[内容提要]著名学者萨米尔·阿明在美刊《每月评论》2001年6月号上发表《帝国主义和全球化》(Imperialism and Globalization)一文，对帝国主义全球化条件下的民主和发展问题提出了独到的见解，驳斥了资产阶级意识形态所谓的资本主义市场制度与民主天然一致的说法，认为其实质是剖裂政治领域和经济领域。文章主要内容如下。
[关键词] 萨米尔·阿明、 帝国主义、全球化
帝国主义的三个阶段及其意识形态
帝国主义并不是资本主义的一个阶段。帝国主义与资本主义是与生俱来的。帝国主义对世界的征服经历了两个阶段。第一个阶段是西欧征服美洲，其结果是印第安文明的毁灭、印第安人的西班牙化一基督教化或者干脆是种族灭绝。信仰天主教的西班牙人以宗教的名义行动，英国新教徒从圣经出发认为他们有权铲除“异教徒”。今天已经没有人怀疑上述暴行与商业资本的扩张密切相关了，但是现在的欧洲人仍然接受为上述暴行辩护的意识形态话语。帝国主义扩张的第二个阶段以产业革命为基础，并表现为对亚洲和非洲的殖民征服，目的是攫取全球自然资源。但是包括第二国际在内的欧洲人再次接受了资本的话语，称帝国主义的扩张为“文明传道”。
人类社会在帝国主义的第二阶段遭遇了空前的两极分化。1800年世界富人与穷人的财产比例为2: 1，今天这一数字已经变成60: 1。资本主义文明的巨大“成就”也引发了空前激烈的斗争。“二战”后的民族解放运动结束了殖民主义体系。欧洲殖民国家的统治阶级不得不在没有殖民地的背景下开始了复兴资本主义积累的工作，也就是说在一种新型全球化的基础上，在不同于1492年以来体系的基础上建设宏大的欧洲人空间。
今天 ， 帝国主义扩张开始了它毁坏世界的第三次浪潮，这次浪潮受到苏联解体和第三世界新自由主义政权执政的鼓舞。资本的目的仍然与以前一样:控制市场，掠夺资源，超额剥削边缘国家劳动力大军— 尽管在某些特征上与此前的帝国主义时代有所不同。这一次，帝国主义国家的意识形态话语建立在“干涉责任”上，并宜称“干涉责任”是出于对“民主” 、“人 权” 和“人道主义” 的保卫。但是西方在使用这些话语时运用了臭名昭著的双重标准，以致在亚洲人和非洲人看来这些语言的使用具有极大的讽刺性。然而西方人却以极大的热情来对待这些话语，就像当年为帝国主义早期阶段的暴行辩护一样。
美国将它的帝国主义目标用神圣的语言仔细包装起来，这种美国意识形态宣扬“美 国的历史使命” 。这是从建立美国的“国父们”那里流传下来的传统。因此，目前美国的霸权必然是“仁慈”的，是道德和民主的源泉，那些受这种霸权统治的人是受益者而不是受害者。美国霸权、世界和平、民主和物质进步是结合在一起的不可分割的术语。欧洲舆论尤其是欧洲左派舆论大多支持美国的论调。媒体的宜传使西方人相信，美国和欧盟国家是“民主的” ，他们国家的政府不可能产生“坏意志” ， “坏意志”是东方“独裁者”的专利。西方人深陷于这种信仰之中，忘记了资本利益的决定性影响。于是，帝国主义国家中的人民再一次赋予自己良心以清白。
民主与发展的关系以及民主与市场的关系
1. 民主与市场是一致的吗?
对发展而言，民主是绝对必要的方面。但是这种观念似乎只是最近才被广为接受。不久以前，无论是在西方国家，还是在东方国家或者南方国家，民主都被认为是“奢侈品” ，这时资本主义世界统治阶级普遍接受的信条是，只有在“发展”解决了社会物质问题以后，民主才会到来。美国以此为它支持拉丁美洲军事独裁者辩护，欧洲人以此为他们支持非洲专制政权辩护。许多第三世界国家、一党制国家以及苏联体制国家也接受这一信条。但现在这一信条一夜之间被颠倒过来了。现在在世界各地，官方几乎每天都在谈论民主问题，获得以正式形式颁发的民主合格证成为从富裕的大国获取援助的一个“条件”。
从一开 始，资产阶级社会将经济管理和政治管理分割开来，对它们采用不同的特殊原则。根据这种观点，民主是好的政治管理的理性原则。由于男人(当时妇女是不包括在内的)或者说一定的男人(受到良好教育的富足的男人)是理性的，他们有责任制定法律，有责任通过选举选择执行法律的人。另一方面，经济生活受另外一种原则的支配，这同样被说成是“理性”要求的表达，这些原则指私有产权、成为企业家的权利、市场上的竞争等。这一套原则与资本主义的原则相同，而与民主原则没有任何关系。“民主 ” ( 即对政治生活的现代管理)和“市场”(即资本主义对经济活动的管理)应当被看作一致的还是分歧的?当前的时髦话语宣称这两者是一致的，民主和市场被认为互为存在基础，民主需要市场，市场也需要民主。启蒙时代的思想家曾询问自己，这两者为什么是一致的?最初，民主必须建立在财产资格的基础上，必须只给与那些同时既是公民又是企业家的人。那么很自然，作为资本家，他们选举时的选择总是与他们的利益相一致的。但后来民主权利向其他公民扩展了。这一扩展并不是资本主义发展的自发结果，也不是资本主义发展要求的体现。恰恰相反，这些权利是该制度的受害者逐渐赢得的，是他们向该制度斗争的结果。民主权利的扩展必然带来这样一个问题:大多数人(该制度的被剥削者)的意志与市场为他们准备的命运之间的矛盾通过民主投票表现出来了，这使得该制度出现了不稳定甚至爆炸的危险。至少存在这样的风险和可能性，即受到质疑的市场不得不服从于社会意志，而这与资本利润最大化是不一致的。换句话说，对一部分人(资本家)而言存在风险，而对另一部分人(工人公民)而言存在另外的可能性，即市场可能受到调控而不是严格按照市场单方面的逻辑运作。这不仅是可能的，而且在战后福利国家中已经实现了。如果具体的历史产生了这样一种环境，在这种环境中社会批判运动变得四分五裂毫无力量，以至于似乎不存在对居于支配地位的意识形态起替代作用的思想，那么这时民主就被掏空了一切实质内容，而落人市场的股掌之中。你可以以你所喜欢的方式自由投票。但无论你做什么，都没有效果，因为你的命运决定于他处，决定于议会之外，决定于市场当中。民主对市场的从属(而不是一致)反映在政治学语言中，便是“交替”(alternation)(变换当权者的面孔以便继续做同样的事情)取代了“替代”(alternative)(做另外的事情)。从一开 始，民主与市场“天然”一致的理论就包含着危险。它假定一个社会与它自身是协调的，这个社会不存在矛盾，就像一些所谓后现代主义者所说的那样。但是现在全球资本主义市场关系已经产生了空前规模的不平等。市场与民主一致的理论今天只是纯粹的教条，是虚构政治学(imaginary politics)的一种学说。这正如“纯粹经济学”不是关于现实存在的资本主义的理论， 而是一种虚构经济学(imaginary economy)的理论。
2. 资 产 阶级个人主义意识形态的危害
由 于上 面论述的原因，我们再也不能接受被普遍宜传的所谓民主与资本主义一致的观念。相反，我们意识到资本主义中潜藏着专制主义。
个人与 集体之间的矛盾是每一个社会与生俱来的，存在于社会的每一个层次。这一矛盾在所有前现代的社会制度下，是通过社会对个人的否定和驯服而克服的。个人只能通过他在家庭、部落和社会中的身份而获得承认。然而在现代(资本主义)世界的意识形态里，上述否定关系被颠倒了:现代性通过个人的权利来表明自身，这种权利甚至是与社会相对抗的。在我看来，这一颠倒只是解放的前提条件，只是解放的开始。因为它也释放了个人之间互相争斗的潜能。资本主义意识形态持这种暖昧的伦理观:竞争万岁，让强者获得胜利。这种意识形态的毁灭性后果有时为其他尚存的伦理原则所限制，其中最重要的有源于宗教的伦理道德和从资本主义以前社会形态继承下来的伦理道德。如果没有这些限制性因素，那么个人权利这种单方面的意识形态就会产生恐怖和专制。
