Editor’s note: This commentary is by Andrew Torre, who gave up his life as a New York City advertising writer 20 years ago and moved to Londonderry, where he is now retired. He writes progressive political commentary, which has appeared regularly in Vermont newspapers. He is a member of the Vermont Progressive Party and the recently formed MoveOn Manchester group.
[T]here is heavy evidence that we are on the cusp of a new epoch in human societal development – our initial stage comprising human subsistence by virtue of human labor; a scarcity of the means of subsistence; and the formation of groups – tribes, nations, et al. – to appropriate those means, usually at the expense of other groups.
These realities have been, by the demands of survival, internalized by human society and have dictated culture and history. These circumstances are also rapidly changing, leaving society with attitudes and behaviors derived from a conditioning inappropriate for the emerging new world. Human labor is rapidly giving way to e-technology; this same technology can produce an unprecedented abundance, ending forever the notion of scarcity; and a readily available abundance will dissolve groups – be they national or otherwise – that no longer have to vie for survival. As far back as 1983, Fortune magazine (Feb. 21, 1983) reported that, “Machine and tool makers … have begun to supply so-called flexible manufacturing systems that herald something very close to the workerless factory.”
While far from full realization, these forces are creating tremors in world social organization, straining an economic system – capitalism – that is totally inappropriate for the emerging realities of limitless production and distribution of commodities. Today’s owner minority enriching itself on the antiquated system intensifies its struggle to preserve it, and tries to contort the new paradigm so it will fit into the old. But just as the old feudal system predicated on land ownership had to give way to a new economic order demanded by the Industrial Revolution, so must our current system submit to the new realities. In this transition, we find ourselves in a distressing limbo with an unpredictable future.
Some economists tell us not worry, since lost industrial jobs will be replaced by others. Perhaps. But labor lost to technology in a capitalist society creates a reserve labor pool willing to work under any conditions: Part time, contract labor without benefits, irregular and/or unpredictable hours, and in the service sector – mostly at unsupportable levels, as with Walmart employees, most of whom qualify for public assistance. With these types of employment becoming the rule, is it any wonder working people are distressed – to the extent of grasping at the straws thrown into the wind by mountebanks like Donald Trump?
Simultaneously, the globalization of capitalism is eroding the nation-state. Multinational corporations have no nationality – and the citizens of nations are relinquishing theirs to economic reality. While Italians, Germans, Frenchmen, et al., still exist, they survive by virtue of – and are equal members of – the European Union, that virtually abolished the competition between nations that had been the source of endless bloody wars. This loss of ethnic identity is also traumatic, and results, at its worst, in virulent racist and anti-immigration responses. Here, too, Trumpism surfaces in its retrogressive, ahistorical and impossible-to-revive nationalism that gives false comfort to the traumatized.
The only antidote to a society whose ingrained culture makes it naturally resistant to the required cultural and economic changes, is a society not so conditioned. This can only be the younger generation that is being conditioned by the new, rather than the older, realities. We progenitors of today’s youth have conspired, however innocently, to imperil all life on the planet. It is now the youth who must save it. Never in human history has so grave a responsibility been passed on to a succeeding generation..
Fortunately, it is a more enlightened youth that is inheriting the problem and spearheading the progressive movement. And it is not simply ecological, but systemic failure that is fueling its consciousness. There’s been a profound shift from the recent past when young people not attending college found supportable work in industry and the trades – opportunities that no longer exist, sending more young people to college than ever before (see The New York Times, May 13, 2017). From 2004 to 2014 enrollment in degree-granting post-secondary institutions increased 17 percent, going from 17.3 million to 20.2 million students.
We are rapidly moving to a more educated society that knows where its real interests lie, and will no doubt express them in the political arena. This is the ideal rooted in democracy. The youth explosion for Bernie is not an aberration but a welcome harbinger.
