General theory of debasement: A theme of our time

The title is somewhat exaggerated and of course ironic. It is not a theory in the strict sense but a series of observations and hypotheses. “Debasement” refers to the degradation, first gradual and then sudden, of values and practices to which we were accustomed until not long ago. Social change is dizzying, but it does not connote improvement in many areas of life.

Argentines know Gresham’s Law well because they have lived it for a long time. They spend in pesos and save in dollars. The law is associated with a London financier who advised Queen Elizabeth I of England, although this law had already been anticipated by Nicolaus Copernicus, who in addition to being an astronomer was an economist and advisor to the King of Poland.

Monetary debasement

The law explains a monetary phenomenon that dates back to ancient times: that is, coins were minted with noble metals (gold, silver) at some point the issuing authority thinned them down by mixing them with some more “vile” metal (copper, tin). The law states that when two types of legal tender are circulating simultaneously in a country, and one of them is considered by the public to be “good” and the other to be “bad”, the bad currency tends to drive the good currency out of the market. The basic idea is that people tend to save in the currency of higher intrinsic value and spend the “bad” currency, which remains in circulation while the “good” one disappears (in a foreign account, in a safe deposit box, or under the mattress). The behavior is still in force in the era of bitcoin.

Cultural displacement

This process of degradation and displacement occurs at other levels of human behavior as well. Referring to the process of cultural evolution, the anthropologist and linguist Gregory Bateson proposed that simplistic ideas tend to displace more sophisticated ideas, and that in the field of communication, vulgar and hateful messages displace more harmonious and beautiful contents, because the latter are more complex.[1] In our age of social networks, the impoverishment of language is directly proportional to the speed of communication.

Linguistic simplification

Before Bateson, the English writer George Orwell held a similar thesis, but considered (with some optimism) that the process was reversible. In his essay on politics and the English language, he had this to say about what was happening with the English language:

“It has become rough and imprecise because our thoughts are nonsensical, but the sloppiness of our language makes it easier for us to think nonsense. The point is that the process is reversible. Modern English, especially written English, is riddled with bad habits that spread by imitation and that we can avoid if we are willing to take the trouble. If we break free from these habits we can think more clearly, and thinking clearly is a first step towards political regeneration.”[2]

Moral erosion

In the field of moral philosophy, there are authors who also point to a similar phenomenon of degradation. For example, if someone violates a norm in a visible way and is not punished, his more “virtuous” and law-abiding fellow citizens will tend to imitate him. In this way, immoral behavior displaces moral behavior.[3] A notorious case is this: as states lose moral legitimacy, tax evasion becomes the foundation of international trade.

Political recomposition

In the political field, a traditional justification for the existence of modern parties is the idea that they should be constituted as schools of leadership and be devoted to the selection of suitable leaders. It is an ideal that sometimes works and sometimes does not. Recent positive examples are the recomposition of the English Labor Party and its eventual triumph at the polls, and the current attempt to recompose the Democratic Party in the United States after Biden’s presidency. Negative examples are the “capture” of the Republican Party by a neo-fascist movement in the US behind an authoritarian and plebiscitary leader.

The general trend at this time and in several countries in particular is toward what Max Weber called “a plebiscitary democracy with authoritarian leadership.” These movements dispense with the channels of party-political representation (and any institutional filter) and establish a direct and emotional relationship between a leader and his followers. There is a great linguistic simplification: flashes and slogans of a “ballistic” nature, the binary logic “friend/enemy”,[4] memes[5], and the dominance of vituperation over reasoning.

Examples of the degradation of political language in both internal and external conflicts in many countries are multiplying. The oratorical technique (to use an old term), is the ancient Latin figure tu quoque (“you too”). It refers to a logical fallacy and an argumentative technique. The goal is to divert attention from an accusation by pointing out that the opponent has committed the same offense[6]. Attacking personal behavior instead of addressing the content of an argument is the favorite trick. Terms such as “terrorist”, “genocide”, “imperialism” pass from one camp to another like ping-pong balls, until they lose all conceptual and persuasive value. In the U.S., the degradation of traditional political terms such as “conservative” and “liberal” is well established. It is also the case with the terms “fascist” and “communist.” Words lose value just like a coin.

The antidote to the devaluing polarization of words in circulation is precise conceptual analysis and the use of alternative terms, which should go beyond the scientific and purely academic sphere[7]. But one thing is certain: it should not happen on social networks where the trend is the opposite. We cannot ask Elon Musk to promote what Orwell called “thinking clearly.” Any attempt to monitor or improve language is accused of “censorship” or violation of “freedom of expression” – two terms also degraded and weaponized.

