FUTURES
RESEARCH
6055 Chapter 11 - Revolutionary Pains
The confusion and uncertainty, caused by so many revolutions coming along at the same time - from the 'IT Revolution' though 'Postmodernism' to the 'End of Ideology', have resulted in a great deal of pain for some of us[1]. It was also thus during the first Industrial Revolution, which was literally accompanied by political revolutions around the world. In Thomas Kuhn's famous words - from the field of science - a paradigm shift is under way. His concept encapsulates much of what is now happening around us[2]. According to his observations, the result is almost always a period of great uncertainty; as the defenders of the old world order, the old paradigm, dispute with those of the new. We are currently in the middle of such a paradigm shift - probably the greatest paradigm shift of all time - experiencing the disorienting uncertainty we term ‘paradigm dissonance’, across the whole of our lives[3]. The pain which accompanies this is, therefore, understandable.
More than a quarter of a century ago, Alvin Toffler[c] predicted the problems we would be facing in his book 'Future Shock'[4]. In that influential tome he said "I coined the term 'future shock' to describe the shattering stress and disorientation that we induce in individuals by subjecting them to too much change in too short a time.[5]" He went on to make the related point that "In the most rapidly changing environment to which man has ever been exposed, we remain pitifully ignorant of how the human animal copes." A quarter of a century on Toffler's predictions have come true, but we still do not know how man will cope. More surprisingly, in view of the impact of his original book, most of us still do not even recognise the symptoms he predicted for what they really are. Indeed, our leaders often are unwilling to admit that such stresses exist[6].
These themes have also been central to much of Toffler's later work. For instance in 'Powershift' he added "The simple speed-up of events and reaction times produces its own effects, whether the changes are perceived as good or bad. It is also held that individuals, organizations and even nations can be overloaded with too much change too soon, leading to disorientation and breakdown in their capacity to make intelligent adaptive decisions." I couldn't explain the phenomenon of 'revolutionary pains' (which is the ultimate outcome of ‘paradigm dissonance’) in better terms than this - yet, despite the proven accuracy of his previous predictions, most of our leaders still remain obstinately blind to what is happening around them![7]
We saw, at the beginning of the book, the confusion which - as a result of these 'pains' - pervades the 1990s. It should be noted, though, that the seminal event of the decade, described by almost all of the commentators, actually took place at the end of the previous decade - in 1989. This - the fall of the Berlin Wall - signalled, for many of us, the start of a global revolution in politics. Reporting the research results of the internationally respected Henley Centre for Forecasting, Stewart Lansley - for instance - states that "The crisis of the nineties is not confined to the problem of political and economic adjustment in Eastern Europe nor to the impoverishment in large parts of the developing world. Despite claims of the final triumph of western liberal capitalism, the democratic west is facing its own deep-seated crises of identity and management. Western values seem increasingly out of tune with the needs of modern society[8].
As might be expected, though, the establishment - which derives its power from, and owes its allegiance to, the old order - is desperately fighting against the tide of history[9]. For the 'crisis decades' - using Eric Hobsbawm's phrase - of the late twentieth century, they have been adopting ever more reactionary measures to try and return to earlier and - in their view - better times[10]. They have had some success, in that - during the 1980s in particular - governments around the world succeeded in taking many of their voters with them, 'a silent majority returning back to basics'. This too is understandable. Revolutions are disorienting, even if they ultimately promise better times. If the politicians wanted to return to more comfortable times, why should one expect us, the people, to be any better informed; in the short term at least.
In particular, in the confusion - simply not knowing how to handle the changes taking place around them - many politicians around the world have chosen to focus on the one simple economic measure the believe they do understand - inflation. As we saw, in the last chapter, to control this they have increasingly induced recessionary forces. The test of good government has now become its ability to keep its economy in a mild form of recession. The result has been a return to past times; but perversely to the worst of past times - the Depression! The politicians may welcome the return of problems they understand, to replace those they can't comprehend, but all the lessons of economic management - most notably those developed by Lord Keynes - have been lost in the gadarene rush to regain these past certainties. On the other hand, it seems unlikely that - once we realise what is happening - we, the population as a whole, will agree to spend the rest of our lives in such an artificially induced 'depression'.
