Chapter 6 History after Marx
Marx's philosophy was that of the Enlightenment, of which we have just recalled that the dominant initial characteristic was the emancipation of the citizen through access to knowledge. Then, his aversion against the bourgeois system of which he was a part is largely due to the failure of the social revolt of 1848 which aimed to realize part of this enlightenment ideal. From there, Marx advances two paths. In The Communist Party Manifesto, first of all, he advocates the pure and simple overthrow of the bourgeoisie, and the collectivization of productive goods. In Capital, then, he advocates a more moderate path, namely state intervention of the social democracy type, to simply counter the excessive exploitation of workers by the capitalist bourgeoisie. Let us now see what History has unfolded, and the lessons we can learn from it.
The 20th century and its unsuccessful experiments
The additional perspective linked to the course of the entire 20th century allows Thomas Piketty to show that without the support of wars, social struggle is not sufficient to ensure the reduction of inequalities. In other words, the system of regulating the excesses of capitalism by law proposed by Marx in Capital is not enough. What Marx already observed at the end of the Capital, namely the deficiencies in its implementation are systematic. We’ll look at this in more detail in Chapter 7.
In the same way, we must stop seeing the Thirty Glorious Years as a sort of lost golden age to which we could return, for example through a nationalist retreat. Indeed, this period is not the result of irreversible social progress, but as Thomas Piketty shows, it is a simple transitory positive effect, a product of the two great wars of the 20th century. And as a result, the current years are an inevitable return to normal, that is to say a shocking level of inequality, exactly like in Marx's period.
Then, the experience of Soviet communism showed us that the proletarian revolution advocated by Marx in the Communist Party Manifesto did not solve anything by itself, that is to say that the basic problem was not Who exercises power, but how power is exercised. What underlies this error is having considered that the class struggle, that is to say a particular form of the 'us against them' struggle, was a constituent of human nature. Now, as we saw in Chapter 2, what is a constituent of human nature, inherited from our genetic evolution, is the struggle for social position. In other words, if we forcibly merge the two groups which were in intense struggle, namely the working class and the employers, the struggle does not stop, but other groups are formed which begin to struggle. on another modality of 'us against them', for example those of the party against the others.
Conversely, the emergence of fascism showed us the danger of too weak regulation of capitalism by law. Indeed, this results in the inability to bring social organization to a morally satisfactory level with regard to the expectations of populations, which have increased following technological progress. The result is a progressive distrust of the elites which fuels a rise in power of populists, then their access to power, and finally the recourse to dictatorship to maintain themselves there once the facts do not follow the promises. . This disastrous escalation is underway again as we write this book. When we compare this explanation of totalitarianism to the tripartition presented in the previous chapter, we see that a shift in social organization generally has two sources: on the one hand real living conditions, and on the other hand symbolic representations.
Finally, May 68 can be seen as a dogmatic counter-reaction, aiming to impose Rousseau's vision of a naturally good man who society would corrupt. Hence a rejection of the symbolic social structures in place, namely the first two functions of Dumézil, the priestly in both its ecclesiastical and university forms, the martial in both its police and capitalist forms. The problem with Rousseau's certainly pleasant vision of man is that the scientific experiments of emerging sociology, which we discussed in Chapters 2 and 3, had definitively invalidated it by the 1950s.
More precisely, in the 16th century, geocentrism was the fixing point of revealed truth which opposed the birth of modern science, that is to say, dogma which opposes reason. This led in particular to the conviction and execution of Giordano Bruno for heretism, and what shows that this is a fundamental problem and not the result of particular unfortunate circumstances is that four centuries later Later, Giordano Bruno has still not been rehabilitated by the Catholic Church. Today, Rousseauism has become the other form of dogma which is opposed to reason. In this new form, the dogma is that of the idealized man of the Age of Enlightenment, and the emerging science is sociology. The new religion is called coaching ; it also promises us happiness, but from this life, on condition that we replace our critical sense with the religious application of cognitive behavioralist recipes.
When we put together all these elements of experience brought by the 20th century, what appears is that the left, whether moderate or communist, is no longer a credible method or alternative for regulating in the duration, or replace capitalism. But we must also understand that capitalism itself is not a system capable of regulating its own excesses, and therefore involves regular periods of war or totalitarianism. This amounts to saying that Marx does not provide a solution, but that letting it happen or pretending to reform the capitalist system without changing its nature is just as illusory.
In the end, the 20th appears to be a century where we discover what doesn't work, but no real solution beyond Marx's invalidated proposals. The only significant advance was made by Keynes who taught us that not only must we protect individuals from the perverse effects of capitalism, but also protect capitalism from itself by regaining control at the political level as soon as the system enters into crisis. The problem is that this protection is effective in the short term to avoid rapid and massive collapse, but not in the longer term to avoid the sequence of loss of confidence, populism, totalitarianism.
The 21st century and social networks
One of the defining events of the beginning of the 21st century is the emergence of social networks. We will not be interested here in the commercial purposes of the companies which provide this infrastructure, nor even in the risks that the massive profiling of people poses to our societies in the long term, but in the motivations of the individuals who participate in these social networks, and in the potential effect of these on social organization.
