In
Out of the Wreckage George Monbiot
outlines his vision of a social, economic and political reorientation with a
view to a better chance of combatting poverty, social injustice, environmental
destruction and climate change.
The author mostly relies on data
about British and American society with their rather weak welfare state and
higher poverty rates, but his book is nonetheless revealing and inspiring for
readers in Germany and continental Europe, as well. Readers should be willing
to leave behind habitual ways of thinking because the author demands as much as
a paradigm change: his point of departure is the failure of the neoliberal
model of the economy and the need to replace it by a new one which works better
for all humans.
According
to recent studies individual success does not in itself guarantee a satisfactory
life. Contrary to the neoliberal belief system, mutual support and cooperation
play an important role. [i]
Living under the strain of constant
competition, however, leads to atomization and alienation with their many
negative consequences, especially on mental health.
The
encouraging, optimistic message is that a new beginning is possible if we see
ourselves not primarily as careerists or as consumers but as citizens who don´t
compete against each other, but who cooperate with each other for a common
good. Successful projects in various parts of the world, such as community
shops, time banking, food assemblies and transition towns – towns switch to
regional supplies, especially with regard to energy sources aspiring at an
independence from fossil fuels – show the way.
In order to create a community which
is really alive, 10 – 15 % of its inhabitants should be involved. Ideally, one
project inspires another, new businesses might be founded which create new
jobs. Structures and networks develop which make the community both more
resilient and more open. Open because citizens of all the income groups can
participate, including ethnic minorities and refugees. Resilient as involvement
makes communities more sensitive to the dangers to public property, and the
established structures and networks help them to stand up for their interests
when plans for privatization or construction projects put their living
environment at stake.
However, participatory structures
should not be used as an excuse for governments to cut benefits further.
Instead the function of town and city councils will be to support the efforts,
not least financially.
But what about national and global
issues, the political disempowerment of voters in spite of living in a
democracy, the overwhelming power of corporations, the increasing destruction
of the living environment and climate change?
Of
course, there is no easy answer. Instead, the author provides a critical
overview of possible courses for action and options for reform with Kate
Raworth´s integrative model of the economy as his frame of reference. For
Raworth the economy is embedded in the larger contexts of society and the
living environment. (For the images ’The embedded economy’ cp. Monbiot p. 121
and ‘The Doughnut‘, p. 123). Economic growth is replaced as an indicator for
positive development by the well-being of the population.
‘Raworth
asks us to be agnostic about growth: instead of ‘economies that need to grow,
whether or not they make us thrive’, we need economies that allow us to thrive
‘whether or not they grow’. Monbiot, S. 125
Social
and economic development is measured with reference to the Sustainable
Development Goals of the UN (Agenda 2030) adopted in 2015 with the overarching
objective to satisfy the basic necessities of all without destroying the living
environment.
And how can a reorientation be put
into practice?
The
key is taking back control over what used to be common property, above all
public services and facilities which have been more and more privatised since
the 1980s. Examples vary from country to country: very frequently electric
energy supply, public transport, real estate and land are concerned. In Great
Britain water supply has been privatized, too. If the number of jobs is going to
decrease due to digitalization and automatization as predicted, and wages won´t
cover the costs of living in an increasing number of families, re-communalization
or renationalization would be a way to secure comprehensive access to water,
gas and energy supplies and to keep the cost of living fair and affordable.[ii] [The list should be
extended by nursery schools and by good state schools with free primary and secondary
education - reviewer´s remark].
Measures
must be taken to make renting and buying property affordable again with the
collateral of counteracting the dangerously inflated real estate market. To
achieve this it would be reasonable and just to raise taxes on inherited
property and property whose value has risen due to the infrastructure and the
quality of living in the surrounding community. Thus the community would
rightly be remunerated for the rise in value it generated in the first place.[iii]
Election
systems must be reformed in such a way that each vote counts (Monbiot, S.
132-137). Legislation should be changed so as to prevent money from being the
decisive factor for the outcome of elections (Monbiot, S. 145-147).
Added
to this, a functioning democracy encompasses more than going to the polls every
4 or 5 years. Citizens should have a greater influence on the distribution of
public funds, such as tax revenue. Citizens´ conventions such as in Ireland can
provide guidelines for government decisions. [iv]
By empowering citizens in these and other ways, a democracy can be kept alive between elections. (Monbiot, p. 141).
While
according to the neoliberal model the state features as the enemy of the
citizen, Monbiot underlines the essential protective functions of the state,
which range from maintaining the infrastructure to guaranteeing social and
environmental standards and combatting poverty through redistribution, to name
just a few.
