Denis de Rougemont

The key

The crisis in the Western world is unique in that it is the result not of the failure but of the realisation of the industrial utopia, increasingly unhindered by natural and human constraints.

These constraints were scarcity and custom, civic autonomy and the desire for freedom, as well as the fear of social revolt. They have been removed one by one. The Great Machine is coasting towards disaster.

The crisis I have described is not that of capitalism, nor of communism, and even less of libertarian socialism. It is the crisis of power (both material and mythical) in the face of war, a crisis of the faith common to all three systems.

Its driving force is not profit, as we are led to believe by a deception that suits the traditional left (only leftists denounce it). Rather, it is a religious reverence for physics, chemistry, and so-called economic laws, which are sources of power and security.

Man is killing the sentient Earth. It is a dark story that began very slowly, but suddenly the crisis is upon us. It began with the century that saw the formation of industry and nation states; it continued through industrial growth and the stubborn, naive, blind exploitation of natural resources that were believed to be unlimited. It develops in the 20th century with the pollution of the air, water, plants, humus and seas, through the combined effects of industry, a doubling of the world's population and insane over-armament. Waste elevated to a principle of commerce, megalopolitan agglomerations that destroy communities, permanent terror within the peace of cowards: what fine results!

So who was in charge?

The answer is dangerously simple. The responsible parties are the nation states that emerged and multiplied during this same period.

They, and they alone, managed the Earth. They granted themselves the right to do so. They alone had the means to do so. They managed (and destroyed) its resources for their own power and prestige; for the sake of war, from which they all sprang. They methodically took control of the industrial economy of the 19th century, as they had done with the mercantile economy under the absolute monarchies. They developed this industry by offering it national markets and, at the same time, enclosed it within the framework of their sovereignty. Through taxes of all kinds, they made it the main source of their wealth; they enslaved it all the more effectively to their designs by linking its expansion more closely to that of the centralised administration and the army, controlling and mobilising the entire nation at all times. Industrial growth, through its connection with technology, which was itself linked to war, became both the condition and the effect of the growth of the state's power over its subjects.

In the mid-twentieth century, in the aftermath of two world wars caused by European nationalism, wars that had vastly increased the powers of the nation-state in the West and immediately elevated those of some fifty new states to totalitarian levels, people stopped pretending that the economy served anything other than the interests of the state-controlled nation, even if those interests were contrary to those of humanity and nature. This is clearly illustrated by the measurement method adopted at that time, GNP (Gross National Prestige), an unrivalled masterpiece of coded stupidity that reduces everything to the nation and nothing to man. The original sin of the nation state was to take ownership of the Earth, of which it was, at best, only the usufructuary. It is this ownership, in the Roman sense of the term (ius utendi et abutendi, the right to use and, above all, to abuse) that is expressed in the dogma of sovereignty over a given territory, over the people who inhabit it, over their environment, their lives, their deaths, and over all their activities, creations and trade in goods, services, values and, ultimately, ideas.

I will not hesitate to emphasise the simplicity and radical nature of this diagnosis of the crisis. This is not rhetoric or impatience, and what I am saying is not original, but no one has said it outright until now. Most of the authors I have read and quoted complain that the state, in the field they deal with, is not playing the role they expected: sometimes it opposes the recommended solutions, and sometimes it protects the policy that is the cause of the problem being studied. But none of these authors goes so far as to acknowledge that the state is largely responsible for the global crisis, and what is more, that the state recognises and even proclaims itself as such by the mere fact that it claims to be absolutely sovereign, superiorum in terris non recognescens (recognising no superior on its lands), according to the formula of Philip the Fair's lawyers.

How could he deny his responsibility? If he is truly sovereign, then his responsibility is complete and total. On the other hand, if there are limits to his sovereignty, imposed by the general interest of humanity, he can no longer claim relative sovereignty to refuse any supranational or subnational measures that are recognised as necessary.

Faced with the global crisis caused by over a century of mismanagement of the Earth, when we ask him today: ‘What have you done with your territory, its landscapes and cities, its forests and waters?’, it cannot pitifully reply: ‘Am I the guardian of the Earth?’ without us concluding that it has failed in the mission it has set itself. At the root of the crisis resulting from this mismanagement of the Earth, we therefore have an undisputed culprit: the nation state as we, the bad Europeans, have created it and spread it across the Earth. This no longer needs to be proven, but it is still useful to illustrate for those who might still be surprised by my thesis.

[…]

The main obstacle

But since all environmental problems have a continental, and in many cases even global, dimension — whether they concern rivers or oceans, the influence of industry on climate, supersonic flights or nuclear waste — it is clear that the nation state is the main obstacle to solving these problems.

I am not forgetting that most of our capitals have environment ministries, and I know that several of their leaders are genuinely ‘concerned’ about certain situations that are brought to their attention. I am simply saying that our nation states, through their very structures and ambitions, are opposed to the change in attitude and plan that would enable them to suddenly discover the real problems — none of which coincide with state borders — and the solutions to be provided — because they are all supranational or regional.

