City Cousins and Country Cousins

What Makes Them Different?

William Sundwick

The Neolithic Revolution occurred approximately 12.500 years ago. It was followed immediately by the urban/rural political divide. As soon as hunter-gatherers coalesced into agricultural settlements, and stopped being nomadic, they established villages, then cities. Yet, the food to feed the population in those cities was grown by the farmers. It was their surplus that sustained the city.

In time, however, the farmers’ natural advantage over the city dwellers became inverted. Farmers became indentured to the lords of the manor (the “city”) under feudalism. Power flowed upward – the cities became creditors and the manor, or vassals, were debtors.

The eternal conflict between debtors and creditors intensified. Mercantilism was about more than international trade. Any power center (e.g., an estate, corporation, or nation) sought to maximize profit by keeping costs (imports) to a minimum while getting maximum price for its products (exports).

As agricultural workers lost their bargaining power, since they had only one buyer (the city), workers in the city found more favorable economic conditions. If they could produce goods and services only a few skilled individuals could provide, like luxury goods for the nobility, they could demand whatever price they wanted, provided there was a market.

The activities of marketing and money lending became concentrated in cities. Other rent-seeking economic behavior followed. And, the emigration from the countryside to the cities began. That’s where the jobs were. Industrialization only aggravated this. Education also became available mostly in the city – to provide the skills necessary for even more specialized production. Capital, both human and material, became the currency of a new age.

But the farmers stayed the same. Indeed, they found they also needed access to capital in order to maximize their surplus. Family farms became businesses -- or sold out to businesses.

And, the emigration of the young to the city continued. The cities began to grow outside of their previous boundaries – they spawned suburbs! So, even the land area devoted to farming shrunk.

This happened throughout the developed world as, first industrialization, then cosmopolitanism with its diverse poly-cultural richness and higher educational levels, drew ever larger populations, magnetically, to urban areas.

But what about those who either couldn’t or wouldn’t leave? The old, the less educated, the poor. Might they not be resentful of all their talented youth abandoning their traditional way of life for the city? In the United States, and some research indicates in Europe as well, there has now developed a political ideology around the “forgotten ones” status. It often takes on racial animus, “us” (white people) versus “them” (immigrants and non-white others). Religious affiliations can exacerbate the feelings – provincialism and tribalism are frequently promoted by religious denominations. Only some of us are God’s chosen, and fewer of us live in cities.

And those suburbs? That’s where city cousins and country cousins can be neighbors! Suburban development is not unique to the United States. European cities have their own suburbs, with similar characteristics. There are poly-cultural, cosmopolitan suburban communities and multi-cultural communities which experience tension between their constituent cultures. Relatively few suburbs are mono-cultural like small towns or rural areas (very wealthy suburbs may be the exception).

Political sensibilities in the poly-cultural suburbs tend to skew left, or liberal, but multi-cultural communities with their tensions might exaggerate political allegiances across the cultural divide. Sometimes multi-cultural tension is not racial, but class based. It could be between “old-timers” who have been there since the community was a mono-cultural small town and the “newcomers” who have moved there from the city, perhaps victims of gentrification in the city center, or to raise a family in more space.

In the United States today, we are currently engaged in a discussion about the urban/rural divide as it relates to legislative districting. There are severe constitutional constraints on how apportionment is handled from state to state. Recently, the Supreme Court decided federal courts must stay away from partisan redistricting. But the fact remains: if state legislatures decide on the boundaries of the districts, they will always draw the maps so that the dominant party’s position is perpetuated, if they are able. Individual states may come up with alternatives (perhaps even proportional representation), but not all have constitutional provisions for ballot initiatives.

Unless you can make a convincing economic case to farmers and small town mono-cultural voters that their life is made much better by immigrants or free trade, it’s not likely that the present contour of rural right-populism can be replaced any time soon by a more urban poly-culturalism. Some folks simply prefer to live around fewer people, and more empty land. They skew conservative in their values.

