Por Patrick Mazza
 |
| Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair |
A lawless administration – An oligarchy concentrating power
The U.S. is in a crisis of historic proportions, scaling to previous eras such as the Civil War and 1930s Depression. It is a systemic crisis in the sense its political system is failing to respond either to immediate challenges or more deeply rooted problems out of which those challenges rise.
The immediate challenge is a lawless administration that has slipped the rails limiting presidential power. It withholds funds appropriated by Congress, ignores court orders, and deploys camouflaged troops on city streets arresting people without warrant and in some cases disappearing them. The recent execution-style killing of Renee Good by an ICE agent in Minneapolis seems a crystallizing event, much as was the 2020 killing of George Floyd less than a mile away. It underscores how an effectively unaccountable militarized force is exhibiting the lawlessness of the administration it serves.
The deeper challenge is a drift away from democratic institutions with the rise of an oligarchy increasingly concentrating power in its hands. Trump is a perfect expression of that oligarchy, and was elected with the backing of oligarchs such as Elon Musk, the world’s richest man. Overall, the guardrails against an increasing accumulation of political and economic control have been breached. The institutional powers that are supposed to limit oligarchic concentration have been systematically stripped or bought off. The ramifications are breakdown and collapse of political, economic and ecological systems.
It’s a glum picture. But every disease spurs its antibodies. Out of the crisis confronting us, communities of resistance are emerging. The way ICE soldiers are being greeted with contempt and whistles everywhere they go is a sign of that. Chris Armitage has a great piece detailing what is happening in Minneapolis. Antibodies are also showing up in some state and city governments that are putting up legal resistance to administration outrages.
But we need to go further, to dig down into the roots of our crisis, to plant seeds for a new system that frees us from oligarchy. Or to change the analogy a little bit, to be like the seed cones of forests that sprout after being heated by wildfires. There are plenty of cones on the forest floor in the form of people and groups working on new models for community, whether through civil society or public institutions. The fires of crisis can open up space for new growth.
Our three-pronged crisis: political, economic, ecological
In my last post, I promised to offer several scenarios for how this might work. But as I thought it out, I realized it is impossible to sort out the multiple crises facing us, political, economic and ecological. They are all mounting at once, and feeding off each other. So really I have one scenario to offer. It is an iteration and refinement of ideas I have presented here under the rubric, building the future in place. They are worth revisiting. In fact, I see them as the only long-term path through what is coming.
And we cannot delay because it is obvious the order of things is cracking. We will not return to the situation as it was before. A hope for return to normalcy, say with the election of Democrats, is in vain. Certainly this is needed for some restoration of a balance of powers. But the system is too far gone to really deal with the root of our troubles in the concentration of oligarchic power. It exhibits a kind of hardening of the arteries that makes it too rigid to make the deep changes necessary. To call out a few specifics of those changes, deep cuts in military spending, universal health care, a restoration of progressive taxation, and rapid phaseout of fossil fuels with their climate destroying pollution. Instead, the system is going to have to crack, and we need to prepare for those cracks by acting now where we still have some level of democratic potential, to plant those seeds of a different order.
It is a principle of scenario planning that you not only plan for the most likely possibilities, but also for worst case outcomes. When systems have lost the capacity to self-correct, the likelihood of the latter increases. We need to take a good hard look at what might come about and prepare as best we can.
First, the political system. We rightly fear the imposition of an autocracy. Trump and his administration are certainly making every power play they can. But the U.S. is a large and complex nation. With all its cultural variations, one can even question whether it is a nation at all, rather than an assemblage of different cultures held together by a series of compromises. When one element goes for absolute power, the most likely outcome is backlash and division. I have a sense that decisions by a far right Supreme Court backing an autocratic Trump will become so unbearable that some states and cities will outright deny federal authority.
The idea of soft secession is being bandied about. But where is the line between soft and what is in fact hard? If one element goes for absolute control, as Trump seems to be attempting, the probability is a tit-for-tat escalation. So while we might hope the U.S. political system finds the resiliency to restore some modicum of balance, we must prepare for national political breakdown.
Next, the economic system. How many bubbles have been blown up by an oligarchy pursuing its own short-term gain? Corporate debt, commercial and residential real estate, AI, Wall Street stock valuations in general. It’s like 2008 on steroids. Behind that is an unprecedented level of federal debt with interest payments now exceeding the military budget. All while warning signs spread through the economy. Shipping is down. People seem to be going out to eat less. Retail relies on high end consumers to an unprecedented degree. The mass of people appear to be maxed out, struggling to keep up with the increasing expense of life basics – food, electricity, food, etc. Is a massive economic downturn around the corner? A new Great Depression? Some are predicting this. So while we might hope for a soft landing, we must prepare for a sharp economic break, and at a time when a debt-ridden federal government seems less capable of handling it than in previous downturns.
