Language is the instrument through which political practical
experience takes place. To reconstitute past succeeding
political experiences therefore means to reconstitute their
language(s). The task is overwhelming because politics is mingled
with every aspect of human life: work, property, family, sex,
religion, education, ethics, and art. It is present even in the
interrelations of these aspects because politics is also
self-reflective. That is, the identity of one entity is related
to the identity of others in relation to which
self-identification takes place. The variety of political
experiences corresponds to the variety of pragmatic
circumstances within which humans project their identity.
Individual existence resulting from interaction with others
extends to the realm of politics and is embodied in the
recurrent patterns that make up expectations, goals,
institutions, norms, conflicts, and power relations. The
individual is concealed in all these. In some ways, politics is
a social-educational practice resulting in the integration of
instinctive actions (a-political) and learned modes of practice
with social impact. What constitutes politics is the dynamics of
relations as they become possible and as they unfold as openings
towards new relations. One of the concrete forms of such
relations is the propensity to coalition building. Politics is
contingent upon subjects interacting. Their past (ontogeny) and
present (pragmatics) are involved in these interactions. To a
certain extent, it is a learned form of practice requiring means
for interaction, among which language has been the most
important. It is also a practice of investigation, discovery,
and social testing.
The manifold of political languages corresponds to the manifold
of practical experiences. There are probably as many political
tongues as there are circumstances of self-identification within
a society. But against the background of this variety is the
expectation that word and deed coincide, or at least that they do
not stray too far from each other.
The advent of writing changed politics because it attached
written testimony to it, which became a referential element. As
Socrates and Plato noticed, this was a blessing in disguise.
Since the time writing entered the political sphere, the
practical argument shifted from the fact, argued and eventually
settled, to the record. It became itself a practical experience
of records (of property, law, order, agreements, negotiations,
and allocations for the good of society). The institutions that
emerged after the practical experience of writing operated
within the structure of and in accordance with the expectations
brought about by writing. And soon, as relative as soon can be,
political self-consciousness was established parallel to
political action and pursued as yet another practical
experience.
The many languages of political experience multiply once more in
the new languages of political awareness. Where values were the
final goal of politics, the value of the political experience
itself became a subject of concern. Many political projects were
pursued at this self-reflective level: conceiving new forms of
human cooperation and political organization, advancement of
ideas concerning education, prejudices, emancipation, and law.
This explains, too, why in the sequence of political practical
experiences, expectations did not nullify each other. They
accumulated as an expression of an ideal, forever moving away
from the last goal attained. Without a good understanding of the
process, nobody could account for the inner dynamics of political
change. The same applies to accounting for the role played by
political leaders, philosophers, and political organizations
involved, by virtue of their own goals and functions, in
political life.
Politics in the civilization of illiteracy is not politics out
of the blue sky. Along the continuum of political practical
experiences, it entails expectations generated under different
pragmatic circumstances. And it faces challenges-the major
challenge being the efficiency expected in the new scale of
human experience-for which its traditional means and its
inherited structure are simply not adequate. Political
discontinuity is always more difficult to accept, even
understand. Revolutions are celebrated only after they take
place, and especially after they successfully establish a
semblance of stability.
Can literacy lead politics to failure?
In our time, much is said regarding the perception that the
language of politics and the political practice it seems to
coordinate are very far apart. People's mistrust of politics
appears to reach new heights. The role and importance of
political leaders and institutions apparently have changed. The
most able are not necessarily involved in politics. Their
self-constitution takes place in practical experiences more
rewarding and more challenging than political activism.
Political institutions no longer represent the participants in
the political contract, but pursue their own goals, survival
included. Law takes on a life of its own, more concerned, so the
public perceives, with protecting the criminal, in the name of
preserving civil rights, than upholding justice. Taxes support
extravagant governments and forms of social redistribution of
wealth, more often reflecting a guilt complex over past
inequities than authentic social solidarity. Instead of
promoting meaningful human relationships and addressing the
future, they keep fixing the past. Everyone complains, probably
a phenomenon as old as any relation among people involved in a
sui generis give-and-take interaction. But fewer and fewer are
willing to do something because individual participation and
effort appear useless in the given political structure.
