The Plutocratic Oligarchies and the End of Bourgeois Civilisation

The logic of accumulation is that of the growing concentration and centralisation of capital. Contemporary capitalism is a capitalism dominated by a plutocratic oligarchy that is unprecedented in history, to which I have already drawn attention (From Capitalism to Civilization, Chap.

5.3.1 The Wheeler-dealers, The New Dominant Class in the Peripheries

The centre/periphery contrast is not new: it accompanied the globalised capitalist expansion from the beginning, five hundred years ago. Thus the local governing

classes in the countries of peripheral capitalism, whether they were independent countries or even colonies, have always been subordinated governing classes, but nevertheless allied by the profits they obtained by being inserted into globalised capitalism.

These classes, most of them coming from those that previously dominated their societies before submitting to capitalism/imperialism, are very diverse. Their change, because of this integration/submission, is also considerable: former political mentors becoming large landowners, old aristocracies becoming leaders of the modernised State, etc. The re-conquest of independence often involved replacing these old subordinated classes (collaborators) by new governing clas- ses—bureaucracies, State bourgeoisies, etc. They had greater legitimacy in the eyes of their peoples (at the beginning) because of their association with the national liberation movements.

But here again, in the peripheries dominated by old imperialism (the forms preceding 1950) or by the new imperialism (that of the Bandung period until about 1980), the local governing classes benefited from a relative visible stability. Successive generations of aristocrats and new bourgeois for a long time, then the new generation coming from the political forces that directed national liberation, shared value systems, moral and national.

The upheavals brought about by the capitalism of the oligopolies in the new collective imperialist centre (United States, Europe, Japan) have completely eradicated the power of all these old governing classes of the peripheries, replacing them by a new class that I call “wheeler-dealers”. This term has in fact sponta­neously circulated in many countries of the South. A wheeler-dealer is a ‘busi­nessman’, not a creative entrepreneur. He obtains his wealth from his relationships with existing power and the foreign masters of the system, whether it is repre­sentatives of the imperialist countries (CIA, in particular) or the oligopolies. He operates as a very well-paid intermediary, who benefits from a veritable political rent from which he draws the wealth that he accumulates. The wheeler-dealer does not belong to any system of moral or national values whatsoever. He is a caricature of his alter ego in the dominant centres, for he knows nothing else but ‘success’, money, the covetousness that lies behind his alleged praise for the individual. There, again, mafia-like and criminal behaviour is never very far away.

It is true that phenomena of this kind are not completely new. The very nature of imperialist domination and the subordination of the local governing classes to them used to encourage the emergence of this kind of man in power. But, what is surely new, is that this kind of person is now dominating the whole scene of politics and wealth. They are the ‘friends’, the only friends of the dominant plu­tocracy at the world level. Their vulnerability lies in the fact that they have no legitimacy whatsoever in the eyes of their peoples, neither the legitimacy con­ferred by ‘tradition’ nor that given by participation in national liberation.

5.3.2 Senile Capitalism and the End of Bourgeois

Civilization

The characters of the new dominant classes described here are not coincidental, they correspond strictly to the requirements of contemporary capitalism and its functioning.

Bourgeois civilisation—like all civilisation—is not only reduced to the logic of the reproduction of the economic system.

This system of values is in the process of disappearing—making way for a system which has no values. There are many clear signs of this transformation: a criminal US President, buffoons at the head of European states, insignificant autocrats in a number of countries in the South, who are not “enlightened despots” but just despots, ambitious obscurantists (the Talibans, the Christian and other ‘sects’, the pro-slavery Buddhists). They are all admirers of the ‘‘American model” without any reservation. Lack of culture and vulgarity are characteristics of a growing majority of this world of those who ‘dominate’.

A dramatic evolution of this kind proclaims the end of a civilization It repro­duces what we have already seen in the decadent epochs of history. A ‘‘new world’’ is being born. But not the (better) one which many of the naive social movements are calling for. They do of course see the extent of the destruction but they do not understand the reasons. A world that is much worse than that of the bourgeois civilization is being imposed.

