While the debates are going on, these new practical experiences are taking hold in the global economy. Networks, in full expansion, are altering the nature of human transactions to the extent that fewer and fewer people partic.i.p.ate in elections because they know that the function of these elections-to present choice-is no longer politically relevant. There is a need to bring politics closer to individuals; and this need can be acknowledged only within structures of individual empowerment, as opposed to empty representation.
Political activity resulted in norms, inst.i.tutions, values, and a consciousness of belonging to society. Not by any stretch of the imagination is politics a harmonizing activity, because to live with others, to enter a contract and pursue one"s individual goals within its limitations, means to accept a condition of a sui generis trade-off. Political experiences involve, in various degrees, skills and knowledge for giving life and legitimacy to trade-offs. Language is the blood that flows through the arteries of the political animal. When tamed by literacy, this language defines a very precise realm of political life. The heartbeat of the literate political animal corresponds to a rhythm of life and work controlled by literacy. The accelerated rhythm that became necessary under a new scale of experiences requires the liberation of political language from the control of literacy, and the partic.i.p.ation of many languages in political experiences.
It should come as no surprise that the expectation of language skills, even when language changes, in people involved in the practical experience of politics is carried over from one generation to another. Regardless of the level of sophistication reached by a particular language, and of the specific form of political practice, effective use of powerful means of expression and communication is required. Even when they did not know how to write, kings and emperors were regarded as being better writers than those who could. They would dictate to the scribe, who created the perception that they probably translated what higher authorities whispered into their ears.
Even when their rhetoric was weak, the masters of persuasion they used were seen as only agents of power. Books were attributed to political leaders; victory in war was credited to them, as well as to military commanders. Law codes were a.s.sociated with their names, and even miracles, when politics joined the forces of magic and religion (often playing one against the other). All this and more represent the projection of expectations.
The particular expectations of literacy confirm values a.s.sociated with its characteristics. Politics and the ideals embodied in the Enlightenment-it carried into action political aspirations originating in religion-and the Industrial Revolution cannot be separated. Expectations of permanency, universality, reason, democracy, and stability were all embodied in the political experience. New forms of political activism were encouraged by literacy and new inst.i.tutions emerged. Awareness of boundaries among cultures and languages increased. Centralism was inst.i.tuted, and hierarchies, some very subtle, others insidious, were promoted with the help of the very powerful instrument of language. Within this context, the practical experience of politics established its own domain and its own criteria for effectiveness, very different from those in the ancient city-state or in the pragmatics of feudalism. Identification of the professional politician, different from the heir to power, was part of this process. Politics opened to the public and affirmed tolerance, respect for the individual, and equality of all people before the law. Political functions were defined and political inst.i.tutions formed. Rules for their proper operation were encoded through literate means. The alliance between politics and literacy would eventually turn into an incestuous love, but before that happened, emanc.i.p.ation of human political experiences would reach a historic climax in the revolutions that took place during this time.
To celebrate all these accomplishments, while remaining aware of the many shadows cast upon them by prejudices carried over from previous political experiences (in regard to s.e.x, race, religion, ownership), was a task of monumental dimensions. We can and must acknowledge that human political experiences played a more important role than in previous social contexts in maximizing efficiency in the pragmatic framework that made literacy necessary. It was at this time that the role of education, and especially the significance of access to it, were politically defined and pursued according to the efficiency expectations that led to the Industrial Revolution. The process was far from being universal. The western part of the world took the lead. Its political inst.i.tutions encouraged investment, and education was such an investment.
Political inst.i.tutions reflect the pragmatic condition of the citizen and, in turn, effect changes in the experience of people"s life and work. While the word illiteracy probably first appeared print in 1876 in an English publication, in 1880 illiteracy in Germany was only one per cent of the population: "Heil dem Knig, Heil dem Staat/ Wo man gute Schulen hat!" went the slogan hailing the king and state where good schools were the rule. This was the time when Thomas Alva Edison invented the incandescent light bulb (1879); Alexander Graham Bell, the telephone (patented in 1876); Nicklaus Otto, the four-stroke gas engine (1876); Nikola Tesla, the electric alternator (1884).
