24.6.03
History and Biography in a Global Age: The Legacy of C. Wright Mills
by Lauren Langman **
This paper was originally delivered at the American Sociological Association Annual Meeting in Washington D.C., August 2000
Introduction
Contemporary society itself, with its alienating methods of production, its enveloping techniques of political domination, its international anarchy--in a word, its pervasive transform[ed] the very 'nature' of man and the conditions and aims of his life (1959, p.13)
Although C. Wright Mills penned these words over 40 years ago, they seem as relevant today as then. Indeed given the nature of digitalized, computerized post-fordist production, the erosion of the political by marketing, with elections now a moment of the culture industries, the universalization of amusement-consumerism, all moments of the globalization of capital with its neo-liberal ideology, Mills words remain contemporary. While in the 60's a number of then young, typically rebellious sociologists found Mills a powerful inspiration in face of the paths sociology had taken. Notwithstanding the tumultuous times, his passion for human fulfillment through reason and his many insights have been eclipsed by both the growing irrelevancy of most contemporary social theory and the massive expansion of "empirical" research no more relevant today than when he scribed his telling critique, The Sociological Imagination.
For C. W. Mills. American sociology circa the late 50's had failed to live up to the promises of its founders. For Marx and Weber, sociology examined the emergence and consequences of capitalism, the growth of Protestantism and the industrial division of labor which had changed work, governance, the society and its communities. But what must be noted is that these social changes led to changes in people lives. Lords became merchants, peasants became workers and both were subjected to market forces and business cycles. The bonds that held people together were rent asunder and new forms of personal and collective behavior marked the new age of large factories, cities and Nation States. Some classes ascended to wealth and power-or were rendered poor and powerless. In this modern era, more and more of social life depended on rational organizations and formally trained administrative cadres-especially given modern corporations and Nation States which now stood as the fundamental contexts of social life. For Mills, sociology had forgotten its classical origins. The sociological imagination was meant restore that tradition and locate individual biographies within larger historic trends to understand the varieties of social types and their specific instantiations. Structural and institutional changes were not just "there", they impacted the lives of actual people to grant them freedom or subject them to domination. The sociological imagination promised to show how one’s personal life, issues and problems in work, marriage and meaning were linked to the larger social realities. It should enable people to understand the social forces that impacted their lives.
For a variety of reasons, following WWII, American sociology in what Mills was the first to term the "post modern" age, had forgotten its early roots and moved to either obscurantist "grand theory", Parson’s structural functionalism or "abstracted empiricism" belaboring irrelevant minutiae. Grand theory, an excessively verbose conservative ideology masked as social theory was primarily concerned with "the problem of order". It systematically and decidedly affirmed the dominant economic system, its class structure and its gender arrangements and ignored questions of classes, power, inequality, alienation, conflict, change and most of all, the life experiences of actual people-especially poor and/or marginal people. At the same time, mini-empires of grant funded research, led by "managers of the mind", well trained in "scientific methods" of sampling and analysis, moved sociological research from its original concerns to an obsessive gathering of isolated, de-contextualized factoids. Mills, was one of the first Americans to read the Frankfurt School critiques of instrumental reason as a hegemonic ideology sustaining the status quo, technologically based capitalism and the spurious "objectivity" of abstracted empiricism. Such "research" agendas could no more understand the nature of the times or address the vital questions of the age than could"grand theory".
On the one hand, given the events of the 1960's, a number of audiences began to pay heed to the questions and issues raised by Mills. One important reason for his popularity was his ability to write in a clear, lucid way quite different from the majority of sociologists. As a public intellectual, he defended populist agendas-criticizing the power elites as well as his own profession for ignoring them. The echoes of his clarion calls can yet be heard-and I would say contemporary sociology is that much better for his presence. We need only note that we now have sections concerned with women, minorities, gender, Marxism and gays. But at the same token, the dominant directions of sociology today, like our culture in general, have moved away from critical concerns. While functionalism has been relegated to the ash bins of textbooks, there now exist a plethora of social theories and approaches largely indifferent to the sociological imagination. Post modernism, post structuralism and rational choice theories, are not only indifferent to the concerns of classical sociology, but blind to the actual life experiences of real people and the role of new forms of power that are masked by popular culture.
As we begin the next millennium, I would like to argue that we should take stock of the legacy of C. W. Mills. I would like to argue that the sociological imagination is needed today as much if not more than when Mills first penned his critique. In the current age in which more and more people face deskilled McJobs and downward mobility, we find a more fragmented social fabric in which the pluralization of life worlds and highly differentiated carnival cultures of the now globalized "culture industries" fosters privatized hedonism and a withdrawal of concern with the social or political-save as entertainment (Gabler, 2000). Meanwhile, the political system is more and more beholden to the new "men and women of power" in the new centers of globalized power. Telegenic clones compete to serve trans national capital while the neo liberal State is ever more indifferent to the multitudes.
Mills would help us understand why the progressive moment of sociology was short lived. More specifically, let us recall that the 60's were an era of relative economic growth and prosperity. The dominant tropes of television encouraged consumerism as the "goods" life through eating tv dinners in suburbia. A number of social critiques addressed alienation, conformity. "one dimensionality" and questions of meaning. By the end of that era, given a variety of structural forces led to a variety of mobilizations over civil rights, anti war protests and the growth of feminism. And these events did inspire a number of sociologists, who were informed by the sociological imagination. The legacy of that era yet endures-if only in voto soce.
But why did that era wane and now fewer sociologists pay attention to the sociological imagination. A number of factors might be noted, the Civil Rights act and the end of the Viet Nam war lowered the intensity of pressures for social change. At the same time, the young sociological Turks were seeking academic jobs and/or tenure and the sociological factions that Mills described did not take kindly to leftist firebrands. The failure of progressive social movements to lead to a more rational, egalitarian society led many away from activism, perhaps the impact of the failure of the 1968 French workers movement should be noted. At that time, many French Marxists, veterans of Kojeve’s Hegelian Nietzsche seminar might be noted. Baudrillard, Lyotard, Foucault and Derrida moved away from Marxist or progressive traditions to the hyperealities of pomo and post structural theories. Radicalism then moved from social movements to deconstructing local texts and discourses.
By the end of the 70's, the progressive moments of sociology had waned as rock and roll became mainstream, sexual freedom became normative and the remnants of activism became institutionalized. Yet in that era, radical changes in technology began to transform capitalist production. Little noted then, but Mills foretold what Bluestone, Bowles and Gintis would later call the de-industrialization of an America being turned into an "industrial wasteland". New strategies of computerized, digitalized production, and/or the movement of production to off shore sites of cheap labor would portend the erosion of the labor movement and the decline of wages, colas, and many of the benefits that labor had won after long hard struggles. By the 80's, issues of unemployment, plant closings and the growth of low paid service work garnered little attention in an era dominated by the make believe politics of the Reagan era in which the cultural tone was set by idolizing the rich of Dallas, Dynasty and Knotts Landing.
Most sociologists ignored the underside of the growing "worlds of pain" described by Rubin (l972). Not so grand theories moved to center stage. Theory moved to new and unimagined realms of irrelevance or narrow fields of limited in which esoteric language replaced the clear lucidity of both classical theory or the progressive populist analyses of Mills. Smith’s economics returned as rational choice theory. This trend, had been noted earlier by Mills, much affected the kinds of people recruited to sociology. Sociology moved back to the farm boys, "second rate minds" from "third rate states" gravitated to sociology as a career in data collection. But this move, a reflection of the general indifference of sociology to actual people and their struggles to survive and find meaning was an important factor in the rise and spread of cultural studies in the academy. The Gresham’s Law of ideas was evident, bad sociology forced out good. By having abandoned the sociological imagination, sociology would be all the poorer while a variety of disciplines like communication, cultural studies and literature became sites of social critique in general and the sociological imagination in particular. Thus for example Hall’s concerns with media, identity and hegemony said more about race/class relations than Elmira revisited again.
History and Biography
In order to consider the nature of history and biography in our time, I would like to first note some of C. W. Mills observations-and their impact on sociology. I would then like to show how globalization has impacted the lives of people-and for most people, this influence has been adverse. Finally, recalling Mills understanding of social dynamics, I would like to suggest we are moving into a new stage of what I will call cyberfeudalism.
Prosperity, Meaning and Understanding
For both Marx and Weber, the rise of capitalism and in turn the Enlightenment eroded the hegemony of Church based religion as a moral code, as an explanatory framework and the basis of legitimation for dynastic rule. One of the important issues for Mills was the question of making sense of his times, how could people now understand the world in order to find life meaningful, why were people anxious while better off. . Despite the post war economic expansion of corporations, or perhaps because of it, notwithstanding higher standards of living, suburbanization and automobilization, there was a pervasive anxiety about the "stability" of the new economy. Always in the background during the cold war was the fear of communists from within and nuclear war from without. (1)
Mills captured the geist of his time as he noted that "nowadays men often feel that their private lives are a series of traps. They sense that within their everyday worlds, they cannot overcome their troubles, and in this feeling, they are often quite correct: What ordinary men are directly aware of and what they try to do are bounded by the private orbits in which they live; their visions and their powers are limited to the close-up scenes of job, family, neighborhood; in other milieux, they move vicariously and remain spectators. And the more aware they become, however vaguely, of ambitions and of threats which transcend their immediate locales, the more trapped they seem to feel" (1959, p.3). People were little aware of how rational capitalism might provide material comforts and or fantasied gratifications-but its alienation could not easily be assuaged despite its largesse. (2) Nor could most folks see and understand how the "cold war" that threatened their lives depended on a number of elites-or would be elites-whose careers and power were based on the manufacture of "red menace".
Today, like then, our society faces crises of meaning and understanding, but that said, there is a greater fragmentation of social life based on the many new kinds of jobs, specialized education, consumer styles and participation in the myriad taste cultures and leisure sites of advanced capital. This has led to a cacophony of competing voices that would claim or grant meanings. And quite often, these different meanings stand in violent opposition to each other. On the one hand, the move to consumer society, fostered largely by television based advertising, has made consumption the overall hegemonic ideology which promised happiness through the "goods life". But the shallowness of consumerism, its narcissism and its lack of a moral posture has led to a plethora of alternatives. These can take such forms as religious conservatism that would take us back to an imagined past of a simpler times when orthodox religion had clear answers to moral questions-while affirming essentialist identities. The fragmentation of progressive forces into a plurality of competing identity claims along racial, ethnic, gender or cultural-if not counter cultural lines provided a number of alternative communities of meaning that would give voice to the silent and grant and recognize valorized identities. And finally, for segments of those marginalized by global capital, instead of dealing with the realities of capitalist restructuring various extremist groups blame minorities, Jews or a UN conspiracy to take over the world.
While the dominant self image and national mood of confidence and prosperity of the 1990's was primarily based on the affluent, the gaps of rich and poor grew-and much of this divide was often closely tied to issues of race/ethnicity. The past 20 years witnessed a massive production of wealth, but most has been appropriated by the economic elites- the top 20%,(see below). Even in this stratum, most of that wealth has gone to the upper echelons who have fostered a variety of cynical justification for the greater disparities of income and wealth. Meanwhile, the bottom 20% have lost considerable ground, even when working. Many of those now marginalized include racial minorities. But it might be noted that included among the marginalized are a number of counter-cultures of downwardly mobile youth ranging from punks to Goths sporting a number of studs, posts, rings, spikes, tatoos and florescent colors that guarantee unemployment-save in a few record shops or health food stores (Cf Rojek, 1999). But whereas most countercultures have envisioned a better world, many of the youth counter cultures of today seek only more varied and intense forms of personal gratification.
Alienated work
Among the most influential books that Mills wrote exemplifying the sociological imagination was his analysis of the new middle classes, various clerks, sales persons and service workers who ranks were just beginning to swell. For Mills, work was one of the central linkages between the person and the larger society. Mills was among the first to chart the movement of alienation from the factory floor to the sales floor and the office. In the shadow of Mill’s legacy, we might well note that his influence generated a number of studies of how work adversely impacts the lives of actual people. Let me just note three such studies. One such example was Hochschild’s The Managed Heart, now itself a sociological classic. In this ground breaking work, Hochschild showed how while for Marx, alienation was based on the appropriation of the workers labor and the products s/he produced for others, today, for service workers, flight attendants as a prime example, corporate demands for "pleasant" service and self presentation, the required forms of social interaction became commodified and feelings commercialized. Warmth, cordiality and sympathy have become part of corporate competition utilized in the service of profits-notwithstanding the adverse consequences for the worker. But further, in this vein, Leidner has shown that for more and more "interactive service work" that includes much of the fast food industry, not only must minimum wage workers show the "proper" deference and demeanor, but management manages to enlist the public to collude in the surveillance of workers. Finally, let me note that his recent book, Corrosion of Character, Sennett has argued that in the new, post Taylorized flexible work environments of modern corporation, where flextime, innovation and team cooperation rather than rigid rules and hierarchy are stressed, loyalty to the group/organization has eroded in favor short term instrumental relations which may provide "success" in business, but cannot much provide the narratives (of identity) that sustain family life or civic involvement upon such values. This is perhaps one reason why so many workers put in long hours at their corporations-away from friends, families or communities (Hochschild, 1998).
It is also worth noting that today the variety of work and many of the jobs today could hardly be imagined by Mills. These would range from webmaster to fast foods to the electronic sweatshops of sales offices, insurance companies and reservations departments. Further, in addition to the short term commitments and limited loyalties just noted, one of the most rapidly growing segment of the new work force of today are the various "consultants", temps and "home" workers whose jobs tend to be of limited duration and for the most part are without benefits. What these changes in the work force indicate is that work in the contemporary labor force little provides a basis for social ties, connections and commitments.
While work is often quite alienating, one of the salient issues of the current age is the very availability and stability of work. But it is worth recalling that for Mills, "the immense productivity of mass-production technique and the increased application of technologic rationality are the first open secrets of modern occupational change: fewer men turn out more things in less time. . . . This industrial revolution seems to be permanent, seems to go on through war and boom and slump; thus a decline in production results in a more than proportional decline in employment; and an increase in production results in a less than proportional increase in employment" (1951, p. 66-67).
By the 90's, it became evident to most people that the transformations of capitalism led to a restructuring of manufacturing. The computerization of work not only impacted workers, but many skilled professions saw permanent changes in the nature of their work. More and more jobs were automated, comptuterized and/or exported. Many lower echelon management jobs have been made redundant and eliminated. Some social critics such as Rifkin, and of course Aronowitz and DaFazio raised serious questions about the future of a society in which large segments of the work force faced declining wages if not permanent marginalization. While these concerns were pushed out of sight by Clinton’s embrace of neo-liberalism that created a large number of jobs, most of these were for the lower echelons of service work, without benefits, job security or prospects of a better future. It has been said in jest that there are so many jobs that many folks have 2 or 3. But for every systems analyst, webmaster, genetic engineer, financial planner or e-commerce millionaire, there are perhaps 5 or 6 lower echelon McJobs. Now it may well be that the production of jobs cannot be micro managed-as the Soviet experience demonstrated-but at the same time, the distributions of rewards and wage levels are political questions-to which neo-liberalism has given an answer-the personal sacrifices of the majority are morally desirable since like the Protestant ethic, asceticism serves ultimately provides greater wealth-but today, not to those who do the sacrificing (see Teeple, 1996).
The changing nature of work has much impacted the life of the lower statum. Much in line with the concerns raised by Mills a number of sociologists began to explore the conditions of life for the lower stratum that came to be termed the underclass. While a long tradition going back to DuBois, Frazier, and St Clair Drake and Clark had been concerned with the conditions of the Afro American ghetto, William Wilson (1996) systematically traced the impact of globalization on the lives of the poor. He argued that the closing of urban factories for the sake of corporate capitalism has had a deleterious impact on poor communities-sucking their very life blood. Not only did the loss of jobs contribute to crime, violence and family instability, but at the same, elites members of Afro-American communities were likely to move, intensifying the "social isolation" of the poor, depriving such communities of "successful* role models with organizational skills. Now while his thesis has been much debated and criticized, it nevertheless exemplified the sociological imagination. In much the same vein, as Sassen (1998) has noted, global capital/information flows have changed the nature of global cities fostering gentrification. Anderson (1990) showed how the influx of affluent people into formerly poor areas has led to anger and resentment between the largely white newcomers and the largely Black residents.
Power elites
Studied in classical social theory, Mills well knew the role of elites in directing a society-claims of democracy and popular participation notwithstanding. For Marx, the domination by ruling classes was the basis of history. These classes not only controlled wealth, but political power as well as the means of cultural production (e.g.) they controlled ideologies and beliefs. Similarly, for Weber, domination, legitimacy and authority were central themes and indeed he seems to have suggested that politics was the only way to find meaning in the modern world. Further, while Marx saw political leaders simply as the agents of capital, Weber noted that political life was a "vocation" in which ones career was based on a particular "calling" not simply reducible to economics. Weber’s student Michals noted that elite domination was not just a characteristic of society writ large, but took place within organizations as well. Thus for Mills some citizens, especially those born into affluence and likely to go to a few select elite schools, had disproportionate power and control over economic, political and even military institutions. These groups, historical blocs rather than a unified ruling class, long described by Domhoff, have had a disproportionate-and undemocratic influence over the work most of us do, the products we buy, the way we live-and now the ways we get sick and find health care. But further, these power elites make economic and political choices that not only have great impact on the society, but for a number of reasons, their influences are rendered either invisible-or transformed into the "will of the people" to command "spontaneous assent" (Gramsci). But what must now be noted is that the new face of power is no longer national but global.
When Mills wrote SI, he argued that the appropriate context of modern social life was not the local community but the Nation State. Indeed much of the 20th C must be understood in terms of nationalist conflicts, the vagaries of national economies and impact of national cultures. But the dominant historical context of contemporary life is no longer the Nation State but globalization, the condition of our age in which the constraints of geography upon economic, culture and political life recede (Waters, 1995). Thus globalization can be seen as a fundamentally new form of economy, governance and culture (Cf. Waters, 1995). Globalization now stands as the fundamental historical context that most impacts people*s lives. From the alpha geek millionaires of Silicon Valley to Mongolian nomads with modems, the universalization of electronic communication and the resulting time and space compression has radically transformed contemporary lives. The fundamental historical reality that now impacts individual biographies is now globalization-this is the central moment of the sociological imagination of our age.
We must not lose track of the fact that the underlying dynamics of globalization rest on technologically advanced capitalism, "techno-capital (Kellner) and its valorization of instrumental reason, e.g. "techno-culture" (Aronowitz).The various strands of contemporary social life can be understood by noting a major restructuring of political economies in which commerce, governance and culture moved from an international system of Nation-States engaged in trade, and often war, to a "network society" (Castells, 1996) in which a variety of economic organizations concerned with finance and production might be spatially located in a large number of countries yet remain connected through a number of electronic information flows. Ownership is widely dispersed beyond the country of origin and may be found in a number of particular locales. At the same time, a number of regulatory agencies have eroded certain State functions, eg. there is an alphabet soup of regional and global regulatory agencies and agreements from the WTO to the IMF as well as the EU, NAFTA and MERCOSUL. Finally, the nature of communication and transportation has enabled the rapid diffusion of culture, entertainment and entertainers giving rise to a global culture, moments of which are closely tied to globalized culture industries and branded products. We must note that he major actors of this new system are Trans national corporations and with the ascendance of these organizations, we have also seen the emergence of a new power elite, a transnational capitalist class (Sklair, l998, 2000). While this trans national capitalist class is a new phenomenon, it must be seen as a metamorphosis of national power elites whose capitalist forms and/or organizations have been transformed. Thus while Mills noted the dominance of the corporations in his day, today, most of those corporations, following buyouts, mergers, consolidations across nation boundaries etc, are now players in the global economy and the powers behind most of the diplomatic and political decisions of our day.
Industrialization in its classical form depended on the extraction of raw materials from "peripheral" countries to the "core" economies. The earliest signs of globalization might could seen in the 60's when a number of manufacturing companies first began to either shift operations to countries with lower labor costs or began to purchase finished/semi-finished goods from abroad. This initiated the de-industrialization that was previously noted, but the critical moment of globalization came with the computerization of production and communication-soon followed by the globalization of finance and investment. Perhaps the most corrosive moment of globalization is speculative capital that creates wealth for the few, but unlike manufacturing, productive capital, does not produce jobs or any use value. Finally, and critical for the present argument, most globalized commerce is devoted to consumerism in general, and in particular, cultural consumption(print, recordings, television, films, the internet etc), leisure time activities and tourism which is now the fastest growing industry in the world.
The Coming of Cyberfeudal Society
Influenced by Weber’s notions of "ideal types" and Fromm’s ideas of social character, a central concern for Mills was human variety, who were the typical types of people in strategic locations in each historical epoch, how did classes and status groups foster certain types of character. If we now rethink Mills* understandings of the sociological imagination I would like to suggest that we now face three major trends reflecting historically recent human "varieties". Each type is likely to face radically life chances, biographies and trajectories in the new global age. These types constitute in microcosm the outlines of what I call "cyberfeudalism", the new hegemony on the now globalized world stage in which a very small class of elites has or controls most of the wealth while a large class of "cyberserfs" do most of the grunt work that makes the system work. But further, despite growing inequalities, a new form of carnival culture valorizing the vulgar, the obscene and repulsive, as a liminal culture in the interstices of the contemporary world, much like the carnival of the middle ages, has become a form of cultural resistance in which hedonistic gratifications for the many serve to stabilize the system that benefits the few (Cf. Langman, 1998, Twitchell ; 1992 Bakhtin, 1968).
