Everyone for oneself

Jeder für sich und Gott gegen alle – Everyone for Oneself and God against All is a title of a Werner Herzog film based on a true story of a man raised in total isolation from any human contact, whom citizens of a German town tried to integrate to their community.  It may as well be a metaphoric expression of capitalist rationality destroying what the German sociologists Ferdinand Tönnies and Max Weber called Gemeinschaft – a human community based on feelings of togetherness and on mutual bonds, and replacing it with Gesellschaft – a group sustained by the pursuit of its members’ individual interests and goals.  The loss of Gemeinschaft is – I believe – the main reason behind the recent growth of populist nationalism, which left liberal pundits flabbergasted and grasping for answers.  In fact, this change from Gemeinschaft to Gesellschaft has been largely unnoticed by the English speaking pundits, as the English language does not even have the words for these two different kinds of human societies. 

As an Eastern European immigrant to the United States, I had an opportunity to directly experience this change.  The key element of Eastern European socialism – routinely missed by its detractors and supporters alike – was the marriage of modernization and internationalism with Gemeinschaft.  The official state ideology, or religion as some would argue, was “socialist” economic development.  Like any other economic development, the ‘socialist’ variety aimed to bring industrialization, modern technology, rationally managed economy to the nation, and integrate the nation into a broader network of international cooperation.  But unlike its ‘capitalist’ counterpart – the Eastern European socialism was achieving this modernization and internationalization without the "capitalist" transition from Gemeinschaft to Gesellschaft.  Despite massive migration from the countryside to the cities triggered by industrialization, the urban communities maintained the essential features of rural communities based on physical proximity, feelings of togetherness and on mutual bonds.  This type of community was, in fact, carefully cultivated by the socialist state, from the state promotion of folk culture to the official declarations of solidarity at both local and international level. 

However, one of the key element in the preservation of Gemeinschaft in Eastern Europe was the physical organization of the living space, specifically physical proximity.  I lived in a fairly large city, yet I did not have to leave my neighborhood to obtain life necessities, from food shopping to education.  I started walking to school by myself in the first grade.  In the third grade I was sent on shopping errands to buy food in the neighborhood stores.  In the fourth grade I started exploring more remote parts of the city – all by myself – because I could take advantage of good public transportation.  In the seventh grade I run away from home for the first time – again taking advantage of the availability of public transit.

My childhood ability to physically move around the city was facilitated not only by physical proximity and public transit but also by social bond and feeling of togetherness.  It was taken for granted that I, or for that matter any child, would be helped by strangers if needed and certainly not taken advantage of.  Neighbors watching other neighbors’ kids playing in the community yards was the norm.  When kids misbehaved in school or even engaged in petty crime, teachers would rather work with parents to address the issue instead of notifying authorities. 

This was not limited to children.  As a college student, I would often hop on a train on a spur of a moment, without any money, and go to another town, counting on the fact that others would help me.  In one instance, my girlfriend and I would travel some 750 kilometers to Dresden in Germany with enough money to buy a one way ticket.  While in Dresden, we managed to get completely plastered in a local pub thanks to the hospitality of the local residents, and then some good Samaritan gave us a ride back to the border town – some 120 kilometers, which is “far away” in Europe – from where we hitchhiked the remaining 600 kilometers to home.

All that ended when I immigrated to the United States at the age of 27.  When I first landed, FOB, in Grand Rapids MI, I first thought that we were shipped off to some underdeveloped hinterland.  Not only the center of the city was hollowed up by deindustrialization – something almost unimaginable in Europe, but the sheer sprawl of it made it almost impossible to move around it, at least without a car.  The automobile was a mixed blessing, because while it allowed moving around the city more efficiently, it also isolated me from other people.  Unlike in Eastern Europe, when travel was almost invariably an opportunity for socializing, people in the United States travel alone. 

