The Implosion of Contemporary Capitalism

It has to be recognized that the most important social and political
struggles of the twentieth century challenged not so much capitalism in
itself as the permanent imperialist dimension of really existing capitalism.

that political Islam does not
belong to the opposition bloc, as claimed by the Muslim Brotherhood, but
is an organic part of the power structure

Financialization,
which spreads the illusion that money “generates its own offspring” without
any connection to actual production, expresses to the very highest
degree contemporary capitalism’s abstract character.

“low-intensity democracy”:
you are free to vote for whomever you want, because your choice has no
importance. It is the market, not the representative assembly, that decides
everything.

the American ideology
of the “self-made man,” à la John D. Rockefeller or Henry Ford, is a
clear break with European familial conservatism. As also the cult of “true”
competition, even where such competition was nonexistent, which is why
antitrust laws were passed as early as 1890. But irrespective of these real
differences in their political cultures, there prevails the same transformation
in the mode of existence of capitalism’s new ruling class in Europe as
in the United States.

The bourgeoisie used to
be made up of stable bourgeois families. From one generation to another,
their heirs maintained a certain specialization in the business of their firms.
The bourgeoisie built, and constructed itself, in a long-term perspective.
That stability promoted confidence in “bourgeois values,” and facilitated
their extension throughout society. To a very great extent the position of
the bourgeoisie as dominant class was generally accepted.

Talk by some fundamentalist right-wing ideologists calling
for “reduction” of these fiscal extractions is purely demagogic: capitalism
can no longer function in any other way. In reality, any possible
decrease in the taxes paid by the “rich” must necessarily be made up by
heavier taxation on the “poor.”

What are euphemistically called “markets” are nothing
other than places where the strategies of these actors who dominate
the economic scene are deployed.

Thus we are not living in an era of advanced democracy; on the
contrary, we are witnessing the disfigurement and retrogression of democratic
values. A citizen who tries to understand the true state of affairs is
subjected to tribulations that make him feel depoliticized. But there is no
democracy without politically savvy citizens who are capable of thinking
creatively and conceiving alternative ways of doing things coherently and
differently.