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Divided States
Both the Democratic and Republican national conventions have attempted this year to show total unity to the viewing public. More so than in the past with the Democrats going to great length in casting as diverse a lineup as they could, with out importing some alien beings from Alpha Century.
But one needs only to dig a little below the surface to see that this mask of unification is superficial at best. With Washington’s increasing inability to be responsive to a larger and larger portion of America, state revenues falling and large metro areas loosing money and population and states asserting what they believe to be their prerogative on voting rights, immigration, environment and other issues. The changing demographics were more and more people of similar economic class, ethnicity and social values are self segregating.
All this makes one wonder just how much longer this country will remain one or whether if should. If as some of our founding fathers had questioned a strong central government can keep the country together without the use of force.
The governments of Europe have taken their limits and form from adventitious circumstances, and nothing can be argued on the motive of agreement from them; but these adventitious political principles have nevertheless produced effects that have attracted the attention of philosophy, which have established axioms in the science of politics therefrom, as irrefragable as any in Euclid. It is natural, says Montesquieu, to a republic to have only a small territory, otherwise it cannot long subsist: in a large one, there are men of large fortunes, and consequently of less moderation; there are too great deposits to trust in the hands of a single subject, an ambitious person soon becomes sensible that he may be happy, great, and glorious by oppressing his fellow citizens, and that he might raise himself to grandeur, on the ruins of his country. In large republics, the public good is sacrificed to a thousand views, in a small one, the interest of the public is easily perceived, better understood, and more within the reach of every citizen; abuses have a less extent, and of course are less protected. He also shows you, that the duration of the republic of Sparta was owing to its having continued with the same extent of territory after all its wars; and that the ambition of Athens and Lacedemon to command and direct the union, lost them their liberties, and gave them a monarchy.
From this picture, what can you promise yourselves, on the score of consolidation of the United States into one government? Impracticability in the just exercise of it, your freedom insecure, even this form of government limited in its continuance, the employments of your country disposed of to the opulent, to whose contumely you will continually be an object. You must risk much, by indispensably placing trusts of the greatest magnitude, into the hands of individuals whose ambition for power, and aggrandizement, will oppress and grind you. Where, from the vast extent of your territory, and the complication of interests, the science of government will become intricate and perplexed, and too mysterious for you to understand and observe; and by which you are to be conducted into a monarchy, either limited or despotic; the latter, Mr. Locke remarks, is a government derived from neither nature nor compact.
Indeed it has been torn apart in the past and was reintegrated with only a great deal of blood on both sides being spilled. Or has the country become so large and diverse that it can no longer be effectively governed with out an increasingly oppressive use of force as we have seen and continue to see either directly or indirectly by the federal government to maintain control.
Reflection on the impact of very large scale on democracy can be traced back to the Greeks, and later especially to Montesquieu, who held that democracy could flourish only in small nations. The judgment that very large scale is inimical to democracy was also taken very seriously by the founding fathers. Indeed, at a time when the United States hardly extended beyond the Appalachian mountains, John Adams worried: “What would Aristotle and Plato have said, if anyone had talked to them, of a federative republic of thirteen states, inhabiting a country of five hundred leagues in extent?” Similarly – again, at a time when the nation numbered a mere 4 million people – even James Madison (who challenged the traditional argument that democracy was possible only in small nations) believed that a very large- (rather than a “mean”-scale) republic could easily become a de facto tyranny because elites at the center would be able to divide and conquer diverse groups dispersed throughout the system. Few people imagined democracy in a continent.
One can also isolate important and difficult aspects of the question of scale in the larger complex of issues that in the nineteenth century culminated in the Civil War. For our purposes, however, it is sufficient to recall that a sophisticated theoretical debate over scale problems began to develop in academic and political centers during the early years of the twentieth century, continuing up to and through the 1920s and 1930s.
The traditional response to the argument that democracy is difficult if not impossible in very large-scale units, has been to propose decentralization to the states. The point of departure for the more sophisticated debate is recognition that many states are simply too small to manage important economic issues, or for instance (in the 1930s as well as in modern times) a number of important ecological matters. Logically, if a continental national system is too large and many states are too small, the obvious answer must be something in-between – the unit of scale we call a “region.”
