2011: Because of the ongoing democratic revolutions in the Middle East, this feels a hugely-exciting time to be alive and to be a thinking person. As I write, in the wake of the victory of the rebels over the appalling Gaddafi regime in Libya, the situation in Syria seems to be tipping a little further in the favour of the incredibly-brave protesters there…
As a philosopher, one thing that I think these revolutions do quite powerfully is throw into greater disrepute the arguments that are periodically made against democracy, or at least against democracy ‘for them’, as opposed to for ‘us’. Such arguments are arguments against trusting (the / ordinary) people with power and responsibility; and this is just very implausible, in an age in which we have comparatively distributed employment, an age in which traditional sources of authority are less sacrosanct, etc. . For my detailed arguments against such distrust, see my recent review essay “Economist-Kings?”, in the _European Review_ (19:1; pp.119-129)… . (I would love to know what readers of this blog make of my argument there.)
Democracy is in itself a gigantic gamble. But I take it that we take it to be a gamble worth taking. And, furthermore, the alternative is hard to see: for it is increasingly obvious (cf. once more the democratic Arab revolts of 2011) that democratic legitimacy is a _practical requirement_ of governance in a world that values self-expression and is increasingly sceptical of dictatorialism (See on this the argument of R. Inglehart and C. Welzel in their Modernization, Cultural Change and Democracy (Cambridge: CUP, 2005)). Democracy, now: There is no alternative.
The possibility that seems to be increasingly real, in the continuing light of the ‘Arab Spring’, is that pressures for democracy will grow elsewhere in the world too: such as in Africa; …and in Britain… For, as a philosopher, one has of course to ask the question: What does democracy actually mean? One clue of course is etymology: Do the people (the demos) really rule, in this country? See on this…
I believe, as I have recently argued at length in a ‘call to arms’ on the ‘Green Words Workshop’ blog ( – again, I’d welcome readers thoughts on my line of thinking and suggestion for action there), that democracy in its true sense might just be about to start coming to this country too. It will depend on exposing, as I aim to help to do in that piece, the somewhat (ahem) corrupt state of our current democracy; crucially, the way that our current system is dominated by money. As a rare beast, a philosopher who is politically active, I have real experience of this. In the 2009 Norwich North byelection, in which I stood as the Green Party candidate, we raised almost £20000 with which to fight the byelection. This is far far more than the Green Party had ever raised in a byelection previously. But it was only a small fraction of what the LibDems, UKIP and the Conservatives each spent in the byelection campaign. Their access to rich donors and corporate donors made it easy for them to drown voters in paper on the doorsteps (and in billboards) and to crowd the Green Party voice in the campaign out. The Conservatives and Labour moreover moved whole staffing operations out from London to fight the campaign; something which just wasn’t possible for the Greens to do.
If we are to have real democracy as opposed to merely formal democracy (On which, see Norman Daniels’s important criticism of Rawls… ), then the power of big money to deform politics, which is a serious problem in this country and even more serious in some other countries such as the U.S., must be addressed.
And of course, Libya and Egypt and Tunisia and so on will discover this too, soon enough.
[p.s. Forgive the funny formatting of my links here... Still getting used to blogging for myself on WordPress! As I've done it here, each link _follows_ the piece of text that introduces it.]
Although I haven’t read Caplan’s book, the European Review article seemed to be quite good on the whole.
However, one problem I had with the review was that it didn’t draw enough from the economic tradition when it came to some of the particulars. For instance, you allude to the fact that the “minimum wage is bad” claim is a myth, but I think that asserting that it is a myth (and explaining why) would have paid off quite strongly.
Intentionally or not, you give the impression in your main thesis that the economists as a whole are guilty of hubris. But as it turns out, the conventional wisdom about economics is quite far from what economic theory actually tells us. Joseph Heath’s fantastic book, “Filthy Lucre”, spells out some popular economic myths. By bringing in some of these concrete points, the critic is capable of devastating the neoliberal opposition.
Another point — sort of minor, but worth mentioning — is that the idea of the tragedy of the commons has its roots in Aristotle. Of course, the idea was only given conventional expression more recently. I suppose I only mention this as a way of giving props to philosophers, but I’m sure you’ll agree that’s a noble goal!
Thanks Benjamin. Heath sounds interesting – thanks for the tip.
Can you give a reference for the ‘tragedy of the commons’ in Aristotle please, B?
[Btw, for Ostromian I don't buy the standard Hardinian thesis; and indeed Hardin gave it up too, late in life.]
As you alluded to, Rupert, this is a great time for us in democracies to be alive, to see democracy unfolding somewhere that has never experienced it. It is great to have a front row seat and watch an experiment take life. The unfolding of democracy in the Arab/Islam world is very different from the unfolding of democracy in ex-communist countries because in a big sense those people shared with us the same values, aesthetics and religion we in the West share.
For democracy to develop in the Arab/islam world it is going to have to learn, for one, secularism. That is going to take time since that world is culturally still quite tribal and sexist.
No problem. Heath’s book (and his work in general) is excellent.
I believe the relevant book of Aristotle is the Politics. Wikipedia reminds me that the section is book two, part three. Beginning with the sentence, “For that which is common to the greatest number has the least care bestowed upon it.”
1/.Bashing a worn out old tyrant on the head with Nato derived firepower doth not a democracy make.
2/. Democracy: A means by which the majority of the population are persuaded that hey have just sufficient choice to not actually start a revolution, but otherwise keep exactly the same system of legalised protection racket they had before the last election. Only the face of the Godfather changes…
Philofra: Thanks for your comment, which I mostly agree with. Just one thing: Democracy doesn’t require secularism. On this, see my recent published journal article here:
http://www.arsdisputandi.org/
See also the argument made by Inglehart and Welzel: caring about democracy, trusting others, valuing the ability to make civic choices – THESE are the kinds of things that matter to whether one has a democracy or not. We may be about to see a rash of non-secular democracies to join Turkey etc.
Leo: Re. your (2): Err… That’s exactly why I wrote in the piece and at the links about establishing REAL democracy, the substance, not just the shadow.
Thanks Rupert.
“Democracy doesn’t require secularism.”
Perhaps not in the short term. But I think that is similar to the belief that democracy doesn’t need capitalism.
As Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. explained: “Democracy is impossible without private ownership because private property [capitalism] — resources beyond the arbitrary reach of the state — provide the only secure basis for political opposition and intellectual freedom.”
I would say secularism works in a similar way. Secularism and capitalism also enhance pluralism, an essential for lasting and meaningful democracy.
The requirement of secularism many not be necessary where the majority is like-minded. But in complex and varied societies like the UK, US and Canada I think secularism is essential.
That quote from Schelsinger Jr., isn’t that an elegant bit of U.S. propaganda, the old line that only a capitalist system, that is, one like the U.S. economic system, can be democratic and hence, any system which challenges U.S. ideological hegemony is undemocratic and hence, evil?
By the way, what if the population voted for a non-capitalist system, say, socialism, wouldn’t that be democratic?
“By the way, what if the population voted for a non-capitalist system, say, socialism, wouldn’t that be democratic?”
Yes, but ultimately it wouldn’t work so robustly. Democracy needs an angst like capitalism to keep it alive and awake.
Democracy can also be a dictator. It has to have a counterbalance like capitalism to keep its dictatorship to a minimum, just like capitalism needs the counterbalance of democracy.
The Libyan people have proved the core meaning of democracy, that the people are the ultimate source of power (OK, with a little help from NATO).
Whatever the defects of our UK system, and there are many, at least we have to option of kicking out our elected dictator, and this is the key virtue, because all power corrupts, but absolute power corrupts absolutely. It also drives people mad, probably through an abnormality in the amygdala. Whispers go around any long serving Prime Minister that they think they are God. (Wilson, Thatcher, Blair).
