Showing posts with label capitalism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label capitalism. Show all posts

Sunday, 24 September 2023

The Porcupine Saga, Part 4, One Last Lecture, Part 1

Allan Harper, early afternoon, Tuesday, April 9, 2030

From his seat at the back Allan Harper looked around the big room where they all sat. By his count there were twenty of them now, himself included. Seated on an assortment of couches and chairs they pretty well filled up the addition to the old farm house. He and his dad, Tom Harper, had spent the last six weeks tracking these people down and moving them here, to the back end of Inverpen Township. Now Tom had called them all together.

Allan didn't like meetings, having sat through too many pointless ones at work, but he couldn't see any way out of this one, short of setting fire to the house. That would be pretty counterproductive, though, and would probably only serve to delay the meeting anyway. So he resigned himself to sitting through it, doubting that anything useful or important would come of it.

Tom stood at the far end of the room, in front of a big white board with an erasable marker in his hand.

"For the last few weeks there have been few enough of us that we've just made decisions by talking things over after supper every night," said Tom. "Two problems with that. First, we've added five more people today and more are coming. Soon there will be too many of us for such an informal arrangement. Even now, we can't all sit around one table. We need to formalize our decision making a bit. And two, you folks have been letting me just go ahead and run things. You really don't want to do that in the long run."

This struck Allan as his dad being dumb in an all too familiar way. Allan had no doubt that Tom would try to steer the group towards the sort of consensus decision making process that they had often argued about. He just had to speak up. "Why not Dad?" he asked."We need a leader and you seem to know what you are doing, you've got a plan for where we're going with this. If you get too far out of line, don't worry, we'll let you know."

Most of the people in the room nodded their heads and murmured in agreement. But Allan knew his dad wouldn't go along with it.

"We'll get back to that before I'm done here—it's part of what I want to talk about. And Allan, I know you won't let me forget," replied Tom, "But before I do quit running things—and I guarantee I will—there are a few things I want to say."

Allan shook his head and frowned, but decided to hold off from saying anything more for the moment.

"I haven't made any sort of a secret of what I hope we can do here, but I've mostly talked about it in bits and pieces, and to individuals or couples rather than the whole group. I think I should run through the whole idea from top to bottom in one go, in front of you all at once, just so everyone is on the same page," Tom said. "Hmmm... now that I am faced with the task, I can see why I have been doing it in bits and pieces. Bear with me—it's a little hard to know where to start when trying to sum it all up in one go."

He paused for a moment, drew in a noisy breath, exhaled and then went on, "OK, maybe this will do it. There are three basic things that are behind us all being assembled here today. I sure hope that I've already made those things clear to everyone, but just in case, I guess I should go over them again. If something isn't clear, or you think I'm leaving something out, speak up."

Allan could tell his father thought this would be quick and easy. It seemed likely that he was in for a surprise.

Tom paused for a moment, taking in his audience, then continued, "So, three things."

"One, the collapse of our capitalistic industrial civilization."

"We rely on capitalism to provide us with the necessities of life, and jobs to earn the money it takes to buy them, and it is gradually failing to do either. We are seeing this first in the form of rising unemployment, lower paying and more precarious jobs, and poorer working conditions. And second, in rising prices, supply chain failures and a general decrease in the quality and variety of goods that are available, when and if they are available. Or to put it another way, we are experiencing collapse mainly as an increasing level of poverty, as the number of poor people increases and their level of poverty deepens, while the cost of living goes up. I expect all this will continue to get worse, to the point where a great many people will fall out of the bottom of our system and find themselves homeless and hungry. As many of you know personally, that has already started. Pandemics, climate change and the ongoing effort to sabotage our energy infrastructure are all contributing to the situation as well."

He turned to the white board and wrote, "1. Collapse is happening".

As he turned back to his audience, he said, "Moving on to point two—".

"Hang on a minute there Tom, how can you be sure that this mess isn't going to straighten itself out?" asked Terry Mackenzie. Alan knew him as a retired dental hygienist and amateur potter—a nice old guy who Alan quite liked.

"If you mean 'sure' in an absolute sense, Terry," answered Tom, "then of course I am not that sure. But I am pretty damned sure."

"But the economy has been in trouble before," said Terry, "and it has always recovered."

"Actually, that's part of why I am so sure," said Tom. "I don't believe what's wrong at the moment is a matter of the economy being just temporarily out of whack.

"Capitalism is inherently a cannibalistic system—it eats up the very things it relies on for its continued operation. Over the last few hundred years it has gone from crisis to crisis, running up against one set of limits after another and always finding ways around them. Some people think that this can go on forever. I don't agree.

"These days capitalism has pretty much taken over the whole world, depleted natural resources to the point where they can no longer be exploited profitably, depleted human resources to the point where families and society are breaking down and depleted political resources to the point where governments are having difficulty maintaining the systems that makes capitalism itself possible. It seems that capitalism—'business as usual'—has nowhere left to turn. It has finally hit the wall."

"But surely there is some way to reform capitalism so that can get it back on track," said Mark Mackenzie, Terry's husband, a retired lawyer, an avid gardener and a banjo player who was part of the bluegrass group Alan was putting together.

"Well," said Tom, "the present problems are the result of faults that are inherent to the system. The social democracies of the late twentieth century tried to regulate the excesses of capitalism, and they succeeded to some extent, but not completely. And now they have pretty much all been replaced by populist right wing governments who are controlled by the capitalists, who don't want to be regulated or reformed. So, I don't have much hope for that as an overall solution. On the other hand some communities, like the one we are trying to set up here, may manage to reorganize themselves in revolutionary ways so as to get away from the problems of capitalism."

So far, the questions were the kind that Tom was used to fielding, and while it was clear that Terry had surprised him, it didn't look to Allan like it was really bothering him.

"Tom, I have no trouble with the idea that collapse is going to happen," said Jim MacGregor, a retired machinist who had arrived a week before with a pretty complete machine shop stowed in a trailer behind his pickup truck. "And from your blog I know you think it is going to happen slowly. But why slow? I would have thought that once collapse gets started, it will go hard and fast."

"Jim, I've tossed that one back and forth with many other bloggers and kollapsnik friends over the last decade or two ," replied Tom, "and to a large extent it depends on what you means by slow and fast. Days, weeks, months, years, decades? I believe we started collapsing almost 60 years ago, with the energy shocks caused by OPEC in the earlier 1970s. And I'd say we've got another decade or two at least before the process is complete. I've met people who call that a fast collapse and others that think it's really slow."

"Christ," said Jim, "if that isn't slow, I don't know what would be."

"Still, it's only 7 or 8 decades," said Tom. "Rome took several hundred years to collapse and it was a much smaller entity than our current global civilization. Define the speed of collapse as you will, but there are three things I've observed that are beyond doubt:

"One, collapse proceeds unevenly in a geographical sense. Things fall apart in one area while continuing along as usual in others.

"Two, it proceeds unsteadily in a chronological sense. Things decline quickly for a short period of time, then stay the same or even improve somewhat for a long time after that.

"And three, collapse proceeds unequally in the social or 'class' sense, usually hurting the middle and lower classes far more than the one percent at the top.

"All this makes it hard to see that collapse is really happening and it leads people to put off preparing for it, leaving them even more susceptible to it when it happens to them.

"But speaking in an overall sense, things really do go slower than you might expect. Shaky as our society is, it has a lot of momentum and a big majority of people who are trying to keep it going, with a lot of resources devoted to the job. So when things start to decline rapidly, measures are taken to stop it. Even if they don't succeed and there is a local collapse, things tend to get put back together, at least to some extent.

"And so far, collapse has been confined to small enough areas that help has always been available from outside. Or sometimes, when we in the developed countries don't really care much about the affected area, we just conveniently forget about it. The news cycle is short and it moves on. Ask people in New Orleans or Syria."

Unlike his father (and Jim, evidently) Allan wasn't any sort of "kollapsnik", but he did have a lot of personal experience with the decline his Dad was talking about, and while he wasn't sure about Tom's ideology, pragmatically speaking he was ready to go where Tom lead, especially if the food was good and there was a warm place to sleep.

"What do you think about the sabotage that's been going on the last couple of years?" asked Jim.