Nevertheless, before Leo Tolstoy wrote War and Peace, he learned that only one per cent of all Russians were literate. In many other parts of the world, the situation was not much better. In addition, this was also a time when literacy was literally an instrument of political discrimination. Those not literate were looked down on, as were women (some held back from literacy and study), as were nations considered ignorant and of inferior morals (Russia being one of them).
Reflected in the ability to dominate nature, the growth of science and the use of effective technological means influenced the political nature of states, as well as the relation among nations. Rationality formed the foundation of legality; the state ascertained priority over individuals-a very direct reflection of its literate nature. Rules were applied to everyone equally (which later translated into an effective "all are equal," quite different from the empty slogans of populist movements). The rationality in place derived from literacy. To be effective meant to dominate those who were less effective (citizens, communities, nations).
Far from being a historic account, these observations suggest that the literate political animal pursues political goals in line with the sequential nature of literacy in a context of centralized power, acknowledged hierarchies, and deterministic expectations. The political inst.i.tution is a machine, one among many of the pragmatics of the Industrial Revolution. It did one thing at a time, and one part of the machine did not have to know what the other was doing. Energy was used between input and output, and what resulted-political decisions, social policies, regulations-was ma.s.s production of whatever the society could negotiate: lubrication diminished friction. Parties were formed, political programs articulated, and access to power opened to many. Two premises were implicit in the literate discourse: people should be able to express opinions on issues of public interest; and they should be able to oversee the political process, a.s.suming responsibility for the way they exercise their political rights. These two premises introduced an operational definition of democracy and freedom, eventually encoded in the doctrine of liberal democracy. They also confirmed the literate expectation that democracy and freedom, like literacy, are universal and eternal.
The failure of literacy-based politics takes place on its own terms. Dictatorships (left-wing and right-wing), nationalism, racism, colonialism, and the politics of disastrous wars and of the leveling of aspirations that leads to the mediocrity embodied in bureaucracy have brought the high hopes, raised during the climax of literate political action, to the low of indifference and cynicism we face in our day. Instead of the people"s broader partic.i.p.ation in the political process, a hope raised by progress in making equality and freedom effectively possible, society faces the effects of the ubiquitous dedication to enjoyment in corrupted welfare states unable to meet the obligations they a.s.sumed, rightly or not. At times, it seems that the complexity of political experience prevents even the people"s symbolic partic.i.p.ation in government. Volunteering and voting, a right for which people fought with a pa.s.sion matched only by their current indifference, have lost their meaning. There is no proper feedback to reinforce the will and dedication to partic.i.p.ate. It also seems that in advocating equality and freedom, a common denominator so low was established that politics can only administer mediocrity, but not stimulate excellence. From among all its functions, nationhood, as the embodiment of the experience of political self-const.i.tution, seems to maintain only the function of redistribution.
Individual liberty, hard fought for under the many signs of literacy, appears to be conformistic at best, and opportunistic. To many citizens, it is questionable whether the lost sense of community is a fair trade-off for the acquired right to individualism. The hundreds of millions again and again seduced by the political discourse of hatred (in fascism, communism, nationalism, racism, fanaticism) wasted their hard-won rights in order to take away from others property, freedom of expression and religion, liberty, dignity, and eventually life. Politics after Auschwitz was not meant to become yet another instance of pettifogging. But it did, and we all are aware of the opportunistic appropriation of tragedy (hunger, oppression, disease, ecological disaster) in current political entertainment.
The efficiency expected from political action under the a.s.sumptions of literacy is characteristic of the scale at which people const.i.tute themselves. The nation is the world, or the only thing that counts in this world of opportunity and risk. The rest is, relatively speaking, superfluous. Nations, even those that acknowledge the need to integrate, try to secure functioning as autonomous ent.i.ties. National borders may be less guarded, but they are maintained as borders of literacy translated into economic opportunity. When the goal of autonomous existence is no longer attainable, expansion is the answer. Ideological, racial, economic and other types of arguments are articulated in order to justify the extension of politics in the experience of battle. The two World Wars brought literate politics to its climax, and the Cold War (the first global battle) to its final crisis, but not yet to its end, even though the enemy vanished like a humorless ghost.
