The Engine of Integration
The Secret History of Big Government
The modern industrial society, which I often describe as Second Wave, developed and flourished due to unique features. It gave rise to many associations from labor and trade groups, faith groups, schools, and service clubs, all of which had to work within a framework of predictable rules. Above all was a legal system needed to align the budding info-sphere, socio-sphere, and techno-sphere. Yet integration played a fundamental role in our society.
Integration was the engine driving of Second Wave civilization, with the number one coordinator of it all— was big government. This growth in big government fed the system of integration that explains the unyielding increase of big government in all Second Wave societies.
Too many political firebrands insist on smaller government or worse, cry tyranny at the latest societal inconvenience. Yet, these same political leaders will always increase rather than reduce the size and scope of government if given the chance. Our United States federal government never ceases to expand or seek control, even under small-government Republicans. Every single Republican administration for the last fifty years has supported some form of big government. Political parties and politicians fight over the issues, but all support some version of big government: one because their jobs count on it and two because so does industrial society.
This inconsistency in political rhetoric is only comprehensible if we acknowledge the supreme role Second Wave governments have in building and sustaining industrial civilization. This is the key objective of all such systems. All other minor arguments take a back seat. Politicians Republican, Democratic, Green, or Constitution Party bicker over the latest issues, yet government power is always part of their agenda because industrial societies require the government to execute vital integrational missions.
Free marketeers from the Friedrich Hayek school of economics have claimed that governments impede business. Yet if the enterprise was restricted to the private sector only, industrialization would have come at a near glacial pace. Starting in America with the Lincoln administration the government accelerated the development of the infrastructure needed for industrialism. They built railroads, harbors, roads, canals, and highways. Later government-funded or regulated the telegraphs, telephones, TV, and the internet. They mandated commercial rules and regulations needed for standardized marketplaces. They forced native Americans off their land so ranchers and farmers could replace them. Eventually, they too got push off the land and into the industrial labor market. Today we see the family farm transitioning to compete with or become corporate farms. Second Wave governments subsidized the energy sector and advanced technology, especially military technology. None of these would ever get done alone by the private sector so governments accepted the integrative tasks needed in the industrial system.
Alvin Toffler called government the great accelerator, not as a compliment but due to the coercive power of the State and tax revenues it could generate to accomplish what private enterprise could not or would not undertake. Governments could jump-start industrial development by marching in to satisfy gaps in the system. If needed governments could carry out “preemptive integration.”
This system also set up mass education systems of the 19th and 20th centuries, to school youths for their future roles in the industrial labor force. Along the way, the governments encouraged the nuclear family concept over an extended family model. By severing the family of educational and other homebound traditional functions, governments accelerated the nuclear family concept to meet the era of the factory system. Governments coordinated the integration for so many complex social, political, and economic levels for Second Wave civilization to work.
Not unexpectedly, as the importance of integration expanded both the essence and type of government changed. Presidents and prime ministers stopped being cultural or political leaders and started to view themselves as managers or CEOs. Their behavior and conduct were similar to men who ran the large corporations, and yes, they were usually men. Eventually, oligarchical companies partnered with the big governmental machine. They still paid lip service to democracy and social justice, but the Bushes, Clintons, Trumps, and Blairs, of the industrial world, strode into office by promising little more than effective management.
This system went global as the Chinese communists and the Russian mafia state applied the same model but put it on steroids as their oligarchical companies functioned as limbs of a big governmental machine. The workers never did seize the means of production, as Marx calculated, or capitalists retaining power, as Adam Smith’s disciples hoped, instead a new influence arose to challenge both. The technicians of power seized the “means of integration” and, in doing so, they took over the direction of social, cultural, political, and economic development. The Second Wave societies are still to this day ruled by these integrators.
As we transition to a Third Wave society citizens need to reexamine the outdated roles these technicians play. In our budding Third Wave society, the issue is no longer big government versus small government. It’s about efficient government. Today government has ceased being the great accelerator, it is now information that is the great accelerator. Information acceleration impacts all spheres of society: info-sphere, poli-sphere, socio-sphere, econ-sphere, and techno-sphere. The tension running through our society today is a result of information acceleration. Third Wave political figures can’t be managers anymore, they must return to being leaders. Citizens also need to wake up to their role in Third Wave society. They are no longer cogs in the factory system, now they are active participants in all spheres. Thanks to the information acceleration they also have all the information at their disposal to actualize change.
Notes
Why Abe Lincoln Was Biden’s Inspiration For Infrastructure Plan (forbes.com)
What is a family farm? How is it different from a factory farm? (farmaid.org)
https://www.economist.com/books-and-arts/2018/05/19/inside-vladimir-putins-mafia-state