"I sympathize with the people who are doing it, whoever they are," said Tom. "We're doing nothing about climate change and other insults to the biosphere. We're making no attempt to conserve non-renewable resources. These folks are frustrated by the lack of action. But we have a great deal invested in fossil fuel infrastructure, much of which needs to be abandoned, and it isn't going to be abandoned as long as it's making money for the people who own it. It would be much easier to abandon if it was in a mess, and making that mess is clearly the aim of the saboteurs.

"This is definitely making things decline faster, and the current depression is part of that. Some would argue that a fast collapse is preferable since it quickly gets rid of the old institutions that are holding us back, and it would bring to a halt the damage that is being done to the biosphere and the remaining stocks of non-renewable resources.

"On the other hand, a slow collapse would kill at lot fewer people since it gives us more time to clue in and start adapting—to develop and implement strategies while the resources supplied by civilization are still available. So, personally, I'd prefer not to speed collapse up any further—coping with it a the current rate is going to be challenging enough."

"I suspect that without that sabotage we wouldn't be here, trying to adapt," said Jim with a chuckle. "Just one more question—why do you think humanity can even hope to survive this at all?"

"Well, that's my next point, actually" said Tom. "Point Two, adaptation is possible."

"I won't deny that extinction is a possibility, especially on an individual level—when our current system quits supporting them, a lot of people will be taken by surprise, and many of them just aren't going to make it" said Tom. "But I also maintain that at least some of us are going to make a successful adaptation. To do that, we need to find an area that is likely to miss the worst of climate change (like here in the Great Lakes basin) and the worst of civil unrest (like here in Southwestern Ontario), and set up in a specific location with the resources needed to allow us to be self sufficient—rainfall, ground water, topsoil, existing forests, junk yards to salvage from and so forth (like this area here in Inverpen township)—so we don't have to rely on a system that is falling apart. Given that none of these things are that hard to do, some of us will likely manage it."

Tom turned to the white board and wrote, "2. Adaptation is possible". And on the next line, "Self-sufficiency and salvage."

"I hear people saying that there is no hope," said Jane Cook, "that it would it be better to enjoy the best of what civilization has left to offer and then go out with a bang."

Jane was a woman in her early forties who had been introduced to Allan as a psychologist and counselor, specializing in PTSD and trauma therapy.

"Well, I suspect that if you really thought that, you wouldn't be here," replied Tom with a smile. "But from one sort of viewpoint it is a fair enough question, I guess."

Allan could tell that his dad didn't really think it was fair at all—this was exactly the kind of thinking that got under Tom's skin.

"And for a while yet, you could probably fiddle while Rome burns, so to speak, if you happen to have the financial resources to support such a lifestyle. But eventually, things are going to get a lot worse. That stage won't be much fun, and it will likely last long enough to be something you'd want to avoid—you'd be going out not with a bang, but a long wimper or perhaps an extended scream. That's why I am here, doing this, instead."

"Well, Tom," Jane said, "I was thinking more along the line that the kind of life we face here might be something to avoid. I've heard people say they'd rather die than go back to the Middle Ages. And death is always an option."

"Well, Jane, a deliberate descent to the Middle Ages is not what I'm planning—this is not a reenactment of Dies the Fire," said Tom. "We'll be aiming to support an early twentieth century level of technology. I will admit that even that will take some getting used to, for people who've been living with the internet for most of their lives."

Alan knew that what his father meant by early twentieth century technology was electricity. As an electrician he expected to play a big role in setting that up, indeed he'd already made a start at it. But he wondered why Jane was giving his dad such a hard time about this.

"And there you bring us to the heart of the problem," said Jane. "These days even many homeless people have a smart phone and can get free wi-fi for an internet fix when they want one. We are all dependent on the internet to some extent, and it's so darned useful that it is hard to argue against it, or imagine doing without."

"Well, that's for us to decide as a group in the weeks to come," said Tom.

"Good, it will be interesting to see what we decide" replied Jane. "And Tom, I hope you know I'm just giving you the gears here. You've asked me to serve as counselor for this group, since we are both expecting the people will have some trouble adapting to our new lifestyle. And I think that is definitely going to be the case. Though actually, looking around this room, I'm pretty impressed—none of us have been checking our phones since we sat down here. So maybe there is hope."

"I think there is, Jane," Tom replied. "And I'm hoping the loss of twenty-first century conveniences will be compensated for by getting away from the trials of capitalism and wage slavery. But I do suspect many of us will find need of your help. And there will be others, yet to arrive, who will have had some harrowing experiences on their way here, and will need your help in coping with that trauma."

"I'm beginning to wonder if I'll be the first person to need my help," said Jane. "It's a lot to take in."

"Indeed it is," said Tom. "Anyway, time to move on to my third point: adaptation is best approached as a communal effort."

"It's clear to me that attaining a significant degree of self-sufficiency is best done as a group effort," said Tom. "Looking around the room, I can see that we already have a set of skills and experiences that no one person or even one couple could ever hope to have. There are many ways to organize a group like this, but regardless of which one we chose, a group it must be."

He turned to the white board, and wrote, " Self-sufficiency—a community effort".

At this point Allan was a little surprised to hear his wife Erica speak up. "Tom, people are hard creatures to get along with. Do you really think putting up with all the interpersonal drama is going to be worth it?"

"I know what you mean, Erica," said Tom, "and I feel the same. Very few of us have had the opportunity to try this sort of a living situation. It's going to be a learning experience, and it will take some effort. But, yes, I think that it will definitely be worth it.

"Still, you are right to be concerned. If you look at the history of intentional communities, what you'll see is a lot of failures. Why? Well, several reasons. The single biggest one is that they were often based on magical thinking, the childish idea that if you want something badly enough, you'll get it. And many of the people involved rejected the sort of counting, measuring, calculating and planning that they connected with business—which was exactly what they were trying to get away from. This meant that they were very poorly organized."

"A bunch of hippies, you mean" said Erika.

"More or less," said Tom with a grin. "But another important factor was that they didn't really need the thing to succeed. They had the option of quitting and going back to regular society when the going got tough. We, on the other hand, really need to make this work.

"Some of you may be aware that I am on record as believing that intentional communities are a bad idea. But that was in a bog post that I wrote about twelve years ago, and a number of things have changed, mainly due to the depression. At that time farm land was extremely expensive, now some of it can be had for back taxes. Most people still had jobs back then, and would have been foolish to leave them, where now unemployment is at a ninety year high and most of us here, if we're not retired, are out of work.

"That puts the idea of an intentional community in a much different light, and that's why I have invited you all here. I am optimistic that we can make this work. We all have similar political leanings—we're flaming commies, to put it bluntly—and that should make it easier to agree on how we're going to organize our community."

A tall, skinny fellow cleared his throat and said, "We just got here today and in case the introductions didn't stick, my name is Wilf Janes—Wilf the Welder, they call me. I am, as you say, a leftist. But I have to wonder, Tom—why you think a little group like this can do any better than the whole of capitalism?"

Allan saw Wilf as a potential friend, but this worried him. He didn't think that Tom had had enough time alone with Wilf to arrange this question, but it sure did lead in the direction he knew his father wanted to go.

"Now we'll never get him stopped, "Allan said quietly to his wife Erika who was sitting next to him.

Tom, who had clearly heard Allan, gave him a cold stare, with one eyebrow raised in question.

Allan put up his hands, palms out, and shook his head—an indication that he didn't want to fight. Not yet, anyway....

"Well... ," Tom went on, "I'm not a fan of capitalism. It's only goal is to make rich people richer. It doesn't have a purpose as far as the rest of us go, except to the extent that it can exploit us in one way or another. And it certainly isn't even trying to fix the problems we're concerned about. As I said a moment ago, it tends to cannibalize the very resources it's dependent on, and because of that it just goes from crisis to crisis. Like the present one. So that sets the bar pretty low."

"Sure," said Wilf, "but I hope you've got more up your sleeve than that."

"Oh, I do," replied Tom. "What I'm thinking of is the power of co-operation and sharing. What is often called mutual aid."

He wrote again on the board: "Mutual Aid, Sharing, Co-operation"

"Doesn't sound like much," said Wilf.

"More than you might think," replied Tom. "We're all used to living in a capitalistic society, where we are urged to compete for artificially limited resources. Mutual aid is scoffed at and its strengths are downplayed. If we all started to help each other, capitalism would lose two of the things it relies on —workers and consumers. We have got some learning to do—none of us have had much practice at this sort of thing. But we shouldn't underestimate its possibilities—a co-operative, communal organization acts as a force multiplier for its members."

