The Revolt of Homo Economicus – by Tatalo Alamu

We return to this arduous and thankless labour this morning, and to a world out of joints. Almost everywhere on the globe, humankind is in bitter revolt against a system that has failed to satisfy their primary yearning for food and shelter. Economic disorganization runs ahead of political organization. The post-empire model of nation-state is suddenly facing its stiffest and most severe test since the Treaty of Westphalia.

Even the founding Empire, Great Britain, the one that was billed to last forever, is showing signs of finally unravelling at the seams of ethnic particularities. After the latest Brexit fiasco which saw Boris Johnson thumped once again by a clearly distressed House of Commons, the pound sterling took a savage pounding from the American dollar.  The almighty symbol of British fiscal might has tumbled to its lowest value in thirty years.

So scandalized was a notable British historian and right-wing columnist by this development this past week that he is calling for a commission of enquiry into the national humiliation that the Brexit debacle has become. There will be plenty of room for national enquiries, but that is if Britain survives in one piece.

There are many who view Britain’s problem as arising from a dearth of visionary leadership and a fundamentally defective leadership recruitment process which revels in paddy-paddy politics and its glorification of mediocrity and mendacity.

The result is a parliament stuffed with deadbeats, over-pampered paperweights and a leadership cadre groaning under the weight of its own abject incompetence.  Boris Johnson is a prime exemplar of this spectacular collapse of politics as an instrument of social engineering. The other is Donald Trump from a different route and a different process.

The post-empire model of nation-state is suddenly facing its stiffest and most severe test since the Treaty of Westphalia.

With their back to the wall and faced with economic annihilation, ordinary folks are fighting back. The misdirected anger has led to xenophobia, extreme nationalism and the rise of right-wing populism in Europe and North America particularly in Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Hungary, Poland, the United States, Austria, Holland and in misbegotten enclaves of humanity such as Albania and Bulgaria where a football match was almost halted as a result of race-taunting crowds.

In many of these countries, the misdirected national anger has led to the dramatic ascendancy of right-wing populist governments.  Many who made their modern reputation as storied frontiers of globalization now find themselves stoking the global ember of racial hysteria on a scale the world has never witnessed before even as they circle the wagon of nationalism against the onslaught of the globalism and globalization they have hitherto championed.

The global economic bondage foisted on the rest of the world in the guise of globalization has now shown that it is no respecter of territorial boundaries or national identity. What diminishes other nations and sentences their harried and harassed denizens to a life of economic bondage and global peonage will surely come back to the founding falconers.

In the past fortnight or so, the revolt of Homo Economicus has taken on a decidedly economic hue. Driven to social perdition by worsening economic insecurities, crowds of protesters have stormed the streets of Beirut, demanding for an immediate amelioration of their economic miseries or revolution, or both. They have refused to be placated by a dramatic slash in ministerial salaries and perquisites and an impassioned plea by President Michel Aoun who also hinted darkly that mere street protests cannot topple a security state.

The same scene has repeated itself in Santiago, Chile, Buenos Aires, Argentina, Tripoli, Libya, Barcelona, La Paz, Algiers, and in crowds permanently confronting mounted police on the streets of Hong Kong which has now been reduced to an economic hulk of its former buoyant self. In this frontier of western civilization which is itself a product of an earlier wave of globalization, Tiananmen Square may be loading all over again. In many of these societies, economic discontent finds perfect outlet in political disaffection.

When everything has been factored in, it may well be that what is confronting the world is the decline of the nation-state paradigm which has helped to shape the destiny of humankind in the last four centuries or so. This thesis has been mooted several times in this column. Despite the attendant bloodfest and millennial miseries, the nation-state paradigm has helped to push humanity forward in the perpetual drive to a higher telos. But it is beginning to look like a spent force.

Yet if the old world is expiring, there is nothing tangible in the horizon to replace it. Or it may well be the case of the more things change, the more they remain the same. Despite the global ascendancy of the nation-state paradigm, it is empire-nations such as Britain, America, Russia, Japan and now China that have shaped the destiny of humanity in the last three centuries.

Hitler’s quest to turn the emergent German state into an empire-nation ended in peril and perdition with Germany being thwarted by the superior nous of the Anglo-American civilization and the munitions and magnificent fighting spirit of the Soviet soldiers who smashed their way to his bunker reducing the whole nation to smithereens in the process.