As long as that ‘N’ remains in the GNP, not only will the measure remain worthless, useless or dangerous for governance, and non-existent in the eyes of honest science, but it will also continue to foster the most threatening confusion for our immediate future, between, on the one hand, genuine progress, which is spiritual first, social second, and material in their service, and, on the other hand, this ‘progress’ measured by the increase in accidents, diseases, pollution, urban sprawl, crime, etc.

Should it then be replaced by a regional GRP, a European GEP and ultimately a world GWP, which would be more in line with the emerging realities of the late 20th century? But what would be the point of counting gross product, apart from the uses to which the state can put it and the abuse it currently makes of it to “justify” any measure or its opposite with “irrefutable figures”? In fact, the question does not arise: as long as the nation state exists, there will be no Europe or regions organised and autonomous enough to be able to make these calculations.

We must abandon GNP, and first and foremost the secret ambition that lies at its origin and is betrayed by its method: to find a universal indicator that reduces the diversity of the universe and the destiny of humankind to a set of monetary signs that are at least locally homogeneous.

In order to establish a policy, a strategy for our future, and consequently to develop a European model of society, we need balance-sheet that are balanced:

— not quantified revenues and expenditures (because their actual values would not be comparable and would often be opposite to those appearing in a nation's accounts or in GNP calculations)

— but the real, overall, natural and human gains and losses recorded by the public domain on which the quality of life of individuals and groups in a given community depends.

These regional, continental and global balance-sheet would take into account, for example:

— Gains: the number and scope of civic initiatives, as indicators of the development of community spirit; progress in the industrial sector’s adaptation to a more sustainable exploitation programme and the recycling of natural resources; the proliferation of local energy sources of all kinds; the increase in employees’ purchasing power, notably through the expansion of worker cooperatives; increased expenditure on pollution prevention; advances in hygiene and the fight against physical and mental illnesses…

— Losses: damage to humanity's natural heritage and the cultural heritage of cities and regions; decline in civic spirit; number of civil lawsuits; crime and terrorism; energy waste; pollution in all its forms, etc.

Changing our goals

But our governments will never accept these views, let alone these measures, which would mean relinquishing their power.

Having no other raison d’être than to ensure that their interests prevail over the common good, they remain the obstacle to the future; and consequently, they promise to transform most of the dangers besieging us into calculable fatalities — fatalities in both senses of the word: inevitable and leading to death.

In examining the various aspects of the crisis, I have encountered only one instance of inevitability in the strictest sense, and that was the ‘half-life’ of radioactive elements, whether natural or man-made in nuclear power stations, such as plutonium and thorium. Regarding these ‘half-lives’, and in this respect alone, human will and all our scientific knowledge have absolutely no effect. Nowhere else have I found a trend that cannot be reversed by our action or by ceasing our action. Everywhere, if we change our goals, the chains of events that seemed destined to be catastrophic can be altered or halted. Everywhere, on the other hand, I have found the nation-state’s opposition to any change of direction, to any course correction made before it becomes impossible.

My analysis of the global crisis thus leads me back to a dilemma of formidable simplicity:

— either the nation-state maintains and even extends its claim to exclusive authority over the administration of the Earth, in which case only the most catastrophic scenarios stand a chance of coming to pass,

— or the nation-state is gradually stripped of its power. Individuals and groups of people decide to take their destinies back into their own hands, at local and regional levels, and to put the common good before that of nation-states. The game is back on; the future is once again in our hands…

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Inventing our future

We have therefore reached a crisis point where the only reason for nation states to continue to exist is that there is currently no alternative. This reason draws its strength from the civic inertia into which we see the silent majorities sinking. It therefore remains at the mercy of the first convincing initiative — or yet another scandal, the straw that breaks the camel's back...

Every year, it becomes more apparent that the nation-state-military-industrial complex no longer knows how to, or is no longer able to, exercise power within the framework of existing laws. The system is on its last legs. This is not necessarily good news.

The nation-state cannot survive without war, but humanity cannot survive beyond the next general war. It will be either humanity or the nation-state, before long. If the nation-state collapses, it will be better for nature and our descendants, if there are any left, but worse for us, camping in the rubble. If it remains in place, with no candidate to take over the stewardship of the Earth, it can still do a lot of damage, increasingly irreparable.

Should we secretly hope that the emirs, by depriving him of oil without waiting for the final shortage, will render him harmless in the years to come? Without oil, what could he do? Plutonium, unfortunately, as we are already seeing.

We absolutely must change course, invent! My entire description of the crisis, although written in the present tense, only takes on its real meaning in the future: its greatest severity lies ahead of us, in a more or less near future that depends solely on us — if not on whom? — to avoid, by turning elsewhere through conversion, by returning to ourselves, to our true ends.

The kingdom to come is “within us”. So is the Totalitarian State.