He turned to the board and added "—Force Multiplier" to the same line.

"For most of our existence as human beings we lived together in small egalitarian groups. Everyone contributed to the extent of their abilities, and were supported to the extent of their needs and the ability of the community to do so. If that sounds familiar, it's a paraphrase of Marx and a description of primitive communism. This was, and is still, a very effective way of organizing small communities. It allowed our relatively small, slow, and weak species to spread over most of the world and occupy a slot at the top of the food chain."

"Actually, I can accept that," said Wilf. "but people aren't equal, so what's this egalitarian thing?"

"People are all different from one another, and it can be pretty hard to say who is better or worse, given that the situation at hand is always changing," said Tom. "But by equal I mean that each member of this group will have equal rights and privileges and an equal voice in our councils. Also, following that communistic ideal, this won't be strict equality—those who need more will get more, and those who are more capable will give more. And just in case there is any doubt, this is regardless of age, gender, race, sexual preferences or anything else that people can find as an excuse to base a prejudice on."

On the board Tom wrote: "Egalitarian Groups, Primitive Communism—from each... to each..."

Turning back to his audience, Tom said, "Actually, I think we are teetering on the edge of the next major area I want to cover. So maybe this would be a good time for a break and perhaps a stretch and some fresh air. Let's take 15 minutes and when we come back, I'll go over some of the specifics of how I hope this is going to work."

Allan checked the time on his phone and quickly set an alarm for 15 minutes. Standing up, he turned to Erika and said, "let's go outside."

"I see your mom heading for the kitchen," she replied. "I think I should give her a hand."

"OK," said Allan, "See you in a bit."

Coming soon, The Porcupine Sage, Part 5, One Last Lecture, Part 2


Links to the rest of this series of posts:
The Porcupine Saga

Maintaining the lists of links that I've been putting at the end of these posts in getting cumbersome, so I have decided to just include a link to the Porcupine section of the Site Map, which features links to all the episodes I've published thus far.

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Tuesday, 16 May 2023

The Porcupine Saga, Part 3: When The Lights Went Out, Part 2

Will Harper, Thursday, July 20, 2028

In the middle of the night Will woke up with a full bladder. As usual he took care of that without needing to turn on a light and disturb Sue, but on the way back to bed he realized the attic fan wasn't running. He flicked on the bathroom light, just to confirm his suspicion. Nothing—the power was out again. But he was only half awake and said to himself, fuck it until morning, it's probably just a hiccup in the process of getting the provincial grid pieced back together, anyway.

In the morning the lights were still out. Coming back from the bathroom, Will sat on the edge of the bed, picked up his cell phone from the night stand and called Joe.

"'lectrical Maintenance. Joe speakin'."

"Hi Joe, it's Will Harper again. What's up with the power outage?"

"You won't believe this one," Joe replied, "All but two of the tower lines leaving the Bruce site fell down in the wind last night. Several towers down in a row on each line, just a couple of miles off site. Hell of a mess."

"I didn't think it was that big a wind," said Will.

"It wasn't," said Joe, "it appears that all the towers that went down were sabotaged so they'd fall in even a moderate wind."

"Shit!"

"It gets worse," said Joe, "same thing happened at Pickering and Darlington, and at three of the ties to the US. And the event in Quebec that started yesterday's outage now appears to have been sabotage too."

"Wow, you folks have got your work cut out for you," said Will, "any guess as to when you'll be turning the province back on?"

"Well, some areas are going to be out longer than others," said Joe. "And with all those 230KV and 500KV lines out and the nukes disconnected from the system, we'll be relying mainly on hydro power and at this time of year there is a limited amount of water available. So we're asking all industrial customers to stay shut down for the duration and there'll be rotating black outs for many residential areas.

"The good news is Unit 8 at Bruce B didn't trip off and is running on condense now, heating the lake while waiting to be connected to some load. The tower lines to Owen Sound and Hanover are still standing, and there are ties to the rest of the system from there. That nuke unit can't respond quickly to changes in load, so we need to get some more dispatchable generation on line as well before we can turn any lights back on. Combustion turbines, natural gas units and/or hydraulic units would do. Even then, though, there still won't be enough generation to carry much load, so we'll have to leave most people turned off, and the system, such as it is, will be pretty unstable. It'll stay like that until we get some of the big lines back up to connect more nuclear units to the system."

"So, what are we talking here—days... weeks?" asked Will.

"For this end of the province, where the load is light, probably a day or so," replied Joe. "But expect random interruptions for weeks after that, until we get the downed lines back in service. As soon as the power does come on, I'd stock up on gasoline for that generator of yours."

"Sounds like a good idea, Joe," said Will. "And other things as well—this is going to play hell with supply chains."

"That's not in my wheelhouse," said Joe, "but yeah, things are going to be a mess for the next few weeks."

"Well, I guess I should let you go," said Will, "try not to work too hard."

"Right now I'm just sitting here in my Hydro truck, looking at the mess," said Joe, "but before long we're going to get real busy. Talk to you later."

"Later."

Will was outright shocked. Nothing like this had ever happened before, and it blew his feeling of having things under control right out of the water. He got dressed in something of a daze, joined Sue down stairs in the kitchen, and told her the news.

"Wow, that's quite a disaster, if I read it right," she said.

"I think you do," said Will. "Gas stations and grocery stores are the first worry. The minute the power comes back on, we need to get out and get stocked up on quite a few things."

"OK, sounds good. You think any of the stores will try to open up without power?" she asked.

"Maybe so, or they might have generators," answered Will. "We should scare up some breakfast and then go see what's what with Inverpen's retailers."

"You want to set up the Coleman stove out on the deck and I'll cook us some breakfast or do you plan to start up the generator right away?" she asked.

"I'll get the generator going and cool down the freezers and fridge. The generator will run the microwave too, and oatmeal is good enough for me." Will said.

"OK, I'll get the oatmeal ready to go and check on the ice in the fridge. Maybe put some more bottles of water in the freezer to freeze."

A repeat performance of the afternoon before ensued. Will had just gotten the generator running, and was wondering what to do about his neighbours when Rick Brown from across the street showed up, with an extension cord in hand.

"Mornin' Will," Rick said.

"Mornin' Rick," said Will. "Can I lend you some electrons?"

"You'll just want me to give them back right away."

"That is the way it works," said Will with a chuckle. Rick was a retired highschool shop teacher, one of the few people around that Will could swap electrical jokes with. "You hear what's going on with the power outage?"

"They've been talking about it on the radio," answered Rick, "sabotage, lines down just outside all the nuclear stations?"

"Yeah, that's about it," said Will. "I've been thinking that I probably should be taking steps to make the gas I've got stored in my shed last longer."

"Hell, it's your generator, I'm just along for the ride, and glad to get it." said Rick, "What are you thinking of?"

"Well, if we only run the generator for a couple of hours in the morning and the same in the evening, it would help a lot," said Will. "That would keep the freezers cold and allow us to use them to make ice to use in our refrigerators. Normally a fridge warms up in a couple of hours after the power goes out, but if you put a few plastic jugs of ice in it, it'll stay cold while the generator is off in the middle of the day and at night. If you don't stand around with the door open, anyway."

"Sounds good to me," said Rick. "How long will your supply of gas last if you do it that way?"

"Well," said Will, "that will be interestng to see. The gas tank on this generator holds 20 liters, and it's rated to run 8 hours at half load on those 20 liters. It's a 5500 watt generator, so half load is 2250 watts. I'm talking about running it 4 hours a day, and I don't expect to every use close to that much power, so let's assume we get 12 hours from a tank, at a guess. That's 3 days per tank of fuel. I've got 3 jerry cans full of gas, 20 liters each, and an empty one I hope to fill up today. So, along with the gas that's in the machine, that would be 15 days altogether. More if we don't use too much power."

"OK, how much power does a fridge or freezer use?" asked Rick.

"Depending on the size, between 100 and 150 watts, running" replied Will. " Quite a bit more while starting, but that surge only lasts for seconds. I've got a fridge and two freezers, which use around 350 watts if they are all running together. But they don't run continuously, of course—they shut down once they get cold enough and start again when they warm up. And Sue's using the microwave right now, which is 900 watts, but it'll only be on for a few minutes."

"We've got a fridge and a freezer," said Rick, "and I may hook some lights up in the evening."