It is no secret that Adolf Hitler privately admired the Brits and the Americans. As a corporal in the First World War and as a ruler of Germany and prime instigator in the Second War, Hitler was endlessly fascinated by the superior bulk and sheer size of the average American soldier.

The irony was not lost on him that it was the descendants of poor and miserable Germans who were forced by economic necessity to emigrate to America in the eighteenth and nineteenth century who had returned to teach the home country a memorable lesson.  Globalization in its homeward journey may yet teach the western world an unforgettable lesson in reverse colonization.

In keeping with the global play of irony and history’s great sense of humour, the Russians seem to have a new Tsar in Vladimir Putin having driven the Romanov clan out of the Winter Palace. Driven by an injured sense of Slavic nationalism, Putin has managed to put Russia on a sound economic footing after the western-inspired reign of economic terror by the local oligarchs.

Whatever the misgivings about his autocratic ways, it is to Putin’s eternal glory that he has given post-revolution Russia a new sense of direction, purpose and global punching power. Accustomed to authoritarian father-figures from the days of their ancient Tsars, majority of Russians appear willing to trade the authoritarian excesses of the former KGB supremo for rising prosperity and the feel-good sense that comes from purposeful and patriotic governance. There is no xenophobia and insular malice coming from contemporary Russia. It is the economy, stupid.

Pretty much the same can be said of contemporary China. Having driven their old emperors out of business, the Chinese now have new mandarin emperors firmly entrenched in the Forbidden City. But the new emperors have their clothes on and their head firmly in place. In what is unarguably the most staggering economic miracle of all time, the Chinese leadership has lifted most of its people from the clutches and ravages of poverty into life more abundant.

Capitalism and democracy are not necessarily coterminous. While the ancient Greeks taught the world that there can be democracy without capitalism, the Chinese have taught the modern world that there can be capitalism without democracy.

As its economy overhauls the American economy, China is poised to teach the modern world more memorable lessons in global power-play. As usual with global developments in the last four hundred years, it is in the surviving hell-holes of Africa where there is neither genuine capitalism nor real democracy that this global play of giants is bound to be most gripping and engrossing.

In the cradle of humanity, the law of uneven development which dictates the dynamics of evolution also applies to the paradigm of the nation-state.  While many developed countries are already grappling with the complexities and possibilities of post-nation emergences, Africa is stuck in the groove with most African nations unable to consolidate or break out of the colonial cocoon of imposed nationhood.  Authentic and organic nationhood is either in retreat or in total abeyance.

Capitalism and democracy are not necessarily coterminous. While the ancient Greeks taught the world that there can be democracy without capitalism, the Chinese have taught the modern world that there can be capitalism without democracy.

Consequently, the normally tortuous transition from authoritarian, military-bedevilled societies to full political, intellectual and economic modernity has been rendered even more traumatic by weak, undisciplined and unfocused leadership given to lethargic indolence and primitive hedonism. The civil populace which could have acted as a countervailing force and power for good is too weak and enervated, too dazed and disoriented by sheer poverty and bitter ethnic divisions to act in pan-national concert.

If we take Nigeria as an example, it is obvious that what we have had since 1999 is not democratic rule in any sense of the word but civilian autocracy, a hybrid between full-blown military dictatorship and genuine civil rule. The 1999 Constitution guarantees and underwrites this strange aberration and as long as it subsists Nigeria is stuck in the morass of “elected” autocrats, an ideal breeding ground for former military dictators and their anti-democratic civilian subalterns.

It is only under this hybrid monstrosity that the frantic assaults on the rule of law that we have witnessed, the frenzied onslaught on the press and freedom of association, the brazen rigging of federal and state elections, the canonization of thieves and the flagrant subversion of the constitution as seen in the travesty of impeachment that took place in Kogi state last week can be contextualized.

If it were possible to put a time-frame to these infractions, one is sure that impassive and long-suffering Nigerians will put up with them as a necessary national sacrifice to traumatic transition. Unfortunately, no such timeline exists.

Yet unless there is executive remorse and contrition countervailed by judicial dismay, legislative discontent combined with popular outrage, the situation is bound to degenerate to social anomie and widespread anarchy which may gravely imperil the nation in the shortest run. Judging by rising incidents of social disobedience and the sullen angry faces staring you down on the streets, the revolt of Homo Economicus may well be underway in Nigeria.

This article was first published in The Nation of October 27, 2019