A closer look at the systematic aspects of the political experience of human self- const.i.tution should prepare us for approaching the current political condition. This should at least provide elements for understanding all those acc.u.mulated expectations that people have with respect to politics, politicians, and the inst.i.tutions through which political goals are pursued. Political goals are always practical goals, regardless of the language in which they are expressed or the rituals attached. As recurrent patterns of human relationships, political experiences appear to have a life of their own. This creates the impression that agreements dictated by practical reasons originate outside the experience, at the initiative of politicians, due to a certain event, or as the result of random choice.
Political tongues
Language is the instrument through which political practical experience takes place. To reconst.i.tute past succeeding political experiences therefore means to reconst.i.tute their language(s). The task is overwhelming because politics is mingled with every aspect of human life: work, property, family, s.e.x, religion, education, ethics, and art. It is present even in the interrelations of these aspects because politics is also self-reflective. That is, the ident.i.ty of one ent.i.ty is related to the ident.i.ty of others in relation to which self-identification takes place. The variety of political experiences corresponds to the variety of pragmatic circ.u.mstances within which humans project their ident.i.ty.
Individual existence resulting from interaction with others extends to the realm of politics and is embodied in the recurrent patterns that make up expectations, goals, inst.i.tutions, norms, conflicts, and power relations. The individual is concealed in all these. In some ways, politics is a social-educational practice resulting in the integration of instinctive actions (a-political) and learned modes of practice with social impact. What const.i.tutes politics is the dynamics of relations as they become possible and as they unfold as openings towards new relations. One of the concrete forms of such relations is the propensity to coalition building. Politics is contingent upon subjects interacting. Their past (ontogeny) and present (pragmatics) are involved in these interactions. To a certain extent, it is a learned form of practice requiring means for interaction, among which language has been the most important. It is also a practice of investigation, discovery, and social testing.
The manifold of political languages corresponds to the manifold of practical experiences. There are probably as many political tongues as there are circ.u.mstances of self-identification within a society. But against the background of this variety is the expectation that word and deed coincide, or at least that they do not stray too far from each other.
The advent of writing changed politics because it attached written testimony to it, which became a referential element. As Socrates and Plato noticed, this was a blessing in disguise.
Since the time writing entered the political sphere, the practical argument shifted from the fact, argued and eventually settled, to the record. It became itself a practical experience of records (of property, law, order, agreements, negotiations, and allocations for the good of society). The inst.i.tutions that emerged after the practical experience of writing operated within the structure of and in accordance with the expectations brought about by writing. And soon, as relative as soon can be, political self-consciousness was established parallel to political action and pursued as yet another practical experience.
The many languages of political experience multiply once more in the new languages of political awareness. Where values were the final goal of politics, the value of the political experience itself became a subject of concern. Many political projects were pursued at this self-reflective level: conceiving new forms of human cooperation and political organization, advancement of ideas concerning education, prejudices, emanc.i.p.ation, and law.
This explains, too, why in the sequence of political practical experiences, expectations did not nullify each other. They acc.u.mulated as an expression of an ideal, forever moving away from the last goal attained. Without a good understanding of the process, n.o.body could account for the inner dynamics of political change. The same applies to accounting for the role played by political leaders, philosophers, and political organizations involved, by virtue of their own goals and functions, in political life.
Politics in the civilization of illiteracy is not politics out of the blue sky. Along the continuum of political practical experiences, it entails expectations generated under different pragmatic circ.u.mstances. And it faces challenges-the major challenge being the efficiency expected in the new scale of human experience-for which its traditional means and its inherited structure are simply not adequate. Political discontinuity is always more difficult to accept, even understand. Revolutions are celebrated only after they take place, and especially after they successfully establish a semblance of stability.
Can literacy lead politics to failure?