So let us be duly grateful that we have the power to kick out our dictator, and let us also look for ways to extend our democracy to its fullest extent, by opposing the encroachment of plutocracy, getting truly representative voting systems &c.
PS To avoid the obvious danger of having the revolution stolen by the next dictator, the Libyans need to unite around a green economic agenda: http://greenerblog.blogspot.com/2011/08/what-now-for-libya.html
Philofra:
What evidence do you have that democracy needs capitalism to keep it alive and awake, besides years and years and pages of pages written by advocates of capitalism?
As a matter of fact, there is lots of evidence that capitalism often tends to corrupt democracy, to turn elections into circuses where the candidates with most money win and where media run by and/or allied to huge corporations manipulate public opinion to the extent that alternatives, for example, socialism, are seen by most people as not “natural”?
In fact, capitalism has been very successful in convincing many human nature is inherently capitalist.
By the way, I’m talking about real
world capitalism, not about some idyllic vision of me selling you my apples and you selling me your tomatoes.
I do not claim that it is inevitable that capitalism turns democracy into a circus or a question of prefabricated images and candidates like Rick Perry, but there is equally no evidence that democracy and socialism are not compatible.
Capitalism – free market, is about choices and mobility. The choices and mobility that free markets afford us are aspects of democracy. We can see the difference under communism where there were no free markets, resulting in no freedoms at all.
I look at South Korea and Taiwan as two examples that first started off on a capitalist footing, eventually evolving into democracies. It is happening that way throughout Asia. It often works that way, where peoples first acquire an economic freedom and then develop a taste for more freedom and democratic participation. Democracy developed very much that way in Britain with the first ideas of “classic liberalism”.
It is unfortunate that we need a perverse system like capitalism to help guarantee democracy. But democracy has never been handed over willingly. We’ve had to have capitalism to help attain it and hold on to it.
Does capitalism really provide us with choice, mobility and free markets?
I live in Chile. We have two huge supermarket chains (one owned by Walmart). Where is the choice?
A woman friend of mine has to undergo a complicated surgical procedure. The public health service does not provide this procedure and she has the choice of going into debt to pay for it at the usury interest rates offered by the two banks which dominate the market, to ask friends to pay for it out of charity or to die.
A wonderful choice provided by contemporary capitalism!!!
Social mobility? Please. Since education was turned over to the market by Mr. Pinochet, a fan of Milton Freedman, only those with money can buy a good education for their children.
Thus, the poor and the low middle class are condemned to remain forever in “their station” by the very fact that education is a business.
Fortunately, all this year the students have been protesting against education being a commodity and demanding, yes, that education be socialized.
Free markets? Really, in Chile all retail commerce is dominated by a few huge chains, including the two supermarket chains mentioned above, and no small businessperson can compete against them and if any small businessperson does try to compete with them, they will try to destroy him or her.
Please don’t confuse contemporary capitalism with an idealized version of the free market where John grows apples and sells them to Peter who produces chairs.
By the way, a history lesson.
In 1970 Chileans elected Salvador Allende president, beginning a Marxist government which nationalized the copper industry, among other things. Allende’s government was far from perfect, but it was democratic.
Now, Mr. Nixon, following the philosophy outlined above by Mr. Schlesinger and angered that someone (Allende) had dared to nationalize U.S. copper companies, conspired against the Allende goverment with the Chilean army and with local rightwingers, producing a coup in September 1973 and the ensuing bloody repression.
So we had far from perfect democratic socialism in Chile, which was replaced on the orders of the free world’s greatest power, the U.S.A., by a brutal dictatorship, that of Pinochet, which during 17 years privatized everything that they could, handing all the assets of the state over at bargain prices to the same greedy rich people who had plotted with the CIA about the coup.
The role of the “free world” in backing Pinochet has been amply investigated and shown to be true by the U.S. Senate. The investigating committee was headed by Senator Church, I believe.
Thanks Richard – well put.