The majority of people look back to some prior political
experience and interpret the past in the light of books they
have read. They fail to realize that the complexity of today's
human experience cannot be met by yesterday's solutions. They are
convinced that if we are faithful to our political heritage, all
problems, credibility and corruption included, will be solved.
They also believe religious systems and their great books
contain all that is needed to meet all imaginable present and
future challenges. Even the very honorable conviction that the
founders of modern democracies prepared citizens to cope with
this unprecedented present cannot go unchallenged. The
Constitution of the United States (1787) as well as the
Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen in France
(1789) reflect the thinking and the prose of the civilization of
literacy. Similar documents are on record in Latin America,
Europe, India, and Japan. They are as useless as history can be
when new circumstances of human self- constitution are totally
different from the experiences that gave birth to these
documents. Revisionism will not do. The new context requires not
a static collection of admirable principles, but dynamic
political structures and procedures of the same nature as the
pragmatics of shorter cycles of change, non-determinism, high
efficiency, decentralization, and non-hierarchical modes of
operation. As the world reinvents itself as interwoven, it
breaks loose from prescriptions of local significance and
traditional import.
Although the number of emerging nations has increased-and nobody
knows how many more will emerge-we know of no political
documents similar to those articulated in 1776, 1789, 1848, or
even 1870. Nothing comparable to the Declaration of
Independence, the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen,
even the Communist Manifesto (no matter how discredited it is at
present), whether in substance or style, has accompanied current
political movements. The reason why no such document can emerge
can be connected to the inadequacies of literacy-based politics.
This civilization is no longer one of ideas, religious or
secular. It is characterized by processes, methodologies, and
inventions expressed in various sign systems that have a
dynamics different from that of language and literacy. The ideas
of the civilization of literacy address the mind, soul, and
spirit.
The most one can expect in our time of upheaval and change are
provisions for establishing conditions for unhampered human
interactions in the market and in other domains of human
self-constitution (religion, education, family). Steady
globalization means that the health of national economies,
education, sports, or art matters just as little as national
borders and the theatrics of diplomacy and international
relations. One can hear Dostoyevsky's prophetic line: "If it's
otherwise not possible, make us your servants, but make us
full." It hurts to repeat it, but it will hurt more to ignore it
at a time when nothing grows faster than the urge of millions of
people to emigrate to any developed country willing to take
them, even as second-class citizens, so long as they escape
their current abysmal condition.
The dynamics of change in the world is characterized by the
acknowledged need of many countries to be integrated in the
global economy while preserving or requiring a token of national
identity. State sovereignty is self-delusive in the context of
commercial, financial, or industrial autonomy that is impossible
to achieve. Self- determination, always to the detriment of some
other ethnic group, echoes those tribal instincts that make the
ideal of constitutional government an exercise in futility. The
underlying structure of literacy is reflected in national
movements and their dualistic system of values. The logic of the
good and the bad, more difficult to define in a context of
vagueness, but still pursued blindly, controls the way
coalitions are established, migration of populations is handled,
and national interests defended, while these very nations argue
for integration and free market.
Nevertheless, the language of today's politics is, in the final
analysis, shaped by the pragmatic framework. Its sentences are
written in the language of ledgers; the freedom it purports to
establish is that of commercial democracy, of equal access to
consumption, which happens to be the main political achievement
of recent history. The fact that the nations forming the
European Community gave up sovereignty with respect to the
market proves the point. That they still preserve diplomatic
representation, defense functions, and immigration policies only
attests to the conflict between the politics of the civilization
of literacy and the politics of the civilization of illiteracy.