Which brings the questions should the United States remain a nation with a large powerful central government ? And more importantly is it possible for it to remain this way ? Or will it inevitably spit into to small regions as some have predicted ? And would this be a good thing or bad thing ? How would it happen ? What would be the trigger ?
It seems less and less likely that the riffs that have been occurring politically, socially and economically will be healed any time soon. That they seem to be getting broader and broader and each group more intransigent. In any event what comes next will very different that what we have now.
41 Comments
Good “food for thought” post. Recc’d. Funny how the anti-Federalists have been largely forgotten by our so-called leaders, isn’t it?
There are any number of things that could trigger the fragmentation of the United States. The collapse of the oil economy, or even just prohibitive fuel prices, could be one. A Second American Revolution would certainly create great regional political stresses. For that matter, a second revolution could actually be triggered by a few states seceding from a federal government their people feel no longer gives a damn about them.
As for whether such scenarios could be good things well, that all depends on the eventual outcome, doesn’t it? Hard to say.
“Difficult to see is the future. Always shifting, always in flux.”
–Yoda, in “The Empire Strikes Back”
Cessation went so well last time…
I’m getting a pounding sensation in the butt just thinking about it.
Any such threat to the status quo, (short of a super-massive grass-roots movement,) will be dealt with exponentially. That should be immensely clear.
Support OWS
Thanks Barbarian. To think that the status quo will remain or that it can be maintained even trough force is a fools errand. History is riddled with such things.
I do think that you are correct though. Another such economic collapse could just be the trigger. Hard to say. But I find it interesting that the general rage that initially occurred at the suggestion of the bailout was very quickly scrubbed from the M$M and committed to the memory hole.
But I remember John Boner saying that if he voted for it, he would be lynched back home and at least one progressive stating that they were threatened with marshal law if they did not vote for it.
I don’t think many would go along even that easily next time. I could see most of congress just walking out at the suggestion which is probably why most of it was done quietly and under the table since.
But this can only go on for so long. And if Israel decides to go rogue and attack Iran on it’s own, oil and commodity prices would go through the roof along with Americans tempers.
As for the outcome ? Well this sort of thing has happen before elsewhere and in the long run, worked out pretty well.
See my reply to Barbarian.
And yes the response would at least attempt to be harsh, but in the end I do not think successful.
It was the same PTB that were actually behind the push for the federal response that was the civil war. But nobody likes to talk about THAT.
I may have been under estimating the situation in this diary. From Huffington.
Of course a United States of Europe would go over like a lead balloon as such an attempt would create a severe reaction in each country.
Frank Zappa’s Brick Wall Quote comes to mind (and doesn’t seem so extreme anymore) when people talk about changing the system.
There’s a possibility that we may not live to see any meaningful improvement. After all, minimum wage has been in decline since Richard Nixon was my commander-in-chief. Although the situation seems unsustainable, we could continue on this slow decline indefinitely.
I’m a hoot at parties if you couldn’t tell.
You maybe right. I would not be surprised though to see states themselves begin for for coalitions in response to the decline.
Another colapse of capitalism could make some states or regions become socialist, losing trust in the system. When it happens, I will want to move there, to be with all my good comrades. It will probably be in Slab City, California.
We see this sort of anxiety and thinking in every political economic (as in political economy) crisis that the US goes through–beginning with Shays rebellion and the threat of secession from Virginia over claims to Kentucky, Northeastern Federalists in response to Jefferson’s policies, to all sorts of state and regional movements, such as the attempt to form the state of Cascadia.
And as geo-social and geo-cultural realities change, there have been many proposed partitions. Remember in the 1970s, there was The Nine Nations of North America. Other partitions are based on bioregions, which themselve have no consensus are are getting trasformed by the failure to deal with global climate change.
There are Anti-Federalists who are still popular, especially on the right. The leading one is Patrick Henry, and John C. Calhoun’s political philosophy still has traction on the right.
The question of how large a democratic government can be is unsettled. The United States as a continental power has had a fairly good run of it so far.
The question of corruption of democracy is not related to size as the experience of Ancient Greece and the Roman Republic show.
