Sustained Collective Action is the Solution
Let the echoes of history tell the story
With Miroslaw Manicki
Ironically, the battles being fought in Northern Ukraine today are the site of the Pripet Marshes, that place that defined the early years of the Slavic peoples, where they could hide their gardens in the face of conquering armies and could stoically survive for centuries as they formed their cultural roots. The waters of the marshes that watered early Slavic gardens were targeted by Chernobyl planners, with catastrophic outcomes in our times.
Many have staked their claim on underestimating the Slavs. In fact, these were a people who preferred gardening to all else. They survived by disappearing in battle to survive and live their lives, but they were known to be fierce and dependable fighters when called on to do so. They suffered from the Golden Hoard from the east above all, but also from the Varangians from the north. At one point, they made peace with the northerners to protect them from Tatar raiders, and arrangement that among other things resulted in the reign of the czars.
Kiev was to be the third seat of the Church, after Rome and Constantinople, but it was moved further north to Moscow to be that much colder, out of the range of the Turks. There was to be a dual ecclesiastical rule there by the church and the state, a plan that was violently ended by Peter the Great’s father, Tsar Alexis, who exiled Nikon, the head of the church. The result was the phenomenon of the Old Believers, who subsisted in forests on the margins of Slavic culture before the advent of any states in question.
There was an awkward dance between the stoic gardeners and their less productive overlords. There was a sardonic wit among the Slaves, who knew that after days of fighting, if not conquest, it was those with food that won the day at last.
We live in echoes of those times. Of course, Slavic peoples expanded to the west and to the south. They represent one of the largest of people characterized by being inconsequential by others. This is perhaps the reason many are not aware of their contributions and the nature of their societies. Their Christian faith bridges the gap between east and west. They have grown to about 350 million people ranging from western Russia to the north to the Ukraine and Poland and to the Serbs and the Czechs and about a dozen other contemporary states to the south. We have written an essay on this subject titled “Mother Russia: Earth’s puzzle” (https://tinyurl.com/2p8nc32c).
There are ethnic issues here, but also others that have little to do with this. The Slavs survived through quiet competence. This was a large part of the risk they introduced to the conquerors. They would be interesting partners, but they could not be reliably ruled. They always reserved the right to be privately free despite apparent power of their would-be rulers. There are many other ethnic groups that have survived Northern European colonization of recent centuries, able to keep to the the traditions that sustained them physically and spiritually over the years. The Kurds of the Zagros Mountains and the four countries that they inhabit come to mind.
These are a type of a related phenomenon that is coming to its head around the world. Humans, it has been held by some, are not supposed to be competent. Those who do demonstrate that they are apt are held under wraps by their very beneficiaries.
We have been taught that some problems are too big to resolve. This came to a head in the work of Harvard’s Mancur Olson, who coined the phrase in the 1960s of the “collective action problem”. Those of us schooled in development are inculcated with this idea: Problems rendered important by their scope and impact on many people are thus doomed to fail. They become impossible. Thus was granted permission to fail, with catastrophic outcomes the world over.
This kind of thinking gained credence in the failure of the English in the 17th century in the course of their devastating, inconclusive civil wars. Since they resolved nothing, it was decided that they could engage on naval conquest of the world, resulting in sufficient spoils to fill the void brought on by disagreement and governance failure among themselves.
With the ‘3 ms’ of merchants, military, and missionaries in the lead, they spread their message of assimilation under the shadow of conquest, with many cultures and peoples succumbing in the process. As Joseph Schumpeter noted that the experiment had failed by the mid-19th century, the effort stumbled along by attempting the swallow the ‘big fish’ of India and China. Failing at this contributed to the chaos of the 20th century, from which we do not seem to have recharted the ships of state of the world.
This brings us back to the Pripet Marshes and Slavic gardens. Indeed, how do we work to reinforce and sustain collective action in perpetuity? It is not a matter of conquest; it requires mutual respect and collaboration. Competition serves a role, but the experience of the old cultures is that the needs of the people need to be assured first. On top of this, people should have the freedom and capacity to achieve great things, including self-enrichment, but food, basic shelter, clothing, and health care should not be subject to somebody’s ‘deal’, or outcomes of supposed market moves.
Oh, but what about laziness? This is held out as the original sin, but there is a question as to what lazy people are otherwise inclined to do. Not chained down to a menial task, people might be inclined to sing, or to engage in art, or cook a creative meal, or make something. Could not these be construed as occupations that could come to serve the general good? How is it that such cannot be rationally identified, encouraged, and ultimately rewarded?
It could be said that this could not serve — the money must flow, and how can that be without enforced employment? Similarly, how can this come to be without the imposition on competition in the process. By this line of reasoning, people and their labor must be commoditized. There is no other way.
And yet, for a few, there is an escape route. Say, for example, a child has the capacity to score well on the examinations that are offered. That child is typically ushered into a fairy land of academia, with nary a care in the world as the joys of tenure take hold. From that point, even productivity is optional.
What about the children that didn’t get tests to their liking? Perhaps their talents are not so easily identified. Perhaps they are not put in position to share their abilities to the people that matter most in those very fields.
