How to change a society

Translation of an article published in the magazine Aeon In December 2021^[1]. Author of Disruptions: Why Things Change (2021), history professor David Potter describes why and how societies change radically. Here is what the influential political magazine says Foreign Affairs in a review of Potter's book:

“Replacing one political order that shapes the world with another has always required strategy, leadership, and ideological struggles motivated by the search for legitimacy. It is less the oppressed and the dispossessed who are reshaping political life than the activists and charismatic leaders who hold on to powerful new ideas and build new coalitions.^[2].”

Unsurprisingly, Potter finds the liberal model great and seems to defend the idea of a “disruption” aimed at reinventing this model in order to make it fairer, and therefore to perpetuate the technological system. That industrial society and its high technology are ravaging the living systems that produce our food, water, and air, and that this dynamic is driving the human species towards extinction, all this does not seem to really worry him. Let us add that it is illusory to hope that one day the technological society will become more egalitarian. Technological development has caused inequalities to explode since the first industrial revolution and the delay in this area is virtually impossible to catch up, as a recent UN report showed.^[3] (summary) hither). If I translated this text by David Potter, it was mainly for its historical and strategic interest, less for the positions of its author.

Currently, industrial society is subject to increasing tensions that will very likely cause major upheavals in the years or decades to come. Most of the conditions that generally precede radical changes in societal trajectory seem to be in place. The technological system will certainly do everything it can to reorganize society in such a way as to guarantee its survival. If the system succeeds in solving the energy and raw material crises, we may be at the dawn of a new industrial revolution, especially as the power of machines — especially thanks to artificial intelligence — is constantly increasing. This new industrial revolution is precisely what the Shift Project, the Think Tank by the Polytechnic engineer Jean-Marc Jancovici (“Europe must pave the way for the next industrial revolution, that of the exit from fossil fuels)^[4] ”). For people who see high technology (and the industrial system as a whole) as a threat to the survival of the human species and other creatures in this world, regardless of the energy that powers the system, one of the major challenges ahead will be to prevent this systemic transformation. We need to promote the complete dismantling of the industrial system rather than its political and social reorganization in order to extend its lifespan. As the mathematician Alexandre Grothendieck already noted in the 1970s^[5], in any case, there is no solution to the social and ecological problems of our time within the framework of industrial society. First, we need to significantly reduce the technological level of our societies. This should be the top priority for anyone who at least cares about the future of this world and its inhabitants.

Below is the translated article by David Potter.

The major upheavals in world history follow a clearly identifiable pattern. What can past disruptions tell us about our own future?

On April 3, 1917, a crowd gathered to welcome a train arriving from Helsinki at the Finland Station in Petrograd. Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was traveling on the train. He greeted his audience with a speech calling for the overthrow of the Russian government — six months later, he had achieved his goal. The world was turned upside down.

Living then in exile outside Russia for more than ten years, Lenin was known as a theorist on the fringes of Russian political circles. He was shaping Marxist thinking to support his own theory of change. Karl Marx imagined several ways for a society to evolve towards a system in which workers would have control of the means of production. But Lenin saw only one way: the violent overthrow of the current government, a process organized by a dedicated group of professional revolutionaries. Lenin arrived in Petrograd (now Saint Petersburg) with this project in mind. There, his political party took the lead of the workers' organization, which had shared power with a provisional government since the abdication of the tsar. But Lenin's party had to wait more than five years before gaining absolute power in Russia. Millions of people died during this process.

Lenin's theory of change was a theory of social rupture that consisted in imposing a change so radical that a society could no longer return to its previous state. Such convulsions do not happen by chance. There is a set of conditions required to cause them, and there are particular circumstances under which the initiators of disruptive movements tend to achieve their goals.