There are some assumptions that are commonly made about the political geography of the US that are no longer true. Cities are no longer losing population and getting poorer; they are losing population and becoming more gentrified. Suburbs, especially inner suburbs of large cities are becoming poorer. Rural areas are becoming depopulated even as small cities and small towns in small farm states are gaining population; chalk that up to the concentration in agribusiness. The self-segregation is primarily being done by the very wealthy and those of any income who aspire to be wealthy (which sorta maps to the Republican base). Richard Louv’s 1983 book America II: The Book that Captures Americans in the Act of Creating the Future was prescient about the self-segregation by wealth and the increase in gated communities. Alan Ehrenhalt, The Great Inversion and the Future of the American City covers recent contrary trends. Jeb Bruggman’s Welcome to the Urban Revolution: How Cities are Shaping the World provides a global perspective on the shifting demographics (and politics) of city regions. The issue of an effective political geography is not simple.
And the electorate that existed in 1788 was much narrower in demographics, economic interests, and culture than that today.
From the perspective of political geography, there are these weaknesses in the way government works in the US:
1. The growth in population and the broadening of the electorate means that poltical units that were of the size of the “ideal” Greek democracy, namely counties and city wards no longer are at that size today–almost anywhere except for a small number of rural counties, that are most notable for that fact.
2. The political geography has become more complex because of the complicated patchwork of federal administrative regions, state planning regions (and any associated councils of government), townships (only in certain states), named neighborhoods, school districts, unincorporated rural settlements, water and sewer districts, development zones, volunteer fire districts, various special tax districts–and the many councils, boards, supervisors, and other officials who are appointed instead of elected to make decisions for one of these hunks of political geography.
3. Electoral politics is an overlay over the complexity of administrative units; there are state legislative districts that span multiple Congressional Districts, and Congressional Districts that comprise a complex arrangement of parts of counties and engineered demographics.
4. There is no consistent electoral structure below the county level that could provide a way of geographically aggregating a consensus or a forum for democratically affecting decisions.
5. Clearcut bioregional features, such as river basins, that require common action to protect, are split among multiple jurisdictions in their management. If the environment is an “externality” to economics, it is not even recognized in the political structures.
6. The very complexity of the political geography makes it easier for those with the luxury of time or wealth to manipulate the various pieces of the system against one another in order to achieve their interests–leaving everyone else out.
Well what about partition, such a proposed in The Nine Nations of North America or the map above. What would be the basis for putting a set of geographical locations in one or another region? To what degree would there be self-determination, and how would that work? How would you avoid introducing a whole new set of problems and crises (think of the collapse of Milosevich’s Yugoslavia) as a result of the partition?
The history of Europe is a history of states. And until the European Union under the Pax Americana, the history of Europe was a history mostly of continuous war. A similar pattern erupted in the US in the Civil War when the states of the Confederacy considered themselves more sovereign than the Union–just because they feared that the demographic changes and previous compromises in dividing free states and slave states would at some point mean a majority of free states that could impose abolition of the institution of slavery in the South.
BTW, in the Compromise of 1876 that brought Rutherford B. Hayes to the Presidency and home rule for the South, the former planters–mostly now transformed into industrialists–were restored to citizenship and power. A reign of terror by the PtB was rewarded. And–they were the anchors of the Democratic Party that held the Solid South until 1964.
Well dang me Tarheel, you left me with more questions than I started out with.
As to adding problem with a partitioning, I think exchanging problems would come closer to the mark. But isn’t that what we humans are so good at anyway.
But now even more food for thought.
A period of tremendous growth! All that speculation, cash, and investment predicated on EU integration. Aznar is a right-wing fraudster and aristocratic tool.
The collapse of Yugoslavia was caused by integration, not partition.
I stand corrected. Milosevich was trying to integrate Serbians from the other Republics. The partition happened over the course of the 1980s and early 1990s.
Let us not forget the Soviet Union. All it took was for Gorbachev to say, “Hey guys. We can’t afford you any more. You’re on your own. Oh and have a nice day.”
The founders entertained some enlightened heuristics on scale. They were seduced by their opportunity. It is the wrong question.
Look at the irony of the South – they risked a war for their autonomy meanwhile they maintained a virulent racist hierarchy. The question of scale is a dilemma of the elites. They must federate for their own protection yet they must fight to extend their dominance.
The neocons blame the necessity of dominance on mankind’s tribal nature. Theirs is a cynical argument for the exercise of superpower preemption. Hierarchy engenders hallucination.
