As we mark the first anniversary of the recession, who still remembers the great one-liner from Rahm Emanuel, Barack Obama’s chief of staff?[rssbreak]
Emanuel’s flip “A crisis is a terrible thing to waste” spoke to the brassiness of a new team willing to summon energies that are unavailable when it’s thought that good enough is well enough left alone.
One year later, we can safely say the crisis has indeed been wasted.
Accounts of what’s actually been done by governments, and more important, the absence of significant protests or alternative demands by the population, read like something that belongs in a postscript to the post-crash edition of Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine.
Mass panic converted the losses suffered by reckless financial speculators and incompetent auto companies into everyone else’s number-one problem. People around the world accepted upwards of $5 trillion in debt – at least twice the debt load anyone would have accepted for such “non-urgent” problems as climate change and global child malnutrition.
Some of this was for old-style shovel-ready infrastructure jobs. “Shovel-ready” is code, of course, for same old, same old construction jobs that had to be shovel-ready because proponents didn’t want to lose time on debate over the relative merits of alternative or greener forms of infrastructure. This was more like using a crisis to induce waste.
To my knowledge, there’s been no campaign for a shorter workweek (except perhaps in Germany), no effort to develop strategies for unplugging from the consumer economy, and little concentration on infrastructure projects that actually reduce the need to burn energy, like green roof megaprojects.
Virtually nothing has gone into promoting local food. Ontario’s $8 million a year for three years, a pittance compared to what the province threw at automakers, is the exception that proves the rule of food neglect.
I’m not so interested in the failure of nerve by governments, because it’s not exactly unexpected. Their shortcomings are difficult, but there’s also the failure of imagination and energy on the part of advocates for the environment, social equity and public health – whether Greens, New Democrats, Liberals or whatever.
What’s the material reason, my inner dogmatist keeps nagging at me, that explains why advocates for change are taking a pass on a major opportunity?
I’m worried that part of the problem may be non-government organizations or non-profits. I’m a huge fan of such organizations and their method of operation, particularly their sense of relentless incrementalism: slow and steady reforms win the race, one grant at a time.
Over the long run, I hope, such organizations will model social enterprises that will become an important pillar of the post-industrial economy and society.
But as with all good things, there is a downside if such organizations marginalize the kinds of low-budget groups whose direct mandate is haranguing and demanding more things from people in power.
It may be we’ve hit the point where too many NGOs and professional non-profits are monopolizing too much popular energy for change, converting too much of that energy into improving today and not enough to changing tomorrow.
The food bank dilemma – do we sacrifice core principles in order to feed someone today? – has become a stock problem for all citizen groups, and we need to re-evaluate the decision to leave such a gaping political hole in the landscape.
But if part of the problem is a voluntary sector that forgets it has long-term goals, another part is governments that forget they need private sector partners.
Today’s failure of nerve and imagination in the popular sector may speak to a major shortcoming of progressive politics left over from the heyday of the welfare states of the 1950s and 60s.
This was the union movement habit of letting the bosses control all production decisions as long as the profits could be distributed somewhat fairly afterwards. It was what’s sometimes called the “Fordist social contract,” workable when monopoly auto companies spelled lifelong job security, but obsolete in an era when Ford is in deep doodoo.
In today’s world, far-sighted workers will want some say in how managerial decisions determining their future are made, while far-sighted governments – Sweden would be the standout – will want more collaborative partnerships with businesses.
Jeb Brugmann, the Toronto-based author of Welcome To The Urban Revolution: How Cities Are Changing The World, says successful governments develop a common set of orientations with ongoing business partners, while unsuccessful governments impose policies on resistant or indifferent corporations.
Those on the progressive side are uncomfortable with that kind of ongoing relationship with businesses. They may even regard it as collusion.
They only think of how much can be imposed. But face to face with a depression, they lose the nerve to impose anything and end up with little to propose.
That’s the kind of year it’s been.
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