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THE COMING DARK AGE
Newsletter
May, 2005
1. INTRODUCTION
This month's newsletter contains a survey of the state of the German nation written by Dominic Bruce, who also produced the summary of George Modelski's theories in last month's newsletter. Apologies to Dominic for not crediting him before. This month's newsletter also contains a brief analysis of the dark age significance of the recent UK General Election.
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 ROTTEN HEART OF EUROPE: GERMANY AND THE COMING DARK AGE
2.1 A EUROPEAN SUCCESS STORY
In contrast to France and the United Kingdom, Germany is a young nation state. Born in 1872, after a staggering victory against the Third French Republic, it quickly rose to a position of dominance in Central Europe. In 1912, Germany had the largest and best-trained army as it prepared to expand its ocean-going navy, thereby increasingly challenging the British Empire. The output of its steel and coal industries exceeded the latter's in both quality and quantity, and in chemical and electrical engineering German know-how was unmatched. The state's bureaucracy was lean and efficient, the education system among the most prestigious in Europe, radiating its influence into the Nordic countries, where German was the first foreign language. Unemployment meandered between two and three per cent, the ratio of government expenditures to gross national product stood at around 14 per cent. 60 years after the end of World War II, Germany still has many reasons to rejoice at its situation. Europe's most populous country enjoys respect within the international community, and for 15 years it has been reunified. German troops are helping guard the fragile peace in Afghanistan and Kosovo, which has bolstered the nation's long term aspirations for a seat in the Security Council. Together with its former arch-enemy France, Germany has been playing a leading role in advancing European integration. Today, it maintains good relations with its Eastern neighbours and Turkey, the latter of which intends to join the EU. The German export industry is powerful, German motor cars, tanks and machine-tools belong to the finest in the world. And in 2006, Germany is even going to host the world cup. At a closer look, however, this bright picture appears elusive. A historical perspective shows that there are profound difficulties. This essay intends to demonstrate that the problems which manifested themselves as small nuisances several decades ago have developed into severe burdens locked in mutually reinforcing vicious circles that are unlikely to disappear.
2.2 ECONOMIC DOWNTURN
Especially in the domestic economy, the divergence between then and now is striking. To be sure, in the aftermath of defeat in two world wars, Germany swiftly recaptured an enviable economic position and comprehensive systems of social security were established. Indeed, many of its products are still world class. Yet, today's mass unemployment is not merely the result of taking over the bankrupt German Democratic Republic (GDR). While the number of unemployed was at roughly 250,000 in 1970 [1], it had already increased tenfold by the mid eighties. Today, there are officially 5 million unemployed. The state's share in the economy amounted to 47.5 per cent in 2004 [2], reflecting the vast increase in economically unproductive bureaucratic activity over the decades. With its steadily growing debt burden, Germany has repeatedly failed to observe the criteria of the Maastricht stability pact. The precarious budgetary situation has recently sparked off a debate as to whether raisi! ng the value added tax would be necessary to enable the state to service its debts. Perhaps more than shadowy figures, the fact that Germans, after welcoming Southern Europeans in the 60s and 70s, are now themselves in search of cheap labour in bars, restaurants and the construction industry in Austria and Switzerland, is telling for the worrisome state of the economy [3]. Meanwhile, there is little question that both in absolute and relative terms the performance and ranking of the German education system has dropped considerably [4].
2.3 SOCIAL DISCOHESION
Germany's schools, especially on the elementary and secondary level, are, as their counterparts across Central Europe, feeling the strain from immigration which has not been accompanied by a sustained process of assimilation. As a matter of fact, the majority of citizens whose origins lie in the Balkans, Turkey, Asia and Africa, are segregated in their own ghetto-like subcultures, the largest of which can be found in Berlin (Kreuzberg) and Cologne. This alienation has been amplified by globalisation (travel, satellite television, Internet) and perhaps overcast by a particularly problematic, self-critical sense of national and cultural identity within the host country [5]. While during the 1980s and 90s the media's focus was on several savage attacks against asylum hostels, since September 11th the public has grown more attentive to infiltration by foreign elements and ideologies radically opposed to what western societies claim to hold dear [6]. Fears about a resurgence of populist sentiment have deepened, a first attempt to impose a ban on the neo-nazi NPD failed in 2003. Especially the economically weak eastern part, presently the stronghold of the communist PDS, where 120 men face 100 women, may give cause for concern [7]. The ailing East has seen exodus of skilled manpower and women since unification, Germany as a whole has witnessed a rise in the number of, mostly wealthy and well-educated, emigrants. Divorce legislation may have played a role in bringing down the reproduction rate from around 2.5 children per woman in 1965 to roughly 1.5 in 2004, which has in turn promoted the ageing of society. The status preserving nature of Germany's conservative welfare state is likely to put a heavy strain on the economically active population. Another area where social discohesion has become apparent is the military. Designed as a conscript army, it is relying increasingly on volunteers while a substantial proportion of ! young men fit for military service opt for the longer but more pleasant and popular alternative service [8]. While the hardware of the Bundeswehr and the training of its officers and specific units are still considered formidable, the organisation's overall readiness and morale are being questioned.