Civilizational investment

In a broader realm — long-term world history — I believe we are in the midst of the reversal of what the German sociologist Norbert Elias called the process of civilization. His argument was that civilization involves a gradual process of self-coercion and social control internalized by individuals, through networks of interdependent individuals (very little to do with today’s instantaneous social networks). Those individuals would become sober and educated. His major work analyzes how social norms and human behavior evolved from the Middle Ages to modernity[8].

Elias did not manage to live through postmodernity and the era of new networks, characterized by the pseudo liberation of self-coercion and exteriorization of social control by computer platforms. I dare to think that Elias’s reaction to these trends would be to regard them as a retreat and a certain debasement. He would see with amazement the fall of our age into an anomic and disconnected individualism that thinks of itself as super-connected, that is, individuals who actively and voluntarily participate in their own subjection and manipulation[9].            

We do not know for sure whether this reversal of the civilizing process is unidirectional or only part of a cycle. Throughout his life, and in opposition to Elias, the famous anthropologist Claude Levi Strauss considered that the civilizing process led inexorably to the thickening and brutalization of society. He became a prophet of the present disproportion and decline in the “civilized” societies, as opposed to the wiser “primitive” ones.[10]

In any case, the time has come to revisit some theories of cyclical social change[11], which conceive history as a succession of cyclical phases, rather than an ascending line of continuous progress, bringing them up to date with the theme of globalization and its contradictory trends.

Weakening of the state

Finally, in the realm of geopolitics that is most familiar to me, we register the “dark side” of the current version of globalization, namely the withdrawal of the state. Historical and comparative sociology made notable advances in understanding the formation of the modern state, especially with Charles Tilly’s theory[12]. The states in formation use strategies of coercion and extraction of resources, aided by wars, to finally impose themselves on a national territory, with an almost absolute monopoly on the legitimate use of force and its assembly in a system of laws and institutions.

Today, this process seems to regress “from above” due to transnational flows and organizations, and “from below” due to at least partial loss of control of violence (especially organized crime).[13] Just as there was a historical process of concentration of power and violence, starting from groups among which they were scattered, it would seem that we are entering an opposite cycle, in which power and violence “spread” outside the state. The same theories on the formation of the state can be applied to the study of state weakening or decay in these areas:

• Loss of the monopoly of violence
• Fiscal weakening
• Erosion of legitimacy
• Challenges to sovereignty
• Institutional fragmentation

These processes are visible in many countries, and “obvious” in Latin America.

My reflections are brief and the subject of course exceeds the scope of this article, but perhaps they stimulate us to think and investigate this important aspect of our time, which I call in a very provocative way debasement.

According to the Dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy, this is the meaning:

“1. m. Action and effect of debasing or debasing oneself.

Synonym.:	degeneration, degradation, humiliation, corruption, dishonor, vileness, prostitution.
Antonym:	ennoblement”

Let’s think about how we can promote the antonym.

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[1] G. Bateson, Steps to an Ecology of Mind, Chicago: University of Chicago Press,. 1972.

[2] https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/politics-and-the-english-language/

[3] Ver Hughes, R.C. “Breaking the Law Under Competitive Pressure.” Law and Philosophy 38, 169–193 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10982-019-09345-7

[4] This logic ends up affirming the use of violence not as ultima ratio (foundation of the state) but as prima ratio, that is, anarchy.

[5] Image, video, or text, usually distorted for cartoon purposes, that is disseminated primarily through the internet.

[6] It would be the case of a doctor who advises his patient to quit smoking and that patient responds that he also smokes, so, coming from him, the advice is not valid.

[7] A notable example is Norberto Bobbio in his analysis of the concepts of right and left: https://vburgos.online/PDF/Bobbio%20-%20Derecha%20e%20Izquierda.pdf

[8] https://ddooss.org/libros/Norbert_Elias.pdf

[9] The issue of voluntary servitude, which dates back to a booklet by Étienne de la Boetie (sixteenth century), has once again worried analysts of current processes as a result of the progress of communication and computing. See https://comein.uoc.edu/divulgacio/comein/es/numero133/articles/s-suarez-servitud-tecnologica-voluntaria-algunes-preguntes-i-definicions.html

[10] In particular, see Adam Shatz’s essay, “Jottings, Scraps, and Doodles,” in the collection The Meaninglessness of Meaning, London: London Review of Books 2020.

[11] The best known are those of Spengler, Toynbee, and Sorokin.

[12] Charles Tilly, Coercion, Capital, and European States, AD 990-1992, London: Blackwell, 1990.

[13] See https://ciaotest.cc.columbia.edu/wps/lea06/lea06.pdf

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