Clever, but not the correct interpretation. Yugoslavia was neoliberalized, i.e. integrated into the capitalist domain, by encouragement of sectarianism and warfare.
Interesting point. The initial rage and resentment vocalized over the bail out of the Wall Street banks was summarily buried and distracted by Wall Street and their media lackeys. I think it was Boehner who said he would be lynched if he voted initially for the TARP bill.
This was expressed over the entire political spectrum. I do not think people have forgotten about it, though I’m sure Wall Street is wishing they did.
I guarantee you any other such situation would not be so easily brushed aside.
George Clinton adopts Motesquieu’s progression of republic-monarchy-empire. Note the use of subject in his paraphrase of Montesquieu:
Interesting that even in a republic the monarchs to be are referred to as “subjects”. Here is Montesquieu’s prescription for a monarchy:
Clinton is ignorant of the potential of bourgeois tyranny. Size has little pertinence now.
Hierarchy is not the only way to solve the scale problem.
Sorta describes what the local “princes” of 13 of the colonies of British America did, doesn’t it. The planters were closer to the old princes and the large merchants closer to the newly emerging “princes”. And the folks who were involved in the Continental Congresses, taken together pretty much included all of the local oligarchy of each of the states. (Loyalist “tories” excepted)
Yes. In Montesquieu’s framework, they pretended they sought a republic when empire was in the cards. If they’d had Marx’s analysis, the hypocrisy of their protestations would have been more apparent.
Montesquieu’s hierarchy spectrum was a partial optimization, not a solution. I doubt any “solution to the scale problem” is devoid of hierarchy.
A revolution 72 years too soon, IOW.
There are solutions to the scale problem that do not require hierarchy but require guards against the emergence of a hierarchy.
There are solutions to having non-barter solutions to transferring goods from producers that do not result in capital but they require guards against accumulation that becomes the basis of capital.
And then there is the who guards the guardians problem.
But the solution need not be completely persistent to be satisfactory.
The alternative is to give up on highways, coffee, spices, and the internet.
I think US regionalism and nationalism are archaic notions now. Our young diverse and disparate populations will come up with something entirely new, and it will be fascinating. Wish I could be here long enough to witness it.
I like that, billthechowchow. Left me with a warm smile of optimism.
Thanks. ;o)
I keep thinking of Native American and other tribes who were not hierarchical – at lest not by possessions. Chefs were chefs for other reasons. For say their wisdom or skills or both.
By “the scale problem”, I assume you mean the propensity for control centers in economic expansion. Given that the capitalist economy is integrated with militarism, I doubt these control centers will be relinquished.
Capitalism is not unsatisfactory because not “completely persistent”. Capitalism is unsatisfactory because it is a fraud and unrelentingly exploitative. I think the biggest problem for just social organization is the prohibition of predatory alliances. Perhaps once the internal predation of allies is suppressed, those predatory alliances will be too.
The scale problem is the fact that we have accumulated so much large scale and integrated infrastructure and supply chains that replacement with totally local systems of production are no longer possible in the short term without severe disruption. There are communications methods of coordinating large-scale projects (making or maintaining) without hierarchies. The problem is that all of these have a tendency to evolve towards having privileged nodes in the network, which then becomes the technical justification for political hierarchy. This is an issue with distributed automated systems (like the network of internet servers) as well. Which means that there must be political counterbalancing of that tendency in any supposedly horizontal polity.
If you have an universal intermediary product in transferring goods and services, you have money–no matter what system of political economy it is introduced into. Marx’s analysis of money argues that it inevitably becomes a commodity, and that eventually transforms money into capital. Which means that there must be political counterbalancing if money become capital is not to subvert the economy, polity, and culture.
Yes, add predatory alliances to the list of things that require structural counterbalancing in any new system.
Expand on what you mean by the “internal predation of allies”.
I’m not sure that there is good enough evidence about how most indigenous people were organized before Western colonization. Kinship societies tend to function differently than non-kinship societies. In part because kinship is structured as various patterns of family trees and tradition has a higher cultural weight than in non-kinship societies.
Also too much that we know about indigenous people has been reported through European “civilized” eyes.
This is true. And those of direct decent have a third and forth hand knowledge.
Capitalism also does not handle advances in technology well at all.