2.4 INNOVATION FAILURE
It seems ridiculous to speak of innovation failure in Germany. As mentioned before, the country hosts some of the world's most successful companies, and the infrastructure it provides to its 80+ million citizens is impressive. The point is not that Germany has an obsolete and inefficient technological base but rather that innovation has been slowing down considerably. This holds true for every western country when we compare the rate of change between, say, 1915 and 1960, and 1960 and today. Yes, everyday life has become even more comfortable and, through the diffusion of a few groundbreaking inventions like the computer, the internet and the mobile phone, even more fugacious. But the transformation lacks the powerful and dramatic quality which characterised the first half of the 20th century. A nice case in point for Germany is the Transrapid. As early as 1934, Hermann Kempner received a patent for his concept of a train propelled by magnetic levitation. In 1969, practical research started on the project and by the end of the 1980s, test vehicles reached speeds up to 440 km/h. But from here, the project failed to make headway in Germany. The Transrapid bogged down in a quagmire of evaluations, alternating responsibilities between planning committees, the state and federal governments and fears concerning noise and technical feasibility. In 2003, North Rhine-Westphalia resigned from building the Metrorapid from Dortmund to Düsseldorf. Meanwhile, China had decided to acquire the technology for a 30 km long line between Shanghai and Pudong International Airport [9]. Another prominent example indicative of innovation failure is the protracted discussion about the future of Germany's nuclear industry. Twelve years after the end of the Second World War, the first experimental reactor was set up at Munich, marking the beginning of a phase of expansion during which 20 power stations were constructed. In 1988, the dismantling of the first nuclear reactor took place. Although it is unclear how Germany will make up for the energy shortfall, the ruling coalition (SPD and Greens) under chancellor Gerhard Schröder has decided to phase out nuclear power until 2025. Under current legislation, each of Germany's 19 reactors will be closed down on its 32nd birthday [10]. To add insult to injury, Germany has become the world's greatest producer of wind power with roughly 14,000 generators producing around 1% of Germany's total energy demand. Despite the plain fact, that wind power is much less efficient than conventional forms of energy generation let a! lone nuclear power and has, ironically, come under attack from environmentalists, current plans envisage that wind will meet 12.5% of Germany's energy needs by 2010 [11].
2.5 OUTLOOK
Let us be clear: Germany belongs to an exclusive club of nations where the majority of the population enjoys a stupendous level of wealth, physical and social security as well as legal certainty. It will remain a major player in both World and European affairs for the foreseeable future. The question is, however, whether it will continue to do so as a source of stability and prosperity or whether it will turn into a footloose payload, similar to Russia, sloshing about dangerously in the back of the carriage. This asks for an examination of the severity of the current crisis. Many people have blamed Germany's problems on the reunification with the bankrupt assets which constitute the former German Democratic Republic. Undoubtedly, the fall of the Berlin wall has contributed substantially to the extent of today's difficulties. But it has not caused them in the first place. The underlying causes are to be sought in the laws of history, which dictate that in a given society high levels of integration, organisation and cohesion will ultimately promote disintegration, disorganisation and discohesion. An indication that such a process is in operation may be seen in the fact that in principle all western nations have been facing similar problems. One might argue that the problems are a short-term fluctuation and that 20 to 30 years are a very brief period in human history. The latter is of course true in absolute terms. Yet, if we take into account the clock-rate at which our high-scale! [12] societies function, the duration and persistence of the syndrome should be a cause for alarm. And the longer it is able to worsen without causing major disruptions, the more catastrophic the collapse will be once it will have arrived. From what has been said it follows that party politics have very limited significance for the coming dark age. Nevertheless, the decisions of Germany's current government with regards to energy policy are grave. We are not talking about someone leaving the light on before going out for a drink on a summer's evening. Rather, the situation might be compared with a landlord about to disassemble the central heating at the onset of winter. Even if the plans are annulled, the experiment will cost society dearly. Germany's chances for a change for the better are slim. One might think that Eastern European countries like Poland, where unemployment is at terrifically high levels (20%), are undergoing a catch-up process, at the end of which the EU would emerge wealthier as a whole. The same hopes were harboured for Italy, Greece and Spain 30 years ago. All things considered, organised crime and the informal economy will profit most from the continuing expansion of Europe, an area in which Germany already has its share of problems [13]. The demographer Herwig Birg has predicted that the proportion of foreigners under 40 years of age will hit 50% in Germany's major cities by 2010 [14]. Even if such a scenario fails to materialise, the trend is highly unlikely to come to a halt, let alone reverse. Under such circumstances, the number of Germans willing to move overseas might rise. What many fear, the revival of a powerful national socialist or racist government, appears rather unlikely to us. To be sure, nationalist and conservative movements are forces to be reckoned with. It is also by no means beyond the realms of possibility that an authoritarian or technocratic form of government might at some stage replace today's democratic arrangement. But German society is too fragmented and split for any ideologically pronounced political force to achieve a durable hegemony and enjoy legitimacy and enthusiastic mass support. If we revisit 1929, a tentative conclusion may be that both Germany's exposure to external shocks and the damage such reverberations are able to inflict have significantly increased.