Cosmopolitanism is seen by many country cousins as the ideology of the elites – for the winners in society, not them! Likewise, many poorer urban residents see rural provincialism as a strategy for protecting what’s theirs from “theft” by non-whites, especially. Perhaps heightened awareness of their privilege might be prudent for both city cousins and country cousins in this debate.

Read, and absorb message. Some facts a little questionable, but thrust remains on target. The future belongs to the left!

Making of a Lefty

Populism Isn’t Only for the Right

William Sundwick

Things have changed in American politics over the last hundred years. In 1917, there was a Democratic Party that had embraced the soul of the Progressive Era (started by Republicans), seemingly dedicated to a “Fair Deal” for working men (and some women, mostly in the garment industry). There was a peace between the Democratic Party and capitalism based on capital’s earnest desire for labor. The coming war in Europe would further constrict the supply of labor. Big industrial employers were competing for workers – they were eager to accommodate the Left, at least that part of it that didn’t threaten their survival.

In 2017, however, we are looking at low growth in the short term … greater productivity of workers, for sure, but no labor shortage on the horizon. Both technology and immigration are reducing demand for American workers. And, with these economic changes, the political power of organized labor has dwindled to virtually nil.

Initially, the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, and its wave effect throughout the industrialized world, struck fear into the hearts of capitalists everywhere. They felt weak and vulnerable, and began to shore up their defenses. In the U.S., they invented an ideology: “The American Way” … it didn’t include any security for most industrial workers, and people of color were still excluded. But, we were “free,” they said. The Frontier, Horatio Alger and self-reliance, were heroic. Generations were indoctrinated accordingly.

The Left took a big hit. The Cold War didn’t help, when it seemed like the world was divided between two giant superpowers facing off – one “Communist” and one “Free.”

Saving Capitalism

There was an interruption to this story in the thirties and forties – capitalism nearly collapsed worldwide. It was saved by two things: rediscovery of that turn-of-the-century “progressivism,” and total mobilization of the state to fight an existential threat from fascism. The Soviet Union beat us at the latter, as their economy had been mobilized by the state since the Revolution.

In the United States, 1945 showed us that “The American Way” had triumphed … but, what really triumphed? Stalin would say the very same thing to people in his half of the world: “socialism” was triumphant. The Cold War seemed to prove both views correct!

The progressivism of FDR’s New Deal became institutionalized in the U.S. throughout the forties, fifties, sixties, even the seventies with Nixon-Ford-Carter. Both American parties subscribed to the same ideology, despite the still unacceptable public association with the Left (progressives became known as “liberals” in the U.S.).

The Socialist International of the nineteenth century became the basis for democratically elected center-left parties throughout western Europe, and Latin America. The term “liberal” was associated with center-right parties. The Soviet Union grew its own economy, along with its new imperial domain in eastern Europe, although at a somewhat slower pace than the West. By the end of the century, that competition finally got the best of the Soviets. They were ultimately outproduced into oblivion, probably due to structural weaknesses of their overly centralized economy.

But, “victory” in the Cold War did NOT come only because of the free market ideology of the Reagan years. Capitalism won because of those many decades of collaboration between industry and the state. It was the progressive left that saved it. Capital remained privately owned (or, publicly, through shareholders), but was subject to regulation by the state, for the common good. Fascism used a similar economic organization, but its “common good” was defined as furtherance of national interests vs. the rest of the world -- hence, World War II.

Post-Cold War, Dems Fail

By the beginning of the 21^st century, it was becoming increasingly clear that most American working- class people saw less hope in the future than their parents had known in the past century. The Russians hadn’t been their enemy, but powerful forces in their own society were. However, propaganda for the “American Way” intentionally made these forces difficult to identify.

Exceptions to this malaise were now people of color (POC), women, and those fortunate enough to find their way into growing economic sectors (tech), rather than retreating sectors (manufacturing). Everybody else tended to look backward rather than forward – they drifted to the right, politically. The Republican Party seized on this opportunity, since they had a similar group of supporters already (rural and small-town folks). Democrats started losing elections when Republicans portrayed them as the “powerful forces” keeping people down. As Dems were the leading proponents of the meritocracy of the professional class, there was some truth to the charge.

