The Fall of the Wall

In my misspent youth, I was a politician. And in my role as a politician, I did all the things that politicians do. Well, not all the things; I say that in case there are law-enforcement agents who read this blog. Now, one ought to repent of one's sins, and in general I try to do so with a sincere heart. For example, I generally repent of all the boondoggles I took at the expense of the taxpayers. Of course, I doubt that I will ever reimburse the city treasury, so one may question the sincerity of my repentance. But there is one boondoggle at least that I do not repent. It was a trip that allowed me to witness a unique moment in history in a unique way. And for that, I will always be grateful to all the anonymous visitors to Our Fair City who paid their room taxes to the city's Convention and Visitors Bureau.

These were high taxes, and we have a lot of hotels, which makes the Bureau a rich organization. And since the taxes were paid by visitors and not our own citizens, the council didn't really watch the activities of the Bureau all that closely. Besides, the Bureau was adept at keeping the council happy with the odd boondoggle, among other things. And in March of 1990, the Bureau wanted to keep me happy, being a senior member of the council and the Mayor Pro Tempore.

And so it was in March of 1990 I was dispatched by the Bureau to the International Tourist Trade Fair in Berlin, and the date is important. The world is now celebrating the 20^th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989. But in fact, the Wall did not fall on that date. What did happen on that day was that a minor East German Politburo member, Günter Schabowski, let it slip in a press conference that the travel restrictions which trapped East Germans in the East would be lifted. He said “sofort” (immediately) but in fact the decision had not yet been formally made. Nevertheless, tens of thousands of East Berliners moved towards the crossings, and the outnumbered and demoralized guards, who in the past would simply have opened fire, first stalled for time and finally gave way. The Wall was not down, but it was irrelevant.

The dismantling of the Wall would not begin until June of 1990, and reunification would not take place until October of that year. And so the Berlin I visited was still a divided city, and still divided by the Wall. But the celebrations that had begun on the ninth of November continued, although somewhat more commercialized. Still, there were constant parties at the wall, immense crowds, unending music, couples making love, vendors making money, and tourists making pictures. It was the entire world's Kodak moment.

And the joy was justified. The history of the world since 1918, and particularly since the end of World War II, had been dominated by the struggle with communism, and most of that time it looked like we were losing. Yalta had allowed Stalin to swallow up Eastern Europe, which quickly became a prison for its own people. China fell, and a bloody stalemate was reached in Korea. The United States suffered a humiliating defeat in Vietnam, where I served nearly two years (the loss of that war, I want to make clear, was not my fault.) Castro brought communism to the Western hemisphere, and it appeared to be on the march in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.

The Triumph of the West was by no means assured. But suddenly, communism fell. Just like that. It was like a dream. The joke was that it took 10 years Poland, 10 months in Germany, 10 weeks in Czechoslovakia, 10 days in Bulgaria, and 10 hours in Romania. The Great Political Question of my youth was settled, or so it seemed.

One thing a politician does NOT do is to pass up a photo op, and so it was that we went out early one morning to take some pictures, “Mayor Pro Tem Tears Down the Berlin Wall.” One of the pictures in its full absurdity is reproduced here. But while making the pictures, something marvelous happened. We went out very early in the morning to avoid the crowds that would so be there. We were at a spot on the wall near the Brandenburg Gate, where there was a small gap between the Wall and the Gate. Then we heard, “psst, psst.” There in the gap, the East German border guards were motioning us to enter the German Democratic Republic in a rather unauthorized fashion. These were the men who had shoot to kill orders for anybody attempting to exit the Workers' Paradise, and had in fact shot hundreds of them over the years. And so of course, we went into East Berlin. Now the guards had not murder but commerce on their minds. They were selling their bits of the Wall, the Eastern side. The contrast was startling. While the Western was covered with a riot of graffiti, the Eastern side was whitewashed and without a single mark on it. I could not resist having tangible evidence of the contrast between East and West. I bought a bit of the Wall, I bought one of the guard's medals, I bought his uniform blouse. He would sell anything, Deutschmarks only; nobody, not even the GDR wanted the East German Reichsmark.

And that was when the Marvelous Thing happened. The guard picked up that weapon common to bureaucrats the world over, be they communist, or capitalist, or corporate, or Fascist, or whatever. He picked up the date stamp and click-thump stamped the clean bit of wall. I am sure he would have stamped the medal as well, had there been a practical way to do so. I was amazed. And amused. “He will do well in the new order of things, since they are likely to be a lot like the old order.” More on this point in a moment.