As we will see later through historical examples, the essential characteristics of the type of radical reversal I am describing are as follows: 1) it arises from a loss of trust in the central institutions of a society; 2) it enshrines a set of ideas from the margins of the intellectual world, and places these ideas at the center of a redesigned political order; and 3) it involves a coherent group of leaders dedicated to change. These historical disturbances are similar to events called revolutions, although they are two different things. Disruptions don't always replace leaders in charge — in fact, they're sometimes necessary to keep a government in place that's on the brink of bankruptcy. But these disruptions at the very least change how a group of leaders think and act.

Major disruptions cause a profound change in people's understanding of how the world they live in works. They thus contrast with less radical societal changes, based on an existing system of thought: for example, the English “revolutions” of the 17th century, which changed the balance of power between the king and the parliament without altering the fundamental model of governance. Ideological change is crucial for major societal change such as that pursued by Lenin. Societies promote ideologies that support the way they do business — and if the way they conceptualize the world doesn't change, the way they do business won't change either. It's fairly easy to look back to the past for ideas that were once central and later abandoned, such as the theory that kings rule by “divine right.”

It is important to note that periods of dispute with similar causes will not always produce similar outcomes. As Barrington Moore Jr. argued in his 1966 study on the social origins of dictatorship and democracy, one could argue that a change in the political system will occur in a society where there is a significant disconnect between co-existing modes of economic activity, such as traditional agriculture and capitalist enterprise. It could also be said that a split between those who run economic activity and those who hold political power is a prerequisite for change. In such circumstances, managers have a great deal of leeway to make choices that will lead to very different results. The first of these scenarios could reasonably be considered to describe both the United States and Russia in the early 20th century, but there was no American equivalent to Lenin's seizure of power.

The disruption model I am proposing does not predict that radical change will occur due to specific structural problems such as those described by Moore, nor does it predict that there is an inescapable outcome caused by a specific set of problems. I suggest that when a political system is undermined by events such as economic bankruptcy, a defeat in war, or an environmental disaster, that political system must change or collapse. Success or failure depends on the choices leaders make, and on their ability to provide the people with a set of fresh ideas that will help them identify a new path forward.

The outcome of a major disruption is often completely unexpected for contemporaries, and that is precisely because ideas outside the mainstream were used to shape solutions to the problems of the time. We can't know in advance exactly how a disruption will end. What history can teach us is the circumstances that lead to a disruption. It can make us aware of the events we may face as a result of the current situation.

If we consider one of the first major disturbances that are still affecting the world we live in — the conversion of the Roman emperor Constantine to Christianity in the 4th century AD — we see that change was in the air of the times for some time already. In the half-century that preceded Constantine's coup and put him on the path to taking control and unifying the Roman Empire, society was affected by plague, massive inflation, and a series of military disasters. But the attitude of leaders to these challenges was simply reduced to attempts to make the old systems work better.

Constantine sent a completely different message by getting his regime to adopt the concepts of a marginal movement—Christianity—to ensure its own legitimacy. To do this, Constantine called on a small number of Christian advisers who shaped a new relationship between the Church and Roman society; the latter joined the close-knit group that Constantine depended on to run the empire.

This early example shows the main characteristics of a major disruption: a loss of trust in central institutions (the imperial system of government), the placement of previously marginal ideas (those of Christianity) at the center of the political order, and a group of leaders working together and dedicated to initiating change. By elevating the role of Christianity in the empire, Constantine changed thought patterns, replacing old ideas about imperial authority with a new model of government with obvious differences. This change was a sign to people that society was heading in a new direction.

We can also observe these characteristics by taking another upheaval that occurred in the 7th century AD, when an age-old political order in the Middle East collapsed. After the collapse of the old system, the Umayyad caliph 'Abd al-Malik adapted the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad into the ideology of a new government that would eventually spread from North Africa to Central Asia. Having died several decades earlier, Mohammed wanted to use his visions to form a community of believers. His revelation did not suggest that the current system, based on the Roman and Persian Empires, would soon be overthrown. But incompetent leaders had undermined the legitimacy of the Persian and Roman Empires during disastrous years of armed conflict. This is how close-knit groups of followers of Mohammed succeeded in rapidly defeating these failed states. As their movement seemed to be on the verge of imploding, 'Abd al-Malik recognized the need to rebuild the center of Islamic society and to introduce new rules for the community so that it could move forward.

