Alternative Editorial: Resist The Devil We Know
Since we launched Spring on March 1st we’ve had a lot of engagement from people who had never considered the possibility of a new kind of politics. Up till now the prospect of political change – new forms and expression of power – came in the form of new parties or new policies. Change would continue to be led from the front by the most competent or charismatic people and the citizens would have a chance to vote differently every four or five years. We call this party-politics.
No doubt in the future party politics will persist – although in the UK that would be immeasurably and easily improved by proportionality. But beyond that, there is every sign that a new political system will include significant new elements, currently taking shape but not yet constituted. This process is what we would call socio-politics: the politics of the social realm.
Again, this is not a new term but in the age of the internet it has the chance of taking unprecedented form as a parallel polis. We’ve talked a lot about this emerging over the past seven years but the terms on which a parallel polis can become a decisive game-changer for people, communities and planet are yet to be discovered. Suffice to say we are not talking about new institutions only, but a new political paradigm – meaning a new framework for understanding what counts as power, resource and agency.
The etymology of the word politics takes us back to Greece where our current notion of democracy was birthed. From there, we accept politics as being about governance - decision making - and hard power management (money, weapons). It points at a state and a citizenry (polis), living within the rules and regulations that the state sets.
However, it’s tricky to go back to Greece as the starting point because only free men were enfranchised – women and slaves had no voice. Without re-writing history, it might be better to use another interpretation of the word polis as meaning “citadel, city, or community".
Place-based polises would offer quite a different starting point for a future politics because from the word go they would imply a people in relationship to each other and the place they live. Their questions and ideas would be rooted and make constant reference to a territory – rather than simply evoke abstract principles that find it hard to land in reality. For example, democracy is a great call, but how do you practice that where you live; how does it shape your agency?
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When exploring a new paradigm, one must pull hard against the gravity of the old one: the devil we know. How might a socio-politics look once the people are imagined as being of a place, rather than of a state? It’s not a small shift of perspective, since the state which imagines you as its charge – its responsibility and mandate - and governs through a party-political system only has the active buy-in (as represented by party membership) of 2% of the electorate. The vast majority of people are not engaged in the affairs of the state other than as an authority that they have little power to affect.
Even so, when we self-organise – largely cosmolocally - often using different tools, logic, goals, our habit is to still refer back to the state for permission and resources to act. As if we believe ourselves to be powerless or our goals unreal, until we can leverage the credibility of the state. This is so even in an era when the governments of the world have proved themselves to be hugely complicit in the socio-economic-environmental collapse we are now experiencing.
With the launch of Spring we find ourselves having to use multiple reference points to clarify ‘not that’ (party politics) ‘but this’ (socio-politics). Not so much because it is hard to understand as an idea but because it is hard to embody in our daily lives.
For example, when we held a collaboratory in Eastbourne in April, 2017, those gathered decided that the most urgent problem in the community was loneliness. It was causing mental health problems, a loss of social fabric with people staying at home reluctant to face society, even turning to suicide. They proposed a series of cafes dotted across the town where solo people could regularly gather – but then turned to the council for funding help.
However, the council had no budget for this other than as care or social work, which was not meeting the need for community that loneliness calls for. In the end local people got a number of already established cafes involved, who agreed to put aside a number of dates a year for this focus.
The benefits were notable. Not only did the project generate a lot of new relationships within the community, but the initiators felt they could design and own the project without feeling overly defined by disinterested parties. In addition, those who benefited – lonely people of all ages – felt noticed and cared for in the community they lived in. Not dealt with as a problem to be fixed by social services, running on budget-determined time-clocks.
This is not an argument against the state, nor the services they bring (paid for by our taxes), all of which remain vital. Yet it is an argument for the social polis becoming more sovereign, creative and relational. Generating new value where the government did not even see a lack. Answering emotional needs that fell outside of the agenda party politics seeks to promote. We discover that we are not homo economicus – defined by our economy and material needs. But bio-psycho-social-spiritual entities that have complex needs that are more often met by community, not budgets alone.
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That doesn’t mean money becomes unimportant. Socio-politics is not another name for the volunteer sector: where mostly middle-class people engage simply because they have more time and resources. At best it involves the full diversity of people living in the place, thereby generating new inputs and opportunities for work. Whether we are describing community wealth building, Asset Based Community Development (ABCD), local currencies, local energy or food projects – social entrepreneurs of all kinds can be involved in generating a fourth sector economy in each location. It doesn’t happen overnight but there are plenty of models that offer methods of bringing people and resources together, in ways that generate many forms of social capital that add up to flourishing.
Not that but this (3)
Maybe the most difficult thing to achieve in socio-politics is staying true to the language of the polis. One should avoid giving status only to technocratic words and thought patterns – strategies, ideologies, power formats – and immerse oneself deeper into the lived experience of people. Notice where the energy bubbles up, what its quality is, what is being generated that matters to people. This is where the agency lives – where it can grow and develop. And how people come to see themselves as the source of a better future rather than as the weakest link.
This is why we spend as much time immersed in arts scenes, festivals and football culture as we do in town halls or workshops. These are the spaces where people willingly congregate, share their lives and appreciate the good things available to them – less products, more experience. It’s not a low common denominator of base emotions – it’s just as often a much higher bar of complex feelings. People congregating is not simply ‘letting go’ (although that’s a valuable aspect) – it’s also re-creation: the re-“making whole” of people mechanised by work. What is known in Gaelic—speaking nations as the ‘craic’ is hard to describe – but it champions fellow feeling in a challenging world.
Add to that the feminist phrase, ‘the personal is political’ – which relates our most human dilemmas to how we allocate resources. These are the realities of most peoples’ lives that party politics rarely credits – lack of time, need for status and autonomy, invasion of privacy and so much more. Creating conditions for people to live at ease and with motivation is the natural goal of socio-politics.
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Core to all these alternative ways to be political is leaving behind the simple binaries that are so easily polarised. Left v Right, Men v Women, Rich v Poor – all useful as distinctions (not that but this) but increasingly less useful as tools of division (this against that).
Particularly relevant is the notion that the alternative to top-down politics is bottom-up action. Who should ever consider themselves as being below the authorities, powerless, small? Socio-politics makes the much bolder claim that the alternative to top down is the whole of society, self-organising, regenerative, in which the top-down plays just a part.
All the above is only an initial walk up to the question: what might a living, breathing socio-politics look like in the years to come? Please join us in figuring out the possible reality as it unfolds in a place near you.