I agree with S.Wallerstein against Schlesinger. In fact, there is a basic IN-compatibility between real democracy and capitalism. I explore this in my piece in the EUROPEAN REVIEW. (And also in my paper just out in the INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF GREEN ECONOMICS).
There is no excuse for what Pinochet did in or to Chile.
I remember, though, what Peron did in the name of socialism. He destroyed Argentina. That’s why we left. And we were lucky.
These arguments about capitalism, whether one is for it or against, depends a lot on how the individual entered the world and sees life. Capitalism has been fair to me. The free market has taught me self-responsibility and reliance, and not to expect things handed to me on a platter. That doesn’t mean I don’t bitch about the state of thing or I am not horrified at the discrepancies in the world. The world can be a mean place. However, it is good to live in Canada, in a country that is sophisticated enough to blend capitalism with a socialism that is mutually beneficial to the majority.
One can argue all they want but the evidence on the whole shows that people are better off in a free market environment, not necessarily in just consumer goods, but also of ideas.
The world can be a mean place, yes.
I would prefer to live in Canada myself than in Argentina under Peron or under his contemporary followers, the Kircher family.
However, in your last paragraph you once again conflate “a free market” (which is an ideal condition) with capitalism, under which free markets may disappear, to be replaced by huge corporations which manipulate public opinions, elections and elected officials.
“However, in your last paragraph you once again conflate “a free market” (which is an ideal condition) with capitalism, under which free markets may disappear, to be replaced by huge corporations which manipulate public opinions, elections and elected officials”
Unfortunately everything is manipulatable, even wonderful utopia, democracy and socialism. We have to go with the least ‘sticky’ system, which happens to be capitalism and the free market.
S.Wally is on fire today! And largely correct.
In Phil’s defence, I think it is true that civic freedom is absolutely necessary to any democracy worth having, and that that freedom requires the autonomy of the consumer. If that’s what he/she is saying, then as an abstract point it is fine.
But that’s not a very robust defence of Phil. On all the salient points, it seems to me that S.Wally is doing an excellent job in applying abstract doctrine to practical concrete affairs. First, it is futile to advocate for consumer sovereignty when income inequality is at barbaric levels. Consumption presupposes access to capital. True, you can always go into debt. But debt is essentially a bet on the future, and if the foundations of the nation’s economy are weak, and both unemployment and underemployment are predictable problems, then there’s no reason to think the bet will pay off.
Second, there is no point in making the argument for capitalism when the supply side of the market is dominated by an oligopoly, an international system that enforces interest rates that are tilted in favor of those who already possess the fruits of capital.
Finally, S.Wally is bang on when he refers to the need for thinking about the real world, not just idealized models. For it turns out that the beloved hypothetical idealization that produces a model that genuinely supports free market conclusions — resting on assumptions of perfect competition, perfect information, perfect rationality — is only a first-best solution… and the second-best solution is, well, pretty much anything at all (including advocacy of monopolies — be they government owned or not)! In other words: when you assume that we don’t live in an ideal world, a strong measure of socialism can make good economic sense as a way of coping with inefficiencies.
In sum — capitalism may be necessary for liberalism, so long as capitalism is suitably understood. But capitalism is never sufficient, and we should be extremely careful in just how far we’re willing to support it.
Thank you, Ben.
The point is that to be fair, one should compare ideals with ideals or realities with realities.
Often people compare an ideal of capitalism with the reality of socialism, and obviously, capitalism seems preferable.
Socialists tend to compare an ideal of socialism with the reality of capitalism, and we reach an opposite conclusion.
What is more, generally in this polemic, the anti-socialist brigade finds the worst possible example of socialism, say, the Soviet Union, while the anti-capitalist brigade seeks the worst possible example of capitalism, say, sweat shops or subprime loans or working people without healthcare in rich countries.
Real world contemporary capitalism generally is as distant from the free market ideal of small producers selling the fruit of their work to one another as real world socialism is from Marx’s ideal of “from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs”.
