On my last post on the topic I applied the
organizational types I had previously defined to the Greek negotiation with the
so-called Troika, reaching the conclusion that the failure of the representatives
to reach an agreement could be read as the unsuccessful attempt to resolve the conflict
caused by the parties pursuing incommensurable goals. I particularly pointed at
the difficulties and rigidities caused within the Greek team by their double allegiance,
as representatives of the whole Greek state (thus invested with the authority
to pursue what was best for the permanence of current Greeks, fallaciously
considered to be dependent on their material well being) but also of the
ideologically charged far left parties that form the Syriza coalition which
sets a number of red lines they theoretically can not cross, from further
reductions in pension payments to maintenance of a primary surplus close to
current levels… although in practice we’ve seen those red lines nominally
crossed once and again, at least according to Tsipras and his boys, even if
crossing them would be beneficial for the improvement of such well being (as
the opposing team has relentlessly but unconvincingly argued).
I didn’t delve much back then, and
want to do it now, on the equivalent contradictions within the troika team,
formed by a representative from the EU (a political organization), the ECB (a
political organization that although nominally independent has the same goal,
the preservation of the European peoples through the equally fallacious expedient
of increasing their material wealth and using means, like low inflation and
certain arbitrary level of employment, that is not clear at all that contribute
to such end) and the IMF (an apparently economic organization, which operates
under the umbrella of a political one under the auspice of a wider body, making
it even more unclear how and who they represent/ pretend to serve). That is a
dysfunctional team if there ever was one, and it is surprising they could ever reach
a decision on what terms to accept, which ones to reject and what ones to
propose… of course in the end the public suspects things were made workable
simply by calling Berlin and have either Angela Merkel or Wolfgang Schäuble
tell them what they had to say. Well, at least they seem to have a single
hierarchy and they all adhere to a common worldview (it happens to be a wrong
one, but we’ll leave that aside for a moment), and that’s why I would say they
still seem to have the upper hand in the negotiation regardless of what 11
million Greeks decide to vote, and why if there is a final agreement it will
end up looking much closer to their initial conditions than to Greece’s (of
course, Greeks will not comply with it soon afterwards, but that’s another
story). That, and the fact that they have the power of the purse and as popular
wisdom says, “he who pays the piper calls the tune”, so the Greeks could have
sent a team made by Socrates, Demosthenes, Themistocles and Pericles and still
would have came back empty handed…
However, colorful historical
analogies aside, I wanted to reflect (inspired by this little and most likely
inconsequential episode in the rich history of European nations reverting to
what they do best, which is harming one another) on the interplay between
different types of organizations, or rather, on how a single organization ends
up adopting goals of different types, how that adoption follows certain rules, and
how that is the norm rather than the exception.
Let’s start with Religious organizations: in their most encompassing
form (that of established churches, although non denominational sects follow a
similar arc) they all start with some sort of revelation experienced by a
revered master (the “founder”), which communicates it to a reduced number of
followers (reduced because most churches started in an age without mass
communications and mostly illiterate masses, so the good message had to spread by
word of mouth, a notably slow way). Those followers have to make substantial
adjustments to their way of living (religions in their founding stages are
probably the most dominant form of organization there has ever been) and tend
to subordinate everything to the embodiment of the truth they have been taught,
leaving them little time from more earthly concerns like procuring a stable
income, allocating resources or setting rules for the participation of new
members in decisions that may affect the whole community. However, the goodwill
and sharing of a common purpose (the spreading of the faith) normally more than
compensate for the lack of organizational sophistication, and given that the
message of the founder was well attuned to the needs of the age, and that the
first disciples presented an alluring example of worthy living, religions
spread and grow in the number of their adherents.
That growth makes it necessary to
devote growing resources to teaching the newcomers, not just the simple, bare
bones message of the founder, but some of the complications that surely have
arisen since the founding, including the solutions that have been arrived at
for all those early concerns that could initially be set aside, but which have
probably grown a more pressing concern. The bigger the church grows, the more
sophisticated the rules on how to live (in greater numbers, with greater specialization)
become. The development of Canon Law in the Catholic Church, which has become a
whole subset of Law Studies (and requires years of training to master) would be
a good example of how an organization that started being entirely religious
needs beyond certain size to develop some distinctly educational capabilities.
