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II The Ideological and Para-Theoretical Foundations of Liberalism

1. IMAGINARY CAPITALISM AND THE PARA-THEORY OF “PURE” ECONOMICS

THE CONCEPT OF CAPITALISM cannot be reduced to the “generalized market,” but instead situates the essence of capitalism precisely in power beyond the market. This reduction, as found in the dominant vulgate, substitutes the theory of an imaginary system governed by “economic laws” (the “market”) which would tend, if left to themselves, to produce an “optimal equilibrium,” for the analysis of capitalism based on social relations and a politics through which these powers beyond the market are expressed. In really-existing capitalism, class struggle, politics, the state, and the logics of capital accumulation are inseparable. Consequently, capitalism is by nature a regime in which the successive states of disequilibrium are products of social and political confrontations situated beyond the market. The concepts proposed by the vulgar economics of liberalism—such as “deregulation” of the markets—have no reality. So-called deregulated markets are markets regulated by the forces of monopolies which are situated outside the market.

Economic alienation¹ is the specific form of capitalism which governs the reproduction of society in its totality and not only the reproduction of its economic system. The law of value governs not only capitalist economic life, but all social life in this society. This specificity explains why, in capitalism, the economic is erected into a “science”—that is, the laws which govern the movement of capitalism are imposed on modern societies (and on the human beings which form those societies) “like laws of nature.” In other words, the fact that these laws are the product not of a transhistorical nature (which would define the “human being” vis-à-vis the challenge of “scarcity”) but of a particular historical nature (social relations specifically characteristic of capitalism) is erased from social consciousness. This is, in my opinion, how Marx understood “economism,” the unique characteristic of capitalism.

In addition, Marx brings to light the immanent instability of this society, in the sense that the reproduction of its economic system never tends towards the realization of any sort of general equilibrium, but is displaced from disequilibrium to disequilibrium in an unforeseeable manner. One can account for this after the fact but never define it in advance. The “competition” between capitals—which defines capitalism—suppresses the possibility of realizing any sort of general equilibrium and thus renders illusory any analysis founded on such a supposed tendency. Capitalism is synonymous with permanent instability. The articulation between the logics produced by this competition of capitals and those which are deployed through the evolution of the social relations of production (among capitalists, between them and the exploited and dominated classes, among the states which form capitalism as a world system) accounts, after the fact, for the movement of the system as it displaces itself from one disequilibrium to another. In this sense, capitalism does not exist outside of the class struggle, the conflict between states, and politics. The idea that there exists an economic logic (which economic science enables us to discover) that governs the development of capitalism is an illusion. There is no theory of capitalism distinct from its history. Theory and history are indissociable, just as are economics and politics.

I have pointed out these two dimensions of Marx’s radical critique precisely because these are the two dimensions of reality of which bourgeois social thought is ignorant. This thought is, in fact, economistic from its origins in the era of the Enlightenment. The “Reason” that it invokes attributes to the capitalist system, which replaces the Ancien Regime, a transhistorical legitimacy, making it the “end of history.” This economic alienation was to be accentuated thereafter, precisely in the attempt to respond to Marx. Pure economics, starting with Walras, expresses this exacerbation of the economism of bourgeois social thought. It substitutes the myth of a self-regulating market, which would tend through its own internal logic towards the realization of a general equilibrium, for the analysis of the real functioning of capitalism. Instability is no longer conceived as immanent to this logic, but as the product of the imperfections of real markets. Economics thus becomes a discourse which is no longer engaged in knowing reality; its function is no more than to legitimize capitalism by attributing to it intrinsic qualities which it cannot have. Pure economics becomes the theory of an imaginary world.

The dominant forces are such because they succeed in imposing their language on their victims. The “experts” of conventional economics have managed to make believe that their analyses and the conclusions drawn from them are imperative because they are “scientific,” hence objective, neutral and unavoidable. This is not true. The so-called pure economics on which they base their analyses does not deal with reality, but with an imaginary system which not only does not approach reality but is located squarely in the opposite direction. Really-existing capitalism is another thing entirely.