I will be returning to Eastern Europe in a few days, this time to Romania. Much has passed in the East in the last 20 years. In 1991, John Paul II issued his encyclical Centesimus Annus which dealt with the question of what the East should do with its new-found freedom. He warned the people against thinking that “the defeat of so-called 'Real Socialism' leaves capitalism as the only model of economic organization.” but the Pope's warning would not be headed. Indeed, the Solidarity movement of John Paul's native Poland of which he was so proud for the leadership it had shown in its ten-year struggle with communism, whitered shortly after that freedom was won. Instead “Experts” from the West flooded the East with plans for economies they knew nothing about based on models which had never actually worked in the West. The best minds of Harvard were easily outsmarted by a small number of players who gamed the new system to loot the wealth of their countries and become the new ruling oligarchs.

It is small wonder, therefore, that the Pew Foundation, in its recent poll of Russia and Eastern Europe has found that,

The initial widespread enthusiasm about these changes has dimmed in most of the countries surveyed; in some, support for democracy and capitalism has diminished markedly. In many nations, majorities or pluralities say that most people were better off under communism, and there is a widespread view that the business class and political leadership have benefited from the changes more than ordinary people.

Currently, most of the nations of the former Soviet block must go hat in hand to the moguls of the IMF or the European Union to ask for loans that cannot be repaid but which will bind these nations further to the Western oligarchs and make them as dependent on today as they were on new Sultanate in Brussels as they ever were on Moscow.

I will not be going to Romania as an “expert” on anything, and I certainly don't have plans for remaking its economy. Rather, my message is not to listen to experts at all, and not to listen to foreigners, not even me, or especially not me. Rather, they should look at what works and devise their own plans. The should look at Mondragón, or Emilia-Romagna, or the thousands of successful cooperatives large and small that make goods from the simple to the most complex, and allow a nation to chart its own course, a course neither capitalist nor communist. I will simply state the obvious, that it does no good to replace the old “SovRoms” (Soviet-Romanian joint enterprises used to drain the wealth of Romania into Russia) with EuroRoms or AmerRoms; what they need are RomRoms.

The Wall has long since fallen, but in many ways it remains. Globalism has not worked, nor for us and not for the East. This new collapse, which is hitting the East particularly hard is also a new opportunity to think in ways apart from the now outdated paradigms of the bloody 20^th century. If this century is to avoid the mistakes of the last, it must avoid the political and economic systems of the last. The celebrations over the Fall of the Wall should be a time for seriously thinking how to build a new order.

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Distributism is Dying...

... or so I've been told.

It wasn't but four years ago that I stumbled upon Distributist Perspectives Vol. 1. It was a Christmas gift from my parents. Along with it came two other books. The first was "I'll Take My Stand" by the Twelve Southerners. The second was "Who Owns America?" edited by Agar and Tate. Unbeknownst to me, the writers and content of both "I'll Take My Stand" and "Who Owns America" were in some way or another linked to those persons and ideas contained in Distributist Perspectives Vol. 1. Chalk it up as a strike of providence. 

Upon reading these books, it didn't take me long to see the similarities. All three were traditionalist, skeptical of all things big, and agrarian to the core. Furthermore, the writers all appeared to see a connection between the political economy and culture. They talked of art, literature, and architecture. In brief, there was a consensus amongst the contributors that the debates surrounding the political economy were not merely academic. Rather, these debates hit to the very center of who we are as individuals, as a city, and as a nation.

Some may insist that the ideas advanced within these books fall within the losing column of history. I would beg to differ, though only with the luxury of hindsight. While one should readily admit that there was relatively little progress made during the lifetimes of these particular men, it would be foolish to confine the win and lose columns of history to the lifespan of a group of writers. 

At any rate, there are those who point to the burgeoning of Big Business, Wall Street, and the service economy as proof that the American people have no interest in the ideas typically associated with distributism. Some may even note the fact that a large portion of Americans claim to love Capitalism, while very few have ever heard the word distributism, and even less of its substance. These facts, at least for the anti-distributist, serve as evidence that distributism is on its deathbed waiting to be put out of its misery. Or, if they are generous enough to grant that there will always be a remnant of those willing to identify themselves as distributists, they will ridicule the school of thought as a fringe movement made up of discontents and those overly infatuated with all things nostalgic. 

But are these so-called evidences proof, as the antagonist would insist, that distributism is dying? As I said earlier, I would answer this in the negative. For these so-called evidences can be seen and interpreted in many other ways. 