Among the factors that benefited Constantin and 'Abd al-Malik in spreading previously marginal ideas were effective control of the media available for mass communication—including the currency carrying their message and the statements that were supposed to be read during public festivities. Another way to spread their message was through impressive construction projects, such as the construction by 'Abd al-Malik of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem. These monuments allowed people to visualize the new political order as something stable.

The skilful use of media was crucial in another major disturbance that shaped European history: the Protestant Reformation of the early 16th century. Around 70 years before Martin Luther put on posters his 95 theses questioning the notion of purgatory — the place where souls must wait before going to heaven — and the validity of indulgences that can be purchased to speed up the journey through purgatory, Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press. Luther proved to be a master of this new medium of communication, recognizing that successful communication had to be short, to the point, and in the language of his audience. The Catholic Church always published its statements in Latin. Luther was telling people that they could receive God's word in German.

Luther was a brilliant polemicist with a powerful message, but he was not alone. Luther would not have survived without the support of Frederick of Saxony who ensured his protection before that decisive moment in 1517 when the polemicist undertook to attack Catholic doctrine. Frederick remained his protector even after the dramatic moment of 1521, when Luther defied Charles V, then emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. Standing up to the emperor and his court, Luther refused to have his writings retracted.

Charles V was ill-prepared. He grew up in the Netherlands, knew little about Germany, and was only a teenager when he came to the throne. The ruling elites of German society questioned his abilities. They were also worried about the sale of indulgences by the Catholic Church, which was taking money from Germany at the very moment when the empire needed additional funding to wage possible wars designed to stop the advance of the Ottoman Turks. The Catholic Church was also undermined by numerous testimonies about papal corruption.

Frederick represented German political leaders who had lost confidence in the political leadership of the Holy Roman Empire. Luther's alternative ideology gave their movement substance that was lacking in previous efforts to contain the power of emperors and popes. In the decades following Luther's challenge to the emperor, the princes of Germany inspired other Protestant movements in England and the Netherlands by forming a political alliance that allowed them to obtain the following concession from Charles V: “Protestant” states could be legitimate states.

Ultimately, the upheaval caused by Protestantism would end Catholic dominance over intellectual life, open the door to new forms of scientific research, and allow for the development of nation states in Europe. Another consequence of this disruption was that it would allow the rise of new thinking based on classical political theory rather than on the Bible.

More than a century after these events, the English philosopher John Locke also defied religious ideas — and the events that followed illustrate the main characteristics of this upheaval. Locke starts his Two government treaties (1689) by demolishing the concept of the divine right of kings based on a political structure allowed by God, creator of the Garden of Eden. In the second treatise, he develops his point of view. According to him, the main reason why people agree to submit to a government is to preserve their property. This submission is only possible if there is a “common consent” on the current standards of good and evil. Tyranny, he writes, is “the exercise of power beyond the law.”

According to Locke, a person who abuses their power by extending it beyond the norms approved by the community cannot be endowed with legitimate authority. This idea ultimately helped to justify the rebellion of the thirteen English colonies in North America against King George III. Thomas Paine popularized a radical version of Locke's thinking in his best-selling pamphlet, Common sense (1776), in which he defended the idea that the English monarchy was illegitimate — it had been imposed on an unwilling population.

George III had the best army, but the military might was insufficient to put down a rebellion inspired by the powerful ideas of Locke and his followers about what a just society should be. Equally important to the final success of the Americans was the creation of a group of characters around George Washington, including his allies Alexander Hamilton and James Madison. They knew how to work together to transform the abstract ideas of political theorists into viable institutions.

