Poised Between Epochs

Being a witness to epochal change is rare. Really big events like the industrial revolution, the Protestant Reformation, and colonization of the Americas only come along once in a great while. They may last for decades or generations, but in the sweep of human history they are moments of brief and radical reorientation away from a previous era.

Although mammoth transformations provide demarcations through which we learn the past, many living through such drama will not recognize its significance at the time. People may fully understand that they are in the midst of substantial, perplexing, and even difficult change, but they may not be able yet to discern its cumulative and momentous character. The opposite occurs as well. Individuals and communities may encounter transitions that appear to be bigger than they are--small events that do not add up to move the world into a new stage of human experience.

I believe we are poised between epochs. Engulfed by astonishing and somewhat overwhelming changes across the world, we struggle to get a grip, to find our bearings. On one day we are elated about the release of Nelson Mandela or the destruction of the Berlin Wall, whereas the next finds us in anguish over war in the Gulf, civil war in Yugoslavia, or danger of starvation among millions in Africa. Underlying some of these events are significant transitions in the way that we think about and organize political economy.

Fundamental shifts from one political economy to another are usually accompanied by substantial social turmoil. Communism has collapsed after long decades of failure to respond to the needs and aspirations of many who lived within it. News of the consequences of this collapse bombard us daily, again some of it uplifting, some of it distressing.

We have more firsthand familiarity with the failures of capitalism. Our system long ago largely abandoned the poor and less powerful in our society. Yet as long as the middle class represented the largest segment of the population, we could believe the myths of "trickle-down," or "up by the bootstraps," or "education is the key to the future." Recent studies demonstrate clearly, however, that the poor really are getting poorer, the rich really are getting richer, and perhaps most important for the fate of the system, incomes for the middle class now stagnate or decline.

Furthermore, the same is true globally. The fruits of an international economy organized along capitalist principles are also bitter. The debt crisis of the last 10 years or so represents one of the most massive transfers of wealth from "South" to "North" the world has ever seen.

DOMESTICALLY, the decade of greed in the 1980s yields to decay and deterioration of the 1990s in financial institutions, insurance companies, health care services, political parties, and even physical infrastructure. And Middle Americans have been left with the enormous costs of the scandals on Wall Street and within the savings and loan institutions and the dramatic collapse of the international banking giant, BCCI.

No longer is the system simply unjust; it is becoming dysfunctional. The doublespeak denials of a recession and desperate attempts to get consumers to use credit cards betray the depth of anxiety among those accustomed to steering the ship of state.

The litany is maddeningly familiar. But there is a difference this time. Because the Cold War is over, we can now examine models of political economy in a fresh way. We can expose the chauvinistic claim that Americans know best how to organize politics and economics. The old ideological battles are no longer credible. Those who have serious misgivings about capitalism can now come out of the closet. We can ask the hard questions about what's wrong with our society and its imposition on the rest of the world without fearing the red smear.

Domestic and international capitalism may not collapse soon. Those who benefit will cling to and defend the old order. Yet further breakdown may be hastened by continued massive ecological devastation that may soon become cataclysmic.

Some aspects of the old are worth preserving. We need to examine seriously what we want from social, political, and economic institutions. What do we like about our system? What good can be salvaged from the variety of socialist experiences? What issues have neither of these systems addressed adequately?

Visions of an alternative future are already embodied in experiments all over the country and all over the world where people live in small-scale alternative expressions of political economy. We need to understand and learn from these concrete manifestations of people searching for the new. Creative transformation is hard work. Yet living in a time when such possibilities exist is a privilege and an extraordinary opportunity. God calls us to make the most of it.

Janice Love was associate professor of political economics at the University of South Carolina in Columbia when this article appeared.