In our time, much is said regarding the perception that the language of politics and the political practice it seems to coordinate are very far apart. People"s mistrust of politics appears to reach new heights. The role and importance of political leaders and inst.i.tutions apparently have changed. The most able are not necessarily involved in politics. Their self-const.i.tution takes place in practical experiences more rewarding and more challenging than political activism.
Political inst.i.tutions no longer represent the partic.i.p.ants in the political contract, but pursue their own goals, survival included. Law takes on a life of its own, more concerned, so the public perceives, with protecting the criminal, in the name of preserving civil rights, than upholding justice. Taxes support extravagant governments and forms of social redistribution of wealth, more often reflecting a guilt complex over past inequities than authentic social solidarity. Instead of promoting meaningful human relationships and addressing the future, they keep fixing the past. Everyone complains, probably a phenomenon as old as any relation among people involved in a sui generis give-and-take interaction. But fewer and fewer are willing to do something because individual partic.i.p.ation and effort appear useless in the given political structure.
The majority of people look back to some prior political experience and interpret the past in the light of books they have read. They fail to realize that the complexity of today"s human experience cannot be met by yesterday"s solutions. They are convinced that if we are faithful to our political heritage, all problems, credibility and corruption included, will be solved.
They also believe religious systems and their great books contain all that is needed to meet all imaginable present and future challenges. Even the very honorable conviction that the founders of modern democracies prepared citizens to cope with this unprecedented present cannot go unchallenged. The Const.i.tution of the United States (1787) as well as the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen in France (1789) reflect the thinking and the prose of the civilization of literacy. Similar doc.u.ments are on record in Latin America, Europe, India, and j.a.pan. They are as useless as history can be when new circ.u.mstances of human self- const.i.tution are totally different from the experiences that gave birth to these doc.u.ments. Revisionism will not do. The new context requires not a static collection of admirable principles, but dynamic political structures and procedures of the same nature as the pragmatics of shorter cycles of change, non-determinism, high efficiency, decentralization, and non-hierarchical modes of operation. As the world reinvents itself as interwoven, it breaks loose from prescriptions of local significance and traditional import.
Although the number of emerging nations has increased-and n.o.body knows how many more will emerge-we know of no political doc.u.ments similar to those articulated in 1776, 1789, 1848, or even 1870. Nothing comparable to the Declaration of Independence, the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, even the Communist Manifesto (no matter how discredited it is at present), whether in substance or style, has accompanied current political movements. The reason why no such doc.u.ment can emerge can be connected to the inadequacies of literacy-based politics.
This civilization is no longer one of ideas, religious or secular. It is characterized by processes, methodologies, and inventions expressed in various sign systems that have a dynamics different from that of language and literacy. The ideas of the civilization of literacy address the mind, soul, and spirit.
The most one can expect in our time of upheaval and change are provisions for establishing conditions for unhampered human interactions in the market and in other domains of human self-const.i.tution (religion, education, family). Steady globalization means that the health of national economies, education, sports, or art matters just as little as national borders and the theatrics of diplomacy and international relations. One can hear Dostoyevsky"s prophetic line: "If it"s otherwise not possible, make us your servants, but make us full." It hurts to repeat it, but it will hurt more to ignore it at a time when nothing grows faster than the urge of millions of people to emigrate to any developed country willing to take them, even as second-cla.s.s citizens, so long as they escape their current abysmal condition.
The dynamics of change in the world is characterized by the acknowledged need of many countries to be integrated in the global economy while preserving or requiring a token of national ident.i.ty. State sovereignty is self-delusive in the context of commercial, financial, or industrial autonomy that is impossible to achieve. Self- determination, always to the detriment of some other ethnic group, echoes those tribal instincts that make the ideal of const.i.tutional government an exercise in futility. The underlying structure of literacy is reflected in national movements and their dualistic system of values. The logic of the good and the bad, more difficult to define in a context of vagueness, but still pursued blindly, controls the way coalitions are established, migration of populations is handled, and national interests defended, while these very nations argue for integration and free market.