Indeed, we are already starting to move ahead of our governments. For their part, however, politicians of all parties - under immense pressure from a rapidly changing world - are increasingly showing signs of defensive 'groupthink'. They are clubbing together to reassure each other that their own, now largely artificial, world is more real than the disconcerting one outside. Corruption is endemic, not so much in terms of financial gains but in terms of desperate measures to retain power against the unwelcome tide of changes which is sweeping that world outside.
It has to be recognised, though, that the politicians still have their supporters in other parts of the establishment. In particular, despite the new realities of employee power, and of the massive investment in people, too many senior managers unwisely used the recession at the beginning of the 1990s to ruthlessly reduce their workforces. The 3Rs - Restructuring, Re-engineering and Redundancy - came to dominate Western management thinking; and took their toll on investment in people. It is interesting to note that, at precisely the same time, the comparable Japanese 3Rs were Restructuring, Re-engineering and Retraining! They, at least, never lost sight of the importance of their workers; and are still as committed as ever to the ‘lifetime employment’ which optimises their investment in people. Our research indicates that it is the Japanese corporations, rather than the Western governments, which will be proved correct in the longer term.
As indicated above, what makes the 'revolutionary pains' especially important is the reaction to them by the establishment. Alvin Toffler[a] explains "Second Wave elites fight to retain or reinstate an unsustainable past because they gained wealth and power from applying Second Wave principles, and the shift to the new way of life challenges that wealth and power." It now seems to be an inevitable feature of almost all governments, communist just as much as Western, that they are composed of a self-perpetuating elite - which holds itself separate, and aloof, from the general population[11]. This aloof elite extends beyond politics to encompass all aspects of power; business, the law, and - too often - even trade unions.
The concomitant weakness, which has only recently emerged, is in the resulting blindness of the establishment to almost all matters outside of itself.[12] Whilst the establishment alone held power such weaknesses did not matter, but now that power has in large part shifted to the masses! One man one vote means just that, once the masses have been instructed so; and they have, now, learned that lesson well. It is these problems of the establishment[13], rather than those of the masses, which have led to many of the dilemmas xe "dilemmas "being encountered in the crisis decadesxe "crisis decades" at the end of the 20th century.
In the long term the establishment will be unable to resist change. In the shorter term, though, its response will determine whether the transition is painful, or even as bloody as have previous ones. Alvin Toffler[a] describes some of the historical precedents "The transition from the First Wav to Second Wave civilization was one long, blood-drenched drama of wars, revolts, famines, forced migrations", coups d'état and calamities."[14] He continues "Today the stakes are much higher, the time shorter, the acceleration faster, the dangers even greater." He then succinctly sums up the position "Much depends on the flexibility and intelligence of today's elites, sub-elites and super-elites. If these groups prove to be as shortsighted, unimaginative and frightened as most ruling groups in the past, they will rigidly resist the Third Wave and thereby escalate the risks of violence and their own destruction..." He adds the hopeful note, though, that "...never in history have there been so many reasonably educated people...above all, never have so many had so much to gain by guaranteeing that the necessary changes, though profound, be made peacefully." We too believe, or at least hope, that the new battles will be fought with the ballot box rather than the gun. Toffler demands that "We must, as a first step, launch the widest possible public debate over the need for a new political system attuned to the need of a Third Wave civilization." This book is intended to contribute to that debate.
As a final - optimistic - footnote to this section, Francis Fukayama, in his sometimes misunderstood treatise 'The End of History', notes that "...there was a remarkable consistency in the democratic transitions in Southern Europe, Latin America and South Africa. Apart from Somoza, there was not a single instance in which the old regime was forced from power through violent upheaval or revolution. What permitted regime change was the voluntary decision on part of at least certain members of the old regime to give up power in favour of a democratically elected government." The even more dramatic revolutions in Eastern Europe were just as bloodless. Perhaps the modern establishment is different; and we will not see blood on the streets this time.
The outcome of the revolutionary changes in the political views of the electorate has not yet been that the masses have risen up against the establishment . As already mentioned, even the genuinely revolutionary changes which have already happened in the communist world took place with, relatively speaking, almost no bloodshed; even though they occurred on the same massive scale as Lenin's very bloody revolution at the beginning of the century. Instead, in the West the population has - whilst learning to use their new powers - simply rejected politics[15]!