“from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs”.
Never quite understood that saying. Marx seemed to contradict himself in saying it. For instance, if my ability is greater than yours I should have more than you; I should be able to have a bigger house than you. But according to Marx everybody should have the same size house; nobody should have more than anybody else. However, my needs are greater than yours so I should be able to have more.
Hello Philo:
Let’s see if I can explain what Marx means by from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.
Let’s take a household, a family, a group of good friends. When a meal is being prepared, each one does what she or he can according to her abilities: one cuts the vegetables, another bakes the bread, still another sets the table, and finally, one washes the pots as they are being used.
Yet when the meal is served, each eats what she wants or feels that she needs to eat. No one says:
I worked harder peeling the potatoes than you worked slicing the carrots, and thus, I have a right to eat more.
Marx thinks that that family or group of close friends is a model for how a good society would function. Marx would not use the word “just” since he eschews moral language, but at least Marx in his earlier writings would see that community based on each giving according to her abilities and taking according to her needs as human flourishing.
I think that such a community can only be realized in small groups and even then it is difficult to
keep it going, since people tend to get resentful about “doing more” or “contributing more” than others. Still, those moments in which people share, without thinking of what they can get out of it, are beautiful, although rare and infrequent, in my opinion.
S.Wally, well said. You’ve encapsulated a great insight into one sentence. “The point is that to be fair, one should compare ideals with ideals or realities with realities.”
Phil, I don’t see the contradiction. “From each according to his abilities” means, each person has a duty to do their best according to their abilities. So when you say that “(if) my ability is greater than yours I should have more than you; I should be able to have a bigger house than you”, you are speaking with your own voice, not Marx’s. No contradiction there, except between your distinct ideologies.
“To each according to their needs” means, each person is entitled to whatever they need. You point out that if I have greater needs than my neighbor, then according to Marx I deserve a bigger house. But assuming that were what Marx had in mind (which is doubtful), that is only a moral absurdity, not a contradiction.
What started out as a treatise on democracy has turned into a debate on capitalism and socialism.
If this debate is to have any meaning, it would help if we would define our terms.
By “capitalism” do we mean free-market capitalism? Mega capitalism of the transnational corporations? Does our opposition to these tree unacceptable faces of capitalism mean that we oppose the ability of a redundant worker to invest her redundancy money (capital) into buying a shop to sell local produce and craft work? Do we accept the right of people to accumulate savings, and is there a limit?
By “socialism” do we mean the simple recognition that H. “Sapiens” is a social animal?” Or do we mean full-blooded socialism of Marx? Or Lenin? Or Stalin? Or mao? Or Castro? Or who? What the hell does anyone mean by sociaism?
Please define your terms.
Richard:
I for one think that it is more useful to talk about realities than models of capitalism or of socialism, since a fertile mind can invent models which simply never have and never will exist.
In simple terms, capitalism is private ownership of the means of production with wage labor (that is, it’s not a society of individual owners) and socialism is public ownership of the means of production.
There is no shortage of examples of capitalist societies. Perhaps the only socialist society which exists these days is Cuba, but certainly there are socialist sectors in many countries including socialized healthcare, some industries, public utilities, about half of the copper mining in Chile, etc.
I have a rather practical rather than philosophical objection:
The formatting in the blog post is broken.
Thanks for the great debate.
“Democracy – what does it mean, and how can we all get some?”
Democracy, as we all know, means government of the people, by the people and for the people. In democracies we generally have that. It will never satisfy everybody but why should it and how can it, especially when there are so many diverse interests involved.
A true democracy has many masters, pulling in different directions. This makes it maddening. But if it didn’t have multiple demands placed on it most likely would wither away because of inaction. Democracy needs action to remain alive and awake. This is why democracy has coupled itself more with capitalism rather than socialism, because the former gives us action, whereas the latter tends to lead to complacency and laziness.
