2023 FUTURE OBSERVATORY
2023 FUTURE OBSERVATORY
The tale of the Emperor's new clothes, which offered a powerful parable about a previous political revolution, is just as relevant now. The electorate, across much of the world, is beginning to see that their political masters - no matter how much they bluster - are naked of workable policies to meet the new challenges! The vacuous bumblings - on which the media have focused – especially of George Bush Jr, in the US, merely personalise or even charicature the deeper nature of the overall problems. Whatever the reason, the structures are, indeed, being torn apart.
Paradoxically, this outcome has long been predicted by one group of Marxist Structuralist academics, who saw the real revolution occurring in 'Crises of Legitimation' - when the masses would at last recognise the lies (the corrupt means of 'legitimation') being promoted by their governments in order to hold onto power. It was, perhaps, the greatest irony of all that the first victims of such crises were the communist governments, rather than their Western equivalents which the academics had thought they were describing!
Despite the euphoria of the victory over their enemies, most notably characterised by Francis Fukuyama as 'the end of history', Western leaders now need to learn the more basic lesson; and view their own political future with just as much trepidation. The same structural forces - which should perhaps be better encapsulated as 'the end of ideology' - are now undermining the position of Western governments, as previously they did those of their Communist counterparts.
In addition, this end to the ideological battle between communism and pluralism, each of which was long presented to supporters in black and white terms as the only truly moral choice available, will make the specific principles of 'representative democracy' - which are the only real political offering in much of the West - look increasingly unsatisfactory. The supporters of this - now exposed - ideology will in this way be forced to defend their choice with rational arguments rather than quasi-jingoistic pleas which they were previously able top rely upon.
The ultimate paradox is that Marxian theory still, in effect, dominates the argument. By removing the corrupted versions of communism promoted by the Soviet Union, which previously overshadowed the debate, the West can now often be seen to be operating on the basis of the mirror image of his theories; Eastern Europe may have shaken off Marx but Washington hasn't!
The most obvious symptom of the political changes will be in the failure of governments to earn the legitimacy necessary to effectively manage their nations. Crises (of legitimacy) will increasingly feature on the political scene.
Brian Beedham observes, for instance, "A recognisable post-cold-war frontier is starting to emerge between a new left and a new right in terms of debate about the competing claims of efficiency and compassion..." He adds, though, "The choice at voting time is no longer even in theory a choice between two radically different bodies of ideas. It is a series of selections among relatively small differences of opinion about the details of economic management and fairly minor disagreements over the amount and direction of public spending." Peter Drucker, writing in 1989, simply observed that "...anyone who now proclaims the Great Society, as Lyndon Johnson did only twenty years ago, would be laughed out of court." He adds, in explanation "Practically no government regulation enacted since the 1950s in the western world - or in the communist countries - has been successful."
15 May 2003
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