"Me too," said Will. "One thing—be sure not to try to liven up your whole house, say with a double male extension cord. If you forget to open your main breaker, you'll by trying to liven up the whole system. Probably trip my generator off, but it can be pretty hard on any linemen who happen to be working at the time."

"And if I don't forget?" asked Rick.

"It's still against code, but on your head be it," said Will. "Really though, anything you want to run, just unplug it from the receptacle it's plugged into now and plug it into the end of that cord. I see it's a triple ended cord, so that should be good enough. Anything that's wired in solid rather than plugged in, I can show you how to put it on a plug and receptacle so you can easily switch it over to the generator. Someday down the road you might want to get a transfer switch installed."

"Yeah, this'll be fine, for now" said Rick. "So you're expecting to be without power for over two weeks?"

"Well, you know, my buddy in the switchyard crew at Bruce says they might have power back to this area in a day or two. He doesn't think it will be very stable though, lots of random outages, and maybe weeks until things are completely back to normal. How many weeks—who knows."

"Pretty hard to plan a response when you have no idea what's coming," said Rick.

"Yep," said Will, "in many ways, this situation poses more of a challenge than a long term outage. And with power out all over the province, I have some concerns about supply chains, like how long local supplies of fuel and food will last."

"So many relatively short outages, but no chance to top up your fuel supply in between?"

"Something like that. Groceries may be a problem too, and possibly water and sewage" said Will. "Anyway, why don't you plug that cord into my ground fault receptacle up front, just like we did yesterday."

"OK," said Rick, "and you just go ahead and shut down when you figure the time is right."

A few minutes later Will had cords run to his other two neighbours' houses and grabbed his empty jerry can from the shed. He went up front and got the spare, and currently empty, propane tank from the side deck and put them both in the back of the car. He then joined Sue inside at the breakfast table. She had a steaming bowl of oatmeal with chopped dates and a cup of coffee ready for him, just the way he liked it.

"Thanks, Sue," said Will, "as my bother Tom would say, you are a gem! What's on the radio?"

"Talk about the outage, mainly," she answered, "all kinds of speculation about who is responsible for the sabotage. Based on exactly zero facts."

"But no word of anyone actually being caught in the act, eh?"

"No, and no one claiming credit for all the damage either," answered Sue.

"It's early days yet," said Will, "pretty hard to keep anything this widespread secret for long."

"You got that right," said Sue. "So you want to drive around town and see what's open?"

"Yep. At the very least, I'd like to fill up the empty jerry can, the propane tank and the car too," answered Will. "And if any of the grocery stores are open, we should stock up on any basics we're short on. I guess we should do a quick inventory before we leave, and grab the emergency cash stash...."

They had no problem getting gas and propane at the Co-op Gas Bar on the corner of Broadway and Queen, cash only. The Gas Bar was operated by The Country Depot, situated in back of them, which was also open, generator purring away in the background. The Circle K convenience store, kitty corner across from the Gas Bar was open too and glad to take cash for a 4 litre bag of milk. As long as supplies lasted. And they too had a generator running, so the milk was cold.

A short cruise down the main street revealed no open stores, so they headed out to the mall. Nobody there was open either. It sounded like No Frills had a generator running to keep their coolers and freezers working, but their doors were locked, and a hand lettered sign said they weren't ready to try selling anything without a working internet connection.

Out on the highway, Sobies, Inverpen's other supermarket, was also closed, as were Canadian Tire, RONA and Home hardware, along with all the other retailers and restaurants in that part of town.

Back home an hour later, Will sat on his side deck and mulled over the mixed results of their retail survey. It occurred to him that none of Inverpen's three pharmacies were open. Fortunately neither he nor Sue had an prescriptions that need to be filled right away. But it would no doubt be a problem for some people. Still, if the power came back on in a day or two, with the stores open and deliveries coming in from out of town, none of this would be insurmountable. That's a pretty big if, though, thought Will.

His brother Tom always said, "the only question you ever have to answer is what to do next."

Well, he needed to shut off the generator soon, and then put up some sort of tent over it so he could leave it out and running if it started to rain. Then he felt an urge to organize some sort of get together with his neighbours, maybe a pot luck or "stone soup" supper. But first, it would be good to see what Tom thought about all this.

Tom answered on the third ring, "Hi Will, how's it going?"

"To hell in a hand basket, seems like," replied Will.

"Maybe so," said Tom, "but are you and Sue OK?"

"Oh, we're fine," said Will, "you and Karen ?"

"We're good," said Tom. "we talked to the kids and they seem to be coping. The power is off, but our generator is working, we've got lots of gas and food—we're hardly even inconvenienced."

"Same here. Most of the stores are closed for now." said Will. "But Joe Manelli at Hydro One says they should have the power back on in a day or two around here."

"OK, so what does Joe say about the sabotage?"

"You've heard about the sabotage?" asked Will

"Yeah, I have my sources," said Tom.

"Joe says most of the tower lines are down just outside all of our nuke plants, and at the main ties to the States, as well" said Will.

"Yes and I understand something similar is happening in the States, and that some of the oil and gas pipelines in both countries have been hit as well," said Tom.

"That so? Sounds like it's even worse than I thought," said Will.

"You've always been an optimist, little brother," said Tom, "so, yeah, probably."

"Ha, ha," replied Will, "what's this all about anyway—why the sabotage, and why now?"

"Looks like some people finally lost patience with the lack of action on climate change and other environmental problems," said Tom.

"And this is going to solve those problems?" said Will, his voice rising with disbelief.

"Well, there is a lot of money sunk in the infrastructure for fossil fuels and consumer culture, and it's still making the owners a lot of money, even though it's fucking up the planet in the process," said Tom. "The argument goes that we'll never change until we're forced to abandon that investment. Like by having it sabotaged repeatedly, and eventually rendered unprofitable."

"Repeatedly?" ask Will, "you mean this is likely to happen again after we get things pieced back together?"

"There are lots of targets that haven't been hit yet, so it seems likely that it will keep on happening," said Tom, "and then, yes, when stuff get's fixed it's likely to be hit again, and again. Maybe until we give up on fixing it. Not my idea and not something I support, but there are a lot of people who have had it up to here with business as usual."

"That sounds pretty extreme," said Will, "isn't there something that could be done to stop the sabotage?"

"You spent your whole career in the utility business, Will," said Tom, "you know how spread out and exposed all of our energy infrastructure is, and how many people it would take to post a guard on all of it, right?"

"I'll give you that Tom," replied Will, "And I guess if you can't guard the whole length of a pipeline or power line, there's little point in guarding it at all. The saboteurs would just find an unguarded section and do their thing there. Tough and expensive to find competent guards, too."

"Exactly," said Tom, "If there is any hope of stopping this, it's in finding the people who are doing the sabotage and putting them in jail. Eventually they'll trip up and give themselves away, but who knows how long that will take."

"So far they have been pretty quiet," Will said. "which unfortunately is a good first step towards not getting caught."

"Not much we can do about that anyway," said Tom. "I am more worried about how the economy is going to react the shock."

"You're be thinking that this is going to lead to a recession?" asked Will.

"Damn right," said Tom, "more likely a depression, and a long one. We've been teetering on the edge of one since the first couple of years of the COVID-19 pandemic, and I think this may push us over the edge. The economy runs on energy and energy systems are what's being hit."

"Yeah, I can see that," said Will, "So the economy will slow down and businesses will close. Lots of people will lose their jobs, and have no money to spend, and it will snowball."

"Yes, all that will likely happen," said Tom, "but you know what really scares me?"

"No," said Will, "what?"

"The system we've set up to supply us with the necessities of life. Energy for sure, but also water, food, medicines, clothing, housing, you name it. There's two issues really. One is the fragility of the production facilities and supply chains. All highly exposed to sabotage. And also hugely dependent on a reliable supply of electricity and diesel fuel at a reasonable price. Not too say raw materials and spare parts that come from far away...."

"Isn't that enough of a problem?" said Will. "What's this second issue?"

"Well, we've let capitalism take over the responsibility for supplying us with all this stuff," said Tom. "The whole system is owned and operated by capitalists. Even though we are totally dependent on them, they aren't in business for our benefit—their only goal is profit. During a depression, as business becomes less profitable they will do a poorer job until finally they just quit. With no thought as to the consequences for the rest of us."

"The 'poorer job' consisting of higher prices, lower quality, less variety and worse service until they finally shut down altogether," said Will, "I've been reading your blog for years, Tom. And I think you've got things figured out just about right. But as you always say, the only thing that matters now is what do we do next. So, uh, what do we do next?"

