Piketty ideology 1

Capital and Ideology

Introduction Every human society must justify its inequalities: we must find them reasons, otherwise it is the whole of the political and social edifice that threatens to collapse. Each era thus produces a set of contradictory discourses and ideologies aimed at legitimizing inequality as it exists or should exist, and at describing the economic, social and political rules that make it possible to structure the whole. From this confrontation, which is at once intellectual, institutional and political, usually emerge one or more dominant narratives on which the inegalitarian regimes in place are based. In contemporary societies, this includes the proprietary narrativeentrepreneurial and meritocratic: modern inequality is just because it stems from a freely chosen process in which everyone has the same chances of gaining access to the market and property, and where everyone benefits spontaneously from the wealthiest accumulations, which are also the most enterprising, the most deserving and the most useful. This would place us at the antipodes of the inequality of ancient societies, which was based on rigid, arbitrary and often despotic statutory disparities. The problem is that this great proprietor narrativeand meritocratic, which experienced a first hour of glory in the nineteenth century, after the collapse of the order societies of the Ancien Régime, and a radical reformulation and world-wide since the end of the twentieth century, as a result of the fall of Soviet communism and the triumph of hypercapitalism , appears more and more fragile. It leads to contradictions whose forms are certainly very different in Europe and the United States , India and Brazil, China and South Africa, Venezuela and the Middle East . However, these different trajectories, stemming from specific and partly connected stories, are at the beginning of the twenty-first century more and more closely linked to each other. Only a transnational perspective can help to better understand these fragilities and to consider the reconstruction of an alternative narrative. In fact, the rise in socio-economic inequalities has been observed in almost all regions of the world since the 1980s and 1990s. In some cases, it has become so massive that it is becoming increasingly difficult to justify it in the name of the general interest. There is also a gaping chasm between the official meritocratic proclamations and the realities faced by the underprivileged in terms of access to education and wealth. Meritocratic and entrepreneurial discourse often appears as a convenient way for the winners of the current economic system to justify any level of inequality, without even having to examine them, and to stigmatize the losers for their lack of merit, virtue and diligence. This guilt of the poorest did not exist, or at least not to the same extent, in the previous unequal regimes, which insisted more on the functional complementarity between the different social groups. Modern inequality is also characterized by a set of discriminatory practices and statutory and ethno-religious inequalities whose violence is poorly described by the meritocratic fairy tale, and which brings us closer to the most brutal forms of the old inequalities of which we claim to distinguish us. We can cite the discriminations faced by those who have no home or come from certain neighborhoods and origins. We also think about drowning migrants. Faced with these contradictions, and for lack of a new credible universalist and egalitarian horizon to face the unequal, migratory and climatic challenges ahead, it is to be feared that the withdrawal of identity and nationalism will more and more often substitution, as has been seen in Europe during the first half of the twentieth century, and as it manifests again at the beginning of the twenty-first century in different parts of the world. It was the First World War that launched the movement of destruction and redefinition of the very unequal commercial and financial globalization under way at the "Belle Epoque" (1880-1914), a time that only appeared "beautiful" that in comparison with the ensuing outbursts of violence, which in truth were especially so for the landowners, and especially for the white man-owner. If we do not profoundly transform the current economic system to make it less unequal, more equitable and more sustainable, both between countries and within countries, then xenophobic "populism" and its possible electoral successes to come could very quickly begin the movement of destruction of hypercapitalist globalizationand digital from the years 1990-2020. To ward off this risk, knowledge and history remain our best assets. Every human society needs to justify its inequalities, and these justifications always contain their share of truth and exaggeration, imagination and baseness, idealism and selfishness. An inegalitarian regime, as defined in this survey, is characterized by a set of discourses and institutional arrangements aimed at justifying and structuring the economic, social and political inequalities of a given society. Each regime has its weaknesses and can only survive by constantly redefining itself, often in a confrontational and violent way, but also by relying on shared experiences and knowledge. This book is about the history and the future of unequal regimes. By gathering historical materials about societies far apart from each other, and most often ignore or refuse to compare with each other, I hope to contribute to a better understanding of the transformations underway, from a perspective global and transnational. From this historical analysis emerges an important conclusion: it is the struggle for equality and education that has allowed economic development and human progress, and not the sacralization of property, stability and inequality. . The new hyper-social narrative that has emerged since the 1980s-1990s is partly the product of history and communist disaster. But it is also the fruit of ignorance and the division of knowledge, and it has largely contributed to nourish the fatalism and the current drifts of identity. By taking the thread of history, in a multidisciplinary perspective, it is possible to arrive at a more balanced narrative, and to outline the contours of a new participatory socialism for the twenty-first century; that is to say, a new egalitarian horizon with a universal aim, a new ideology of equality, of social property, of education and sharing of knowledge and powers, more optimistic in human nature, and also more