我认为 ，马克思没有看到全部资产阶级个人主义意识形态的潜在反动性。他认为美国没有封建社会的残余，这是美国较之欧洲的优势。但是我的意见正相反，我认为欧洲封建社会的历史相对而言具有积极意义— 支配美国日常生活的那些比欧洲多得多的暴力的存在，不正说明美国缺乏前现代的传统导致的恶果吗?就这些前现代传统强调宽容和团结而言，它们对于后资本主义意识形态的出现是具有积极意义的。而如果缺乏它们就会增强资本主义意识形态。“软”专制主义(与硬专制主义如麦卡锡主义交替使用)正是美国的一贯特征。在美国，人民参加投票的比例比其他任何地方都要低。
3. 真正的发展与民主之间的关系
如 果 在 市场与民主之间没有一致性，那么发展(按照通常的理解，指通过市场的扩展使经济加速增长)与高度发达的民主实践就不相容了吗?
要证明这个论点并不缺乏证据。韩国、台湾和巴西在军事独裁之下的“成功” 以及许多民族主义者的平民主义政府的“成功”与民主没有什么关系。当年德国和日本在赶超英法时并不比他们的竞争对手民主。但另一方面我们也看到，战后民主的意大利比法西斯时代的发展要快得多，西欧在社会民主主义之下也取得了历史上最辉煌的发展。
或许有人会说，现实存在的社会主义的历史会反驳这一论点。确实，苏联意识形态认为，取消私有财产就直接意味着私有财产被社会财产取代了。但无论马克思还是列宁都没有做过这样简单的陈述。对他们来说，取消资本和土地的私人所有制只是向构建社会所有制的长期演化的可能性迈出了必要的第一步。只有当民主化已经成为强大的进程，当公民一生产者已经变成对从工作场所到国家大事的一切事情所作出的决定的主人的时候，社会所有制才开始变成现实。这项任务的难度不亚于建设一种新文化，需要连续数代人不懈地用他们的行动逐渐改变自身。
4. 真正的民主与“社群主义”
民主必然是一个普世主义的概念，在这一本质点上民主不容有任何折扣。但是占支配地位的话语在解释民主时割裂了民主，他们的解释有利于某“种族”、“社群”或“文化群体”(如伦敦郊区的印第安人、法国的北非人、美国的黑人)，却最终否定了人类的统一。盎格鲁一撒克逊的身份认同政治学(identity politics)将这一倾向发展为“社群主义”(communitarianism )，这就否定了人类真正的平等。即使初衷是好的，“社群主义”也要将个人禁锢在社群中，将社群禁锢在现行制度强加的等级制度的严密限制当中。这其实与种族隔离相差无几。民主的有效性、可信度和合法性被侵蚀，人们只有到特别的身份认同中寻求虚幻的保护。文化主义认为每一个社群(宗教、种族、性别或其他)都有自身不可约减的价值。这种观念不是对民主的补充，而正好与民主矛盾。
社会斗争的全球化:重振发展的条件
民主和发展 的未来前景取决于现存的强大的客观趋势的发展和人民及社会力量对这种客观趋势的反应和挑战。
在 我 们的时代，对未来作出预言尤其困难，因为支配各种行为者的所有的政治机制都消失了。当后“二战”时期结束之际，政治生活的结构也崩溃了。政治生活和政治斗争传统上在政治国家的背景下进行，政治上国家(不是政府)的合法性不存在问题。在国家内部，政党、工会和其他许多组织，构成了该体系的基本结构，政治运动、社会斗争和意识形态思潮就在这个体系中发生。但是我们发现，现在几乎在世界各地，这些组织都丧失了一部分甚至全部合法性。人民不再相信它们了。
在这些组织原来的位置上，各种各样的“运动”层出不穷，这些运动围绕环保、妇女问题或者民主、社会公正问题或者种族、宗教认同问题而展开。这种新的政治生活很不稳定。因为其中有些运动有意识地参与了(或者能够参与)对由当权者统治的社会的拒绝。另外一些运动则相反，对此毫无兴趣。当权者能够并且确实利用了这一区别。当权者扶持利用一部分运动，而打击压制另外一部分运动。
目前 世 界 管 理存在一个全球性的政治策略。该策略的目标是通过促成国家和社会组织的解体来尽可能地造成敌视现存制度力量的分裂。车臣和科索沃越多越好。在这种情况下，利用和操纵基于身份认同的运动就受到欢迎。因此，社群认同(种族、宗教或者其他)问题是我们时代的中心问题。
我认为在辨别以身份认同为基础的运动时，存在一个根本的标准。一部分运动，它们提出的要求反对社会剥削，它们要求在每一个领域都实行民主，这样的运动是进步的。与此相反，另一部分运动，它们标榜自己“没有社会纲领”(因为这不重要)， “对全球化没有敌意”(因为这也不重要)，宣称它们与民主概念不相干(民主是“西方”概念)，这样的运动显然是反动的，是为统治资本的目的服务的。
民主和各族人民的权利，这在今天只不过被理解为新自由主义者控制世界危机的政治工具，以此作为经济工具的补充。所谓“善治” ，其真相也是这样。特别当这些概念成为美国和发达国家战略目标的工具时，其双重标准和讽刺意味就尤为明显。为了所谓的民主和人民权利可以去干涉海湾地区、科索沃(将来或许还有西藏)，但是巴勒斯坦、塞浦路斯和卢旺达人的民主和权利就被忘记了。
为 了 实 现民主和人民的权利，就必须采取行动。我们已经看到现行制度的受害者发起了斗争。巴西的无地农民，欧洲国家的工薪阶层和失业者，印度尼西亚的学生和工人⋯ ⋯ 这个名单每天都在增长。
Imperialism and Globalization
06/2001| Samir Amin |2001, Volume 53, Issue 02 (June)
Imperialism is not a stage, not even the highest stage, of capitalism: from the beginning, it is inherent in capitalism’s expansion. The imperialist conquest of the planet by the Europeans and their North American children was carried out in two phases and is perhaps entering a third.
The first phase of this devastating enterprise was organized around the conquest of the Americas, in the framework of the mercantilist system of Atlantic Europe at the time. The net result was the destruction of the Indian civilizations and their Hispanicization- Christianization, or simply the total genocide on which the United States was built. The fundamental racism of the Anglo-Saxon colonists explains why this model was reproduced elsewhere, in Australia, in Tasmania (the most complete genocide in history), and in New Zealand. For whereas the Catholic Spaniards acted in the name of the religion that had to be imposed on conquered peoples, the Anglo-Protestants took from their reading of the Bible the right to wipe out the “infidels.” The infamous slavery of the Blacks, made necessary by the extermination of the Indians—or their resistance—briskly took over to ensure that the useful parts of the continent were “turned to account.” No one today has any doubt as to the real motives for all these horrors or is ignorant of their intimate relation to the expansion of mercantile capital. Nevertheless, the contemporary Europeans accepted the ideological discourse that justified them, and the voices of protest—that of Las Casas, for example—did not find many sympathetic listeners.