Americans who questioned the authority of George III were opposed to the idea of a powerful central government giving them orders. But they soon realized that the Articles of Confederation that united them during the war were too light and insufficient to unite them in the future. The convening of a constitutional convention to create a new government is one of the crucial aspects of a major disruption. Successful : it creates a space where people can discuss new ideas. It is precisely the inability to maintain such space that will destroy efforts to form a new government in France after the Revolution.

Lenin was an avid reader of the history of events in France between 1789 and the emergence of Napoleon Bonaparte as the country's leader ten years later. There were significant parallels between Russia and France. Russian Tsar Nicholas II undermined his regime by waging a war against Germany, and French King Louis XVI constantly undermined his own government and allies in the years following the Estates-General, a governmental assembly convened in 1789. The king hoped to resolve a financial crisis arising from France's continued support for the American rebellion against Great Britain. But the people had already lost confidence in a court that they considered incapable and corrupt. France had not developed elective institutions before, so the French court did not have a clear idea of how to manage the States-General at the time they were convened.

As events progressed, Louis XVI more or less became a prisoner of his own palace. Groups hostile to its interests set up an alternative military structure, a National Guard. They started to draft a new constitution. Even in this situation, Louis XVI could have survived if he had agreed to go from being an absolute monarch to a constitutional monarch. But he decided otherwise. He conspired with other monarchs to overthrow the reformist movement in France, thus attacking the centrists who would have allowed him to maintain his throne. In doing so, he rolled out the red carpet for Maximilien Robespierre and other radicals with bold ideas for whom moderation was hampering revolution. The revolution could only succeed if traitors were eliminated and a new state, based on the promotion of virtue, replaced dysfunctional civic constitutions favoured by moderates.

With a dominant position in French politics as the chairman of a committee responsible for overseeing the country's war effort, Robespierre defended and strengthened his power by taking French politics to the extreme. He put in place a quasi-judicial process to quickly execute political opponents (including former allies). Dependent on terror to support his vision of a new society, Robespierre destroyed the democratic institutions that were emerging during repeated efforts to draft a new French constitution. After Robespierre was executed, the strength of the revolution faded, and then Napoleon came to power.

This French example shows a destructive disruption of old institutions without building a sustainable alternative. It highlights the importance of political leadership with a clear vision at a time when an existing system of government is overthrown. This is the type of leadership that Frederick of Saxony provided, as did Constantine and 'Abd al-Malik. And the great strength of the authors of the United States Constitution was to understand that radical change could be achieved through compromise. As Robespierre showed, the use of violence to impose new rules on the population is a disastrous recipe.

What is Lenin's place in this picture? By the time he returned to Russia, the central institutions of the tsarist regime had collapsed and the existing provisional government had no electoral mandate. Lenin controlled the small group of revolutionaries who took over from the labor movement and shared power with the government. Without Lenin's ability to organize a framework of subordinates, the revolution he hoped for would not have taken place in October 1917.

Lenin managed to maintain power during a violent civil war. He created a secret police apparatus responsible for thousands of assassinations while millions more died in fighting, starvation, and disease. Eventually, however, he realized that the policies he had used in war would not work in time of peace. It is this ability to adapt to circumstances that has allowed other leaders to succeed in previous overturns. Lenin's New Economic Policy—essentially state capitalism—gave people a vested interest in what could generously be described as an alternative communist regime. But Joseph Stalin, then Lenin's successor, caused the destruction of the New Economic Policy with his program of forced collectivization. Its homicidal regime ensured that the Soviet Union could never offer a viable alternative to Western capitalism.

Another particularly brutal disturbance of the 20th century was the rise of Nazism. Nazism is rooted in a theory that involves unavoidable competition between nations. Within each nation, there was also an ongoing struggle for survival and the government should strive to support the “winners” rather than the “losers” in this struggle; in the same way there could only be “winners” and “losers” between nations in foreign affairs. Originally promulgated by Herbert Spencer, this view is known as Social Darwinism. It was supported by the pseudoscience of eugenics developed by Francis Galton, a contemporary of Spencer. Despite his English nationality, Spencer's theories gained popularity in the United States, a country where Galton's eugenic theories were used to support restrictive immigration policies and the sterilization of prisoners by the state due to “mental disability.” Adolf Hitler was among the people who found these laws appealing.