precise and convincing than the previous stories because better anchored in the lessons of global history. It is of course up to everyone to judge, and to seize these few fragile and temporary lessons to transform and lead them further. Before describing the organization of this book and the different stages of my historical presentation, from the study of ancient ternary and slave societies to that of modern postcolonial and hypercapitalist societies , I will begin by describing the main sources on which I am supports, and how this work articulates with my previous work, Capital in the 21st Century. But first I have to say a few words about the notion of ideology used in this survey. What is an ideology? I will try in this book to use the notion of ideology in a positive and constructive way, that is to say, as a set of plausible ideas and discourses to describe how structure the company. The ideology will be considered in its dimensions at the same time social, economic and political. An ideology is a more or less coherent attempt to provide answers to an extremely broad set of questions about the desirable or ideal organization of society. Given the complexity of the questions asked, it goes without saying that no ideology can ever win the full support of all: conflict and ideological disagreement are inherent to the ideology itself. Yet each society has no choice but to try to answer these questions, often on the basis of its ownhistorical experience, and sometimes also relying on those of others. To a large extent, each individual also feels bound to have an opinion, however imprecise and unsatisfactory, on these fundamental and existential questions. These include the question of the political regime, that is to say of all the rules describing the contours of the community and its territory, the mechanisms for taking collective decisions within it, and the political rights of its members. This includes the different forms of political participation, the role of citizens and foreigners, presidents and assemblies, ministers and kings, parties and elections, empires and colonies. It is also the question of the ownership regime, that is to say of the set of rules describing the different forms of possible possessions, as well as the legal and practical procedures defining and framing the property relations between the social groups concerned. This includes the role of private and public property, real estate and financial, land and mineral, slavery and servile, intellectual and immaterial, and the regulation of relations between landlords and tenants, nobles and peasants, masters and slaves, shareholders and employees. Each society, each unequal regime, is characterized by a set of more or less coherent and lasting responses to the question of the political regime and that of the property regime. These two sets of responses and discourses are often closely interrelated, because to a large extent they both derive from a theory of social inequality and disparities between the different social groups present (real or supposed, legitimate or condemnable). They generally involve various other intellectual and institutional devices, in particular an educational system (ie the rules and institutions organizing spiritual and cognitive transmissions: families and churches, fathers and mothers, schools and universities) and a tax system. (that is, mechanisms to provide adequate resources for states and regions, communes and empires, as well as social, religious and collective organizations of various kinds). However, the answers given to these different dimensions of questions can vary considerably. One can agree on the question of the political regime and not on that of the property regime, or on one aspect of tax or educational matters and not on others. The ideological conflict is almost always multidimensional, even though an axis may be of paramount importance, at least for a time, which may give the illusion of a majority consensus, and may sometimes allow for large collective mobilizations and large-scale historical transformations. The frontier and property For simplicity, it can be said that each unequal regime, each inegalitarian ideology, is based on a theory of the frontier and a theory of property. On the one hand, we must answer the question of the border. It is necessary to explain who is part of the human and political community to which we are attached and which is not part of it, in what territory and according to which institutions it must govern, and how to organize its relations with other communities, within of the vast universal human community (which according to ideologies can be more or less recognized as such). It is largely a question of the political regime, but it also implies an immediate response to questions about social inequality, especially between citizens and outsiders. On the other hand, we must answer the question of property: can we possess other individuals, agricultural lands, buildings, businesses, natural resources, knowledge, financial assets, public debt, and according to what practical modalities and which legal and jurisdictional system should be organized between the owners and the non-owners and the perpetuation of these relations? This issue of ownership, along with those of the education system and the tax system, has a structuring impact on social inequalities and their evolution. In most ancient societies, the question of the political regime and that of the property regime, in other words the question of power over individuals and that of power over things (that is to say objects of detention, which are sometimes people in the case of slavery, and who in any case have a decisive impact on the power relations between people) are directly and immediately linked. This is obviously the case in slavery societies, where the two questions are largely confounded: some individuals possess others, of which they are both rulers and owners. It is the same, but in a more subtle way, in ternary or "trifunctional" societies (that is, separated into three functional classes: a clerical and religious class, a noble and warlike class, a commoner class, and laborious). In this historical form, observed in most pre-modern civilizations, the two ruling classes are inseparably the ruling classes endowed with sovereign powers (security, justice) and the possessing classes. For centuries, the landlord was thus the lord of the people living and working on the land as much as the lord of the land itself. Owners' societies, which flourish especially in Europe in the