I soon discovered that Grand Rapids was the norm rather than an exception in the United States.  The cities were hollowed up and ravaged by deindustrialization long before President Clinton signed NAFTA.  The situation was even worse in small towns.  In my travels through central and Pennsylvania I saw many of such towns transformed into literally dying communities – all but abandoned by the young people looking for economic opportunities elsewhere and inhabited most by old people who did not have enough energy and resources to leave.  The ultimate case is Centralia, PA, totally abandoned and razed to the ground after an uncontrollable underground fire of coal deposits broke out.

Gemeinschaft died in the United States before I got off the boat here, or rather was killed by capitalist economic development.  It is not the lost of economic opportunity alone that matters, but the loss of community based on close proximity, feelings of togetherness, and on mutual bonds.  This process continued in the 1990s in large cities where local typically ethnic communities were displaced by gentrification.  In fact, gentrification is almost a perfect example of Gemeinschaft giving way to Gesellschaft – townhomes razed to make room for luxury condos, neighborhood stores displaced by national chains, local residents displaced by yuppies ready to move out as soon as a new economic opportunity emerges elsewhere.

The recent influx of immigrants to the United States and Europe did not cause this slow death of Gemeinschaft.  In fact, immigrants likely injected some fresh lifeblood into the dying Gemeinschaft as they brought the sense Gemeinscheft from their old countries.  However, the influx of immigrants provided the lightening rod for the popular anger resulting from the prior loss of Gemeinschaft caused by capitalist development.  It is much easier to blame a visible scapegoat than invisible systemic forces for one’s misfortunes.  It is even easier to blame scapegoats instead of systemic forces when the ruling oligarchy and the media it controls encourage scapegoating.

This loss of Gemeinschaft and the feeling of despair it produces was totally missed by the liberal and leftist pundits and commentators.  The former tried to explain it by anti-immigrant bigotry, the later by the lack of economic opportunity.  Both missed it by a mile – albeit it can be said to their defense that it is easy to miss what you cannot even name in your native language.  In a sense, they acted like the good citizens in the Werner Herzog’s film, who tried to transfer the rational elements of their culture to the “feral” man, yet failed to instill a sense of human bond and community which he was deprived in his childhood.  The nationalist right, on the other hand, sensed the mood and its root causes correctly, and managed to channel that mood into their own nationalistic narratives and ideologies. 

It is difficult to blame people for going with these nationalistic narratives.  If you are dying of a disease that the doctors cannot even properly diagnose, you will listen to anyone who offers you a treatment, even if that treatment is nothing but snake oil.  Calling these people bigots and deplorables is totally counterproductive, as it will push them even more into the embrace of charlatans.

If the Left is to offer a viable alternative to nationalism, it must return to its roots of socialist development that marries the economy and Gemeinschaft.  While the Left typically talks about the economic plight and the need to reorganize the economy, it does not have much to say about restoring Gemeinschaft ravaged by capitalist development.  It is the promise of Gemeinschaft – even if fake – what draws people to nationalism.  The left must simply offer a better alternative in this respect to become relevant again.  Multi-culti hipster colonies in gentrified urban spaces will not do because they are Gesellschaft – groups held together by individual pursuit of self-interest – not Gemeinschaft. 

I am not suggesting a return to a romanticized version of what Karl Marx called idiocy of the rural life, or perhaps to some romanticized version of kibbutz.  In fact, I do not miss the provincialism of Eastern European life that motivated me to emigrate to the United States in the first place.  What I have in mind is an international (“global” is a dirty word today) network of organic communities rooted in specific geographic locations, organized for human interaction rather than automobile movement, close geographic proximity, plenty of public spaces, and composed of people bound together by common interests, activities, and pursuits, but at the same time tied to other similar communities in the region, the nation, and internationally.  Communities that make the people who live in them feel safe and not afraid to interact with strangers.  Communities that offer refuge from threats and danger without closing up and “circling their wagons.”  The promise of such Gemeinschaft communities – which capitalism is simply unable to deliver – must prominently feature in the Left’s message even if the exact blue prints for them are yet to be drawn.  The alternative is descent into nationalism and eventually fascism.