This imaginary economics mixes up concepts and confuses progress with capitalist expansion, market with capitalism. In order to develop effective strategies, social movements must liberate themselves from these confusions.

The confusion of two concepts—the reality (capitalist expansion) and the desirable (progress in a determined sense)—is at the origin of many disappointments expressed in the criticisms of implemented policies. The dominant discourses systematically mix up concepts. They propose means that enable the expansion of capital and then qualify as “development” that which results, or would result, according to them. The logic of the expansion of capital does not imply any result qualifiable in terms of “development.” It does not suppose, for example, full employment or an amount designated in advance for the unequal (or equal) distribution of income. The logic of this expansion is guided by the search for profits by individual enterprises. This logic can entail, in certain conditions, growth or stagnation, expansion of employment or its reduction, can reduce inequality in incomes or accentuate it, according to circumstances.

Here again the sustained confusion between the concept of “market economy” and that of “capitalist economy” is at the source of a dangerous weakness found in critiques of the policies that are carried out. The “market,” which refers by nature to competition, is not “capitalism,” which is defined precisely by the limits to competition that the monopoly or oligopoly (for some people, to the exclusion of others) of private property implies. The “market” and capitalism form two distinct concepts. Really-existing capitalism is, as Braudel’s analysis has shown so well, the opposite even of the imaginary market.

In addition, really-existing capitalism does not function as a system of competition among the beneficiaries of the monopoly of property—competition among them and against others. Its operation requires the intervention of a collective authority representing capital as a whole. Thus the state is not separable from capitalism. The policies of capital, thus of the state insofar as it represents capital, have their own concrete logical stages. It is these logical stages that account for the fact that, at certain times, the expansion of capital entails an increase in employment, at other times a decrease in employment. These logical stages are not the expression of “laws of the market,” formulated in the abstract as such, but requirements of the profitability of capital in certain historical conditions.

There is no “law of capitalist expansion” which is imposed as a quasi-supernatural force. There is no historical determinism anterior to history. The inherent tendencies of the logic of capital always clash with forces which resist its effects. Real history is thus the product of this conflict between the logic of capitalist expansion and those logics that spring from social forces resisting its expansion. In this sense, the state is rarely simply the state of capital, it is also at the heart of the conflict between capital and society.

For example, the industrialization of the postwar period, from 1945 to 1990, was not the natural product of capitalist expansion but rather resulted from conditions imposed on capital by the victories of national liberation movements, which forced globalizing capital to adjust to this industrialization. For example, the erosion of the effectiveness of the national state, produced by capitalist globalization, is not an irreversible determinant of the future. On the contrary, national reactions to this globalization could impose unforeseen trajectories onto global expansion, for better or worse according to circumstances. For example, the concerns stemming from the environment, which are in conflict with the logic of capital (which is by nature a short-term logic) could impose important transformations onto capitalist adjustment. One could multiply the examples.

The effective response to the challenges can only be found if one understands that history is not governed by the infallible unfolding of economic laws. It is produced by social reactions to the tendencies expressed by these laws which, in turn, are defined by the social relations within the framework in which these laws operate. The “anti-systemic” forces—if one wants to refer to this organized, coherent and effective refusal to the unilateral and total submission to the requirements of these alleged laws (in fact, quite simply the law of profit characteristic of capitalism as a system)—make real history as much as the “pure” logic of capitalist accumulation. These forces govern the possibilities and the forms of the expansion which then develop within the framework that they have organized.

The method proposed here prohibits formulating “recipes” in advance that would allow the future to be made. The future is produced by the transformations in the social and political relations of force, themselves produced by struggles whose outcomes are not known in advance. One can nevertheless reflect on this process, in the context of contributing to the crystallization of coherent and possible projects and, consequently, help any social movement avoid false solutions. In the absence of such reflection, a movement could easily become bogged down in the pursuit of these “solutions.”

