Disaster is the Catalyst of a Revolution

[flwyd]

The relationship between disaster and revolution has seldom been explored, though it crops up throughout the history of revolutions. Catastrophic weather across France in the summer of 1788 brought on the crop failures and bad harvests that led to the rising bread prices, shortages, and hunger that played a major role in triggering the French Revolution the following year. The 1870–71 siege and occupation of Paris in the Franco-Prussian War brought on the sense of daring and solidarity that made possible the Paris Commune—several weeks of insurrectionary self-government Kropotkin and anarchists everywhere have cherished ever since. Belli spoke of Nicaraguans feeling after the earthquake that since they could lose their life, they wanted to make it means something, even if that involved risks. Disaster and crisis can stiffen resolve… Sometimes they work by making a bad situation worse to the point of intolerability; they create a breaking point. Sometimes they do so by making obvious an injustice or agenda that was opaque before. Sometimes they do so by generating the circumstances in which people discover each other and thereby a sense of civil society and collective power. But there is no formula; there are no certainties. Leftists of a certain era liked to believe that the intensification of suffering produced revolution and was therefore to be desired or even encouraged; no such reliable formula ties social change to disaster or other suffering; calamities are at best openings through which a people may take power—or may lose the contest and be further subjugated.

— Rebecca Solnit, A Paradise Built in Hell: the extraordinary communities that arise in disaster

Although I've been making slow progress (distracted by 2020!), A Paradise Built in Hell was an excellent book choice for 2020.

I've also been listening to Mike Duncan's Revolutions podcast for the last several years, too[1]. I've noticed a theme that what history knows as the big moments that made a revolution seem inevitable were often a surprise or a minor event at the time. When the social order sits atop a rotten and rickety structure, it's anyone's guess what will happen when a piece of that edifice gives way.

[1] The series will end after the 1917 Russian revolution and it's currently taking a break after the 1905 Russian revolution, so if you start binging now, the last episode should be available by the time you're ready to listen.

Comments

[elusiveat]

I haven't read _Paradise Built in Hell_ but have heard about the book and have read excerpts. It gave me hope when the pandemic was just getting started. Of course, that also means I'm pretty disappointed with how the whole thing has worked out...

Tell me more about what you've appreciated about it in this year?

[flwyd]

In the context of several disasters, the book talks about people who experienced joy, camaraderie, peace, and connection in the aftermath of disaster that resonated with some of what people were feeling early during the pandemic. One thing that was different with the pandemic is that this positive community connection usually happens through in-person connection, helping neighbors you haven't met and bonding over the shared experience. But with the pandemic we were bonding with total strangers on the other side of the country or world over shared experiences, while simultaneously keeping a wide berth from our neighbors.

Another common theme in the disasters she talks about is that organized government response often makes things worse. This was particularly true in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, where the city probably would've been better off if the army had never shown up, but also shows up in earthquakes in Mexico City and Managua, as well as Hurricane Katrina. Government response is often centered on protecting property, preventing looting, and avoiding mob rule. But in practice, those are typically pretty rare in a disaster, and people tend to self-organize in pro-social ways. I'm reminded of a video I saw a day or two after Katrina. Someone was narrating what they saw in a Whole Foods in New Orleans: basic staples were cleared off the shelves, but the fancy cheeses section was still pretty well stocked. This too felt both similar too and different than the protests this summer, where police presence wasn't exactly helping defuse the situation. But also, since the disaster that black people are experiencing isn't always as tangible to their white neighbors[1], there's been animosity between neighbors and some looting and property damage for property damage sake, rather than survival.

[elusiveat]

Some quick thoughts on this...

But with the pandemic we were bonding with total strangers on the other side of the country or world over shared experiences, while simultaneously keeping a wide berth from our neighbors.

That wasn't quite my experience. For the first few months my immediate neighbors were basically the only people I saw in person (at a distance, with masks on), and that was huge. Lots of neighborhood groups near where I am organized mutual aid contact lists, and things looked really promising. The point where things seemed to go south was when the right wing propaganda machine managed to turn the very real pandemic into a left wing conspiracy.

Granted, they might not have been as successful at politicizing more immediate/localized physical disruptions, such as a hurricane or earthquake...

Another common theme in the disasters she talks about is that organized government response often makes things worse.

