State of Crisis E-Book

Zygmunt Bauman

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Seitenzahl: 311

Beschreibung

Today we hear much talk of crisis and comparisons are often made with the Great Depression of the 1930s, but there is a crucial difference that sets our current malaise apart from the 1930s: today we no longer trust in the capacity of the state to resolve the crisis and to chart a new way forward. In our increasingly globalized world, states have been stripped of much of their power to shape the course of events. Many of our problems are globally produced but the volume of power at the disposal of individual nation-states is simply not sufficient to cope with the problems they face. This divorce between power and politics produces a new kind of paralysis. It undermines the political agency that is needed to tackle the crisis and it saps citizens' belief that governments can deliver on their promises. The impotence of governments goes hand in hand with the growing cynicism and distrust of citizens. Hence the current crisis is at once a crisis of agency, a crisis of representative democracy and a crisis of the sovereignty of the state. In this book the world-renowned sociologist Zygmunt Bauman and fellow traveller Carlo Bordoni explore the social and political dimensions of the current crisis. While this crisis has been greatly exacerbated by the turmoil following the financial crisis of 2007-8, Bauman and Bordoni argue that the crisis facing Western societies is rooted in a much more profound series of transformations that stretch back further in time and are producing long-lasting effects. This highly original analysis of our current predicament by two of the world's leading social thinkers will be of interest to a wide readership.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Title page

Copyright page

Preface

1: Crisis of the State

A definition of crisis

A statism without a state

State and nation

Hobbes and the Leviathan

2: Modernity in Crisis

The promises withdrawn

Leaving modernity

Through postmodernity

Deconstruction and denial

The end of history?

3: Democracy in Crisis

Ethics of progress and democracy

An excess of democracy?

Postdemocracy

For a new global order

Index

Copyright © Zygmunt Bauman and Carlo Bordoni 2014

The right of Zygmunt Bauman and Carlo Bordoni to be identified as Authors of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in 2014 by Polity Press

Polity Press

65 Bridge Street

Cambridge CB2 1UR, UK

Polity Press

350 Main Street

Malden, MA 02148, USA

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-8094-1

ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-8095-8 (pb)

ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-8529-8 (epub)

ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-8528-1 (mobi)

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

The publisher has used its best endeavours to ensure that the URLs for external websites referred to in this book are correct and active at the time of going to press. However, the publisher has no responsibility for the websites and can make no guarantee that a site will remain live or that the content is or will remain appropriate.

Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been inadvertently overlooked the publisher will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition.

For further information on Polity, visit our website: www.politybooks.com

Preface

An essay written by four hands. Starting with the definition of ‘crisis’, this book develops along a path through the various forms taken on by the most serious problems of our changing times. It analyses current society according to Zygmunt Bauman in collaboration with Carlo Bordoni.

The basic thesis of this book is that the crisis facing the Western world is not temporary, but the sign of a profound change that involves the whole economic and social system and will have long-lasting effects. Bordoni theorizes a crisis of modernity and postmodernity, representing a contentious interregnum (a time-limited phenomenon that has left its aftermath in the present), while Bauman proposes new solutions within the framework of his theory of liquid society.

The final objective of this work is an original and previously unpublished analysis of the current condition of Western society, involving different aspects: from the crisis of the modern state to representative democracy, from neoliberal economics to the ongoing exit from mass society. A lively debate at a distance on the issues of the liquid society and an attempt to understand the present in order to prepare for the future. A sort of dictionary of the crisis, in which all the topics associated with it are discussed by the authors in an original way.

The authors are grateful to John Thompson for his encouragement and advice and wish to thank Elliott Karstadt, editorial assistant, Neil de Cort, production manager, and Leigh Mueller, copy-editor, for their professional help; moreover, Carlo Bordoni wants to thank Wendy Doherty for her careful help in translation of his text.

1

Crisis of the State

In the twenty-first century, what will replace the nation state (assuming it is replaced by something) as a model of popular government? We do not know.

