The big capitalists did not design and build all this in one time 40-50 years ago. They always went step by step. By hesitating, by probing, by taking the next step when they were convinced that one step would not cause them to take two steps back. They have sometimes found subtle ways of destroying the possibilities of resistance, and when they have seen that the job can be done in a rush, they have proceeded by brute force. When they saw that they could upset with their own hands the equilibrium they had built up over so many years of concessions, they were able to attack the British working class, which deserves a special volume in the history of social struggles, with mounted police. Globalization was not a bad thing, on the contrary. But after decades in which regimes that were dismissed by Stalinism as dreams of equality and freedom, whose flesh was eaten by tyrants who could slaughter millions of their own people, including their comrades, whose bones were thrown on the heads of the workers and laborers of the world, and whose regimes had nothing to do with equality and freedom, were presented as a possible form of socialism in the world, the potential that could have created a culture of acquaintance and cohesion that would have encompassed all of humanity was used by the capitalists to establish and deepen their network of exploitation. The 1980s marked the milestone of capitalism's remaking of the world in its image. This could not be resisted. Because the spirit of resistance, consciousness, culture, morality... whatever we want to call it... that could deal with a new wild capitalism in full swing was out of the picture. And the field on which the game was played could not be reconstituted. The brave and determined force with the spirit of resistance remained subject to the old mind, and new generations grew up without knowing that objection is a natural right, a human right. And of course... people loved toys.
We are still in this situation. Many mechanisms, functions, relationships, institutions, rules... which are never natural, which are established and executed by human beings, which can be changed by human beings in a snap... the wheels turning for the benefit of a small minority and to the detriment of the majority are presented as the sine qua non conditions for living as a community. And it is accepted as such by the majority of those who suffer from it. The natural right to object is not recognized, and resistance is classified as a crime.
Such a distance from resistance and objection brings with it a natural indifference to what happens. But of course, human beings are unpredictable. And while they can accept what happens to them without caring about their well-being, one day they may suddenly remember that there is such a thing as dignity, and this time, they may be ready to rant and rave without caring about the danger. And if they get too crowded, they can overthrow self-interested rulers or shameless exploiters. At the very least, they can make them unable to move freely. In those cases, the rulers, with their robocopied forces, drive punitive officers in suits and guards onto the people they have made enemies, and attempt to crush them with gas, batons, imprisonment, and exclusion.
One way or another, they seem to have managed to make us think that what is happening to us is irresistible. Yet we are in grave danger. As our freedoms are being taken away one by one, the assumption that we have a right to freedom is being called into question. Even the checks and balances - bourgeois law - established on the assumption that states are in fact accountable institutions that are obliged to serve society, are about to become obsolete.
Before the post-1980 era of unbridled capitalism, the politician was a person who, although they had the indispensable function of protecting the interests of the ruling strata in general, also had obligations towards society. Because they were expected to be able to serve the rulers without offending the ruled. Especially in developed countries, their main function was to integrate the working classes into the order without making any noise, and this sometimes meant that space was made available for politicians who sincerely wanted to raise the standard of living of the oppressed and reduce poverty. In their ideal state structure, capitalists were the type of people who worked behind the scenes, without being too visible, without having to give direct orders or impositions to politicians.
In the 1980s and beyond, the qualifications and roles of politicians changed. Politics became increasingly the work of people with low level and low capacity. The field of politics began to be occupied by people who had no political views or goals of their own, who had no goals other than the interests of those on whose behalf they were doing business, in other words, people with no political initiative. Capitalists and corporate executives must have thought that everything could not be handled by purely self-interested, empty-headed politicians with no qualifications - not even genuine political views - other than loyal servitude or they must have been bored with the emptiness because others - their salaried employees - were already doing all the necessary work, or they must have wanted to taste this kind of power, because at some point they entered active politics. The election of Dick Cheney, a “neocon” militant, one of the leading figures of unbridled capitalism, as Vice President of the United States was a sign of what the 21st century would be like for humanity. The state gradually began to be divorced from its social responsibilities and to recognize no criteria other than the interests of capitalists.
