Does history have lessons for the future? Roman Krznaric looks to the past to discover the rules for radical hope
- Written by Peter McPhee, Emeritus professor, History, The University of Melbourne
Answers to the question about the lessons of history generally oscillate between two extremes. One is summed up in the 1905 aphorism of the Spanish-American philosopher George Santayana: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” The other is the famous opening to the English novelist L.P. Hartley’s The Go-Between (1953): “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.”
Can we draw direct lessons from history, or was the past so different as to tell us little about current challenges and their solutions? Most commonly, historians assert the uniqueness of past events while insisting that an historical perspective – evidence-based, thorough, sceptical, holistic – results in richer cultural awareness and wiser public policy.
Recently, more than 30 historians contributed to a collection titled Lessons from History: Leading Historians Tackle Australia’s Greatest Challenges, edited by Carolyn Holbrook, Lyndon Megarrity and David Lowe from the Australian Policy and History Network. They argued compellingly for the lessons to be learned from key moments in Australian history, and for how closer knowledge of the successes and failures of that history would produce better policy in future.
History for Tomorrow: Inspiration from the Past for the Future of Humanity – Roman Krznaric (W.H. Allen)
Roman Krznaric’s latest book, History for Tomorrow: Inspiration from the Past for the Future of Humanity, is a far bolder version of this approach. He explores what we can learn from the last 1,000 years of global history to tackle urgent issues ranging from the climate crisis to the risks of artificial intelligence.
Roman Krznaric.
Kate Raworth, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA
Some would argue that here Krznaric slides into self-fulfilling prophecy. One of his examples is a citizens’ assembly in Ireland on the challenges of climate change for biodiversity. He was profoundly impressed with the way the 100 or so participants found their way to well-informed, radical conclusions. He agreed with those conclusions – but he had also played a major role in briefing the participants.
Krznaric is a remarkably productive writer – he has published seven substantial books in the past 12 years – and at times his conclusions are hasty and sweeping. He is aware that 18th-century revolutionaries in America and France were mostly wary of unlimited democracy, preferring the balance of upper houses based on property. But his assertion that they were determined “to filter out the voice of the demos, the people” is wrong.
He ignores the modern world’s first experience of universal suffrage for men in a single house of parliament in the French Republic in 1792–95. Nor does he dwell on citizens’ assemblies that came to the “wrong” conclusions.
For example, Emmanuel Macron organised advisory nation-wide citizens’ assemblies after the gilets jaunes protests of 2018–19. These turned into pointless talkfests. Their failure was less a result of their lack of power than their becoming occasions for voicing contradictory demands for lower taxes, higher social security payments and cheaper petrol. Similarly, lively citizens’ assemblies in regional Queensland are currently contesting renewable energy projects as ugly, unnecessary intrusions on farmland.
Such examples should not detract from ways in which such local assemblies may make significant, inclusive and farsighted community-based decisions. There are plenty of “co-design” projects that have effectively involved local users and stakeholders from the beginning of a project through to its implementation. This may be as simple as a small coastal community handling the parking needs of daytrippers, or as complex as a tourist town managing the proliferation of short-stay accommodation.
The difference, of course, is the scale of the polity. When can local assemblies best decide for themselves, and about what? Are regional, national and international issues always best handled by representative, elected bodies?
Krznaric acknowledges that the most radical actions to avert potential collapses of entire societies have been by national governments: the US response to Pearl Harbour in 1941, for example, or the Dutch government’s Delta Works program following devastating floods in 1953, or even some governments’ responses to the COVID pandemic.
The French revolutionaries who grappled with the modern world’s first great attempt to create mass democratic structures were steeped in the classics they had studied at school. They were all too aware of the contrasts between small Greek and Roman city-states and a large nation like France. They fought over the issue of direct or participatory democracy, and over the idea of representatives being simply the people’s mandatories.
In his most important speech, On Political Morality, delivered on February 5 1794, Maximilien Robespierre put it like this:
Democracy is not a state in which the whole people, continually assembled, itself rules on all public business, still less is it one in which a hundred thousand factions of the people decide, by unrelated, hasty, and contradictory measures, on the fate of the entire society; such a government has never existed, and it could exist only to lead the people back to despotism. Democracy is a state in which the sovereign people, guided by laws which are its own work, itself does all it can do well, and through delegates all it cannot do itself.
Like other sweeping surveys of the past made to prove a thesis – from Pinker to John Pilger to Francis Fukuyama – Krznaric’s historical examples are often too selective or questionable to be fully convincing. History for Tomorrow is, nevertheless, invaluable for two reasons. One is its breadth and range across time; it is an inspiring and often surprising read. The other is where Krznaric ends up. His “five reasons for radical hope” seem incontrovertible:
Disruptive movements can change the system.
“We” can prevail over “me”.
There are alternatives to capitalism.
Humans are social innovators.
Other futures are possible.
Krznaric’s great achievement in this book is that he prompts us to consider how changes to decision-making in complex societies with overlapping structures of government and administration might result in some issues being resolved more democratically and promptly. His expansive grasp of human history enables him to stud his book with engrossing examples of where this has proved to be possible. History for Tomorrow is a superb example of the capacity of the humanities and social sciences to reflect on the lessons of the past, without being despairing or simplistic.
Authors: Peter McPhee, Emeritus professor, History, The University of Melbourne 