Of course, there was a time in Europe when all education (from the most basic,
in the form of parish schools, to the most advanced, in the great learning
centers that became the first and original universities) was under the mantle
of the Church, so in some sense every educational type of organization is
shaped by being a spin off from the archetypal religious one.
Now, human nature being what it is,
there comes a moment in the life of every major religion (probably even before
the need arises to devote specific efforts to the training of the ruling
cadres) when not all the members who join share the original purpose with the
same purity, or have the same understanding of what that final purpose of the
organization consists in (some people are less inclined to metaphysical truth,
some have greater difficulties understanding the appeal of what they see as
very abstract, unpractical ideas). Some of those people are indeed good
leaders, practical organizers that know how to identify every member’s strengths
and particular genius, how to assign them the tasks they are best suited for
and how to motivate them to strive in the pursuit of the goals that have been
set for them. But, not having the inclination or the ability to embody the
truth of the faith that constitutes the core of the church’s message
themselves, they just direct their energies towards the mere preservation of
the faithful within the physical world (which normally requires their
protection and safety, something to which nobody would object is a legitimate
goal, but then goes on to encompass their prosperity and wealth, because what
better way is there to ensure the fealty of the believers and to attract new
converts than to dazzle them with every conceivable sign of material success).
Of course, at this stage the church has become a political organization, and
ends up fighting other churches (or secular states) not to ensure they can
freely perform their rites, but for the dominance of the social space and the
ability to extract more material riches from the masses (which was the ultimate
reason for the wars of religion that devastated Europe between Luther’s 95
theses in 1517 and the Treaties of Westphalia in 1648).
Finally, at different moments in the
life of a church (but only when it has achieved a certain degree of material
success, which means that it has already mutated at least partly into a
political organization) it will attract people that, in the depth of their
hearts, do not care about the transcendent truth they nominally uphold, and
just want to live in this world as comfortably and successfully as possible.
Some of those people will be wildly ambitious, and also capable to rise in the
hierarchy and even shape it to their taste and preference, staffing it with
other like minded people. The church then turns at last into an economic
organization, devoted to the improvement of the social position of its members,
and participating then in a zero sum game with other (secular or religious)
organizations within the social space. The advantage of an “economized” church
is that it has to struggle for that social recognition of its members within
the rules of the society which hosts it, which in our time and age exclude the
resort to violence or intimidation (although some churches, like Scientology,
still seem to be willing to apply as much coercion as the courts would allow).
The interesting thing is that we
have seen that while a religious organization can adapt its original goals so
they end up being indistinguishable from those of other types of organization
(and there are historical examples of all three of the possible transitions, I
would dare to say in all major religions), the inverse adaptation never takes
place. Neither an economic, nor a political, nor an educational organization
can suddenly claim to have discovered some transcendental truth and expect
their members to a) start believing it and b) change the rules associated with
membership so it becomes more dominant and control additional aspects of their
lives. We will explore this lack of symmetry in other possible transitions, but
can say at this point that this is why I mentioned in the title “corruption” or
“degeneration”, as examples of non-reversible dynamics that, once started, do
not easily admit of a change of direction.
We can see a similar dynamic within
educational organizations, to the point that I have had to discuss with some
colleagues to what extent such a type actually exist as a different entity from
political or economic ones. Indeed, if we look at both schools and universities
in the West (which are becoming more and more the dominant model all the world
over of places where teaching takes place), specially privately owned ones, it
is difficult not to notice as very prominent goals either the permanency of a
well distinguished class separate from the rest of the population (be them
civil engineers, architects, lawyers, sociologists or feminisms scholars),
which would mark them as distinctly political, or even more markedly the social
improvement of their members (a continuous and understandable battle cry of
teachers’ unions, and also the explanation behind their defense of tenure),
which would unmask them as economic. What I would argue is that those goals are
historically secondary (although I readily grant that they have become
predominant in our days), and that organizations to develop and transmit certain
areas of knowledge, subject to an internally developed set of rules for how to
legitimately develop such knowledge, where originally entirely distinct from
what we know today, and entirely free from any desire for social distinction or
collective continuation. Think of the first universities (and of course the
original Lyceum, Epicurean garden or the Stoa), or even of the medieval guilds
of anonymous artisans that built Romanesque or Gothic cathedrals without
signing their works or being paid more than what their subsistence required.