The dismissal of social obligations, of everything that does not bring profit to big business, as an unnecessary expense, has created an ideology in itself. This was accompanied by the untouchable position of the ideology of economism, which fostered the illusion that the economy is an objective medium like nature - that it is not a sanctified wheel that is turned purely for the benefit of some.
The ideological-cultural structure in which the state - “of course!”- is the sacred institution that serves the god of economics -who else would it serve? - and the managers are the clergy of this religion was solid, but the lightning-fast development of technology made it possible for teenage boys to bypass the security guards and information officers at the entrances and ascend to the floors of capitalists and CEOs in an instant. It was inevitable that the teenage boys who rose to the top of the list of the richest people in the world were spoiled, not by inherited paternal wealth, but by their astuteness in turning their success in the suddenly emerging and world-dominating field of technology into money, into profitable business. In an era of unbridled capitalism, enormous wealth acquired quickly was of course compatible with self-interested, content-free politics, and they came together easily.
The maxim of “running the state like a company” is the symbol of the era we are living in, and of the main evil we are exposed to. In the very near future, this motto will be heard frequently when the population, that cannot be profited from, and whose feeding and sustenance is not economically and rationally necessary, will be eliminated.
Elon Musk, the most famous of the spoiled nouveau riche, is now shaping U.S. politics. The significance of the fact that Donald Trump, the big brother of these rascals, will - in fact has - become the head of the most powerful state in the world is still not properly grasped. Especially the repercussions of Trump's “leadership” on the world, and what he can get others to do elsewhere... will probably make us miss even today.
Musk, who has been playing in the field opened by Trump, posted a message on the social media platform X (former Twitter), which he had previously bought and screwed up, about the AfD (Alternative for Deutschland = Alternative for Germany) party, whose approach to power in Germany has horrified everyone with a sane mind and conscience, saying: “Only the AfD can save Germany.” This is serious impudence before its political content and context. The man next to the President of the United States publicly dictating who should govern another - allied - country!
And, of course, the real tragedy: the AfD is an outright fascist party. Many people in Germany are in a panic, some even advocate banning it. What could be the reason why Musk wants the AfD? The reason seems simple: Musk has fascist tendencies. And it is clear that this tendency is not just due to a lack of awareness.
In the UK, you know, there is a scourge called Nigel Farage. The famous Brexiteer fascist politician. His party, Reform UK, is one of those awful typical “far-right” organizations of the time, that on the issue of the climate crisis and global warming, they suggest “keeping up with it rather than pretending we can prevent it”. Elon Musk has decided to give money to this party, which is also demanding withdrawal from the European Convention on Human Rights! According to British law, a citizen of another country cannot give money directly to the party there; Musk's companies based in the UK can, and so on... Some British politicians are saying “Let's not interfere”, arguing that it would not be right to prevent this, that it would benefit Farage, that it would give him an opportunity to confront the “establishment” - the favorite enemy phantom of the populist right - and that it would increase his votes. They are jeopardizing their democracy while trying to keep their distance from Musk, and therefore from Trump.
Musk's embrace of the AfD and his support for Farage are not ordinary. Steve Bannon, whom Trump had put in an important position when he first became the president but had to remove because of the “establishment”, had made the rounds in Europe for an international organization initiative that it would not be an exaggeration to call a “fascist international”. Elon Musk is continuing this initiative. There is no concrete data yet, but it would not be wrong to think that capitalists who manage and control very large capitals and international networks, as well as some giant corporations that now see some democratic-legal obligations of nation-states as a hindrance, are also involved in this. We do not yet know whether such an initiative can be considered the product of a generalizable tendency for global capitalism. But we can guess that some of those spoiled tech-rich teenage boys are willing to do such things. Someone like Musk makes this clear at every opportunity. And he is now at the side of the U.S. President, like a vizier of the end times.
Note: Individuals are powerless to prevent world-wide developments. But you can serve humanity by withdrawing from Twitter, the propaganda apparatus that allows Musk to maintain his current political influence, by making it dysfunctional. People like us, who use it compulsorily to follow the news, will also be able to withdraw.