The project of a humanist response to the challenge of capitalism’s globalized expansion is by no means utopian. On the contrary, it is the only possible realistic project, in the sense that the beginning of an evolution towards such a response could rapidly win over powerful social forces capable of imposing a logic on it. If there is a utopia, in the banal and negative sense of the term, it is truly the project of managing the system, understood as regulation by the market.

2. POSTMODERNISM, IDEOLOGICAL ACCESSORY TO LIBERALISM

Postmodernist discourse is an ideological accessory that, in the end, legitimizes liberalism and invites us to submit to it.

The apparent triumph of liberalism—in its most simplistic and brutal North American form—does not express an impulse towards the rejuvenation of capitalism, restoring to it all the American vigor eroded by statism and the welfare state of old Europe. The opposition of “young America”—which has the future before it—to “old Europe” constitutes, as is well known, one of the favored themes of “pro-American” discourse.

The offensive of liberalism strives, in fact, to overcome, through brutality, the growing contradictions of capitalism, which has had its day and has no perspective to offer humanity other than that of self-destruction.

This obsolescence of capitalism is not expressed exclusively in the spheres of economic and social reproduction. Onto this decisive infrastructural base are grafted multiple manifestations both of the retreat of bourgeois universalist thought (for which new ideological discourses substitute a so-called postmodernist patchwork) and of regression in the practices of political management (calling into question the bourgeois democratic tradition).

The ideological discourse of postmodernism is sustained by these regressions. Recuperating every common prejudice produced by the disarray characteristic of moments such as ours, it methodically lays out, without concern for overall coherence, one argument after another encouraging suspicion towards the concepts of progress and universalism. But far from deepening the serious critique of these expressions of Enlightenment culture and bourgeois history, far from analyzing their actual contradictions, which are aggravated by the obsolescence of the system, this discourse is satisfied with substituting the impoverished propositions of liberal American ideology for a true critique: “live with your time,” “adapt to it,” “manage each day”—that is, abstain from reflecting on the nature of the system, and particularly from calling into question its choices of the moment.

The praise for inherited diversities proposed in place of the necessary effort to transcend the limits of bourgeois universalism thus functions in perfect accord with the requirements of contemporary imperialism’s project of globalization, a project that can produce only an organized system of apartheid on a world scale, sustained as it is by reactionary “communitarian” ideologies in the North American tradition. What I qualify as the “culturalist” retreat, which is at the forefront of the scene today, is thus implemented and manipulated by the masters of the system, just as it is equally often seized upon by the dominated peoples in confusion (under the form of so-called religious or ethnic fundamentalisms). This is the “clash of barbarisms,” as Gilbert Achcar has written, giving Huntington’s thesis a self-realizing character.

The totality of these manifestations of both confusion and retreat in relation to the past achievements of bourgeois thought results in a degradation of political practice. The very principle of democracy is founded on the possibility of making alternative choices. There is no longer a need for democracy, since ideology made the idea that “there is no alternative” acceptable. Adherence to a meta-social principle of superior rationality allows for the elimination of the necessity and possibility of choosing. The so-called principle of the rationality of “markets” exactly fills this function in the ideology of obsolescent capitalism. Democratic practice is thus emptied of all content and the way is open to what I have called “low-intensity democracy”—that is, to electoral buffooneries where parades of majorettes take the place of programs, to the “society of the spectacle.” Delegitimized by these practices, politics is undone, begins to drift and loses its potential power to give meaning and coherence to alternative societal projects.

Is not the bourgeoisie itself, as the structured dominant class, on the way to “changing its look”? All during the ascendant phase of its history, the bourgeoisie was formed as the principal determinant of “civil society.” That did not imply a relative stability of men (only a few women in that era) or at least of family dynasties of capitalist-entrepreneurs (competition always implying a certain mobility in the membership of this class, bankruptcies occurring in conjunction with the rise of nouveaux riches) so much as the strong structuring of the class around systems of values and behaviors. The dominant class could then assert that the respectability of its members established the legitimacy of its privileges. This is less and less the case. A model close to that of the mafia seems to be the one taking over in the business world as much as in politics. Moreover, the separation between these two worlds—which, though it was not watertight, nevertheless characterized the systems that preceded historical capitalism—is in the process of disappearing. This model is not characteristic only of Third World countries or of the former so-called socialist countries of the East: it is tending to become the rule even at the heart of central capitalism. How else to characterize persons like Berlusconi in Italy, Bush (implicated in the Enron scandal) in the United States, and many others elsewhere?

