I
The title may come off as a mass of abstractions, but it is my attempt to move analysis beyond the vile repellant man while avoiding commonplaces we encounter but which tell us nothing about the next steps ahead, e.g.:
What happens then when the state effectively becomes “strong” and retakes a more active role against the free market, but does not necessarily move toward where we want? What happens when the state presents itself to us in its most naked form: not as the neutral instrument that can be used for the common good, but as what it really is: the guarantor of capitalist profit?
Because that is exactly what we see both with Trump and with the limits that progressive strategies faced: the state does make “public policy,” but public policy at the service of capital, not social majorities.
(accessed online at https://www.tni.org/en/article/did-trump-steal-our-agenda-why-fighting-free-trade-isnt-enough-anymore
I agree with every word and sentence as far as it goes. But it does not go far enough because of that quoted term, “public policy”.
First, the term doesn’t deserve scare quotes. Public policy is the stuff of life and interaction like you find in a good novel or film. Second and related, really existing public policies, at least for the major issues with which I’m familiar, are much more complicated than the politics, dollars and jerks doing the servicing. There is a granularity there, and to telegraph ahead, it’s a granularity made particularly suitable to policy and management as experienced and lived.
Why is this important? Because, professionally, I don’t believe that pitching and then keeping the analysis at the level of free market, the state, capitalism, and a synecdoche called Trump (like “The White House says”) lead to policy-relevant conclusions locally and regionally. Principles no more macro-design every micro-operation than does every micro-operation of Donald J. Trump macro-design all policy. The actionable granularity happens in between.
II
What is this “granularity made particularly suitable to policy and management as experienced and lived”? Yes, it’s the devil in the details of policy implementation and operation. But those details in a crucial sense include what now absent as much as what’s now present.
Presidents claiming emergency powers are nothing new in the US. The claim now, however, is that what had hitherto been the status quo ante is the very emergency we face, at least when it comes to levels of immigration, neoliberalism and international security. But that status quo ante also includes the Founders’ proviso that, while presidents may need emergency powers in extraordinary times, their exercise would not be precedent for future policies. That however is precisely what is being claimed when the current Treasury Secretary states, “the national emergency is avoiding a national emergency”.
So what? Emergency powers accruing to leaders is, of course, a very old, high overwritten policy palimpsest, even if we limit the analysis to Caesarism and from the Founders to the present. Over this time and space, the exercise of presidential emergency powers (Lincoln during the Civil War, Roosevelt during World War II) has often been associated with violence, and so too should more violence be no surprise were the historical no-precedent-for-future-policy excised from current readings off the policy palimpsest.
III
Now stop, and assert the very caveat I introduced about discussions at too high a level of abstraction.
The fact is that the violence will not be homogenous and universal. Local/regional differences will be manifest, as we have already seen. This differentiation is necessitated not only because of resisting higher-level agendas, but also because of defending lower-level ones. The combination of case-specific resistance and defence is, I argue, one highly suitable to a more granular policy and management.
Reducing that resistance and that defence to the standard explanation of policy as a function of politics, dollars and jerks is a grave mistake.
WHEN COMPLEX IS AS SIMPLE AS IT GETS 