"Well, what we need to do is adapt to the changes that are coming," said Tom. " First we need to cope with capitalism in crisis, as it gradually crumbles. While we're living through that, we need to be planning ahead for when they finally give up, and have something ready to replace them."

"A bit late to start preparing at this point, isn't it?" asked Will.

"No, I don't think so," said Tom."Fortunately, things aren't going to fall apart all at once, not everywhere, and not for all people. Some particularly unlucky people will be hit really hard—some already have been, for years now, in some parts of the world. But most people not so much. Their power will be out for a few days, they'll be scraping the bottom of their pantry before the grocery stores open, and their gas tanks will be empty. And then it will be back to something like normal for a while.

"For the sharp ones this will be a wakeup call—the incentive they need to get them working on adaptation. I intend to be one of those people and I imagine you will too. Those who don't catch on during this first pass will be given repeated opportunities to do so. And of course there will be some who, years from now, decades maybe, are still saying, 'just another year or so and everything will be back to normal.'"

"All that's pretty abstract," said Will. "what the hell can I do today?"

"Well, the power is off and most stores are closed," said Tom, "so for the moment you're stuck with the preparations you've already done. You can put those preps to work, take notes on how they work, and what you'd like to change or add when you can. I imagine we'll all decide we need deeper pantries, more gas on hand for our generators, maybe some solar panels. So far the municipal water and sewage are working, but we should probably make sure we are ready for those services to fail as well."

"We've still got the composting toilet you left when you sold us this place," said Will. "And the jugs of water in the root cellar. I even change out the water regularly. We've got a small stash of cash, but so far hardly any place to spend it. So I'm thinking that maybe not so important..."

"Now you're getting closer to the crux of this — you can't rely on capitalism so much for what you need," said Tom, "Get more skeptical about any solution that consists mainly of buying things. Get used to living without shopping and most of the other forms of canned entertainment the we've all grown so used to."

"That will be a big change, and a hard one," said Will.

"Damn right. I know old collapsniks whose houses are full of 'preps'. Prepping is what they've been doing for fun for years now. That stuff might last them a year or two at best," said Tom. "Then what are they going to do? They don't even know the people next door to them."

"I guess it's time to reach out to our neighbours and start working on the mutual aid thing," said Will. "I've been thinking about inviting some of the people around here to supper tonight. Also got to put a tarp over the generator."

"Is it going to rain any time soon?" asked Tom.

"Doesn't look like it," answered Will.

"Then I'd say talk that supper over with Sue and if she's keen, go do the inviting first," said Tom. "When you've got a crowd gathered, and you've just filled their stomachs, you can probably get some help with putting that tarp up. Might be the start of a more long term solution."

"You know, I think you're right. I should get going on that," said Will, "And I should let you go so you can do something similar. 'Bye for now."

"'Bye Will."

Will Harper, Saturday, July 21, 2040

"Anyway, we did have a big pot of 'stone soup' that night, with a dozen of our neighbours contributing. The start of a mutual aid project that is a whole other story," said Will Harper, wrapping up the story he'd been telling Alan.

"Well, I'd like to hear that story," said Alan, "but it will have to wait for another day, if you're going to get that tour."

"We can get to the tour in a minute," said Will. "But first, I've got to ask you a question."

"Yes?"

"The sign over your gateway out there—it looks like a cave painting. What's that all about?"

Alan laughed out loud, "It's a reminder of something that happened when we'd only been here a few weeks, and many of us think we ought never forget. The first bunch of us were all moved in, the truck unloaded and taken back to the rental place, and we were sitting around talking, trying to figure out where we were headed. I guess you could say I stuck my foot in it and Dad kinda flipped...."

Coming soon, The Porcupine Sage, Part 4: The Sign Above Our Gate, Alan Harper, Tuesday, April 9, 2030


Links to the rest of this series of posts:
The Porcupine Saga

Maintaining the lists of links that I've been putting at the end of these posts in getting cumbersome, so I have decided to just include a link to the Porcupine section of the Site Map, which features links to all the episodes I've published thus far.

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Saturday, 23 April 2022

Time for Change, Part 3: Without Hierarchies?

Webbwood Falls
about 2 hours drive
east of Kincardine

This is the third of several posts that I would have preferred to publish all at once, were it not for the extreme length of such a piece. It will make more sense if you go back and read the whole series, starting with the first one, if you have not already done so. To briefly and inadequately summarize, I'll just say that overpopulation and overconsumption (and their consequences) are the most serious problems that we face. Overpopulation is going to take decades to solve, while overconsumption could be addressed quite quickly if certain obstacles could be gotten out of the way. By reducing our level of consumption, we could reduce our impact on the planet and give ourselves time to reduce our population.

The blame for overconsumption can be laid squarely at the feet of capitalism, with its insatiable hunger to accumulate wealth, its inescapable need for endless growth, its inability to tackle any problem that can't be solved by making a profit and its endless blaring marketing machine which convinces us that we must consume, consume, consume. It is important to note that the majority of that consumption is done by a minority of people, the top ten to twenty percent of the richest people in the world. Sadly (from my viewpoint), I am part of that group and I suspect that many of my readers are as well, even though we wouldn't call ourselves "rich".

In a previous post where I looked at the problems with industrialization, I had promised to have a more detailed look at our financial systems and our governments.

In this new series I am finally doing that. In Part 1 we looked at our financial system and saw that money is a tool that facilitates the accumulation of wealth by the rich, and a mechanism by which they control the rest of us. It does this by making it possible to keep score in the complex game that is our economy, and pretty much guarantees that the wealthy win. Unfortunately, our financial system creates money as debt, which must be paid back with interest. In order to do that, the economy must continually grow, or it will collapse. At the same time, the inevitable consequence of continued growth on a finite planet is also collapse.

In Part 2 I discussed the problems with hierarchies, especially with governments that have been co-opted by capitalism. The point being that overconsumption is our most pressing problem and hierarchies and capitalism are potent, and mutually reinforcing, agents of overconsumption.

So, I think I've made it clear that we can do without money and capitalism, but can we really do without hierarchies? I'll break that question into several parts today.

1) Are human beings naturally hierarchical? Are we doomed to drift back into hierarchical organizations even if we successfully get rid of today's hierarchies?

2) Are there viable alternatives? That is, are hierarchies necessary when we organize ourselves into large groups and take on large projects, or are there others ways?

3) Given the strengths of today's hierarchies and their success at propaganda, is there any hope that we can get rid of them?

We are repeatedly told that the answer to these questions is yes, no and no, respectively. But if we look a little closer, I think we will find different answers (no, yes and yes). Part of what will lead us to those answers is that, in order to reduce consumption to a sustainable level, we need to only do things that are really necessary—that actually provide the necessities of life to the human race. My definition of necessities is probably wider than yours, but it definitely doesn't include helping hierarchies grow and become more powerful, or helping capitalists accumulate wealth.

OK, question 1. Are humans naturally hierarchical?

In an earlier post I said that for most of our pre-history people lived in egalitarian hunter gatherer bands, and that we have evolved to be best suited to similar circumstances. One of my readers (Stephen Kurtz) objected, pointing out that people are naturally hierarchical—an assertion that he found to be obviously correct, but which just didn't sound right to me, based on my personal experience of living with other human beings. I have to thank Stephen, since his comment motivated me to do some reading that resolved this seeming contradiction. It seems that, yes, people do have innate drives to dominate and to submit, in varying degrees. So we can easily fall into the trap of hierarchical organization, with a few of those who prefer to dominate making it to the top, and the rest of us stuck underneath them. How then does one explain all those egalitarian societies in our past? And even a few remaining at present.

Well, it seems that we also have a strong innate resentment of being dominated. In small bands of people, where there is only room for one leader, most people realize that they cannot reasonably hope to be that person. If they let an upstart take over and run things, they will be stuck submitting to him for the rest of their lives, or they will have to leave the band. That is exactly what happens among gorillas, chimpanzees and bonobos, our nearest relatives. And it was probably our "original" state, as well, if you look far enough back.

Graeber and Wengrow, in The Dawn of Everything spend a lot of time trying to avoid the question of whether our original state was hierarchical or egalitarian. I am not nearly so worried about this—I think you can argue that at one time our distant ancestors did live in primitive hierarchies like our primate relatives. But this was before we were fully human, and it was only when we found another, more egalitarian, way of living that we really became fully human.

