159. System rebellion

Foucault showed how institutions exercise inexorable power (he discussed prisons, hospitals, for example). I discussed this in item 50 of this blog, where I wrote: ‘Foucault showed how cultural systems are internalised, how both those who exert power and those subjected to it may take it as self-evident’.

In item 151 I discussed the work of Rosanvallon, who recalled the paradox of Bossuet: In Western society people complain about the consequences (market failures, increasing inequality of income and wealth, tax evasion, favouritism, lobbying and rule bending by large enterprises) of causes they endorse (individual self-realization, singularity). This explains why in spite of their discontent people don’t rise in revolt. A coherent internal conviction is lacking. 

In item 109 I discussed system tragedy. An example is the recent financial crises. In spite of all the scandals, matters seen to more or less get back to their normal pernicious course. Nested prisoners dilemmas on multiple levels of employees, consumers, banks and governments keep the system locked in.  

The main problem with all these insights is that they may result in resignation, the shedding of all hope of changing the system, and consequent renunciation of any effort. Almost as if there is some supernatural, even divine cause at work.

Williams discussed how in classical Greek tragedy the tragic heroes (Agamemnon, Oedipus, ….) are confronted with little choice in conducting bad deeds, subject to the inexorable power of the gods.[1] Rising against the power of the gods, hubris, is punishable by torture (as for Prometheus, for stealing the fire from the gods).

In Western Europe, the generation 1968 had ideals for change, found no way to realise them from outside the system, allowed themselves to be co-opted in the system, intending to accept the challenge of ‘a march through the institutions’ to effect change. They failed, and with the feeble excuse that they ran up against system tragedy they settled into profiting from it, and became the now much maligned managers and financiers that consolidated the system.

The Occupy movement refused to fall into that trap of becoming embedded and sidetracked in the existing political process, but as a result they locked themselves out from perceived relevance, and apart from symbolic value seem to have no significant, lasting, structural effect on the system, which simply grinds on. They seem to have evaporated.

So what to do now? It is decadent to resign and renounce rebellion, in the same way that responding to nihilism with indifference or hedonism is decadent, as discussed in item 147.

If it is impossible to change the system from within, and soft power of protest from outside has no effect, turns out to have no power, is it is a matter of waiting for revolution to erupt?

Or will the system collapse under the onslaught of rival, more vital ideologies, new or old, that have a more vigorous, consistent and forceful internal conviction, no matter how evil that may be? Is that what we see happening now?

Is the demise of the Enlightenment to be followed by a new dark age?

The only hopeful alternative that I can see is the grasp of new forms of equality, individualism and solidarity that I set out in items 150-154. There is no convincing sign that this will happen any time soon. It probably cannot budge the system. But that is no reason to give up.

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[1] Bernard Williams, 2008 [1993], Shame and necessity, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.