[p2p-research] Prospect Magazine: After Capitalism

[Andy Robinson]

Michel,



I suspect you’d find plenty of Marxists who would quarrel with the claim
that classical fascism was independent from finance capital.  However, I
don’t term today’s regimes fascist in the literal sense, I term them
“neo-totalitarian” meaning they have many of the features of totalitarianism
but in a new combination.  The big difference from classical
totalitarianisms is that neo-totalitarianism is closely tied up with
capitalism as such…  not so much with racialism and the petty-bourgeoisie,
or with bureaucratic anti-capitalism…  I see it converging however, with the
Chinese model and the likes of Malaysia and Singapore.



However, I think current regimes attempt thought control through political
uses of the media, education etc, and that they do attempt to “use the state
in a radical/revolutionary way”, namely the reconstruction of subjectivities
as conformist, “employable” etc.  This is the difference between “Third Way”
social control and classical neoliberalism.  I think if you subtract the
aspects of polyarchy, nominal independence of the media and formal rights
protections, and bracket out the content of the ideology imposed,
neo-totalitarianism is almost indistinguishable from classical
totalitarianism (at least in its “weaker” form, in Brezhnev’s Russia or
eastern Europe for example).  Perhaps the mistake is made that
totalitarianism is assumed to be something it isn’t…  for instance that it
could only possibly apply to things like high Stalinism or wartime Nazism,
and not their successors and little brothers; and the false assumption that
totalitarians actually sought to destroy ALL space of dissent (rather than
to drastically narrow its expression) and that they succeeded in total
thought control (which empirical research has shown was not achieved even in
high Stalinism or wartime Nazism).  I think the biggest resistance in
recognising regimes like contemporary Britain as neo-totalitarian is that
people balk at the idea that a totalitarian regime can also have de jure
features of liberal democracy – yet the Nazis retained aspects of the
architecture of Weimar institutions, and Stalin introduced the world’s most
democratic constitution.



Key to totalitarianism is the attempt at total mobilisation of society
within a state-controlled scheme (high-intensity passive revolution), with
zero tolerance for difference, general closure of social space and a
requirement of active participatory conformity (not simply an absence of
active revolt).  This aspect, which differentiates totalitarianism both from
(even the most degenerated) liberal-democracies and from conservative
authoritarianisms (based on patronage), is certainly present in regimes like
Britain.  To be included, one has to accept the mantras of “employability”,
anti-“crime” fanaticism and so on.  And everyday life is micro-regulated in
very minute ways, greater if anything than historical totalitarianisms –
cameras on every corner, DNA and fingerprint databases, card-access systems,
constant state propaganda through “public information” posters, mobilisation
of fear by the state PR machine through a pliant media, etc.  The included
are supposed to be *totally mobilised* in the regime – not only as providers
of abstract labour-power but as self-motivated learners, possessers of
“skills” (a kind of doublespeak, meaning to have a particular “attitude” and
way of communicating, meaning to hold a particular conception of the world)
which fit with neoliberal capitalism, reacting as “any decent person” would
react to the climate of fear, avoiding any association with “extremism”,
participating in mechanisms of regulation such as reporting “anti-social
behaviour” and taking part in regulated forms of “community”, etc.  And any
deviance, however small, is instantly taken to be completely outside the
field of legitimacy – not just a little bit naughty but absolutely abhorrent
and needing to be stamped out with zero tolerance.  So we get the “dissident
phenomenon” similar to the “anti-Spain” in Francoism or the “dissidents” in
eastern Europe – those who are not totally inside are very radically
outside, and potentially at risk.


Even if you've a problem with the idea of Britain or America being
totalitarian, surely the status of China leaves little to the imagination?



bw

Andy
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