At some point in our past, our ancestors realized that it was possible to prevent upstarts from taking over (with careful vigilance and suitable tactics to control them), and thus to live in an egalitarian society. You didn't get to dominate, but at least you didn't have to submit, and it seems that for most of us this was preferable. Over time, techniques for controlling upstarts were finely honed. These include ridicule, criticism, ostracism, and murder. Once such a system is functioning smoothly, it discourages would be upstarts from acting on their deviant impulses. And it provides a much less stressful social environment for people to live in.

I should note here that from most of the reading I've done on this subject I was left with the impression that these egalitarian bands lived pretty much in isolation. It has recently been suggested to me by a reliable source (thanks, Helga Ingeborg Vierich), that this wasn't so. She says, "bands, in fact, are temporary camping groups, part of a much larger community that shares the same dialect or language, numbering in the many hundreds, or even thousands, of people. Most of these people know each other, or at least know of each other through their individual social networks of friends and family. And camping parties do change in membership from camp to camp and so they rarely consist of the same households over the course of the year." This is supported by what I've read of the Anishinabek in colonial times (Cecil King's book on Jean-Baptiste Assiginack).

Living and evolving in small egalitarian groups fine-tuned our empathy, our communication skills, our tendency toward altruism and our dislike of being dominated. All these thing are innate characteristics of human beings today. So it seems very likely that we could indeed learn to live in non-hierarchical societies again, if given the opportunity. And there is little reason to think we would subsequently backslide into hierarchies. Especially if we keep alive the memories of how bad it was for most of us to live in hierarchical societies.

There will, of course, be an initial learning curve for things like consensus decision making. But excellent training materials and skilled trainers already exist, so this should not be an insurmountable obstacle.

In my recent post on money, I commented on differences in attitude towards the contributions of skilled/successful people in egalitarian societies and in our modern society. Such people in egalitarian communities see their contributions as part of their responsibility to support their community. It is just what human beings do, to the extent of their abilities, without expecting to go on to accumulate wealth, fame or power, or to set themselves above their fellows.

This is strongly in contrast to our modern society where successful people are expected to accumulate wealth, and to use it to accumulate more, without necessarily benefiting their fellows at all.

I think a parallel can be drawn here with differences between leadership in egalitarian societies and hierarchical societies.

Of course, in an egalitarian society, much less in the way of leadership is needed, and what is needed can be much more informal. Still, people will look to individuals with talent, skills and experience in a particular area to provide guidance, mentoring and leadership in that area.

A leader in such societies is expected to be capable and successful "economically", but also generous, impartial, patient and in control of his temper, a good orator capable of winning over an audience and skilled at settling disputes. But never arrogant, parsimonious (cheap), mean, overbearing, boastful or aloof. Because a leader was expected to be generous and help the unfortunate in his community from his own resources, he was often the poorest person in that community. (The content of this paragraph was picked out of various places in Christopher Boehme's book, Hierarchy in The Forest))

To sum it up, in egalitarian societies, a leader's role is to benefit his society rather than himself. To borrow a term from the Zapatistas, you should "lead by obeying"—always keeping in mind the needs and the desires of the people you lead, rather than your own personal ambitions.

In hierarchies people seek leadership roles for several reasons: more pay, more power and control over their futures, increased upward mobility and so on. A leader in a "front line" position is a modern hierarchy is not in that different a situation from a leader in an egalitarian society, except that he has above him a hierarchy which has some expectations of him that have little or nothing to do with the welfare of those he leads. The job is to get the working people to do what those higher up want them to do. But you can't do that without winning the co-operation of your workers. So this is a balancing act, but many leaders are oblivious and lead with their gaze focused upward, often with amusing results.

Still, leaders are an absolute necessity in a hierarchy, lest the working class rise up and start seeing to their own needs, rather than the desires of those above them.

2) Are there viable alternatives to hierarchical organizations?

We are told that large groups, living in more complex ways, tackling large and complex projects, require hierarchies to successfully organize them. This seems a self serving opinion, since such hierarchies largely exist to perpetuate their own existence and growth, and funnel wealth up to those at the top.

I'll admit that co-ordination is required whenever people work together. To borrow from Michael Albert (of Participatory Economics fame), probably about 20% of the work done in a typical modern enterprise is co-ordination work. At present that labour is done by a special 20% of the people in the organization, who occupy all but the bottom-most layer of the organization's hierarchy. It could just as easily be shared out among all the employees, as 20% of their work, completely eliminating the upper tiers of the hierarchy.

If we do away with the co-ordinator and owner classes, allow the employees to manage themselves and share onerous duties equally among each other, things would actually work much better. Without any hierarchy at all.

Workers who have a grasp of how the organization works beyond their own immediate task can cope better with the inevitable unexpected situations that always come up. When "shit jobs" are shared equally among all workers, a good deal of resentment is eliminated. Workers who manage themselves gain a sense of empowerment, are more highly motivated, and can innovate more effectively than managers in a hierarchy, because of their intimate knowledge of affairs on the shop floor. All this works best when owners are eliminated and workers can decide how much of a surplus to aim for and what to do with it when they succeed in generating it. In many cases, workers will choose more leisure time rather than additional material rewards. And that will also contribute to reducing overconsumption.

That's in larger organizations. Reducing overconsumption will mean taking on fewer large endeavours, so there will be less need for large organizations. As I have already suggested, today's large organizations exist primarily to promote their own existence and growth, and facilitate the accumulation of wealth by their owners. They serve little other purpose. Most of what really needs to be done could be done by smaller groups and eliminate a bit chunk of consumption in the process. With the benefit of reducing the amount of co-ordination required.

Borrowing here from Microsolidarity, I would suggest the people naturally function as individuals, duos (two people), crews (3 to 8 people) and congregations (30 to 200 people). Above that there is the "crowd", which is the larger community in which the smaller groups are embedded. We evolved in bands that were very similar to "congregations", and within those bands smaller groups similar to "crews" took on tasks that were too big for one or two people. In both cases, it seems to me that we evolved, and still have, innate abilities to function well in these kinds of groups.

A congregation should be based in an actual geographical area and be made up of the people living there. Their primary concern should be securing the necessities of life for themselves, a situation where producers and consumers are the same people and regulating supply and demand is greatly simplified. The individuals, duos and crews within a congregation will provide the mechanisms for actually securing those necessities.

Capitalism has done its best over the last couple of centuries to eliminate crews and congregations, because those types of group open up the possibility of co-operation, mutual aid and self sufficiency, and make it hard for capitalist hierarchies to control people.

So, it seems clear to me that we could indeed eliminate large hierarchical organizations and a lot of the effort and consumption that goes into creating and maintaining them, and still have, through self management and community ownership, much of what those organizations officially claim to be trying to achieve. As Noam Chomsky said, if you cannot justify a power structure (hierarchy), it should be eliminated. As I would say, you will have a hell of a time justifying most power structures.

Am I missing any other important roles that hierarchies play or situations in which they are needed?

One possibility is the military. Currently the military is set up in a very hierarchical way, so much so that we have trouble imagining it could be otherwise. In fact, though, the best militaries come from societies with a very flat structure, and the worst from societies with very rigid hierarchical power structures. The chaos of war rewards initiative at the lowest levels, similar to the peace time organizations I was just talking about. Which should cast some serious doubt on our assumptions about the military.

And of course the other thing is that militaries are currently necessary because of the conflicts for land and resources that arise between our hierarchical organizations (countries, primarily). Eliminate them and conflicts should be much smaller and less frequent, probably not requiring formal standing armies at all. Smaller organizations, making decision that they themselves have to live with, should get into fewer conflicts.

Many people will tell your that hierarchical organizations are necessary to co-ordinate our response to disasters. This is supported by the disaster myth which would have us believe that the people on the ground in disasters are largely helpless. But, in fact, people do a pretty good job of helping themselves, especially if they have access to the resources they need. What hinders people helping themselves in disasters is a lack of such resources, primarily due to fiscally conservative politicians who will not spend money on planning ahead for disasters. Small groups doing their own planning and keenly aware that they will suffer personally from the effects of short range thinking, are much more likely to do a good job of planning ahead, setting aside resources and training their people to respond in disaster situations.