A new kind of capitalist elite is emerging whose wealth and power are not based on either land or machines, but instead based on the possession and control of symbolic knowledge e.g. advanced technologies such as bio-tech or computer technologies, finance and administration or professional services, especially accountancy and law. These new elites are the core of the trans national capitalist classes who own and manage the new economic realities. They are the ones who most profited from the radical changes of the last few decades. With the new social and historical reality of cyberfeudalism, these "cyber lords", claim more and more of the wealth. Some 400 billionaires have as much wealth and the bottom 40% of the world. Many of the CEO’s and top capitalists make hundred of million dollar/year and while their incomes skyrocket, much of it is at the cost of the workers who have seen their wages and standards of living remain stagnant at best or recede at worst.
While the markets for "upscale" luxury goods and services grow, close to half the world cannot afford a Coca Cola. Some of this class spend small fortunes in cosmetic surgery, almost the world is without adequate health care. This new transnational class of cyberlords more and more resemble the dynastic aristocracies of the middle ages-sans codes of honor and loyalty. Much like aristocratic classes of the past, these elites support small armies devoted to providing them with certain specialized services and artifacts.
At the same time, given the trends noted, the majority of workers today, many who might have found jobs in management now face declining standards of living. we can now see that the vast numbers of workers in the world have seen their standards of living slowly recede, otherwise said a growing army of "cyber-serfs"does much of the McJob services required in the globalized economy ranging from overseas sweatshops producing garments, toys, and electronic gadgets...to sales, fast food chains, janitorial, security, etc. Consider for example as noted the rapid growth of tourism/entertainment. Most of the wealth goes to aircraft makers, airlines and hotel/ restaurant owners. While a number of upper echelon executives, pilots and professionals do very well, most of the workers, lower echelon technicians, clerks, cashiers, servers, maids, janitorial workers, etc, have seen their wages stagnate or decline. While in previous times economic retractions have been associated with political mobilizations, the culture industries foster escapist consumerism and fantasies that placate the masses. Finally, in face of the growing domination of the transnational capitalist class, increased inequality and despoliation of the environment (not much of a concern for Mills), there has emerged new forms of activism and mobilization (Castells, 1998;Dyer-Witheford, 1999).
One of the major consequences of the Enlightenment as the clarion call to modernity was the understanding that social arrangements and hierarchies, inequalities and privilege were not ordained by God(s), but were fashioned by men, or at least mostly by men. Poverty was no longer seen as inevitable and while Smith and Ricardo on the one hand, and Marx on the other offered very different reasons for wealth and poverty, they all envisioned its overcoming. Indeed much of the history of 19th and 20th Cs. can be seen as attempts to overcome domination, hardship and poverty. But now I would ask why do not the conditions of today, great concentration of wealth and growing hardship foster political mobilization left or right. I would answer that much like the "carnival culture" of the middle ages, the popular culture of the present age serves to stabilize class relations by fostering a migration of subjectivity from the social to the personal and a general disinterest in politics-save when political personae become characters in entertaining films, television or books of sexual expose ala the Clintons or Reagans. This carnival culture on the one hand creates a variety of sites for artistic creativity, personal freedom and more gratifying identities than does the dominant culture. But at the same time, like the circuses of Rome, they serve to stabilize class relations and preserve inequality. It should also be noted that the carnival culture of today is not a folk celebration owned by the "people", but rather, the many forms of this carnival culture from tabloid journalism to internet pornography, including television tell alls and WWF smashathons, are produced by global corporations-to both advertise the products of other global corporations and distribute a hegemonic ideology with identities of pseudo resistance that mask and sustain growing inequality.
Cyber-activists to the rescue
Mills, as both a progressive scholar and public intellectual decried the political apathy of his time. Yet his legacy would impact and inspire a generation of activists engaged in the many struggles of the 60's and 70's. Globalization has not only sustained the old inequalities of capital and even generated the new inequalities of cyberfeudalism, but its valorization of Instrumental Reason maintains the domination of humanity and usurpation of Nature. Globalization has accelerated despoliation of the environment, destruction of the ozone layer, the shrinking of rain forests and the mass production of waste products, some of which are not only toxic, but will remain dangerous for 20,000 more years. Adorno, Horkhiemer and Marcuse etc., noted how the technological logic of capital reduced the person into a dehumanized object whose objectification was mystified by mass culture and consumerism and whose capacities for resistance were eroded. In the years since these critiques were penned, we have seen how new technologies of surveillance discipline, dehumanize and depoliticize.
Despite the power of TNCs, the numbing allure of its mass mediated carnival culture, an electoral politics dominated by telegenic neoliberal clones, crises and dysfunctions of globalized capital generate resistance and in turn oppositional groups and coalitions with visions of genuine democracy, empowerment and self realization. The same communication systems that enable capital and information flows across the globe can link people together and distribute information. It is now more difficult for governments or corporations to conceal information whether on environmental conditions, human rights or product safety when electronic access to information cannot be controlled short of making phones illegal. Cyberspace has now created new interstices for progressive cyber-activists to create networks of opposition, new constellations of power and mobilizations. Well organized progressive NGO’s and emerging coalitions can effectively publicize information, impact publics, and mobilize and in turn social policies for targeted progressive change (Castells, 1997).
But if we are to be dialectical and true to the memory of Mills, we would also note that the growing inequalities of wealth and income, the objectification of humanity , increasing pollution and environmental destruction generate and require resistance. But programs contesting dysfunctions of globalization are clearly opposed to its neoliberal policies and require organized opposition. Insofar as globalization transcends national territories, so too must resistance movements extend beyond the nation state and employ new strategies of activism. Yet there are now new means for organization, mobilization and resistance. The proliferation of the internet creates the possibilities for creation of universal communication network and the use of these networks in decentralized, counterplanning" (Dyer-Witheford, 1999). Not only have costs of computers plummeted, but there is a growing surplus of "obsolete" computers, read over a year old, that while not the leading edge of technologies, are perfectly suitable for email and internet use by the less privileged. The potential growth of networks of resistance by oppositional groups with democratic/humanist agendas can empower publics to gain democratic input and control over the technologies and investment decisions that impact peoples lives. But such groups need to develop specific plans and programs rather that slogans and shibboleths.
With the decoupling of the global economy from national polities, and decentralization and dispersion of power and decision making, it is difficult to target opposition. As Castells put it, there is no winter palace to storm. Nor are alternatives to globalization feasible, though post capitalist forms might be possible. Indeed the he production of global abundance can erode national privilege and attenuate the role of markets in the allocation of benefits. Turning back the clock to a "Golden age" and/or smashing the machines (computers and networks), themes that draw together reactionaries, anarchists and neo-Luddites are neither feasible nor desirable, life would be short, nasty and brutish. Proletarian revolution is unlikely after the legacy of totalitarian state socialism. (3) Yet there is an alternative, or set of alternatives; globalization also creates spaces for progressive, movements that seek specific goals rather than "overthrowing the system". Castells (1997) cited the Zapatistas, feminism and environmentalism. I would further note the mobilizations against FGM (female genital mutilation), the Land mine treaty, the growth of anti-sweatshop movements on American campuses and the massive rally against the WTO meetings in Seattle as harbingers of new forms of cyber-activism that portends the contestations of the 21st C.
Back to the sociological imagination
In the heyday of corporate ascendancy and political apathy sustained by relative affluence and in turn consumerism, there was something awry. People were unhappy and insecure. Yet sociology, between the Charybdis of "Grand theory" and the Scylla of "abstracted empiricism" was part of the problem-its quietude in the face of racial oppression was deafening, its indifference to gender unconscionable and its political indifference appalling. These were the conditions in which Mills chastised sociology for its indifference to the sociological imagination and the plight of real people whose lives were subjected to the forces they least understood. And yet its implicit pessimism notwithstanding, within a few years of its publication, and its sub rosa circulations among the more progressive graduate students and young sociologists, a wave of progressive activism spread across the nation-much of it led by these same students and activists.
We are now again at a crucial time in our history. The forces of global capital that grow more powerful each day colonize ever greater spaces in our pluralized lifeworlds and ever more dominate our routines. Our discipline, sad to say, rewards indifference to the sociological imagination and the questions it raises about power, wealth inequality and alienation. But power is not eternal. Lest we forget, but from the time Charlemagne was installed in 800 AD and the final demise of feudalism after WWI, there was more or less stable, if perhaps violent, social order for about 1,000 years. So too today do we face unprecedented social changes do to the rapid developments of technology. How can and will societies change as the technologies of our age reduce the amount of work necessary to produce and transport goods. On the one hand this promises to alleviate of much of the alienating toil of work that prompted Marx to write the 1844 Manuscripts. But at the same time growing inequality that further separates rich and poor. Does this portend new opportunities for human fulfillment and from each according to his/her ability, or does this"jobless future" promise a new serfdom in which a mass mediated carnival culture serve as a compensatory palliative.
But let us not despair-the same technology that enables globalization now also creates the possibilities for new forms of activism that portend the possibilities of turning private troubles into the personal joys of a rational society. One of the main tasks for the sociological imagination of the next century will be to foster the new types of social activism and actions suitable for a globalized network society. Cyberspace offers new forms of commmodification as well as new possibilities of resistance and transformation. If sociology persists in ignoring its own foundations, it remains blind to the sociological imagination, then it promises growing irrelevance and demise.
In conclusion, I would like to thank Joe Feagin from the bottom of my heart for calling for this session, to thank my friends, Stanley, David and both Bills for joining me in this call to rekindle the sociological imagination. But most of all, thank you Charles Wright Mills for inspiring so many of us that we hope to pass this legacy to our successors.
1 But Mills noted that much of the fear of communism was fostered by those industries, generals and politicians for whom this fear brought profits, power and career advance, or more often-all.
2 Curiously enough, similar critiques of capitalist consumerism were soon voiced by Lefebvre (1956) and by Marcuse (1954).
3 Various technophilic theorists of globalization, qua post industrial, third wave, information revolution or end of history positions that dismiss Marxism may be a bit premature (see Dyer-Witheford, 1999).
This paper was originally delivered at the American Sociological Association Annual Meeting in Washington D.C., August 2000
Introduction
Contemporary society itself, with its alienating methods of production, its enveloping techniques of political domination, its international anarchy--in a word, its pervasive transform[ed] the very 'nature' of man and the conditions and aims of his life (1959, p.13)
Although C. Wright Mills penned these words over 40 years ago, they seem as relevant today as then. Indeed given the nature of digitalized, computerized post-fordist production, the erosion of the political by marketing, with elections now a moment of the culture industries, the universalization of amusement-consumerism, all moments of the globalization of capital with its neo-liberal ideology, Mills words remain contemporary. While in the 60's a number of then young, typically rebellious sociologists found Mills a powerful inspiration in face of the paths sociology had taken. Notwithstanding the tumultuous times, his passion for human fulfillment through reason and his many insights have been eclipsed by both the growing irrelevancy of most contemporary social theory and the massive expansion of "empirical" research no more relevant today than when he scribed his telling critique, The Sociological Imagination.
For C. W. Mills. American sociology circa the late 50's had failed to live up to the promises of its founders. For Marx and Weber, sociology examined the emergence and consequences of capitalism, the growth of Protestantism and the industrial division of labor which had changed work, governance, the society and its communities. But what must be noted is that these social changes led to changes in people lives. Lords became merchants, peasants became workers and both were subjected to market forces and business cycles. The bonds that held people together were rent asunder and new forms of personal and collective behavior marked the new age of large factories, cities and Nation States. Some classes ascended to wealth and power-or were rendered poor and powerless. In this modern era, more and more of social life depended on rational organizations and formally trained administrative cadres-especially given modern corporations and Nation States which now stood as the fundamental contexts of social life. For Mills, sociology had forgotten its classical origins. The sociological imagination was meant restore that tradition and locate individual biographies within larger historic trends to understand the varieties of social types and their specific instantiations. Structural and institutional changes were not just "there", they impacted the lives of actual people to grant them freedom or subject them to domination. The sociological imagination promised to show how one’s personal life, issues and problems in work, marriage and meaning were linked to the larger social realities. It should enable people to understand the social forces that impacted their lives.
For a variety of reasons, following WWII, American sociology in what Mills was the first to term the "post modern" age, had forgotten its early roots and moved to either obscurantist "grand theory", Parson’s structural functionalism or "abstracted empiricism" belaboring irrelevant minutiae. Grand theory, an excessively verbose conservative ideology masked as social theory was primarily concerned with "the problem of order". It systematically and decidedly affirmed the dominant economic system, its class structure and its gender arrangements and ignored questions of classes, power, inequality, alienation, conflict, change and most of all, the life experiences of actual people-especially poor and/or marginal people. At the same time, mini-empires of grant funded research, led by "managers of the mind", well trained in "scientific methods" of sampling and analysis, moved sociological research from its original concerns to an obsessive gathering of isolated, de-contextualized factoids. Mills, was one of the first Americans to read the Frankfurt School critiques of instrumental reason as a hegemonic ideology sustaining the status quo, technologically based capitalism and the spurious "objectivity" of abstracted empiricism. Such "research" agendas could no more understand the nature of the times or address the vital questions of the age than could"grand theory".
On the one hand, given the events of the 1960's, a number of audiences began to pay heed to the questions and issues raised by Mills. One important reason for his popularity was his ability to write in a clear, lucid way quite different from the majority of sociologists. As a public intellectual, he defended populist agendas-criticizing the power elites as well as his own profession for ignoring them. The echoes of his clarion calls can yet be heard-and I would say contemporary sociology is that much better for his presence. We need only note that we now have sections concerned with women, minorities, gender, Marxism and gays. But at the same token, the dominant directions of sociology today, like our culture in general, have moved away from critical concerns. While functionalism has been relegated to the ash bins of textbooks, there now exist a plethora of social theories and approaches largely indifferent to the sociological imagination. Post modernism, post structuralism and rational choice theories, are not only indifferent to the concerns of classical sociology, but blind to the actual life experiences of real people and the role of new forms of power that are masked by popular culture.
As we begin the next millennium, I would like to argue that we should take stock of the legacy of C. W. Mills. I would like to argue that the sociological imagination is needed today as much if not more than when Mills first penned his critique. In the current age in which more and more people face deskilled McJobs and downward mobility, we find a more fragmented social fabric in which the pluralization of life worlds and highly differentiated carnival cultures of the now globalized "culture industries" fosters privatized hedonism and a withdrawal of concern with the social or political-save as entertainment (Gabler, 2000). Meanwhile, the political system is more and more beholden to the new "men and women of power" in the new centers of globalized power. Telegenic clones compete to serve trans national capital while the neo liberal State is ever more indifferent to the multitudes.
Mills would help us understand why the progressive moment of sociology was short lived. More specifically, let us recall that the 60's were an era of relative economic growth and prosperity. The dominant tropes of television encouraged consumerism as the "goods" life through eating tv dinners in suburbia. A number of social critiques addressed alienation, conformity. "one dimensionality" and questions of meaning. By the end of that era, given a variety of structural forces led to a variety of mobilizations over civil rights, anti war protests and the growth of feminism. And these events did inspire a number of sociologists, who were informed by the sociological imagination. The legacy of that era yet endures-if only in voto soce.
But why did that era wane and now fewer sociologists pay attention to the sociological imagination. A number of factors might be noted, the Civil Rights act and the end of the Viet Nam war lowered the intensity of pressures for social change. At the same time, the young sociological Turks were seeking academic jobs and/or tenure and the sociological factions that Mills described did not take kindly to leftist firebrands. The failure of progressive social movements to lead to a more rational, egalitarian society led many away from activism, perhaps the impact of the failure of the 1968 French workers movement should be noted. At that time, many French Marxists, veterans of Kojeve’s Hegelian Nietzsche seminar might be noted. Baudrillard, Lyotard, Foucault and Derrida moved away from Marxist or progressive traditions to the hyperealities of pomo and post structural theories. Radicalism then moved from social movements to deconstructing local texts and discourses.
By the end of the 70's, the progressive moments of sociology had waned as rock and roll became mainstream, sexual freedom became normative and the remnants of activism became institutionalized. Yet in that era, radical changes in technology began to transform capitalist production. Little noted then, but Mills foretold what Bluestone, Bowles and Gintis would later call the de-industrialization of an America being turned into an "industrial wasteland". New strategies of computerized, digitalized production, and/or the movement of production to off shore sites of cheap labor would portend the erosion of the labor movement and the decline of wages, colas, and many of the benefits that labor had won after long hard struggles. By the 80's, issues of unemployment, plant closings and the growth of low paid service work garnered little attention in an era dominated by the make believe politics of the Reagan era in which the cultural tone was set by idolizing the rich of Dallas, Dynasty and Knotts Landing.
Most sociologists ignored the underside of the growing "worlds of pain" described by Rubin (l972). Not so grand theories moved to center stage. Theory moved to new and unimagined realms of irrelevance or narrow fields of limited in which esoteric language replaced the clear lucidity of both classical theory or the progressive populist analyses of Mills. Smith’s economics returned as rational choice theory. This trend, had been noted earlier by Mills, much affected the kinds of people recruited to sociology. Sociology moved back to the farm boys, "second rate minds" from "third rate states" gravitated to sociology as a career in data collection. But this move, a reflection of the general indifference of sociology to actual people and their struggles to survive and find meaning was an important factor in the rise and spread of cultural studies in the academy. The Gresham’s Law of ideas was evident, bad sociology forced out good. By having abandoned the sociological imagination, sociology would be all the poorer while a variety of disciplines like communication, cultural studies and literature became sites of social critique in general and the sociological imagination in particular. Thus for example Hall’s concerns with media, identity and hegemony said more about race/class relations than Elmira revisited again.
History and Biography
In order to consider the nature of history and biography in our time, I would like to first note some of C. W. Mills observations-and their impact on sociology. I would then like to show how globalization has impacted the lives of people-and for most people, this influence has been adverse. Finally, recalling Mills understanding of social dynamics, I would like to suggest we are moving into a new stage of what I will call cyberfeudalism.
Prosperity, Meaning and Understanding
For both Marx and Weber, the rise of capitalism and in turn the Enlightenment eroded the hegemony of Church based religion as a moral code, as an explanatory framework and the basis of legitimation for dynastic rule. One of the important issues for Mills was the question of making sense of his times, how could people now understand the world in order to find life meaningful, why were people anxious while better off. . Despite the post war economic expansion of corporations, or perhaps because of it, notwithstanding higher standards of living, suburbanization and automobilization, there was a pervasive anxiety about the "stability" of the new economy. Always in the background during the cold war was the fear of communists from within and nuclear war from without. (1)
Mills captured the geist of his time as he noted that "nowadays men often feel that their private lives are a series of traps. They sense that within their everyday worlds, they cannot overcome their troubles, and in this feeling, they are often quite correct: What ordinary men are directly aware of and what they try to do are bounded by the private orbits in which they live; their visions and their powers are limited to the close-up scenes of job, family, neighborhood; in other milieux, they move vicariously and remain spectators. And the more aware they become, however vaguely, of ambitions and of threats which transcend their immediate locales, the more trapped they seem to feel" (1959, p.3). People were little aware of how rational capitalism might provide material comforts and or fantasied gratifications-but its alienation could not easily be assuaged despite its largesse. (2) Nor could most folks see and understand how the "cold war" that threatened their lives depended on a number of elites-or would be elites-whose careers and power were based on the manufacture of "red menace".
Today, like then, our society faces crises of meaning and understanding, but that said, there is a greater fragmentation of social life based on the many new kinds of jobs, specialized education, consumer styles and participation in the myriad taste cultures and leisure sites of advanced capital. This has led to a cacophony of competing voices that would claim or grant meanings. And quite often, these different meanings stand in violent opposition to each other. On the one hand, the move to consumer society, fostered largely by television based advertising, has made consumption the overall hegemonic ideology which promised happiness through the "goods life". But the shallowness of consumerism, its narcissism and its lack of a moral posture has led to a plethora of alternatives. These can take such forms as religious conservatism that would take us back to an imagined past of a simpler times when orthodox religion had clear answers to moral questions-while affirming essentialist identities. The fragmentation of progressive forces into a plurality of competing identity claims along racial, ethnic, gender or cultural-if not counter cultural lines provided a number of alternative communities of meaning that would give voice to the silent and grant and recognize valorized identities. And finally, for segments of those marginalized by global capital, instead of dealing with the realities of capitalist restructuring various extremist groups blame minorities, Jews or a UN conspiracy to take over the world.
While the dominant self image and national mood of confidence and prosperity of the 1990's was primarily based on the affluent, the gaps of rich and poor grew-and much of this divide was often closely tied to issues of race/ethnicity. The past 20 years witnessed a massive production of wealth, but most has been appropriated by the economic elites- the top 20%,(see below). Even in this stratum, most of that wealth has gone to the upper echelons who have fostered a variety of cynical justification for the greater disparities of income and wealth. Meanwhile, the bottom 20% have lost considerable ground, even when working. Many of those now marginalized include racial minorities. But it might be noted that included among the marginalized are a number of counter-cultures of downwardly mobile youth ranging from punks to Goths sporting a number of studs, posts, rings, spikes, tatoos and florescent colors that guarantee unemployment-save in a few record shops or health food stores (Cf Rojek, 1999). But whereas most countercultures have envisioned a better world, many of the youth counter cultures of today seek only more varied and intense forms of personal gratification.
