[p2p-research] Prospect Magazine: After Capitalism

[Michel Bauwens]

Hi Andy,

sorry, but no time to engage in depth for now.

In short: China is a former totalitarian state, now authoritarian, in which
many alternatives are possible, as long as you not directly challenge the
rule of the party. In Britain and the USA, despite the neoliberal consensus,
now broken, there are many different systems of thought both within and
without the elite, and this despite obvious
authoritarian/surveillance/national security inclined tendencies.

Any new neo-totalitarianism would be predicated on a severe social defeat of
popular and democratic forces, that has not happened in any way.

When, if, it really arrives, we will be out of a conceptual toolbox, for
having called its former very soft 'possible predecessor trends', with that
same brush, and we will look back at it as a paradise to return to ..

Michel


On 4/8/09, Andy Robinson <ldxar1 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> 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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>


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