We currently have large regulatory hierarchies, which are needed to control the excesses of capitalism. When those making decisions are the same ones who will be affected by them, better decisions will be made. People who can organize themselves to survive climate change, biosphere disruption and resource depletion will plan so as to mitigate these things at present and avoid them in the future. With capitalism and oligarchies removed, the temptation to seek short term personal gain instead of planning for the long term should be significantly reduced.

Of course, some will scoff at all of this, saying that this is just communism, which didn't work in the twentieth century and won't work now. What I am talking about is anarcho-communism, or perhaps, eco-anarcho-communism would be a better term. The communist regimes of the twentieth century were authoritarian communitsts, and from that came their problems. They made the mistake of throwing out the old owner/co-ordinating classes (aristocracy and bureaucracy) who had been running their countries and then replacing them with a new co-ordinating class based on the "party". The new co-ordinators were no better than the old ones. Little changed for most people, who had no opportunity to self manage, and who gave the party the absolute minimum of co-operation that they could get away with. As you might expect, this didn't work very well. But it is a mistake to judge communism on how it worked in those cases.

In Russia, before the October Revolution, the workers had already set something close to anarcho-communism, but when Lenin and the Bolsheviks took over they soon eliminated that, and set up an authoritarian state that had little in common with the sort of communism that I am advocating.

In my next post we'll look at the answer to my third question—given the strengths of today's hierarchies and their success at propaganda, is there any hope that we can get rid of them?

During the last few months I've been reading a number of very interesting books and websites, which bear upon what we are discussing. Here is a list of those books, along with a few that I've read previously, but that also have been a help.

Debt, The First 5000 Years, by David Graeber

Hierarchy in the Forest: the evolution of egalitarian behavior, by Christopher Boehm

The Art of Not Being Governed, by James C. Scott

Against the Grain, a deep history of the earliest states, by James C. Scott

Living at the Edges of Capitalism: Adventures in Exile and Mutual Aid, by Andrej Grubacic

The Dawn of Everything, by David Graeber and David Wengrow

No Bosses: A New Economy for a Better World, by Michael Albert

Balancing Two Worlds: Jean-Baptiste Assiginack and the Odawa Nation, 1768-1866, by Cecil King

Websites

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Wednesday, 16 February 2022

Time for Change, Part 2: Hierarchies

Pinnacle Rock Falls
about 2 hours drive east of Kincardine

This is the second of several posts that I'd have preferred to publish all at once, were it not for the extreme length of such a piece. I would suggest that you go back and read the first one, if you have not already done so. To briefly and inadequately summarize, I'll just say that overpopulation and overconsumption (and their consequences) are, in my opinion, the most serious problems we face. Overpopulation is going to take decades to solve, while overconsumption could be addressed quite quickly if certain obstacles could be gotten out of the way. By reducing our level of consumption, we could reduce our impact on the planet and give ourselves time to reduce our population.

The blame for overconsumption can be laid squarely at the feet of capitalism, with its insatiable hunger to accumulate wealth, its inescapable need for endless growth, its inability to tackle any problem that can't be solved by making a profit and its endless blaring marketing machine which convinces us that we must consume, consume, consume. It is important to note that the majority of that consumption is done by a minority of people, the top ten to twenty percent of the richest people in the world. Sadly, I am part of that group and I suspect that many of my readers are as well, even though we wouldn't call ourselves rich.

In a previous post where I looked at the problems with industrialization, I had also promised to have a more detailed look at our financial systems and our governments.

In this new series I am finally doing that, and last time we looked at our financial system and saw that money is a tool that facilitates the accumulation of wealth by the rich, and a mechanism by which they control the rest of us. It does this by making it possible to keep score in the complex game that is our economy. Unfortunately, our financial system creates money as debt, which must be paid back with interest. In order to do that, the economy must continually grow, or it will collapse. At the same time, the inevitable consequence of continued growth on a finite planet is also collapse.

I then asked if we could do without keeping score—without money—and concluded that we could indeed, and to the benefit of most everyone. Especially since the collapse we are facing will hurt people of all socio-economic classes.

Today I'll take a similar look at our governments (and most of the rest of our organizations), identify the problems with them and ask if we could do without them.

These days our families, communities, businesses and so on all the way up to our countries and the UN are organized as hierarchies, and most have been since they were first created. Like money, this sort of organization is a tool designed for the benefit of certain people (those at the top), to be used by them to secure their power, wealth and privileges, and to keep the rest of us in the position where we "belong"—lower down in the hierarchy. And in the process, to stop us from ever realizing that there is any viable alternative.

Inherent Failings of Hierarchies

We are told that a global civilization like ours is so big and complex that it simply couldn't function without a hierarchical organization. I would say just the opposite—that our civilization is so big and complex only because it has to support hierarchies. If we didn't have to maintain hierarchies for the benefit of those at the top of them, we could adequately take care of ourselves with much simpler organizations, in smaller groups, at less expense—in other words, with less consumption.

I usually refer to this phenomenon as the "diseconomies" of scale—the opposite of economies of scale. Economies of scale do exist, of course, but beyond a certain point the organizational costs swamp out the advantages of size. And that point is surprisingly small.

In a small group, say 200 people or less, no formal organization at all is required. With little effort, everybody gets to know each other, and to know what's going on. Decisions can be made by direct democracy, where the whole group gets together, talks things over and a consensus is reached. I'll be talking about that at length later in this series, but the thing to realize here is that even in small organizations, if there is a hierarchy, it introduces problems.

In a hierarchy, even one that is ideally organized and where everyone involved is a willing participant and eager to do their part, information must flow upward from where the actual work is going on to the appropriate decision making level, and decisions must flow down to where they will be actually implemented. This involves a lot of non-productive effort done by people who must be supported by those who are productive.

Of course, real hierarchies are far from ideal. Things are done in unnecessarily complex ways just to support the hierarchy and in many cases to make it look more impressive. The people at the top are inevitably isolated from the rest of the organization and rarely have the information they need to make good decisions. I was a supervisor and then a manager, after years of being a worker, and I was shocked by how quickly I lost touch with things at the workface. And I was trying very hard not to be influenced by the bullshit flowing down from higher in the hierarchy. Often, low level managers wallow in that stuff enthusiastically.

Many managers are not particularly capable of making good decisions. And even those that are frequently focus on their own benefit, with little concern for anything else.

But beyond all this, there are other problems that result from how hierarchies have to be established and maintained. In real hierarchies most of the people involved are not there willingly and are not particularly eager to do their part. They must be forced to do so, which is another cost of running a hierarchy. To be absolutely clear, inequality is an inherent feature of hierarchies, and can only be maintained by exploiting and oppressing those in its lower classes and blaming that situation on those same oppressed people. Let's have a closer look at how this works.

There are three basic mechanisms for establishing and maintaining a hierarchy—physical coercion, bureaucracy and charisma. Any one of these mechanisms can be used to build some sort of hierarchy, any two can make a pretty solid hierarchy, but when all three function together you get the situation we have today—that of being firmly stuck with our existing hierarchies.

One assumes that physical coercion started with a leader simply forcing his will on his followers. The next step would be surrounding himself with some bullies to who he could delegate that job. One suspects that this was not too effective for the rulers as their control wouldn't extend much beyond their own physical reach. Even with henchmen, this improved only a little, since those guys had their own interests and spent much of their time seeing to them. And there were always a few who, when the opportunity arose, were willing to step into their leader's place. Killing him, if necessary, to get rid of him.

Actually, this sort of organization wasn't too onerous for those being ruled. You had a number of options—quiet disobedience or just leaving, possibly to set up your own more agreeable organization in another location.

But since then, the techniques of physical coercion have been considerably refined. Today, states claim a monopoly on violence, which they implement through police forces and the military. If this is managed with a light enough touch, the populace may well be willing to go along quietly. Or, in totalitarian states, there is little alternative and people suffer under a much heavier touch.

Bureaucracy amounts to a state monopoly on information. Everyone in a hierarchy needs information and controlling it is an effective way of keeping people in line. Much of how money and debt are used as a mechanism of control falls under this category.

Charisma is a way of influencing people without using force or bureaucracy. It is easy enough to imagine how charismatic leaders may have taken over small groups. But even in our supposed democratic countries, what is an election but a popularity contest, whereby the most charismatic leaders are chosen. Often with little thought as to their effectiveness at governing. And while using charisma to influence people may seem like a pretty benign way to run a hierarchy, it is still a form of coercion. And just as onerous as any other form, especially if you are not blinded by your leaders' charm, which can happen if things don't go well under their rule.