Civilization abhors two things, laziness and complacency. That is why it has configured itself as it has with the ideals of democracy and the materialism of capitalism (liberal democracy). These two opposing governing principles supply the creative tension required to sustain civilization. Democracy and socialism are to alined to create the dynamics civilization requires to carry on.
One thing that is overlooked in the discussion between socialism and capitalism is which is better equipped to sustain and maintain civilization. Socialism doesn’t motive or incentivize humanity quite like capitalism does to deliver the right combination of sustenance and maintenance civilization needs.
This is why the upheaval is occurring in the Mideast, because as they are constructed now their systems and cultures are unsustainable. Nor can they maintain themselves. They need the creative tension of a liberal democracy to keep up and keep going. This is why the communist world collapsed and is collapsing, because they didn’t have the lively dynamics to maintain and sustain themselves economically or politically.
Phil, to be clear — I take it that you’ve abandoned the claim that the Marxist maxim is contradictory?
These are fine-sounding words, but they don’t do much work in addressing S.Wally’s concerns with whether or not your approach is really grounded in practical reality. The entire question is whether or not “the materialism of capitalism”, as you put it, is realistic enough to satisfy the demands of a diverse population. And we have reason to think it is not — the second-best solution, linked above, indicates that in an imperfect world, capitalism isn’t up to the job. And that’s borne out by the history. The pendulum swings left to right at regular intervals because capitalism needs collectivism to save it from itself.
Why does this happen? Because both ideologies are deficient, to some degree. The tragedy of the commons is an important insight and a definite problem for collectivist regimes. It councils us to have policies that encourage private ownership of certain assets. One should not be tone-deaf to this very important point, and should not allow idealistic socialists to ignore.
But by the same token, we should not be tone-deaf to the problem of externalities, which is simply the idea that all economic transactions have hidden costs and benefits for third parties. (For example, pollution.) This is a quandry that idealistic capitalists have no serious idea how to deal with so long as they are consulting their ideological toolkit.
The sad thing is, mainstream present-day socialists understand this. They got the message. So long as the capitalists don’t get it, then I’m proud to call myself a ‘socialist’, if only because I’m trying to save you from yourselves.
An observation about the tragedy of the commons.
That people often misuse or show no concern about property which belongs to the collectivity or to the community is an important observation about how people many times behave, but it is not an iron law of human behavior.
There are also instances in which people put more into what is collective than into what is their own: team sports, religion, and the military among them.
Why do people often treat museums and churches, both of them collective property, with more care and concern than they do their own homes?
That, too, is an excellent point. However, I think the point can be overstated, so we have to be careful with it.
There’s a difference between the social sphere (like the polis or the community), and the public sphere (that is open to an aggregate). One difference is that people in the polis care about owning things through a sense of communal identity, while the aggregate commons can’t be maintained by that sense of common identity. Another difference is that the aggregate is made up of strangers, while the community / polis shares a set of agents that are interacting. People can feel a sense of communal identity at any level of society, of course — nation-states are made up of strangers, after all — but it is hard to sustain that sense of identity when the society is relatively anomic.
Ben:
You are correct: it is hard to sustain that sense of identity when society is relatively anomic.
My afternoon excursion into the downtown area on foot and my return by metro-train confirms your observation that we cannot ignore the problem of the commons.
About the question that “democracy doesn’t need secularism”. People point to Turkey as being a non-secular state. I beg to differ. It is tacitly a secular state in principle, with an Islamic spirit. However, Turkey is still lacking in its democracy.
If Turkey was not a secular state then it would be imposing shari law and doing away with alcohol and Christmas celebrations. For sure, without secularism, Turkey would be imposing an Islamic will on its people without any democratic review. In general, Turkish society has grown accustom to and accepting of the secularism Ataturk established. Without the sense of secularism behind it Turkey would not be a modern state.
Secularism is a form of multiculturalism. Some have argued that multiculturalism is a threat to democracy because it splinters a society and under it it is difficult or impossible to reach the consensus democracy requires. This is really false because democracy, to be real and true to itself, should represent all. That also enhances democracy because democracy needs dversity to ultimately remain legitimate and robust.