The disastrous results of this first chapter of world capitalist expansion produced, some time later, the forces of liberation that challenged the logics that produced them. The first revolution of the Western Hemisphere was that of the slaves of Saint Domingue (present-day Haiti) at the end of the eighteenth century, followed more than a century later by the Mexican revolution of the decade of 1910, and fifty years after that by the Cuban revolution. And if I do not cite here either the famous “American revolution” or that of the Spanish colonies that soon followed, it is because those only transferred the power of decision from the metropolis to the colonists so that they could go on doing the same thing, pursue the same project with even greater brutality, but without having to share the profits with the “mother country.”
The second phase of imperialist devastation was based on the industrial revolution and manifested itself in the colonial subjection of Asia and Africa. “To open the markets”—like the market for opium forced on the Chinese by the Puritans of England—and to seize the natural resources of the globe were the real motives here, as everyone knows today. But again, European opinion—including the workers’ movement of the Second International—did not see these realities and accepted the new legitimizing discourse of capital. This time, it was the famous “civilizing mission.” The voices that expressed the clearest thinking at the time were those of cynical bourgeoises, like Cecil Rhodes, who envisaged colonial conquest so as to avoid social revolution in England. Again, the voices of protest—from the Paris Commune to the Bolsheviks—had little resonance.
This second phase of imperialism is at the origin of the greatest problem with which mankind has ever been confronted: the overwhelming polarization that has increased the inequality between peoples from a maximum ratio of two to one around 1800, to sixty to one today, with only 20 percent of the earth’s population being included in the centers that benefit from the system. At the same time, these prodigious achievements of capitalist civilization gave rise to the most violent confrontations between the imperialist powers that the world has ever seen. Imperialist aggression again produced the forces that resisted its project: the socialist revolutions that took place in Russia and China (not accidentally all occurred within the peripheries that were victims of the polarizing expansion of really existing capitalism) and the revolutions of national liberation. Their victory brought about a half-century of respite, the period after the Second World War, which nourished the illusion that capitalism, compelled to adjust to the new situation, had at last managed to become civilized.