Those groups remaining tied to the Democratic Party thought their current favorable status, vis-à-vis the future, was a direct result of Democratic priorities. They won the presidency in 2008 and 2012, but otherwise were localized in the cosmopolitan urban centers of the coasts (and Chicago) … there were many of them, but they WERE the privileged class in America!

I am one of them, but hopefully I can see that I don’t represent the majority.

The Impoverished

The majority in America are not people like me. They are people who couldn’t afford college, and weren’t eligible for sufficiently debt-free financial aid. They are younger. They struggle. They won’t have many resources to pass on to their children, either. Their skills may well be in dying occupations. They need relief, and mostly it’s Republican politicians who promise it … by favoring their employers, and their communities.

When Democrats attempt the same, they are generally bargaining with capitalism from weakness. In high growth sectors (like tech), they’ve sometimes managed to work with entrepreneurs. But, entrepreneurship tends to breed reaction … from the established money, their competitors in the market. Entrepreneurship is so twenty-five years ago, not so much now. The Citizens United decision of 2010 sealed the fate of any attempts to influence elections with “grass roots” support alone.

Democrats are now left competing for the same big donors that Republicans use. This requires them to cater to capitalist-centric interests, and remain silent on opposing interests – like things that benefit workers. Only the most cynical (or courageous) donors would take a chance on a politician who travels around campaigning on any kind of restrictions, much less any outright attack, on them. Instead, Dems will usually be content to emphasize positions which support their established base, and have no economic consequences for their big donors. They are never allowed to grow that base, they are always on the defensive.

Those “Deplorables”

The 2016 election did something profound. It etched in clear relief who was on which side. That traditional blue-collar workforce (both male and female, but white) voted overwhelmingly for the candidate of the right: Donald Trump. Other parts of the Democratic coalition held, but turnout was lower than for Obama’s two elections. In the end, the “band of deplorables,” as Clinton memorably named them, won.

The Left needs to get them back. As “deplorable” as they seem, it seems to me that an economic message about capitalism may be just the ticket to get their attention in the 21^st century. If enough people can be convinced that they have something in common with the other cultural groups that remain in the Democratic coalition, Dems can start winning again. Since they are in no danger of losing any more of their base, the time is ripe to think about expansion. And, the most promising avenue for this strategy is to “go left.” Here’s why …

1.    Only old people who remember the Cold War have any negative association with socialism (maybe some “Gen X” libertarians, too … but, they can either vote for a third party, or Republicans, they’re not needed for a left coalition).

2.       Given a few more election cycles, the old folks will die out.

3.       White racism, sexism, social conservatism are all expressions of frustration about not knowing how to deal with “the other” … social engineering (via advertising, social media, and entertainment) can easily remedy that, helping people cope with others. Millennials already have this covered. People in large urban areas are better equipped than those in rural areas and small towns – and, they’re more numerous!

4.       The main thing that keeps people from participating in the democratic process is lack of trust in candidates for elected office – there’s a stench of corruption around the whole thing that keeps many from even voting. Openness about financing would go a long way to help this.

The formula for a winning “lefty” candidate, then, would be one who could marshal the hearts and minds of young people struggling economically, but who have never learned to hate any groups competing with them for the crumbs at the bottom of the food chain. The final ingredient would be willingness of the candidate to fully disclose where their money comes from, and why they’re proud to represent those interests! Yes, some big money IS from socially responsible organizations, or individuals. It should not be a handicap to get large donations from George Soros or Donald Sussman.

Barack Obama managed to marshal those young hearts and minds, but faltered on the openness requirement – even though it dogged his party more than him.

So, what’s stopping the Democratic Party from fielding candidates like this? They sometimes do, but a primary challenge of incumbents, or their designated successors, may be required (as in Virginia this month). Primaries can be just as brutal as general elections against Republicans, if not handled adroitly. The incumbents have lots of resources, and loyal networks of people they have helped (or, who think they’ve been helped).

