The era of opposing sides is over, we have now entered that of unification. We are all enlisted under the same flag. If once the world was orientated towards two opposing illusions, which on close inspection turned out to be anything but divergent, now everybody is being called to unite under the same common verb. Enough of the chatter! A few words, clear and unequivocal, will do. Everybody knows what they need to do and what they should be interested in.

So a formless, flabby whole has taken the place of the “strong” ideologies of yesterday. Possibilism and flexibility, uncertainty and doubt have taken the place of the ideological certainties that transformed themselves into various shades of the concentration camp, all equally destined to social orthopaedics, i.e. the creation, by the whip, of a humanity suited to the conditions imposed by production relations.
Now any idea that is even slightly different is swiftly brought back to meet the requirements of the market, wrapped up in multicoloured cellophane and sold, first wholesale, then retail. The media experts direct thought-control and compete to produce opinion, grinding down any original ideas, any desire to be ‘really other’, into nothing. It is astounding that behind the possibilism one finds the ancient conceit intact: the arrogance of the doctrinaires, barons of nothingness, vassals within the limits of the hedge beyond which only fear of the unknown puts a brake on the thrust of the masses cut off from any possibility of intervening.
So, at world level, a small minority of privileged people are using their power as though they were closed up in a mediaeval castle, building a wall to defend their interests and economic power. A wall of linguistic and technological choices which claim to be universal, i.e. a basis for growth and common improvement, for the satisfaction of the universal interests of men, while in effect it is only a defensive rampart, an increasingly insurmountable barrier as the insiders, themselves slaves with golden chains always solidly fastened to the bosses’ interests, continue to grow in height and strength.
The real power centres today are the big international banks, the central issuing banks, the European Commission, the managers of general agreements on trading tariffs, the International Monetary Fund, etc. The means of information that keep this power together and transmit its directives, translating them into programmatic thought and action are: The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times, Far Eastern Economic Review, les Echoes, Reuter Agency, etc. The men who work there, slaves themselves but enjoying particular conditions of privilege, find themselves being trooped into the universities where a sad brood of economists are prostituting themselves part-time; into newspapers and reviews, where ambivalent journalists good for any sauce spread ignorance and idiocy; into political parties and unions, where tired zombies are recycling slogans of days gone by, giving the great mass of spectators the idea that they can choose their own ideas according to their own interests.
Political economy seems to have become the queen of the sciences. Everywhere in the circles mentioned above political economists jabber forecasts and analyses, study trends and index numbers, analyse curves and equations. Every central bank director feels himself to be a great economist and, leaning on his own reserves, tries to lay down the law to other States in money matters as though that were possible—something that is simply absurd in economics, perhaps more than anywhere else. The ridicule that befell the discount tax manoeuvre can only be compared to the ridicule to which the concept of pro-capita income has always been prey. If capitalism is ‘the natural condition of society’, as Alain Minc recently stated without a shadow of irony, this ‘natural’ condition is one of ridicule.
Think for a moment about the concept of the market and you are left with nothing tangible. What corrects the market? What do its chimerical laws tend to resolve? How can we get to know the laws of the market and the market itself? Many years ago the doubts of the French economists were taught at school, and the teachers accepted various perplexities with an air of self-importance. Today there is no trace of these ancient and still valid doubts in the extremely sophisticated elaboration of the latest generation of economists.
Why on earth should competition improve people’s lives? Why on earth should it increase production and not simply favour the bigger and better organised firms? How on earth would free exchange be synonymous with freedom, be it only economic, if there were not, somewhere in the world, a vast majority of poor disposed to putting up with the consequences of this so-called freedom? Why on earth should the universalisation of the system of production improve workers’ conditions while parallel to it there is an emptying of any real class opposition? Why should a strong currency be the foundation of economic stability? How does privatisation guarantee an improvement in social terms and not simply the interests directed by the dominant minority?
Now, undoubtedly no economic measure can guarantee anything to the whole of humanity. The rest must be able to adjust to the reduced, impoverished living conditions they are offered. Yet this ineluctable reality is covered up with the ideological mantle of contemporary economic and scientific theory: it is covered up and sold off as the way for getting out of all ideology and slavery.
Hard times are looming on the horizon, yet again.