Finally, the ecological underpinnings of it all. In the foreground is the climate crisis. Natural disasters ranging from wildfires to storms and flooding are taking an increasing toll. This is already reflected in property insurance rates, notably in disaster-prone areas such as Florida. Climate impacts are also showing up in increased food prices, whether for vegetables, grains or meat.
But it’s not only climate. Increased prices for materials are ramping up construction costs. More areas are going water-short. Many point to the projections of the Limits to Growth studies that from the 1970s on forecast that economies would begin to bump up against the natural limits of the planet this decade. It is obvious that the oligarchic powers have not paid heed to limits, and really cannot under an economic system conditioned on growth. We can hope that the predictable catastrophes of coming years will bring a deep re-evaluation of our current course. For now, we must build the foundations of an economy centered on the needs of humanity and nature where we can, in our communities.
These crises impinge on one another. The affordability challenges now facing increasing number of us are driven by a system geared to concentrate financial wealth, as well as the underlying ecological limits. The political crisis is fed by the spreading sense among so many that they have been kicked off the economic bus. It has made them responsive to the siren songs of rightist populism that in the end only makes their situations worse. We cannot deal with any one of these crises separately. They must be dealt with as a whole, and while we must deal with them at every level we can, from local to national, the place where we can most effectively begin to craft responses and plant seeds is in our communities.
Community is the solution
So what is the scenario for this joint response, for building community out of crisis? The first step is to realize community is the fundamental solution. In the U.S. especially, the bonds of community have grown thin. We socialize less. We connect with neighbors less. We typically have fewer friends. Loneliness is rampant. Meanwhile, we are oriented to be consumers in a national market economy, and to define our meaning by how much we can acquire in that economy. Our attention is sucked by an increasingly monopolized national media, even as local media outlets are dying, making us part of a placeless blob.
Thus, the solution is to rebuild connections at a local and bioregional level, to create caring communities that break through social isolation. There are so many ways to do this in civil society – mutual aid networks, community food banks, tool sharing, etc. – I could not even begin to name them all. But for a coherent, whole response to the crises facing us, I believe the most important step is to create community assemblies of various sorts. In neighborhoods. In towns and cities. In watersheds. We need to start up a civic dialogue to define and address the challenges facing us as we perceive and experience them in our own communities.
The more we build solidarity at a community level, the stronger position we will have to resist autocratic moves coming from the federal level. It is hard to rule over communities with a strong sense of self-awareness. We also need to create aspirations for something better, and hold institutions accountable for reaching them, especially governing bodies at local and state levels. This is known as dual power. It is the basis for an active, participatory democracy that operates all days of the year, not just election day.
Then the next important step is to gain control of our money by creating public financial institutions at city and state levels. We can no longer rely on private financial institutions and investors to build the kind of economies that our multiple crises demand. Their decisions will always be constrained to narrow bottom line considerations. We need money invested according to broader social and ecological criteria, centered on the common good. This piece by Marco Rosaire Rossi illustrates how public banking can help deal with challenges facing us.
Public institutions can be a place where governments deposit their funds, and can finance public infrastructure without paying fees and interest to private bankers. They could also be a place individuals and socially conscious businesses could keep their funds. While credit unions are a good alternative to private banks, they are generally not focused on investing in specific geographies. Public banks and more targeted facilities such as green banks are. A public bank can also do what private banks do, essentially create money by fractional reserve lending. Banks can lend out money at a ratio of $10 for every $1 deposited. In the hands of the public, this can build community-oriented ecological economies.
The goals community assemblies and governing bodies should set, and community financial organizations should fund, should be to build new range of community-based institutions devoted to social and ecological ends. Facing prospective economic headwinds, creation of worker cooperatives is crucial. This includes formation of new businesses and transformation of existing businesses. To address the crisis of ecological limits, priority should be given to enterprises that create circular economies, using waste products as feedstocks for new products, and which actually reduce material use, such as repair shops.
The climate crisis demands energy transition. Private utilities have too many incentives to hold this back, notably investment in existing power infrastructure. We need public utilities and energy cooperatives that have as their first priority to reduce energy use through funding mass energy retrofits and efficiency in general. Ubiquitous solar and wind installations should as much as possible supply the energy that is needed. Where installations are close to demand, it reduces the need for costly, long-distance transmission, and preserves rural ecosystems. Where heat is generated in industrial installations, it should be recycled into community energy networks. Public financial institutions can invest to drive this all forward.