But a senile system is not one that shuffles peacefully through its last days. On the contrary, senility summons an increase in violence.

The world system has not entered into a new “non-imperialist” phase that is sometimes characterized as “post-imperialist.” On the contrary, it is by nature an imperialist system exacerbated to the extreme (extracting resources without effective opposition). The analysis that Negri and Hardt propose of an “Empire” (without imperialism), in fact an Empire limited to the Triad—that is, the three major regions of capitalism, the United States, Europe, and Japan—with the rest of the world being ignored, is unfortunately inscribed both in the tradition of Occidentalism and in the currently fashionable intellectual discourse. The differences between the new imperialism and the preceding one are found elsewhere. Imperialism in the past was multiple (“imperialisms” in conflict), while the new one is collective (the Triad, even if this be in the wake of United States hegemony). From this fact, the “conflicts” among the partners of the Triad are only minor, while the conflict between the Triad and the rest of the world is clearly the major one. The disappearance of the European project in the face of American hegemonism finds its explanation here. Furthermore, accumulation in the prior imperialist stage was based on the binary relation between the industrialized centers and the non-industrialized peripheries, while in the new conditions of the system’s evolution the opposition is between the beneficiaries of the centers’ new monopolies (technology, access to natural resources, communications, weapons of mass destruction) and peripheries that are industrialized, but still subordinated by means of these monopolies. In order to justify their thesis, Negri and Hardt need to give a strictly political definition of the imperialist phenomenon (“the projection of national power beyond its frontiers”), without any relation to the requirements for the accumulation and reproduction of capital. This definition, which stems from vulgar university political science, particularly of the North American variety, eliminates from the start the true questions. Their discourse deals with a category “empire” placed outside of history and thus happily makes no distinction among the Roman, Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian, Russian, British colonial, and French colonial empires. No care is taken to consider the specificities of these historical constructions without reducing them to one another.

In fact, the global expansion of capitalism, because it is polarizing, always implies the political intervention of the dominant powers, that is, the states of the system’s center, in the societies of the dominated periphery. This expansion cannot occur by the force of economic laws alone; it is necessary to complement that with political support (and military, if necessary) from states in the service of dominant capital. In this sense, the expansion is always entirely imperialist even in the meaning that Negri gives to the term (“the projection of national power beyond its frontiers,” on condition of specifying that this power belongs to capital). In this sense, the contemporary intervention of the United States is no less imperialist than were the colonial conquests of the nineteenth century. Washington’s objective in Iraq, for example, (and tomorrow elsewhere) is to put in place a dictatorship in the service of American capital (and not a “democracy”), enabling the pillage of the country’s natural resources, and nothing more. The globalized “liberal” economic order requires permanent war—military interventions endlessly succeeding one another—as the only means to submit the peoples of the periphery to its demands.

The new-style Empire, on the contrary, is defined naively as a “network of powers” whose center is everywhere and nowhere, which thus dilutes the importance of the national state. This transformation moreover is essentially attributed to the development of the productive forces (the technological revolution). This is a shallow and simplistic analysis that isolates the power of technology from the framework of social relations within which it operates. Once again we recognize here the propositions of the dominant discourse vulgarized by Rawls, Castells, Touraine, Rifkin and others, in the tradition of North American liberal political thought.

The true questions that are posed by the articulation between the political instance (the state) and the reality of globalization, which should be at the center of the analysis of what is possibly “new” in the evolution of the capitalist system, are thus simply evaded by the gratuitous affirmation that the state has almost ceased to exist. In fact, even in the prior stages of an always globalized capitalism, the state was never omnipotent. Its power was always limited by the logic which governed the globalizations of the epoch. Wallerstein has even, in this spirit, gone so far as to give the global determinations a decisive power over the destiny of the states. The situation is no different today, since the difference between the globalization (imperialism) of the present and that of the past is found elsewhere.

