Listen to this
Like many of my colleagues around the world I am increasingly concerned by the evolving political landscape of global capitalism and its implications for young people and our ability to care for them. My concern is centered around patterns emerging globally that indicate a new world order that could dramatically marginalize and disenfranchise millions of human beings and create a landscape toxic to our ability to do CYC work as relational practice. While that may sound alarmist, I am deeply troubled by what I see as the new systems of power fighting for dominance at tremendous cost to human beings, but also all other living things.
The profound threat of the current situation is more immanent for anyone who is situated in the physical reality of war zones with active threats to life itself. The struggle for power and dominance within the contested space of global capitalist Empire would appear to be escalating and the guardrails of civil society are being eroded with astonishing speed. The raw assertion of military force at the expense of an expanding number of people numbered as civilian casualties or collateral damage is ravaging the remnants of what might have been emerging new forms of self-governance.
The warlords have returned with the ensuing brutality and corruption that accompanies the sheer assertion of colonial appropriation and exploitation. The scope is stunning including Gaza, the West Bank, Israel, Ukraine, Congo, Haiti, Ethiopia Lebanon, Iran, Russia, Myanmar, Mali, Burkina Faso, among others. A recent analysis of the human costs entailed in these war zones indicated that
One in seven people worldwide is estimated to have been exposed to conflict between July 2023 and 2024. In previous years, the increase in conflict has been stark. During the period of July 2020 to June 2021, ACLED records 100,272 events and 13% global exposure to conflict.
Such conflicts certainly entail military actions by nation states, but there are also extremely violent areas of the world that entail non-state actors including Mexico, Brazil, Cameroon, Pakistan, and India to name but a few. Violence over illicit trade in commodities such as drugs, precious gems, and minerals has also turned significant segments of nation states into undeclared war zones. The damage to the ability to access the most necessities of life for children and adults caught in the crossfire is devastating.
In Mexico extortion of local farmers by organized crime organizations is significantly impacting consumer prices for avocados, chicken, fish, limes, mangoes, papayas, and tomatoes raising prices by over 25%. In addition, criminal violence has displaced nearly 700,000 people from their homes. Many of these were families living in rural communities relying on agriculture, forestry, and small-scale commerce to generate income. Hidden in these numbers are hungry and displaced children whose homes and communities have been uprooted economically and physically.
This displacement and other displacements around the world have put millions of people in motion, looking for safety and the basic necessities of life. And again, hidden in these statistics are young people without homes, medical care, or enough to eat. The question of hunger and starvation caused by the violence of war is an ever-present threat to young people across the globe. In worst case scenarios, such as Gaza, a bag of flour can cost $150.00 US dollars in the South and over $1000.00 US dollars in the North. In addition to bombs, starvation, and disease, the lack of clean water is killing children or threatening their capacity to thrive at an accelerated rate.
We might imagine a world in which this level of unimaginable suffering would be met by compassion and care. That all efforts would be made by the rest of the world to provide safe spaces for those in flight and at risk. While there are certainly those charitable organizations and communities that do all they can to provide safe passage and care, there is regrettably an increasing number of those of us who are hardening their hearts against those in need. There is hateful rhetoric that supports and justifies state sanctioned violence that kills children daily. There are calls for closing access to immigration and sanctuary for those in flight for their lives. There are identitarian appeals that reject others based on race, gender, sexuality, religion or ethnicity. There is a reassertion of the values of colonial hierarchies, values, and practices. All of these trends preach the gospels of hatred and exclusion. And again, hidden in this rhetoric is a hatred of certain children and a willingness to let them suffer and even die.
In some ways, we are entering a new feudalism in which profoundly brutal hierarchies of wealth and power divide us against ourselves and our neighbors. Even in the wealthiest and seemingly most secure nation states, there is an expanding class of people who cannot feed themselves or their families, afford housing or medical care, feel assured that they are safe from random violence, or that those in power will care about what happens to them. There is a precarity to life circumstance that breeds fear, paranoia, anxiety, depression, and rage. Even for those living at the center of global capitalist wealth and plenitude, there is no certitude of security or care. While the valorization of mental health is ubiquitous, the trauma of daily life makes the very possibility of real mental health a sad joke. No amount of counseling or psychopharmacology will mend the brokenness of a society that has no regard for life. For a generation of children raised under such conditions the prospects for their future are worrisome at best.