What Is To Be Done?

Message to idealistic young people who want to push “lefty” candidates for office: keep trying, always resist attempts to divide voters along cultural lines (don’t talk about “deplorables”), your political foe is a competitor, not an enemy. And, think about the larger community your candidate seeks to serve – it may be an opportunity to build a new network. Remember, you’re probably luckier than most people in the community – don’t forget that privilege. Share your talents, don’t use them as weapons.

Be like Vera Pavlovna, the main character in the 1863 Chernyshevsky novel, Chto delat’.

Once you’ve committed yourself to social justice (to “the revolution”), and become a genuine “lefty” like me, you need to appreciate that change is a big job … indeed, it will likely take many election cycles, uninterrupted by reaction, with many people working toward the same goals.

Your goals are to reduce wealth inequality, and to be sensitive to various emotional and cultural predispositions in your community. Your tools are organizing, contributing, and steadfastness in your dedication to justice.

Whatever you do, it won’t be enough – even if your candidate prevails, they need to be re-elected to complete their mission. If they fail, another candidate will need to take their place. The candidates themselves are only means to an end.

And, others will be needed to take your place, as well – they will be there when you lose your resolve. 

The Russian Bear and 21^st Century Geopolitics

William Sundwick

Many of us are old enough to remember a mid-century exposure to national security, and the “way the world worked,” reinforced not just by the competition with the Soviet Union (“The Communists”), but also by our understanding of World War II, and modern world history, in general. 

The planet was divided into big geographic zones, and the Great Powers, throughout history, had always contested for control of these zones. This was what was called “geopolitics.” Both our high school social studies curricula and real national security policy (i.e., military contingency planning) were governed by geopolitical considerations in those days.

The roots of what we knew as geopolitics went back to the age of 19^th century European imperialism. The growth of capitalism in Europe and the United States required access to resources, both natural and human (labor). Nations with means could develop colonial empires to satisfy those needs. Much like the Roman Empire, inhabitants of any given location in the world had a choice of being dominated by a resource-rich Great Power, maintaining their independence through a successful defensive war with the Great Power, or striking a delicately balanced autonomy via alliances with one or another Great Power. This was, we thought, the way the world had worked through most of its history.

Mahan, Mackinder, and 20^th Century Geopolitics

The first writer to codify this world system was Alfred Thayer Mahan, a Captain in the U.S. Navy. He was a student of modern European history and published his monumental work, “The Influence of Sea Power on History, 1660-1783,” in 1890. Enormously influential throughout the imperialist world for the next hundred years, Mahan’s thesis was that free trade, hence access to those colonial resources (and markets), could only be secured by conscientious attention to control of the world ocean. If a Great Power cannot maintain that control, it will soon be reduced to merely regional importance … limited to overland communications channels. Ultimately, its masters will be those who can freely conduct trans-oceanic commerce with it. Mahan was a fan of the British Empire, and saw the United States, if it were to prioritize the building of an ocean-going navy, as clearly capable of the same level of greatness.

His views became accepted national strategy in the United States for nearly a century, and in Great Britain, albeit reluctantly, for at least half a century. It became the aspirational national strategy for the German Empire, leading Tirpitz to construct his “High Seas Fleet” to fight the British in the First World War. The other colonial empires -- France, Italy, and Japan -- also relied on sea power, but in a more minimalist way (“we’ll protect what is necessary, but we won’t compete for dominance on the world ocean”).

An alternative strategic paradigm emerged in Great Britain around the turn of the 20^th century. Its main proponent was Halford Mackinder, of the Royal Geographical Society. Mackinder published his paper “The Geographical Pivot of History” in 1904. He maintained that there was a world island, where most of the world’s population lived, not just a “world ocean” as Mahan observed. He was obsessed with overland communication through Eurasia, facilitated by railroads, whereas Mahan was impressed more by the development of steamships.