Eric J. Hobsbawm1

A definition of crisis

Carlo Bordoni    Crisis. From the Greek word κρίσις, ‘judgement’, ‘result of a trial’, ‘turning point’, ‘selection’, ‘decision’ (according to Thucydides), but also ‘contention’ or ‘quarrel’ (according to Plato), a standard, from which to derive criterion, ‘means for judging’, but also ‘ability to discern’, and critical, ‘suitable to judge’, ‘crucial’, ‘decisive’ as well as pertaining to the art of judgement.

A word that occurs frequently in newspapers, on television, in everyday conversation, which is used to justify, from time to time, financial difficulties, increases in prices, a decrease in demand, a lack of liquidity, the imposition of new taxes or all these things taken together.

Economic crisis is – according to dictionaries – a phase of recession characterized by a lack of investments, a decrease in production, an increase in unemployment, a term that has the general meaning of unfavourable circumstances, often linked to the economy.

Any adverse event, especially concerning the economic sector, is ‘blamed on the crisis’. It is an attribution of responsibility absolutely depersonalized, which frees individuals from any involvement and refers to an abstract entity sounding vaguely sinister. This is because, some time ago, the word ‘crisis’ lost its original meaning and has since taken on a purely economic connotation. It has replaced other words that have been abused historically, such as ‘conjuncture’, which was often used in the 1960s and 1970s, when the general economic situation was more optimistic, and gave way to seasons in which mass consumerism reigned undisturbed.

Experiencing a period of ‘conjuncture’ was considered to be a painful but necessary transition in order to reach a new phase of prosperity. It was a time of adjustment in which to prepare the ground, refine strategies and recharge in order to regain strength and security and negotiate bargain deals as soon as things stabilized.

Conjuncture was a short period compared to all the rest. The term already implied a positive attitude that was confident about the immediate future, in contrast to other terms commonly used to indicate the economic difficulties in the past. After the Wall Street Crash of 1929, the Great Depression set in. Still today, this term, in comparison with ‘conjuncture’, evokes doomsday scenarios, and suggests a severe, long-term recession, combined with deep existential distress – something from which it is extremely difficult to recover, marked by the inevitable psychological implications.

The most serious crisis of modernity, that of 1929, which caused the stock-exchange collapse and gave rise to a chain of suicides, was skilfully resolved by applying the theories of Keynes: despite the deficit, the state invested in public works, employing labour at a time when there was no work to be found and companies were having to let people go; orders were stimulated and breathing space was given to industry, thus restarting the flywheel of the economy. However, the current crisis is different. The countries affected by the crisis are too far indebted and do not have the strength, perhaps not even the instruments, to invest. All they can do is make random cuts, which have the effect of exacerbating the recession rather than mitigating its impact on citizens.

Today we prefer to speak of ‘crisis’ rather than ‘conjuncture’ or ‘depression’. It is certainly a more neutral term that has been used in many other contexts, apart from an economic one, and is therefore rather familiar. From matrimonial crises that upset the life of a married couple, to adolescent crises that mark the transition from puberty to adulthood, ‘crisis’ conveys the image of a moment of transition from a previous condition to a new one – a transition which is necessary to growth, as a prelude to an improvement in a different status, a decisive step forward. For this reason it strikes less fear.

As can be seen, ‘crisis’, in its proper sense, expresses something positive, creative and optimistic, because it involves a change, and may be a rebirth after a break-up. It indicates separation, certainly, but also choice, decisions and therefore the opportunity to express an opinion. In a broader context, it takes on the meaning of the maturation of a new experience, which leads to a turning point (on a personal level as much as on a historical−social level). In short, it is the predisposing factor to change that prepares for future adjustments on a new basis, which is by no means depressing, as the current economic impasse shows us.

Recently ‘crisis’ has become linked to the economic sector essentially to indicate a complex and contradictory condition, which cannot be defined as ‘inflation’, ‘stagnation’ or ‘recession’, but in which a series of causes and effects is combined in a jumble of conflicting issues.

In fact, this crisis is characterized by the simultaneous combination of an economic gamble on an international level (the causes) and the measures taken locally to deal with it (the effects). Both impact on the citizen in a different way, interacting and contributing to the complexity of a social malaise that is proving to be more and more important. The widespread perception is that the cure is worse than the disease, because it is more immediate and noticeable on the people's skin.

This crisis comes from afar. It has its roots in the 2000s, marked by the new outbreak of terrorism and the emblematic destruction of the Twin Towers in New York in 2001. It was no coincidence that the Twin Towers were part of the World Trade Center, the headquarters of the World Trade Organization. Premonition or coincidence? In fact, since then, despite the explosion of the ‘new economy’, the financial markets have begun to tremble, showing that globalization would not have led to anything good. The main concern for observers at the close of the twentieth century was, in fact, the consequences of the invasion of world markets by large multinational corporations – economic, but also cultural colonizations (challenged by the ‘No logo’ movement), which made us fear globalization as the triumph of a huge standardized and homogen­ized world-wide market, at the expense of small producers and commercial networks.

But the liberalization of borders, as well as having significant effects for personal liberty and communications, has also opened the way to a flood of economic difficulties. A stock market crash in Tokyo has immediate repercussions in London or Milan. So the speculative bubble on junk bonds, which started in South America and is responsible for the most serious collapse of the banking system ever, infiltrated Europe, triggering the present crisis, which we cannot see a way out of.

The current crisis is financial, while the crisis of 1929 was industrial: now the theories of Keynes could not be applied. Look at the case of Greece, where the huge contributions from the European Community only serve to reduce the deficit temporarily and fail to develop into new productive investments. The flywheel cannot restart.

Similarly, private companies have no interest in investing capital in the countries undergoing serious difficulties, partly because of the banking credit crunch, but especially because of inconsistent economic returns, a result of the reduction in consumption.

In this phase we witness the curious phenomenon of an increase in the price of essential goods, which goes against market trends (they should decrease as a consequence of the diminished demand): the rise in prices tries to compensate, in the short term, for the decrease in sales, remunerating the producer for losses suffered as a result of being unable to sell. At a later stage, if adequate corrective measures are not implemented, a fall in consumer prices slows production, bringing about a shortage of essential goods and causing new forced price increases that try to restore the balance between supply and demand. This situation triggers a wartime economy, with doubling of market prices (in the black market), that Europe tragically experienced in the last part of World War II.

When we move towards a severe recession, usually there is a general increase in the price of consumer goods (you only have to do some shopping in a supermarket to notice it), along with the stagnating or falling market value of real estate. It is the most obvious sign of a serious failure, which, if not corrected, will inevitably lead to an economic collapse. The decline in sales of certain goods, such as real estate, alongside an increase in prices of essential goods, immediately indicates a different destination for the money supply which is used in consumption (rather than being invested) or, if we are dealing with large amounts of capital, is transferred abroad where it is safe and has a chance of regaining, at least in part, its lost profit.

The increase in consumer prices not only diverts resources from investment and the real estate market, it also creates a sort of ‘Titanic Syndrome’, characterized by a contagious euphoria while the country is sinking. A part of the population, which for the moment has not yet been affected by the crisis, uses up its savings and increases its spending (spending more than necessary, allowing themselves holidays, etc.), justifying their behaviour to themselves with the precariousness of existence: ‘let's enjoy it while we can’ is their motto, as they carry on living as if nothing had changed, closing their eyes to reality.

In others it can have that particular ‘echo effect’ that makes them spend on the basis of the previous years’ income, thus maintaining the same standard of living and then getting into debt. It is a form of obvious psychological self-defence, in which individuals try to contain the anxiety that pervades them given the collapse of all certainty for the future.

On the other hand, there are the cases of suicide. It is said there have been over 1,200 cases of suicide in Greece alone because of the economic crisis. There are those who drown while the privileged dance on the top deck of the ship, pretending not to see. Or perhaps they are well aware of it but, for this very reason, they stubbornly close their eyes to it.

Inflation is a different matter. The collapse of the value of money, its progressive inconsistency in its relationship with consumer goods, have been avoided for the moment. Inflation is linked with all the economic crises of modernity; it reached an all-time record during the Weimar Republic (before Hitler's rise to power in Germany), when the cost of a kilo of bread reached 1 million marks − or in Argentina in the 1970s, when the number of pesos needed to pay for bread increased day by day in an endless crescendo. Inflation is the worst consequence of any economic crisis, because it sweeps life savings away and reduces people to hunger in a very short time: money can no longer buy anything and despair sets in. A fast-acting cancer that propagates with the same speed of movement as the currency. The more quickly it changes hands, the less value it has. We are saved from inflation thanks to the euro. Greece will be saved from inflation, which should already be moving at galloping speed, as long as it remains within the euro zone. A return to the drachma would be fatal.

The euro is not an inflation-proof currency, but it is the currency of most of the states of the European Community and of the stronger states (starting with Germany) and they have no intention of falling into the Weimar trap a second time. They have the right instruments to keep it at bay and they impose them on everyone else. Among these instruments are, undoubtedly, a balanced budget, a cap on interest rates, a reduction in public debt and the consequent slowing-down of the circulation of money. This is called ‘deflationary’ politics (a far cry from the theories of Keynes, adopted to resolve the crisis of 1929) and, to our cost, we are paying the consequences.

Unfortunately, if this condition is not corrected by appropriate interventions, it in turn generates other problems in a disastrous chain reaction. Redundancies deprive families of purchasing power, burn up savings and lower consumption, which in turn is reflected in trade and production. It opens the way to stagnation, the most feared facet of the economic crisis, in which the state and the government, instead of reducing friction, push in the opposite direction and increase taxes, which only makes the situation worse.

A special feature of this crisis is its duration. The time of unfavourable ‘conjunctures’, which could be resolved over a short period, has come to an end. Now the crises – so vague and generalized because they involve much of the planet – take eons to turn around. They progress very slowly, in contrast to the speed with which all other human activities in contemporary reality actually move. Any forecast of a solution is continuously updated and then postponed until a later date. It never seems to end.

When one crisis ends, another, which in the meantime has come to lick round our borders, steps in to take its place. Or perhaps it is the same huge crisis that feeds on itself and changes over time, transforming and regenerating itself like a monstrous teratogenic entity. It devours and changes the fate of millions of people, making it the rule of life rather than the exception, becoming an everyday habit which we have to deal with rather than an occasional, annoying inconvenience to get rid of in the quickest way possible.

Living in a constant state of crisis is not pleasant, but it can have its positive side, since it keeps the senses vigilant and alert, and psychologically prepares us for the worst. We must learn to live with the crisis, just as we are resigned to living with so much endemic adversity imposed on us by the evolution of the times: pollution, noise, corruption and, above all, fear. The oldest feeling in the world that accompanies us through a reality marked by insecurity.

We will have to get used to living with the crisis. Because the crisis is here to stay.

Zygmunt Bauman    I get the impression that the idea of ‘crisis’ tends to drift nowadays back to its medical origins. It was coined to denote the moment in which the future of the patient was in the balance, and the doctor had to decide which way to go and what treatment to apply to help the ill into convalescence. Speaking of crisis of whatever nature, including the economic, we convey firstly the feeling of uncertainty, of our ignorance of the direction in which the affairs are about to turn – and secondly the urge to intervene: to select the right measures and decide to apply them promptly. When we diagnose a situation as ‘critical’, we mean just that: the conjunction of a diagnosis and a call for action. And let me add that there is an endemic contradiction involved: after all, the admission of the state of uncertainty/ignorance doesn't bode well for the chance of selecting ‘right measures’ and so prompting things to move in the desired direction.

