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THE COMING DARK AGE
Newsletter
December, 2004
1. INTRODUCTION
At this time of the renewal of the year, it seems appropriate to discuss the concept of the 'phoenix principle'.
This month's newsletter also contains some notes about the Swedish social scientist G Esping-Andersen's theories
concerning the three worlds of welfare capitalism.
Past editions of the newsletter are at the following address: http://www.darkage.fsnet.co.uk/Newsletter.htm I welcome
all comments, suggestions and contributions, especially the latter. Please forward this newsletter to anyone you
think might be interested. Marc Widdowson
2. THE PHOENIX PRINCIPLE
The phoenix principle, in its most succinct form, states: "before breakthrough, breakdown". The idea
is that you have to destroy the old in order to create the new. When you have gone down a blind alley, you have
to move backward before you can move forward again. This is the way history works. For example, the invention of
the motor car caused problems for horsing interests, ranging from the people who bred and marketed horses, to the
people who made a living out of stabling and providing horse fodder, to the people who swept up horse manure from
the street and sold it as fuel or fertiliser. In the long run, the motor car generated far more jobs than it removed,
but one industry had to be destroyed for the other to be created.
There are some who ask why it has to be this way. Why cannot industries and social institutions evolve smoothly
in the direction of ever greater improvement? Why does it have to involve destruction as well as creation? To some
extent this question is beyond the bounds of dark age theory. Dark age theory is solely concerned with describing
the way that history actually is, not with why it happens to be that way. We may note, however, that the phoenix
principle, or the principle of creative destruction, is not something that comes into play only rarely. It is always
operating around us, though for most of the time on a small scale so that we don't notice it. Businesses are always
going bust. People are always losing their jobs and having to find new ones. Life itself is characterised by the
experience of setback and recovery. Is it realistic to ask that this should never happen? That everything should
always progress smoothly? If there can be small setbacks, there can also be medium setbacks and large setbacks.
The larger they are, the more rarely they occur.
The phoenix principle is not just found in history. It seems to be inherent to all complex evolving systems. The
classic example is the forest fire. Over time, the forest becomes clogged with deadwood and with a dense undergrowth
that prevents the shoots of new trees from springing up. The forest fire clears this all away and thereby allows
the forest to renew itself. A similar thing is seen in the flash floods that affect rivers and seem to do so much
damage. While the river is flowing along at its normal rate it becomes clogged with stones, logs and other debris.
The flash flood scours out the river bed, getting rid of all this matter, and allowing the river to flow smoothly
again. After the Colorado river was dammed, scientists observed that the river's ecology was being harmed because
flash floods could no longer occur. As a result, they instituted a policy of occasionally releasing large amounts
of water in order to simulate floods and keep the river healthy.
The phoenix principle also seems to operate in biological evolution. Species are going extinct all the time, but
now and again whole groups of species go extinct at roughly the same time, and very occasionally - at intervals
of up to a hundred million years - there are massive extinction events, completely transforming the nature of life
on earth. The latter have often been attributed to special shocks, especially geological catastrophes. The theory
that the dinosaurs were wiped out by a meteorite, for example, is well known. That theory, initially controversial,
gained in acceptability throughout the 1990s. However, some recent work suggests that it may not be a good explanation
after all. The dinosaur die-off seems to have begun a considerable time before the meteorite impact, and to have
continued for a considerable time afterwards. It would be nice to believe that the meteorite impact theory is a
red herring, and that the extinction of the dinosaurs is simply one of the most extreme events within a continuum
of extinction events ranging from individual species upwards. It would be nice to believe that, because it means
that the chaotic dynamic of evolutionary progress can be understood as an inherently logical process. Usually,
when a species goes extinct, nothing else happens. Sometimes, however, that can cause problems for other species
that used to eat the species which has gone extinct, and they may also go extinct. Occasionally, that can cause
problems for other species and very rarely, when conditions happen to be just right, whole ecological webs may
unravel in a domino effect. (This is all neatly modelled by the theory of self-organised criticality, which I won't
go into here.) The point is that the major extinctions and the minor extinctions are seen to be products of basically
the same phenomenon, and we do not need to introduce arbitrary and ad hoc disasters in order to explain them.
Similarly, the phoenix principle applied to history means that history is characterised by an underlying pattern.
There is a logic to it, and it is not simply one damn thing after another. This is relevant to the recent disaster
in the Indian Ocean. Dreadful though it is, this disaster is not really critical to the historical, dark age processes
that affect global society. Society has its own logic, and evolves under its own steam. Society is not simply buffeted
one way or the other by natural disasters, however extreme. Indeed, there have always been natural disasters, and
there always will be, and they simply form a constant backdrop to human experience. Dark ages are to be explained
in terms of social processes and human relationships, not by random geological events.