The question of imperialism (and behind it the question of its opposite—liberation and development) has continued to weigh on the history of capitalism up to the present. Thus the victory of the liberation movements that just after the Second World War won the political independence of the Asian and African nations not only put an end to the system of colonialism but also, in a way, brought to a close the era of European expansion that had opened in 1492. For four and a half centuries, from 1500 to 1950, that expansion had been the form taken by the development of historical capitalism, to the point where these two aspects of the same reality had become inseparable. To be sure, the “world system of 1492” had already been breached at the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth by the independence of the Americas. But the breach was only apparent, because the independence in question had been won not by the indigenous peoples and the slaves imported by the colonists (except in Haiti) but by the colonists themselves, who thereby transformed America into a second Europe. The independence reconquered by the peoples of Asia and Africa took on a different meaning.
The ruling classes of the colonialist countries of Europe did not fail to understand that a new page of history had been turned. They realized that they had to give up the traditional view that the growth of their domestic capitalist economy was tied to the success of their imperial expansion. For that view was held not only by the old colonial powers—primarily England, France, and Holland—but also by the new capitalist centers formed in the nineteenth century—Germany, the United States, and Japan. Accordingly, the intra-European and international conflicts were primarily struggles over the colonies in the imperialist system of 1492. It being understood that the United States reserved to itself exclusive rights to the whole new continent.
The construction of a great European space—developed, rich, having a first-class technological and scientific potential, and strong military traditions—seemed to constitute a solid alternative on which to found a new resurgence of capitalist accumulation, without “colonies”—that is, on the basis of a new type of globalization, different from that of the system of 1492. The question remained how this new world system could differ from the old, if it would still be as polarizing as the old one, even if on a new basis, or if it would cease to be so.
No doubt this construction, which is not only far from finished but is going through a crisis that could call into question its long-term significance, will remain a difficult task. No formulas have yet been found that would make it possible to reconcile the historical realities of each nation, which weigh so heavily, with the formation of a politically united Europe. In addition, the vision of how this European economic and political space would fit into the new global system, which is also not yet constructed, has so far remained ambiguous, not to say foggy. Is this economic space to be the rival of the other great space, the one created in the second Europe by the United States? If so, how will this rivalry affect the relations of Europe and the United States with the rest of the world? Will the rivals confront each other like the imperialist powers of the earlier period? Or will they act in concert? In that case, will the Europeans choose to participate by proxy in this new version of the imperialist system of 1492, keeping their political choices in conformity with those of Washington? On what conditions could the construction of Europe become part of a globalization that would put a definitive end to the system of 1492?
Today we see the beginnings of a third wave of devastation of the world by imperialist expansion, encouraged by the collapse of the Soviet system and of the regimes of populist nationalism in the Third World. The objectives of dominant capital are still the same—the control of the expansion of markets, the looting of the earth’s natural resources, the superexploitation of the labor reserves in the periphery—although they are being pursued in conditions that are new and in some respects very different from those that characterized the preceding phase of imperialism. The ideological discourse designed to secure the assent of the peoples of the central Triad (the United States, Western Europe, and Japan) has been refurbished and is now founded on a “duty to intervene” that is supposedly justified by the defense of “democracy,” the “rights of peoples,” and “humanitarianism.” The examples of the double standard are so flagrant that it seems obvious to the Asians and Africans how cynically this language is used. Western opinion, however, has responded to it with as much enthusiasm as it did to the justifications of earlier phases of imperialism.
Furthermore, to this end the United States is carrying out a systematic strategy designed to ensure its absolute hegemony by a show of military might that will consolidate behind it all the other partners in the Triad. From this point of view, the war in Kosovo fulfilled a crucial function, witness the total capitulation of the European states, which supported the American position on the “new strategic concept” adopted by NATO immediately after the “victory” in Yugoslavia on April 23-25, 1999. In this “new concept” (referred to more bluntly on the other side of the Atlantic as the “Clinton Doctrine”), NATO’s mission is, for practical purposes, extended to all of Asia and Africa (the United States, ever since the Monroe Doctrine, reserving the sole right to intervene in the Americas), an admission that NATO is not a defensive alliance but an offensive weapon of the United States. At the same time, this mission is redefined in terms as vague as one could wish that include new “threats” (international crime, “terrorism,” the “dangerous” arming of countries outside NATO, etc.), which plainly makes it possible to justify almost any aggression useful to the United States. Clinton, moreover, made no bones about speaking of “rogue states” that might be necessary to attack “preventively,” without further specifying what he means by the roguery in question. In addition, NATO is freed from the obligation of acting only on mandate from the UN, which is treated with a contempt equal to that which the fascist powers showed for the League of Nations (there is a striking similarity in the terms used).
American ideology is careful to package its merchandise, the imperialist project, in the ineffable language of the “historic mission of the United States.” A tradition handed down from the beginning by the “founding fathers,” sure of their divine inspiration. American liberals—in the political sense of the term, who consider themselves as the “left” in their society—share this ideology. Accordingly, they present American hegemony as necessarily “benign,” the source of progress in moral scruples and in democratic practice, which will necessarily be to the advantage of those who, in their eyes, are not victims of this project but beneficiaries. American hegemony, universal peace, democracy, and material progress are joined together as inseparable terms. Reality, of course, is located elsewhere.
The unbelievable extent to which public opinion in Europe (and particularly the opinion of the left, in places where it has the majority) has rallied around the project—public opinion in the United States is so naïve that it poses no problem—is a catastrophe that cannot but have tragic consequences. The intensive media campaigns, focused on the regions where Washington has decided to intervene, no doubt partly explain this widespread agreement. But beyond that, people in the West are persuaded that because the United States and the countries of the European Union are “democratic,” their governments are incapable of “ill will,” which is reserved for the bloody “dictators” of the East. They are so blinded by this conviction that they forget the decisive influence of the interests of dominant capital. Thus once again people in the imperialist countries give themselves a clear conscience.