The great documents of the literate past perpetuate the rhetoric
of the time of their writing. All the structural characteristics
of literacy, valid for the pragmatic framework that justifies
them, deeply mark the letter and spirit of these documents. They
ascertain politics as sequential, linear, and deterministic. They
rejoice in promulgating ideals that correspond to the scale of
humankind in which they guarantee the means that result in the
efficiency of industrial and productive society. Liberté,
egalité, fraternité are shorthand for rights of conscience,
ownership, and individual legal status. They are an expression
of accepted hierarchy and centralism to the degree that these
could be rendered relative as need required. Expectations of
permanency and universality were carried over from earlier
political experiences, or from religion, even though separation
of Church and State was emphatically proclaimed during the French
Revolution, and in revolutions that took place afterwards.
Amendments required by altered circumstances of human
self-constitution in practical experiences not anticipated in
the documents render their spirit relative and solve some of the
problems caused by the limitations mentioned.
Political documents, such as the ones mentioned above, are still
perceived as sacrosanct, regardless of their obvious inadequacy
in the pragmatic context of the civilization of illiteracy. It
is one thing to establish the sanctity of property in a framework
of agricultural praxis, whose politics was inspired by a shared
expectation of cycles parallel to natural cycles. Jefferson
envisioned the land as a vast agrarian state. "We are a people
of farmers. Those who work the fields are the chosen people of
God, if He had a chosen people. In their heart He planted the
real virtue." It is quite another thing to live in a pragmatic
context of new forms of property, some reflecting a notion of
sequential accumulation, others an experience of work with
machines, of humans seen as commodity. It is a new reality to
live in today's integrated world of property as elusive as new
designs, software, information, and ways to process it. To apply
to this context political principles inspired by a movement that
sought independence from England while using slaves brought from
Africa is questionable, at least.
Equality of natural rights, deriving from nature-based cycles, is
quite different from equality of political rights and
responsibilities deriving from a machine-inspired model for
progress. Both of these sources are different from the political
status of people involved in a pragmatics of global networking
and extreme task distribution. One can cautiously make the case
that the major political documents of the past were conceived in
reaction to an intolerable state of affairs and events, not
proactively, in anticipation of new situations and expectations.
These documents are the expression of the need to unify,
homogenize, and integrate forces in a world of relatively
autonomous entities-national states-competing more for resources
and productive forces than for markets. The values reflected
therein correspond to the values on which literacy is founded
and for which literacy-inspired ideologies fought.
But maybe these political documents are exemplary in another way,
let's say as an expression of moral standards that we apparently
lost in the course of 200 years; or of cultural standards for
both society and politicians, standards that can only rarely be
acknowledged today, if at all. If this is the case, which is
difficult to prove, what this seems to suggest is that the price
paid for higher political efficiency is the lost ethics of
politics, or its current deplorable intellectual condition. The
lack of correlation between political practice and language
results from the pragmatic context reflected in the condition of
language itself. While in real life, many literacies are at work,
Literacy (with a capital L) still dominates the structure of
politics. Its rules are applied to forms of human interaction
and evaluation that are not reducible to self-constitution in
language.
Political activity by and large follows patterns characteristic
of the civilization of literacy, despite its own indulgence in
non-linguistic semioses: the use of images, film, and video, or
the adoption of new networking technologies focused on
information exchange. Former expectations that politicians
adhere to standards of the civilization of literacy are carried
over in new political and practical experiences. The expectation
that their literacy should match that of political documents
belonging to the political tradition (the Constitution of the
United States of America, for instance) is paradoxical, though,
since the majority of Americans cannot recall what these
political documents state. And they see no reason to find out.
Their own practical experience takes place in domains for which
the past is of little consequence to their well-being. As things
stand now, the political principles required by the dynamics of
industrial society are embodied in institutions and laws
dedicated to their own preservation.
Free of concern for their own freedom, politically rooted in a
prior pragmatic framework, citizens take freedom for granted in
their new practical experiences and end up evading the
associated civic responsibility. They expect their politicians to
be literate for them. We deal here with a strange mixture of
assumptions: on the one hand, a notion of political life
corresponding to a context of homogeneity and a deterministic
view of the social world; on the other, a realization that
today's world requires specialized political practical
experience, means and methods characteristic of heterogeneous
and non-deterministic political processes. The simmering conflict
is met with the type of thinking that will not solve the problem
because it is the problem.