The era of opposing sides is over, we have now entered that of unification. We are all enlisted under the same flag. If once the world was orientated towards two opposing illusions, which on close inspection turned out to be anything but divergent, now everybody is being called to unite under the same common verb. Enough of the chatter! A few words, clear and unequivocal, will do. Everybody knows what they need to do and what they should be interested in.
So a formless, flabby whole has taken the place of the “strong” ideologies of yesterday. Possibilism and flexibility, uncertainty and doubt have taken the place of the ideological certainties that transformed themselves into various shades of the concentration camp, all equally destined to social orthopaedics, i.e. the creation, by the whip, of a humanity suited to the conditions imposed by production relations.
Now any idea that is even slightly different is swiftly brought back to meet the requirements of the market, wrapped up in multi-coloured cellophane and sold, first wholesale, then retail. The media experts direct thought-control and compete to produce opinion, grinding down any original ideas, any desire to be ‘really other’, into nothing. It is astounding that behind the possibilism one finds the ancient conceit intact: the arrogance of the doctrinaires, barons of nothingness, vassals within the limits of the hedge beyond which only fear of the unknown puts a brake on the thrust of the masses cut off from any possibility of intervening.
So, at world level, a small minority of privileged people are using their power as though they were closed up in a mediaeval castle, building a wall to defend their interests and economic power. A wall of linguistic and technological choices which claim to be universal, i.e. a basis for growth and common improvement, for the satisfaction of the universal interests of men, while in effect it is only a defensive rampart, an increasingly insurmountable barrier as the insiders, themselves slaves with golden chains always solidly fastened to the bosses’ interests, continue to grow in height and strength.
The real power centres today are the big international banks, the central issuing banks, the European Commission, the managers of general agreements on trading tariffs, the International Monetary Fund, etc. The means of information that keep this power together and transmit its directives, translating them into programmatic thought and action are: The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times, Far Eastern Economic Review, les Echoes, Reuter Agency, etc. The men who work there, slaves themselves but enjoying particular conditions of privilege, find themselves being trooped into the universities where a sad brood of economists are prostituting themselves part-time; into newspapers and reviews, where ambivalent journalists good for any sauce spread ignorance and idiocy; into political parties and unions, where tired zombies are recycling slogans of days gone by, giving the great mass of spectators the idea that they can choose their own ideas according to their own interests.
Political economy seems to have become the queen of the sciences. Everywhere in the circles mentioned above political economists jabber forecasts and analyses, study trends and index numbers, analyse curves and equations. Every central bank director feels himself to be a great economist and, leaning on his own reserves, tries to lay down the law to other States in money matters as though that were possible—something that is simply absurd in economics, perhaps more than anywhere else. The ridicule that befell the discount tax manoeuvre can only be compared to the ridicule to which the concept of pro-capita income has always been prey. If capitalism is ‘the natural condition of society’, as Alain Minc recently stated without a shadow of irony, this ‘natural’ condition is one of ridicule.
Think for a moment about the concept of the market and you are left with nothing tangible. What corrects the market? What do its chimerical laws tend to resolve? How can we get to know the laws of the market and the market itself? Many years ago the doubts of the French economists were taught at school, and the teachers accepted various perplexities with an air of self-importance. Today there is no trace of these ancient and still valid doubts in the extremely sophisticated elaborations of the latest generation of economists.
Why on earth should competition improve people’s lives? Why on earth should it increase production and not simply favour the bigger and better organised firms? How on earth would free exchange be synonymous with freedom, be it only economic, if there were not, somewhere in the world, a vast majority of poor disposed to putting up with the consequences of this so-called freedom? Why on earth should the universalisation of the system of production improve workers’ conditions while parallel to it there is an emptying of any real class opposition? Why should a strong currency be the foundation of economic stability? How does privatisation guarantee an improvement in social terms and not simply the interests directed by the dominant minority?
Now, undoubtedly no economic measure can guarantee anything to the whole of humanity. The rest must be able to adjust to the reduced, impoverished living conditions they are offered. Yet this ineluctable reality is covered up with the ideological mantle of contemporary economic and scientific theory: it is covered up and sold off as the way for getting out of all ideology and slavery.
Hard times are looming on the horizon, yet again.

[Original title: Il dominio del mondo in poche parole, in “Canenero”, no. 12, 27 January 1995, English translation by Jean Weir published in “Let’s destroy work, let’s destroy economy”, Elephant Editions, London.]