Signs of Collapse: Organized Crime Takes Over Politics and Business

Now that the collapse of our political, economic, social and ecological systems is accelerating, the signs of this collapse, including scapegoating, corruption, and social disorder are becoming more obvious. This is the second of a series of articles on some of these signposts.

image by CaseyColton on DeviantArt — CC BY-NC-ND 3.0

One of the points the British-French historian Aurélien often makes about politics is that humans will naturally pledge allegiance to whichever body — legal or illegal — ‘best’ provides them with security and other social needs like health and education. That might see them supporting governments in functioning democracies (there are a few of those left), and autocratic leaders who aren’t too obviously self-serving, megalomanic, or corrupt.

But when these ‘official’ power blocs do not provide citizens with their basic needs, citizens are forced to turn to other power blocs that deliver, or at least offer, a little more support to cope with their daily struggles. In impoverished areas that governments ignore, and in areas where ‘official’ police forces either fail to ‘serve and protect’ or openly exploit the citizenry, organized crime may offer just enough more to gain the allegiance of local citizens.

Organized crime syndicates take many forms. The mafia-style oligarchies and warlord fiefdoms that now prevail in many ‘failed’ nations are the obvious examples. Give them your allegiance and, provided you pass the ‘tests’, they will look after you. Street gangs are another example. AIPAC’s Congress “babysitters” follow a classic mafia organizational model.

In parts of México, the Zapatistas became popular with citizens as an alternative support network after corrupt local governments had been taken over by drug and crime lords. And much of the vast ‘underground economy’ operates outside the law and the state and provides many people on the planet with what they need that the ‘official’ government can or will no longer provide, or never could.

Many parts of western economies are actually run on the basis of bribes, kickbacks and payoffs both to officials and to ‘unofficials’ who know how to get things done outside of the rules of law and the state, and who command tribute and fealty for doing so. For the most part, the few media that still do investigative reporting have neither the courage nor the resources to bring this illegal activity to light (they may risk death if they try, especially since ‘officials’ and cops are often in on it and, for a price, turn a blind eye to it). So these activities continue ‘under the official radar’, and as our political and economic systems continue to fall apart at an accelerating rate, these activities expand and flourish.

I would argue that corporate and political lobbies like the NRA, AIPAC, Big Pharma and many, many more, are really just different forms of organized crime syndicates that use variations of the ‘mafia model’ to seize power from our failing political and economic systems and exert it for their personal advantage. These organized crime syndicates influence and control a wide swath of our political and economic systems, even above and beyond ‘registered’ lobby groups, and none of them is elected by or responsible to citizens. Examples: political party machines, big corporations and their oligopolies and unregistered lobby groups, the military and ‘defence’ industries, the criminals that run the construction and housing industries, police unions, some politically-active churches, and judiciary bodies stacked with bribed flunkies, just to name a few.

cartoon by Farley Katz from the New Yorker

Oxford defines ‘organized crime’ as “illegal, unethical and coercive activities that are planned and controlled by powerful groups and carried out on a large scale”. By that definition, much of the political and economic activity in western nations is already conducted by organized crime syndicates. As collapse deepens, this is going to get worse, not better.

Once we see that the collapsing political and economic systems, organizations and institutions that governments put in place no longer serve us, where will we turn?

It will of course depend on our situation and location. Once collapse deepens to the point that ‘official’ exercise of power cannot continue (there won’t be enough tax revenues to fund services or to enforce laws), we can expect to see government devolving power to more local levels, or just abandoning the provision of services altogether (starting with the most expensive non-military ones — health, education and social services). With the exception of drugs, most organized crime syndicates will not be much interested in offering these increasingly unprofitable services, so it’s likely that most of us will just have to do without them, or learn to provide them to each other.

Corporate empires, dependent on continuous growth for their survival, artificially low interest rates, ever-growing consumer debt, and cheap energy resources, will collapse along with political ’empires’. Even the very rich will only be able to make do if their wealth is real assets — since stocks and other financial ‘paper’ assets will be worthless as the economy collapses — and if they also have the wherewithal to secure and manage those assets. More and more, as both government and ‘official’ corporate suppliers of goods and services collapse, the vacuum left will inevitably be filled by organized crime.

So in the short run, we are likely going to have to deal with organized crime syndicates of various types for a while as collapse deepens. Look at any of the Global South nations that are already well into collapse and you’ll get the picture. They’ve already learned who they have to pay and what they have to do to get what they need, and you won’t find that information in their government propaganda. In addition to dealing with the reality of ecological collapse and the possibility of becoming climate migrants ourselves, we will have to decide what exactly we can and cannot live without, and pay the appropriate organized crime syndicates when necessary to get what we need.

But in the longer run, we are likely to discover that because power requires wealth to sustain it, and as collapse enters its later stages where no one will have much wealth left, we will all be relatively powerless. It’s at that point, as has been seen in past civilizational collapses, and even in major depressions, that our society will once again become relatively democratic. We’ll all be in the same boat, so we’ll either work together to get what we need, or perish. The once-haughty financiers, arbiters and expensive intermediaries will find their expertise is worthless, and that they have nothing of value to offer to the once-lowly bicycle repair person in return for their services.

And then the hard work will begin of creating radically re-localized subsistence societies that work, uniquely in each location, given that location’s available resources and its citizens’ competencies and cultural conditioning. There will be no cheap easily-extractable energy left to power these new societies, so their economies are likely to be what Anna Tsing has called salvage and scavenger economies. We will learn to reuse and repurpose the waste, weeds, remnants and thrown-away junk of our brief experiment with rapacious industrial economy, to provide us with what we need, wherever we end up finding ourselves living. Societies that actually work well in this world of scarcity may well take centuries to evolve, and we’ll likely have to survive a lot of failed attempts before they do emerge.

In the meantime, it’s useful to recognize, even at this early stage of collapse for many of us, how much of our political and economic system has already fallen to various kinds of organized crime syndicates, many of them masquerading as ‘respectable’ and ‘responsible’ organizations. Given the vast inequalities of wealth and power that our systems have led to, this was inevitable. And as the scarcities get worse, this will inevitably worsen as well.

And then that, too, will pass.