Hitler's political success was largely due to the fact that elements of his speech about Germany's trajectory — that it could have won the First World War, that it had been stabbed in the back, and that its problems could be solved by cancelling the treaty that ended the war — were already known to the electorate from other sources. These statements were lies, but these lies were popular. Hitler's extreme version of racist social Darwinism was initially on the fringes of German thought, but because of its anti-communism, it was tolerated outside Nazi circles.

However, an anti-communist message supported by lies would not be enough to explain Hitler's rise to power. Like previous political upheavals, this one required the disintegration of faith in government. Here, much of the loss of trust came from the policies of the centrist German chancellor: in response to the Great Depression, he decided to follow conventional wisdom by reducing public spending, thus increasing the impact of the recession and damaging the center-right alliance that secured his election. As the depression worsened, Hitler's Nazi Party garnered more and more attention. The party was strengthened by Hitler's vigorous campaign style and his ability to use new technology, especially radio. When German President Paul von Hindenburg appointed Hitler chancellor in January 1933, Hindenburg was confident that Hitler would remain controllable.

It did not take more than two full months for Hitler to put in place the legal conditions for his dictatorship. The Nazi Party was not yet recognized as a murderous institution when, in 1936, the whole world gathered in Berlin to celebrate the Olympic Games. Hitler looked like other conservatives — the parallel between Jim Crow laws in the United States and antisemitic legislation in Germany was invoked to justify the presence of the United States at the Games — and the Nazi Party had strong anti-communist credentials. Because of these factors and the fear of another war, European governments were reluctant to oppose Hitler until war became inevitable.

The overthrow of society led by Hitler was based on the collapse of trust in institutions, on the appeal of the new version of German nationalism promoted by Hitler to a society in the throes of economic collapse and violence, and on the high level of discipline of the Nazi movement in which Hitler formed a core of leaders. In addition, his rise was favored by the blindness ofEstablishment politics.

What can we learn from major historical disturbances and their varied consequences? The value of history is that it allows us to detect patterns of behavior in the present that have produced serious consequences in the past.

Today, there are signs that the liberal democratic systems in the United States and Europe are under threat. The most obvious of these signs is the loss of trust in public institutions. Factors such as the desire of Western governments to allow widespread impoverishment, the weakening of labor organizations, and the inability to provide adequate health care and other basic needs fuel powerful movements that seek to undermine the dominant political system.

Likewise, extreme intellectual ideas fuel these increasingly powerful political movements. Some of these movements use the ideas of social Darwinism to claim, for example, that immigration undermines social protection. In Europe, the normalization of nationalist groups such as the one supporting the candidacy of Éric Zemmour for the French presidency, or Viktor Orbán's Fidesz party in Hungary, threatens established political norms. In the United Kingdom, some Brexit supporters have translated traditional English exceptionalism into a form of hypernationalism in terms that, like those of supporters of former US President Donald Trump, echo the doctrines of social Darwinism. The widespread belief in false information, such as the lie that presents Trump victorious in the 2020 election, recalls the fallacious imaginary that spread in Germany when Hitler came to power. To plug systemic cracks such as election lies, immigration fantasies, or anti-vaccination movements, Western governments should recognize that the prevalence of such extremist thinking is a sign of their failure.

The road to restoring faith—which could involve the type of big disruption that kept societies from collapsing in the past—will offer real help to those who have been left behind. The underlying principle of liberal democracy is to be found in the contract between the government and the governed. The government has a responsibility to control the power of the private sector that undermines public welfare and spreads lies, just as it has a responsibility to ensure that people have access to the goods and services they need. This will require practices that are very different from the usual policy. History tells us that when normality fails, change happens.

There are signs that we are in a period of upheaval. But what type of disruption will prevail?

David Potter