Democracy is one of the absolute requirements for development. But we must still explain why, and on what conditions, because it is only recently that this idea has been, it seems, generally accepted. Not long ago the dominant dogma in the West, as in the East and the South, was that democracy was a “luxury” that could come only after “development” had solved the material problems of society. That was the official doctrine shared by the ruling circles of the capitalist world (by the United States to justify its support for the military dictators of Latin America, and the Europeans to justify theirs for the autocratic regimes of Africa); by the states of the Third World (where the Latin American theory of desarrollismo expressed it clearly); and by Ivory Coast, Kenya, Malawi, and many other countries which proved that the socialist states were not the only ones governed by single parties; and by the rulers of the Soviet system.
But now, overnight, the proposition has been turned into its opposite. Everywhere, or almost everywhere, there is daily official talk about the concern for democracy; a certificate of democracy, awarded in due form, is a “condition” for seeking aid from the big, rich democracies; and so forth. The credibility of this rhetoric is particularly doubtful when the principle of the “double standard,” which is applied with perfect cynicism, so plainly reveals in practice the real priority given to other, unacknowledged objectives, which the ruling circles attempt to achieve by pure and simple manipulation. This is not to deny that certain social movements, if not all, really do have democratic objectives, or that democracy really is the condition for development.
Democracy is a modern concept in the sense that it is the very definition of modernity—if, as I suggest, we understand by modernity the adoption of the principle that human beings individually and collectively (that is, societies) are responsible for their history. Before they could formulate that concept, people had to free themselves from the alienations characteristic of the forms of power that preceded capitalism, whether they were the alienations of religion or whether they took the form of “traditions” conceived as permanent, transhistorical facts. The expressions of modernity, and of the necessity for democracy that it implies, date from the Age of Enlightenment. The modernity in question is therefore synonymous with capitalism, and the democracy that it has produced is limited like the rest, like capitalism itself. In its historical bourgeois forms—even though they are the only ones known and practiced so far—it constitutes only a “stage.” Neither modernity nor democracy has reached the end of its potential development. That is why I prefer the term “democratization,” which stresses the dynamic aspect of a still-unfinished process, to the term “democracy,” which reinforces the illusion that we can give a definitive formula for it.
Bourgeois social thought has been based from the beginning, that is, since the Enlightenment, on a separation of the different domains of social life—among others, its economic management and its political management—and the adoption of different specific principles that are supposed to be the expression of the particular demands of “Reason” in each of these domains. According to this view, democracy is the reasonable principle of good political management. Since men (at the time, there was never any question of including women) or, more precisely, certain men (those who are sufficiently educated and well-to-do) are reasonable, they should have the responsibility of making the laws under which they wish to live and of choosing, by election, the persons who will be charged with executing those laws. Economic life, on the other hand, is managed by other principles that are likewise conceived as the expression of the demands of “Reason” (synonymous with human nature): private property, the right to be an entrepreneur, competition in markets. We recognize this group of principles as those of capitalism, which in and of themselves have nothing to do with the principles of democracy. This is the case especially if we think of democracy as implying equality—the equality of men and women, of course, but also of all human beings (bearing in mind that American democracy forgot its slaves until 1865 and the elementary civil rights of their descendants until 1960), of property owners and non-property owners (noting that private property exists only when it is exclusive, that is, if there are those who have none).
The separation of the economic and political domains immediately raises the question of the convergence or divergence of the results of the specific logics that govern them. In other words, should “democracy” (shorthand for modern management of political life) and “the market” (shorthand for capitalist management of economic activity) be viewed as convergent or divergent? The postulate on which the currently fashionable discourse rests, and which is elevated to the status of a truth so self-evident that there is no need to discuss it, affirms that the two terms converge. Democracy and the market supposedly engender each other, democracy requires the market and vice versa. Nothing could be further from the truth, as real history demonstrates.
The thinkers of the Enlightenment were more demanding than the common run of our contemporaries. Unlike the latter, they asked themselves why there was this convergence and on what conditions. Their answer to the first question was inspired by their concept of “Reason,” the common denominator of the modes of management envisaged for democracy and market. If men are reasonable, then the results of their political choices can only reinforce the results produced by the market. This, then, on the condition, obviously, that the exercise of democratic rights is reserved to beings endowed with reason, which is to say certain men—not women, who, as we know, are guided only by their emotions and not by reason; nor, of course, slaves, the poor, and the dispossessed (the proletarians), who only obey their instincts. Democracy must be based on property qualifications and reserved to those who are simultaneously citizens and entrepreneurs. Naturally, then, it is probable that their electoral choices will always, or almost always, be consistent with their interests as capitalists. But that at once means that in its convergence with, not to say subordination to, economics, politics loses its autonomy. Economistic alienation functions here to the full, concealing this fact.
The later extension of democratic rights to others besides citizen entrepreneurs was not the spontaneous result of capitalist development or the expression of a requirement of that development. Quite the contrary, those rights were won gradually by the victims of the system—the working class and, later, women. They were the result of struggles against the system, even if the system managed to adapt to them, to “recuperate” their benefits, as the saying goes. How and at what cost? That is the real question that must be asked here.
This extension of rights necessarily reveals a contradiction expressed through the democratic vote between the will of the majority (those exploited by the system) and the fate that the market has in store for them, the system runs the risk of becoming unstable, even explosive. At a minimum there is the risk—and the possibility—that the market in question may have to submit to the expression of social interests that do not coincide with the maximum profitability of capital, to which the economic domain gives priority. In other words, there is the risk for some (capital) and the possibility for others (the worker-citizens) that the market may be regulated in terms other than the workings of its strict unilateral logic. That is possible; indeed, in certain conditions it has come to pass, as in the postwar welfare state.