For all these reasons, I consider that the contemporary capitalism of the oli­gopolies must be now described as senile, whatever its apparent immediate suc­cess, because it is a success that is sinking into a new barbarism. (I refer here to the concluding chapter, ‘‘Revolution or decadence, thoughts on the transition from one mode of production to another’’ in my book Class and Nation, written almost 30 years ago.)

5.3.3 The Fragility of Capitalist Globalisation

Capitalism can be defined as the reversal of the relationship of dominance between the political body and the economic one. This reversal goes along with the new market alienation and the obscuring of social production, with the levying of the surplus that accompanies it (Marx).

This invention has produced positive effects which in my view are indisputable, therefore irreversible.

Capitalism is the first system which could become genuinely global. The reason is that the power that it enabled to develop, far beyond that of the most advanced societies of the past, put its conquest of the entire planet on the agenda. This power, which was already visible in the centuries of the mercantilist transition (1500-1800) asserted itself as limitless as from the industrial revolution. Contrary to the naive vision of economists, capitalist globalisation involved the political (and military) intervention of the new imperial powers. It was through these unequal political relationships that ‘markets’ were opened up and conquered, while the economic structures of the periphery, now dominated, ‘adapted’ to the requirements of this form of expansion. The new polarisation, to an extent unprecedented in the history of mankind, was established by political means and not, in any way by the victorious competition of the industries of the dominant centres. As a consequence, the countries of the periphery could re-conquer their political independence without it putting an automatic end to their dominated status.

Polarisation is inherent in historical capitalism. Capitalism and imperialism are inseparable. Imperialist by nature, the world expansion of this historical system has shown that it was neither acceptable nor accepted by the majority of humanity—its victims—and that therefore it is considerably more fragile than believed by the economists, among others.

The status of a dominated country has never been accepted by the peoples concerned, apart from the new comprador classes that benefit from capitalist/ imperialist globalization. During the twentieth century, this refusal turned into revolutions conducted under the flag of socialism or national liberation struggles, both victorious, which forced the imperialist powers to adjust to these unprece­dented changes.

The counter-offensive of capitalism/imperialism, which has been at work for some thirty years, has been made possible by the exhaustion of the alternative forms produced by the historic socialisms and nationalisms of the twentieth cen­tury. This counter-offensive wraps itself up in the flag of ‘globalisation’. But, in fact, it cannot attain its aims without undertaking a new permanent war of re­conquest. The project of contemporary globalisation is inseparable from the per­manent military engagement of the dominant powers, the new Triad of collective imperialism.

Extrication from capitalist globalisation (what I call delinking) is a first con­dition for extrication from peripheral capitalism status (in vulgar terms, getting out of ‘‘under-development’’ or of ‘poverty)’. Extrication from capitalist/imperialist globalisation and extrication from capitalism cannot be dissociated. This equation creates problems and it is therefore crucial to know how it has, or has not been taken into account.

The dominant thinking, which is essentially Eurocentric, is impervious to the arguments developed here. For these thinkers, there is no alternative to the ‘‘Western model”. It has to be—and can be—imitated by others. That capitalism/ imperialism has rendered impossible this development by imitation is beyond their capacity to understand.

Marxist thought is not Eurocentric by nature. Marx inaugurated the only way of modern thinking that was capable of ridding itself of the prejudices and the straitjacket of Eurocentrism.

Polarisation delayed the necessary ripening of the socialist consciousness in the centre whose peoples received benefits from the dominant position of their nations. In the peripheries it prevented the construction of new national capitalisms like those of the dominant centres, and hence it closed off the way to the bourgeois revolution. This created a double challenge to the alternative of the popular rev­olution: that of accelerating the development of the productive forces and simul­taneously building social relationships that break with capitalism. It therefore has perspectives and strategies of the transition from world capitalism to world socialism that are different from those imagined by the historical socialisms and Marxisms. It has created new and unforeseen conditions for constructing the internationalism of the peoples.