The
state – partial, flawed and often oppressive as it is – is all that stands
between us and the unmediated power of money and weapons. This, after all, is
why billionaires and corporations seek to dismantle some of its core functions:
the protection of people and the natural world, the redistribution of wealth,
the creation of a social safety net and the supply of free, universal public
services. S. 138
According
to the principle of subsidiarity, decision making should be devolved as much as
possible and the local or regional government levels equipped with the
necessary financial means to fulfil their functions.
A guideline for viable change
[…]
the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of
private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state
itself‘.
Franklin D. Roosevelt,
‚Message to Congress on Curbing Monopolies‘, 1938,
at presidency.ucsb.edu.,
zitiert in Monbiot S. 48
All
in all, Monbiot´s concept for the future serves well as a guideline for the
reformation and restructuring of societies based on an integrative model of the
economy with the well-being of all humans at its centre. It raises hope and
makes optimistic as many of the initiatives and projects he reports about have
been put into practice somewhere on our planet and can serve as models for
imitation elsewhere. Yes, getting involved in building living communities can
counteract the sense of powerlessness.
Of course, it could be objected that
the proposed model is not that new. Guidelines for sustainable development were
already agreed on in the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change which was
ratified in 1994 by 172 countries (197 countries in December 2015). Agenda 21
initiatives to implement them under the motto ‘think globally, act locally’
have been founded in many communities, for example in Germany. They have made
invaluable contributions and many of them are still active. The work of
environmental pressure groups with their often strong local roots deserves
credit, as well.
But although the concept of sustainability has
found world-wide approval, governments often use it as a façade behind which
they yield to the powerful interests of the big banks and corporations. When sustainable growth is turned into sustained growth, who notices the small
but crucial difference? (Monbiot, p. 114)
That´s exactly why it is so
important to raise awareness. Human beings are so much used to the state of
affairs they have grown up with that its drawbacks seem natural, and
alternatives appear unrealistic, even unthinkable. [v] Thus, the neoliberal model
of the economy was able to survive even its patent failure with the economic
crisis of 2008.
Monbiot´s
outline of how it came to power – with Friedrich Hayek´s The Constitution of Liberty (1960) as its theoretical basis, its
promotion by neoliberal think tanks in the US funded by billionaires and
finally its adoption by social democratic parties e.g. in Germany, the U.K and
the U.S (the Democrats) - is revealing and distressing at the same time, a
must-read for citizens and their representatives in the parliaments.
In American society the neoliberal
ideology has changed the balance of power so much that it can be termed a
plutocracy in which democratic elements have been increasingly pushed to the
side. Monbiot´s discussion of the American political system and especially the
funding of election campaigns and political parties (p. 133-136), should be
taken as a warning from attempts at a continuing Americanisation – the
reduction of state powers and the destruction of state institutions which
allows for a further increase in power of the big banks and corporations – of
western liberal democracies, a policy represented in Germany by some political
parties and factions.
As the author admits: Even if
community life can be revived – which is valuable in itself – it´ll prove
immensely difficult to restrain the power of the big banks and corporations. Even
Germany which is often held up as a role model, does not deserve all the praise
it gets. There, big-time investors in real estate can avoid real estate
transfer tax by using the loop hole provided by so-called Share Deals. [vi] By refusing to close this
loop hole, the government contributes to a further dangerous inflation of the
real estate market which clearly goes against the common good. In this as in
other cases change is prevented due to a lack of political will.
For all readers who
would like to fight for change the chapter
‘Making it Happen’ on successful campaigning is well worth reading.
[i] (1) C. Daniel
Batson, Altruism in Humans. Oxford
University Press, 2011
Kristian Ove et al. ‘Models Inconsistent with
Altruism Cannot Explain the Evolution of Human Cooperation’,
(2) Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences of the United States 113: 18 (May 2016), at pnas.org
[ii] EWS (Elektrizitätswerke Schönau), for example, is a
citizen owned energy provider (https://www.ews-schoenau.de/ews/ueber-die-ews/).
[iii] Hanno Rauterberg ‚Der letzte Grund. In Wahrheit ist die
Wohnkrise eine Bodenkrise. Nur der Bund kann sie lösen und die Spekulationen
beenden.‘ DIE ZEIT, 11.1.2018. As outlined
in the artickle, the policies of the German cities Ulm and Tübingen are good
examples of how control cam be taken back.
[iv] 'Zur Wahl steht:
Die Demokratie', Die ZEIT, 19.1.2017
[v] Daniel Pauly, ‚Anecdotes and the Shifting Baseline Syndrome of Fisheries‘, Trends in
Ecology and Evolution 10:10 (Ocober 1995), at sciencedirect.com
