System Decline and Primary Loyalties

Some thoughts on the potential for systemic collapse and responses to such a crisis. Although the author notes the ineffectiveness of 'mass protest' to influence the state, this does not mean social movements are now irrelevant. On the contrary, such movements can provide the means for both survival and resistance.

System Decline and Primary Loyalties
Global Guerrillas, Oct 6, 2008

What happens when a state becomes hollow and the global market takes control? People find ways to get by. How? They fall back on primary loyalties -- groups and organizations that will help them survive. Those that cling to individualism quickly find themselves outmaneuvered, cornered and fleeced. In the modern context, three major categories of primary loyalties (filled to the brim with many superempowered individuals) will emerge within a hollow state. They are:

• Government/corporate loyalties. Becomes highly corrupt. Only small group and/or strong leaders get benefits (concentrated wealth). Control over police/military power to ensure wealth/survival. Globally networked.

• Street loyalties. To family, neighborhood, gang, church, etc. A large segment turns to crime/smuggling. Another segment focuses on protection fees generated by militias. Violent open source warfare. Systems disruption to coerce the hollow state and its corporate allies. Globally networked.

• Community loyalty (resilient communities). This is the newest segment and still in its infancy. Very democratic and egalitarian. Focus on local production of everything from food to energy to products. Collective action for group survival at the local level. Globally networked.

NOTE: Mass protest to force governmental response? Mass protest is very unlikely to create any meaningful improvement since there isn't a functional state left to influence.

Posted by John Robb on Monday, 06 October 2008

Apocalypse Now (or Never)!

Today, we do not need prophets or prophecies to tell us what the future holds. It is obvious to anyone who is aware of what is going on in the world today. These include:

• ecological crises: as a result of global warming (industrial pollution), the earth's environment is rapidly deteriorating, producing more severe storms and weather extremes, all of which are impacting on social and economic systems.
• economic crises: recent financial crises (falling stock markets, collapse of US housing market, etc.), have resulted in growing unemployment, homelessness, a decline in industrial production and consumerism.
• food crisis: closely connected to the ecological and economic crises is a growing food crisis that has hit the Third World especially hard in 2007-08, when prices for commodities such as wheat, rice and corn dramatically rose resulting in riots in Haiti, Mexico, Egypt, the Philippines, Indonesia, Bangladesh and other countries. The main contributing factors to this crisis: rising energy costs, loss of land due to urbanization and industrialism, climate change including droughts & storms, and switching of food crops to bio-fuels.
  
• expanding police states: in response to the overall systemic decline, national security states have grown their capability for social control and repression of social movements. This includes more military & police, new surveillance technologies, etc., all of which are based on counter-insurgency (insurgency being the final form of warfare national states, organized into a global system, will be forced to fight, that is say against their own domestic populations).
• expanding military conflicts: as the final resources of the world are exploited by transnational corporations, intense struggles are occurring between regional and global powers. The US invasion & occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan are manifestations of this, as the US seeks to gain control of vital oil and gas resources upon which the western industrial system is based. These and other wars carry the potential to become larger regional and international conflicts, possibly involving the use of nuclear, chemical and/or biological weapons.
  

These trends tell us the future will be subject to extreme changes resulting from sudden or growing crises for which the system will be unable to respond effectively. The legitimacy of the state itself will be further questioned and eroded. Social and military conflicts will expand, contributing to ever greater chaos.

These trends will only increase as the ecological and economic crises continue to deepen in the years to come. Unlike previous crises (i.e., the Great Depression of the 1930s), the present situation is characterized by these unique conditions:

• it is global: an economic crisis now affects the entire global system and travels far faster, with far greater impact, than at anytime in history.

• it is a convergence of crises: there is not only one crisis unfolding, but multiple threats inc. economic, ecological, military and social.