Given what I've read about responses to disasters, I was pretty dismayed by how quickly the left-of-center discourse around the pandemic turned into "Donald Trump has ruined everything by messing up the government's ability to respond." On the other hand, the kind of government intervention that is appropriate for a pandemic is I suppose of a very different flavor from the kind of government intervention that occurs during a physical disaster. I've also learned some things about the legislative limits on what state and local governments are capable of in the U.S. today, which I hadn't realized before. Specifically, I had no grasp of the problem created by balanced budget amendments at the state level.

Still, even with Trump in charge I think things could have gone better if we'd collectively focused more on doing what we could with the resources available to us, and less on complaining about what we'd missed out on through Trump dismantling the government's pandemic response infrastructure.

Sometimes I imagine what would have happened if we'd had this thing happen under a president Dick Cheney. What I imagine is a soldier with a rifle on every street corner, enforcing curfews, and that these soldiers would be unlikely to go away when the pandemic ended. I still think that would have been worse than what we have now.

[flwyd]

On the other hand, the kind of government intervention that is appropriate for a pandemic is I suppose of a very different flavor from the kind of government intervention that occurs during a physical disaster.

I think this is an important observation. In a physical disaster, people on the ground have a lot of salient information (like "how structurally sound is this particular building?") and central coordinating authorities are often trying to make decisions without access to all that information. In a pandemic, aggregated information is crucial for making decisions and allocating resources. And what's worse, people can walk around causing infections without realizing they're contagious. Nobody in 1871 Chicago was on fire but didn't realize it.

Sometimes I imagine what would have happened if we'd had this thing happen under a president Dick Cheney. What I imagine is a soldier with a rifle on every street corner, enforcing curfews, and that these soldiers would be unlikely to go away when the pandemic ended. I still think that would have been worse than what we have now.

I think that's kinda what Wuhan looked like in late January and February. China is remarkably efficient at deploying large of numbers of people to do a big task, and they've got a legal and social structure that results in high levels of compliance with government requirements. But I think even China would've had trouble deploying that response nationwide: there are only so many people in the military plus the police force.

The U.S. has about 2 million military personnel (including reserves and national guard) and close to 1 million sworn law enforcement officers. If they were all deployed to U.S. cities, working in 12-hour shifts, there would be one armed order-keeper per roughly 150 people. While that's probably enough of a ratio to protect specific areas (e.g. public gathering places), it seems like it would be hard-pressed to enforce pandemic hygiene.

[(Anonymous)]

I think that's kinda what Wuhan looked like in late January and February. China is remarkably efficient at deploying large of numbers of people to do a big task, and they've got a legal and social structure that results in high levels of compliance with government requirements. But I think even China would've had trouble deploying that response nationwide: there are only so many people in the military plus the police force.

I'm not sure you're quite understanding my point. China is a very different story because they already had a highly centralized government and established norms of disregarding individual rights in favor of actions that are perceived to be for the greater good.

The U.S. is much more individualist and with a broad norm of civil liberties, albeit somewhat eroded after 20 years of the PATRIOT Act. For someone like Dick Cheney, any excuse to shift toward more military rule is an opportunity. We saw this following 2001. Almost none of the "War on Terror" stuff was actually effective, but there was suddenly widespread support both for giving up civil liberties in favor of the nominal greater good and for spending on new government programs for policing and surveillance. What is particularly terrifying about those changes is that they had bipartisan support. Politicians were willing to do absolutely anything if it made the voters feel like *something* was being done to keep us safer. And it is that exact infrastructure that Donald Trump has used to put immigrants into concentration camps and pick up peaceful protesters from the streets.

If the pandemic had hit under a Cheney administration, or a Bush-Cheney administration, I think what we would have seen was further shift toward military/police rule, it wouldn't matter whether it was effective, what would matter was that it would make people feel like someone was in charge of making the big scary thing go away, just as people were happy to see soldiers with assault rifles in the airports following 9/11. I think that both Democrats and Republicans would have been happy with these changes; the Democrats because it was perceived to be a responsible way of handling the pandemic, the Republicans because they love that kind of thing anyway. After the pandemic was under control, maybe there would be conversations about scaling back the police/military presence, but that would mean getting rid of jobs people had become dependent on, who wants to decrease security, and besides we all know that it's just a matter of time before the next pandemic. It's at least as likely that the voters would get sold on the idea of *further* increasing policing as that they would scale back the militarization. And, of course, we'd have all of the usual unpleasantness that goes along with greater police activity, including decreased respect for privacy, harassment of minorities, and so on.

It feels like a very plausible story to me, and as bad as things are right now, I'm inclined to believe that the above would be worse.