But that is not the only possible way of concealing the divergence between democracy and the market. If concrete history produces circumstances such that the movement of social criticism becomes fragmented and impotent, and that consequently there appears to be no alternative to the dominant ideology, then democracy can be emptied of all content that gets in the way of the market and is potentially dangerous for it. You can vote freely any way you like: white, blue, green, pink, or red. Whatever you do, it will have no effect, because your fate is decided elsewhere, outside the precincts of parliament, in the market. The subordination of democracy to the market (and not their convergence) is reflected in the language of politics. The word “alternation” (changing the faces in power so as to go on doing the same thing) has replaced the word “alternative” (doing something else).
This alternation that applies only to the meaningless remnants left by market regulation is in fact a sign that democracy is in crisis. It erodes the credibility and legitimacy of democratic procedures and can readily lead to the replacement of democracy with an illusory consensus based, for example, on religion or ethnic chauvinism. From the beginning, the thesis that there is a “natural” convergence between democracy and the market contained the danger that we would come to this pass. It presupposes a society reconciled with itself, a society without conflict, as certain so-called postmodernist interpretations suggest. But the evidence is conclusive that global capitalist market relations have generated ever greater inequalities. Convergence theory—the notion that the market and democracy converge—is today pure dogma; a theory of imaginary politics. This theory is, in its own domain, the counterpart of “pure economics,” which is the theory not of really existing capitalism but of an imaginary economy. Just as the dogma of market fundamentalism is everywhere wearing thin in the face of reality, we can no longer accept the popular notion propagated today that democracy converges with capitalism.
On the contrary, we become aware of the potential for authoritarianism latent in capitalism. Capitalism’s response to the challenge presented by the dialectic of the individual vs. the collective (social) does indeed contain this dangerous potential.
The contradiction between the individual and the collective, which is inherent in every society at every level of its reality, was surmounted, in all the social systems before modern times, by the negation of its first term—that is, by the domestication of the individual by society. The individual is recognizable only by and through his status in the family, the clan, and society. In the ideology of the modern (capitalist) world, the terms of the negation are reversed: modernity declares itself in the rights of the individual, even in opposition to society. In my opinion, this reversal is only a precondition of liberation, the beginning of liberation. Because at the same time it liberates a potential for permanent aggressivity in the relations between individuals. Capitalist ideology expresses this reality by its ambiguous ethic: long live competition, let the strongest win. The devastating effects of this ideology are sometimes contained by the coexistence of other ethical principles, mostly of religious origin or inherited from earlier social forms. But let these dams give way, and the unilateral ideology of the rights of the individual—whether in the popularized versions of Sade or Nietsche, or in the American version—can only produce horror and, if pushed to its limits, autocracy—hard (fascist) or soft.
Marx underestimated this danger, I think. Perhaps out of concern not to encourage any illusions stemming from an addiction to the past, he may not have seen all the reactionary potential in the bourgeois ideology of the individual. Witness his preference for the American society, on the pretext that it did not suffer from the vestiges of a feudal past that handicapped progress in Europe. I want to suggest, on the contrary, that Europe’s feudal past accounts for some of the relatively positive characteristics that argue in its favor. Should not the degree of violence that dominates daily life in the United States, which is out of all proportion to what exists in Europe, be attributed precisely to the absence of premodern antecedents in the United States? To go even further, can we not ascribe to these antecedents—where they exist—a positive role in the emergence of elements of a post-capitalist ideology, emphasizing the values of generosity and human solidarity? Does not their absence reinforce submission to the dominating power of capitalist ideology? Is it mere chance that, precisely, “soft” authoritarianism (alternating with phases of hard authoritarianism, as the experience of McCarthyism should remind all those who have systematically erased it from their memory of recent history) is one of the permanent characteristics of the American model? Is it mere chance that for this reason the United States supplies the perfect model of low-intensity democracy, to the point where the proportion of people who abstain from voting is unheard of elsewhere and that—another fact that is not just accidental—it is precisely the disinherited who stay away from the polls en masse?
How will a dialectical synthesis, beyond capitalism, make it possible to reconcile the rights of the individual and those of the collectivity? How will this possible reconciliation give more transparency to individual life and the life of society? These are questions that we shall not attempt to answer here, but that definitely present themselves, indeed challenge the bourgeois concept of democracy and identify its historical limits.
If, then, there is no convergence, least of all a “natural” one, between the market and democracy, are we to conclude that development—understood in its usual sense of accelerated economic growth through an expansion of markets (and up to now there has hardly been any experience of development of a different kind)—is incompatible with the exercise of a rather advanced degree of democracy?
There is no lack of facts that would argue in favor of this thesis. The “successes” of Korea, of Taiwan, of Brazil under the military dictatorship, and of the nationalist populisms in their ascending phase (Nasser, Boumedienne, the Iraq of the Baath, etc.) were not achieved by systems that had any great respect for democracy. Further back, Germany and Japan, in the phase when they were catching up, were certainly less democratic than their British and French rivals. The modern socialist experiments, which were scarcely democratic, occasionally registered remarkable growth rates. But on the other side, one might observe that postwar democratic Italy modernized with a speed and to a depth that fascism, for all its bluster; never achieved, and that Western Europe, with its advanced social democracy (the postwar welfare state), experienced the most prodigious period of growth in history. One could strengthen the comparison in favor of democracy by enumerating countless dictatorships that engendered only stagnation, and even devastating masses of intertwined difficulties.
Could we then adopt a reserved, relativist position, refuse to establish any kind of relation between development and democracy, and say that whether they are compatible or not depends on specific concrete conditions? That attitude is acceptable so long as we are content with the “ordinary” definition of development, identifying it with accelerated growth within the system. But it is no longer acceptable once we acknowledge the second of the three central propositions set forth at the beginning of this study. To wit: that globalized capitalism is by nature polarizing and that development is therefore a critical concept, which implies that development must take place within the framework of the construction of an alternative, post-capitalist society. That construction can only be the product of the progressive will and action of people. Is there a definition of democracy other than the one implicit in that will and that action? It is in this sense that democracy is truly the condition of development. But that is a proposition that no longer has anything to do with what the dominant discourse has to say on the subject. Our proposition comes down to saying in effect: there can be no socialism (if we use that term to designate a better, post-capitalist alternative) without democracy, but also there can be no progress in democratization without a socialist transformation.