The new imperialism truly has a center—the Triad—and a center of the center aspiring to exercise its hegemony—the United States. The Triad exercises its collective domination over the whole of the planet’s peripheries (three-quarters of humanity) by means of institutions put into place and under its management for that purpose. Some institutions are in charge of the economic management of the world imperialist system. Foremost among these are the World Trade Organization (WTO) whose real function is not to guarantee “freedom of markets” as it pretends but, on the contrary, to super-protect the monopolies (of the center) and to form systems of production for the peripheries as a function of this requirement; the IMF, which does not trouble itself with the relationships among the three major currencies (the dollar, the Euro, the yen), fulfills the functions of a collective colonial monetary authority (for the Triad); the World Bank, which is a sort of Ministry of Propaganda for the G7. Other institutions have charge of the political management of the system; here it is a question in the first place of NATO, which has replaced the UN in speaking on behalf of the world collectivity. The systematic implementation of military control over the planet by the United States expresses quite brutally this imperialist reality. Negri and Hardt’s work does not discuss questions relating to the functions of these institutions, no more than it mentions the multiplicity of facts which inconvenience the naive thesis of a “network of power”: military bases, powerful interventions, the role of the CIA, etc. The brutality of the U.S. intervention in Iraq makes the whole discourse on “capitalism as a gentle Empire” ridiculous.

In the same manner, the true questions that the technological revolution poses for the system’s class structure are evaded in favor of the vague category of the “multitude,” the analogue of “the people” of vulgar sociology. The true questions lie elsewhere: how does the technological revolution in progress (whose reality cannot be doubted), like every technological revolution, violently break up the old forms of the organization of work and of the class structure, while the new forms of their recomposition have not yet visibly crystallized?

To crown the whole thing and give a semblance of legitimacy to the imperialist practices of the Triad and the hegemonism of the United States, the system has produced its own ideological discourse, adapted to the new aggressive tasks. The discourse on the “clash of civilizations” is completely intended to cement “Western” racism and cause public opinion to accept the implementation of apartheid on a world scale. This discourse is, in my opinion, far more important than lyrical outbursts about the so-called network society.

The influence which the Empire thesis has gained in the opinion of the Western left, and among youth, derives entirely, in my opinion, from the harsh observations it makes about the state and the nation. The state (bourgeois) and nationalism (chauvinistic) have always been rejected, and rightly so, by the radical left. To assert that, with the new capitalism, their decay is beginning can only be pleasing. But, alas, the proposition is not true. Late capitalism certainly puts on the agenda the objective necessity and possibility of the withering away of the law of value; the technological revolution makes possible, in this context, the development of a network society; the deepening of globalization certainly challenges the existence of nations. But obsolescent capitalism, by means of a violent imperialism, is busily annulling all of the emancipatory possibilities. The idea that capitalism could adapt itself to liberating transformations, that is, could produce them, without wanting to, as well as socialism could, is at the heart of the American liberal ideology. Its function is to deceive us and cause us to forget the extent of the true challenges and of the struggles required to respond to them. The suggested “anti-state” strategy unites perfectly with capital’s strategy, which is busy “limiting public interventions” (“deregulating”) for its own benefit, reducing the role of the state to its police functions (not at all suppressing the state, but liquidating only political practice, thus allowing it to fulfill other functions). In a similar way, the “anti-nation” discourse encourages the acceptance of the role of the United States as military superpower and world policeman.

Something else is needed: the development of political praxis, granting it its full significance, and the advancement of social and citizen democracy, giving to peoples and to nations greater latitude for action in globalization. Granted, formulas implemented in the past have lost their effectiveness in new conditions. Granted also that certain adversaries of neo-liberal and imperialist reality do not always see that and live on nostalgia for the past. But the whole challenge still remains.