Beyond the three basics, religion has long been a way of getting people to willingly accept their placed at the bottom of hierarchies. And, in our modern world of mass media, propaganda has become an extremely effective way of controlling the population. In both cases, as Voltaire noted, if you can get people to believe in absurdities they will be willing to commit atrocities.

Because of all this, the bottom of a hierarchy (and that's where most people live), is not a very pleasant place. And in our modern hierarchies, for many people, there is simply nowhere else to go. You can't even head for the hills, as they are already occupied by people also living in hierarchies.

Another problem with hierarchies is that they love to grow. Even taking into account what I've said about diseconomies of scale, the people at the top still benefit by having more people below them, more people to tax. Living, as we do, on a finite planet this leads to trouble. First, hierarchical countries, with their drive to expand, do not make good neighbours, and this leads to conflict. War is expensive and destructive and for the people actually doing the fighting, pretty horrific. Second, the inevitable has finally happened and we as a species have grown to the point where we are running out of room, depleting non-renewable resources and destroying the bio-sphere on which we rely for the necessities of life.

Co-optation of Our Hierarchies by Capitalism

If all this wasn't bad enough (and it certainly is), most hierarchies on the planet today have been co-opted by capitalists and are devoted to the goals of capitalism—the accumulation of ever more wealth into the hands of the capitalists. Which is bringing us up against the limits of life on this finite planet even quicker and harder than otherwise would have happened.

Capitalism goes hand in hand with industrialization and really came into its own during the last couple of centuries when heat engines, driven by burning fossil fuels, made possible production at much higher levels than when most everything had to be done using human or animal muscle power. This lead to a time of unprecedented material abundance in what we now call "the developed nations."

There was a time, not too long ago, when this looked like the greatest thing that had ever happened, but burning all that coal, oil and natural gas have had some negative consequences. Beyond climate change and resource depletion, the primary consequences result from the fact that fossil fuels are non-renewable resources. We used the "lowest hanging fruit" first. By the early 1970s the energy cost of accessing what was left had increased to where it started to cause problems for our economies. Capitalism soon found itself in the early stages of collapse. Since then things have grown continually worse—the middle class has continually decreased in size and economic inequality between the bottom and top of our hierarchies has increased to an unprecedented degree.

Still, capitalism has managed to maintain its hold on our governments, and I think that deserves a closer look. You might assume that your government is at the top of the hierarchy you live in. That has been true at many times in the past—with aristocracies, for instance. But today the situation is more complex.

Representative democracies are a prime example. They are a particularly clever tool for giving the people the illusion that their government is for the people, by the people and of the people, when in reality it serves mainly the plutarchs—wealthy capitalists who sit quietly above the supposedly representative government, exercising a great deal of influence on its policies, solely for their own benefit.

Pretty much everyone is supposed to have a vote in representative democracies, so how can this be? Easily—election campaigns are huge popularity contests. The way the mass media work today this makes them expensive endeavours and while politicians do accept donations from the working class, most of their financial support comes from the wealthy. Those donations come with strings attached, and politicians are expected to rule in such a way as to benefit the wealthy people who support them.

Politicians do make election promises to attract support from the majority of voters, who are not rich. Once they get elected, the trick is to spend as little money and effort as possible on keeping those promises, keeping the voters somewhat happy while changing not the systems that support the plutarchs. Who, of course, provided the majority of financial support for their campaigns, and hopefully will continue to do so in the future.

Another mechanism used by capitalists to increase their control of our societies has been to organize their businesses as corporations, and then gain those corporations rights similar to, and in some cases exceeding, those of people. This makes it harder for governments to regulate their activities.

Over the last few decades "neoliberalism" has become the standard ideology of the great majority of governments the world over, be they democratic or totalitarian. The Wikipedia article on Neoliberalism says it is generally associated with policies of economic liberalization, including privatization, deregulation, globalization, free trade, austerity and reductions in government spending in order to increase the role of the private sector in the economy and society. Through these mechanisms our governments have been even more thoroughly co-opted by capitalism, giving businesses much more freedom to do as they will.

Neoliberalism has been sold to the people by convincing us that whatever is good for business is good for us as well.

There was a time, in the 1800s and early 1900s, when there was a very clear distinction between the working class and the upper classes. Working people knew quite well where their interests lay. But in the mid-twentieth century when the economy was growing very fast, some of the vast wealth that was being accumulated was allowed to trickle down to the working class. The result was that many people in the working classes came to see their interests as lying with the capitalists. They came to see themselves as "temporarily embarrassed millionaires", expecting to strike it rich "any day now". And so they began to vote with the rich, even though that is clearly not in their own best interest. And thus neo-liberalism was able to triumph. This continues even until today in some countries.

But despite the neo-liberal propaganda that we all benefit, economic inequality has continued to grow, and more and more people are falling out the middle class, and out of the bottom of the economy altogether, first to become jobless and eventually to become homeless and often suicidal.

Social Injustice and Structural Violence

The inequality that is inherent to hierarchies results in social injustice and structural violence.

Structural violence refers to "the avoidable limitations that society places on groups of people that constrain them from meeting their basic needs and achieving the quality of life that would otherwise be possible. These limitations, which can be political, economic, religious, cultural, or legal in nature, usually originate in institutions that exercise power over particular subjects. It is therefore an illustration of a power system wherein social structures or institutions cause harm to people in a way that results in 'maldevelopment and other deprivations'."

There always seem to be groups of people in any hierarchial society who aren't really welcome and who are forcefully kept at or near the bottom level. These include the poor (working, jobless and homeless), women, BIPOC* and LGBTQ* people, those with physical and mental challenges, the aged, and probably others who I am forgetting. And of course, that's just what the rest of us are supposed to do—forget about these people and leave them to suffer.

You can recognize structural violence when you see people at a higher level in a hierarchy complaining about just not being able to understand what those below them are complaining about, while the people at the lower level have a keen understanding of those above them. This occurs because those who are above have power over those below, and can simply tell them what to do without having to know anything much about them. Those at the lower level have no choice but to serve those above and, in order to do so successfully, have to understand the people above them very well.

One clear example of this is when you see men saying that there is just no understanding women or keeping them happy. At the same time it is clear that our wives, mothers and daughters do a great job of keeping us happy. They put a lot of effort into understanding us in order to be able to do so, largely because they have no choice in the matter, while we, sitting at the top of our little family patriarchies, can easily get away with just not making the effort. Of course, this situation has improved quite a bit over the last century or so, but there is still a long way to go.

Summing Up

This has been a whirlwind tour of the issues with hierarchies, but I think I've hit on the high points:

  • There is a great deal of waste involved in running a hierarchy and this makes our overconsumption problem even worse, while only benefiting those at the top.
  • Our modern hierarchies are enabling capitalism, which is the main source of our overconsumption problems.
  • Economic inequality and social injustice are inherent to hierarchies and prevent the realization of billions of peoples' potential, which is much needed if we are to successful face the challenges ahead of us.

Many people in the "collapse sphere" feel that we should not worry about "minor" social injustices, and instead focus on preparing for and adapting to the economic, resource, and environmental problems that are already far along the way to causing the collapse of our society. I disagree. Both social injustice and collapse result from the same issues inherent in our hierarchies and in capitalism. Any adaptation that doesn't address them both is sure to fail. Anyone who tells you different is playing "divide and conquer" games, and whether they want to admit it or not, what they really want is to keep the existing system going as long as possible—business as usual and damn the consequences.

So, it's clear to me that hierarchies, especially when combined with capitalism, are not a good thing. Would it be possible to do without them? I think so, and in my next post I'll go into the details of how that might work.

For those who aren't up on the jargon I've been using:
*BIPOC = Black, Indigeous and People of Colour
*LGBTQ = Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transsexual and Queer

During the last few months I've been reading a number of very interesting books, which bear upon what we are discussing. Here is a list of those books, along with a few that I've read previously, but that also have been a help.

Debt, The First 5000 Years, by David Graeber

Hierarchy in the Forest: the evolution of egalitarian behavior, by Christopher Boehm

The Art of Not Being Governed, by James C. Scott

Against the Grain, a deep history of the earliest states, by James C. Scott

Living at the Edges of Capitalism: Adventures in Exile and Mutual Aid, by Andrej Grubacic

The Dawn of Everything, by David Graeber and David Wengrow


Links to the rest of this series of posts:
Collapse, you say? / Time for Change

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