Mackinder’s pivot was based on a Mercator projection of the world, with its core (he called it the “heartland”) being north central Eurasia. This was an area dominated for at least 200 years by the Russian Empire, at the time symbolically depicted in European cartoons as a bear, crouching over that Eurasian land mass.

Russia didn’t even deserve a mention by Mahan! Being essentially land-locked, it would never achieve Great Power status, reasoned the U.S. Naval officer.

Mackinder believed that whoever could control this strategic center of the world island could ultimately control the world – control over sea lines of communication would naturally follow expansion out from the land-locked center, and include most great ports, for navigation. He explained the British Empire’s success in the previous century was due mostly to alliances with Russia (Crimean War notwithstanding?).

While Mahan overlooked Russia, Mackinder could be accused of overlooking the United States. He considered the Americas peripheral islands, part of an “outer crescent” … not central to the human drama. Nicholas Spykman, at Yale, attempted to synthesize the two competing geopolitical theories with his “Rimland” hypothesis. Rimland was comparable to Mackinder’s “inner marginal crescent” of central and western Europe, the Middle East, India, and Japan. He postulated (1942) that it was in this belt that control of the world truly rested. Unfortunately, the diversity of interests vying for dominance in those areas remain, today as much as in his time, way too fuzzy to generalize in a single geostrategic theory.

So, Mahan seems to imagine a world dominated from the sea, probably by the United States, astride its two protective oceans, and Mackinder envisions a central core of strength, dominated by Russia, with tentacles reaching out and ultimately encompassing the rest of the world. 20^th century geopolitics was dominated by one or the other of these competing theories.

Globalization and Geopolitics

But, something else happened in the second half of the twentieth century. Whether through explosive developments in telecommunications and information technology, or the worldwide acceptance of transnational control of capital, we appear to have entered a post-geopolitical age in the 21^st century. Neither Mahan nor Mackinder hold much sway in our current thinking.

Undeniably, most world citizens are concerned more with their own families and communities than they are with remote imperial (or capitalist) authority. It has always been so -- something conveniently ignored by all military geostrategic planning over the past two centuries. Save for proxy wars waged between the Western powers and Communist powers during the Cold War (Greece, Korea, Malaya, Vietnam), it seems that war between Great Powers has become obsolete.

Globalization allows an interconnected world to be easily influenced by advertising from any source -- so long as it is selling something desirable. Aspirations can be monetized, or related back to knowable cultural values of different populations. The age of global marketing, amplified by “big data,” is upon us.

The mountains, deserts, oceans -- geographic barriers for earlier geopolitical thinkers -- gone.

Globalization seems to have neutralized the imperialist ambitions of would-be Great Powers. If capital and labor can both move freely around the world, what good is imperialism? 

There remains one important caveat: capital and labor reside in different countries around the world, and those nation states have the power to pass and enforce laws restricting that free flow within and between nations. The polity in each sovereign nation still maintains some independence, even if the political leaders may have a financial stake in one transnational capitalist entity over another, their allegiance is seldom to another country, per se.

The state, then, persists. A new geopolitics emerges in the 21^st century, based on national political frameworks, and individual leaders’ ties, rather than features of physical geography. Cultural geography becomes predominant. And, economic geography separates the rich from the poor, within a given nation, as well as between them.

What About the Islamic State?

It is the combination of cultural and economic geography which enables entities like the Islamic State to gain a foothold. They rule by fear and intimidation. Their reach is enhanced, not by organized armies, but by the global Internet, and the ability to play upon cultural and economic sensibilities to “recruit” certain marginalized individuals to carry out terrorist attacks -- often in the heart of the former imperialist powers -- ostensibly to further the goals of the Islamic State.

The declared “War on Terror,” waged against these groups by the former imperialist powers, is an attempt to cast the struggle in geopolitical terms. Yet, the usual understanding of geopolitics doesn’t quite fit a semi-organized group holding a small, discontinuous, strip of territory in parts of Syria and Iraq. The Islamic State’s hold on the populations of the territories it occupies will always be weak.

