Bankotsu
13th February 2010, 08:58
Are Venezuela's communal councils the solution to the isolated individual in a developed capitalist state like U.S?
Carroll Quigley raised the problem of the "isolated individual" or "atomised society" in developed capitalist states.
Hugo Chavez is organising communal councils across Venezuela, so I wonder whether this could be a future development in the U.S.
The other part of this will require you to put these things together to some extent. Persons, personalities if you wish, can be made only in communities.
A community is made up of intimate relationships among diverse types of individuals -- a kinship group, a local group, a neighborhood, a village, a large family. Without communities, no infant will be sufficiently socialized.
He may grow up to be forty years old, he may have made an extremely good living, he may have engendered half a dozen children, but he is still an infant unless he has been properly socialized and that occurs in the first four or five years of life. In our society today, we have attempted to throw the whole burden of socializing our population upon the school system, to which the individual arrives only at the age of four or five.
A few years ago they had big programs to take children to school for a few hours at age two and three and four, but that will not socialize them. The first two years are very important. The way a child is treated in the first two days is of vital importance. He has to be loved, above all he has to be talked to.
A state of individuals, such as we have now reached in Western Civilization, will not create persons, and the atomized individuals who make it up will be motivated by desires which do not necessarily reflect needs.
Instead of needing other people they need a shot of heroin; instead of some kind of religious conviction, they have to be with the winning team...
In 1820, thus, the state was essentially unstable, in spite of appearances. It was not fully sovereign. For example, it did not have the control of money and credit in most places; it did not have control of corporations in most places. It was not stable because the nation is not a satisfactory community.
The very idea that, because everyone who speaks French is in the same nation and, in the nineteenth century, in the same state, they must therefore be in the same community, is just not true. The nation or the state, as we now have it in terms of the structure of power, cannot be a community.
Another thing which may serve to point out the instability of the power system of the state: the individual cannot be made the basic unit of a society, as we have tried to do, or of the state, because the internalization of controls must be the preponderant influence in any stable society.
Even in a society in which it appears that all power is in the hands of the government -- Soviet Russia, let's say -- at least eighty percent of all human behavior is regulated by internalized controls socialized in the people by the way they were treated from the moment they were born.
As a result, they have come to accept certain things that allow the Russian state to act as if it can do anything, when it obviously can't and knows it can't. Notice the new Russian budget announced this week: as a result of our pouring our food surpluses into Russia, they are now going to increase the consumption of their expenditures...
Now I want to say good night. Do not be pessimistic. Life goes on; life is fun. And if a civilization crashes, it deserves to.
When Rome fell, the Christian answer was, "Create our own communities."
http://www.carrollquigley.net/Lectures/The-State-of-Individuals-AD-1776-1976.htm Venezuelan communities take centre stage
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/6946013.stm
A New Model With Rough Edges: Venezuela’s Community Councils
http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/4512
Power to the People: Communal Councils in Venezuela
http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/1715
On the other hand, to be effective, democracy requires that people feel a connection to their fellow citizens, and that this connection manifests itself though a variety of nonmarket organizations and institutions.
A vibrant political culture needs community groups, libraries, public schools, neighborhood organizations, cooperatives, public meeting places, voluntary associations, and trade unions to provide ways for citizens to meet, communicate, and interact with their fellow citizens. Neoliberal democracy, with its notion of the market uber alles, takes dead aim at this sector.
Instead of citizens, it produces consumers. Instead of communities, it produces shopping malls. The net result is an atomized society of disengaged individuals who feel demoralized and socially powerless.
http://whosemedia.com/authors/mcchesney_robert_w/noam_chomsky_and_the_strugg.html
Then came two which have been largely been destroyed or frustrated in the last thousand years of Western Civilization. Men have social needs. They have a need for other people; they have a need to love and be loved. They have a need to be noticed.
Sirhan Sirhan killed Robert Kennedy because no one had ever noticed him and he was determined that, from now on, someone would know he existed.
In fact, most of these "motiveless" assassinations are of this type. Someone went up to the top of the University of Texas tower and shot something like seventeen people before they caught him. That was because no one had ever noticed him.
