With a few exceptions, since January 19, 2009, I have filled half of this page with my thoughts on what was going on in the country and the world around it to the extent that this was, in my view, relevant to us. Looking back, my fortnightly contributions appear to me now to have been mere footnotes to the falling apart of a system of power.

The future is not written in advance

With the wisdom of hindsight, I think that all I have done is give a running commentary on the disintegration of what many sociologists refer to as a ‘historic bloc’. Bypassing any academic discussion of this concept and its origins, think of a ‘historic bloc’ as a network of networks, involving formal and informal arrangements, alliances and understandings across the fields of politics, business and civil society.

Although this system does not exclude criminal collusions, that is, forms of illegal cooperation between specific individuals or groups set up with the express aim of cheating and deceiving others, and other secret networks, it also – and indeed mainly – involves a wide range of other relationships, most of which are perfectly legal and legitimate and not at all hidden from public view. In fact, some of them are blatantly ‘in -your-face’.

This web of links is truly all pervasive and capillary. They range from cartels aimed at depriving consumers of the positive effects (cheaper prices for goods and services) of market competition, to perfectly normal things such as marriages between the offsprings of families that have either social status and prestige, money and political influence or any of these in a variety of combinations.

No sphere of the economy and of society is spared. Certainly not the world of culture and education (I remember writing a piece on politically transversal networks of influence at the University of Malta). Certainly not the media. Nor are the Church and its lay organisations beyond the scope of the web of relationships that constitute the ‘historic bloc’.

These sorts of networks of networks are by no means unique to us or to small provincial island societies. In some way or another they are universal. Perhaps peripheral smallness and insularity tend to accentuate certain characteristics of some of these networks when they are finally exposed as what they are. I am thinking particularly of their meschinità, an Italian noun that does not easily translate but that fuses the notions pathetic, meanness and cheapness.

The historic bloc I am referring to flourished for 10 years between the mid-1980s and the mid-1990s and then again for another 10 years between 1998 and 2008. These were its two periods of maximum effectiveness and compactness. Its roots, however, go much further back in time.

Although the political and social effectiveness of the bloc declined sharply after the Nationalist Party’s narrow victory at the 2008 election – partly because of the coming apart of various networks – the networks concerned did not cease.

I enjoyed writing this column and it has often helped me clear my own thoughts to myself about a number of issues. I know that a number of readers, across the party political divide, enjoyed reading what I wrote even when they completely disagreed with my views. I could not please everybody, of course, but then I never intended to. No doubt, I sometimes displeased individuals who expected me to toe a more orthodox party line. Tough on them.

I was delighted by the results of the recent election. Again with the advantage of the wisdom of hindsight, I think that this contribution may also be seen as a series of footnotes to the development of a movement for change. Not a movement for a mere change of parties in power but a movement for a more meaningful, deeper change in the relationship between people – not ‘people’ in an abstract rhetorical sense but people as many individuals each with her own individual dignity – and political power.

The crisis of the historic bloc referred to above is not unrelated to the emergence of the movement for change that led to the historic achievement of this movement at the March election. It is too early to attempt to adequately understand the relationship between the two processes. One thing, however, is already very clear. Both are unfinished processes.

The crisis of the network of networks that underpinned the PN in government has not come to an end with this party’s defeat. Nor has the development of the movement inspired by Joseph Muscat come to an end either.

It should also be clear that the future is not written in advance and that the idea of historical inevitability is a dangerous myth. If the PN is to come out of its crisis, it will have to rethink its relationship with society. If the movement that led to the resounding Labour victory is to maintain its momentum it will have to continue to reflect on its own origins and goals.

This is my last contribution for this column. I thank you all. It was good to travel with you over the last four years.

Mario Vella blogs at http://watersbroken.wordpress.com .