Alienated work
Among the most influential books that Mills wrote exemplifying the sociological imagination was his analysis of the new middle classes, various clerks, sales persons and service workers who ranks were just beginning to swell. For Mills, work was one of the central linkages between the person and the larger society. Mills was among the first to chart the movement of alienation from the factory floor to the sales floor and the office. In the shadow of Mill’s legacy, we might well note that his influence generated a number of studies of how work adversely impacts the lives of actual people. Let me just note three such studies. One such example was Hochschild’s The Managed Heart, now itself a sociological classic. In this ground breaking work, Hochschild showed how while for Marx, alienation was based on the appropriation of the workers labor and the products s/he produced for others, today, for service workers, flight attendants as a prime example, corporate demands for "pleasant" service and self presentation, the required forms of social interaction became commodified and feelings commercialized. Warmth, cordiality and sympathy have become part of corporate competition utilized in the service of profits-notwithstanding the adverse consequences for the worker. But further, in this vein, Leidner has shown that for more and more "interactive service work" that includes much of the fast food industry, not only must minimum wage workers show the "proper" deference and demeanor, but management manages to enlist the public to collude in the surveillance of workers. Finally, let me note that his recent book, Corrosion of Character, Sennett has argued that in the new, post Taylorized flexible work environments of modern corporation, where flextime, innovation and team cooperation rather than rigid rules and hierarchy are stressed, loyalty to the group/organization has eroded in favor short term instrumental relations which may provide "success" in business, but cannot much provide the narratives (of identity) that sustain family life or civic involvement upon such values. This is perhaps one reason why so many workers put in long hours at their corporations-away from friends, families or communities (Hochschild, 1998).
It is also worth noting that today the variety of work and many of the jobs today could hardly be imagined by Mills. These would range from webmaster to fast foods to the electronic sweatshops of sales offices, insurance companies and reservations departments. Further, in addition to the short term commitments and limited loyalties just noted, one of the most rapidly growing segment of the new work force of today are the various "consultants", temps and "home" workers whose jobs tend to be of limited duration and for the most part are without benefits. What these changes in the work force indicate is that work in the contemporary labor force little provides a basis for social ties, connections and commitments.
While work is often quite alienating, one of the salient issues of the current age is the very availability and stability of work. But it is worth recalling that for Mills, "the immense productivity of mass-production technique and the increased application of technologic rationality are the first open secrets of modern occupational change: fewer men turn out more things in less time. . . . This industrial revolution seems to be permanent, seems to go on through war and boom and slump; thus a decline in production results in a more than proportional decline in employment; and an increase in production results in a less than proportional increase in employment" (1951, p. 66-67).
By the 90's, it became evident to most people that the transformations of capitalism led to a restructuring of manufacturing. The computerization of work not only impacted workers, but many skilled professions saw permanent changes in the nature of their work. More and more jobs were automated, comptuterized and/or exported. Many lower echelon management jobs have been made redundant and eliminated. Some social critics such as Rifkin, and of course Aronowitz and DaFazio raised serious questions about the future of a society in which large segments of the work force faced declining wages if not permanent marginalization. While these concerns were pushed out of sight by Clinton’s embrace of neo-liberalism that created a large number of jobs, most of these were for the lower echelons of service work, without benefits, job security or prospects of a better future. It has been said in jest that there are so many jobs that many folks have 2 or 3. But for every systems analyst, webmaster, genetic engineer, financial planner or e-commerce millionaire, there are perhaps 5 or 6 lower echelon McJobs. Now it may well be that the production of jobs cannot be micro managed-as the Soviet experience demonstrated-but at the same time, the distributions of rewards and wage levels are political questions-to which neo-liberalism has given an answer-the personal sacrifices of the majority are morally desirable since like the Protestant ethic, asceticism serves ultimately provides greater wealth-but today, not to those who do the sacrificing (see Teeple, 1996).
The changing nature of work has much impacted the life of the lower statum. Much in line with the concerns raised by Mills a number of sociologists began to explore the conditions of life for the lower stratum that came to be termed the underclass. While a long tradition going back to DuBois, Frazier, and St Clair Drake and Clark had been concerned with the conditions of the Afro American ghetto, William Wilson (1996) systematically traced the impact of globalization on the lives of the poor. He argued that the closing of urban factories for the sake of corporate capitalism has had a deleterious impact on poor communities-sucking their very life blood. Not only did the loss of jobs contribute to crime, violence and family instability, but at the same, elites members of Afro-American communities were likely to move, intensifying the "social isolation" of the poor, depriving such communities of "successful* role models with organizational skills. Now while his thesis has been much debated and criticized, it nevertheless exemplified the sociological imagination. In much the same vein, as Sassen (1998) has noted, global capital/information flows have changed the nature of global cities fostering gentrification. Anderson (1990) showed how the influx of affluent people into formerly poor areas has led to anger and resentment between the largely white newcomers and the largely Black residents.
Power elites
Studied in classical social theory, Mills well knew the role of elites in directing a society-claims of democracy and popular participation notwithstanding. For Marx, the domination by ruling classes was the basis of history. These classes not only controlled wealth, but political power as well as the means of cultural production (e.g.) they controlled ideologies and beliefs. Similarly, for Weber, domination, legitimacy and authority were central themes and indeed he seems to have suggested that politics was the only way to find meaning in the modern world. Further, while Marx saw political leaders simply as the agents of capital, Weber noted that political life was a "vocation" in which ones career was based on a particular "calling" not simply reducible to economics. Weber’s student Michals noted that elite domination was not just a characteristic of society writ large, but took place within organizations as well. Thus for Mills some citizens, especially those born into affluence and likely to go to a few select elite schools, had disproportionate power and control over economic, political and even military institutions. These groups, historical blocs rather than a unified ruling class, long described by Domhoff, have had a disproportionate-and undemocratic influence over the work most of us do, the products we buy, the way we live-and now the ways we get sick and find health care. But further, these power elites make economic and political choices that not only have great impact on the society, but for a number of reasons, their influences are rendered either invisible-or transformed into the "will of the people" to command "spontaneous assent" (Gramsci). But what must now be noted is that the new face of power is no longer national but global.
When Mills wrote SI, he argued that the appropriate context of modern social life was not the local community but the Nation State. Indeed much of the 20th C must be understood in terms of nationalist conflicts, the vagaries of national economies and impact of national cultures. But the dominant historical context of contemporary life is no longer the Nation State but globalization, the condition of our age in which the constraints of geography upon economic, culture and political life recede (Waters, 1995). Thus globalization can be seen as a fundamentally new form of economy, governance and culture (Cf. Waters, 1995). Globalization now stands as the fundamental historical context that most impacts people*s lives. From the alpha geek millionaires of Silicon Valley to Mongolian nomads with modems, the universalization of electronic communication and the resulting time and space compression has radically transformed contemporary lives. The fundamental historical reality that now impacts individual biographies is now globalization-this is the central moment of the sociological imagination of our age.
We must not lose track of the fact that the underlying dynamics of globalization rest on technologically advanced capitalism, "techno-capital (Kellner) and its valorization of instrumental reason, e.g. "techno-culture" (Aronowitz).The various strands of contemporary social life can be understood by noting a major restructuring of political economies in which commerce, governance and culture moved from an international system of Nation-States engaged in trade, and often war, to a "network society" (Castells, 1996) in which a variety of economic organizations concerned with finance and production might be spatially located in a large number of countries yet remain connected through a number of electronic information flows. Ownership is widely dispersed beyond the country of origin and may be found in a number of particular locales. At the same time, a number of regulatory agencies have eroded certain State functions, eg. there is an alphabet soup of regional and global regulatory agencies and agreements from the WTO to the IMF as well as the EU, NAFTA and MERCOSUL. Finally, the nature of communication and transportation has enabled the rapid diffusion of culture, entertainment and entertainers giving rise to a global culture, moments of which are closely tied to globalized culture industries and branded products. We must note that he major actors of this new system are Trans national corporations and with the ascendance of these organizations, we have also seen the emergence of a new power elite, a transnational capitalist class (Sklair, l998, 2000). While this trans national capitalist class is a new phenomenon, it must be seen as a metamorphosis of national power elites whose capitalist forms and/or organizations have been transformed. Thus while Mills noted the dominance of the corporations in his day, today, most of those corporations, following buyouts, mergers, consolidations across nation boundaries etc, are now players in the global economy and the powers behind most of the diplomatic and political decisions of our day.
Industrialization in its classical form depended on the extraction of raw materials from "peripheral" countries to the "core" economies. The earliest signs of globalization might could seen in the 60's when a number of manufacturing companies first began to either shift operations to countries with lower labor costs or began to purchase finished/semi-finished goods from abroad. This initiated the de-industrialization that was previously noted, but the critical moment of globalization came with the computerization of production and communication-soon followed by the globalization of finance and investment. Perhaps the most corrosive moment of globalization is speculative capital that creates wealth for the few, but unlike manufacturing, productive capital, does not produce jobs or any use value. Finally, and critical for the present argument, most globalized commerce is devoted to consumerism in general, and in particular, cultural consumption(print, recordings, television, films, the internet etc), leisure time activities and tourism which is now the fastest growing industry in the world.
The Coming of Cyberfeudal Society
Influenced by Weber’s notions of "ideal types" and Fromm’s ideas of social character, a central concern for Mills was human variety, who were the typical types of people in strategic locations in each historical epoch, how did classes and status groups foster certain types of character. If we now rethink Mills* understandings of the sociological imagination I would like to suggest that we now face three major trends reflecting historically recent human "varieties". Each type is likely to face radically life chances, biographies and trajectories in the new global age. These types constitute in microcosm the outlines of what I call "cyberfeudalism", the new hegemony on the now globalized world stage in which a very small class of elites has or controls most of the wealth while a large class of "cyberserfs" do most of the grunt work that makes the system work. But further, despite growing inequalities, a new form of carnival culture valorizing the vulgar, the obscene and repulsive, as a liminal culture in the interstices of the contemporary world, much like the carnival of the middle ages, has become a form of cultural resistance in which hedonistic gratifications for the many serve to stabilize the system that benefits the few (Cf. Langman, 1998, Twitchell ; 1992 Bakhtin, 1968).
A new kind of capitalist elite is emerging whose wealth and power are not based on either land or machines, but instead based on the possession and control of symbolic knowledge e.g. advanced technologies such as bio-tech or computer technologies, finance and administration or professional services, especially accountancy and law. These new elites are the core of the trans national capitalist classes who own and manage the new economic realities. They are the ones who most profited from the radical changes of the last few decades. With the new social and historical reality of cyberfeudalism, these "cyber lords", claim more and more of the wealth. Some 400 billionaires have as much wealth and the bottom 40% of the world. Many of the CEO’s and top capitalists make hundred of million dollar/year and while their incomes skyrocket, much of it is at the cost of the workers who have seen their wages and standards of living remain stagnant at best or recede at worst.
While the markets for "upscale" luxury goods and services grow, close to half the world cannot afford a Coca Cola. Some of this class spend small fortunes in cosmetic surgery, almost the world is without adequate health care. This new transnational class of cyberlords more and more resemble the dynastic aristocracies of the middle ages-sans codes of honor and loyalty. Much like aristocratic classes of the past, these elites support small armies devoted to providing them with certain specialized services and artifacts.
At the same time, given the trends noted, the majority of workers today, many who might have found jobs in management now face declining standards of living. we can now see that the vast numbers of workers in the world have seen their standards of living slowly recede, otherwise said a growing army of "cyber-serfs"does much of the McJob services required in the globalized economy ranging from overseas sweatshops producing garments, toys, and electronic gadgets...to sales, fast food chains, janitorial, security, etc. Consider for example as noted the rapid growth of tourism/entertainment. Most of the wealth goes to aircraft makers, airlines and hotel/ restaurant owners. While a number of upper echelon executives, pilots and professionals do very well, most of the workers, lower echelon technicians, clerks, cashiers, servers, maids, janitorial workers, etc, have seen their wages stagnate or decline. While in previous times economic retractions have been associated with political mobilizations, the culture industries foster escapist consumerism and fantasies that placate the masses. Finally, in face of the growing domination of the transnational capitalist class, increased inequality and despoliation of the environment (not much of a concern for Mills), there has emerged new forms of activism and mobilization (Castells, 1998;Dyer-Witheford, 1999).
One of the major consequences of the Enlightenment as the clarion call to modernity was the understanding that social arrangements and hierarchies, inequalities and privilege were not ordained by God(s), but were fashioned by men, or at least mostly by men. Poverty was no longer seen as inevitable and while Smith and Ricardo on the one hand, and Marx on the other offered very different reasons for wealth and poverty, they all envisioned its overcoming. Indeed much of the history of 19th and 20th Cs. can be seen as attempts to overcome domination, hardship and poverty. But now I would ask why do not the conditions of today, great concentration of wealth and growing hardship foster political mobilization left or right. I would answer that much like the "carnival culture" of the middle ages, the popular culture of the present age serves to stabilize class relations by fostering a migration of subjectivity from the social to the personal and a general disinterest in politics-save when political personae become characters in entertaining films, television or books of sexual expose ala the Clintons or Reagans. This carnival culture on the one hand creates a variety of sites for artistic creativity, personal freedom and more gratifying identities than does the dominant culture. But at the same time, like the circuses of Rome, they serve to stabilize class relations and preserve inequality. It should also be noted that the carnival culture of today is not a folk celebration owned by the "people", but rather, the many forms of this carnival culture from tabloid journalism to internet pornography, including television tell alls and WWF smashathons, are produced by global corporations-to both advertise the products of other global corporations and distribute a hegemonic ideology with identities of pseudo resistance that mask and sustain growing inequality.
Cyber-activists to the rescue
Mills, as both a progressive scholar and public intellectual decried the political apathy of his time. Yet his legacy would impact and inspire a generation of activists engaged in the many struggles of the 60's and 70's. Globalization has not only sustained the old inequalities of capital and even generated the new inequalities of cyberfeudalism, but its valorization of Instrumental Reason maintains the domination of humanity and usurpation of Nature. Globalization has accelerated despoliation of the environment, destruction of the ozone layer, the shrinking of rain forests and the mass production of waste products, some of which are not only toxic, but will remain dangerous for 20,000 more years. Adorno, Horkhiemer and Marcuse etc., noted how the technological logic of capital reduced the person into a dehumanized object whose objectification was mystified by mass culture and consumerism and whose capacities for resistance were eroded. In the years since these critiques were penned, we have seen how new technologies of surveillance discipline, dehumanize and depoliticize.
Despite the power of TNCs, the numbing allure of its mass mediated carnival culture, an electoral politics dominated by telegenic neoliberal clones, crises and dysfunctions of globalized capital generate resistance and in turn oppositional groups and coalitions with visions of genuine democracy, empowerment and self realization. The same communication systems that enable capital and information flows across the globe can link people together and distribute information. It is now more difficult for governments or corporations to conceal information whether on environmental conditions, human rights or product safety when electronic access to information cannot be controlled short of making phones illegal. Cyberspace has now created new interstices for progressive cyber-activists to create networks of opposition, new constellations of power and mobilizations. Well organized progressive NGO’s and emerging coalitions can effectively publicize information, impact publics, and mobilize and in turn social policies for targeted progressive change (Castells, 1997).
But if we are to be dialectical and true to the memory of Mills, we would also note that the growing inequalities of wealth and income, the objectification of humanity , increasing pollution and environmental destruction generate and require resistance. But programs contesting dysfunctions of globalization are clearly opposed to its neoliberal policies and require organized opposition. Insofar as globalization transcends national territories, so too must resistance movements extend beyond the nation state and employ new strategies of activism. Yet there are now new means for organization, mobilization and resistance. The proliferation of the internet creates the possibilities for creation of universal communication network and the use of these networks in decentralized, counterplanning" (Dyer-Witheford, 1999). Not only have costs of computers plummeted, but there is a growing surplus of "obsolete" computers, read over a year old, that while not the leading edge of technologies, are perfectly suitable for email and internet use by the less privileged. The potential growth of networks of resistance by oppositional groups with democratic/humanist agendas can empower publics to gain democratic input and control over the technologies and investment decisions that impact peoples lives. But such groups need to develop specific plans and programs rather that slogans and shibboleths.
With the decoupling of the global economy from national polities, and decentralization and dispersion of power and decision making, it is difficult to target opposition. As Castells put it, there is no winter palace to storm. Nor are alternatives to globalization feasible, though post capitalist forms might be possible. Indeed the he production of global abundance can erode national privilege and attenuate the role of markets in the allocation of benefits. Turning back the clock to a "Golden age" and/or smashing the machines (computers and networks), themes that draw together reactionaries, anarchists and neo-Luddites are neither feasible nor desirable, life would be short, nasty and brutish. Proletarian revolution is unlikely after the legacy of totalitarian state socialism. (3) Yet there is an alternative, or set of alternatives; globalization also creates spaces for progressive, movements that seek specific goals rather than "overthrowing the system". Castells (1997) cited the Zapatistas, feminism and environmentalism. I would further note the mobilizations against FGM (female genital mutilation), the Land mine treaty, the growth of anti-sweatshop movements on American campuses and the massive rally against the WTO meetings in Seattle as harbingers of new forms of cyber-activism that portends the contestations of the 21st C.
Back to the sociological imagination
In the heyday of corporate ascendancy and political apathy sustained by relative affluence and in turn consumerism, there was something awry. People were unhappy and insecure. Yet sociology, between the Charybdis of "Grand theory" and the Scylla of "abstracted empiricism" was part of the problem-its quietude in the face of racial oppression was deafening, its indifference to gender unconscionable and its political indifference appalling. These were the conditions in which Mills chastised sociology for its indifference to the sociological imagination and the plight of real people whose lives were subjected to the forces they least understood. And yet its implicit pessimism notwithstanding, within a few years of its publication, and its sub rosa circulations among the more progressive graduate students and young sociologists, a wave of progressive activism spread across the nation-much of it led by these same students and activists.
We are now again at a crucial time in our history. The forces of global capital that grow more powerful each day colonize ever greater spaces in our pluralized lifeworlds and ever more dominate our routines. Our discipline, sad to say, rewards indifference to the sociological imagination and the questions it raises about power, wealth inequality and alienation. But power is not eternal. Lest we forget, but from the time Charlemagne was installed in 800 AD and the final demise of feudalism after WWI, there was more or less stable, if perhaps violent, social order for about 1,000 years. So too today do we face unprecedented social changes do to the rapid developments of technology. How can and will societies change as the technologies of our age reduce the amount of work necessary to produce and transport goods. On the one hand this promises to alleviate of much of the alienating toil of work that prompted Marx to write the 1844 Manuscripts. But at the same time growing inequality that further separates rich and poor. Does this portend new opportunities for human fulfillment and from each according to his/her ability, or does this"jobless future" promise a new serfdom in which a mass mediated carnival culture serve as a compensatory palliative.
But let us not despair-the same technology that enables globalization now also creates the possibilities for new forms of activism that portend the possibilities of turning private troubles into the personal joys of a rational society. One of the main tasks for the sociological imagination of the next century will be to foster the new types of social activism and actions suitable for a globalized network society. Cyberspace offers new forms of commmodification as well as new possibilities of resistance and transformation. If sociology persists in ignoring its own foundations, it remains blind to the sociological imagination, then it promises growing irrelevance and demise.
In conclusion, I would like to thank Joe Feagin from the bottom of my heart for calling for this session, to thank my friends, Stanley, David and both Bills for joining me in this call to rekindle the sociological imagination. But most of all, thank you Charles Wright Mills for inspiring so many of us that we hope to pass this legacy to our successors.
1 But Mills noted that much of the fear of communism was fostered by those industries, generals and politicians for whom this fear brought profits, power and career advance, or more often-all.
2 Curiously enough, similar critiques of capitalist consumerism were soon voiced by Lefebvre (1956) and by Marcuse (1954).
3 Various technophilic theorists of globalization, qua post industrial, third wave, information revolution or end of history positions that dismiss Marxism may be a bit premature (see Dyer-Witheford, 1999).
Notes on Max Weber, by Paul Gingrich
Sociology 250
October 9, 2002
Theories of complexity and form
Adams and Sydie introduce the German sociologists – Max and Marrianne Weber, and Georg Simmel – at the beginning of section IV (pp. 167-8). The theories of Durkheim and Marx are largely structural, in that they are primarily concerned with the structures of society, how these emerge and develop, and how they change. For Durkheim, these were the division of labour, systems of law, and forms of social solidarity. For Marx, these were production and labour processes, markets and the economy, and social classes and class struggle. While Durkheim and Marx each recognized the individual, worker, or owner, they focussed their analysis on the structural features of society as a whole and how the social relationships that emerged from these created order, disorder, conflict, struggle, change, and development. Compared to some writers, the theories of Durkheim and Marx provide a relatively clear cut and straighforward explanation of social relationships and social change.
While the Webers and Simmel also wrote about structural issues, they added some different element to sociological analysis. They focussed on the social actor, his or her uniqueness as an individual, and interaction among social actors at the individual and small group level. They developed an approach that attempted to understand and interpret social actions of the individual actor, an approach that Max Weber argued is possible because sociologists are human beings, with a capability of developing a sympathy with, or understanding of, other individuals. In summary, they argued "that sociology must never lose sight of human agency" (Adams and Sydie, p. 168). See quotes 1 and 2 on social action.
Another aspect of how these German sociologists approached the study of the social world was to recognize the complexity of human social relationships and human society. Unlike Marx, who focussed on the economic factor of ownership or non-ownership of the means of production, or Durkheim’s focus on division of labour and solidarity, Max Weber considered status, religion, ideas, organizational structures, as well as class, to be important factors that are involved in social relationships. For Weber, each of these had a separate and independent effect. This approach makes it more difficult to draw broad generalizations about society and change, but may be more useful in understanding specific aspects of society.
