Two tendencies: an interpretation outline

Multi-polarity and rebellion are two tendencies that cross and separate in today’s world. They manifest in two different but overlapped levels: geopolitical and social. It is important to describe their respective characteristics

-I-

In today’s world, there are two general tendencies on different and overlapped levels. Sometimes they separate, some other times they touch. Both tendencies are anarchic. Both disrupt the presumptions with which we have lived during several decades.

The first tendency is on the geopolitical level itself. It serves the relation force/space between states that for the time being seem solid. Three stand out and are the center of empires: the United States, the People’s Republic of China, and the Russian Federation. Following them come the European Union –unable to consolidate–, Japan, India, and countries from the economic and military periphery in various continents. On this level, the tendency is clear: in thirty years, we have passed from bipolarity to unipolarity, and then to multi-polarity.

The tendency is anarchic because a stable equilibrium has not been found in the power troika–US, Russia, and China–that could replace the old nuclear-bipolar equilibrium of the Cold War, or the later equilibrium of an exclusive American domination. Today, China advances, the USA recedes, and Russia provokes. There is no arbiter to regulate or moderate the competition between these three. Therefore, the geopolitical field is increasingly appearing as unstable and unpredictable, not only for an external observer but also for the  actors in play.

In terms of interstate relations, opportunistic and short-term tactics have replaced real strategies. Growing authoritarianism in these three powers (not to mention the proliferation of authoritarian regimes in other countries) exacerbates the anarchic tendency.

The relationship between dictators is much less stable than an international order that operates as a framework for the relations between powers. Every dictatorship is faced not only with resistance and even rebellion, but also with typical problems of its structure and dynamic, among them: the difficulty in securing a succession, the difficulty in obtaining good intelligence because of the surrounding slavishness, the arbitrary character of decisions, an excessive dependency on interpersonal relations at the highest level and the primacy of personal interest in the internal political front above every long-term strategy.

Of the three main powers, China and Russia have full dictatorships; USA is a halfway dictatorship probably of shorter duration. Of course, the three present themselves as “democratic.”

-II-

The second tendency has a sociological character, though its interpretation for the time being is dominated by an economics-focused discourse (per capita and gross growth indicators, prices’ evolution, inequality indexes, etc.). To characterize it, we could resort to an old concept by Ortega y Gasset (but not his interpretation): mass rebellion. Let us review its main characteristics within the confusing picture they present.

Today’s mass mobilizations differ from previous historic manifestations in their way of appearing and acting.

Mobilizations are more spectacular and persistent, with a wide range of tactics that go from civil disobedience to violence. The answers from the public force are also different: at the same time perplexed and more brutal.

Demonstrations and mass mobilizations have multiplied in all corners of the planet and pass across the hierarchy of power between the countries. Where they take place. They are also transversal to the internal social structure of those countries.

Here, both tendencies—geopolitical and social—seem to dissociate and at the same time imitate each other. Mass rebellions can arise at the drop of a hat, anywhere, for various reasons. An increase in public transportation fares, an elimination of subsidies, an increase in taxes on gas, or the simple announcement of a pension reform, are some of the immediate causes of popular mobilization. They are the trigger of lengthy street protests, against a background of unresolved serious structural fissures.

The theatre of these protests is fundamentally urban. It coincides with the universal demographic tendency of populations to concentrate in large cities.

Mobilizations are acephalous. They lack a defined leadership, either individual or collective. However, there certainly are opportunistic interventions of internal and external provocateurs. There are no channels for gathering and negotiation. When a government, or any power holder, wants to negotiate with the rebellious mass, it cannot find fixed spokespersons on the other side.

Protests predominate over proposals. Demonstrators are motivated by the rejection of the existent order but without a clear vision of alternatives. Protest motives succeed to maintain a mobilization whose main objective is to resist marginality and oblivion.

Existing parties and labor organizations have lost legitimacy. There is a total crisis of representation. Traditional organizations and parties in turn feel disoriented and isolated, incapable of being heard and of articulating the demands behind social protest.

Violence becomes a way of communication and self-representation of groups whose social insertion (productive or otherwise) has become tenuous and precarious. These groups have moved from the status of the proletariat to that of a precariat. Noisy disruption is the main means used for being heard.

The anarchic form of disruption disorients the repressive forces, creating a non-traditional asymmetry of power. The new social mass media facilitate the massive, multiple, and diffuse character of the rebellion.

Disruption feeds on itself and becomes much extended but without a clear or positive destiny.

Rebellion is asymmetric in another sense: sometimes it is able to overthrow governments but fails to seize power. In this sense, it is far from being a revolution in the classic sense of the word. The replacement is frequently a return to the status quo ante.

There is another asymmetry in the rebellion. On the one hand, there is a great sophistication in the means of communication and action. On the other hand, there is a scarcity of organization and leadership to make social change sustainable. There are social media and videos, but not teams to work on the replacement. There are no multitudinous parties or vanguard parties to orientate the rebellion.

On the other side of barricades, established powers that feel besieged by protest cannot negotiate, see themselves isolated, and become prey to simplistic and out-of-place interpretations (conspiracy theories, external infiltrations, crime and madness, etc.) and only envisage increasing repression, which is at the same time violent and inefficient.

-III-

Let´s see how these tendencies cross each other.

Faced with the (inorganic) rebellion of masses, power holders, either eastern or western, from left or right, democratic or authoritarian governments (inherited dichotomies count for less) target their attention first and foremost towards the internal front and neglect thinking and developing external strategies in front of other state or non-governmental powers.

Simultaneously, there is a governability crisis and a strategic impasse, that is, an increase in anarchy of the internal and international orders. This double crisis in turn reflects the anomic state of contemporary society, in my opinion, characterized by a simultaneous tendency towards distraction and explosion.

The world awaits, and for the time being does not find, new ways of sustained representation as precursor of new ways of social organization.

In the meantime, if the reader wishes to plumb the depths of social psychology, I suggest beginning by reading or rereading Freud’s speculative essay Civilization and its Discontents and try to update such reflection.

“The fateful question for the human species seems to me to be whether and to what extent their cultural development will succeed in mastering the disturbance of their communal life by the human instinct of aggression and self-destruction. It may be that in this respect precisely the present time deserves a special interest. Men have gained control over the forces of nature to such an extent that with their help they would have no difficulty in exterminating one another to the last man. They know this, and hence come a large part of their current unrest, their unhappiness and their mood of anxiety. And now it is to be expected that the other of the two ‘Heavenly Powers’, eternal Eros, will make an effort to assert himself in the struggle with his equally immortal adversary. But who can foresee with what success and with what result?”

If you like this text, by filling out the form that appears in this page you can subscribe to receive once a month a brief summary of Opinion Sur English edition.

Leave a comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *