Chickens Running in All Directions (X)

The recent outbreak of hooliganism in London http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14449675 and in other parts of England, confirms the death of the traditional community with a vengeance http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-14487982 . Not that this is anything new or has not been known to happen before. Many historians of economy, notably Karl Polanyi (The Great Transformation, 1944), noted “the social catastrophe which followed the Industrial Revolution” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Transformation_(book) .

The social catastrophe of the Industrial Revolution was gradually arrested and a kind of temporary society reestablished in place of the traditional community. If before the arrival of the piston engine “…the self-sufficing household of the peasant laboring for his subsistence remained the broad basis of the economic systems…” (ibid), these systems were soon transformed into ones that turned the substance of its labors, labor including, into money.

Moreover, if before the arrival of money as the chief determinate of value, the community had been held together by the limits imposed by slow mobility (the horse, the sail, and objectified land), social rituals established over long periods of time, and the founding violence of the arch-Christian world (later to become neo-Christendom), the arrival of money commoditized even violence. Some of the first great wealth of our times was made by financing wars.

War is not a new phenomenon. We only have to recall the Vikings, who roved or sailed to distant lands and pillaged peaceable villages located far upriver of those lands. Indeed, such wars preceded the times of roads, because once the only ‘roads’ that were were rivers or paths along seashores. However, these early wars differed significantly from the wars of our time. While no one to this writer’s knowledge has called these early wars ‘fascist wars’, this is what they were, if we understand that  fascism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism_and_ideology can stand for socialism on behalf of small homogenous http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homogeneity_and_heterogeneity  communities.

No doubt, early communities were also more or less democratic in the sense that individualism as such was non-existent or was barely perceived as such. Moreover, early communities probably sustained a dual system of self-governance: that of the sacred King being buttressed by so-called community of Elders.

The Sacred King was the scapegoat who legitimized the community by confirming through his death (real, ritualistic, one or both) the community’s will to be (as if to say: ‘The community is so important to me that I am willing to die for it’). The elders of the community (early bureaucrats) were then able to exploit the charisma of the death in an administrative way. Usually, such an ‘administration’ was by way of instituting common gods, ritualistic observations, distribution of supplies in times of emergency, and a network of messengers who distributed such summons as the Sacred King and the Elders issued in the name of the community. The community, often misnamed ‘tribe’, was generally visualized as a totem.

[The name of the Sacred King was probably John (Janis, Ivan, Huan, Jean, Dion, etc. The name probably derives from the name ‘gans’; re, herdsman. This is why the herdsman, also the Sacred King, is often identified with a lamb.]

Small community fascism expanded, after the great movement of communities from the East (perhaps originating in some climactic cataclysm) came up against the shores of the Atlantic in the West. With oceangoing ships not yet invented, many of the migrants settled as households (self-contained subsistence level economic units). Relatively peaceable communities at their inception, the governments of the communities—the Sacred King and Elders—soon came under the pressure of violence.

For one, the Vikings (and their like) had more prey (settlements) at hand, which they could attack; secondly, the relative vulnerability of a settled community vis-à-vis a gang of marauders increased the role of the messengers. With the arrival of violence, the role of these messengers was transformed. Traveling armed with a stick, we know them to this day as Gendarmes http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_Upljy3gks&NR=1  and Janissaries http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ackK2GP8mCk + http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opac9IGV8fM&feature=related .

The proto-Latvian communities had their Jahnihshi (Jānīši) or Johns, too. A Johns Festival song on Midsummer’s Eve or Johns Eve sings of this community’s guardian: “Ai, Jonny, son of the Sun!” Of course, today the word ‘Sun’ is replaced by the word ‘God’’. This is one of the ways that a small community is joined to the empire. Or could it be that one empire, the East, was exchanged for the empire of the West?

Yes, of course. I have frequently mentioned the 1209 attack by Bishop Albert’s knights (of Riga) against the proto-Latvian king Visvaldis and the city of Jersika (Jerusalem), which was located in what is now eastern Latvia. Situated on the left bank of Daugava (Jaunava?), Jersika was but a portage away from the Volga, whence the Black Sea and the Orient was wide open.

Without going through the labyrinth of proto-Latvian history (I do that in my earlier blogs), let us allow ourselves the fantasy of joining the 12^th and 13^th centuries in proto-Latvia to our days.

Today the Johns Festival on Midsummer’s Eve is famous for drunkenness by disoriented Latvians or summer concerts beginning with a Spanish song. John himself has been scandalized and was removed to heaven to sit on his hands there centuries ago.

Following a brief period of independence, 1918-1939, Latvia was occupied by the Soviet Union and administered on its behalf from 1940 until 1991. Since 1991, after undergoing brain massage by shock and awe capitalism, Latvia is an invalid sovereign country presided over and administered by a President, who cannot escape having a conflict of interest and being under suspicion of being a proxy of Western banks. The same goes for the Finance Minister. Almost everyone pretends that this is not so, but perhaps as many as 20% of Latvians have left the country to work abroad. This ought to serve as proof of incompetence, failure, and ‘sovereign’ power sans charisma.

Ecce communitas http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communitas .

Recommended essay (in Latvian): http://www.delfi.lv/news/comment/comment/gundars-davidsons-slazda.d?id=39645309

Chickens Running in All Directions (I)

To continue :

According to the economist Karl Polanyi (1886-1964)  http://uncharted.org/frownland/books/Polanyi/POLANYI%20KARL%20-%20The%20Great%20Transformation%20-%20v.1.0.html “…by the end of the nineteenth century the peoples of the world were institutionally standardized to a degree unknown before.”

Though Polanyi refers to the 19^th century, what he had in mind was not only that one century or the universal bureaucratic infrastructure crabbing and sterilizing governments, but how that same standardization “…enforced [a] uniformity of domestic systems [which] hovered as a permanent threat over the freedom of national development….”.  The result was, as Polanyi calls it “anarchistic sovereignty”, which became “…a hindrance to all effective forms of international cooperation….”

The failure of the international system in the 1920s and 1930s or as Polanyi says, “the passing of capitalist internationalism”, then “…let lose the energies of history …, the tracks of which were laid down by the tendencies inherent in a market society.”

The above thought may be carried forward to Latvia today, because the Latvian government has for all these years of failed capitalist internationalism presumed to join (in the name of Latvians) that very failure, justifying the course as the only way to escape the Bolsheviks. While such a presumption is not of all Latvians, it was presumed such by those who bought into the system of institutional standardization, which had preoccupied so much of the energies of the 19^th century.

The standardized system became the system in Latvia today by way of liberal capitalism teaming up with individual rights and buying with ‘good’ money a sustained period of growth. Even so, though a significant number of people in the West have indeed had access to ‘good’ money, their sustainability and their money is illusory. The Latvian government however does not see it thus and has no intentions of hiring scholars and other experts to research alternatives for any eventuality.

Too, both liberal capitalism and human rights became identified with ‘freedom’ as sold by a more or less libertarian America in a fit of temporary success. The Latvian-Americans who arrived in America mid-20^th century were America’s vanguard. They were not ones to discover the ebb in the tide of a free and self-controlling market and, therefore, in of the potential damage to their own that an ebb in their prescribed course would bring.  

Most Latvians fleeing the Soviets went to Germany (mostly) and then migrated to other Western countries (particularly the U.S.A.) during the late 1940s and early 1950s. As their arrival in America coincided with America’s and Western Europe’s post WW2 economic boom, the ‘right way’ of both politics and the economy for Latvians became what Polanyi called “failed capitalist internationalism”. In other words, few people, let alone Latvians, remembered Polanyi’s observation or perceived it as prescient http://ardictionary.com/Prescient/11143 .

This is one of the reasons why the Latvian government, having escaped the clutches of the Soviet Union, continued with its rightward tilt. Not surprisingly, Latvia is now caught up in the collapse of capitalist internationalism the second time around, this time however known by the name ‘globalization’ a la neo-liberal capitalism. And not surprisingly, Latvian politicians and business leaders continue to insist that no such collapse is taking place or is ever likely to take place.

All the same, the economic collapse of the West along with the value of its monies—the dollar and the euro—is foreseeable more clearly than ever. Given that economically Latvia is among the last of the European Union’s countries, it ought to be among the first to jump off the wagon known to be running out of tracks.

It is interesting that with the passing into retirement of President Valdis Zatlers [assuming that Zatler’s Reform Party will fail due to an early stall] and the aggressive implant of President Andris Berzins as the new President by the market forces, the opportunity—perhaps the last—for Latvians to escape death as a singularity has passed.

Currently the ‘word’ of the Latvian government is best expressed by the mantra: “Latvia is an example to the rest of the world”, sometimes also called “The Latvian Option” http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/dec/20/latvia-debt-economy-europe-austerity / . The Prime Minister has written a book called “How Latvia came through the financial crisis” http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xjn59w_latvian-prime-minister-launches-his-book-about-financial-crisis_news , though no crisis has as yet been overcome.

No, no one in Latvia is jumping off the wagon or the system.

Though Latvia’s wagon has no engine, it rolls on. Though the system is now run by bad or fiat money, and few Latvians of former times would recognize themselves in the world of today, the cultural vacuum or debasement smiles on. To end with the words of Karl Polanyi: “Not economic exploitation, as often assumed, but the disintegration of the cultural environment of the victim is … the cause of disintegration ”.

Part 2 to follow.