They can also invest in other basic necessities. The housing affordability crisis says social housing must be a priority, and for a wide range of income groups. Creation of an affordable housing base will set limits on what private landlords can charge. Housing must be built to high efficiency standards and powered with renewable electricity. Another priority less often mentioned is the creation of affordable commercial space that allows small and medium businesses to thrive. If an employment crunch is coming with AI and an economic downturn, it will be vital to give people a chance to go into business on their own.
The range of crises, political, economic and ecological, call for a focus on that most basic of human needs, food. Local food production should be encouraged, and bioregional networks built to supply food to towns and cities. Basic infrastructure such as processing and warehousing should be created. Public grocery stores can end food deserts and tamp down prices at grocery chains. Communities might consider long-term food storage to deal with breakdowns in supply systems. It is hard to contemplate what might happen in the case of national political breakdowns, but the breakdown of supply chains is a possibility. The difficulties experienced during the pandemic could be an early warning. In any event, the possibility of multiple breadbasket failures under a disrupted climate is all too real. And even now, a shocking proportion of people already experience food insecurity. Creating new community and bioregional food systems must be a top concern and target for investment.
Local democracy versus oligarchy
These are all elements of a community-based economy. A social economy that begins to draw back into the boundaries set by ecological limits. A caring economy oriented to meeting basic human needs for housing, food, energy and employment. They are built by gaining our own tools for investment. They can set us free of oligarchic control over our lives, and reverse the trend toward concentrated power. Whatever happens, whether things move to worst case scenarios or we pull out with more moderate outcomes, they will help us build a more equitable and just system. This is a no-lose proposition.
No one locality or bioregion can do it on its own, so we need to find ways to work horizontally, networking across the landscape, finding ways to mutually aid each other. The greater the spread of communities building these roots of resilience and adaptation, the deeper the impact. Potentially, successful community models can set the agenda for broader political change, while the strong communities they make can provide the power to do so.
We need to work at every level we can to make change. While we resist the depredations of the current administration, we need to build stronger communities empowered by independent economic bases. We can begin by assembling as communities to set higher aspirations, and using our governing bodies to make them real. We have our greatest democratic possibilities in the communities where we live, and this is where we can begin to turn around the trend to concentrated oligarchic power that threatens democracy as a whole. We must build the future in place.
This first appeared on Patrick Mazza’s Substack page, The Raven.
The U.S. is in a crisis of historic proportions, scaling to previous eras such as the Civil War and 1930s Depression. It is a systemic crisis in the sense its political system is failing to respond either to immediate challenges or more deeply rooted problems out of which those challenges rise.
The immediate challenge is a lawless administration that has slipped the rails limiting presidential power. It withholds funds appropriated by Congress, ignores court orders, and deploys camouflaged troops on city streets arresting people without warrant and in some cases disappearing them. The recent execution-style killing of Renee Good by an ICE agent in Minneapolis seems a crystallizing event, much as was the 2020 killing of George Floyd less than a mile away. It underscores how an effectively unaccountable militarized force is exhibiting the lawlessness of the administration it serves.
The deeper challenge is a drift away from democratic institutions with the rise of an oligarchy increasingly concentrating power in its hands. Trump is a perfect expression of that oligarchy, and was elected with the backing of oligarchs such as Elon Musk, the world’s richest man. Overall, the guardrails against an increasing accumulation of political and economic control have been breached. The institutional powers that are supposed to limit oligarchic concentration have been systematically stripped or bought off. The ramifications are breakdown and collapse of political, economic and ecological systems.
It’s a glum picture. But every disease spurs its antibodies. Out of the crisis confronting us, communities of resistance are emerging. The way ICE soldiers are being greeted with contempt and whistles everywhere they go is a sign of that. Chris Armitage has a great piece detailing what is happening in Minneapolis. Antibodies are also showing up in some state and city governments that are putting up legal resistance to administration outrages.
But we need to go further, to dig down into the roots of our crisis, to plant seeds for a new system that frees us from oligarchy. Or to change the analogy a little bit, to be like the seed cones of forests that sprout after being heated by wildfires. There are plenty of cones on the forest floor in the form of people and groups working on new models for community, whether through civil society or public institutions. The fires of crisis can open up space for new growth.
Our three-pronged crisis: political, economic, ecological
In my last post, I promised to offer several scenarios for how this might work. But as I thought it out, I realized it is impossible to sort out the multiple crises facing us, political, economic and ecological. They are all mounting at once, and feeding off each other. So really I have one scenario to offer. It is an iteration and refinement of ideas I have presented here under the rubric, building the future in place. They are worth revisiting. In fact, I see them as the only long-term path through what is coming.