What does it mean that we are entering a new feudalism? At the most basic level it means a reversal of the impetus towards democratic forms of governance in which power and resources are more evenly distributed across society. Historically, feudalism was the monarchical system of rule in which kings and queens had absolute power over all segments of society. They owned all the land, and everything produced by those who did the labor. Wealth was distributed unevenly with most of it going to a small percentage of people who worked to keep the kings and queens in power.
A recent meme on facebook gives a good comparative representation of how the emerging system of the new feudalism compares to traditional feudalism and how it appears to be developing under 21st century capitalism:
In the emerging system of rule, the monarchs are replaced by billionaires or in another term oligarchs. Under global capitalism, this is a small number of extremely wealthy individuals or families who have concentrated wealth and control of global production. This is not a random or accidental development. There are think tanks, organizations, and wealthy individuals who are asserting that the utility of the democratic nation state no longer functions. These new feudalists argue that 21st century society needs to be run by strong centralized forms of rule.
Although the ideological justifications seem to vary somewhat, with some arguing for rule by technocrats who ostensibly understand the emerging virtual world of AI and cyber-social forms of culture and society. Others argue for a centralized form of governance centered on a reactionary investment in religious fundamentalism such as Hindu or Christian nationalism. In either case, the argument is that the 21st century world is too corrupt or complex to be left to the judgement of the average person. Those who dismiss democracy insist that the troubles of global governance in our contemporary world need a strong man or group of men to guide us, either by returning us to a mythical past of religious purity, reviving the colonial imperative of nationalist empire, or assimilating us to the Cyber world of the future.
What is often left out of these descriptions of a new society is the fact that in addition to centralizing power in the hands of one dictator or a small group of oligarchs is the concomitant accumulation of wealth. As Hardt and Negri point out in their ever more prescient book “Empire” as capitalism has expanded globally, its economic and political force has expanded with it. The force of the money sign has become so powerful as to infiltrate all aspects of civil society and social identity. Transnational corporations operate as transit points for this flow of not only material wealth, but also cultural and social transformation. The power of the nation state and democratic rule becomes subservient to the dictates of capital. Because the form of rule is premised in flows of money, there is no actual center to the system that governs it all. The Empire becomes a decentered and unstable form of absolute rule that operates at all levels of society. Under this kind of Empire, there is an ongoing struggle for wealth and power among the small group of extremely wealthy families and individuals who are nominally in charge of transnational corporations. This struggle manifests through the absolute exploitation of all living things, including human beings, and ongoing internecine warfare over who controls markets and the future development of technology and profit. In this neo-feudal struggle over who will be king, queen, or emperor, the rest of humanity are simply fodder for the creation of wealth and influence.
This is a dark vision indeed and raises the question of what we in CYC can do under such circumstances. After all, it can seem as though the array of power in our contemporary global society is quite overwhelming. The brutality of appropriation and disregard for the young people we serve is so all encompassing. It can all feel as though the best we can do is triage work for the wounded and grieving for the dead. And that is good and necessary work. But, I would argue that we have another role as well, and that is to preserve the seeds of an alternative world in which the care for life is valued. To do that though, we must resist the seductions of the contradictory impulses to join in the plunder of life and the despair of seeing the devastation such violence entails for all that we love. If we are not careful, that impossible set of conflicting imperatives can lead to cynicism and apathy.
However, if we pay attention to every opportunity to see the affirmative force of life in the world around us, we stand the chance of planting seeds of possibility that might withstand the darkness of our times and circumstances. To build living relations with the young people we come in contact with and leave a resonant trace, a capacity for another kind of life has immense capacity.
But we have to be careful not to be to anxious. We must hold those seeds close and pass them generation to generation until there is a shift in the world that would allow for such seeds to have a fertile place to grow, In our current form of capitalist subjectivity we are not patient people. We want what we want now. But for the seeds of living relations to prosper, we must wait until the times are right. Of course, I don’t know if that will be generations away or tomorrow. But we must be always watchful for an opening for life, love, and joyful connection, to store away or bring into full blossoming the light of a new world to come.