Nevertheless, the language of today"s politics is, in the final a.n.a.lysis, shaped by the pragmatic framework. Its sentences are written in the language of ledgers; the freedom it purports to establish is that of commercial democracy, of equal access to consumption, which happens to be the main political achievement of recent history. The fact that the nations forming the European Community gave up sovereignty with respect to the market proves the point. That they still preserve diplomatic representation, defense functions, and immigration policies only attests to the conflict between the politics of the civilization of literacy and the politics of the civilization of illiteracy.
The great doc.u.ments of the literate past perpetuate the rhetoric of the time of their writing. All the structural characteristics of literacy, valid for the pragmatic framework that justifies them, deeply mark the letter and spirit of these doc.u.ments. They ascertain politics as sequential, linear, and deterministic. They rejoice in promulgating ideals that correspond to the scale of humankind in which they guarantee the means that result in the efficiency of industrial and productive society. Libert, egalit, fraternit are shorthand for rights of conscience, ownership, and individual legal status. They are an expression of accepted hierarchy and centralism to the degree that these could be rendered relative as need required. Expectations of permanency and universality were carried over from earlier political experiences, or from religion, even though separation of Church and State was emphatically proclaimed during the French Revolution, and in revolutions that took place afterwards.
Amendments required by altered circ.u.mstances of human self-const.i.tution in practical experiences not antic.i.p.ated in the doc.u.ments render their spirit relative and solve some of the problems caused by the limitations mentioned.
Political doc.u.ments, such as the ones mentioned above, are still perceived as sacrosanct, regardless of their obvious inadequacy in the pragmatic context of the civilization of illiteracy. It is one thing to establish the sanct.i.ty of property in a framework of agricultural praxis, whose politics was inspired by a shared expectation of cycles parallel to natural cycles. Jefferson envisioned the land as a vast agrarian state. "We are a people of farmers. Those who work the fields are the chosen people of G.o.d, if He had a chosen people. In their heart He planted the real virtue." It is quite another thing to live in a pragmatic context of new forms of property, some reflecting a notion of sequential acc.u.mulation, others an experience of work with machines, of humans seen as commodity. It is a new reality to live in today"s integrated world of property as elusive as new designs, software, information, and ways to process it. To apply to this context political principles inspired by a movement that sought independence from England while using slaves brought from Africa is questionable, at least.
Equality of natural rights, deriving from nature-based cycles, is quite different from equality of political rights and responsibilities deriving from a machine-inspired model for progress. Both of these sources are different from the political status of people involved in a pragmatics of global networking and extreme task distribution. One can cautiously make the case that the major political doc.u.ments of the past were conceived in reaction to an intolerable state of affairs and events, not proactively, in antic.i.p.ation of new situations and expectations.
These doc.u.ments are the expression of the need to unify, h.o.m.ogenize, and integrate forces in a world of relatively autonomous ent.i.ties-national states-competing more for resources and productive forces than for markets. The values reflected therein correspond to the values on which literacy is founded and for which literacy-inspired ideologies fought.
But maybe these political doc.u.ments are exemplary in another way, let"s say as an expression of moral standards that we apparently lost in the course of 200 years; or of cultural standards for both society and politicians, standards that can only rarely be acknowledged today, if at all. If this is the case, which is difficult to prove, what this seems to suggest is that the price paid for higher political efficiency is the lost ethics of politics, or its current deplorable intellectual condition. The lack of correlation between political practice and language results from the pragmatic context reflected in the condition of language itself. While in real life, many literacies are at work, Literacy (with a capital L) still dominates the structure of politics. Its rules are applied to forms of human interaction and evaluation that are not reducible to self-const.i.tution in language.
Political activity by and large follows patterns characteristic of the civilization of literacy, despite its own indulgence in non-linguistic semioses: the use of images, film, and video, or the adoption of new networking technologies focused on information exchange. Former expectations that politicians adhere to standards of the civilization of literacy are carried over in new political and practical experiences. The expectation that their literacy should match that of political doc.u.ments belonging to the political tradition (the Const.i.tution of the United States of America, for instance) is paradoxical, though, since the majority of Americans cannot recall what these political doc.u.ments state. And they see no reason to find out.