The third major difference from Durkheim and Marx is methodology. Durkheim’s positivist and evolutionary approach and Marx’s historical materialism were modelled at least partly on the natural sciences, and especially physics. They develop social laws and structures that can be compared with natural laws and structures. For these German sociologists, uniqueness of the individual, interpretation of his or her understanding of the meaning of social action, and consideration of relationships between individuals is key to understanding society. Adams and Sydie note that "social data require interpreation within their social context" in this approach. While sociologists may tackle topics that interest them or in which they are involved, the sociologist must also be careful to conduct an objective analysis, one that does not involve the sociologists own values.
Along with these differences, there were many similarities between the approaches of Marx and Durkheim and these German sociologists – the importance of historical developments, the economy, work and its organization, and the structures that emerge from these.
Max Weber
1. Importance and Influence
Weber is often regarded as the most important classical sociological theorist since he investigated many areas and since his approach and methods guide much later sociological analysis. Like Marx, Weber had a wide ranging set of interests: politics, history, language, religion, law, economics, and administration, in addition to sociology. His historical and economic analysis does not provide as elaborate or as systematic a model of capitalism and capitalist development as does that of Marx. But the scope of his analysis ranges more widely than that of Marx; is examines broad historical changes, the origins of capitalism, the development of capitalism, political issues, the nature of a future society, and concepts and approaches that Marx downplayed – religion, ideas, values, meaning, and social action.
In the view of some, Weber may have "spent his life having a posthumous dialogue with the ghost of Karl Marx." (Cuff, p. 97). This dialogue concerned (i) economic determinism or the extent to which developments are rooted in the material base, and (ii) the extent to which economic factors alone can be considered at the root of social structure. At the same time, the differences between Weber and Marx should not be overstated. Weber's analysis had similar scope to that of Marx, and he came from a similar historical, German tradition of thought, examining many of the same topics as Marx. Many contemporary sociologists think of Weber as complementing Marx, examining issues that Marx thought less important, providing a way of thinking about the individual within a structural approach, and laying out a sociological methodology. Weber's writing had an influence on structural functionalism, critical theory, some of the social interaction approaches, and much contemporary sociological theory, including some Marxist approaches that use ideas from Weber.
2. Max Weber's Life
Max Weber (1864-1920) was a German writer, academic (historian and sociologist), who was sometimes involved in the field of politics. He was born near Erfurt, Saxony (in central Germany) part of Prussia at that time. His family background was not all that dissimilar from that of Marx – both were born into middle class professional families, although Marx was Jewish and Weber's family was better off than Marx's.
Politics played an important role in Weber's life and intellectual activity. Prussia was dominated by the Junkers, aristocratic landowners who were opposed to free trade in grain and to liberal, capitalistic reforms. Germany was still divided into separate principalities at the time of Weber's birth, at was at war with Austria and France. By 1871, Count Bismarck had unified Germany and Prussia "attained complete control over most of German-speaking Europe" (Ashley and Orenstein, p. 264). Bismarck was able to balance the interests of the Junkers and the western German industrialists, and was able to push through some progressive reforms, such as social security or pension plans. The unification of Germany helped encourage the expansion of industry, German capitalism and the German working class. The latter supported various socialist parties, and Marxist influences were strong in the working class. The German political system was not liberal and democratic, but "administered by monarchists, militarists, and industrialists." (Ashley and Orenstein, p. 266). Weber also lived during the first world war, and the Versailles settlement that was imposed on Germany. After this, politics was dominated by the fights between the governing Social Democratic Party and the power of the nationalist and right-wing elements. This ultimately led to the Nazi triumph in 1933. Hadden notes that Germany was generally in a chaotic political situation during much of Weber's lifetime, and as a result Weber was pessimistic about achieving national unity and cohesion, political aims that he valued highly (p. 126).
Weber's father (Max Weber, Sr.) was a bureaucrat, part of the German establishment, and a member of the National Liberal Party who sat in the Prussian House and the Reichstag.
Within the political debates of this period, Weber's father was a supporter of the "conservative, reactionary policies of the German Kaiser and Chancellor ... Bismarck." (Grabb, p. 44). Bismarck opposed constitutional rule and was a representative of the Junkers, the aristocratic, eastern German landowners, and practised power politics. Weber later had disputes with his father, partly because Weber was a liberal, who supported "democracy and human freedom." (Grabb, p. 44).
Weber's mother, Helene Weber, was a Protestant and a Calvinist, with strong moral absolutist ideas. Weber was strongly influenced by her views and approach to life. Although Weber did not claim to be religious himself, religion did was an important them through much of his thought and writings. Weber studied religion extensively, and The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, his most famous work, is a model of Weber's historical and sociological method. In this work, his main contribution was to show the connection of Calvinism with the emergence of capitalism.
Weber studied at Heidelberg and Berlin (earning a Ph. D.) and, unlike Marx, was not prevented from taking up an academic career because of his politics, but became an important German professor. As Marx had done, he studied law and became a lawyer. He began studying the conditions of agricultural workers in east Prussia in 1892 and by 1894 became a professor of economics. His studies branched out into the study of history, economics, sociology, religion and languages. Like Marx, he tackled practically any subject which interested him, and both were products of a broad intellectual tradition. "Max Weber belonged to a generation of universal scholars ... ." (Gerth and Mills, p. 23).
Weber married Marianne Schnitger (1870-1954) in 1893. Marianne Weber provided important support to her husband and later wrote a biography of him. Marianne Weber later became a prominent leader of German feminism, and lived until 1954. Much of Weber's life was preoccupied with his personal relationships with his parents. According to Ritzer, "There was a tension in Weber's life and, more important, in his work, between the bureaucratic mind, as represented by his father, and his mother's religiosity. This unresolved tension permeates Weber's work as it permeated his personal life." (Ritzer, p. 101). In 1896, Weber criticized his father severely concerning his father's treatment of his mother. His father died soon after, and Weber had a nervous breakdown. Weber was not able to teach regularly again, although most of his writings were undertaken after this.
After his psychological depression, the Webers traveled to the United States in 1904. This visit influenced Weber greatly, Weber being impressed with mass political parties, voluntary citizens’ organizations and other institutions which he felt helped promote freedom and democracy (Grabb, p. 46). He also became aware of machine politics and the necessary role of bureaucracy in ‘mass democracy.’ His attempt to promote liberalism in Germany was guided partly by his observations concerning American democracy, in particular, his view that the German president's power should be strengthened to counteract the power of the Reichstag. (Gerth and Mills, p. 18).
After his return to Germany, Weber completed The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1905). In the next years, he published some methodological essays The Methodology of the Social Sciences, and continued his studies of major world religions in "world-historical perspective" (Ritzer, p. 101). He also did extensive writing on economics and history and began his major work Economy and Society in 1909, although this work was never finished.
Weber lived in Heidelberg and his home became a meeting place for intellectuals. The first world war broke out in 1914, and this interrupted Weber's work. He worked as a reserve officer in military hospitals. Later, he became disillusioned with the war, questioning the competence of the military and political regime. Weber tried to convince the generals to stop fighting, but this had no effect. After the war, Weber served as an advisor to the German delegation at Versailles, helped draft a German constitution and became an important political figure. He opposed the Kaiser's conservative government, but was also opposed to the socialist parties. Given that there was not a middle grouping in Germany at the time, this left him little opportunity to make much positive contribution.
Weber took up teaching again late in his life, this time at Munich. He debated Marxists concerning the nature of capitalism, and seemed ready to resume an active role again. In 1920 he caught pneumonia, and he died at age 56.
5. Intellectual Influences
Weber was familiar with, and part of, the major German intellectual debates of his time, first in his parents' household, and then in his own and through his professional, academic contacts. As Ritzer notes (pp. 113-114), Weber was concerned with the debate concerning science and history, and attempted to establish a foundation for sociology. Weber felt that historical sociology should be "concerned with individuality and generality." (Ritzer, p. 114). The philosopher who dominated German philosophical thought during Weber's time was Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). Kant argued that "the methods of the natural sciences give us true knowledge about the external phenomenal world – the world we experience through our senses." (Ashley and Orenstein, p. 268). At the same time, Kant argued that moral philosophy or a system of morality, is also important and "involves reflection on moral axioms that appear to be innate and are understandable without reference to human experience." (Ashley and Orenstein, p. 268). That is, empirical analysis and moral judgment are two separate systems – sociology could not set out moral values, but could discuss the effects of these. While sociology must be concerned with empirical analysis of society and history, the method of sociology would have to be different from that of the natural sciences. Sociological analysis would have to examine social action within a context of social interaction, and would have to be interpretive, not viewing people as object just driven by impersonal forces. Marianne Weber's biography argued that Max Weber believed that the purpose of political and social institutions is the development of autonomous, free personality. These influences can be seen in Weber's approach to methodology, understanding and social action. (Paragraph based on Ashley and Orenstein, pp. 267-271).
One of Marx's major influences and struggles was with Hegelian idealism. While Weber never seemed to have a similar set of problems with philosophical views, the political situation of Germany occupies a similar position in Weber's thought. That is, a large part of Weber's writing and analysis was an attempt to make sense of political features in Germany, and an attempt to promote a liberal economic system in a country torn between reaction and socialism.
Germany was backward economically, compared with France and Britain. Landowners still held political power, but wanted free trade so they could export food to Britain, the liberal Friedrich List advocated protective tariffs, and it was Bismarck and the aristocrats who unified Germany, not the emerging bourgeoisie. The liberal intellectuals were detached from the entrepreneurial middle class. Thus Weber could not find an easy model from France, Britain or the United States, from which he could draw practical political lessons. (from Gerth and Mills, p. 45). This may have been part of what led Weber to look on the political sphere as disconnected from the strictly economic, at least in the Marxian manner.
For example, Weber considered European political history as a struggle by different rulers "to appropriate the financial and military means that in feudal society were relatively dispersed." (Gerth and Mills, p. 48). That is, economic factors affected politics, but not through the direct route from the bourgeoisie to the ruling class of Marx. Military factors, the control of territory, and political power in itself all played important roles in affecting politics and history.
Weber also looked toward the national units as the "historical ultimates that can never be integrated into more comprehensive and harmonious whole." (Gerth and Mills, p. 48). This is part of what made Weber antagonistic to socialism, especially the international socialism of this period. In addition, Weber viewed the rationality of capitalism within a national unit as the most that could be hoped for in terms of achieving human freedom. To integrate the state with control of the economy, as socialist doctrine urged, would mean an even further centralization, with a consequent loss of freedom. According to Weber, "the state had 'nationalized' the possession of arms and of administrative means [from the feudal estates]. Socialization of the means of production would merely subject an as yet relatively autonomous economic life to the bureaucratic management of the state. The state would indeed become total, and Weber, hating bureaucracy as a shackle upon the liberal individual, felt that socialism would thus lead to a further serfdom." (Gerth and Mills, p. 50). While Weber sympathized with the struggle of the proletariat, he was too individualistic to join this struggle.
References
Adams, Bert N. and R. A. Sydie, Sociological Theory, Thousand Oaks, Pine Forge, 2001
Ashley, David and David Michael Orenstein, Sociological Theory: Classical Statements, third edition, Boston, Allyn and Bacon, 1995. HM24 A77
Cuff, E. C., W. W. Sharrock and D. W. Francis, Perspectives in Sociology, third edition, London, Routledge, 1992. HM66 P36 1984
Gerth, Hans and C. Wright Mills, From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, New York, Oxford University Press, 1958.
Grabb, Edward G., Theories of Social Inequality: Classical and Contemporary Perspectives, second edition, Toronto, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1990. HT609 G72
Ritzer, George, Sociological Theory, third edition, New York, McGraw-Hill, 1992. HM24 R4938.
Last edited October 14, 2002
Paul Gingrich, Professor
Department of Sociology and Social Studies
University of Regina, CL217
(306) 585-4196
paul.gingrich@uregina.ca
October 9, 2002
Theories of complexity and form
Adams and Sydie introduce the German sociologists – Max and Marrianne Weber, and Georg Simmel – at the beginning of section IV (pp. 167-8). The theories of Durkheim and Marx are largely structural, in that they are primarily concerned with the structures of society, how these emerge and develop, and how they change. For Durkheim, these were the division of labour, systems of law, and forms of social solidarity. For Marx, these were production and labour processes, markets and the economy, and social classes and class struggle. While Durkheim and Marx each recognized the individual, worker, or owner, they focussed their analysis on the structural features of society as a whole and how the social relationships that emerged from these created order, disorder, conflict, struggle, change, and development. Compared to some writers, the theories of Durkheim and Marx provide a relatively clear cut and straighforward explanation of social relationships and social change.
While the Webers and Simmel also wrote about structural issues, they added some different element to sociological analysis. They focussed on the social actor, his or her uniqueness as an individual, and interaction among social actors at the individual and small group level. They developed an approach that attempted to understand and interpret social actions of the individual actor, an approach that Max Weber argued is possible because sociologists are human beings, with a capability of developing a sympathy with, or understanding of, other individuals. In summary, they argued "that sociology must never lose sight of human agency" (Adams and Sydie, p. 168). See quotes 1 and 2 on social action.
Another aspect of how these German sociologists approached the study of the social world was to recognize the complexity of human social relationships and human society. Unlike Marx, who focussed on the economic factor of ownership or non-ownership of the means of production, or Durkheim’s focus on division of labour and solidarity, Max Weber considered status, religion, ideas, organizational structures, as well as class, to be important factors that are involved in social relationships. For Weber, each of these had a separate and independent effect. This approach makes it more difficult to draw broad generalizations about society and change, but may be more useful in understanding specific aspects of society.
The third major difference from Durkheim and Marx is methodology. Durkheim’s positivist and evolutionary approach and Marx’s historical materialism were modelled at least partly on the natural sciences, and especially physics. They develop social laws and structures that can be compared with natural laws and structures. For these German sociologists, uniqueness of the individual, interpretation of his or her understanding of the meaning of social action, and consideration of relationships between individuals is key to understanding society. Adams and Sydie note that "social data require interpreation within their social context" in this approach. While sociologists may tackle topics that interest them or in which they are involved, the sociologist must also be careful to conduct an objective analysis, one that does not involve the sociologists own values.
Along with these differences, there were many similarities between the approaches of Marx and Durkheim and these German sociologists – the importance of historical developments, the economy, work and its organization, and the structures that emerge from these.
Max Weber
1. Importance and Influence
Weber is often regarded as the most important classical sociological theorist since he investigated many areas and since his approach and methods guide much later sociological analysis. Like Marx, Weber had a wide ranging set of interests: politics, history, language, religion, law, economics, and administration, in addition to sociology. His historical and economic analysis does not provide as elaborate or as systematic a model of capitalism and capitalist development as does that of Marx. But the scope of his analysis ranges more widely than that of Marx; is examines broad historical changes, the origins of capitalism, the development of capitalism, political issues, the nature of a future society, and concepts and approaches that Marx downplayed – religion, ideas, values, meaning, and social action.
In the view of some, Weber may have "spent his life having a posthumous dialogue with the ghost of Karl Marx." (Cuff, p. 97). This dialogue concerned (i) economic determinism or the extent to which developments are rooted in the material base, and (ii) the extent to which economic factors alone can be considered at the root of social structure. At the same time, the differences between Weber and Marx should not be overstated. Weber's analysis had similar scope to that of Marx, and he came from a similar historical, German tradition of thought, examining many of the same topics as Marx. Many contemporary sociologists think of Weber as complementing Marx, examining issues that Marx thought less important, providing a way of thinking about the individual within a structural approach, and laying out a sociological methodology. Weber's writing had an influence on structural functionalism, critical theory, some of the social interaction approaches, and much contemporary sociological theory, including some Marxist approaches that use ideas from Weber.
2. Max Weber's Life
Max Weber (1864-1920) was a German writer, academic (historian and sociologist), who was sometimes involved in the field of politics. He was born near Erfurt, Saxony (in central Germany) part of Prussia at that time. His family background was not all that dissimilar from that of Marx – both were born into middle class professional families, although Marx was Jewish and Weber's family was better off than Marx's.
Politics played an important role in Weber's life and intellectual activity. Prussia was dominated by the Junkers, aristocratic landowners who were opposed to free trade in grain and to liberal, capitalistic reforms. Germany was still divided into separate principalities at the time of Weber's birth, at was at war with Austria and France. By 1871, Count Bismarck had unified Germany and Prussia "attained complete control over most of German-speaking Europe" (Ashley and Orenstein, p. 264). Bismarck was able to balance the interests of the Junkers and the western German industrialists, and was able to push through some progressive reforms, such as social security or pension plans. The unification of Germany helped encourage the expansion of industry, German capitalism and the German working class. The latter supported various socialist parties, and Marxist influences were strong in the working class. The German political system was not liberal and democratic, but "administered by monarchists, militarists, and industrialists." (Ashley and Orenstein, p. 266). Weber also lived during the first world war, and the Versailles settlement that was imposed on Germany. After this, politics was dominated by the fights between the governing Social Democratic Party and the power of the nationalist and right-wing elements. This ultimately led to the Nazi triumph in 1933. Hadden notes that Germany was generally in a chaotic political situation during much of Weber's lifetime, and as a result Weber was pessimistic about achieving national unity and cohesion, political aims that he valued highly (p. 126).
Weber's father (Max Weber, Sr.) was a bureaucrat, part of the German establishment, and a member of the National Liberal Party who sat in the Prussian House and the Reichstag.
Within the political debates of this period, Weber's father was a supporter of the "conservative, reactionary policies of the German Kaiser and Chancellor ... Bismarck." (Grabb, p. 44). Bismarck opposed constitutional rule and was a representative of the Junkers, the aristocratic, eastern German landowners, and practised power politics. Weber later had disputes with his father, partly because Weber was a liberal, who supported "democracy and human freedom." (Grabb, p. 44).
Weber's mother, Helene Weber, was a Protestant and a Calvinist, with strong moral absolutist ideas. Weber was strongly influenced by her views and approach to life. Although Weber did not claim to be religious himself, religion did was an important them through much of his thought and writings. Weber studied religion extensively, and The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, his most famous work, is a model of Weber's historical and sociological method. In this work, his main contribution was to show the connection of Calvinism with the emergence of capitalism.
Weber studied at Heidelberg and Berlin (earning a Ph. D.) and, unlike Marx, was not prevented from taking up an academic career because of his politics, but became an important German professor. As Marx had done, he studied law and became a lawyer. He began studying the conditions of agricultural workers in east Prussia in 1892 and by 1894 became a professor of economics. His studies branched out into the study of history, economics, sociology, religion and languages. Like Marx, he tackled practically any subject which interested him, and both were products of a broad intellectual tradition. "Max Weber belonged to a generation of universal scholars ... ." (Gerth and Mills, p. 23).
Weber married Marianne Schnitger (1870-1954) in 1893. Marianne Weber provided important support to her husband and later wrote a biography of him. Marianne Weber later became a prominent leader of German feminism, and lived until 1954. Much of Weber's life was preoccupied with his personal relationships with his parents. According to Ritzer, "There was a tension in Weber's life and, more important, in his work, between the bureaucratic mind, as represented by his father, and his mother's religiosity. This unresolved tension permeates Weber's work as it permeated his personal life." (Ritzer, p. 101). In 1896, Weber criticized his father severely concerning his father's treatment of his mother. His father died soon after, and Weber had a nervous breakdown. Weber was not able to teach regularly again, although most of his writings were undertaken after this.
After his psychological depression, the Webers traveled to the United States in 1904. This visit influenced Weber greatly, Weber being impressed with mass political parties, voluntary citizens’ organizations and other institutions which he felt helped promote freedom and democracy (Grabb, p. 46). He also became aware of machine politics and the necessary role of bureaucracy in ‘mass democracy.’ His attempt to promote liberalism in Germany was guided partly by his observations concerning American democracy, in particular, his view that the German president's power should be strengthened to counteract the power of the Reichstag. (Gerth and Mills, p. 18).
After his return to Germany, Weber completed The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1905). In the next years, he published some methodological essays The Methodology of the Social Sciences, and continued his studies of major world religions in "world-historical perspective" (Ritzer, p. 101). He also did extensive writing on economics and history and began his major work Economy and Society in 1909, although this work was never finished.
Weber lived in Heidelberg and his home became a meeting place for intellectuals. The first world war broke out in 1914, and this interrupted Weber's work. He worked as a reserve officer in military hospitals. Later, he became disillusioned with the war, questioning the competence of the military and political regime. Weber tried to convince the generals to stop fighting, but this had no effect. After the war, Weber served as an advisor to the German delegation at Versailles, helped draft a German constitution and became an important political figure. He opposed the Kaiser's conservative government, but was also opposed to the socialist parties. Given that there was not a middle grouping in Germany at the time, this left him little opportunity to make much positive contribution.
Weber took up teaching again late in his life, this time at Munich. He debated Marxists concerning the nature of capitalism, and seemed ready to resume an active role again. In 1920 he caught pneumonia, and he died at age 56.