The coordination of political action through literacy-based
language and methods and the dynamics of a new political
practice, based on the characteristics of the civilization of
illiteracy, simply diverge. As in many other domains of literate
condition, it is as though institutions, norms, and regulations
take on lives of their own, as literate language does,
perpetuating their own values and expectations. They develop as
networks of interaction with an autonomous dynamics, uncoupled
from the dynamics of political life, even from the new pragmatic
context. The tremendous amount of written language (speeches,
articles, forms, contracts, regulations, laws, treatises) stands
in contrast to the very fast changes that make almost every
political text superfluous even before it is cast in the fast
eroding medium of print or in the elusive bits and bytes of
electronic processing.
Many economies have undergone, or realize they must undergo,
profound restructuring. Massive down-sizing, paralleled by
flatter hierarchies and smoother quality control, have affected
economic performance. But very little of this has touched the
sacrosanct centralized state institutions. In the USA alone, 14
departments, 135 federal agencies employing more than 2.1
million civilians and 1.9 million military personnel account for
$1.5 trillion in yearly expenditure. If the economy were as
inefficient as political activity is, we would face a crisis of
global proportion and consequences that are impossible to
anticipate.
This is why today, some citizens would write a Declaration of
Independence that begins with the following line: "We're mad as
hell and we're not going to take it anymore." But this would not
mean that they would vote. When five times more people watch
Married with Children than vote in primaries, one understands
that the morality and intellectual quality of the politician and
citizen correspond closely. Cynical or not, this observation
simply states that in the civilization of illiteracy, political
action and criteria for evaluating politics do not follow the
patterns of political practical experiences peculiar to the
civilization of literacy. Multiplied to infinity, choices no
longer undergird values, but options that are equally mediocre.
The issue of literacy from the perspective of politics is the
issue of the means through which political practice takes place.
A democracy resting solely upon the contribution to political
life in and through literate language is at the same time captive
to language. The experience of language resulted from
developments not necessarily democratic in nature. Embedded in
literacy, past practical experiences pertinent to a pragmatic
context appropriate to a different scale of humankind are often
an obstacle to new experiences. So are our distinctions of sex,
race, social status, space, time, religion, art, and sport. Once
in language, such distinctions simply live off the body of any
new design for political action. Language is not politically
neutral, and even less so is the literate practice of language.
Various minority groups made a very valid point in stating this.
Power relations, established in political practice, often become
relations in the literate use of language and of other means, as
long as they are used according to literacy expectations. It is
not that literacy prevents change; literacy allows for change
within the systematic domain of practices relying on the literate
practical experiences of language. But when literacy itself is
challenged, as it is more and more in our day, it ends up
opposing change.
Discrepancies between the language and actions of politics,
politicians, and political institutions and programs result from
the conflict between the horizon of literacy and the dynamics
for which the literate use of language is ill equipped. If the
formula deterioration of moral standards corresponds to the
failure of politics to meet its constituency's expectations, the
most pessimistic views about the future would be justified,
because politicians are not better or worse than their
constituency. But as with everything else in the new pragmatic
context, it is no longer individual performance that ensures the
success or failure of an activity. Integrating procedures
ascertain a different form of cooperation and competition. Such
processes are made possible by means characteristic of high
efficiency pragmatics, that is, task distribution, parallelism
and reciprocal testing, cooperation through networking, and
automated procedures for planning and management. They are
meaningful only in conjunction with motivations characteristic
of this age. If, on the other hand, the romantic notion that the
best become leaders were true of today's political experience,
we would have cause to wonder at our own stupidity. In fact, it
does not matter which person leads.
Political processes are so complex that the industrial model of
successful stewardship no longer makes sense. Political life in
society does not depend on political competence, people's
generosity, or self-motivation that escapes institutional,
religious, or ideological coercion. The degree of efficiency,
along with the right ascribed to people to partake in affluence,
speaks in favor of political experiences driven by pragmatic
forces. Such forces are at work locally and make sense only
within a context of direct effectiveness. But short of taking
these forces for granted, we cannot escape the need to
understand how they work and how their course can be controlled.