“The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.”
― Antonio Gramsci
We live through transitional times. Transition from an era of growth to economic contraction. From a stable climate to something utterly different and chaotic. From a global hegemony to a multi-polar world. These are interesting times indeed, loaded with peril and doubt. Why are so many of us — especially those who should know better — are still in deep denial as to what is really going on? Why can’t our leaders change course when it is needed the most?
With every end to a civilizational cycle, there is a caste which has a lot to lose, yet remain unable to influence the course of events. These people are usually located just below the top tier of the ruling elite. They are the well payed, salaried individuals who serve the system loyally and receive tremendous privileges in return: getting all the access to the best of what this world has to offer.
In our current round of the popular game called civilization, replayed time after time with the same predictable results, this layer is happened to be called the “professional-managerial class” (or PMC for short). They are your high ranking academics, engineers, doctors, lawyers, economists, political scientists, project leaders and managers of multinational companies who run and oversee the system for the wealthy elite. I should know, I’m one of them.
This class has gathered immense power over the past few decades, and has managed to turn democracy into a technocracy (the government of society or industry by an elite of technical experts) — leaving little to none for the public to decide. In order to preserve their hard earned status, and to provide justification for their actions, they needed a new belief system, a set of unquestionable truths. A system, not created consciously with a goal of starting a new church, but rather through trial and error, and a steadfast perfection of its elements. ‘Laws’ of economics and the field of ‘political science’ were established in an organic way, together with the myth of infinite growth, the illusion of perfect government control through money and taxation alone, the belief that resources do not matter (since they are fungible) and a deep faith in salvation through technology.
There was a lot at stake: should let’s say the environmental movement of the 1960’s and 70’s won with its stupid ideas of ‘limits’ and ‘no growth’, the PMC would have been left with nothing else to do, than to manage the controlled decline of industrial civilization, then wave a long slow good-bye to all the goodies and benefits it received so far. No more holidays abroad. No more McMansions. No cars. No more board meetings where billions of dollars were at stake. No, this was to be avoided at all costs. The show must go on: as long as it’s possible (or “takes” to use a more recent phrase).
The sense (or rather illusion) of control and oversight was dizzying. Managers and experts across the board felt that everything happening — good or bad — was down to their, or others’, individual and conscious decisions. Reinforced by movies from Hollywood, with its countless tales of superheroes, this belief of individual control imbued their wielders with godlike power (or so they thought), but also with tremendous responsibility… for the shareholders’ bottom lines, not for the environment, the good of the people or sustainability for that matter. That was none of their business.
Everyone suggesting otherwise was a heretic to be dealt with. An infidel to be cast out.
This position could not be held for long. In order to preserve their status, and in response to the environmental movement, the professional managerial caste had to took on the mantle of responsibility to save the world. If you cannot fight it, then lead it — or so they thought. The following quote from John Kerry, climate envoy of the US sums it up perfectly:
“When you start to think about it, it’s pretty extraordinary that we — select group of human beings because of whatever touched us at some point in our lives — are able to sit in a room and come together and actually talk about saving the planet. I mean, it’s so almost extraterrestrial to think about ‘saving the planet.”
Now, the question poses itself: what do you do when the planet needs no self-proclaimed savors? People, who despite their ‘best intentions’ are plunging us deeper into trouble, who, instead of thinking generations ahead, think only about their (and their industries’) survival… It never occurred to this class who fought tooth and nail to avoid it, that the best thing we could do is still to power down, dismantle corporations and central control over our lives, and perform a managed retreat from this madness called ‘industrial civilization’… That the planet needs no individual heroes, kings and overseers but cooperation and mutual trust.
So, what do you do in this situation as a member of the professional managerial class, when despite your best efforts your world is slowly plunging into chaos? Well, according to the book of ‘best practice’: you start denying all this. As things continue to turn sour for those who think Business As Usual (mass-scale deployment of ‘renewables’ is still business as usual, only in a somewhat different way) is a recipe for success, or for those who still believe that the uni-polar moment is meant to last forever, the only way out is to blame it on other individuals making bad policies, stupid decisions, or evil dictators starting wars… and so on.
The professional managerial class is far from being a unified group or a secret cabal, running the shadow government of the world. Lacking any real political power its members form or join various factions often at war with each other. Oil drillers vs ‘renewable’ investors, foreign policy hawks vs doves, miners, lawyers, financiers etc. All of them are blaming the other for all the ills of this world, while fighting fiercely for their share of the global market and an ever bigger slice of the government money pie.
Today there is clearly an abundance — if not an outright overproduction — of the technocratic elite, an ailment not uncommon in times of civilizational decline. This phenomenon is especially problematic in the leading nation of the West, the United States. The ever faster erosion of democratic institutions, rampant bureaucracy and corruption reaching obscene levels are all tell tale signs that the West has found itself on a slippery slope.
A senator from Ancient Rome would instantly feel himself at home in Washington.
Blinded by hubris and aggrandized by its own master-plan to ‘save’ the world by punishing the bad guys (1), the part of the managerial class running foreign policy has found itself too in a state of perpetual war — this time in a real, bloody war — a vortex, it lacks the power to escape. (Why, foreign policy ‘experts’ are just as part of this class like the board of directors running oil companies).
US foreign policy has slowly became captive to economic interests, primarily driven by the country’s outsized military-industrial complex, and perpetuated by the revolving door policy between arm manufacturers’ board rooms, state cabinets and think tanks or NGO’s. (Don’t trust me on that one, just look up the CV of any of those people.) Since the country lacks the power (2) to maintain a resource intensive land war on another continent, experts advising on its policy are rushing from one debacle to another, ever increasing the stakes in the game until they risk losing everything in the final round… Not unlike a casino addict who firmly believes that the big win is just around the corner — after taking out a loan on the house…
Good old Arnold Toynbee’s words keep ringing in my ears:
“Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder.”
In the meantime, till that happens, they are distracting themselves and the public (from this, and this among other things) by waging an all out war on balloons, stoking up fear for the next big war. Like its 1942 again:
If there is a lesson to be learned from all this, it could be summed up like this: never underestimate the power of entrenched interests. At the same time never overestimate their capability to grasp the situation and truly understand what is going on. As Upton Sinclair used to say: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!”
Those who are benefiting from the status quo the most will thus continue to do what worked in the past — until it all implodes. The professional managerial class of our age is no different. This time it will be these ‘experts’ who will make sure that this version of human civilization will end up like many others before: happily denying that their system is totally unsustainable and duly placing all their bets against reality — unintentionally collapsing the entire ordeal in the end.
Maybe whoever comes after us will be smarter. Or not.
Until next time,
B
Notes:
(1) This is absolutely not to say that the West is the only empire in the world trying to grab resources, there are many more nations that fits this description. Don’t get me wrong: no military superpower is a saint. In this argument I might as well joined the chorus of media pundits and bloggers blaming Russia and China, but that would not had any added value, beyond further enraging westerners against the nations they already hate. Our fellow citizens in the west are looking in the wrong direction exactly for this reason. Instead of making their own governments and foreign policy experts responsible for provoking, then feeding a war with weapons, raping and polluting their environment, or pushing millions into poverty, they shake their fists in anger demanding an evil dictator to step down (something over which they have absolutely no control).
(2) The world is still running on fossil energy and raw resources, and those who have the most rise to power. A country who has run down its industries, lags behind on resource extraction (no wonder, it is getting ever costlier to keep extracting depleting resources) and forced to use ever more costly and complex technologies to get access to energy will inevitable left behind.
