In Defence of Politics

 Lately politics have come to be on the center stage again.

In these last days I re-read Adam Smith and Bernard Crick (the title of this post is a title from a book by the later). Although those two thought in many ways very differently there are certain commonalities.

As a founding father of liberalism, Adam Smith had the same suspicion as Crick, a democratic socialist, about ideologies. His works on macro economics or political economy (as you prefer to see it) had the same ethical constituent bases. Using different methodologies, concerned about different aspects of the well being of the State they couldn't care less about ideologies, political fashion trends and social fashions. The focus of Smith was on economical behavior and regulation, the focus of Crick was on ethical collective behavior (sometimes different from individual moral conviction).

Despite so many years between the work of each other and the difference in the approach it's amazing to see how the fundamental problems addressed by both of them are not yet solved. Albeit we almost reached very balanced societies in the late XXth century (namely in Scandinavia) most places in the world still keep missing the point.

I'm writing in defense of politics for I have been seeing politics being poorly understood and strongly mismanaged.

In recent years the socio-economical and environmental data we have been gathering suggests a strong regression of our planetary values and human civilization. We are facing a rising of food prices although we were never before more able to produce vast amounts of food, we'll have to deal with the lack of oil whether it's because its availability will finish soon or because we can't afford to keep on burning it into our air, many fish species are in severe risk of extinction, many of us don't understand why it's impossible - in economical and health terms - to have kids, those who have them cannot begin to understand why with, so many technology, parents don't happen to be with their children more than some hours a week.

Also we know many of our fellow humans are getting more and more violent and frustrated, many more are getting very poor and sometimes we don't even recognize ourselves during the week due to lack of sleep, bad eating, and huge amounts of stress. We know we have a linear economical model based on over-exploration, waste, and frenzy consumption of finite resources and we know we are on a suicidal track.

We know all that, and yet, just as a moth we can't seem to avoid to fly right into the burning glass. We are hypnotized, we have been brain washed to believe that there's no other way to act. We even have been brain washed to believe that a human being's life goal should be a car, the house, and a fat bank account. Nobody told us what to do after we reach that point but that is another discussion.

On top of it all, we get the feeling our supposed leaders don't live in our world such are the nonsensical sound bytes we get from the press. The most usual thing we hear from political power at the present is "we can't do anything" and "it will get worse, get used to it". I wonder why we still vote. The leaders are not leading. They refuse to lead. It's gross negligence of the worst kind.

Many of the press itself is a bastion of lack of culture, lack of intelligence, lack of knowledge and promotion of ruthless consumption, fear, meaningless lifestyles, and misinformation. The press is owned by the balls by the machine behind the present linear system. They are parrot-puppets that repeat what they are told to say, a bad recording composed of bad clichés, formatted talking and thinking. Moreover, to make sure they don't start thinking and go astray what do you do? Flood them with millions of nonsensical data at a pace no human could ever digest and presto! mission accomplished. The press has been genetically modified and the new organism reprogrammed. We cannot count on it anymore. They are a power within themselves, obsessed with themselves and tightly controlled to remain that way.

More important right now is that part of the brainwash is that politics is a bad thing and we have politics to blame for our present condition. Reading Sir Bernard Crick one realises that saying such a thing is like saying that the fault for the errors committed by members of the church is God's or the Church's fault. As for me, I have a strong suspicion that it's not God's fault.

What led me to Crick again was the speech from Barack Obama after the Minnesota primary election. The two contenders of the American elections are men of great quality. They made me think again about the political virtues as understood by Crick: Prudence, Conciliation, Compromise, Variety, Adaptability, and Liveliness. In addition, it reminded me that these virtues listed by Crick as some Machiavelli's advice to his prince are not at all incompatible with a concept of political and management ethics and with free regulated market (Adam Smith from what I read from him was not at all favorable to a deregulated savage and anarchic market). His political virtues had something in mind quite different from the arrogance, lack of reasonable communication, egotistical stances and contempt we have been getting from our governments and administrations. His political virtues are something each and everyone of us should embody at moments of recession or crisis but they are something we should most definitely expect from a leader.

Once again I was reminded that in our time maybe the last ethic base is politics. It should be it can be. Because, when considering all the other powers in action on the modern State, political power still seems the most possible way to go. We don't need less politics, we need better policies. Moreover, a better policy these days has to be a global policy, one that, while understanding the several particular implications, doesn't loose track of the global picture. Globalization is a management necessity from the political point of view. It seems almost a mystical goal, but it's a very necessary one. In the end it would allow us to control the out of control behavior of other powers throughout the planet (namely the economic power).

The alternative to that is what we have right now. Politics doing nothing and saying they can do nothing. If you can do nothing except maybe getting a good job after politics you are not needed anymore, are you?

 

2008/06/06 at 7:44 am