JUST ME AND THE STATE (via Tom Morin):

The politics of the lonely crowd (Frank Furedi, 9 March 2004, Spiked)

The coincidence of the politics of feeling and an apolitical populism is one of the distinctive features of contemporary protest. By focusing on an individual politician's personality, it personalises politics. But even more importantly, protest has become a strikingly personal matter. It is about the protester as an individual, and says more about how he feels about himself than what he thinks of the issue at stake. That is why it is difficult to define today's acts of protest as constituting a political movement. On the contrary: they are the product of a profound mood of political disengagement that afflicts most Western societies.

We live in an era of political exhaustion and social disengagement. Fewer and fewer people are prepared to vote, and fewer still are interested in getting involved in party politics. In the UK, membership of the major political parties has fallen by half since 1980. During the same period, political party membership in France has declined by two-thirds, and in Italy by 51 per cent. By comparison, the German figure looks good: total party membership fell by only nine per cent, probably because of an influx of new recruits from the east.

The decline of party membership coincides with a wider disengagement from political life. Today, people's idealism and hopes are rarely invested in a belief in political change, and individuals rarely develop their identities through some form of political attachment. Thirty years ago, an individual might have identified himself as a Labour man, whose outlook on life was shaped by his belief in a socialist future and whose relationships in the present were with a community that shared this broad view. Today the question of who you vote for is seen as barely significant, and self-identity is viewed far more in terms of individuals' lifestyles, cultural habits and personal experiences.

What has changed during the past two decades is the very meaning of politics itself. Last century, political life was dominated by radically different alternatives. Competing political philosophies offered contrasting visions of the good society. Conflict between these ideologies was often fierce, provoking violent clashes and even revolutions. 'Left' and 'Right' were not mere labels - in a fundamental sense, they endowed individuals with an identity that said something crucial about how they saw themselves.

Ardent advocates of revolutionary change clashed with fervent defenders of the capitalist system. Their competing views about society dominated the conduct of everyday politics. So debates about the health service or taxation, for example, were not the bean-counting spats about exactly how much a particular initiative will cost the consumer that they are today. They were debates about the future direction of society, and the symbolic ways in which today's policy could shape tomorrow's world.

The twenty-first century offers a radically different political landscape. Politics today has little in common with the passions and conflicts that have shaped people's commitments and hatreds over the past century. There is no longer room for either the ardent advocate of revolution or the fervent defenders of the free market faith. Political sentiments rarely acquire a systematic form, in which vague aspirations for change are transformed into real-life discussions about how change might come about. This is definitely not an age of political programmes. Where political life was once defined by debates about the welfare state or privatisation, now similar-sounding manifestos pick over class sizes in schools and university tuition fees.

It would be wrong to conclude that politics has become simply more moderate. Politics has gone into early retirement. Our culture continually emphasises problems that are not susceptible to human intervention, and, therefore, outside of the political realm entirely. Theories of globalisation stress the inability of people and their nation states to deal with forces that are beyond their control. The big issues of our time - potential environmental catastrophe, killer bugs like SARS, weapons of mass destruction - are presented as perils that stand above politics.

It is widely believed that the world is out of control and that there is little that human beings can do to master these developments or influence their destiny. Now that there are no competing visions about how society should be organised, real choices about how we control our future are no longer possible. Humanity is forced to acquiesce to a worldview that former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher aptly described as TINA - There is No Alternative. If there is no alternative to the status quo, the notion that we can control the future at all ceases to apply. Instead, it is assumed that all we can do is try to limit the damage that is threatened by a destructive system.

This kind of disengagement from politics would be a very healthy thing if it were simultaneous with a drastic reduction in government and government power. It would clear the way for a re-engagement with society, community, neighbors, fellow congregants, family and friends. Instead is it representative of the complete atomization of humankind that inevitably occurs where the State is all powerful. Indeed, it might be seen as the goal of statism, were it teleological, to create such a condition, where folk have willingly surrendered to the reality of state power and made themselves totally dependent on the state. It is in part to rectify this condition that we must adopt the Opportunity Society, a social welfare net that we sew ourselves and thereby liberate ourselves from this dependence.

Posted by Orrin Judd at April 11, 2004 11:15 AM