Possibly as result of the elite's tight control over the processes of legitimation, the public at large have not seen revolutionary change as a viable option. Unlike earlier revolutionaries, they have not been desperately hungry. Instead they have been rather comfortable. The result is that they have, with some notable exceptions, chosen to distance themselves from the whole political process - whilst gradually developing a quite considerable distaste for all of those involved in it (journalists almost as much as politicians)[16]. Whatever the reasons, legitimation (at the level of the individual) has broken down in a spectacular manner - but this has so far not been reflected in widespread political activity[17].
What has been developing, however, has been a growing awareness by individuals - but not by politicians - of their new powers in the political processes. As one example of this, referred to earlier in terms of single issue politics, many contentious issues have merely been taken outside the normal frameworks to be dealt with in specialist actions by specialist groups. More generally, though, electors XE "electors "are beginning to use - with increasing effectiveness - the one power that they are given; that of the ballot box.
Thus, there is some evidence that they are starting to use even national elections to deliberately convey messages - typically of discontent to the politicians[18]. For a number of decades, possibly since the end of the Second World War, there has been a cynical belief that, with a few notable exceptions, nobody won an election, parties only lost them - most voting (apart from die-hard supporters, and even these are now disappearing) was essentially negative. This was, in particular, evident in the opinion polls and by-elections, between national elections, where the electorate could with impunity concentrate on making their objections known - in protest votes. Sometime in the 1980s, however, this seemed to extend to national elections. It is not possible to be definitive about what were extremely sophisticated political reactions, but it did appear as if a large proportion of the electorate started to vote tactically - to diminish the power of politicians. In the United Kingdom, for example, this was perhaps evidenced, in 1997, by the electorate's virtual destruction of the Conservative party in the United Kingdom. But there were similar outcomes around the world - in France, Italy, Canada, Japan, to name but a few - there were massive switches in voting patterns; which heavily penalised the sitting tenants. Even in the United States, with Bill Clinton offering possibly the best record of success for a generation, he - as the sitting tenant - was similarly punished by the results of the 1994 congressional elections; though he then managed to reverse this position and engineer his own re-election - albeit against the best efforts of his own party!
The result can be seen as a form of ‘anarchy’; using the term in the strictly theoretical sense of ‘an absence of government’ which I will use throughout the rest of this chapter; rather than its more popular use as ‘political disorder’ in general. It is, indeed, an especially pure form of anarchy - since the electorate is only concerned with destroying the power of government[19].
Somewhat surprisingly, however, the overall trend - in terms of the major changes to the electoral systems - was not generally recognised as such by a significant number of our general groups; although a greater degree of recognition of the more significant individual changes was evident in our 'expert' groups and half of our individual respondents expected the rejection of political parties to be general by 2025. Along with most managers in the west, our non-specialists had difficulty in seeing such structural changes - here in politics, elsewhere in society. Two thirds of these general groups, however, recognised most of the symptoms. They did see that there were major problems in the general area of politics - including the rejection of traditional parties, the emergence of single issue politics in general - but they ascribed these effects to a wide variety of causes, rather than seeing any overall patterns. The overall themes which did emerge most frequently, again across two thirds of the general groups, were those related to resurgent nationalism; including the re-emergence of Fascism (a danger also recognised by two thirds of our individuals) and, on the contrary - the rejuvenation of Socialism (also reported by two thirds of individuals). The expert groups, especially those more directly involved with politics, were much more able - as one might expect - to put names to the various 'movements' they were describing; though even they had difficulty in seeing the overall picture. It is not surprising, therefore, that the establishment - even more insulated from reality - fails to see what is happening.
Such ‘anarchy’ (once more using the term, and even then very loosely, to mean ‘absence of government’) might now be possibly made workable, in the sense that although the traditionally rigid hierarchies of government are already disappearing, and - despite their differences on specific issues - there is usually still a broad consensus amongst the majority of the population on the overall package of policies to be adopted. The danger potentially comes from those outside of this mainstream consensus. There have always been groups which have been disadvantaged, as against the majority groupings. Indeed, the history of the United States - as just one obvious example - has often consisted of the struggles of such groups to join the mainstream; the Irish, the Italians, the Coloureds, the Hispanics. Around the world the struggles of such groups have often led to terrorism - the IRA, the Palestinians - and may continue to do so[20].