The “realistic” observer who is lying in wait for me will lose no time in pointing out that the experience of really existing socialism argues against the validity of my thesis. True. The popular version of Soviet historical Marxism did decree that the abolition of private property meant straight away that it had been replaced by social property. Neither Marx nor Lenin had ever made so far-reaching a simplification. For them, the abolition of private ownership of capital and land was only the first necessary act initiating a possible long evolution toward the constitution of social ownership. Social ownership starts to become a reality only from the moment when democratization has made such powerful progress that the citizen-producers have become masters of all the decisions taken at all levels of social life, from the workplace to the summit of the state. The most optimistic of human beings could not imagine that this result might be achieved anywhere in the world—whether in the United States or France or the Congo—in “a few years,” like the few years at the end of which it was proclaimed that in one place or another the construction of socialism had been completed. For the task is nothing less than to build a new culture, which requires successive generations gradually transforming themselves by their own action.
The reader will have quickly understood that there is an analogy, and not a contradiction, between 1) the functioning, in historical capitalism, of the relation between utopian liberalism and pragmatic management; and 2) the functioning, in the Soviet society, of the relation between socialist ideological discourse and real management. The socialist ideology in question is that of Bolshevism which, following that of European social democracy before 1914 (and making no break with it on this fundamental point), did not challenge the “natural” convergence of the logics of the different domains of social life and gave a “meaning” to history in a facile, linear interpretation of its “necessary” course. That was no doubt one way of reading historical Marxism, but it was not the only possible way of reading Marx (at any rate, it is not mine). The convergence is expressed here in the same way: seen from the point of view imposed by the dogma, the management of the economy by the Plan (substituted for the market) obviously produces an appropriate response to the needs. Democracy can only reinforce the decisions of the Plan, and opposing these is irrational. But here too imaginary socialism runs up against the demands of the management of really existing socialism, which is confronted with real and serious problems, among others, for instance, developing the productive forces so as to “catch up.” The powers-that-be provide for that by cynical practices that cannot be, and are not, acknowledged. Totalitarianism is common to both systems and expresses itself in the same way: by systematic lying. If its manifestations were, plainly, more violent in the USSR, it is because the backwardness that had to be overcome was such an extremely heavy burden, while the progress that had been made in the West gave its societies comfortable cushions on which to rest (hence its often “soft” totalitarianism, as in the consumerism of the periods of easy growth).
Abandoning the thesis of convergence and accepting the conflict between the logics of different domains is the prerequisite for interpreting history in a way that potentially reconciles theory and reality. But it is also the prerequisite for devising strategies that will make it possible to take really effective action—that is, to make progress in every aspect of society.
The intimate relation between real social development and democratization, so close that the two are inseparable, has nothing to do with the chatter on the subject offered by the proponents of the dominant ideology. Their thinking is always second-rate, confusing, ambiguous, and in the end, despite what may sometimes appear, reactionary. As a consequence, it has become the perfect tool of the dominant power of capital.
Democracy is necessarily a universalist concept, and it can tolerate no lapse from that essential virtue. But the dominant discourse —even the one that emanates from forces that subjectively classify themselves as “on the left”—gives a sliced-up interpretation of democracy that in the end negates the unity of the human race in favor of “races,” “communities,” “cultural groups,” etc. Anglo-Saxon identity politics, the aggregate expression of which is “communitarianism,” is a blatant example of this negation of the real equality of human beings. To wish naively, even with the best of intentions, for specific forms of “community development”—which, it will be claimed afterwards, were produced by the democratically expressed will of the communities in question (the West Indians in the London suburbs, for example, or the North Africans in France, or the Blacks in the United States, etc.)—is to lock individuals inside these communities and to lock these communities inside the iron limits of the hierarchies that the system imposes. It is nothing less than a kind of apartheid that is not acknowledged as such.
The argument advanced by the promoters of this model of “community development” appears to be both pragmatic (“do something for the dispossessed and the victims, who are gathered together in these communities”) and democratic (“the communities are eager to assert themselves as such”). No doubt a lot of universalist talk has been and still is pure rhetoric, calling for no strategy for effective action to change the world, which would obviously mean considering concrete forms of struggle against the oppression suffered by this or that particular group. Agreed. But the oppression in question cannot be abolished if at the same time we give it a framework within which it can reproduce itself, even if in a milder form.
The attachment that members of an oppressed community may feel for their own culture of oppression, much as we may respect the feeling in the abstract, is nevertheless the product of the crisis of democracy. It is because the effectiveness, the credibility, and the legitimacy of democracy have eroded that human beings take refuge in the illusion of a particular identity that could protect them. Then we find on the agenda culturalism, that is, the assertion that each of these communities (religious, ethnic, sexual, or other) has its own irreducible values (that is, values that have no universal significance). Culturalism, as I have said elsewhere, is not a complement to democracy, a means of applying it concretely, but on the contrary a contradiction to it.
The scenarios for the future remain largely dependent on one’s vision of the relations between the strong objective tendencies and the responses that the peoples, and the social forces of which they are composed, make to the challenges those tendencies represent. So there is an element of subjectivity, of intuition, that cannot be eliminated. And that, by the way, is a very good thing, because it means that the future is not programmed in advance and that the product of the inventive imagination, to use Castoriadis’s strong expression, has its place in real history.