But of course, any body devoted to learning, if successful, will want to
somehow mark its practitioners from the rest of the public, developing signs of
distinction and differentiation (becoming then a political body) and then try
to benefit from that distinction seeking a differential treatment for them, and
trying to maximize the privileges they can wring from the social body, and will
thus transform itself in an economic
organization.
Again, we do not see the opposite
transition taking place, as although both political formations and economic
enterprises may develop some “training centers”, “think tanks”, “corporate
universities” (I would know, having taught in one some hundreds of hours) they
can not make a legitimate goal of theirs the pursuing of an area of knowledge
by its own sake. As much as some organizations would like to convince us of the
contrary, I’ve never seen a corporation or a factional party discover the
intrinsic value of truth, and allow a significant amount of their precious resources
to be diverted to the refinement of such truth. I’ve seen private funds (or,
more frequently, a mixture of private and public funds assuring the recovery of
the investment, be it by direct transfer or by the issuance of lucrative
monopolies) invested in the creation of sophisticated research and development
facilities, many of which have been instrumental in the advance of applied
science and of technology… what I have not seen is that science and technology
being pursued by the love of knowledge and with the open, sharing spirit that
is intrinsically part of an educational organization, which unmasks them as
just another arm of the economic conglomerates to which they rightfully belong.
Finally, we have the case of the
political organizations, where there is not much room for degeneration left, as
they are already degenerate enough (just kidding). They can not develop an
interest in knowledge, they can not discover a sudden zeal for an otherworldly
truth, but sure as hell they can discover that the collective for which they
vouch is not really worth it, and that there is a lot of benefit to be made for
their cadres in exploiting the state apparatus, as long as they can convince
enough schlubs they still represent them, and all their accepting bribes,
taking a cut in public adjudications, partaking of insider trading and the rest
of little and big corruptions and horse trading we associate with contemporary
politics are just for the common good, or at least for the benefit of the
ingroup (which is defined necessarily in exclusion of some real or imagined
outgroup that has to be demonized for all those depredations to be morally
justifiable). I think randomly opening the newspaper (any day, in any country)
provides us with ample enough evidence of how political organizations degenerate
without much resistance into economic ones, devoted mainly to the enrichment of
its members (enrichment being the fastest way of gaining social prestige for
those that have not the talent, wits and cultural capital to gain it by other
means).
Could a commercial/ productive
organization in turn evolve to include in its goals the perpetuation of its
members (which would need first to acquire some defining feature to
differentiate themselves from the mass of humanity), thus becoming political? Very
unlikely. Corporations (let’s not forget that, in the USA at least, they have
juridical personhood, which allows for a certain effortless continuity) may buy
political influence by lobbing or any other available (legally or not) way of
influencing the political process of determining how the commonwealths in which
they operate rule themselves, but the objective of that transaction is to
increase their benefits through a more favorable legislation, not to ensure
their survival. They assume that as long as they make enough money, and have
enough to distribute to their members, that survival is guaranteed enough, and
that the moment the benefit stops flowing to their coffers there will be
nothing worthy of being continued (which is what really differentiates them
from political organizations, where the survival of the collective is an end in
itself, and their enrichment is only a means to that end, whilst in economical
organizations the enrichment is the end in itself, regardless of who benefits
from it).
We can then represent the evolution
of organizations with the following one directional flow:
Religious -> Educational -> Political
-> Economic
Which doesn’t mean that the moment a
religious organization allows some of its members to pursue within its formal
structure some sort of secular benefit it automatically becomes an economic one
and can never change back. As long as they keep their nominal intent, they can reform and,
through innovation, get rid of the “corrupted” goals and restore their original
capacity to pursue the first, “higher order” ones. I recognize that stating “otherworldly”
goals as somehow of a higher order than the pursuit of things like group
recognition (a first task, previous to permanence, required of political
groups) or material well being may jar some of my readers, but it will require
a separate post to sort it out.
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