And we cannot delay because it is obvious the order of things is cracking. We will not return to the situation as it was before. A hope for return to normalcy, say with the election of Democrats, is in vain. Certainly this is needed for some restoration of a balance of powers. But the system is too far gone to really deal with the root of our troubles in the concentration of oligarchic power. It exhibits a kind of hardening of the arteries that makes it too rigid to make the deep changes necessary. To call out a few specifics of those changes, deep cuts in military spending, universal health care, a restoration of progressive taxation, and rapid phaseout of fossil fuels with their climate destroying pollution. Instead, the system is going to have to crack, and we need to prepare for those cracks by acting now where we still have some level of democratic potential, to plant those seeds of a different order.
It is a principle of scenario planning that you not only plan for the most likely possibilities, but also for worst case outcomes. When systems have lost the capacity to self-correct, the likelihood of the latter increases. We need to take a good hard look at what might come about and prepare as best we can.
First, the political system. We rightly fear the imposition of an autocracy. Trump and his administration are certainly making every power play they can. But the U.S. is a large and complex nation. With all its cultural variations, one can even question whether it is a nation at all, rather than an assemblage of different cultures held together by a series of compromises. When one element goes for absolute power, the most likely outcome is backlash and division. I have a sense that decisions by a far right Supreme Court backing an autocratic Trump will become so unbearable that some states and cities will outright deny federal authority.
The idea of soft secession is being bandied about. But where is the line between soft and what is in fact hard? If one element goes for absolute control, as Trump seems to be attempting, the probability is a tit-for-tat escalation. So while we might hope the U.S. political system finds the resiliency to restore some modicum of balance, we must prepare for national political breakdown.
Next, the economic system. How many bubbles have been blown up by an oligarchy pursuing its own short-term gain? Corporate debt, commercial and residential real estate, AI, Wall Street stock valuations in general. It’s like 2008 on steroids. Behind that is an unprecedented level of federal debt with interest payments now exceeding the military budget. All while warning signs spread through the economy. Shipping is down. People seem to be going out to eat less. Retail relies on high end consumers to an unprecedented degree. The mass of people appear to be maxed out, struggling to keep up with the increasing expense of life basics – food, electricity, food, etc. Is a massive economic downturn around the corner? A new Great Depression? Some are predicting this. So while we might hope for a soft landing, we must prepare for a sharp economic break, and at a time when a debt-ridden federal government seems less capable of handling it than in previous downturns.
Finally, the ecological underpinnings of it all. In the foreground is the climate crisis. Natural disasters ranging from wildfires to storms and flooding are taking an increasing toll. This is already reflected in property insurance rates, notably in disaster-prone areas such as Florida. Climate impacts are also showing up in increased food prices, whether for vegetables, grains or meat.
But it’s not only climate. Increased prices for materials are ramping up construction costs. More areas are going water-short. Many point to the projections of the Limits to Growth studies that from the 1970s on forecast that economies would begin to bump up against the natural limits of the planet this decade. It is obvious that the oligarchic powers have not paid heed to limits, and really cannot under an economic system conditioned on growth. We can hope that the predictable catastrophes of coming years will bring a deep re-evaluation of our current course. For now, we must build the foundations of an economy centered on the needs of humanity and nature where we can, in our communities.
These crises impinge on one another. The affordability challenges now facing increasing number of us are driven by a system geared to concentrate financial wealth, as well as the underlying ecological limits. The political crisis is fed by the spreading sense among so many that they have been kicked off the economic bus. It has made them responsive to the siren songs of rightist populism that in the end only makes their situations worse. We cannot deal with any one of these crises separately. They must be dealt with as a whole, and while we must deal with them at every level we can, from local to national, the place where we can most effectively begin to craft responses and plant seeds is in our communities.
Community is the solution
So what is the scenario for this joint response, for building community out of crisis? The first step is to realize community is the fundamental solution. In the U.S. especially, the bonds of community have grown thin. We socialize less. We connect with neighbors less. We typically have fewer friends. Loneliness is rampant. Meanwhile, we are oriented to be consumers in a national market economy, and to define our meaning by how much we can acquire in that economy. Our attention is sucked by an increasingly monopolized national media, even as local media outlets are dying, making us part of a placeless blob.
Thus, the solution is to rebuild connections at a local and bioregional level, to create caring communities that break through social isolation. There are so many ways to do this in civil society – mutual aid networks, community food banks, tool sharing, etc. – I could not even begin to name them all. But for a coherent, whole response to the crises facing us, I believe the most important step is to create community assemblies of various sorts. In neighborhoods. In towns and cities. In watersheds. We need to start up a civic dialogue to define and address the challenges facing us as we perceive and experience them in our own communities.