To these can now be added the impacts of the new differences, between the 'underclasses' and the mainstream. In the United States these latest divisions have resulted in a significant part of the population being, in effect, disenfranchised from the consensus which is the driving force behind the rest of society - and, worse still, seeing no possibility of redress (since the majority, almost as much as the politicians, has turned its back on them). The terrorism which is being generated as a result is often not obvious, but is just as destructive none the less. With nothing to lose, members of the underclass are opting out of the values which power the consensus, to build their own state within a state. Not least, crime has become a staple industry - tolerated by (and tacitly encouraged by) the majority in these underclasses. It has taken a generation or more to create this situation in the United States; and it will take at least as long to reverse it - even with the most committed policies. Even then its ramifications may last much longer. The outcome of similar Sicilian resistance, in the form of the Mafia (which originated as a self-protection group), still haunts us.
Indeed, almost all our groups worried about anarchy - the expert groups (with four times as many references to it) much more than the general ones; though not, as here, in terms of political anarchy, but as a phenomenon afflicting the population as a whole - though it should be noted that only a third of individuals expect a complete breakdown in society (though they then, understandably, rate such an event 7.7 in importance). This was expressed, in particular, in terms of crime and drugs (and the potential collapse of the inner cities) - with about half of our groups (and up to two thirds of individuals) mentioning each of the former - but not, surprisingly, racial tension (one piece of good news in an otherwise gloomy picture). On the other hand, the cause of the widespread anarchy was clearly seen - by almost all our groups (and four fifths of individuals) to be the (growing) inequalities in society.
Despite the fact that this is the only part of the book which clearly has the potential for pessimistic outcomes, in practice - even here - the balance probably swings towards optimism.
The dark forces are those which might, therefore, delay - or just possibly destroy - the chances of a happy future for humanity; by opposing, or at least threatening, short-term implementation of some of the positive developments described in the earlier sections. They are certainly those which will determine how serious are the revolutionary pains which accompany these changes. They are almost entirely political in nature. More specifically, they revolve around the role of the existing establishment; and depend, especially, on the extent to which it may oppose these changes; fearing its own loss of power.
Although it is little recognised, in terms of structural processes, the political establishment - not least the traditional political parties around the world - is under threat now. It is unlikely that the existing systems will be able to much longer resist the pressure from electorates, who are becoming increasingly dissatisfied by the failures of their leaders. What the resulting changes will be is less clear; though a number of commentators talk of various forms of direct democracy emerging to fill the resulting void. The key, though, will probably be an attitude; a genuine desire by governments to actively involve their electorates in political decision-making.
The biggest threat is, as I have already suggested, that the revolutionary pains being experienced - especially by the establishment itself - will not be seen as symptoms of underlying changes, but will themselves be seen as the problems, and the targets for government action. This happened, to a degree, in the 1980s and 1990s; and led to reactions which greatly magnified the pain - especially in terms of unnecessary unemployment. In previous centuries, such revolutionary pains have escalated to cause widespread bloodshed - and this must still be a fear hanging over the current problems.
Yet, there is some evidence that, at one extreme - because modern populations are so much better educated and informed, they will be able to handle the transitions much more effectively, and, at the other, members of the modern establishment are more willing to cede power more peacefully.
[1]. Charles Hauss, Barry Minkin
[2] Charles Hauss
[3] Peter Kassler
[4] Peter Drucker[d]
[5] Henry Minzberg
[6] Henry Minzberg
[7] Morris Miller
[8] Charles Handy, Václav Havel
[9] Peter Kassler
[10] Charles Hauss
[11]. Christopher Lasch
[12] Charles Leadbeater xe "Leadbeater, Charles "& Geoff Mulgan[a]
[13] The Chatham House Forum
[14] David Snyder
[15] Wilkinson & Mulgan
[16] Zygmunt Bauman
[17] Dolbeare & Hubbell
[18] Dolbeare & Hubbell
[19] John Petersen
[20] John Petersen
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