5.3.4 Is Lucidity Possible in the Transformative Activities of Societies?

The modernity of the Enlightenment, by declaring ‘man’ the author of his history, inaugurated a new chapter of history involving the possibility of lucidity.

Lucidity and alienation are the two opposite poles of the same dialectical contradiction. Lucidity is defined by the knowledge of need, and the power, based on this knowledge, to act freely and transform reality. Lucidity involves the emergence of a social science that makes it possible to know these objective necessities. In contrast, alienation is defined by the submission of human beings to forces seen as being exterior—supernatural—even if they are in fact the result of the human thinking and action that shape social reality.

Lucidity, which is absent in all pre-modern societies, European and others, thus realises that the passing from one stage of social evolution to another is not conceived and implemented by a social force that develops such a project (which one might describe as revolutionary), but it imposes by itself, through chaotic evolutions and is, therefore, associated with what one could describe as moments of decadence (from the old regime in decline). The passing of the slave society of the Roman Empire to the feudalism of the Middle Ages is a good example of this mode of transformation in which lucidity is lacking. Lack of lucidity is not the same as lack of intelligence. Our ancestors were no less intelligent than us: they were only less equipped to control the necessary transformation—even when this control was only relative. Actors use tactics of intelligent actions. But they do not know where their choices will lead them, they do not pose the question of the results they will really be producing.

With modernity and the emergence of lucidity, the ways of transforming society underwent a Copernican revolution. The sages of the Enlightenment formulated, for the first time, a holistic and coherent project of transformation. This was to establish capitalism on the rubble of the Ancien Regime, a new society based on Reason, itself a condition of Emancipation. The project, which described what essentially became the bourgeois ideology, was, in turn, based on the separation of the regulations proposed for managing economic life (to be ordered on the prin­ciple of the new private ownership and the freedom of enterprise and to draw up contracts) and that of the model for managing political life (ordered by what was gradually to become democracy: respect for the diversity of opinions, removing the sacred from power, the formulation of the rights of man and of the citizen). The two sides of the project were legitimate in terms of Reason.

The lucid project of the capitalist modernity to be constructed was defined by itself as establishing a transhistoric and definitive Reason—the End of History, following non-reasonable pre-history. Auguste Comte, in his time, had a definitive vision which encapsulated the essential ideology of bourgeois modernity. But the victims of the new system of triumphant capitalism—the working classes—saw their project of transforming reality in a completely different perspective, that of overtaking capitalism and building socialism. By so doing they showed the relative character of bourgeois lucidity. From the idealistic formulations of utopian socialisms up to the one initiated by Marx—historical materialism—there is clearly visible progress in recognizing the need to found the transformation project on it.

Associating the democratization of society in all the dimensions of its economic and political management, associating therefore this to social and human progress, definitively rejects the dissociation in the bourgeois formula of the Enlightenment, unmasks the market alienation that is peculiar to this formulation, and so gives to the ReasonZEmancipation association a new meaning, representing the advances in the communism project that was initiated by Marx. That this perspective, which in turn consigned capitalism to pre-history, had sometimes imagined the communist future as the authentic end of history is another story.

The fact remains that lucidity, however relative it may be, made it possible to invent the revolutionary path as a way of transforming society, replacing the decadence of the Ancien Regime and the crystallization of the new through, controlled chaos.

The revolutionary path was indeed the one that capitalism imposed, first in its early revolutions in the Netherlands and in England, then partly through the independence war of the English colonies of North America and finally, and above all, in the French Revolution. In its turn, the revolutionary path was imposed as a lucid way of transformation, as it proposed to open the way to socialist/communist construction. The ‘revolution’ in question has often been seen as the great moment that makes it possible, once and for all, to give a rational/emancipatory response to the contradictions of a reality that had outrun its course (the Ancien Regime for the bourgeois revolutionaries, capitalism for the worker and socialist movements). One could compare the scope of these imaginary visions and replace, for the concept of ‘‘the revolution’’ (in the singular), that of ‘‘revolutionary advances’’ (in the plural) which take on different forms according to the conjunctures, but are always driven by an expression of objectives and means that aspire to lucidity.