5. Intellectual Influences
Weber was familiar with, and part of, the major German intellectual debates of his time, first in his parents' household, and then in his own and through his professional, academic contacts. As Ritzer notes (pp. 113-114), Weber was concerned with the debate concerning science and history, and attempted to establish a foundation for sociology. Weber felt that historical sociology should be "concerned with individuality and generality." (Ritzer, p. 114). The philosopher who dominated German philosophical thought during Weber's time was Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). Kant argued that "the methods of the natural sciences give us true knowledge about the external phenomenal world – the world we experience through our senses." (Ashley and Orenstein, p. 268). At the same time, Kant argued that moral philosophy or a system of morality, is also important and "involves reflection on moral axioms that appear to be innate and are understandable without reference to human experience." (Ashley and Orenstein, p. 268). That is, empirical analysis and moral judgment are two separate systems – sociology could not set out moral values, but could discuss the effects of these. While sociology must be concerned with empirical analysis of society and history, the method of sociology would have to be different from that of the natural sciences. Sociological analysis would have to examine social action within a context of social interaction, and would have to be interpretive, not viewing people as object just driven by impersonal forces. Marianne Weber's biography argued that Max Weber believed that the purpose of political and social institutions is the development of autonomous, free personality. These influences can be seen in Weber's approach to methodology, understanding and social action. (Paragraph based on Ashley and Orenstein, pp. 267-271).
One of Marx's major influences and struggles was with Hegelian idealism. While Weber never seemed to have a similar set of problems with philosophical views, the political situation of Germany occupies a similar position in Weber's thought. That is, a large part of Weber's writing and analysis was an attempt to make sense of political features in Germany, and an attempt to promote a liberal economic system in a country torn between reaction and socialism.
Germany was backward economically, compared with France and Britain. Landowners still held political power, but wanted free trade so they could export food to Britain, the liberal Friedrich List advocated protective tariffs, and it was Bismarck and the aristocrats who unified Germany, not the emerging bourgeoisie. The liberal intellectuals were detached from the entrepreneurial middle class. Thus Weber could not find an easy model from France, Britain or the United States, from which he could draw practical political lessons. (from Gerth and Mills, p. 45). This may have been part of what led Weber to look on the political sphere as disconnected from the strictly economic, at least in the Marxian manner.
For example, Weber considered European political history as a struggle by different rulers "to appropriate the financial and military means that in feudal society were relatively dispersed." (Gerth and Mills, p. 48). That is, economic factors affected politics, but not through the direct route from the bourgeoisie to the ruling class of Marx. Military factors, the control of territory, and political power in itself all played important roles in affecting politics and history.
Weber also looked toward the national units as the "historical ultimates that can never be integrated into more comprehensive and harmonious whole." (Gerth and Mills, p. 48). This is part of what made Weber antagonistic to socialism, especially the international socialism of this period. In addition, Weber viewed the rationality of capitalism within a national unit as the most that could be hoped for in terms of achieving human freedom. To integrate the state with control of the economy, as socialist doctrine urged, would mean an even further centralization, with a consequent loss of freedom. According to Weber, "the state had 'nationalized' the possession of arms and of administrative means [from the feudal estates]. Socialization of the means of production would merely subject an as yet relatively autonomous economic life to the bureaucratic management of the state. The state would indeed become total, and Weber, hating bureaucracy as a shackle upon the liberal individual, felt that socialism would thus lead to a further serfdom." (Gerth and Mills, p. 50). While Weber sympathized with the struggle of the proletariat, he was too individualistic to join this struggle.
References
Adams, Bert N. and R. A. Sydie, Sociological Theory, Thousand Oaks, Pine Forge, 2001
Ashley, David and David Michael Orenstein, Sociological Theory: Classical Statements, third edition, Boston, Allyn and Bacon, 1995. HM24 A77
Cuff, E. C., W. W. Sharrock and D. W. Francis, Perspectives in Sociology, third edition, London, Routledge, 1992. HM66 P36 1984
Gerth, Hans and C. Wright Mills, From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, New York, Oxford University Press, 1958.
Grabb, Edward G., Theories of Social Inequality: Classical and Contemporary Perspectives, second edition, Toronto, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1990. HT609 G72
Ritzer, George, Sociological Theory, third edition, New York, McGraw-Hill, 1992. HM24 R4938.
Last edited October 14, 2002
Paul Gingrich, Professor
Department of Sociology and Social Studies
University of Regina, CL217
(306) 585-4196
paul.gingrich@uregina.ca
17.6.03
Mercato mondiale e nuovo ordine economico
di John Bellamy Foster
L'ERNESTO 3/2002 del 01/05/2002*
Le contraddizioni capitalistiche di fase
Poco più di un mese prima che scrivessimo queste pagine, prima dell’11 Settembre, la ribellione di massa contro la globalizzazione capitalistica cominciata a Seattle nel Novembre 1999, e che aveva recentemente guadagnato nuove forze a Genova nel Luglio 2001, stava denunciando le contraddizioni del sistema come da anni non si vedeva. Tuttavia, la particolare natura di questa ribellione era tale che il concetto di imperialismo veniva del tutto rimosso, anche all’interno della sinistra, a favore del concetto di globalizzazione, indicando implicitamente che alcune delle peggiori forme di sfruttamento e di rivalità stavano in qualche modo riducendosi.
Una moda crescente nella sinistra nel modo di trattare la globalizzazione —ma altrettanto allettante per i circoli dominanti, a giudicare dall’attenzione rivoltagli dai mass media— è esemplificata dal nuovo libro di Michael Hardt e Antonio Negri intitolato Impero. Pubblicato nel 2000 dalla Harvard University Press, questo libro ha ricevuto grandi elogi dal New York Times, dalla rivista Time e dal London Observer, e ha pure dato luogo alla partecipazione di Hardt alla trasmissione di Charlie Rose e a un pezzo Op-Ed1 sul New York Times. La sua tesi è che il mercato mondiale, sotto l’influenza della rivoluzione informatica, si sta globalizzando al di là delle capacità di controllo degli stati nazionali. La sovranità degli stati-nazione starebbe subendo un progressivo declino, e starebbe per essere sostituita dalla nuova sovranità globale emergente, l’“Impero”, che sta emergendo dalla progressiva integrazione di “una serie di organismi nazionali e sovranazionali... unita da un’unica logica di potere” (p.14)2, senza una chiara gerarchia internazionale.
I limiti questo articolo non consentono di trattare tutti gli aspetti di questa tesi. Ne commenterò solo un aspetto, quello della supposta scomparsa dell’imperialismo.
Nell’analisi di Hardt e Negri il termine “Impero” non si riferisce al dominio imperialista del centro sulla periferia, ma a un’entità omnicomprensiva che non riconosce limiti territoriali o confini fuori di sé. Nel suo momento aureo, “l’imperialismo —affermano gli autori— costituiva una vera e propria proiezione della sovranità degli stati-nazione europei al di là dei loro confini” (p.14). In questo senso, l’imperialismo e il colonialismo sarebbero ora morti. Inoltre Hardt e Negri pronunciano pure la sentenza di morte del neocolonialismo in quanto forma di sfruttamento e di dominio economico senza controllo politico diretto da parte delle potenze industriali. Essi insistono sul fatto che tutte le forme di imperialismo, in quanto rappresentano un limite per la forza omogeneizzante del mercato mondiale, sono condannate a morte dal mercato stesso. L’Impero è dunque “tanto postcoloniale quanto postimperialista” (p. 26). “L’imperialismo —ci viene detto— è una macchina per la striatura globale, per canalizzare, codificare e territorializzare i flussi di capitale e, in particolare, per fissarne alcuni e liberarne altri. Il mercato mondiale, al contrario, esige uno spazio liscio su cui possano correre i flussi non codificati e territorializzati... se non fosse stato superato, l’imperialismo avrebbe provocato il collasso del capitalismo. Il compimento del mercato mondiale segna necessariamente la fine dell’imperialismo” (pp. 309-310)3. Concetti come quelli di centro e di periferia, secondo gli autori, sono ormai quasi completamente obsoleti. “Con la decentralizzazione della produzione e il consolidamento del mercato mondiale, le divisioni internazionali e i flussi della forza lavoro e del capitale sono stati frammentati e moltiplicati, di modo che non è più possibile delimitare grandi aree geografiche e classificarle come centri e periferie, Nord e Sud”. Non ci sono “differenze essenziali” tra gli Stati Uniti e il Brasile, la Gran Bretagna e l’India, ma “soltanto differenze di grado” (pp. 311-312).
Se ne sarebbe andata anche la nozione di imperialismo USA in quanto la forza centrale del mondo contemporaneo: “Né gli Stati Uniti —scrivono Hardt e Negri— né alcuno stato costituiscono attualmente il centro di un progetto imperialista. L’imperialismo è finito. Nessuna nazione sarà un leader mondiale come lo furono le nazioni europee moderne.” (p. 15). “La guerra del Vietnam —notano— può essere giudicata come l’atto finale della tendenza imperialista e il punto di passaggio a un nuovo regime costituzionale” (p. 170). Questo passaggio a un nuovo regime costituzionale globale sarebbe mostrato dalla Guerra del Golfo, durante la quale gli Stati Uniti sono emersi “come l’unica potenza in grado di dirigere la giustizia internazionale, non in relazione a motivi d’ordine nazionale, ma in nome del diritto globale... la polizia mondiale americana agisce nell’interesse dell’Impero non dell’imperialismo. In tal senso, come ha affermato George Bush, la guerra del Golfo ha annunciato la nascita di un nuovo ordine mondiale.” (p. 172).
Impero, il nome dato dagli autori a questo nuovo ordine, è il prodotto della lotta per la sovranità e il costituzionalismo su scala globale, in un’epoca in cui un nuovo jeffersonianismo globale —l’espansione della forma costituzionale USA in ambito globale— è diventata possibile. Gli autori contestano le lotte locali contro l’Impero poiché essi ritengono che la lotta ormai sia semplicemente sulla forma che la globalizzazione assumerà, e sull’amiezza con cui l’Impero manterrà la promessa di portare a maturazione “l’espansione su scala globale del progetto interno alla Costituzione americana” (p. 174). Le loro argomentazioni sono a favore degli sforzi di una “moltitudine contro l’Impero” —cioè della lotta della moltitudine per divenire soggetto politico autonomo—, poiché questo processo può prendere forma solo all’interno delle “condizioni ontologiche determinate dall’impero” (p. 376).
Questo è quanto riguarda le idee attualmente più alla moda. Voglio ora passare a discutere di ciò che è decisamente fuori moda.
Al contrario di Impero, il nuovo libro di István Mészáros Socialism or Barbarism, rappresenta per molti versi l’apice di ciò che è fuori moda, anche a sinistra. Anziché incoraggiare un nuovo universalismo dalle potenzialità che nascono dal processo di globalizzazione capitalistica, purché quest’ultima imbocchi la strada giusta, Mészáros sostiene che il perpetuarsi di un sistema dominato dal capitale garantirebbe esattamente l’opposto: “malgrado la sua ‘globalizzazione’ imposta, il sistema incurabilmente iniquo del capitale è strutturalmente incompatibile con l’universalità in qualsiasi vero senso della parola... non può esserci universalità nel mondo sociale senza uguaglianza sostanziale” (pp. 10-11)4.
Per Mészáros, il modo migliore di intendere il capitale è di considerarlo come un processo metabolico simile a quello di un organismo vivente. Quindi il capitale deve essere trattato tenendo conto che incorpora un sistema di relazioni complesso. Qualsiasi risultato ottenuto dal capitalismo sul piano della liberazione “orizzontale” è negato dall’ordinamento “verticale” dominante, che costituisce sempre il suo momento decisivo. Questo soverchiante antagonismo significa che il sistema del capitale si articola come una rete di contraddizioni simile a una giungla, che può essere solo gestita per qualche tempo, ma mai definitivamente superata.
Tra le principali contraddizioni insormontabili all’interno del capitalismo vi sono quelle tra: (1) la produzione e il suo controllo; (2) la produzione e il consumo; (3) la concorrenza e il monopolio; (4) lo sviluppo e il sottosviluppo (centro e periferia); (5) l’espansione economica mondiale e le rivalità intercapitalistiche; (6) l’accumulazione e la crisi, (7) la produzione e la distruzione, (8) il potere sul lavoro e la dipendenza sul lavoro; (9) l’occupazione e la disoccupazione; (10) la crescita della produzione a tutti i costi e la distruzione ambientale. “È del tutto inconcepibile il superamento anche di una sola di queste contraddizioni — osserva Mészáros — e a maggior ragione delle loro inestricabili interrelazioni, senza istituire un’alternativa radicale al controllo metabolico sociale capitalistico” (pp. 13-14).
Secondo questa analisi, il periodo dell’ascesa storica del capitalismo è ormai terminato. Il capitalismo si è esteso in tutto il globo, ma nella maggior parte del mondo ha prodotto solo enclavi di capitale. Non c’è più alcuna promessa di recupero economico rispetto ai paesi capitalistici avanzati da parte del mondo sottosviluppato, e nemmeno di avanzamento economico e sociale sostenuto nella maggior parte della periferia. Le condizioni di vita della maggioranza dei lavoratori stanno globalmente declinando. La lunga crisi strutturale del sistema, a partire dagli anni ‘70, impedisce al capitale di comporre le proprie contraddizioni, anche temporaneamente. L’appoggio esterno offerto dallo Stato non è più sufficiente a sostenere il sistema. Quindi, l’“incontrollabilità distruttiva” del capitale — la sua tendenza a distruggere i rapporti sociali precedenti e la sua incapacità a sostituirli con qualcosa di sostenibile — sta emergendo sempre di più (pp. 19, 61).
Al centro dell’argomentazione di Mészáros vi è la tesi che noi stiamo ora vivendo in quella che “potenzialmente è la fase più letale del capitalismo” (il titolo del secondo capitolo del libro). L’imperialismo, secondo l’autore, può dividersi in tre fasi storiche distinte: (1) il primo colonialismo moderno, (2) la fase classica dell’imperialismo descritta da Lenin, e (3) il capitalismo egemonico globale, con gli USA come forza dominante. La terza fase si è consolidata dopo la Seconda Guerra Mondiale, ma è diventata “assai pronunciata” con l’inizio della crisi strutturale del capitale negli anni ‘70 (p. 51).
A differenza di molti analisti, Mészáros sostiene che l’egemonia americana non è terminata negli anni ‘70, anche se in quegli anni gli USA hanno subito una flessione della propria posizione economica relativamente agli altri grandi stati capitalistici rispetto agli anni ‘50. Inoltre, gli anni ‘70, a partire dall’abbandono da parte di Nixon della parità dollaro-oro, hanno segnano l’inizio di uno sforzo assai determinato da parte degli USA di stabilire la propria preminenza globale in termini politici, economici e militari, per costituirsi come sostituto di un governo globale.
Allo stadio attuale dello sviluppo globale del capitale, insiste Mészáros, “non è più possibile evitare di confrontarsi con una contraddizione fondamentale e un limite strutturale del sistema. Questo limite è costituito dalla sua incapacità di costituirsi come stato del sistema del capitale, come complemento delle sue aspirazioni e articolazioni transnazionali”. È qui quindi che “la tendenza degli USA ad assumere pericolosamente il ruolo di stato del capitale in quanto tale, sussumendo in sé con tutti i mezzi a disposizione tutte le potenze rivali” diventa qualcosa di molto simile a uno “stato del sistema capitalistico” (pp. 28-29).
Ma gli Stati Uniti, pur essendo stati in grado di arrestare il declino nella loro posizione relativa nella gerarchia capitalistica mondiale, non riescono a raggiungere un livello di dominio economico sufficiente da consentir loro di governare da soli il sistema mondiale, che resta, quindi, ingovernabile. Di conseguenza, gli USA cercano di utilizzare il loro immenso potere militare per stabilire il loro primato globale. "Quel che è oggi in gioco, scrive Mészáros, non è il controllo di una qualche parte del pianeta, di qualsivoglia dimensione, mettendo in difficoltà i rivali pur continuando a tollerarne l’azione indipendente, ma il controllo di tutto il globo da parte di una superpotenza economica e militare egemonica che utilizza tutti i mezzi a sua disposizione, anche i più autoritari e, se necessario, i più militarmente violenti.
Questo è, in definitiva, ciò di cui necessita l’estrema razionalità del capitale globalmente sviluppato nel vano tentativo di controllare il suo irriducibile antagonismo. Tuttavia il problema è che tale razionalità —che può essere scritta senza virgolette poiché corrisponde realmente alla logica del capitale nella fase attuale del suo sviluppo globale— è al tempo stesso la più estrema irrazionalità storica, includendo in sé il concetto nazista di dominio mondiale, per quanto riguarda le condizioni necessarie per la sopravvivenza dell’umanità (pp. 37-38).
Affermare che l’imperialismo contemporaneo, rappresentato innanzitutto dagli USA, è in qualche modo venuto meno per il fatto che vi è poco controllo politico diretto di territori stranieri, significa semplicemente non capire i problemi che ci stanno di fronte. Come osserva Mészáros, il colonialismo europeo ha in realtà occupato solo una piccola parte dei territori della periferia. Ora gli strumenti sono diversi, ma la dimensione globale dell’imperialismo è sempre più grande. Gli Stati Uniti occupano attualmente territorii stranieri, nella forma di basi militari, in sessantanove paesi, e il numero continua a crescere. Inoltre, “la moltiplicazione della potenza distruttiva degli arsenali militari —e specialmente quello delle catastrofiche armi aeree— ha modificato in un certo senso il modo di imporre i diktat imperialistici a un paese da sottomettere (truppe terrestri e occupazione diretta sono meno necessari), ma non la sostanza.” (p. 40).
Con il crollo dell’Unione Sovietica e la fine della guerra fredda, l’imperialismo ha bisogno di un nuovo vestito. Le vecchie giustificazioni interventiste della guerra fredda non funzionano più. Saddam Hussein, osserva Mészáros, ha in tal senso fornito una giustificazione, ma solo temporaneamente. Perfino gli USA sono stati costretti a presentare la loro guerra sotto le vesti di una alleanza universale nell’interesse del diritto globale, anche se con gli Stati Uniti che si presentavano sia nelle vesti del giudice che in quelle del pubblico accusatore.
Tra gli sconcertanti sviluppi segnalati da Socialism or Barbarism vi sono: le enormi perdite civili irachene causate dalla guerra e la morte di più di mezzo milione di bambini a causa delle successive sanzioni; l’offensiva militare e l’occupazione dei Balcani; l’espansione ad Est della NATO; la nuova politica americana che utilizza la NATO come forza militare offensiva in sostituzione delle Nazioni Unite; i tentativi USA volti ad ingannare e scalzare l’ONU; il bombardamento dell’Ambasciata cinese a Belgrado; la firma del trattato di sicurezza nippo-americano in funzione anticinese; e la crescente aggressività del militarismo USA contro la Cina, vista sempre di più come superpotenza rivale emergente.
Nel lungo periodo, anche l’attuale apparente armonia nei rapporti tra USA e Unione Europea non può essere data per scontata, in quanto gli USA continuano a perseguire i loro scopi di dominio globale. La risposta non può essere trovata all’interno del sistema in questa fase dello sviluppo del capitale. La globalizzazione, secondo Mészáros, ha fatto della condizione globale un imperativo per il capitale, ma il carattere intrinseco del processo sociale metabolico del capitale, che richiede una pluralità di capitali, lo rende impossibile. “La fase potenzialmente più letale del capitalismo” ha quindi a che vedere con la circolarità di barbarie e distruzione che queste condizioni sono condannate a produrre.
Come ci appaiono oggi, dopo l’11 settembre e la fase iniziale afgana della guerra globale al terrorismo, questi due punti di vista sulla globalizzazione/imperialismo, quella sempre più alla moda basata sull’emergere di una sovranità globale (detta "Impero") e quella decisamente fuori moda che segnala “la fase potenzialmente più letale del capitalismo”?
Si potrebbe forse sostenere che l’analisi di Impero viene confermata, visto che non è stato uno stato-nazione a sfidare l’emergente sistema di sovranità globale bensì terroristi internazionali esterni all’Impero. In quest’ottica si potrebbe ritenere che gli Stati Uniti conducano in Afghanistan un’azione di “polizia mondiale” “non in relazione a motivi d’ordine nazionale, ma in nome del diritto globale” —come Hardt e Negri hanno definito le azioni USA nella Guerra del Golfo. Questo è più o meno il modo in cui Washington descrive le proprie azioni.
Socialism or Barbarism, invece, sembra suggerire un’interpretazione ben diversa, che vede l’imperialismo USA al centro dell’attuale crisi del terrore. In quest’ottica, i terroristi che hanno attaccato il World Trade Center e il Pentagono non hanno attaccato la sovranità o la civiltà globali (infatti, non hanno attaccato le Nazioni Unite a New York), e tantomeno i valori di democrazia e libertà come sostenuto dagli Stati Uniti, ma hanno deliberatamente puntando ai simboli del potere finanziario e militare USA, e quindi il potere globale degli USA. Pur essendo ingiustificabili sotto qualsiasi profilo, tuttavia questi atti terroristici sono parte della più amplia storia dell’imperialismo USA e del loro tentativo di stabilire la propria egemonia globale, in particolare della storia dell’interventismo USA in Medio Oriente. Inoltre, gli USA non hanno risposto con un processo di costituzionalismo globale, e nemmeno nella forma di una mera azione di polizia, ma imperialisticamente, dichiarando una guerra unilaterale contro il terrorismo internazionale e lanciando la loro macchina da guerra contro il governo Taliban in Afghanistan.
In Afghanistan l’esercito USA cerca di distruggere le forze terroristiche che non molto tempo fa aveva esso stesso contribuito a creare. Lungi dall’aderire ai suoi propri principi costituzionali in ambito internazionale, gli USA hanno sempre sostenuto gruppi terroristici ogniqualvolta ciò risultasse funzionale ai loro disegni imperialistici, e hanno essi stessi esercitato il terrorismo di stato in prima persona, massacrando popolazioni civili. La sua nuova guerra al terrorismo, ha dichiarato Washington, potrà rendere necessari interventi militari USA in numerosi paesi oltre all’Afghanistan, in paesi come l’Iraq, la Siria, il Sudan, la Libia, l’Indonesia, la Malesia e le Filippine, che vengono già segnalati come possibili teatri per gli interventi futuri.
