of great wealth – are all eroding, but whether the influence of digitised people-power can generate stable, effective means of governance and policy action is yet to be seen.

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About the Author

Dr Peter McMahon has worked in a number of jobs including in politics at local, state and federal level. He has also taught Australian studies, politics and political economy at university level, and until recently he taught sustainable development at Murdoch University. He has been published in various newspapers, journals and magazines in Australia and has written a short history of economic development and sustainability in Western Australia. His book Global Control: Information Technology and Globalisation was published in the UK in 2002. He is now an independent researcher and writer on issues related to global change.

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