2009 vs. 1789 – Will the crisis end in a revolution?

Prof. Knight is angry (source: thisislondon.co.uk)

Prof. Knight is angry – but does this help to recover and transform? (source: thisislondon.co.uk)

G20 summit under immense pressure

Radical measures must be decided at the G20 summit or it could become the “fateful moment” when the global recession lurches into an outright slump, Liberal Democrat leader, Nick Clegg, said today. (guardian.co.uk, 2009-03-30)

The crisis and the consequences for business and politics are still in the focus of mass media and the blogosphere. When I check the stats of future facts blog I find a lot of phrases containing “financial crisis” still on the top of the most used search terms. Surprisingly most of the visitors checked in here on the post of Oct. 2008 Global financial crisis may end 2009 – which is not really a typical post in a blog concerned with long-term trends. The news seemed significant at that time because

it had been expressed by an insider, Michel Camdessus, the former chief of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and
it was extraordinarily optmistic.

Let us contrast this sunny quote of last year with doomsday news like this of March 25th 2009: “Russia Expects New Financial System Crisis Outburst”. Russia’s Finance Minister Aleksei Kudrin said:

“We were standing on the brink of the financial collapse, but we prevented it, and I must here thank the Central Bank and the State Duma for giving us an opportunity to take decisions quickly,” (my emphasis, www.marketoracle.co.uk)

The coincidence of some news urges me to come back to the issue of the spreading crisis. In these days we read news like this:

3M manager taken hostage in France (he is free again)
Nationwide strike in France over economic crisis
Professor of anthropology going mad in Britain, threatening bankers (see picture above)

Empirically there is a tendency towards violence in words and now deeds – and this seems to culminate before the event of G20 in London. This was to be expected – but maybe this time this is more than the normal “role game” of summit protesting.

2009 vs. 1789 – Will the crisis end in a revolution?

There are a bunch of dissimilarities concerning 1789/2009, but to make the point I just want to remind you about the characterics of the situation:

Blindness: Economical and political elite are not adequately changing their mindset
Double Standards: A majority of people conceive an asymmetry in burdens (while many have lost their fortune, in the public opinion, the responsible “risk takers” in the poltical and financial system are not adequatelly sanctioned)
Conceptual Passivity: Standard measurements like stimulus plans are necessary, but they prevail the scene; legal system is not transforming – in many countries there are no new regulation laws on the way to protect against the next bubble
Legitimation Crisis: Diminishing confidence in the solution competence of economical and political elite

Question: Will all this escalate in a sudden and deep change of some power structures, i.e. result in a revolution?

We are talking about a time horizon <5ys. Then my answer is: No, I definitely don’t think so, but of course it depends on the definition of “deep change”. Some institutions like IMF or Securtiy Council may transform, some other neo-socialistic experiments will start (and will be falsified sooner or later!) – but I think this is not the decisive question at all!

Catalyst for transformation

The crisis will be a catalyst for transformation on a global scale, Schumpeter’s “creative destruction” will take place, the real “post-industrial” age with new mindsets and structures of work and collaboration will take place, and IT, the web, cloud computing, “wikinomics” will play a decisive role in this deconstruction. And if you want to call this kind of change a revolution, then yes, we will have one – and it will be unbloody.

21st Century – The Great Adaptation

Since most futurists did not predict the events and disruptive change of the world 1989 and 2001 we should be careful. I for my part think and hope that the rather successful market paradigm will be adjusted to the new prerequisites of the 21st century: