Here's a rule of thumb I routinely use: If one person screws up, then they're very likely at fault. If hundreds of people screw up, then the system or situation they're a part of is very likely at fault.
Now, there are obviously plenty of situations that are genuinely ambiguous, or that are over-determined, where you can readily find both individual and systemic factors to blame. (And, of course, there are intermediate levels of analysis--the small group, the institution, etc. So the individual/system dichotomy I develop below needs to be taken as a deliberately simplified first-order approximation.) But even in such situations, it can save you a whole lot of grief to step back and try to see which broad explanation is likely to yield the biggest immediate payoff in terms of changing the direction of things.
That's why I can share a great deal of frustration with individual politicians--even including members of the Progressive Caucus, for example, without necessarily focusing my blame on them.
Now, here's the thing: It's my belief that the period of time in which the blogosphere formed was a period when both sorts of explanations/approaches were much more evenly balanced. This was true for a variety of reasons, but the best way to summarize was to say that things were in a massive state of flux and uncertainty, typified in the realm of physics by what happens with common forms of phase transition:
A phase transition is the transformation of a thermodynamic system from one phase or state of matter to another.
A phase of a thermodynamic system and the states of matter have essentially uniform physical properties. During a phase transition of a given medium certain properties of the medium change, often discontinuously, as a result of some external condition, such as temperature, pressure, and others. For example, a liquid may become gas upon heating to the boiling point, resulting in an abrupt change in volume. The measurement of the external conditions at which the transformation occurs, is termed as the phase transition point.
Phase transitions are common occurrences observed in nature and many engineering techniques exploit certain types of phase transition.
The term is most commonly used to describe transitions between solid, liquid and gaseous states of matter, in rare cases including plasma.
During a phase transition, what's most important is the change in the energy state of the entire system: keep the heat on, and the water will turn to water vapor: it will boil. But at the same time, it needs specific places where the boiling process concentrates, as anyone knows who's watched water boil in a glass container. Likewise, when water vapor condenses into water, as dew forms in the morning, it does so at specific points, rather than everywhere equally at once. Because we have individual agency, at times in which social/political systems are transitioning like this, the actions we take to help create the change both "generate the heat" to alter the entire system, and specifically direct it toward particular condensation or boiling points--we bring particular pressure to bear on individuals and specific situations.
To put it simply, and perhaps over-simply, on a variety of fronts (most notably financial restructuring and health care reform, but arguably on climate change as well), the Obama administration has chosen the strategy of deploying regulated and subsidized private sector entities to achieve progressive policy results. This approach was a hallmark of the so-called Clintonian, "New Democrat" movement, and the broader international movement sometimes referred to as "the Third Way," which often defended the use of private means for public ends. (It's also arguably central to the American liberal tradition going back to Woodrow Wilson, and is even evident in parts of the New Deal and Great Society initiatives alongside elements of the "social democratic" tradition, which is characterized by support for publicly operated programs in key areas).
To be clear, this is not the same as the conservative "privatization" strategy, which simply devolves public responsibilities to private entities without much in the way of regulation. In education policy, to cite one example, New Democrats (and the Obama administration) have championed charter public schools, which are highly regulated but privately operated schools that receive public funds in exchange for successful performance of publicly-defined tasks. Conservatives have typically called for private-school vouchers, which simply shift public funds to private schools more or less unconditionally, on the theory that they know best how to educate children.
The First "Third Way"--Social Democracy, Was A GOOD THING.
In a comment, I raised the point that there often wasn't that much difference between conservative privatization and neoliberal "Third Way" privatization--see how little has changed since Bush in our use of mercenaries, for example. In this diary, I'd like to lay out a framework for understanding what I meant by this and why it must be so. The framework is that of the three "Third Ways". The first "Third Way" was social democracy, as exemplified by the German Social Democratic Party. It was a "Third Way" between naked capitalism and revolutionary socialism. Their main policy for gaining broad public support was universal health care-in the 1870s. It was a very popular idea-so popular, in fact, that conservative mastermind Otto Van Bismark decided to co-opt the idea, thereby depriving the social democrats of their signature issue, and implementing it in such a way that it furthered elite nationalist goals by giving German manufacturers a healthier, more secure, more productive and more loyal workforce to aid in their international competition with Britain and other industrial powers.
In my opinion the first "Third Way" was a good thing. The revolutionary socialists basically had the economics right, compared to the laissez-faire capitalists. It wasn't anything that indiividual capitalists did that was responsible for the enormous increase in wealth brought about by Industrial Revolution--they were simply positioned to capture a vastly disproportionate share of the proceeds--even as the working class, transformed from rural peasants into an urben proletariat, suffered a tremendous mass immiseration in the process. But the revolutionary socialists had most everything else wrong--especially the complete rejection of democracy, except for purely tactical purpose. By combining a socialist economic view with a democratic political view, this was a "Third Way" you could believe in. The others, not so much.
observers who want to lay a guilt trip on us about falling for Mousavi's smooth upper middle class schtick are simply ignoring the last 12 years of Iranian history.
Today, the situation in Iran seems very much in flux, as street demonstrations continued for a second day. Before discussing Iran specifically, though, I want to address the the larger world historical background.
In yesterday's discussion of what's happening in Iran, there was a lot of back and forth that seemed to me to be of the "Blind Men and the Elephant" kind--the Elephant being liberal social democracy. The diary I wrote was about the events unfolding in Iran as part of a centuries-long struggle for liberal social democracy punctuated with several such crucial moments which I referred to, and since it seems the Elephant got lost a bit in that discussion, I thought it worthwhile to begin saying a few words about it.
First off, stealing elections is not democratic. That's more or less ground zero for me. Democracy that's not liberal does not protect individual rights. It would allow a democratic majority to arbitrarily put someone to death. And, of course, the right to vote--which of course includes the right to have it counted--os one of those rights. Democracy that's not social does not recognize protect social and economic rights. It would allow any number of people to starve to death.
That's why I see liberal social democracy as the minimal acceptable form of government. And I see the struggle to achieve LSD on a worldwide basis as the great struggle of the past 250 years--a struggle we are still very much in the midst of.
The post-WWII expansion of widespread prosperity, leading to the first truly mass middle class, first centered in Western Europe and North America, then spreading around the globe, has seen a reorientation toward what are called "post-materialist values". There is a great potential here, as this represents a great maturing in the potential for collective self-government, but there is a danger as well, to the extent that people born into conditions of basic material security may not appreciate what it has taken to achieve that state, or what it means that so many still live outside of it.
There have been, and will be posts here on openleft, that call for real pressure, strong pressure, on the drive to 'reform' our healthcare system, and what that 'reform' should be.
But there have been no diaries, the frontpage thrust of the debate here at openleft is on the economy, the debates and calls to action, such as the necessary calls to primary those who stand ion the way on necessary legistation are on jobs and laws. There are calls to organize around accuracy in reporting, the history of progressives and Keysian economic plans, calls to reinstate civil rights protection and a threatening survielance society.
But the debate on healthcare is lacking.
That is a shame. This is the time for 'economic, jobs and worker rights progressives' to listen closely to what 'health progressives' are saying, have been saying, will be saying louder and louder in the months and years to come.
The opportunity, the responsibility, right now to act desicively is greater than at any other time in our history. The ongoing lurch of history will beging to have turbulence, the debates about other significant issues will heat up, the situations in other crisis will press for attention. Right NOW is the time.