The result is a life of enforced misery, engaged in some kinds of acts to which they are not particularly well-suited and that serve the singular role of providing cash. Such a system works as follows: They must serve in that role despite its risks and costs because that is the only way to get the money needed to obtain the basics of life. It is possible that the money thus acquired did not serve the public good in the first place; it may have served interests counter to individual and collective needs. Nonetheless, it is the money alone that sets the stage for all else.
This kind of conundrum led to a standoff at Harvard decades before Professor Olson outlined his problematic collective action problem. Two notable academics had a faceoff that was for the most part congenial, but indicative of the fundamental issues faced here. One of these was a famous man, Joseph Schumpeter, then in the prime of his career as economist, former finance minister of Austria, and professor. The other was Talcott Parsons, then a young assistant and economist with deep soundings in the theory of social relations and organizations.
Parsons’ position at Harvard was not secure. In the face of this, he was profoundly motivated by his studies of Weber, Durkheim, Pareto and others. To him, a fundamental underlying question was this: Which provided more profound groundings for understanding and policy-making, society or the economy? His ultimate conclusion that society, social organization, and the will of people was more fundamental that what is considered otherwise as the economy. Society was the ‘dog’; the economy was its ‘tail’.
The question wasn’t so much whether the money existed; it was whether there was capacity. Within the capabilities of people and machines, resources being available, what could result, especially with regard to the needs of the people? If the people were available as well as productive tools and inputs, accounting for these could be carried out readily. Central to this, we can say, is a viable means of helping people to do what they would do if otherwise allowed to be ‘lazy’. They should be apprenticed in that. That is what they should be paid for.
So, back to the professors, Parsons and Schumpeter. The elder, more established one made an offer to the other ‘that he could not refuse’. He would raise money and organize an institute within the confines of Harvard that the younger one would oversee. This kind of an arrangement is a dream come true in the academic career — the kind of thing that underscores a career in fact.
Parsons, the would-be beneficiary, knew that there was one caveat; it would be an economics-over-society proposition. Schumpeter was open-minded and socially aware, but Parsons knew, as a trained economist, that his leader would not go that far. The net result was that Parsons never answered. He didn’t refuse; he didn’t even agree to consider it. He simply didn’t respond in any way, largely because he did not want to insult the man, which he felt any truthful response would do.
This is in line with the means of achieving sustainable, successful collective action. Rather than hope for the magic of open market happiness in all realms and sectors, it is beneficial in some cases to make plans; to create direct means of achieving solutions. The great civilizations have done this. They had granaries. They arranged for voluntary labor in the public interest. Moderns are quick to add that such arrangements in antiquity resulted from slavery and coercion, but it is clear from now-available ancient records that this was not always the case.
Let’s engage in a thought experiment. Let’s assume that automation and economies of scale result in fully-automated production of everything needed by people — food, clothing, housing, and health care. What would happen then? Would that constitute ‘paradise’ or ‘Armageddon’? In effect, there would be food, but no jobs for workers to earn the money to obtain it.
To use a technical term, that would be dumb. Why should people go hungry under such circumstances? Why not pay them to do something — especially something associated with their abilities and interests — thus giving them access to what they need to live?
What if no one wanted or obviously benefitted from what they had to offer? It might be that participation in a community of practice would help to resolve the problem. They could help to position it within the framework of what others want and enjoy. Perhaps the persons in question could be given generic work to do that was sufficient to account for the basics. In some cases, this might be a good situation for students or entrepreneurs that wish to put their primary efforts into something else.
Competition is important and rightly deserves a place at the high end of the achievement scale, but cooperation and participation best serve where basic needs are in question. This is where collective action emerges as a public good. Hollowed-out plans, where everyone is essentially a project manager and all is dependent on transactional approaches to the money, are clearly limited as to scope and duration. No one’s heart is in it. It can be said that for all intents and purposes, nobody knows and nobody cares.
Instead, we need structured society, good at instilling and guiding youth, caring and flexible in meeting the needs of the people. The great organizations of society are needed in private-public partnership — the schools, the churches and other social and interest-oriented institutions. These should rightly provide living frameworks — what Anthony Wallace called mazeways — to lead them through the habits and actions of healthy, happy lives. These are processes, serving and creating cycles that themselves frame the activities of living systems and the interactions supporting nature generally.
Can collective action be established successfully and sustained over time? Query the builders of the ancient wonders of the world as to the nature of their works. Contemplate the longevity and vitality of the great ancient cultures. Consider traditions of cooperation and collaboration in ancient literatures now available and contemporary, indigenous cultures, now studied and better-understood. These and their behavioral frameworks did not come about via belligerence, nor did they occur without the cooperation and support of many, contributing there knowledge and their abilities. This can be seen in particular in cultural and civil environments where destruction has not occurred in intervening times.
This brings us back to those poor Pripet Marshes. Let not current events there signal our ultimate contribution to civilization, or the lack thereof. Lessons learned there long ago can substantially contribute to our current knowledge of the way, the mazeways we need to follow, in fact.