But let me focus – as is, I gather, your intention – on the economic crisis. You start by reminding us of the horrors of the 1920s−1930s, against which each successive stumbling of the economy has since tended to be measured, and ask whether the current, post-credit-collapse crisis can be seen and described as a reiteration of that period, thereby throwing some light on its likely outcome. While admitting that there are numerous striking similarities between the two crises and their manifestations (first and foremost, massive and prospectless unemployment and soaring social inequality), I suggest that there is, however, one crucial difference between the two that sets them apart and renders comparing one to the other questionable to say the least.

While horrified by the sight of markets running wild and causing fortunes to evaporate together with workplaces, while forcing viable businesses into bankruptcy, victims of the late 1920s stock-exchange collapse had little doubt about where to look for rescue: to the state, of course – to a strong state, so strong as to be able to force the state of affairs to concur with its will. Opinions as to the best way out of the predicament might have differed, even considerably, but there was no disagreement about who might push the state of affairs onto the road eventually selected: of course the state, equipped with both resources indispensable for the job: power − that is, the ability to get things done − and politics − that is, the ability to decide which things ought to be done. You rightly mention Keynes in this context: along with the rest of the informed or intuitive opinion of the time, he put his wager on the resourcefulness of the state – his recommendations made sense in as far as the ‘really existing’ states could rise to meet popular expectations. And indeed, the aftermath of the collapse stretched to its limits the post-Westphalian model of a state armed with absolute and indivisible sovereignty over its territory and everything it contains, even in forms as various as the Soviet state-managed, German state-regulated and US state-stimulated economies.

This post-Westphalian model of the omnipotent territorial state (in most cases a nation-state) emerged from the war not only unscathed, but expanded, reinforced and reassured to match the comprehensive ambitions of a ‘social state’ – a state insuring all its citizens against the vagaries of fate, individual misfortunes and fear of indignity in any of the many forms (as fear of poverty, exclusion and negative discrimination, ill health, unemployment, homelessness, ignorance) that haunted the pre-war generations. The model of the ‘social state’ was also adopted, even if in a considerably cut-down rendition, by numerous new states and quasi-states emerging amidst the ruins of colonial empires. The ‘glorious thirty’ years that followed were marked by the rising expectation that all harrowing social problems were about to be resolved and left behind, and the haunting memories of poverty and mass unemployment would be buried once and for all.

In the 1970s, however, the progress ground to a halt, confronted with rising unemployment, seemingly unmanageable inflation, and the growing inability of states to deliver on their promise of comprehensive insurance. Gradually, yet ever more starkly, states manifested their inability to deliver on their promises; gradually, but apparently unstoppably, faith and trust in the potency of the state began to be eroded. Functions previously claimed and jealously guarded by the states as their monopoly, as well as being widely considered by the public and the most influential opinion-setters as their inalienable obligations and mission, seemed suddenly too onerous or too resource-greedy for the nation-states to carry. Peter Drucker famously declared that people need to, should and shortly will have to abandon hopes of salvation descending ‘from above’ – from the state or society – and the number of ears keen to absorb that message grew at an accelerating pace. In popular perception, aided and abetted by the chorus of a growing part of the learned and opinion-making public, the state was downgraded from the rank of the most powerful engine of universal well-being to that of a most obnoxious, perfidious and annoying obstacle to economic progress.