NOTES
(1) http://www.lpb.bwue.de/aktuell/puu/4_01/a23_a32.htm (2) http://ftd.de/pw/de/1108979726147.html (3) http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1472748,00.html (4) http://www.oecdobserver.org/news/fullstory.php/aid/702/PISA:_The_consequences_for_Germany.html (5) The point may be illustrated by this recent episode: Vandal scrawls swastika on Berlin Holocaust memorial on its first day open http://www.canada.com/news/world/story.html?id=15e8e982-d77d-4dc8-a335-4ef78f909ad7 (6) Several of the September 11th suicide pilots had lived in Germany, attending German universities. The author and renowned journalist (FAZ) Udo Ulfkotte has warned about the existence of sophisticated Islamist networks in his book "Der Krieg in unseren Städten" (the war in our cities). (7) http://www.innovations-report.de/html/berichte/gesellschaftswissenschaften/bericht-6423.html (8) One of the main reasons why the military has not been transformed into a professional army is the fact that health care and social relief would greatly suffer from a discontinuation of the alternative service. http://www.deutsche-rundschau.com/archiv/03_01_99/bundeswehr.htm (9) Scheduled operations began on 29th December 2004. http://www.transrapid.de/en/index.html. Before, with 501 km/h a new world record was achieved. (10) http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4536203.stm (11) The main reason why wind power has managed to assert itself in Germany is a special law which forces utility companies to buy electricity provided by renewable energy sources even though it is much more expensive. An issue which is often overlooked is the fact that a sizeable number of conventional power stations needs to remain in operation to compensate for changeable wind conditions. http://www.udo-meyer.de/html/body_keine_windkraftanlagen_in_der_.html (12) Scale is a technical term of dark age terminology. The definition of scale is: "This is the number of distinct actors with whom a given actor comes in contact in a given time interval. It depends on population size, population density and transport and communications technology." It is essentially equivalent to what Emil Durkheim called 'dynamic density'. (13) Udo Ulfkotte, Grenzenlos kriminell, München 2004. (14) Herwig Birg, Die demographische Zeitenwende, München 2000.
3. UK ELECTION 2005
Dark age theory would predict, due to discohesion, an increasing fragmentation of the political scene as we move towards a dark age. In the UK General Election, the number of parties represented in the House of Commons increased from 10 in 2001 to 12 in 2005. This certainly suggests fragmentation.
To get a more precise picture it is appropriate to use an information theory-type measure, i.e. the 'entropy' of the House of Commons. This is found by taking the sum over i of -Pi*log(Pi) where Pi is the proportion of seats obtained by the ith party. Such a measure of entropy increases with the number of parties and with the even-ness of the split of seats between them. To give an idea, if there were only one party with all the seats, the entropy would be 0. If there were two parties each with half the seats, the entropy would be 1. If there were two parties, but one had 99% of the seats and the other had 1% of the seats, the entropy would be 0.08. The last example shows how the entropy measure reflects the spread of the share of seats. Clearly a parliament in which two parties share the seats 50-50 is more fragmented than one in which one party has almost all of them, and this is reflected in the entropy (1 versus 0.08).
Given this, we find that the entropy of the House of Commons in 2001 was 1.52, whereas in 2005 it is 1.65. Thus there has been a significant increase in the fragmentation of the political scene by this more sophisticated measure. There were also various parties that received votes in the election but did not gain seats in parliament because of the British 'first-past-the-post' electoral system. If we look at share of the vote, rather than share of the seats, we find an even higher entropy of about 2.25 in 2005, compared with 1.9 in 2001 (these figures are approximate as they do not take into account all independents or minor parties, such as the Monster Raving Loony Party).
Behind the statistics is a continued trend towards independent members of parliament, which were almost unheard of a decade or so ago. The doctor who won a seat in 2001 as part of a protest against plans to close the local hospital was re-elected. In Wales, an ex-Labour Party politician who was standing in protest against the Labour policy of all-women shortlists (i.e. men could not be considered in the process of selecting an electoral candidate) succeeded in taking a seat from Labour as an independent. Ex-Labour MP George Galloway also won a seat, representing his own Respect Party.
The nationalist parties show a more mixed picture. One would expect these to increase in popularity as a mark of discohesion, especially since they campaign for independence of their respective regions of the UK. The Scottish Nationalists gained two seats, having lost a seat in 2001. The Welsh Nationalists lost one seat (in 2001, they remained level). In Northern Ireland, Sinn Fein gained one seat, despite or perhaps because of recent controversies linking them to political espionage and organised crime. Nevertheless, all these nationalist parties lost a little bit of vote share, even when they gained seats.
On the other hand, the UK Independence Party increased its share of the vote from 1.5% to 2.3%. The vote for the anti-immigration British National Party, whose leader was recently arrested on racism charges, also went from 0.2% to 0.7%. Finally, the Green Party vote increased from 0.6% to 1%, thus providing reassurance to all dark age enthusiasts that its pro-innovation failure agenda will continue to influence mainstream thinking.
Overall, the election shows no dramatic changes, but still confirms the generally discohesive climate of our times.