nineteenth century, try instead to strictly separate the issue of the right to property (deemed universal and open to all) and that of regal power (now the monopoly of the centralized state). The political regime and the ownership system are nevertheless closely linked, on the one hand because political rights were long reserved for the owners, within the framework of the so-called political regimes, and on the other hand and more generally because of Multiple constitutional rules continued (and still continue to) drastically limit any possibility for a political majority to redefine the ownership regime within a legal and peaceful framework. We will see that the question of the political regime and that of the property regime have in reality never ceased to be inextricably linked, from ancient ternary and slave societies to modern postcolonial and hypercapitalist societies , passing of course by the landlord and communist and social-democratic societies, which developed in reaction to the unequal and identity crises provoked by the proprietarist societies . This is why I propose to analyze these historical transformations by using the notion of "unequal regime", which encompasses those of political regime and property regime (or even educational regime and tax system) and makes it possible to perceive it better. coherence. To illustrate the structural and persistent links between political and property systems, still present in today's world, we can also mention the absence of any democratic mechanism allowing a majority of EU citizens (let alone a majority of citizens of the world) to adopt the least tax or the least project of redistribution and common development, taking into account the right of fiscal veto of each country, also minority its population, and whatever the benefits that it also draws from its commercial and financial integration to the whole. More generally, the central fact is that contemporary inequality is strongly and powerfully structured by the system of borders, nationalities, and social and political rights associated with it. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, this contributes to violent ideological conflicts over unequal, migratory and identity-related issues, which considerably complicates the constitution of majority coalitions to cope with rising inequalities. Concretely, ethno-religious and national divides often prevent the popular classes from different origins and different countries from coming together in the same political coalition, which can make the game of the richest and drift unequal, for lack of a ideology and a programmatic platform sufficiently persuasive to convince disadvantaged social groups that what unites them is more important than what divides them. These issues will be considered in due course. I simply want to stress here that the close link between political system and property ownership corresponds to an old, structural and lasting reality, which can only be properly analyzed after a vast historical and transnational re-examination. Take ideology seriously Inequality is not economic or technological: it is ideological and political. This is probably the most obvious conclusion of the historical inquiry presented in this book. In other words, the market and competition, profit and wages, capital and debt, skilled and unskilled workers, nationals and foreigners, tax havens and competitiveness, do not exist as such. They are social and historical constructs that depend entirely on the legal, fiscal, educational and political system that we choose to set up and the categories we give ourselves. These choices refer first and foremost to the representations that each society makes of social justice and the just economy, and the politico-ideological power relations between the different groups and discourses in presence. The important point is that these relations of force are not only material: they are also and above all intellectual and ideological. In other words, ideas and ideologies count in history. They constantly allow to imagine and structure new worlds and different societies. Multiple trajectories are always possible. This approach differs from many conservative discourses aimed at explaining that there are "natural" grounds for inequality. Unsurprisingly, the elites of different societies, at all times and in all latitudes, often tend to "naturalize" inequalities, that is to say to try to give them natural and objective foundations, explain that the social disparities in place are (as it should be) in the interest of the poorest and of society as a whole, and that in any case their present structure is the only one that can be envisaged, and can not be substantially modified without causing immense misfortunes. Historical experience shows the opposite: inequalities vary greatly in time and space, in their size and structure, and in conditions and with a speed that contemporaries would have often struggled to anticipate a few decades earlier. It has sometimes resulted in misfortunes. But as a whole the various ruptures and revolutionary and political processes that have helped to reduce and transform the inequalities of the past have been an immense success, and are at the origin of our most valuable institutions, precisely those that have allowed the idea of ​​human progress becomes a reality (universal suffrage, free and compulsory schooling, universal health insurance, progressive taxation). It is very likely that the same will happen in the future. Current inequalities and present institutions are not the only ones possible, though the conservatives may think, and they too will be called upon to transform and reinvent themselves permanently. But this approach, centered on ideologies, institutions and the diversity of possible trajectories, is also differentiated from certain doctrines sometimes called "Marxist", according to which the state of economic forces and relations of production would almost mechanically determine the ideological "superstructure". of a society. On the contrary, I insist on the fact that there is a real autonomy of the sphere of ideas, that is, of the ideological-political sphere. For the same state of development of the economy and the productive forces (insofar as these words have a meaning, which is not certain), there is always a multiplicity of possible ideological, political and inegalitarian regimes. For example, the theory of the mechanical transition from "feudalism" to "capitalism" following the industrial revolution does not make it possible to account for the