#centralisation

A bureaucratically centralized state capable of military defense and expansion, the management of economic crises, the construction of transport infrastructure, the domination of labor, and the suppression of oppressed groups is very much in capital’s general interests, so long as its interventions do not impinge upon the rights of property and the “liberties” of business. Such a state is an integral aspect of the capital relation, expressing and managing the forms of alienation unique to capitalist society and the conflicts it generates through institutions of impersonal power. Excessively fragmented state powers are generally suboptimal to this project, and they carry the risk that conflicts between regionalized part-sovereigns can become militarized.

When power is centralized, people have to attain dominion over others to gain any influence over their own destinies.

‘Whenever something is wrong,’ wrote Leopold Kohr in his classic book The Breakdown of Nations, ‘something is too big.’ Virtually everything in the EU is too big these days, and it shows. The impossibility of maintaining one financial model for 28 nations has required the EU to cast the people of its poorer periphery nations, from Ireland to Greece to Spain to Portugal, into debt peonage or mass unemployment in order to keep its superstate dream alive; something it has done with extreme ruthlessness. The economic crisis this has caused, combined with the cultural and social impact of its open borders policy, has led to the rise of far-right parties in many EU nations: the very thing which defenders of the union say it exists to counter. Economically, culturally and politically, the giant is staggering: giants always do. Small, after all, is beautiful, right?

Wherever there are hierarchies, it favors the ones on top to centralize power. Building more checks and balances into the system just means relying on the thing we need to be protected from for protection. The only way to exert leverage on the authorities without being sucked into their game is to develop horizontal networks that can act autonomously. Yet when we’re powerful enough to force the authorities to take us seriously, we’ll be powerful enough to solve our problems without them.

Data.Sports : Portail numérique sur le sport en France

2025.5 - How Do We Fix It? I recently read Sam Freedman's "Failed State: Why Britain Doesn't Work and How We Fix It"? I really loved the book...but somehow feel it didn't go far enough.