Their own practical experience takes place in domains for which the past is of little consequence to their well-being. As things stand now, the political principles required by the dynamics of industrial society are embodied in inst.i.tutions and laws dedicated to their own preservation.
Free of concern for their own freedom, politically rooted in a prior pragmatic framework, citizens take freedom for granted in their new practical experiences and end up evading the a.s.sociated civic responsibility. They expect their politicians to be literate for them. We deal here with a strange mixture of a.s.sumptions: on the one hand, a notion of political life corresponding to a context of h.o.m.ogeneity and a deterministic view of the social world; on the other, a realization that today"s world requires specialized political practical experience, means and methods characteristic of heterogeneous and non-deterministic political processes. The simmering conflict is met with the type of thinking that will not solve the problem because it is the problem.
The coordination of political action through literacy-based language and methods and the dynamics of a new political practice, based on the characteristics of the civilization of illiteracy, simply diverge. As in many other domains of literate condition, it is as though inst.i.tutions, norms, and regulations take on lives of their own, as literate language does, perpetuating their own values and expectations. They develop as networks of interaction with an autonomous dynamics, uncoupled from the dynamics of political life, even from the new pragmatic context. The tremendous amount of written language (speeches, articles, forms, contracts, regulations, laws, treatises) stands in contrast to the very fast changes that make almost every political text superfluous even before it is cast in the fast eroding medium of print or in the elusive bits and bytes of electronic processing.
Many economies have undergone, or realize they must undergo, profound restructuring. Ma.s.sive down-sizing, paralleled by flatter hierarchies and smoother quality control, have affected economic performance. But very little of this has touched the sacrosanct centralized state inst.i.tutions. In the USA alone, 14 departments, 135 federal agencies employing more than 2.1 million civilians and 1.9 million military personnel account for $1.5 trillion in yearly expenditure. If the economy were as inefficient as political activity is, we would face a crisis of global proportion and consequences that are impossible to antic.i.p.ate.
This is why today, some citizens would write a Declaration of Independence that begins with the following line: "We"re mad as h.e.l.l and we"re not going to take it anymore." But this would not mean that they would vote. When five times more people watch Married with Children than vote in primaries, one understands that the morality and intellectual quality of the politician and citizen correspond closely. Cynical or not, this observation simply states that in the civilization of illiteracy, political action and criteria for evaluating politics do not follow the patterns of political practical experiences peculiar to the civilization of literacy. Multiplied to infinity, choices no longer undergird values, but options that are equally mediocre.
The issue of literacy from the perspective of politics is the issue of the means through which political practice takes place.
A democracy resting solely upon the contribution to political life in and through literate language is at the same time captive to language. The experience of language resulted from developments not necessarily democratic in nature. Embedded in literacy, past practical experiences pertinent to a pragmatic context appropriate to a different scale of humankind are often an obstacle to new experiences. So are our distinctions of s.e.x, race, social status, s.p.a.ce, time, religion, art, and sport. Once in language, such distinctions simply live off the body of any new design for political action. Language is not politically neutral, and even less so is the literate practice of language.
Various minority groups made a very valid point in stating this.
Power relations, established in political practice, often become relations in the literate use of language and of other means, as long as they are used according to literacy expectations. It is not that literacy prevents change; literacy allows for change within the systematic domain of practices relying on the literate practical experiences of language. But when literacy itself is challenged, as it is more and more in our day, it ends up opposing change.
Discrepancies between the language and actions of politics, politicians, and political inst.i.tutions and programs result from the conflict between the horizon of literacy and the dynamics for which the literate use of language is ill equipped. If the formula deterioration of moral standards corresponds to the failure of politics to meet its const.i.tuency"s expectations, the most pessimistic views about the future would be justified, because politicians are not better or worse than their const.i.tuency. But as with everything else in the new pragmatic context, it is no longer individual performance that ensures the success or failure of an activity. Integrating procedures ascertain a different form of cooperation and compet.i.tion. Such processes are made possible by means characteristic of high efficiency pragmatics, that is, task distribution, parallelism and reciprocal testing, cooperation through networking, and automated procedures for planning and management. They are meaningful only in conjunction with motivations characteristic of this age. If, on the other hand, the romantic notion that the best become leaders were true of today"s political experience, we would have cause to wonder at our own stupidity. In fact, it does not matter which person leads.
