Localism versus/and nationalism?

I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t at least a little bit sympathetically disposed to Bill Kauffman’s paean to neo-secessionists in Vermont, but I’m not so sure that ultra-localism is the solution to the problems that the secessionists identify.

For one thing, to the extent that they deplore the effects of the global marketplace, it’s not clear that smaller communities are able to effectively resist it.

This is one of the reasons that Daly and Cobb give for their qualified nationalism. They actually hope to see a greater devolution of economic and political power, but believe that right now the nation-state is the only entity capable of putting checks on globalization that has some measure of democratic accountability:

Nation-states are today extremely important societies. They are in many instances the only loci of power capable of asserting themselves effectively against those forces that erode all community. They do, in many instances, contribute strongly to the self-identification of their citizens, and at least some of them allow for considerable participation in governance. Most of them have concern for the well-being of their citizens, and some affirm the diversity among them. Hence nations can be communities, and some are quite good communities. At the present time we join [Dudley] Seers in calling for economics to serve national communities.

It is important to see what difference this would make. The current economic ideal is that national boundaries not impede the global economy. Increasingly this means that economic decisions of determinative importance to the people of a nation are made by persons who are not responsible to them in any way. In short, whatever form of government the state may have, its people cannot participate in the most important decisions governing their daily lives. This weakens the possibility for a nation-state to be a community. With a national community, on the contrary, there is some possibility for the people through their government to share in decisions. A healthy national community is possible.

There can be no effective national economy if a people cannot feed themselves and otherwise meet their essential needs. Hence a national economy for community will be a relatively self-sufficient economy. This does not preclude trade, but it does preclude dependence on trade, especially where the nation cannot participate in determining the terms of trade. (Daly and Cobb, For the Common Good, p. 173)

Invoking the Catholic principle of subsidiarity, Daly and Cobb enunciate, as a general principle that decentralization is good if the community can effectively exercise control over its economic life:

In many instances the nation-state is already too large and too remote from ordinary people for effective participation to be possible. Decentralization of the economy within the nation should accompany nationalization in relation to the global economy. Many regions within the United States could become relatively self-sufficient. With economic decentralization there could come political decentralization as well. The main formal point is that a political community cannot be healthy if it cannot exercise a significant measure of control over its economic life. The second formal point is that of the Catholic teaching of “subsidiarity”: power should be located as close ot the people as possible, that is, in the smallest units that are feasible. Our special emphasis is that except for a few functions, political power that cannot affect the economic order is ineffective. Hence we tie political decentralization to economic decentralization. (p. 174)

The secessionists of the Second Vermont Republic, however, don’t see the nation-state as a potential ally. They see it as the enemy and themselves as the foes of “giantism” in all its forms.

From Kauffman’s article:

“The left-right thing has got to go,” declares Ian Baldwin, cofounder of Chelsea Green Publishing and publisher of Vermont Commons. “We’re decentralists and we are up against a monster.”

What might replace left and right, liberal and conservative, as useful political bipolarities? Globalist and localist, perhaps, or placeless versus placeist. Baldwin argues that “peak oil and climate change are linked and irreversible events that will within a generation change how human beings live. The world economy will relocalize.” He dismisses homeland security as “fatherland security”—for “homeland,” with its Nazi-Soviet echoes, has never been what Americans call their country. What we need, says Baldwin, is “homestead security”: sustainable agriculture, small shops, a revival of craftsmanship, local citizenship, communal spirit. The vision is one of self-government. Independence from the empire but interdependence at the grassroots. Neighborliness. The other American Dream.

Personally I like the idea of acheiving the ends of community and sustainability through noncoercive libertarian means. I’m just not sure it can be done. I certainly think that Daly and Cobb would agree with much of the spirit of the SVR folks, but their view is that the nation-state has to play an essential role in shielding local economies and communities from the ravages of the global marketplace. But the radical decentralists of the SVR are likely to reply that you can’t strengthen localities by concentrating more power in the center.

It may be that what’s needed is a mixture of both approaches. In reviewing WorldChanging, a vast compendium of ideas for saving the planet (and a pretty nifty book that we received as a gift from some friends), Bill McKibben writes:

If there’s one flaw in the WorldChanging method, I think it might be a general distrust of the idea that government could help make things happen. There’s a Silicon Valley air to the WorldChanging enterprise – over the years it’s been closely connected with Wired magazine, the bible of the digerati and a publication almost as paranoid about government interference and regulation as the Wall Street Journal. Like Internet entrepreneurs, they distrust both government intentions and abilities – bureaucrats tend, after all, to come from the ranks of those neither bold nor smart enough to innovate. A libertarian streak shines through: “When we redesign our personal lives in such a way that we’re doing the right thing and having a hell of a good time,” Steffen writes, “we act as one-person beacons to the idea that green can be bright, that worldchanging can be lifechanging.” I’m sympathetic to this strain of thinking; I believe we’re going to need more local and more nimble decision-making in the future to build strong, survivable communities. But it also makes it a little harder to be as optimistic as you’d like to be when reading these pages, which are filled with good ideas that, chances are, won’t come to all that much without the support of government and a system of incentives for investment.

Frankly I’m not sure what the right balance is. It may be that one of the necessary functions of government is to create a protective framework or space within which communities can flourish. This wouldn’t have to entail either bureaucratic micro-management or utter laissez-faire. Rather, what may be needed is some way to permit communities to freely experiment in different ways of living while enjoying a measure of protection from the levelling effects of the market.