Tutto ciò sembrerebbe suggerire, in una fase caratterizzata da un rallentamento economico mondiale e da una crescente repressione nei maggiori stati capitalistici, che l’“incontrollabilità distruttiva” del capitale sta venendo in primo piano. L’imperialismo, nel suo intento di bloccare ogni tipo di sviluppo autocentrato nella periferia —in altre parole, la perpetuazione del sottosviluppo—, ha allevato il terrorismo, che a sua volta si è rivoltato contro il maggiore stato imperialista stesso, determinando una spirale di distruzione di cui non si vede la fine.
Poiché un governo globale è impossibile nel quadro del capitalismo ma necessario nella sempre più globalizzata realtà contemporanea, il sistema, insiste Mészáros, è sempre più orientato verso un governo fondato sul “comando violento sul mondo intero, su base permanente, da parte del paese imperialista egemonico: un modo... assurdo e insostenibile di governare l’ordine globale” (p. 73).
Dieci anni fa, poco dopo la Guerra del Golfo, i direttori di Monthy Review Harry Magdoff e Paul Sweezy osservavano: “Gli USA sembrano essersi messi su una strada che comporta gravissime implicazioni per tutto il mondo. Il mutamento è l’unica legge certa dell’universo. Non può essere fermato. Se alle società (della periferia del mondo capitalistico) si impedisce di risolvere i loro problemi a modo loro, non li risolveranno certo nei modi dettati da altri. E se non possono andare avanti, andranno inevitabilmente indietro. Questo è quanto sta accadendo attualmente in gran parte del mondo, e gli Stati Uniti, la più potente nazione del mondo con mezzi illimitati di coercizione a sua disposizione, sembra dire agli altri che questo è un fato che va accettato, pena la distruzione violenta.
Alfred North Whitehead, uno dei maggiori pensatori del secolo XIX, disse una volta: “Non ho mai cessato di considerare l’idea che l’umanità possa ascendere fino ad un certo punto e poi declinare senza mai più riprendersi. Molte altre forme di vita lo hanno fatto. L’evoluzione potrebbe andare tanto in giù come in su”. Si tratta di un pensiero sconcertante ma tutt’altro che assurdo, considerando che gli agenti forieri di questo declino potrebbero star prendendo forma sotto i nostri occhi.
Non vogliamo naturalmente sostenere che il declino irreversibile è inevitabile, finché non si verifica. Ma vogliamo suggerire che il modo come sono andate le cose nell’ultimo mezzo secolo, e specialmente nell’ultimo anno, racchiude in sé tale potenziale. E vogliamo anche riconoscere che noi, il popolo americano, abbiamo la responsabilità speciale di fare qualcosa in proposito, visto che è il nostro governo che minaccia di fare la parte di Sansone nel tempio dell’umanità (editoriale "Pax Americana", Monthly Review, Luglio-Agosto 1991).
Gli ultimi dieci anni hanno confermato la validità generale di queste analisi. Secondo qualsiasi standard obbiettivo, gli USA sono la nazione più distruttiva della terra.
Dopo la fine della Seconda Guerra Mondiale hanno ucciso e terrorizzato più popolazioni in tutto il globo di qualsiasi altra nazione. Il loro potere di distruzione sembra illimitato, armato com’è con ogni arma concepibile.
I suoi interessi imperiali, che puntano all’egemonia globale, sono virtualmente senza limiti. In risposta agli attacchi terroristici a New York e a Washington, gli USA hanno dichiarato guerra ai terroristi che, dicono, risiedono in più di sessanta paesi, e hanno minacciato azioni militari contro i governi che danno loro rifugio. In quella che viene presentata come solo la prima fase di una lunga lotta, hanno lanciato la loro macchina militare contro l’Afghanistan, provocando già un numero spaventoso di vittime, includendo quelle morte per mancanza di cibo.
Come interpretare questi sviluppi se non come crescita dell’imperialismo, della barbarie e del terrorismo, che si alimentano mutuamente, in un’epoca in cui il capitalismo sembra aver raggiunto i limiti della sua fase storica ascendente?
In queste circostanze la speranza che rimane all’umanità sta nella ricostruzione del socialismo e, più immediatamente, nell’emergere di una lotta popolare all’interno degli Stati Uniti per impedire a Washington di continuare il suo gioco mortale di Sansone nel tempio dell’umanità. Le parole “socialismo o barbarie", già eloquentemente pronunciate da Rosa Luxemburg, non hanno mai avuto un più forte carattere di urgenza globale.
Note
1 Sui giornali americani i pezzi Op-Ed (letteralmente, editoriali di opinione) appaiono di solito a coppie, sono scritti da esperti esterni, e presentano punti di vista opposti su una determinata questione (per esempio bombardare o non bombardare l’Iraq). A volte vicino ad essi appare anche l’editoriale vero e proprio, che esprime la linea del giornale (N.d.T.).
2 Michael Hardt e Antonio Negri, Impero. Il nuovo ordine della globalizzazione, Rizzoli, 2002.
3 Hardt e Negri fanno riferimento ai lavori di Samir Amin, in particolare a Empire of Chaos (Monthly Review Press, 1992), come alla più autorevole interpretazione dell’imperialismo/ impero alternativa alla propria, e che ne differisce particolarmente sul tema centro/periferia. Vedi Hardt e Negri, Impero (pp. 14, 85, 311, 399, 422-424, 433)
4 Socialism or Barbarisn (2001) e l’importante opera teorica di Mészáros Beyond Capital (1995) sono state
entrambe pubblicate dalla Monthly Review Press.
* L’articolo è basato su una conferenza di presentazione del libro Socialism or Barbarism di István Mészáros tenutasi al Forum Brecht di New York il 14 ottobre 2001.
L'ERNESTO 3/2002 del 01/05/2002*
Le contraddizioni capitalistiche di fase
Poco più di un mese prima che scrivessimo queste pagine, prima dell’11 Settembre, la ribellione di massa contro la globalizzazione capitalistica cominciata a Seattle nel Novembre 1999, e che aveva recentemente guadagnato nuove forze a Genova nel Luglio 2001, stava denunciando le contraddizioni del sistema come da anni non si vedeva. Tuttavia, la particolare natura di questa ribellione era tale che il concetto di imperialismo veniva del tutto rimosso, anche all’interno della sinistra, a favore del concetto di globalizzazione, indicando implicitamente che alcune delle peggiori forme di sfruttamento e di rivalità stavano in qualche modo riducendosi.
Una moda crescente nella sinistra nel modo di trattare la globalizzazione —ma altrettanto allettante per i circoli dominanti, a giudicare dall’attenzione rivoltagli dai mass media— è esemplificata dal nuovo libro di Michael Hardt e Antonio Negri intitolato Impero. Pubblicato nel 2000 dalla Harvard University Press, questo libro ha ricevuto grandi elogi dal New York Times, dalla rivista Time e dal London Observer, e ha pure dato luogo alla partecipazione di Hardt alla trasmissione di Charlie Rose e a un pezzo Op-Ed1 sul New York Times. La sua tesi è che il mercato mondiale, sotto l’influenza della rivoluzione informatica, si sta globalizzando al di là delle capacità di controllo degli stati nazionali. La sovranità degli stati-nazione starebbe subendo un progressivo declino, e starebbe per essere sostituita dalla nuova sovranità globale emergente, l’“Impero”, che sta emergendo dalla progressiva integrazione di “una serie di organismi nazionali e sovranazionali... unita da un’unica logica di potere” (p.14)2, senza una chiara gerarchia internazionale.
I limiti questo articolo non consentono di trattare tutti gli aspetti di questa tesi. Ne commenterò solo un aspetto, quello della supposta scomparsa dell’imperialismo.
Nell’analisi di Hardt e Negri il termine “Impero” non si riferisce al dominio imperialista del centro sulla periferia, ma a un’entità omnicomprensiva che non riconosce limiti territoriali o confini fuori di sé. Nel suo momento aureo, “l’imperialismo —affermano gli autori— costituiva una vera e propria proiezione della sovranità degli stati-nazione europei al di là dei loro confini” (p.14). In questo senso, l’imperialismo e il colonialismo sarebbero ora morti. Inoltre Hardt e Negri pronunciano pure la sentenza di morte del neocolonialismo in quanto forma di sfruttamento e di dominio economico senza controllo politico diretto da parte delle potenze industriali. Essi insistono sul fatto che tutte le forme di imperialismo, in quanto rappresentano un limite per la forza omogeneizzante del mercato mondiale, sono condannate a morte dal mercato stesso. L’Impero è dunque “tanto postcoloniale quanto postimperialista” (p. 26). “L’imperialismo —ci viene detto— è una macchina per la striatura globale, per canalizzare, codificare e territorializzare i flussi di capitale e, in particolare, per fissarne alcuni e liberarne altri. Il mercato mondiale, al contrario, esige uno spazio liscio su cui possano correre i flussi non codificati e territorializzati... se non fosse stato superato, l’imperialismo avrebbe provocato il collasso del capitalismo. Il compimento del mercato mondiale segna necessariamente la fine dell’imperialismo” (pp. 309-310)3. Concetti come quelli di centro e di periferia, secondo gli autori, sono ormai quasi completamente obsoleti. “Con la decentralizzazione della produzione e il consolidamento del mercato mondiale, le divisioni internazionali e i flussi della forza lavoro e del capitale sono stati frammentati e moltiplicati, di modo che non è più possibile delimitare grandi aree geografiche e classificarle come centri e periferie, Nord e Sud”. Non ci sono “differenze essenziali” tra gli Stati Uniti e il Brasile, la Gran Bretagna e l’India, ma “soltanto differenze di grado” (pp. 311-312).
Se ne sarebbe andata anche la nozione di imperialismo USA in quanto la forza centrale del mondo contemporaneo: “Né gli Stati Uniti —scrivono Hardt e Negri— né alcuno stato costituiscono attualmente il centro di un progetto imperialista. L’imperialismo è finito. Nessuna nazione sarà un leader mondiale come lo furono le nazioni europee moderne.” (p. 15). “La guerra del Vietnam —notano— può essere giudicata come l’atto finale della tendenza imperialista e il punto di passaggio a un nuovo regime costituzionale” (p. 170). Questo passaggio a un nuovo regime costituzionale globale sarebbe mostrato dalla Guerra del Golfo, durante la quale gli Stati Uniti sono emersi “come l’unica potenza in grado di dirigere la giustizia internazionale, non in relazione a motivi d’ordine nazionale, ma in nome del diritto globale... la polizia mondiale americana agisce nell’interesse dell’Impero non dell’imperialismo. In tal senso, come ha affermato George Bush, la guerra del Golfo ha annunciato la nascita di un nuovo ordine mondiale.” (p. 172).
Impero, il nome dato dagli autori a questo nuovo ordine, è il prodotto della lotta per la sovranità e il costituzionalismo su scala globale, in un’epoca in cui un nuovo jeffersonianismo globale —l’espansione della forma costituzionale USA in ambito globale— è diventata possibile. Gli autori contestano le lotte locali contro l’Impero poiché essi ritengono che la lotta ormai sia semplicemente sulla forma che la globalizzazione assumerà, e sull’amiezza con cui l’Impero manterrà la promessa di portare a maturazione “l’espansione su scala globale del progetto interno alla Costituzione americana” (p. 174). Le loro argomentazioni sono a favore degli sforzi di una “moltitudine contro l’Impero” —cioè della lotta della moltitudine per divenire soggetto politico autonomo—, poiché questo processo può prendere forma solo all’interno delle “condizioni ontologiche determinate dall’impero” (p. 376).
Questo è quanto riguarda le idee attualmente più alla moda. Voglio ora passare a discutere di ciò che è decisamente fuori moda.
Al contrario di Impero, il nuovo libro di István Mészáros Socialism or Barbarism, rappresenta per molti versi l’apice di ciò che è fuori moda, anche a sinistra. Anziché incoraggiare un nuovo universalismo dalle potenzialità che nascono dal processo di globalizzazione capitalistica, purché quest’ultima imbocchi la strada giusta, Mészáros sostiene che il perpetuarsi di un sistema dominato dal capitale garantirebbe esattamente l’opposto: “malgrado la sua ‘globalizzazione’ imposta, il sistema incurabilmente iniquo del capitale è strutturalmente incompatibile con l’universalità in qualsiasi vero senso della parola... non può esserci universalità nel mondo sociale senza uguaglianza sostanziale” (pp. 10-11)4.
Per Mészáros, il modo migliore di intendere il capitale è di considerarlo come un processo metabolico simile a quello di un organismo vivente. Quindi il capitale deve essere trattato tenendo conto che incorpora un sistema di relazioni complesso. Qualsiasi risultato ottenuto dal capitalismo sul piano della liberazione “orizzontale” è negato dall’ordinamento “verticale” dominante, che costituisce sempre il suo momento decisivo. Questo soverchiante antagonismo significa che il sistema del capitale si articola come una rete di contraddizioni simile a una giungla, che può essere solo gestita per qualche tempo, ma mai definitivamente superata.
Tra le principali contraddizioni insormontabili all’interno del capitalismo vi sono quelle tra: (1) la produzione e il suo controllo; (2) la produzione e il consumo; (3) la concorrenza e il monopolio; (4) lo sviluppo e il sottosviluppo (centro e periferia); (5) l’espansione economica mondiale e le rivalità intercapitalistiche; (6) l’accumulazione e la crisi, (7) la produzione e la distruzione, (8) il potere sul lavoro e la dipendenza sul lavoro; (9) l’occupazione e la disoccupazione; (10) la crescita della produzione a tutti i costi e la distruzione ambientale. “È del tutto inconcepibile il superamento anche di una sola di queste contraddizioni — osserva Mészáros — e a maggior ragione delle loro inestricabili interrelazioni, senza istituire un’alternativa radicale al controllo metabolico sociale capitalistico” (pp. 13-14).
Secondo questa analisi, il periodo dell’ascesa storica del capitalismo è ormai terminato. Il capitalismo si è esteso in tutto il globo, ma nella maggior parte del mondo ha prodotto solo enclavi di capitale. Non c’è più alcuna promessa di recupero economico rispetto ai paesi capitalistici avanzati da parte del mondo sottosviluppato, e nemmeno di avanzamento economico e sociale sostenuto nella maggior parte della periferia. Le condizioni di vita della maggioranza dei lavoratori stanno globalmente declinando. La lunga crisi strutturale del sistema, a partire dagli anni ‘70, impedisce al capitale di comporre le proprie contraddizioni, anche temporaneamente. L’appoggio esterno offerto dallo Stato non è più sufficiente a sostenere il sistema. Quindi, l’“incontrollabilità distruttiva” del capitale — la sua tendenza a distruggere i rapporti sociali precedenti e la sua incapacità a sostituirli con qualcosa di sostenibile — sta emergendo sempre di più (pp. 19, 61).
Al centro dell’argomentazione di Mészáros vi è la tesi che noi stiamo ora vivendo in quella che “potenzialmente è la fase più letale del capitalismo” (il titolo del secondo capitolo del libro). L’imperialismo, secondo l’autore, può dividersi in tre fasi storiche distinte: (1) il primo colonialismo moderno, (2) la fase classica dell’imperialismo descritta da Lenin, e (3) il capitalismo egemonico globale, con gli USA come forza dominante. La terza fase si è consolidata dopo la Seconda Guerra Mondiale, ma è diventata “assai pronunciata” con l’inizio della crisi strutturale del capitale negli anni ‘70 (p. 51).
A differenza di molti analisti, Mészáros sostiene che l’egemonia americana non è terminata negli anni ‘70, anche se in quegli anni gli USA hanno subito una flessione della propria posizione economica relativamente agli altri grandi stati capitalistici rispetto agli anni ‘50. Inoltre, gli anni ‘70, a partire dall’abbandono da parte di Nixon della parità dollaro-oro, hanno segnano l’inizio di uno sforzo assai determinato da parte degli USA di stabilire la propria preminenza globale in termini politici, economici e militari, per costituirsi come sostituto di un governo globale.
Allo stadio attuale dello sviluppo globale del capitale, insiste Mészáros, “non è più possibile evitare di confrontarsi con una contraddizione fondamentale e un limite strutturale del sistema. Questo limite è costituito dalla sua incapacità di costituirsi come stato del sistema del capitale, come complemento delle sue aspirazioni e articolazioni transnazionali”. È qui quindi che “la tendenza degli USA ad assumere pericolosamente il ruolo di stato del capitale in quanto tale, sussumendo in sé con tutti i mezzi a disposizione tutte le potenze rivali” diventa qualcosa di molto simile a uno “stato del sistema capitalistico” (pp. 28-29).
Ma gli Stati Uniti, pur essendo stati in grado di arrestare il declino nella loro posizione relativa nella gerarchia capitalistica mondiale, non riescono a raggiungere un livello di dominio economico sufficiente da consentir loro di governare da soli il sistema mondiale, che resta, quindi, ingovernabile. Di conseguenza, gli USA cercano di utilizzare il loro immenso potere militare per stabilire il loro primato globale. "Quel che è oggi in gioco, scrive Mészáros, non è il controllo di una qualche parte del pianeta, di qualsivoglia dimensione, mettendo in difficoltà i rivali pur continuando a tollerarne l’azione indipendente, ma il controllo di tutto il globo da parte di una superpotenza economica e militare egemonica che utilizza tutti i mezzi a sua disposizione, anche i più autoritari e, se necessario, i più militarmente violenti.
Questo è, in definitiva, ciò di cui necessita l’estrema razionalità del capitale globalmente sviluppato nel vano tentativo di controllare il suo irriducibile antagonismo. Tuttavia il problema è che tale razionalità —che può essere scritta senza virgolette poiché corrisponde realmente alla logica del capitale nella fase attuale del suo sviluppo globale— è al tempo stesso la più estrema irrazionalità storica, includendo in sé il concetto nazista di dominio mondiale, per quanto riguarda le condizioni necessarie per la sopravvivenza dell’umanità (pp. 37-38).
Affermare che l’imperialismo contemporaneo, rappresentato innanzitutto dagli USA, è in qualche modo venuto meno per il fatto che vi è poco controllo politico diretto di territori stranieri, significa semplicemente non capire i problemi che ci stanno di fronte. Come osserva Mészáros, il colonialismo europeo ha in realtà occupato solo una piccola parte dei territori della periferia. Ora gli strumenti sono diversi, ma la dimensione globale dell’imperialismo è sempre più grande. Gli Stati Uniti occupano attualmente territorii stranieri, nella forma di basi militari, in sessantanove paesi, e il numero continua a crescere. Inoltre, “la moltiplicazione della potenza distruttiva degli arsenali militari —e specialmente quello delle catastrofiche armi aeree— ha modificato in un certo senso il modo di imporre i diktat imperialistici a un paese da sottomettere (truppe terrestri e occupazione diretta sono meno necessari), ma non la sostanza.” (p. 40).
Con il crollo dell’Unione Sovietica e la fine della guerra fredda, l’imperialismo ha bisogno di un nuovo vestito. Le vecchie giustificazioni interventiste della guerra fredda non funzionano più. Saddam Hussein, osserva Mészáros, ha in tal senso fornito una giustificazione, ma solo temporaneamente. Perfino gli USA sono stati costretti a presentare la loro guerra sotto le vesti di una alleanza universale nell’interesse del diritto globale, anche se con gli Stati Uniti che si presentavano sia nelle vesti del giudice che in quelle del pubblico accusatore.
Tra gli sconcertanti sviluppi segnalati da Socialism or Barbarism vi sono: le enormi perdite civili irachene causate dalla guerra e la morte di più di mezzo milione di bambini a causa delle successive sanzioni; l’offensiva militare e l’occupazione dei Balcani; l’espansione ad Est della NATO; la nuova politica americana che utilizza la NATO come forza militare offensiva in sostituzione delle Nazioni Unite; i tentativi USA volti ad ingannare e scalzare l’ONU; il bombardamento dell’Ambasciata cinese a Belgrado; la firma del trattato di sicurezza nippo-americano in funzione anticinese; e la crescente aggressività del militarismo USA contro la Cina, vista sempre di più come superpotenza rivale emergente.
Nel lungo periodo, anche l’attuale apparente armonia nei rapporti tra USA e Unione Europea non può essere data per scontata, in quanto gli USA continuano a perseguire i loro scopi di dominio globale. La risposta non può essere trovata all’interno del sistema in questa fase dello sviluppo del capitale. La globalizzazione, secondo Mészáros, ha fatto della condizione globale un imperativo per il capitale, ma il carattere intrinseco del processo sociale metabolico del capitale, che richiede una pluralità di capitali, lo rende impossibile. “La fase potenzialmente più letale del capitalismo” ha quindi a che vedere con la circolarità di barbarie e distruzione che queste condizioni sono condannate a produrre.
Come ci appaiono oggi, dopo l’11 settembre e la fase iniziale afgana della guerra globale al terrorismo, questi due punti di vista sulla globalizzazione/imperialismo, quella sempre più alla moda basata sull’emergere di una sovranità globale (detta "Impero") e quella decisamente fuori moda che segnala “la fase potenzialmente più letale del capitalismo”?