It is especially hard to make predictions in a period like ours, when all the ideological and political mechanisms that governed the behavior of the various actors have disappeared. When the post-Second World War period came to an end, the structure of political life collapsed. Political life and political struggles had traditionally been conducted in the context of political states, whose legitimacy was not questioned (the legitimacy of a government could be questioned, but not that of the state). Behind and within the state, political parties, unions, a few great institutions—like national associations of employers and the circles that the media call the “political class”—constituted the basic structure of the system within which political movements, social struggles, and ideological currents expressed themselves. But now we find that almost everywhere in the world these institutions have to one degree or another lost a good part, if not all, of their legitimacy. People “don’t believe in them any more.” Thus, in their place “movements” of various kinds have pushed to the fore, movements centered around the demands of the Greens, or of women, movements for democracy or social justice, and movements of groups asserting their identity as ethnic or religious communities. This new political life is therefore highly unstable. It would be worth discussing concretely the relation between these demands and movements and the radical critique of society (that is, of really existing capitalism) and globalized neoliberal management. Because some of these movements join—or could join—in the conscious rejection of the society projected by the dominant powers; others on the contrary, take no interest in it and do nothing to oppose it. The dominant powers are able to make this distinction, and they make it. Some movements they manipulate and support, openly or covertly; others they resolutely combat—that is the rule in this new and unsettled political life.
There is a global political strategy for world management. The objective of this strategy is to bring about the greatest possible fragmentation of the forces potentially hostile to the system by fostering the breakup of the state forms of organization of society. As many Slovenias, Chechnyas, Kosovos, and Kuwaits as possible! In this connection, the opportunity of using, even manipulating, demands based on separate identity is welcome. The question of community identity—ethnic, religious, or other—is therefore one of the central questions of our time.
The basic democratic principle, which implies real respect for diversity (national, ethnic, religious, cultural, ideological), can tolerate no breach. The only way to manage diversity is by practicing genuine democracy. Failing that, it inevitably becomes an instrument that the adversary can use for his (less often her) own ends. But in this respect the various lefts in history have often been lacking. Not always, of course, and much less so than is frequently said today. One example among others: Tito’s Yugoslavia was almost a model of coexistence of nationalities on a really equal footing; but certainly not Romania! In the Third World of the Bandung period the national liberation movements often managed to unite different ethnic groups and religious communities against the imperialist enemy. Many ruling classes in the first generation of African states were really transethnic. But very few powers were able to manage diversity democratically, or, when gains were made, to maintain them. Their weak inclination for democracy gave results as deplorable in this domain as in the management of the other problems of their societies. When the crisis came, the hard-pressed ruling classes, powerless to confront it, often played a decisive role in a particular ethnic community’s recourse to withdrawal, which was used as a means of prolonging their “control” of the masses. Even in many authentic bourgeois democracies, however, community diversity is far from having always been managed correctly. Northern Ireland is the most striking example.
Culturalism has been successful to the degree that democratic management of diversity has failed. By culturalism I mean the affirmation that the differences in question are “primordial,” that they should be given “priority” (over class differences, for example), and sometimes even that they are “transhistorical,” that is, based on historical invariables. (This last is often the case with religious culturalisms, which easily slide toward obscurantism and fanaticism.)
To sort out this tangle of demands based on identity, I would propose what I think is an essential criterion. Those movements whose demands are connected with the fight against social exploitation and for greater democracy in every domain are progressive. On the contrary, those that present themselves as having “no social program” (because that is supposed to be unimportant!) and as being “not hostile to globalization” (because that too is unimportant!)—a fortiori, those that declare themselves foreign to the concept of democracy (which is accused of being a “Western” notion)—are openly reactionary and serve the ends of dominant capital to perfection. Dominant capital knows this, by the way, and supports their demands (even when the media take advantage of their barbarous content to denounce the peoples who are its victims!), using, and sometimes manipulating, these movements.
Democracy and the rights of peoples, which the same representatives of dominant capital invoke today, are hardly conceived to be more than the political means of neoliberal management of the contemporary world crisis, complementing the economic means. The democracy in question depends on cases. The same is true of the “good governance” they talk about. In addition, because it is entirely subservient to the priorities that the strategy of the United States/Triad tries to impose, it is cynically used as a tool. Hence the systematic application of the double standard. No question of intervening in favor of democracy in Afghanistan or the countries of the Persian Gulf, for example, any more than of getting in the way of Mobutu yesterday, of Savimbi today, or of many others tomorrow. The rights of peoples are sacred in certain cases (today in Kosovo, tomorrow perhaps in Tibet), forgotten in others (Palestine, Turkish Kurdistan, Cyprus, the Serbs of Krajina whom the Croatian regime has expelled by armed force, etc.). Even the terrible genocide in Rwanda occasioned no serious inquiry into the share of responsibility of the states that gave diplomatic support to the governments that were openly preparing it. No doubt the abominable behavior of certain regimes facilitates the task by providing pretexts that are easy to exploit. But the complicitous silence in other cases takes away all credibility from the talk of democracy and the rights of peoples. One could not do less to meet the fundamental requirements of the struggle for democracy and respect for peoples, without which there can be no progress.
That being (fortunately) the case, in the new phase we are already witnessing the rise of struggles involving the working people who are victims of the system. Landless peasants in Brazil; wage earners and unemployed, in solidarity, in some European countries; unions that include the great majority of wage earners (as in Korea or South Africa); young people and students carrying along with them the urban working classes (as in Indonesia)—the list grows longer every day. These social struggles are bound to expand. They will surely be very pluralistic, which is one of the positive characteristics of our time. No doubt this pluralism stems from the accumulated results of what has sometimes been called the “new social movements”—women’s movements, ecological movements, democratic movements. They will, of course, have to confront different obstacles to their development, depending on time and place.
The central question here is what the relation will be between the overriding conflicts, by which I mean the global conflicts between the various dominant classes—that is, the states—whose possible geometry I have tried to outline above. Which will carry the day? Will the social struggles be subordinated, contained within the larger global-imperialist context of the conflicts, and therefore mastered by the dominant powers, even mobilized for their purposes, if not always manipulated? Or, on the contrary, will the social struggles win their autonomy and force the powers to adapt to their demands?