I remember the talk after 9/11 how important it was that democracy come to the Islamic world. Many male Islamic scholars talked of its necessity in order to reform. But for all the talk not one Islamic scholar mentioned that women should be included in the democratic process. Islamic men seemed to think that democracy doesn’t doesn’t require women.
What kind of democracy would it be if women where not included? It would be a half-ass democracy like it would be if it didn’t include secularism.
Democracy is,as Rupert says, a gamble. Its advent may be conceived as a utopia, but the most basic democratic reform of granting one vote to every adult person (including females, religious zealots, secularists and the mentally unstable) merely stirs the soup of squirming, struggling,opinionated humanity.
Can a just system of government emerge from this primeval chaos? The reality tends to be domination by those who shove hardest to force through – or fund – a particular agenda. Voting has little impact on legislation when there is no voting post-general election.
Libya will not avoid this fate. It will soon find itself having to tackle corruption and injustice among those who pledged themselves to democratic reform. It does not help that the new Libya was won by quasi-military force.
Dissident groups like Rupert’s Green Party (and UKIP and the BNP and militant atheists and religious leaders) express real shortfalls in the British democratic process. Public pressure has to be relentless to counter the more dominant forces. Public pressure has finally, for example, brought about a public inquiry, conducted by the Treasury select committee, into the issue of corporate tax avoidance (http://www.ukuncut.org.uk/blog/a-major-win-for-uk-uncut)
We all have in some dimension a sense of unfairness or moral panic, and an idea that if our ideas were implemented life would be more just and people would be happier. As philosophers we may not do much social harm but few of us do much to topple unjust domination, either.
Good on you, Rupert. You are showing how we can at least make a start on getting some.
Thanks GWMARG!
The revolution has happened because the Libyan people were of one mind: Gaddafi Must Go. Being of one mind, the people won, which proves the basic ground truth of democracy: the people are the ultimate source of political power.
Now comes the tricky part: the people have to reconstruct their country and nation. This is where the politicking, the jostling, the disagreements and the problems start. From being of one mind, they become of many minds.
To succeed, they need a single idea to unite them. There is such an idea, a sound, robust and simple idea that overrides all sectional interests. It is the same idea that can unite all humanity. It is simple, easily grasped, but it it so simple and so obvious that nobody sees it.
It is the idea of sustainability.
What the Libyan people need is the same as that which the whole human family needs:
water, food, housing, energy, and safe waste recycling – foundational economic needs.
When those needs are satisfied, humans need education, healthy environment, health services, justice, equality, music, dancing, art, conviviality and happiness.
To satisfy the foundational economic needs, we have to work. All governments would do well to remember that youth unemployment is one of the constant drivers of rebellion, not just in the Arab Spring, but also in the recent English Riots.
Two problems, one solution: the proper work of government is provide work in providing for basic ecological needs.
The Libyan revolution deserves a new economics, one where unemployment and poverty is a thing of the past, and everyone has access to good, satisfying, meaningful and well-remunerated work.
Insofar as the revolution is a response to unemployment, it is a rejection of conventional economics, which is based on market values, and uses unemployment as an instrument to keep wages down and profitability up.
This is a distortion of real, ecological economics, which demands that if there is a vital task to be done, it is the job of the government to ensure that the work gets done. Governments must therefore invest in broad, employment intensive infrastructure projects to secure access to water and food.
In creating a new sense of purpose, of everyone working together on projects that have an immediate benefit to society, the power of the people is focused on construction rather than crime, self-interest and destruction, the unity of the revolution is maintained, and a new social and economic order can emerge, not just in the Middle East, but around the world.
Libyans are intelligent, spirited and are riding high on the wave of victory over an oppressive dictatorship. If they can create a new economic model that provides good work, eliminates poverty and reduces inequality, they will be giving leadership not just to the new nations of the Arab Spring, but also to the whole world.