Take for instance Big Business. It certainly appears to be thriving. On the other hand, even giants like Wal-Mart are having to rally the troops in hope of figuring out ways to bypass what has recently become a storm of opposition.  One need only watch the documentary "Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price" to see just how strong, and coordinated, the opposition has become. 

But this, in and of itself, does not answer the question as to why so many people continue to frequent these behemoths. Truth be told, the answers are as simple as they are complex. We know that there many shoppers that have been pigeonholed into believing that they cannot afford to shop anywhere else. There are others who could shop elsewhere, and who decry the loss of small business, but who would prefer watching the local hardware dealer go out of business than to pay what could only be described as a reasonable price for goods  and services of better quality. Sadly, there are also those who simply don't care what happens to their neighbor, so long as they save a few pennies here and there. Of course, they shun from their conscience all guilt for having fed companies that rely for their existence on what amounts to nothing less than slave labor in foreign countries. For these particular shoppers, it is a matter of "out of sight, out of mind." To make matters worse is that the vast majority of these people don't realize that their low prices are also tied to government subsibies. These come from local, state, and federal dollars, and they come in frequency and figures that would be the envy of any local business owner. So while the answer to this question may seem easy to the antagonist, the truth of the matter is that the issue is much more complicated than it may first appear.

Wall Street is an entirely different story. The average Johnny Q and Sally Sue have little care for what goes on there. As The Nation pointed out so accurately in 2002, people don't typically go to work in order to purchase stocks. Where the common folk of yesteryear may have been somewhat indifferent to Wall Street, this can no longer be said. Instead, indifference has turned into outrage. Faulty prices, rabid speculation, credit swaps, and the stock market's subtle, but now apparent, interconnectivity with even those who know little about the numbers and letters flashing across the bottom of the television screen, has resulted in a collective man-hunt, with Wall Street as its target. Add to the flames the "revelation" concerning the government's obvious preference for the well-being of Wall Street insiders over against the common good, and you have a sure recipe for populist outcry. 

People are outraged. This much is certain. But what is more telling than their outrage is their not wishing to better familiarize themselves with the beast. Rather, many prefer to see it go the way of the dinosaur, or at least to be treated like a plague that needs isolation and strict supervision. Regardless of how the hucksters on Wall Street and Pennsylvania Avenue wish to spin this, the American people have quickly grown a healthy distaste (and distrust) for Capitalism's casino and the gamblers who frequent its halls.

As for capitalism, while the word is commonplace amongst the citizenry, very few know what it really entails. Most tend to boil it down to a free market where people can compete with others and earn money along the way. This is typically dovetailed with the notion that less government intervention is good. 

While all this sounds well and good, it fails to take into account the fact that, as Chesterton put it, one of capitalism's greatest inadequacies is that it creates too few capitalists.  To add insult to injury, the average citizens knows as little about little of the current status of wealth in the United States as they do about the meaning of capitalism. I'm willing to bet the farm that were the citizenry to be fully aware of the figures concerning the distribution of wealth and land in this so-called capitalist society, they would, unlike Chesterton, be astounded. 

Let's take the 2006 Federal Reserve, Department of Treasury survey as a practical example. We begin with $100. Then we add 100 people. Now,  a perfectly equal distribution of wealth (which is not the goal of distributism) would be $1 per person. As it stands right now, the 50 individuals at the bottom of the stack have $0.05. Collectively, they make up $2.50, leaving $97.50 to be divided between the remaining 50. The next 40 have $0.70 of wealth, or $28 collectively. The next nine have $4 of wealth, or $36 collectively. Now this leaves one person remaining. This single individual would, per $100 mentioned earlier, have in his or her sole possession $33.50. 

To say that this is horrifying would be to trivialize the meaning of horror.

One may rest assured that when these figures come to light, as they are with the passing of every day, people will begin to see the forest for the trees. They'll begin to connect the dots, finding a line between Big Business, Wall Street, and what parades around as capitalism. It is here, at this moment and at this time that distributists can smile and wink at the antagonist, knowing full well that the confidence of the naysayer was built on what was little more than a phantasm waiting for the right moment to disappear.

Distributism isn't dead. It isn't even dying. No, distributism is coming to light. It is, as John Medaille would say, "the wave of the future."

The road is destined to be hard, as money and power never fail to put up a good fight. But those rumbling underfoot, fueled by ideas penned by those of old, may be too much for even the giants of today to withstand. In the end, being perceived as finding a home in history's losing column may have turned out to be a boon rather than a bust. 

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