Si potrebbe forse sostenere che l’analisi di Impero viene confermata, visto che non è stato uno stato-nazione a sfidare l’emergente sistema di sovranità globale bensì terroristi internazionali esterni all’Impero. In quest’ottica si potrebbe ritenere che gli Stati Uniti conducano in Afghanistan un’azione di “polizia mondiale” “non in relazione a motivi d’ordine nazionale, ma in nome del diritto globale” —come Hardt e Negri hanno definito le azioni USA nella Guerra del Golfo. Questo è più o meno il modo in cui Washington descrive le proprie azioni.
Socialism or Barbarism, invece, sembra suggerire un’interpretazione ben diversa, che vede l’imperialismo USA al centro dell’attuale crisi del terrore. In quest’ottica, i terroristi che hanno attaccato il World Trade Center e il Pentagono non hanno attaccato la sovranità o la civiltà globali (infatti, non hanno attaccato le Nazioni Unite a New York), e tantomeno i valori di democrazia e libertà come sostenuto dagli Stati Uniti, ma hanno deliberatamente puntando ai simboli del potere finanziario e militare USA, e quindi il potere globale degli USA. Pur essendo ingiustificabili sotto qualsiasi profilo, tuttavia questi atti terroristici sono parte della più amplia storia dell’imperialismo USA e del loro tentativo di stabilire la propria egemonia globale, in particolare della storia dell’interventismo USA in Medio Oriente. Inoltre, gli USA non hanno risposto con un processo di costituzionalismo globale, e nemmeno nella forma di una mera azione di polizia, ma imperialisticamente, dichiarando una guerra unilaterale contro il terrorismo internazionale e lanciando la loro macchina da guerra contro il governo Taliban in Afghanistan.
In Afghanistan l’esercito USA cerca di distruggere le forze terroristiche che non molto tempo fa aveva esso stesso contribuito a creare. Lungi dall’aderire ai suoi propri principi costituzionali in ambito internazionale, gli USA hanno sempre sostenuto gruppi terroristici ogniqualvolta ciò risultasse funzionale ai loro disegni imperialistici, e hanno essi stessi esercitato il terrorismo di stato in prima persona, massacrando popolazioni civili. La sua nuova guerra al terrorismo, ha dichiarato Washington, potrà rendere necessari interventi militari USA in numerosi paesi oltre all’Afghanistan, in paesi come l’Iraq, la Siria, il Sudan, la Libia, l’Indonesia, la Malesia e le Filippine, che vengono già segnalati come possibili teatri per gli interventi futuri.
Tutto ciò sembrerebbe suggerire, in una fase caratterizzata da un rallentamento economico mondiale e da una crescente repressione nei maggiori stati capitalistici, che l’“incontrollabilità distruttiva” del capitale sta venendo in primo piano. L’imperialismo, nel suo intento di bloccare ogni tipo di sviluppo autocentrato nella periferia —in altre parole, la perpetuazione del sottosviluppo—, ha allevato il terrorismo, che a sua volta si è rivoltato contro il maggiore stato imperialista stesso, determinando una spirale di distruzione di cui non si vede la fine.
Poiché un governo globale è impossibile nel quadro del capitalismo ma necessario nella sempre più globalizzata realtà contemporanea, il sistema, insiste Mészáros, è sempre più orientato verso un governo fondato sul “comando violento sul mondo intero, su base permanente, da parte del paese imperialista egemonico: un modo... assurdo e insostenibile di governare l’ordine globale” (p. 73).
Dieci anni fa, poco dopo la Guerra del Golfo, i direttori di Monthy Review Harry Magdoff e Paul Sweezy osservavano: “Gli USA sembrano essersi messi su una strada che comporta gravissime implicazioni per tutto il mondo. Il mutamento è l’unica legge certa dell’universo. Non può essere fermato. Se alle società (della periferia del mondo capitalistico) si impedisce di risolvere i loro problemi a modo loro, non li risolveranno certo nei modi dettati da altri. E se non possono andare avanti, andranno inevitabilmente indietro. Questo è quanto sta accadendo attualmente in gran parte del mondo, e gli Stati Uniti, la più potente nazione del mondo con mezzi illimitati di coercizione a sua disposizione, sembra dire agli altri che questo è un fato che va accettato, pena la distruzione violenta.
Alfred North Whitehead, uno dei maggiori pensatori del secolo XIX, disse una volta: “Non ho mai cessato di considerare l’idea che l’umanità possa ascendere fino ad un certo punto e poi declinare senza mai più riprendersi. Molte altre forme di vita lo hanno fatto. L’evoluzione potrebbe andare tanto in giù come in su”. Si tratta di un pensiero sconcertante ma tutt’altro che assurdo, considerando che gli agenti forieri di questo declino potrebbero star prendendo forma sotto i nostri occhi.
Non vogliamo naturalmente sostenere che il declino irreversibile è inevitabile, finché non si verifica. Ma vogliamo suggerire che il modo come sono andate le cose nell’ultimo mezzo secolo, e specialmente nell’ultimo anno, racchiude in sé tale potenziale. E vogliamo anche riconoscere che noi, il popolo americano, abbiamo la responsabilità speciale di fare qualcosa in proposito, visto che è il nostro governo che minaccia di fare la parte di Sansone nel tempio dell’umanità (editoriale "Pax Americana", Monthly Review, Luglio-Agosto 1991).
Gli ultimi dieci anni hanno confermato la validità generale di queste analisi. Secondo qualsiasi standard obbiettivo, gli USA sono la nazione più distruttiva della terra.
Dopo la fine della Seconda Guerra Mondiale hanno ucciso e terrorizzato più popolazioni in tutto il globo di qualsiasi altra nazione. Il loro potere di distruzione sembra illimitato, armato com’è con ogni arma concepibile.
I suoi interessi imperiali, che puntano all’egemonia globale, sono virtualmente senza limiti. In risposta agli attacchi terroristici a New York e a Washington, gli USA hanno dichiarato guerra ai terroristi che, dicono, risiedono in più di sessanta paesi, e hanno minacciato azioni militari contro i governi che danno loro rifugio. In quella che viene presentata come solo la prima fase di una lunga lotta, hanno lanciato la loro macchina militare contro l’Afghanistan, provocando già un numero spaventoso di vittime, includendo quelle morte per mancanza di cibo.
Come interpretare questi sviluppi se non come crescita dell’imperialismo, della barbarie e del terrorismo, che si alimentano mutuamente, in un’epoca in cui il capitalismo sembra aver raggiunto i limiti della sua fase storica ascendente?
In queste circostanze la speranza che rimane all’umanità sta nella ricostruzione del socialismo e, più immediatamente, nell’emergere di una lotta popolare all’interno degli Stati Uniti per impedire a Washington di continuare il suo gioco mortale di Sansone nel tempio dell’umanità. Le parole “socialismo o barbarie", già eloquentemente pronunciate da Rosa Luxemburg, non hanno mai avuto un più forte carattere di urgenza globale.
Note
1 Sui giornali americani i pezzi Op-Ed (letteralmente, editoriali di opinione) appaiono di solito a coppie, sono scritti da esperti esterni, e presentano punti di vista opposti su una determinata questione (per esempio bombardare o non bombardare l’Iraq). A volte vicino ad essi appare anche l’editoriale vero e proprio, che esprime la linea del giornale (N.d.T.).
2 Michael Hardt e Antonio Negri, Impero. Il nuovo ordine della globalizzazione, Rizzoli, 2002.
3 Hardt e Negri fanno riferimento ai lavori di Samir Amin, in particolare a Empire of Chaos (Monthly Review Press, 1992), come alla più autorevole interpretazione dell’imperialismo/ impero alternativa alla propria, e che ne differisce particolarmente sul tema centro/periferia. Vedi Hardt e Negri, Impero (pp. 14, 85, 311, 399, 422-424, 433)
4 Socialism or Barbarisn (2001) e l’importante opera teorica di Mészáros Beyond Capital (1995) sono state
entrambe pubblicate dalla Monthly Review Press.
* L’articolo è basato su una conferenza di presentazione del libro Socialism or Barbarism di István Mészáros tenutasi al Forum Brecht di New York il 14 ottobre 2001.
Gramsci, Lenin e l’egemonia
di Gianni Fresu
L'ERNESTO 3/2002 del 01/05/2002
Negli ultimi anni si è tentato di negare la consonanza di pensiero tra i due grandi rivoluzionari. Un disegno ideologico che trova le sue basi materiali nel tentativo di liquidare Lenin e che rischia di trasformare Gramsci in un “libero pensatore umanista”
Una prima considerazione di carattere generale che emerge dall’analisi diretta degli scritti di Gramsci – e non solo dallo studio di articoli, saggi e documenti politici del periodo che arriva fino al Congresso di Lione, ma anche degli stessi Quaderni – riguarda la forte consonanza tra molti aspetti del pensiero di Gramsci e quello di Lenin. Proprio questa consonanza, negli ultimi anni, è stata risolutamente combattuta, per legittimare in qualche modo un’operazione di rilettura in chiave “liberal” del pensiero “maturo” di Gramsci, una rilettura “neutra” che si articola almeno in tre livelli: la prima tende a presentare Gramsci come un semplice libero pensatore, affamato di cultura a prescindere dal suo ruolo di teorico ed organizzatore del movimento comunista internazionale; la seconda tende a farne un idealista hegeliano tutto assorto nell’indagare la natura sovrastrutturale del concetto di società civile; la terza, infine, cerca di rintracciare tra le pagine dei Quaderni e negli abusatissimi concetti di “egemonia” e “guerra di posizione”, la prova di una frattura tra il Gramsci pre e post 1926, per giustificare tramite essa la discontinuità, se non proprio l’incompatibilità, tra queste categorie del Gramsci “maturo”, e la strutturazione complessiva del pensiero di Lenin.
Una delle ragioni di questa revisione va forse ricercata nel clima culturale e politico che si è creato con la fine “della spinta propulsiva” dell’esperienza del socialismo reale, che ha reso troppo ingombrante e imbarazzante la figura di Lenin per certi ambienti politico-intellettuali, e che in conseguenza ha portato questi al goffo tentativo di emanciparsi da quella esperienza, tramite un netto taglio d’accetta, che ripulisse Gramsci da tutto ciò che potesse risultare in qualche modo scomodo. In realtà così non si analizza la storia ma la si trasforma in una propria “biografia storico-politica”, e al contempo non si fanno neanche i conti con quell’esperienza che va semmai affrontata proprio tramite la piena valutazione delle fonti documentali, e dunque anche tramite il giusto riconoscimento alla profondità e fecondità storica del pensiero di Lenin, e quindi alla sua influenza su Gramsci, anziché tramite il suo occultamento o la sua mistificazione.
Questa operazione di maniera, tutta ideologica e per niente scientifica, ha l’evidente scopo di giungere appunto alla definizione di un Gramsci liberale o al massimo socialdemocratico, ed è insomma una di quelle tipiche forme di degenerazioni storiografiche che Gramsci stesso definiva come “storia feticistica”, con la quale si pretende di rileggere la vastità dei processi storici passati in funzione delle compatibilità attuali, dunque un approccio che fa assurgere a principio guida della propria analisi un presupposto per sua natura antistorico, che inevitabilmente tende a piegare il passato in funzione dei propri interessi politici immediati e contingenti, trovando così in esso le ragioni delle proprie “svolte”.
Affermare infatti che le categorie gramsciane di “guerra di posizione” e di “egemonia” sono politicamente autocefale, o comunque antitetiche rispetto al pensiero di Lenin, significa fare un torto non solo a Lenin e a Gramsci, ma alla verità storica. Così nel quaderno numero sette è lo stesso Gramsci ad affermare: “mi pare che Ilici aveva compreso che occorreva un mutamento della guerra manovrata applicata vittoriosamente in Oriente nel 17, alla guerra di posizione che era la sola possibile in occidente (...) questo mi pare significare la formula del “fronte unico” (...) solo che Ilici non ebbe il tempo di approfondire la sua formula, pur tenendo conto che egli poteva approfondirla solo teoricamente, mentre il compito fondamentale era nazionale, cioè domandava una ricognizione del terreno e una fissazione degli elementi di società civile” 1.
Ancora nel quaderno dieci si può leggere: “La proposizione contenuta nell’introduzione alla Critica dell’economia politica che gli uomini prendono coscienza dei conflitti di struttura sul terreno delle ideologie deve essere considerata un’affermazione di carattere gnoseologico e non puramente psicologico e morale. Da ciò consegue che il principio teorico pratico dell’egemonia ha anche esso una portata gnoseologica e pertanto in questo campo è da ricercare l’approccio teorico massimo di Ilici alla filosofia della praxis. Ilici avrebbe fatto progredire effettivamente la filosofia in quanto fece progredire la dottrina e la pratica politica. La realizzazione di un apparato egemonico, in quanto crea un nuovo terreno ideologico, determina una riforma delle coscienze e dei metodi di conoscenza, è un fatto filosofico”2.
Ancora più esplicite e illuminanti, da questo punto di vista, sono le note che vanno sotto il nome di Posizione del problema, sempre nel quaderno sette: “Marx è un creatore di Weltanschauung ma quale è la posizione di Ilici? È puramente subordinata e subalterna? La spiegazione è nello stesso marxismo – scienza e azione –. Il passaggio dall’utopia alla scienza e dalla scienza all’azione. La fondazione di una classe dirigente (cioè di uno stato) equivale alla creazione di una Weltanschauung . (...) Per Ilici questo è realmente avvenuto in un territorio determinato. Ho accennato altrove alla importanza filosofica del concetto e del fatto di egemonia, dovuto a Ilici. L’egemonia realizzata significa la critica reale di una filosofia, la sua reale dialettica. (...) Fare un parallelo tra Marx e Ilici è stolto e ozioso: esprimono due fasi: scienza-azione, che sono omogenee ed eterogenee nello stesso tempo”.
Nel passaggio successivo Gramsci compie un curioso parallelo nel rapporto tra Marx e Lenin, con quello tra Cristo e S. Paolo, che chiarisce la sua opinione su una categoria, sorta dopo la morte di Lenin, che fu e che rimane ancora oggi, elemento di controversia all’interno dello stesso movimento marxista, quella di marxismo-leninismo. “Così, storicamente, sarebbe assurdo un parallelo tra Cristo - Weltanschauung, S. Paolo organizzazione, azione, espansione della Weltanschauung: essi sono ambedue necessari nella stessa misura e però sono della stessa statura storica. Il Cristianesimo potrebbe chiamarsi, storicamente, cristianesimo-paolinismo e sarebbe l’espressione più esatta (solo la credenza nella divinità di Cristo ha impedito un caso di questo genere, ma questa credenza è anch’essa solo un elemento storico, e non teorico)” 3.
Dopo la lettura di queste note, non sono necessari troppi giri di parole, per chiarire che ad un ipotetico allontanamento di Gramsci dal leninismo nelle riflessioni del carcere, così come sostenuto, avrebbe dovuto corrispondere il contemporaneo allontanamento di questi dal marxismo, ma essendo tale tesi ancora più difficile da dimostrare della prima, coloro che si dilettano in quest’opera revisionistica, non si rivelano abbastanza arditi da arrivare a tanto e in conseguenza decidono dunque, di fermarsi al primo gradino della revisione.
Ma per dimostrare l’insussistenza di questo impianto teorico e per mostrare che la categoria egemonica e più in generale la consapevolezza delle differenze di contesto tra oriente e occidente, fossero tutt’altro che estranee a Lenin, avremmo potuto riportare alcuni passaggi da questo punto di vista assai significativi, come lo scritto leniniano del 1898 sullo sviluppo capitalistico in Russia, i suoi interventi al VII Congresso del PCB del 1918, al X del 1921, al III Congresso dell’Internazionale comunista del luglio 1921, e ad ulteriore sostegno avremmo potuto ancora citare gli scritti del periodo relativo al trattato di pace Brest-Litovsk, ed al paragrafo del Che fare? intitolato Denunce politiche e educazione dell’attività rivoluzionaria4.
Con tutto questo non si vuole certo affermare che il pensiero di Gramsci sia una applicazione pedissequa e ortodossa del leninismo, perché anche questa sarebbe una visione manieristica scarsamente attinente con la realtà, oltre che un insulto all’intelligenza, ma semplicemente che Gramsci, sia sul piano teorico che politico, fa consapevolmente proprio sin dal primo momento, l’assunto più importante del pensiero di Lenin, cioè quello di far interagire dialetticamente la propria strategia con il mutare delle condizioni generali, storiche, culturali e territoriali, anziché rinchiudersi “in una dottrina come in un’armatura”, e rendere con ciò il marxismo una “dottrina esteriore di affermazioni dogmatiche ed indiscutibili”.
Come già detto Gramsci ha fornito un contributo enorme ed originalissimo al marxismo, rendendolo una teoria viva e operativa tramite “un’accurata ricognizione nazionale degli elementi di trincea e di fortezza rappresentati dagli elementi di società civile”, ha cioè realizzato uno degli esempi di sviluppo del marxismo più organici e ricchi in assoluto, contestualizzando gli assunti teorici di Marx alle specificità economico-sociali, storiche e culturali dell’Italia, così come Lenin a sua volta contestualizzò questi alle peculiarità russe.
Dunque, considerando l’insieme dell’attività sia teorica che politica di Gramsci – dagli anni dell’Ordine Nuovo, alla conferenza di Como, al Congresso di Lione, alle riflessioni del carcere –, la prima conclusione più logica è che sicuramente non si possa parlare di rottura o addirittura di ripudio (tra il Gramsci pre e post 1926), come qualcuno sostiene, ma semmai di una evoluzione, di una costante crescita in simbiosi dialettica con la realtà, che comunque anche nei suoi ultimi assunti, non va mai disgiunta da una strategia che ha come suo asse portante la lotta di classe e come suo obbiettivo il socialismo. La prima conclusione è in sostanza, che il goffo tentativo di rendere Gramsci ciò che non era, per mera piaggeria di corte, costituisce una pessima operazione di mistificazione storica.
Nei Quaderni Gramsci sviluppa organicamente, con una ampiezza sorprendente, alcuni degli spunti e delle riflessioni che segnarono non solo l’elaborazione teorica, ma più concretamente, le battaglie politiche di cui egli fu protagonista sin dalle sue prime esperienze torinesi. Dal libro di Domenico Losurdo, Antonio Gramsci dal liberalismo al comunismo critico, estrapoliamo una valutazione di ordine generale che probabilmente coglie in pieno l’importanza del contributo fornito da quest’ultimo al pensiero marxista mondiale, e cioè che nei Quaderni, ma più in generale in tutto il pensiero di Gramsci, la categoria di base del marxismo, vale a dire il passaggio dalla classe in sé alla classe per sé, l’acquisizione da parte del proletariato della propria coscienza e soggettività politica, assume una “configurazione nettamente più complessa e tormentata che in Marx e nello stesso Lenin”, che ha a monte un problema storico nodale, quello di rendere le classi subalterne realmente protagoniste della loro emancipazione, quello per il quale la coscienza di classe può essere raggiunta solo con l’assunzione di un pieno ruolo dirigente da parte del proletariato e con il rigetto di una partecipazione passiva, basata sulle deleghe “bonapartistiche” a bardature burocratiche ed a organismi dirigenti del movimento operaio. Un problema che mantiene drammaticamente la sua attualità in un’epoca come quella odierna, caratterizzata dalla sempre maggiore lontananza tra dirigenti e diretti, tra oligarchie e masse, tra una politica ad esclusivo beneficio delle classi privilegiate e le aspirazioni mortificate del resto della società, un’epoca nella quale l’emarginazione delle classi strumentali e l’aumento esponenziale di quelle private di qualsiasi ruolo nei processi produttivi, e di un effettivo diritto di cittadinanza sociale e politico, è sempre più evidente.
All’individuazione di questo problema Gramsci giunge, non per una semplice intuizione intellettuale e speculativa, come risultato di una ricerca condotta a tavolino, ma attraverso una esperienza politica vissuta a diretto contatto con la classe operaia, con le sue esigenze, i suoi bisogni. Nei confronti del proletariato Gramsci non ha mai assunto l’atteggiamento distaccato e freddo dell’intellettuale, non si limitava a “sapere” ma cercava di “comprendere e sentire”, e ciò emerge non solo da ciò che ci resta dei suoi scritti, ma anche dalle numerose ricostruzioni biografiche. In queste, infatti, la testimonianza più ricorrente e significativa, da parte degli operai che negli anni torinesi ebbero modo di conoscerlo e frequentarlo, era che a differenza degli altri dirigenti del movimento operaio, Gramsci sapesse non solo parlare, ma soprattutto ascoltare5, che avesse un reale interesse, una “passione”, che lo spingeva ad informarsi su tutti gli aspetti della vita dei lavoratori, delle loro condizioni materiali di esistenza, delle loro conoscenze tecniche, della loro psicologia, delle concrete dinamiche dei processi produttivi.
La teoria del partito inteso come “intellettuale collettivo” rappresenta il risultato più fecondo e originale di questa passione, senza il quale non è possibile comprendere alcune categorie importanti del pensiero gramsciano, come quelle relative al passaggio dalla “guerra manovrata” alla “guerra di posizione”.
La questione della rivoluzione in occidente, e più concretamente in Italia, dopo il fallimento della “biennio rosso” e la fine della fase relativa alla guerra manovrata6, l’affermazione per la quale in occidente lo Stato costituisce solo la trincea più avanzata dietro la quale si sviluppa una robusta catena di trincee e casematte, espressione dell’egemonia politica, culturale e sociale delle classi dominanti, e dunque il compito operativo della conquista egemonica di quelle trincee e casematte da parte della classe operaia italiana, prima di lanciarsi nell’assalto frontale alla trincea più avanzata, sono infatti strettamente intrecciate alla individuazione della forma organizzativa più adeguata a perseguire questo compito, cioè all’idea del partito che Gramsci elabora.