complexity and diversity of the historical and political-ideological trajectories observed in the different countries and regions. of the world, especially between colonizing and colonized regions, as well as within each ensemble, and above all does not allow us to draw the most useful lessons for the next steps. By taking up the thread of this story, we see that it has always existed and that there will always be alternatives. At all levels of development, there are multiple ways to structure an economic, social and political system, to define property relations, to organize a fiscal or educational system, to deal with a public or private debt problem, to regulate relationships between different human communities, and so on. There are always a number of possible ways to organize a society and the relationship of power and property within it, and these differences are not just about details, far from it. In particular, there are many ways of organizing property relations in the twenty-first century, and some of them may be a much more real leap from capitalism than the path of promising destruction without worrying about what will follow. The study of the different historical trajectories and the many unfinished bifurcations of the past is the best antidote to both the elitist conservatism and the revolutionary wait-and-see of the big night. Such a wait-and-see attitude often dispenses with thinking about the truly emancipatory institutional and political regime to be applied in the aftermath of the big night, and generally leads to relying on a state power that is both hypertrophied and indefinite, which can be just as true. dangerous than the proprietarist sacralisation to which one claims to oppose. This attitude has caused in the 20th century considerable human and political damage, of which we have not finished paying the price. The fact that post-communism (in its Russian variant as in its Chinese version, and to a certain extent, in its Eastern European variant, despite all that differentiates these three trajectories) has become at the beginning of the 21st century. The best ally of hypercapitalism is the direct consequence of the Stalinist and Maoist communist disasters, and the abandonment of all the egalitarian and internationalist ambitions that ensued. The communist disaster has even succeeded in putting the damage caused by slavery, colonialism and racialist ideologies , as well as the deep ties that tie them to the proprietarist and hypercapitalist ideology , into the background, which is no small feat. Whenever possible, I will try in this book to take ideologies seriously. In particular, I would like to give a chance to each ideology of the past, in particular to the proprietarist , social democratic and communist ideologies, but also to the trifunctional, slave or colonialist ideologies, restoring them in their own coherence. I assume that every ideology, however extreme and excessive, may seem to be defending a certain type of inequality or equality, expresses in its own way a certain vision of the just society and social justice . This vision always has a basis of plausibility, sincerity and coherence, from which it is possible to extract useful lessons for the future, on the condition, however, to study these political-ideological developments not abstractly, ahistorically and -institutional, but on the contrary as embodied in particular societies, historical periods and specific institutions, characterized in particular by particular forms of property and tax and educational system. These forms must be thought out rigorously, without fear of studying precisely their rules and operating conditions (legal systems, tax scales, educational resources, etc.), without which institutions and ideologies are nothing but empty shells, unfit for to truly transform society and to create lasting support. In doing so, I am aware that there is also a derogatory use of the notion of ideology, and that this use is sometimes justified. Is often described as ideological a vision characterized by dogmatism and lack of concern for the facts. The problem is that those claiming absolute pragmatism are often the most "ideological" of all (in the pejorative sense): their supposedly postureological stance hides their lack of interest in the facts, the extent of their historical ignorance, heaviness of their presuppositions and class egoism. In this case, this book will be very "factual". I will present many historical evolutions concerning the structure of the inequalities and their transformation in different societies, on the one hand because it is about my initial specialty as a researcher, and on the other hand because I am convinced that the serene review of available sources on these issues helps advance our collective thinking. This makes it possible to compare societies that are very different from one another, and which often refuse to compare each other, because they are convinced (usually wrongly) of their "exceptionalism" and the uniqueness and incomparability of their path. At the same time, I am well placed to know that available sources will never be sufficient to settle all disputes. Never will the examination of the "facts" definitively solve the question of the ideal political system or the ideal property regime or the ideal educational or fiscal system. First, because "facts" are largely dependent on the institutional arrangements (censuses, surveys, taxes, etc.) and social, fiscal or legal categories forged by different societies to describe, measure and transform themselves. . In other words, the "facts" are themselves constructions, and they can only be correctly apprehended in the context of these complex interactions, crossed and interested between the observation apparatus and the studied society. This obviously does not imply that one can not learn anything useful from these cognitive constructions, but rather that any attempt at learning must take into account this complexity and this reflexivity. Secondly, because the issues studied - the nature of the ideal social, economic, and political organization - are far too complex for a single conclusion to ever emerge from a mere "objective" examination of the "facts," which will not be never but the reflection of the limited experiences of the past, and the incomplete deliberations to which we have been able to participate. Finally, because it is quite possible that the "ideal" regime (whatever meaning one chooses to give to this term) is not unique and depends on a certain number of characteristics of the studied society.