Studies have indicated that, as horrifying as deadly terrorist attacks are, they have little impact on the real value of capital, worldwide (markets recover quickly). It is certainly not a “war”, in the geopolitical sense of the 19^th century colonial wars, or either World War of the 20^th century.  If global capitalism is the true “Great Power” of the 21^st century, it is not even fazed by terrorist groups like ISIS or Al Queda.

But, what of that cultural motivation? Affiliations with the world’s great religions are of great cultural consequence to many. And, if a group, terrorist or not, can successfully inspire large numbers of people, scattered throughout the world, by using cultural symbols, is that group not wielding geopolitical  power? There may be only a few thousand “members” of ISIS, but they can certainly get a lot of attention through terrorist acts! They are engaging in what nineteenth century European anarchists called “propaganda of the deed.”

Can it be that such acts will raise the political stature of the group, versus its competitors? In the case of ISIS, it could be following a systematic plan to make the populations of the former imperialist powers feel unsafe, unprotected by their own governments. In the case of a would-be Great Power (or former Great Power, like Russia?), might not an organized psy-ops plan aimed at disheartening the population of an adversary, causing it to lose confidence in its own government, accomplish a similar goal? This sort of action may well be a salient characteristic of the “new geopolitics.”

 Russian Psy-Ops

Imagining the possibilities of a coordinated Russian cyber-attack on U.S. and west European democratic institutions, following much recent speculation in the media, is clearly consistent with this new definition of geopolitics. And, Russia has a history of expansion which tends to support such methods. From the 15^th century onwards, the Principality of Moscow (Muscovy to the West) depended largely on the cunninig of its diplomats, combined with treachery and bribes, to cajole neighboring states into alliances, or vassal status.

It seldom resorted to war to accomplish its goals. Its primary early threats were from less organized armed bands of raiders, Tatars and Cossacks. Contrary to Mackinder’s thesis, the “heartland” of Russia never succeeded in subduing a power as well organized, and resourceful, as itself. It never conquered the Ottoman Empire, China, or Germany. Its expansion to the north and east was essentially expansion into a vacuum. In the case of the 18^th century partition of Poland, and the 20^th century emergence of Communist Parties throughout Europe, it sewed weakness and dissension within its rivals, leading to a favorable diplomatic outcome – ultimately, expansion of the Russian sphere of influence. At the culmination of the Soviet period, it had even produced its own follower of Mahan: Admiral Sergei Gorshkov, who thought the time was ripe to pursue mastery of the world ocean. This, however, proved to be an unwelcome import from the West, very un-Russian. The Voennyi Morskoi Flot, built by Gorshkov, was left to rust in Russian ports after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. 

But, a stealthy cyber-attack on the political process in the U.S. or France is entirely within the tradition of Russian history. It, in many ways, is the same old geopolitics of previous centuries, which the Russians have developed into a science. Let’s remember that Russia’s current oligarch-in-chief, Vladimir Putin, cut his professional teeth, before entering politics, as a practitioner of that scientific dark art of geopolitical strategy. He was a KGB agent. And, increasingly, it seems that his “useful idiot” in the White House is entirely naïve about this history.

We, in the United States, as well as the citizens of the EU, China, South America and all other countries in Mackinder’s inner and outer “marginal crescents” should be alert to the persistence of geopolitics from that former Great Power, the once-and-future imperial Russia.

Sometimes, a sense of “history interrupted” can be a powerful incentive for aggressive geopolitical action plans. We’ve seen several cases of this syndrome, over the last century, motivating profound political change. Vulnerable target populations were instrumental in the growth of European fascism after the humiliating defeat of the Central Powers in World War I, again in the “radicalization” of some segments of Islam who feel they were handed a raw deal by former colonial powers. And, some say that the humiliating toll of globalization on much of the world’s working poor is creating the same opportunity for a “history interrupted” movement.

Perhaps, it is even a motivator right here in the United States. Make America Great Again!

Seems Marx getting bit of a revival on left these days ... because rent-seeking now dominates capitalism

Tesla is actually an old school company ... they use capital to make things!