Gramsci vedeva nella concezione del partito di cui si faceva portatore Bordiga non solo la continuità con la tradizione della filosofia idealista italiana, ma anche una idea di partito che opera solo nel momento topico dello scontro sociale, solo nella fase più acuta della radicalizzazione politica, che mantiene costituzionalmente la sua distanza dalle masse, dunque uno strumento strutturalmente inidoneo ad un lavoro teso alla conquista egemonica della società civile, che richiede la presenza sistematica7 di un partito che aderisce organicamente con le masse, quelle masse, – come più volte sottolineato –, che non devono essere solo dirette, ma devono diventare esse stesse dirigenti per assumere un ruolo egemone nei confronti della maggioranza delle classi sfruttate, dei gruppi sociali oscillanti, degli intellettuali che si sottraggono agli assetti di dominio esistenti.
In un’epoca come quella attuale, nella quale sul piano politico e storico si assolutizza una fase (per quanto importante comunque limitata) della Storia contemporanea, preconizzando con essa il futuro e proclamando in ultima analisi, con solennità, la fine della storia, la vastità del pensiero politico di Gramsci non deve essere relegata nell’ambito dell’archeologia politica, abbandonata al monopolio della vanità degli intellettuali e della “critica corrosiva dei topi”, ma deve necessariamente tornare ad essere viva ed operativa, per tutti coloro che continuano ostinatamente a non considerare la miseria un semplice problema di ordine “morale”, che rifiutano di accettare la bipartizione “naturale” tra privilegiati ed esclusi, e dunque in conclusione, per tutti coloro che non si rassegnano a considerare questo come il migliore dei mondi possibile.
Note
1 Quaderni dal carcere, edizioni Einaudi. p. 866
2 Ibid., p. 1249
3 Ibid., p. 879
4 Che fare? cit. p. 86
5 Su questo punto le testimonianze sono molte, qui ci limitiamo a riportare un passaggio della Storia del Partito Comunista Italiano di Paolo Spriano: “ Aveva una voce così bassa che mal si addiceva ai comizi. Preferiva ascoltare che non parlare, e parlare a tu per tu col compagno o con l’operaio che non intervenire a una tribuna; badava a suscitare e a convincere piuttosto che a proclamare e a comandare. Non aveva neppure il temperamento dell’apostolo: l’ironia, il sarcasmo, il gusto della precisione logica e del lavoro ben fatto, si accompagnavano agli slanci di una passione e di una volontà che il naturale ‘pessimismo dell’intelligenza’ non offuscava.” p. 15
6 Nel Quaderno dieci Gramsci afferma: “nell’epoca attuale, la guerra di movimento si è avuta politicamente dal marzo 1917 al marzo 1921 ed è seguita una guerra di posizione il cui rappresentante, oltre che pratico (per l’Italia), ideologico, per l’Europa, è il fascismo”. p.. 1229
7 Gramsci concepiva il partito di massa come uno strumento impegnato 365 giorni all’anno, che utilizza qualsiasi elemento anche parziale di lotta, per conquistarsi sul campo l’egemonia, così come chiarisce questo passaggio della lettera che Gramsci mandò nel 1924 a Togliatti e Terracini, contestando gli assunti della direzione bordighista.
“Il partito ha mancato di una attività organica di agitazione e propaganda, che invece avrebbe dovuto avere tutte le nostre cure e dar luogo al formarsi di veri e propri specialisti in questo campo. Non si è cercato di suscitare tra le masse, in ogni occasione, la possibilità di esprimersi nello stesso senso del partito comunista. Ogni avvenimento, ogni ricorrenza di carattere locale o nazionale o mondiale avrebbe dovuto servire per agitare le masse attraverso le cellule comuniste, facendo votare mozioni, diffondendo manifestini. Ciò non è stato casuale”. In La formazione del gruppo dirigente del PCI nel 1923-24, p. 195
L'ERNESTO 3/2002 del 01/05/2002
Negli ultimi anni si è tentato di negare la consonanza di pensiero tra i due grandi rivoluzionari. Un disegno ideologico che trova le sue basi materiali nel tentativo di liquidare Lenin e che rischia di trasformare Gramsci in un “libero pensatore umanista”
Una prima considerazione di carattere generale che emerge dall’analisi diretta degli scritti di Gramsci – e non solo dallo studio di articoli, saggi e documenti politici del periodo che arriva fino al Congresso di Lione, ma anche degli stessi Quaderni – riguarda la forte consonanza tra molti aspetti del pensiero di Gramsci e quello di Lenin. Proprio questa consonanza, negli ultimi anni, è stata risolutamente combattuta, per legittimare in qualche modo un’operazione di rilettura in chiave “liberal” del pensiero “maturo” di Gramsci, una rilettura “neutra” che si articola almeno in tre livelli: la prima tende a presentare Gramsci come un semplice libero pensatore, affamato di cultura a prescindere dal suo ruolo di teorico ed organizzatore del movimento comunista internazionale; la seconda tende a farne un idealista hegeliano tutto assorto nell’indagare la natura sovrastrutturale del concetto di società civile; la terza, infine, cerca di rintracciare tra le pagine dei Quaderni e negli abusatissimi concetti di “egemonia” e “guerra di posizione”, la prova di una frattura tra il Gramsci pre e post 1926, per giustificare tramite essa la discontinuità, se non proprio l’incompatibilità, tra queste categorie del Gramsci “maturo”, e la strutturazione complessiva del pensiero di Lenin.
Una delle ragioni di questa revisione va forse ricercata nel clima culturale e politico che si è creato con la fine “della spinta propulsiva” dell’esperienza del socialismo reale, che ha reso troppo ingombrante e imbarazzante la figura di Lenin per certi ambienti politico-intellettuali, e che in conseguenza ha portato questi al goffo tentativo di emanciparsi da quella esperienza, tramite un netto taglio d’accetta, che ripulisse Gramsci da tutto ciò che potesse risultare in qualche modo scomodo. In realtà così non si analizza la storia ma la si trasforma in una propria “biografia storico-politica”, e al contempo non si fanno neanche i conti con quell’esperienza che va semmai affrontata proprio tramite la piena valutazione delle fonti documentali, e dunque anche tramite il giusto riconoscimento alla profondità e fecondità storica del pensiero di Lenin, e quindi alla sua influenza su Gramsci, anziché tramite il suo occultamento o la sua mistificazione.
Questa operazione di maniera, tutta ideologica e per niente scientifica, ha l’evidente scopo di giungere appunto alla definizione di un Gramsci liberale o al massimo socialdemocratico, ed è insomma una di quelle tipiche forme di degenerazioni storiografiche che Gramsci stesso definiva come “storia feticistica”, con la quale si pretende di rileggere la vastità dei processi storici passati in funzione delle compatibilità attuali, dunque un approccio che fa assurgere a principio guida della propria analisi un presupposto per sua natura antistorico, che inevitabilmente tende a piegare il passato in funzione dei propri interessi politici immediati e contingenti, trovando così in esso le ragioni delle proprie “svolte”.
Affermare infatti che le categorie gramsciane di “guerra di posizione” e di “egemonia” sono politicamente autocefale, o comunque antitetiche rispetto al pensiero di Lenin, significa fare un torto non solo a Lenin e a Gramsci, ma alla verità storica. Così nel quaderno numero sette è lo stesso Gramsci ad affermare: “mi pare che Ilici aveva compreso che occorreva un mutamento della guerra manovrata applicata vittoriosamente in Oriente nel 17, alla guerra di posizione che era la sola possibile in occidente (...) questo mi pare significare la formula del “fronte unico” (...) solo che Ilici non ebbe il tempo di approfondire la sua formula, pur tenendo conto che egli poteva approfondirla solo teoricamente, mentre il compito fondamentale era nazionale, cioè domandava una ricognizione del terreno e una fissazione degli elementi di società civile” 1.
Ancora nel quaderno dieci si può leggere: “La proposizione contenuta nell’introduzione alla Critica dell’economia politica che gli uomini prendono coscienza dei conflitti di struttura sul terreno delle ideologie deve essere considerata un’affermazione di carattere gnoseologico e non puramente psicologico e morale. Da ciò consegue che il principio teorico pratico dell’egemonia ha anche esso una portata gnoseologica e pertanto in questo campo è da ricercare l’approccio teorico massimo di Ilici alla filosofia della praxis. Ilici avrebbe fatto progredire effettivamente la filosofia in quanto fece progredire la dottrina e la pratica politica. La realizzazione di un apparato egemonico, in quanto crea un nuovo terreno ideologico, determina una riforma delle coscienze e dei metodi di conoscenza, è un fatto filosofico”2.
Ancora più esplicite e illuminanti, da questo punto di vista, sono le note che vanno sotto il nome di Posizione del problema, sempre nel quaderno sette: “Marx è un creatore di Weltanschauung ma quale è la posizione di Ilici? È puramente subordinata e subalterna? La spiegazione è nello stesso marxismo – scienza e azione –. Il passaggio dall’utopia alla scienza e dalla scienza all’azione. La fondazione di una classe dirigente (cioè di uno stato) equivale alla creazione di una Weltanschauung . (...) Per Ilici questo è realmente avvenuto in un territorio determinato. Ho accennato altrove alla importanza filosofica del concetto e del fatto di egemonia, dovuto a Ilici. L’egemonia realizzata significa la critica reale di una filosofia, la sua reale dialettica. (...) Fare un parallelo tra Marx e Ilici è stolto e ozioso: esprimono due fasi: scienza-azione, che sono omogenee ed eterogenee nello stesso tempo”.
Nel passaggio successivo Gramsci compie un curioso parallelo nel rapporto tra Marx e Lenin, con quello tra Cristo e S. Paolo, che chiarisce la sua opinione su una categoria, sorta dopo la morte di Lenin, che fu e che rimane ancora oggi, elemento di controversia all’interno dello stesso movimento marxista, quella di marxismo-leninismo. “Così, storicamente, sarebbe assurdo un parallelo tra Cristo - Weltanschauung, S. Paolo organizzazione, azione, espansione della Weltanschauung: essi sono ambedue necessari nella stessa misura e però sono della stessa statura storica. Il Cristianesimo potrebbe chiamarsi, storicamente, cristianesimo-paolinismo e sarebbe l’espressione più esatta (solo la credenza nella divinità di Cristo ha impedito un caso di questo genere, ma questa credenza è anch’essa solo un elemento storico, e non teorico)” 3.
Dopo la lettura di queste note, non sono necessari troppi giri di parole, per chiarire che ad un ipotetico allontanamento di Gramsci dal leninismo nelle riflessioni del carcere, così come sostenuto, avrebbe dovuto corrispondere il contemporaneo allontanamento di questi dal marxismo, ma essendo tale tesi ancora più difficile da dimostrare della prima, coloro che si dilettano in quest’opera revisionistica, non si rivelano abbastanza arditi da arrivare a tanto e in conseguenza decidono dunque, di fermarsi al primo gradino della revisione.
Ma per dimostrare l’insussistenza di questo impianto teorico e per mostrare che la categoria egemonica e più in generale la consapevolezza delle differenze di contesto tra oriente e occidente, fossero tutt’altro che estranee a Lenin, avremmo potuto riportare alcuni passaggi da questo punto di vista assai significativi, come lo scritto leniniano del 1898 sullo sviluppo capitalistico in Russia, i suoi interventi al VII Congresso del PCB del 1918, al X del 1921, al III Congresso dell’Internazionale comunista del luglio 1921, e ad ulteriore sostegno avremmo potuto ancora citare gli scritti del periodo relativo al trattato di pace Brest-Litovsk, ed al paragrafo del Che fare? intitolato Denunce politiche e educazione dell’attività rivoluzionaria4.
Con tutto questo non si vuole certo affermare che il pensiero di Gramsci sia una applicazione pedissequa e ortodossa del leninismo, perché anche questa sarebbe una visione manieristica scarsamente attinente con la realtà, oltre che un insulto all’intelligenza, ma semplicemente che Gramsci, sia sul piano teorico che politico, fa consapevolmente proprio sin dal primo momento, l’assunto più importante del pensiero di Lenin, cioè quello di far interagire dialetticamente la propria strategia con il mutare delle condizioni generali, storiche, culturali e territoriali, anziché rinchiudersi “in una dottrina come in un’armatura”, e rendere con ciò il marxismo una “dottrina esteriore di affermazioni dogmatiche ed indiscutibili”.
Come già detto Gramsci ha fornito un contributo enorme ed originalissimo al marxismo, rendendolo una teoria viva e operativa tramite “un’accurata ricognizione nazionale degli elementi di trincea e di fortezza rappresentati dagli elementi di società civile”, ha cioè realizzato uno degli esempi di sviluppo del marxismo più organici e ricchi in assoluto, contestualizzando gli assunti teorici di Marx alle specificità economico-sociali, storiche e culturali dell’Italia, così come Lenin a sua volta contestualizzò questi alle peculiarità russe.
Dunque, considerando l’insieme dell’attività sia teorica che politica di Gramsci – dagli anni dell’Ordine Nuovo, alla conferenza di Como, al Congresso di Lione, alle riflessioni del carcere –, la prima conclusione più logica è che sicuramente non si possa parlare di rottura o addirittura di ripudio (tra il Gramsci pre e post 1926), come qualcuno sostiene, ma semmai di una evoluzione, di una costante crescita in simbiosi dialettica con la realtà, che comunque anche nei suoi ultimi assunti, non va mai disgiunta da una strategia che ha come suo asse portante la lotta di classe e come suo obbiettivo il socialismo. La prima conclusione è in sostanza, che il goffo tentativo di rendere Gramsci ciò che non era, per mera piaggeria di corte, costituisce una pessima operazione di mistificazione storica.
Nei Quaderni Gramsci sviluppa organicamente, con una ampiezza sorprendente, alcuni degli spunti e delle riflessioni che segnarono non solo l’elaborazione teorica, ma più concretamente, le battaglie politiche di cui egli fu protagonista sin dalle sue prime esperienze torinesi. Dal libro di Domenico Losurdo, Antonio Gramsci dal liberalismo al comunismo critico, estrapoliamo una valutazione di ordine generale che probabilmente coglie in pieno l’importanza del contributo fornito da quest’ultimo al pensiero marxista mondiale, e cioè che nei Quaderni, ma più in generale in tutto il pensiero di Gramsci, la categoria di base del marxismo, vale a dire il passaggio dalla classe in sé alla classe per sé, l’acquisizione da parte del proletariato della propria coscienza e soggettività politica, assume una “configurazione nettamente più complessa e tormentata che in Marx e nello stesso Lenin”, che ha a monte un problema storico nodale, quello di rendere le classi subalterne realmente protagoniste della loro emancipazione, quello per il quale la coscienza di classe può essere raggiunta solo con l’assunzione di un pieno ruolo dirigente da parte del proletariato e con il rigetto di una partecipazione passiva, basata sulle deleghe “bonapartistiche” a bardature burocratiche ed a organismi dirigenti del movimento operaio. Un problema che mantiene drammaticamente la sua attualità in un’epoca come quella odierna, caratterizzata dalla sempre maggiore lontananza tra dirigenti e diretti, tra oligarchie e masse, tra una politica ad esclusivo beneficio delle classi privilegiate e le aspirazioni mortificate del resto della società, un’epoca nella quale l’emarginazione delle classi strumentali e l’aumento esponenziale di quelle private di qualsiasi ruolo nei processi produttivi, e di un effettivo diritto di cittadinanza sociale e politico, è sempre più evidente.
All’individuazione di questo problema Gramsci giunge, non per una semplice intuizione intellettuale e speculativa, come risultato di una ricerca condotta a tavolino, ma attraverso una esperienza politica vissuta a diretto contatto con la classe operaia, con le sue esigenze, i suoi bisogni. Nei confronti del proletariato Gramsci non ha mai assunto l’atteggiamento distaccato e freddo dell’intellettuale, non si limitava a “sapere” ma cercava di “comprendere e sentire”, e ciò emerge non solo da ciò che ci resta dei suoi scritti, ma anche dalle numerose ricostruzioni biografiche. In queste, infatti, la testimonianza più ricorrente e significativa, da parte degli operai che negli anni torinesi ebbero modo di conoscerlo e frequentarlo, era che a differenza degli altri dirigenti del movimento operaio, Gramsci sapesse non solo parlare, ma soprattutto ascoltare5, che avesse un reale interesse, una “passione”, che lo spingeva ad informarsi su tutti gli aspetti della vita dei lavoratori, delle loro condizioni materiali di esistenza, delle loro conoscenze tecniche, della loro psicologia, delle concrete dinamiche dei processi produttivi.
La teoria del partito inteso come “intellettuale collettivo” rappresenta il risultato più fecondo e originale di questa passione, senza il quale non è possibile comprendere alcune categorie importanti del pensiero gramsciano, come quelle relative al passaggio dalla “guerra manovrata” alla “guerra di posizione”.
La questione della rivoluzione in occidente, e più concretamente in Italia, dopo il fallimento della “biennio rosso” e la fine della fase relativa alla guerra manovrata6, l’affermazione per la quale in occidente lo Stato costituisce solo la trincea più avanzata dietro la quale si sviluppa una robusta catena di trincee e casematte, espressione dell’egemonia politica, culturale e sociale delle classi dominanti, e dunque il compito operativo della conquista egemonica di quelle trincee e casematte da parte della classe operaia italiana, prima di lanciarsi nell’assalto frontale alla trincea più avanzata, sono infatti strettamente intrecciate alla individuazione della forma organizzativa più adeguata a perseguire questo compito, cioè all’idea del partito che Gramsci elabora.
Gramsci vedeva nella concezione del partito di cui si faceva portatore Bordiga non solo la continuità con la tradizione della filosofia idealista italiana, ma anche una idea di partito che opera solo nel momento topico dello scontro sociale, solo nella fase più acuta della radicalizzazione politica, che mantiene costituzionalmente la sua distanza dalle masse, dunque uno strumento strutturalmente inidoneo ad un lavoro teso alla conquista egemonica della società civile, che richiede la presenza sistematica7 di un partito che aderisce organicamente con le masse, quelle masse, – come più volte sottolineato –, che non devono essere solo dirette, ma devono diventare esse stesse dirigenti per assumere un ruolo egemone nei confronti della maggioranza delle classi sfruttate, dei gruppi sociali oscillanti, degli intellettuali che si sottraggono agli assetti di dominio esistenti.
In un’epoca come quella attuale, nella quale sul piano politico e storico si assolutizza una fase (per quanto importante comunque limitata) della Storia contemporanea, preconizzando con essa il futuro e proclamando in ultima analisi, con solennità, la fine della storia, la vastità del pensiero politico di Gramsci non deve essere relegata nell’ambito dell’archeologia politica, abbandonata al monopolio della vanità degli intellettuali e della “critica corrosiva dei topi”, ma deve necessariamente tornare ad essere viva ed operativa, per tutti coloro che continuano ostinatamente a non considerare la miseria un semplice problema di ordine “morale”, che rifiutano di accettare la bipartizione “naturale” tra privilegiati ed esclusi, e dunque in conclusione, per tutti coloro che non si rassegnano a considerare questo come il migliore dei mondi possibile.
Note
1 Quaderni dal carcere, edizioni Einaudi. p. 866
2 Ibid., p. 1249
3 Ibid., p. 879
4 Che fare? cit. p. 86
5 Su questo punto le testimonianze sono molte, qui ci limitiamo a riportare un passaggio della Storia del Partito Comunista Italiano di Paolo Spriano: “ Aveva una voce così bassa che mal si addiceva ai comizi. Preferiva ascoltare che non parlare, e parlare a tu per tu col compagno o con l’operaio che non intervenire a una tribuna; badava a suscitare e a convincere piuttosto che a proclamare e a comandare. Non aveva neppure il temperamento dell’apostolo: l’ironia, il sarcasmo, il gusto della precisione logica e del lavoro ben fatto, si accompagnavano agli slanci di una passione e di una volontà che il naturale ‘pessimismo dell’intelligenza’ non offuscava.” p. 15
6 Nel Quaderno dieci Gramsci afferma: “nell’epoca attuale, la guerra di movimento si è avuta politicamente dal marzo 1917 al marzo 1921 ed è seguita una guerra di posizione il cui rappresentante, oltre che pratico (per l’Italia), ideologico, per l’Europa, è il fascismo”. p.. 1229
7 Gramsci concepiva il partito di massa come uno strumento impegnato 365 giorni all’anno, che utilizza qualsiasi elemento anche parziale di lotta, per conquistarsi sul campo l’egemonia, così come chiarisce questo passaggio della lettera che Gramsci mandò nel 1924 a Togliatti e Terracini, contestando gli assunti della direzione bordighista.
“Il partito ha mancato di una attività organica di agitazione e propaganda, che invece avrebbe dovuto avere tutte le nostre cure e dar luogo al formarsi di veri e propri specialisti in questo campo. Non si è cercato di suscitare tra le masse, in ogni occasione, la possibilità di esprimersi nello stesso senso del partito comunista. Ogni avvenimento, ogni ricorrenza di carattere locale o nazionale o mondiale avrebbe dovuto servire per agitare le masse attraverso le cellule comuniste, facendo votare mozioni, diffondendo manifestini. Ciò non è stato casuale”. In La formazione del gruppo dirigente del PCI nel 1923-24, p. 195