At the present time we are being invited urgently to abandon what is described as the ‘‘illusion of lucidity’’. No doubt the reason is that the first wave of implementing projects for socialist construction wore out its capacities to successfully transform the societies concerned. Lucidity, which is always relative (sometimes the headi­ness of early success tends to make people forget this) is even brought into question as a very principle. However, the reasons for the collapse of the first wave of socialist projects should—with the benefit of hindsight—be very clear: historical Marxism, which inspired these projects, had under-estimated—which is the least one can say—the polariaing character of historical globalised capitalism. The second wave—to be created in the future—must draw the necessary lessons. The history of the formation of capitalism itself shows how it was a succession of waves that made it possible for the final victory to emerge: the Mediterranean wave of the Italian towns, which aborted, preceded by three centuries the wave of Atlantic mercantilism which prepared the success of the definitive form of European capi- talism/imperialism and ensured its conquest of the world.

To renounce the principle of the will for lucidity means not opening up new avenues for the future, but closing them by a return to the obscurantism of the pre­modern epochs. This obscurantism is at the forefront of the scene at the present moment, in the trough between the collapse of the first wave of socialist advances and the emergence of the second wave, which is necessary and possible. This obscurantism takes on different forms, ‘hard’ and ‘soft’. The hard versions take the form of a return to the apocalyptic hope, whose extreme and caricatural expression is found in the discourses of the ‘sects’, but its ravages are no less visible when it comes disguised behind the masks of so-called religious or ethnic fundamentalisms.

It is not a case of returning to the ‘spirituality’ denied by the gross materialism of the consumerism of capitalist modernity but, in a more commonplace sense, it is the expression of peoples’ powerlessness confronted by the challenges of ageing capitalism. The ‘soft’ version contents itself with renouncing the idea of a coherent global project which, necessarily poses the question of power, replacing it by the wonderful belief that ‘individuals’ can change the world just by the miracle of their own behaviour. From the so-called autonomist movements to the philoso­phies—a la Negri—of the ‘bobos’ (the bourgeois bohemians, typical of individuals of the upper middle classes who lean to the left as long as their own privileges are maintained) of our time, this ‘soft’ mode of obscurantist renunciation of lucidity, by thus obliterating the reality of existing power (oligopolies, military interven­tions, etc.), is now fashionable because its discourse is trumpeted by the media.

There is always a need for lucidity, even if it is, as always, relative Abandoning it is like withdrawing into obscurantism and it can only lead to the horror of an uncontrolled transition towards ‘‘another world’’ which is still more barbaric than that of our senile globalised capitalism.

Lucidity involves supporting universalism which is different from really existing globalisation. The religious universalisms of ancient times (Christianity, Islam, Buddhism and others), which accompanied the formation of tributary empires, should be considered as quite distinct from the necessary universalism, both modern (Man makes his own history) and socialist (the progress of humanity must be based on cooperation and solidarity, and not on competition).

The renunciation of lucidity opens the way to the possibility of returning to the model of transformation through chaos and decadence. Senile capitalism can, in this way, inaugurate a new era of immense massacres, with the means available today. Nearly a century ago Rosa Luxemburg described the alternative: ‘‘socialism or barbarism’’. Today one could say: capitalism or civilisation? Decadence and criminal chaos or lucidity and the renaissance of the socialist project?

References

Arrighi, Giovanni, 2007: Adam Smith in Beijing: Lineages of the 21st Century (London-New York: Verso).

Bagchi, Amiya Kumar, 2005: Perilous Passage, Mankind and the Global Ascendancy of Capital (Oxford: Oxford University Press).