Mass Politics and the Failure of Government Part 1

The industrialization of society was the deciding factor in the influx of populations into cities, which in turn necessitated a politics of the massive, a way of dealing with large groups as a cohesive unit. The multiplicity of political viewpoints was streamlined and concentrated into the two seemingly opposed ideologies of liberal and conservative. But an ideology, and its party affiliation, works constantly towards ever greater homogenization of individualism in order to maintain its identity and systemic efficiency.
It is, after all, structured to mobilize the body politic as a whole, and dissuade the fragmentation that comes from a genuinely open inquiry.
For no mass society can long tolerate a truly competative marketplace, whether intellectual or economic, as such competition would act like a solvent, threatening its frail bonds.
And so the concentrations of political and economic power are invested into ever more rigid definitions of the social system as being something fundamental to the functioning of the populace, something inevitable and inescapable, for which no alternative options could exist.
But a paradox emerges from this effect, as industrial societies become more politically and economically consolidated the promised returns of those foundational systems become less and less.
Why this occurs is simple; the tools used by societies to organize themselves are incapable of operating properly on mass scales. Their inevitable outcome is the reduction of the human being into the consumer- a consumer of goods and services, and a consumer of prepackaged political opinions.

The industrial populations of the twentieth century, as a consequence of this industrialism, were too massive to ever be governed in any truly democratic fashion. Indeed, the very notion of governance is counter to the tenants of democracy as a collection of individuals who will determine the rules by which their society should function. In truth, there has never been a socio-political ‘ism’ of the massive capable of effectively dealing with the multiple-millions in the modern nation-state.
Only individual-based networks embody the principles necessary for the functioning of large groups, but even here these groups will tend away from class, ethnic, or national identities, and will instead arrange themselves along mutually-shared lines of value.

Why should it be that the larger a society grows the more ineffective the social system it is predicated upon becomes- regardless of whether that system is socialism or capitalism?
It is because social economics is not grounded in the physical realities of limits, but instead, being an abstraction which nevertheless must deal with tangible realities, seeks to expand its capacities heedless of the consequences.
A system, by definition, is always lesser than the total potential of the populace it operates within, meaning that it must always seek out what is percieves to be the most efficient means to fulfill its core functions, which are to organize labour and distribute resources.
This is fine and appropriate when dealing with limited numbers, but as these go up certain feedback loops come into effects.
We can see an example of this clearly in the rapidly idustrializing areas of China, where the rural poor are forced into the cities as their lands are appropriated for development. There they must work at low-paying manufacturing jobs for long hours just to be able to buy the basic necessities that were previously gotten from their land. This influx of people expands the economy, requiring more land to be developed, and sets in motion a race to the bottom of wages and living conditions, all for the sake of maximizing growth efficiency.
The consequence of this pattern, whether here or in the developing world, is the failure of mass politics as the system becomes all-pervasive, a bureaucratic labyrinth designed only to increase the functionality of the system (it should be noted that efficiency in a system and its effectiveness in fulfilling human needs can indeed be directly opposed).

This is the great illusion which undergirds democracy and socialism alike, that in becoming ever more efficient at managing the lives of millions, it alienates those same individuals, stripping them of their inherent power. Its ultimate goal is the reduction of human potential, not as the result of sinister machinations, but simply as a natural outcome of an wholly inappropriate structure.