Was this another watershed, then, in the history of public mood? Was it another ‘interregnum’, or as the French would say ‘rupture’ – a stretch of under-defined and under-determined terrain as yet unvisited, unexplored and unmapped, which the old trusty vehicles seem unfit to negotiate, yet the new ones fit for the job still need to be designed, produced and put on the road? Yes, but, just as during the Great Depression of the 1920s−1930s, the opinion-setters, as well as gradually but steadily widening circles of the general public, claimed to know what kind of vehicles were called for to replace the old ones – once trusty yet increasingly rusty and overdue for the scrapyard. Once more, it seemed to be obvious what kind of a powerful force was destined, willing and able to lead the way out of the current crisis. This time, public trust was invested in the ‘invisible hand of the market’ – and indeed (as recommended by Milton Friedman, Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and the fast-expanding bevy of their enthusiastic subalterns, sycophants and acolytes – all busily digging up from disgrace and oblivion Adam Smith's pronouncements and recycling/reshaping them for public use) in the magic power of bakers’ greed, on which all those who wish freshly baked bread to appear daily on our breakfast table can rely. ‘Deregulation’, ‘privatization’, ‘subsidiarization’ were to accomplish what regularization, nationalization and communal state-guided undertakings so abominably and frustratingly failed to deliver. State functions had to be and were to be shifted sideways (‘hived-off’, ‘out-sourced’ and/or ‘contracted out’) to the market − that admittedly ‘politics-free’ zone − or dropped downwards, on the shoulders of human individuals, now expected to furnish individually, while inspired and set in motion by their greed, what they did not manage to produce collectively while inspired and moved by communal spirit.

After the ‘glorious thirty’ came the ‘opulent thirty’: the years of a consumerist orgy and all-but-continuous, seemingly unstoppable growth of GNP indices all over the place. The wager on human greed seemed to be paying off. Its profits came into view much earlier than its costs. It took a couple of dozen years to find out what fuelled the consumerist miracle: the discovery by the banks and the credit-card issuers of a vast virgin land open to exploitation – a land populated by millions of people indoctrinated by the precepts of a ‘saving-book culture’ and still in thrall to the puritan commandment to resist the temptation of spending unearned money. And it took yet a few years more to awaken to the sombre truth that the initially fabulous returns from investments in virgin lands must soon run out of steam, reach their natural limits and eventually stop arriving altogether. When that ultimately happened, the bubble burst, and the bright fata morgana of perpetually rising opulence vanished under a sky covered with dark clouds of prospectless redundancy, bankruptcies, infinite debt-repayment, drastic falls in living standards, shrinking life ambitions – and, in all probability, of social degradation of the self-confident, upward-looking and boisterous classes to the status of a perplexed, defenceless and fear-stricken ‘precariat’.

Was this another crisis of agency, then − another ‘rupture’ or interregnum? Yes, but with a difference – and a fateful, seminal one. As before, old vehicles of ‘progress’ are overdue for the scrap­heap, but there is no promising invention in sight in which one could reinvest the hope of carrying all the rudderless victims out of trouble. After the loss of public trust in the wisdom and potency of the state, now it is the turn of the dexterity of the ‘invisible hand of the market’ to lose credibility. Every one of the old ways of doing things lies discredited, and the new ways are – at best – at the drawing board or experimentation stage. No one can swear, hand on heart, to the effectiveness of any. All too well aware of the hopes that failed, we have no potential runners-up to bet on. Crisis is a time for deciding what way of proceeding to take, but in the arsenal of human experience there seem to be no trustworthy strategies to pick from.

We are painfully aware, at least for a moment and until the human, all-too-human selective memory has done its job, that, if left to their own devices, the profit-guided markets lead to economic and social catastrophes. But should we – and, above all, could we – return to the once-deployed, yet now unemployed or under-employed, devices of state supervision, control, regulation and management? Whether we should is obviously a moot question. What is well-nigh certain, however, is that we couldn't – whatever answer we choose to the other question. We couldn't because the state is no longer what it used to be 100 years ago, or what it was then hoped it would soon become. In its present condition, the state lacks the means and resources to perform the tasks which effective supervision and control of the markets, not to mention their regulation and management, required.

Trust in the state's capacity to deliver rested on the supposition that both conditions of effective management of social realities – power and politics – are in the hands of the state, assumed to be a sovereign (exclusive and indivisible) master within its territorial boundaries: ‘power’ meaning the ability to get things seen through and done, and ‘politics’ meaning the ability to decide which things ought to be done and which things are to be sorted out on the global level − where much of the effective power to get things done already resides − and so to be avoided or undone. By now, however, the state has been expropriated of a large and growing part of its past genuine or imputed power (to get things done), which has been captured by the supra-state − global – forces operating in a politically uncontrolled ‘space of flows’ (Manuel Castells’ term) − whereas the effective reach of the extant political agencies did not progress beyond the state boundaries. This means, purely and simply, that finances, investment capitals, labour markets and circulation of commodities are beyond the remit and reach of the only political agencies currently available to do the job of supervision and regulation. It is the politics chronically afflicted with the deficit of power (and so also of coercion) that faces the challenge of powers emancipated from political control.

To cut a long story short: the present crisis differs from its historical precedents in as far as it is lived through in the situation of a divorce between power and politics. That divorce results in the absence of agency capable of doing what every ‘crisis’, by definition, requires: choosing the way to proceed, and applying the therapy called for by that choice. This absence, it seems, will continue to paralyse the search for a viable solution until power and politics, now in the state of divorce, are remarried. It also, however, looks as though, under conditions of global interdependence, such remarriage is hardly conceivable inside one state, however large and resourceful it might be. It looks like we are now facing the awesome task of raising politics and its stakes to an entirely new, and unprecedented, height.

A statism without a state

Carlo Bordoni    With regard to health, the word ‘crisis’ was used in the past to indicate that the patient was in a serious condition and faced dying. At that point, a consultation was called − that is, a meeting of several medical specialists − to discuss which treatments should be administered. ‘Consultation’ is no longer used in everyday language, especially after Dr House demystified physicians’ meetings, in which they talk about everything and try different treatments to see how the patient responds. Crisis has suffered the same downgrading in other fields and ‘is in crisis’; it has moved to the field of psychology, referring to mood or the existential, as well as the sentimental, condition.

Perhaps this is why the definition of ‘crisis’ is ill suited to the current situation, which, at least in the economic sphere, seems to be fairly stable. There is the risk of the term ‘crisis’ being used deliberately to give the impression that the condition we are experiencing is only temporary and that we will soon be able to pull out of it using the appropriate treatment.

The separation of power and politics is one of the decisive reasons for the State's inability to make appropriate choices. According to Étienne Balibar, the irreparable rift between local and global has produced a kind of ‘statism without a state’ which takes place through a ‘governance’.2 This produces the paralysing effect you described of a political system (representative of the people, and therefore democratic) at a local level, reduced to the management of routine administration, unable to take on and solve the problems that global power (without political representation, and therefore fundamentally undemocratic) imposes with increasing frequency.

Contemporary cities are a sort of big rubbish bin [Bauman's metaphor] into which global powers drop the problems they create for resolution. For example, mass migration is a global phenomenon caused by global forces. No mayor of any city in the world actually created the mass migration of people looking for bread, pure water for drinking and these sorts of conditions. People were set in motion by the impact of global forces, which deprive them of their means of existence and force them to move or die. So it's a vast problem. But they come to Milan, they come to Modena, they come to Rome, they come to Paris, they come to London and it is the mayor or the municipal council of the city who need(s) to deal with the issue. That's why I call it a rubbish bin. The problem comes from outside, but the problem has to be resolved, for better or worse, on the spot.3

Decisions are taken elsewhere by the powers that be, who, since they are supranational by their very nature, are not required to observe the local laws and ordinances: they are free from the limitations of political expediency as well as from needs of a social nature, in the name of objectivity and a principle of equity that does not express real justice.