It seems clear to us that the main motivation for joining social networks, conscious or not, is the strategy of alliances, the driving force of which is the objective of social ascension mentioned in chapter 2. The power of this instinct inherited from our Genetic evolution perfectly explains why the adoption of social networks was rapid and massive, and why the problems of generalized registration were ignored by individuals. Then, what seems striking to us regarding the potential effect of social networks on social organization is their similarity with the real world. The documentary Caribbean primates showed that individuals can either favor a benevolent network, which Chester did, or an aggressive network, which Tony did. We find exactly the same phenomenon at the level of social networks, where on one side there are networks for the exchange of gossip or crowdfunding, and on the other side networks whose basis is a common hatred. Then, we saw that social exchanges with a view to establishing alliances, whether benevolent or aggressive, ultimately resulted in a permanent struggle in rhesus macaques. Here again, social networks seem to us to present the same dynamics as the real world. Either people adopt popularity as a criterion for social success, or they use the social network as a tool to make alliances in the real world, that is, to develop their network to ensure their social success in the real world. However, those who adopt popularity as their criterion of social success are in a permanent struggle for this. Finally, one of the problems linked to cognitive dissonance is that individuals tend to select their source of information based on their beliefs, which often leads them to maintain erroneous beliefs. Here again, social networks pose a problem, but the selection of the press that we read or the television channel that we watch previously produced the same type of bias. Finally, social networks have this apparent novelty that everyone can express themselves, something that the written press did not allow, and television rarely, but which already existed at the level of any political or associative gathering.
In the end, social networks appear to us simply as a new media, which like the press, then radio, then television in their time, simply accelerates the speed of propagation of information, and therefore reduces the level of critical perspective. Should we therefore conclude like Gérard Bronner in The democracy of the gullible that the massification of information linked to the development of the Internet reduces the level of veracity? In our opinion no, as long as we adapt the functioning of professional media, as will be proposed to us in chapter 20.
Our time
Before moving on to the description of the proposed solution, let us specify the context of the problem we seek to resolve, and to do so, let us begin by better defining what characterizes our time.
Singularity
The most singular element of our era, compared to all previous ones, and therefore also compared to that of Marx, is that the Earth has suddenly become the limiting factor in our development. However, our current social organization, which we recall corresponds more or less to the recommendations of Marx in Capital, namely a regulation of capitalism by law, also attempts to resolve the new ecological problem by law. That's the practical side. On the symbolic side, ecological sensitivity corresponds well to the expression of the need for a new social organization to control the consequences of the technological revolution, but this aspiration struggles to find a proposal for practical modalities. We find at the level of ecology the same split that we encountered at the level of social justice. On one side, the hardliners who want to get out of capitalism, and on the other, the moderates who simply want to amend it. In this sense, even if it speaks relatively little directly about ecology, we can see this book as a radical ecological proposal in the sense that its central object is indeed the establishment of a social organization adapted to the modern technological level.
Continuity
Conversely, once we have ruled out the major difference in the resilience capacity of the current terrestrial ecosystem which has become the limiting factor in human development, many elements of the current era, that is to say that of the second industrial revolution, are in continuity with the time of Marx, that is to say that of the first industrial revolution.
The second industrial revolution (computer science, robotics) and the explosion of means of communication simply amplifies the shift that had already taken place in Marx's time: the main objective is no longer production but becomes finding at all costs outlets for products.
The chronic instability of the capitalist system persists. Marx affirmed that this instability is inherent to capitalism, and despite the optimistic and peremptory declarations of economists convinced that we now understand the functioning of the system, therefore we know how to regulate it, history, including recent history, proves Marx right.
Changes are rapid, but contrary to popular belief, they are no more rapid than in the 19th century. Indeed, the upheavals linked to the arrival of the train were just as violent and rapid as those linked to the arrival of digital technology.
Let us now address the social aspect of our time.
The social structure of production has not fundamentally changed. Simply, after slavery and worker misery, we now rely on the exploitation of a relocated working class, mainly in Asia and Africa.
Social reports
Elites have become notoriously incompetent because they are digitally illiterate. They are therefore incapable of thinking about the organization and largely lose their credibility. This is an important difference from Marx's time. At the time of the first industrial revolution, a boss who toured his factory could get a fairly clear idea of u200bu200bthe situation just by observing the operation of the machines and workers, and the flow of production. Conversely, in the digital age, the boss is largely myopic. The image he has of the state of his computer system depends entirely on what he is told about it and not on direct observation. Furthermore, once the production flow involves data and no longer goods, it becomes incapable of organizing it without calling on specialists.
The union elites are also outdated, digitally illiterate, incapable of thinking about man-machine complementarity (1). So the demands gradually shifted from synonyms of progress to retrograde. Lacking the ability to propose a model for the future, we have come to demand a return to an idealized past, or simply seek the status quo.
In the end, before people were for this or that system, now they are gradually becoming against the system but for nothing else. So at the beginning of the 21st century we are witnessing a return of populism without content, with the associated risks. The successive phases of such a drift are: 1. No sense of social justice, i.e. the feeling that elites do not deserve their position 2. We vote for an alternative man 3. As he does not deal with the real subject, he either disappears or becomes a tyrant.
(1) The term 'man-machine complementarity' corresponds to the fact that production is today ensured by a mix of automated operations and manual operations. Therefore, to obtain efficient and quality production, it is important to ensure good coordination between the two. However, we too often see that it is the automation side which is the subject of the greatest investments, and that this leads to considering humans as simple complements to machines. This ultimately produces a deterioration of working conditions, exactly as Marx observed during the first industrial revolution. See the fuller explanation provided in Chapter 15.
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