People need other people. That's the social need. The basis of social relationships is reciprocity: if you cooperate with others, others will cooperate with you.
http://www.carrollquigley.net/Lectures/The-State-of-Individuals-AD-1776-1976.htm
Carroll Quigley raised the problem of the "isolated individual" or "atomised society" in developed capitalist states.
Hugo Chavez is organising communal councils across Venezuela, so I wonder whether this could be a future development in the U.S.
The other part of this will require you to put these things together to some extent. Persons, personalities if you wish, can be made only in communities.
A community is made up of intimate relationships among diverse types of individuals -- a kinship group, a local group, a neighborhood, a village, a large family. Without communities, no infant will be sufficiently socialized.
He may grow up to be forty years old, he may have made an extremely good living, he may have engendered half a dozen children, but he is still an infant unless he has been properly socialized and that occurs in the first four or five years of life. In our society today, we have attempted to throw the whole burden of socializing our population upon the school system, to which the individual arrives only at the age of four or five.
A few years ago they had big programs to take children to school for a few hours at age two and three and four, but that will not socialize them. The first two years are very important. The way a child is treated in the first two days is of vital importance. He has to be loved, above all he has to be talked to.
A state of individuals, such as we have now reached in Western Civilization, will not create persons, and the atomized individuals who make it up will be motivated by desires which do not necessarily reflect needs.
Instead of needing other people they need a shot of heroin; instead of some kind of religious conviction, they have to be with the winning team...
In 1820, thus, the state was essentially unstable, in spite of appearances. It was not fully sovereign. For example, it did not have the control of money and credit in most places; it did not have control of corporations in most places. It was not stable because the nation is not a satisfactory community.
The very idea that, because everyone who speaks French is in the same nation and, in the nineteenth century, in the same state, they must therefore be in the same community, is just not true. The nation or the state, as we now have it in terms of the structure of power, cannot be a community.
Another thing which may serve to point out the instability of the power system of the state: the individual cannot be made the basic unit of a society, as we have tried to do, or of the state, because the internalization of controls must be the preponderant influence in any stable society.
Even in a society in which it appears that all power is in the hands of the government -- Soviet Russia, let's say -- at least eighty percent of all human behavior is regulated by internalized controls socialized in the people by the way they were treated from the moment they were born.
As a result, they have come to accept certain things that allow the Russian state to act as if it can do anything, when it obviously can't and knows it can't. Notice the new Russian budget announced this week: as a result of our pouring our food surpluses into Russia, they are now going to increase the consumption of their expenditures...
Now I want to say good night. Do not be pessimistic. Life goes on; life is fun. And if a civilization crashes, it deserves to.
When Rome fell, the Christian answer was, "Create our own communities."
http://www.carrollquigley.net/Lectures/The-State-of-Individuals-AD-1776-1976.htm Venezuelan communities take centre stage
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/6946013.stm
A New Model With Rough Edges: Venezuela’s Community Councils
http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/4512
Power to the People: Communal Councils in Venezuela
http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/1715
On the other hand, to be effective, democracy requires that people feel a connection to their fellow citizens, and that this connection manifests itself though a variety of nonmarket organizations and institutions.
A vibrant political culture needs community groups, libraries, public schools, neighborhood organizations, cooperatives, public meeting places, voluntary associations, and trade unions to provide ways for citizens to meet, communicate, and interact with their fellow citizens. Neoliberal democracy, with its notion of the market uber alles, takes dead aim at this sector.
Instead of citizens, it produces consumers. Instead of communities, it produces shopping malls. The net result is an atomized society of disengaged individuals who feel demoralized and socially powerless.
http://whosemedia.com/authors/mcchesney_robert_w/noam_chomsky_and_the_strugg.html
Then came two which have been largely been destroyed or frustrated in the last thousand years of Western Civilization. Men have social needs. They have a need for other people; they have a need to love and be loved. They have a need to be noticed.
Sirhan Sirhan killed Robert Kennedy because no one had ever noticed him and he was determined that, from now on, someone would know he existed.
In fact, most of these "motiveless" assassinations are of this type. Someone went up to the top of the University of Texas tower and shot something like seventeen people before they caught him. That was because no one had ever noticed him.
People need other people. That's the social need. The basis of social relationships is reciprocity: if you cooperate with others, others will cooperate with you.
http://www.carrollquigley.net/Lectures/The-State-of-Individuals-AD-1776-1976.htm