The separation between the two levels, between the global and the local, between power and politics, would have remained unresolved and conflicting if power had not tried to ‘interfere’ in politics – to recuperate the difference, the distance between the two terms, and try to standardize their behaviour. It does so in the only way possible, by taking the place of tout court politics in the management of the local/national and, where this is not possible, by making the appropriate political decisions with consistent persuasion and/or subordination. With control over politics, the global power can now eagerly dominate society and prevent any resistance.

Balibar focuses on a form of ‘governance’ that has replaced the direct, tangible relationship between the state and the citizen: ‘The European Union … is only the ghost of a state, because it does not have any really effective element of collective identification … A similar structure anticipates perhaps the form of survival of the state institution of citizenship, which is in our future and which would actually represent, under the name of governance, a form of statism without a state.’4

‘Governance’ is replaced by the state in relation to politics. The inconsistency of national governments, their inability to adapt to change and to meet the new organizational requirements and provide the safety net that the process of globalization requires, means that the need for community participation, the sine qua non condition for every kind of civil society, looks for satisfactory answers elsewhere. Answers that are not always fit for purpose, but can be driven by emotion, resentment, fear, or even by that voluptas dolendi that Étienne de la Boétie called ‘voluntary servitude’ (a sycophantic acquiescence and submission to any form of power). In any case, they question every current form of democracy or, at best, create the conditions for new, previously unknown, forms of democratic representation.

Inconsistent answers – because they do not resolve the problem in all its complexity – mainly take the form of an anti-politics, a kind of rejection and nausea in the face of a relationship now worn thin. Anti-politics is an inaccurate term: formally it indicates an aversion of the citizenry (there is no mention of the people, because it presupposes a reciprocal link with the sovereign state) to policy itself. Rather than anti-politics, one could speak of ‘anti-partyism’, but it is clear to everyone that the use of this term is fairly ambiguous and conforms to the system, sending a negative and accusatory message to those who practise ‘anti-politics’.

But anti-politics – as recognized by Balibar – gives rise to populism and nationalism, both dangerous and subject to the most devastating deviations. It often proves to be the prelude to tyrannical and authoritarian regimes, as demonstrated by recent history. It starts from the rejection of politics (‘politics is a dirty thing’) and, through the exaltation of charismatic figures, able to attract the attention and fondness of the masses, it manages to justify the dictatorship of the strong man, the only one who can take on the daunting task of putting things right. There is always a man of providence ready to intervene when the relationship between the state and citizens has deteriorated.

Nationalism is anachronistic and short-sighted. Going back to traditional values, tightening the ranks and valuing only what is known locally and territorially delimited, seems today to be a futile effort − especially if we think it is possible to give back the absolute power of decision-making and policy management to a local area that has to deal with the global economy. Like a certain kind of populism, nationalism today does not go beyond the drama of a tragicomic operetta, exaggerated by the media for the entertainment of the masses, who are quite rightly worried.

But the most disturbing thing is the ‘statism without a state’, towards which we launched ourselves with naive indifference. ‘Governance’ has taken the place of a functional government, bound by a relationship of trust with the public. Hidden behind a mass of increasingly chaotic and impenetrable bureaucracy, ‘governance’ manages the community that has lost its state guardian due to an inconsistent delegation that gave rise to the idea of ‘false democracy’, because it lacks both the conditions that make the ‘proxy’ democratic: political direction and control. In fact, no one stipulates the orientation of community policy and its priorities (there is no programme with which to make a comparison); nobody checks the work of the community and its adherence to the will and intentions of the people. Faced with this grave double lacuna, it is not possible to talk about democracy, while it undermines even the threatened separation of politics and power. The two terms appear so far apart as to be fragmented, controversial and interfering.

If power is managed by the markets, by financial groups, by supranational forces that evade any democratic control, then politics is a controversial and frayed subject. It takes on many faces: there is the policy of the European community, conditioned by the stronger states and markets (who are able to address ‘their’ policy through lobbies