Meanwhile, the very legend of the phoenix shows that people have long recognised the existence of the phoenix principle,
which operates not only in history but also in many kinds of natural system. This concept is also expressed in
the notion of the dying-and-rising god, which was found in ancient Egypt and today in Christianity. That concept
seems particularly to be associated with agricultural peoples, who experience it in the farming cycle, whereby
the crops grow up, flourish and are then cut down, leaving the fields bare, for a new crop to be sown. The same
cycle of death and re-birth is the result of finite human lifetimes. It is also found in astronomical phenomena,
such as the waxing and waning of the moon, and the yearly oscillation between summer and winter solstices. If some
cosmological theories are correct, it may affect the universe as a whole, which grows old and is then re-born in
a fiery cataclysm. The phoenix principle is thus one of the most fundamental principles of all nature.
3. THREE WORLDS OF WELFARE CAPITALISM
Three worlds of welfare capitalism - three different routes to economic unravelling?
The Swedish political scientist Esping-Andersen (Esping-Andersen, G.: The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism, Cambridge
1990) has classified the universe of welfare institutions in the Western world into three large categories: a)
liberal wfs (US, UK, NZ, AUS) b) conservative wfs (D, I, F, NL,) c) social-democratic wfs (Scandinavian countries)
LIBERAL. The liberal welfare state is set up to prevent poverty. This goal is being achieved through means-tested
provisions and the private welfare industry. Family policy is, as a rule, virtually absent, and childcare only
available to the middle class. Labour market stratification: The labour market is characterised by the large number
of "junk jobs", relatively low unemployment. At the same time there is the problem of the working-poor.
The liberal welfare state has higher wealth differentials than the two other models. Other principal features are
the high employment rate of women and comparatively high fertility rates (work-family-nexus).
CONSERVATIVE. The conservative welfare state, inspired by catholic social doctrine and paternalism has traditionally
aimed at preserving the different societal segments' status while making sure that the threat posed by socialism
got no chance. Benefits are contributory and differentiated (originally, only the strategically important coal
and metal workers received pensions in Bismarckian Germany), and there is a reliance on cash benefits rather than
services. Labour market stratification: As wages are artificially inflated, there is less potential for job creation
at the lower end. Furthermore more women opt to stay out of work than in the liberal system as there appears to
be a trade-off between family and work (benefits are not intended to reconcile this conflict); fertility rates
are low (work-family-nexus).
SOCIAL-DEMOCRATC. The social-democratic welfare state is formed around the values of equality and solidarity. Accordingly,
the policy outcome is the most redistributive of all systems. Benefits are ideally universal and tax-funded and
there is strong emphasis on services (especially child-care). In addition, training and education have been a top
priority in states undertaking an active labour-market policy. Labour market stratification: Of all systems, the
Nordic welfare state probably has the highest rate of female employment. Secondly, many jobs were created in the
public sector. Investment in child care may have resulted in comparatively high fertility rates (work-family-nexus).
While the lean liberal welfare state enjoys public support, there is the danger of an ever-growing class of working-poors,
crime and social disorder as low-cost jobs are being mercilessly offshored to Asia and elsewhere. The conservative
welfare state is said to be a "world of welfare without work". In addition to unemployment, sustainability
is a crucial issue, also since immigration as a solution to the problem is not welcome with everyone in rather
conservative societies (Germany, Italy). The egalitarian social-democratic welfare states avoided both poverty
and high unemployment rates by accumulating deficits in the public sector.
Trilemma: subsistence earnings - full employment - balanced budget Four challenges for the welfare state:
1. globalisation: a) Mobile capital and production facilities, globalisation of finance services (pensions?) ->
state loses control over income source b) mass immigration: potential solution to demographic problem but also
appears to be a burden for the wfs
2. post industrial economy: a) less scope for productivity b) growing wealth differentials
3. demographic change Population ageing: 3 key variables (fertility rate, life expectancy, immigration)
4 work (?) Female employment; trade-off between work and family (?)
The welfare state and the CDA
- Fundamental problem: systems of public welfare = tragedy of commons overall needs and demands are growing faster
than delivery capacity: disorganisation
- Conservative systems appear to be stuck. Nordic nations with highly-skilled labour force and more egalitarian,
homogenous societies may be better off, but in the long term all of them are doomed to fail.
- "Globalisation" (growth of scale) = catalyst: Competition from rising nations forces retrenchment,
mass immigration raises pressure - demands of national clienteles (voters): retrenchment can only be minimal/gradual
-> contradiction: no fundamental change until radical collapse of system; in meantime gradual impoverishment
of large segments of population
- On the other hand: modernisation will lead to similar problems in China (one-child-policy); "equilibrium"?
- Surprises? Innovations leading to new industries and with potential for growth <-> "robotic revolution"?,
static and anti-scientific anti-enterpreneurial climate
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