Commentary from UK author/researcher James Robertson,
received December 7, 2002
Dear David,
Thank you very much for the draft of “Global Civil Society: The Path Ahead”.
You asked for comments on it.
I think the draft is really excellent, but I feel it may communicate a sense of
not being quite hard-headed enough. The following passage, just before the
heading “Earth Democracy”, is an example of what I mean:
The
underlying principle of this five part strategy might be characterized as
“Walking away from the king” because it centers not on confronting the
authority of the king, but on walking away — withdrawing the legitimacy and
the life energy on which the king’s power depends. Think of it as a
conversation with the king along the following lines.
“You have your game. It’s called empire. I have no quarrel with you. It’s
just that the game that works for you doesn’t work for me. Please, no hard
feelings, but I’m leaving to join with a few billion others for whom the game
of empire isn’t working either. We will no longer play by the rules of empire.
We are creating our own game based on the rules and values of community.
You’re welcome to join us as a fellow citizen if you are willing to share your
power and wealth and play by new rules. In any event, we wish you good health
and happiness.”
Do we really think the king will
allow us to play our own game? Is he not driven by the need to keep his power?
I should confess that I took a similar view to that in your draft when, under
the heading “Non-Violent Transformation” in the 1983 edition of “The Sane
Alternative”, I said that many of us had already begun “to liberate ourselves
and one another. There is no need to try to destroy the present system or take
it over. It will be enough to withdraw support from it:” - and then I went on
to give a list of examples of how to do that. I should say that I took that
view when I was still on the rebound from the frustrations of trying to achieve
change when working in the corridors of power!
But by the mid-1990s I‘d come to the conclusion that it was an unrealistic view.
Reviewing Richard Douthwaite’s splendid book Short Circuit in
Resurgence, Jan/Feb 1997, I noted one important point on which I disagreed
with him – his view that it would be possible to build self-reliant local
communities on a significant scale, working only from the bottom up. I said:
“Today’s
mainstream institutions are heavily biased against [self-reliant local
communities]. Governments compel unemployed people to seek jobs from
conventional employers; they channel huge amounts of public spending into big
business and finance, including agribusiness; and they fail to make them pay
the social and environmental costs of their centralised activities and their
use of transport and fossil-fuel energy. The education system and the media
reinforce the perception that alternative local initiatives are very much a
second best, mainly for those who have dropped out or failed to survive in the
main stream. All but a handful of today’s politicians, public officials,
lawyers, accountants, bankers, economists, land surveyors, and other
professionals are ignorant and unsympathetic.
If parallel community economies did begin to be strong enough to loosen
the stranglehold of big business and government, then – in the absence of
changes in mainstream institutions and attitudes – the authorities would clamp
down on them, just as they stamped out the parallel local currencies which
began to flourish successfully in the 1930s.”
My conclusion is not that the aim
should be to destroy existing mainstream institutions, or even to take them
over. But, at least as an essential interim step, we do have to reform them out
of their present perversity – which rewards activities and ways of life that are
positively undesirable, penalises those that are desirable, and frustrates
desirable change.
In my view there is no one panacea or single way to break through the
interlocking perversity of our present mainstream institutions. We should each
work on the areas to which, for one reason or another, we personally give top
priority. My own main focus at present is the financial and monetary system,
and the many ways in which – as a scoring system for the game of economic and
social and cultural life – it now rewards what is bad, penalises what is good,
and frustrates change for the better.
All the best to you and yours,
James
Reply to James Robertson from
David Korten
Thanks for your detailed and
thoughtful comments on "Global Civil Society: The Path Ahead." We do face
terrible dilemmas. I would be the first to acknowledge that my enthusiasm for
concentrating on facilitating the emergence of a new economy grounded in living
principles is also prompted in large measure from the failure of my own efforts
to bring change from within the system. It is surely true that the dominant
system is intent on wiping out alternatives. It is at least as intent on
blocking internal reforms.
I strongly agree that there is no one
panacea and that we must each work on the areas which we give top priority. I
will check to see that we have made this adequately clear. At the same time,
Vandana, Nicky, and I have each made the choice to concentrate on strategies
that seek to draw energy away from the currently dominant system in support of
growing new life-serving economies into being. The portion of our paper to which
you took exception is our effort to explain why we believe this to be the more
promising approach.
I applaud your work on demonstrating
why the present financial and monetary system is a bad scoring system for the
game of economic, social, and cultural life. Of course, whether one considers it
a success or a failure depends on one’s view of whether this is the purpose for
which the system was designed. Whether it is a success or a failure thus depends
on what we presume to be its purpose. In a book I’ve just begun writing with
Sarah van Gelder, the executive editor of YES! we are making the case that the
system was not designed to serve life. It was designed to do what it does
exceedingly well — serve the interests of power by facilitating the
concentration of power and wealth without regard to the needs of life. That, of
course, is why the beneficiaries in charge have not the slightest interest in
changing it. Only those who believe the system’s purpose is to reward service to
life are likely to be drawn to act on your message.
With thanks and best
regards
David Korten
Posted
January 7, 2003