The more we build solidarity at a community level, the stronger position we will have to resist autocratic moves coming from the federal level. It is hard to rule over communities with a strong sense of self-awareness. We also need to create aspirations for something better, and hold institutions accountable for reaching them, especially governing bodies at local and state levels. This is known as dual power. It is the basis for an active, participatory democracy that operates all days of the year, not just election day.
Then the next important step is to gain control of our money by creating public financial institutions at city and state levels. We can no longer rely on private financial institutions and investors to build the kind of economies that our multiple crises demand. Their decisions will always be constrained to narrow bottom line considerations. We need money invested according to broader social and ecological criteria, centered on the common good. This piece by Marco Rosaire Rossi illustrates how public banking can help deal with challenges facing us.
Public institutions can be a place where governments deposit their funds, and can finance public infrastructure without paying fees and interest to private bankers. They could also be a place individuals and socially conscious businesses could keep their funds. While credit unions are a good alternative to private banks, they are generally not focused on investing in specific geographies. Public banks and more targeted facilities such as green banks are. A public bank can also do what private banks do, essentially create money by fractional reserve lending. Banks can lend out money at a ratio of $10 for every $1 deposited. In the hands of the public, this can build community-oriented ecological economies.
The goals community assemblies and governing bodies should set, and community financial organizations should fund, should be to build new range of community-based institutions devoted to social and ecological ends. Facing prospective economic headwinds, creation of worker cooperatives is crucial. This includes formation of new businesses and transformation of existing businesses. To address the crisis of ecological limits, priority should be given to enterprises that create circular economies, using waste products as feedstocks for new products, and which actually reduce material use, such as repair shops.
The climate crisis demands energy transition. Private utilities have too many incentives to hold this back, notably investment in existing power infrastructure. We need public utilities and energy cooperatives that have as their first priority to reduce energy use through funding mass energy retrofits and efficiency in general. Ubiquitous solar and wind installations should as much as possible supply the energy that is needed. Where installations are close to demand, it reduces the need for costly, long-distance transmission, and preserves rural ecosystems. Where heat is generated in industrial installations, it should be recycled into community energy networks. Public financial institutions can invest to drive this all forward.
They can also invest in other basic necessities. The housing affordability crisis says social housing must be a priority, and for a wide range of income groups. Creation of an affordable housing base will set limits on what private landlords can charge. Housing must be built to high efficiency standards and powered with renewable electricity. Another priority less often mentioned is the creation of affordable commercial space that allows small and medium businesses to thrive. If an employment crunch is coming with AI and an economic downturn, it will be vital to give people a chance to go into business on their own.
The range of crises, political, economic and ecological, call for a focus on that most basic of human needs, food. Local food production should be encouraged, and bioregional networks built to supply food to towns and cities. Basic infrastructure such as processing and warehousing should be created. Public grocery stores can end food deserts and tamp down prices at grocery chains. Communities might consider long-term food storage to deal with breakdowns in supply systems. It is hard to contemplate what might happen in the case of national political breakdowns, but the breakdown of supply chains is a possibility. The difficulties experienced during the pandemic could be an early warning. In any event, the possibility of multiple breadbasket failures under a disrupted climate is all too real. And even now, a shocking proportion of people already experience food insecurity. Creating new community and bioregional food systems must be a top concern and target for investment.
Local democracy versus oligarchy
These are all elements of a community-based economy. A social economy that begins to draw back into the boundaries set by ecological limits. A caring economy oriented to meeting basic human needs for housing, food, energy and employment. They are built by gaining our own tools for investment. They can set us free of oligarchic control over our lives, and reverse the trend toward concentrated power. Whatever happens, whether things move to worst case scenarios or we pull out with more moderate outcomes, they will help us build a more equitable and just system. This is a no-lose proposition.
No one locality or bioregion can do it on its own, so we need to find ways to work horizontally, networking across the landscape, finding ways to mutually aid each other. The greater the spread of communities building these roots of resilience and adaptation, the deeper the impact. Potentially, successful community models can set the agenda for broader political change, while the strong communities they make can provide the power to do so.
We need to work at every level we can to make change. While we resist the depredations of the current administration, we need to build stronger communities empowered by independent economic bases. We can begin by assembling as communities to set higher aspirations, and using our governing bodies to make them real. We have our greatest democratic possibilities in the communities where we live, and this is where we can begin to turn around the trend to concentrated oligarchic power that threatens democracy as a whole. We must build the future in place.
This first appeared on Patrick Mazza’s Substack page, The Raven.
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