What is going on? Of what are we the half-fascinated,
half-devastated witnesses? The continuation, at all costs, of a weary world? A
salutary crisis of that world, racked by its victorious expansion? The end of
that world? The advent of a different world? What is happening to us in the early
years of the century - something that would appear not to have any clear name
in any accepted language?
Let us consult our masters: discreet bankers; media stars;
hesitant representatives of major commissions ; spokesmen of the '
international community ' ; busy presidents; new philosophers; factory and
estate owners; stock market men and boards of directors; chattering opposition
politicos; urban and provincial notables; economists of growth; sociologists of
citizenship; experts on all sorts of crises; prophets of the 'clash of
civilizations'; heads of the police, justice and 'penitentiary' systems; profit
assessors; productivity calculators; the prim editorialists of serious
newspapers; human resources directors; people who in their own view are of some
account; people one would do well not to take for nobodies . What have they got
to say about it, all these rulers, all these opinion-formers, all these
leaders, all these thimble-rigging tyrants?
They all say that the world is changing at a dizzy ing pace
and that, if we are not to risk ruin or death (for them it comes to the same
thing), we must adapt to this change or, in the world as it is, be but a mere
shadow of ourselves. That we should energetically engage in incessant
'modernization' , accepting the inevitable costs without a murmur. Given the
harsh competitive world that daily confronts us with challenges, we must climb
the steep slopes of productivity, budget reduction, technological innovation,
the good health of our banks, and job flexibility. All competition is sportive
in its essence. In short, we must form part of the final breakaway alongside the
champions of the moment (a German ace, a Thai outsider, a British veteran, a
Chinese newcomer, not to mention the ever vigorous Yankee, and so on), and
never crawl at the back of the pack. To that end everyone must pedal:
modernize, reform, change! What politician on the campaign trail can dispense
with proposing reform, change, novelty? The argument between government and
opposition always takes the following form : What the others are saying isn't
real change. It's a thinly resprayed conservatism. I represent real change!
You've only to look at me to know it. I reform and modernize; new laws rain
down every week - bravo! Let's break with routine ! Out with the old !
So let us change.
But change what, in fact? If change is to be permanent, its
direction, so it would seem, must be constant. All the measures dictated to us
by the economic situation are to be implemented as a matter of urgency. This is
so that the rich can continue to get rich while paying fewer taxes; so that the
workforce of firms can be reduced with numerous redundancies and extensive
restructuring; so that everything which is public can be privatized, and
thereby ultimately contribute not to the public good (a particularly
'anti-economic' category) , but to the wealth of the rich and the maintenance
(costly, alas) of the middle classes, who form the reserve army of the rich; so
that schools, hospitals, housing, transport and communications – those five
pillars of a satisfactory life for all - can initially be regionalized (that is
a step forward), then exposed to competition (that is crucial) , and finally
handed over to the market (that is decisive) , in order that the places and
resources where and with which the rich and semi-rich are educated, treated,
housed and transported cannot be confused with those where the poor and their
like struggle to get by; so that workers of foreign origin, who have often
lived and worked here for decades, can have their rights reduced to nothing,
their children targeted, their statutory papers rescinded, and have to endure
the furious campaigns of 'civilization' and 'our values' against them; so that,
in particular, young girls can only go out on the streets with their heads
uncovered, and the rest too, mindful as they must be of affirming their 'secularity'
; so that the mentally ill can be imprisoned for life; so that the countless
social 'privileges' on which the lower classes are getting fat can be hunted
down; so that bloody military expeditions can be mounted the world over,
especially in Africa, to enforce respect for 'human rights' - i.e. the rights
of the powerful to carve up states, to put in power (through a combination of
violent occupation and phantom ' elections') corrupt valets, who will hand over
the totality of the country's resources to the aforesaid powerful for nothing.
Those who, for whatever reason, and even if they were serviceable for
'modernization' in the past, even If they were obliging valets, are suddenly
opposed to the carve-up of their country, to its pillaging by the powerful and
the 'human rights' that go with it, will be brought before the tribunals of
modernization, and hanged if possible. Such is the invariant truth of 'change',
the actuality of 'reform' , the concrete dimension of 'modernization'. Such,
for our masters, is the law of the world.
This short book aims to oppose to this view of things a
rather different one, which can be summarized here in three points.
Under the interchangeable rubrics of 'modernization' ,
'reform,' 'democracy,' 'the West,' ' the international community,' 'human
rights,' 'secularism,' 'globalization' and various others, we find nothing but
an historical attempt at an unprecedented regression, intent upon creating a
situation in which the development of globalized capitalism, and the action of
its political servants, conforms to the norms of their birth: a dyed-in
the-wool liberalism of mid-nineteenth-century vintage, the unlimited power of a
financial and imperial oligarchy, and a window-dressing of parliamentary
government composed (as Marx put it) of 'Capital's executives'. To that end,
every thing which the existence of the organized forms of the workers'
movement, communism and genuine socialism had invented between 1860 and 1980,
and imposed on a world scale, thereby putting liberal capitalism on the
defensive, must be ruthlessly destroyed, and the value system of imperialism -
the celebrated 'values' - recreated. Such is the sole content of the
'modernization' underway.
The present moment is in fact that of the first stirrings of
a global popular uprising against this regression. As yet blind, naive,
scattered and lacking a powerful concept or durable organization, it naturally
resembles the first working-class insurrections of the nineteenth century. I
there fore propose to say that we find ourselves in a time if riots wherein a
rebirth of History, as opposed to the pure and simple repetition of the worst,
is signaled and takes shape. Our masters know this better than us: they are
secretly trembling and building up their weaponry, in the form both of their
judicial arsenal and the armed taskforces charged with planetary order. There
is an urgent need to reconstruct or create our own.
Lest this moment flounder in glorious but defeated mass
mobilizations, or in the interminable opportunism of 'representative'
organizations, whether corrupt trade unions or parliamentary parties , the
rebirth of History must also be a rebirth of the Idea. The sole Idea capable of
challenging the corrupt, lifeless version of 'democracy' , which has become the
banner of the legionaries of Capital, as well as the racial and national
prophecies of a petty fascism given its opportunity locally by the crisis, is
the idea of Communism, revisited and nourished by what the spirited diversity
of these riots, however fragile, teaches us.