I suspect that this tendency arises from advantageous efficiency. Under the premise of ethical authorities, these privileges are presented as in the common interest. However, people serve roles and in the swapping of roles the integrity of the roles are enhanced … at a cost to efficiency. Since capitalism is a fraud, that cost is necessary.
Of course, the capitalist expropriates value through differential valuation.
By internal predation, I mean the hierarchy that exists within allies.
Please expand.
Technological advances do not always see the light of day unless someone or some company can make money off of them quickly.
Had it not been for the Japanese – more specifically Sony – the transistor may have languished in the labs of Bell Tell for ten years or more. The American electronics corporations did not want to give up vacuum tubes since they were still making a good deal of money on them without the massive retooling needed to use transistor technology.
It took small businesses and/or inventors to bring nearly all the new inventions to light. The corporations merely fed on them.
In systems like the internet, it arises out of selective pruning of connections to make communication more efficient. One can see that process for oneself in the frequency with which you visit all of the web sites that of interest to you on the internet. There is a certain amount of randomness in which ones you have come to rely on among very many similar choices. Those sites (or nodes of communication) get your preferential treatment. Layer that with all readers with content judgments similar to yours, and you start to have a hierarchy emerge. That becomes political when there is sufficient self-consciousness of one’s location in that hierarchy to either demand deference or to think one has to extend deference just based on the position in the hierarchy.
By allies, I am interpreting something like the informal alliance between employees of a company that allow them to use each other to climb the corporate ladder, or the collusion between a buyer and a vendor to ensure their personal interest. And many other situations of interpersonal relationships of factional cooperation. Hierarchy under those conditions means a relatively consistent and emergent informal pecking order that might and often is at cross purposes with the formally stated hierarchy.
That problem boils down to the fear of canniabalizing a less-risky large but moderately profitable income stream in order to secure an extremely risky initially small but potentially highly profitable income stream.
The small company entrant doesn’t have the large market to cannibalize. That puts all of their risk as upside risk or total failure. Also why maybe 80% of new ventures fail. The high downside risk.
Or get swallowed up by bigger corporations. That was the main way Sarnoff’s RCA and George Westinghouse and GE to name few acquired most of their technical advances.
Funny, neither MITI-coordinated Sony nor the American companies acted according to idealized capitalist strategy. So, while capitalist legend promotes relentless competition as the only means of maintaining profitability, state backing (military spending?) may coordinate innovation or defacto collusion may forestall it.
Capitalists subvert the fictional strategy because it is too expensive. State subsidy and coordination promote innovation. However, the nature of the state, as we all know, affects the technological choices. A capitalist state beholden to business will not handle technological advances well either.
I was thinking more of capitalist states that will ally and war as a consequence of their internal hierarchies.
… or an extension of their internal hierarchies.
To recap, “the scale problem”, or the coordination of large scale operations either explicitly uses hierarchy or tends to develop power centers. I submit that rotation of peers through those roles tends to prevent the abuse of those roles. Other efficiency compromises may likewise ameliorate that problem.
Efficiency becomes a euphemism for authoritarianism.
Just off the top of my head (so take it with a bushel of salt) seems to me the corporatization of America not only has bushwhacked the economy, but it has made it a very much less fun place to visit. It’s boring!
Part of Europe becoming more linked together not only an easier place to go to and from countries but also a celebration of the diversities therein (perhaps they overdid it a bit, corporate influence again.) The diversities in this country are often pitted against one another, not seen as an asset, nor the actual history of the place. Gosh, Britain makes much of their sordid past because it is history for goodness sake and look how far they have come with that. Whereas here it is continually dragged up as something we have to atone for – not me, I wasn’t here when this happened!
I’m just saying tourism is one way of redistributing the wealth,(and would benefit from a lowering of the value of the dollar) and it’s an important one. I know, global warming and all that, but once they’re here, let them use great public transport that has been manufactured here by out of work Americans at locally owned factories. And let’s de-McDonaldize, de-Walmartize and get back to family farming. All over.
I don’t know why I didn’t think of this sooner, so sorry, folks. After all, my Dad spent his life promoting tourism in New Zealand. I don’t think people realize how important to the economy this can be – maybe because Americans have been too used to being tourists themselves. (If anyone is unsure of this, ask the indigenous tribes. They know.)