Political processes are so complex that the industrial model of successful stewardship no longer makes sense. Political life in society does not depend on political competence, people"s generosity, or self-motivation that escapes inst.i.tutional, religious, or ideological coercion. The degree of efficiency, along with the right ascribed to people to partake in affluence, speaks in favor of political experiences driven by pragmatic forces. Such forces are at work locally and make sense only within a context of direct effectiveness. But short of taking these forces for granted, we cannot escape the need to understand how they work and how their course can be controlled.
Crabs learned how to whistle
Some of today"s political systems are identified as democracies, and others claim to be. Some are identified as dictatorships of some sort, which almost none would accept as a qualifier. But no matter which label is applied, there is an obsession with literacy in all these systems. "We need literacy for democracy to survive," says the literacy special interest group. But how do dictatorships come about in literate populations? The biggest dictatorship (the Soviet block) was proud of its high literacy rate, acknowledged by the western world as an accomplishment impossible to overlook. It fell because the underlying structural characteristics reflected in literacy collided with other requirements, mainly pragmatic.
An empire, the fourth in the modern historic succession that started with the Turkish Empire and continued with the Austro-Hungarian and British Empires, crumbled. What makes the fall of the Soviet Empire significant is its own underlying structure. The former members of COMECON, those East European countries that, along with the Soviet Union, once formed the communist block, represent a good case study for the forces involved in the dynamics of illiteracy. While writing this book, I benefited from an experiment probably impossible to duplicate.
A rigid structure of human activity, basically captive to a slightly amended paradigm of the Industrial Revolution, hailing itself as the workers" paradise, and laboring under the illusion of messianic collectivism, maintained literacy as its cultural foundation.
Even the harshest and blindest critics of the system had to agree that if anything of historic significance could be attributed to communism, it was its literacy program. Large segments of the population, illiterate prior to communism, were taught to read and write. The school system, deficient in many ways, provided free and obligatory education, much better than its free medical system. This effort at education was intended to prepare the new generations for productive tasks, but also to subject each person to a program of indoctrination channeled through the powerful medium of literacy. Questioned about his own ideas for the reform of the orthodox communist system, Nikita Kruschchev, the maverick leader of the post-Stalin era, declared: "He who believes that we will give up the teachings of Marx, Engels, and Lenin deludes himself tremendously. Those who are waiting for this to happen will have to wait until crabs learn how to whistle." When, throughout Russia, statues of Lenin started falling and Marx"s name became synonymous with the failure of communism, people probably started hearing strange sounds from crustaceans.
The abrupt and unexpected failure of the communist system-an event hailed as victory in a war as cold as the market can be-makes for unexpected proof of this book"s major thesis. The breakdown of the Soviet system can be seen as the failure of a structure that kept literacy as its major educational and instrumental medium, and relied on it for the dissemination of its ideological goals inside and outside the block. Literacy, as such, did not fail, but the structures that literacy entails: limited efficiency, sequential practical experiences of human self-const.i.tution in a hierarchic and centralized economy; deterministic (thus implicitly dualistic) working relations, a level of efficiency based on the industrial model of labor division, mediation subjected to central planning without choice as to the mediating elements; opaqueness expressed in an obsession with secrecy, and last but not least, failure to acknowledge the new scale of humankind-in short, a pragmatic framework whose characteristics are reflected in literacy-all led to the final result. Indeed, the system acted to counter integration and globality. It maintained rigid national and political boundaries under the false a.s.sumption that insularity would allow a controlled and orderly exchange of goods and ideas, perpetuation and dissemination of an ideology of proletarian dictatorship, and eventually coexistence with the rest of the world under the a.s.sumption of its progressive conversion to communist values.