Opinion Sur
Technological change and the accumulation of capital have generated all-powerful characters who are not heads of state. Their emergence is not accidental. It is the product of several decades of globalization and its contradictory effects. Like any human institution, the State has had an origin and will have its end. It has lasted three centuries, but it is not eternal. For the moment, its withering is perceived, but not yet its replacement. Today, it tries, without much success, to control the anarchic performance of these paladins and their companies, as well as other dark forces.
Elon Musk, Jeffrey Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, among others, are today almost mythical characters: a new and exaggerated version of Citizen Kane, the famous film starring Orson Wells (1941). In film fiction (based on the life of newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst), the character makes a career in the publishing industry. He starts with idealism and social service, but evolves into a relentless pursuer of power. Still, his great power is framed by his nation state–the United States–and he must compromise with it.
The characters that I cite here are made of flesh and blood. They are modern giants. Their financial power exceeds that of many countries; their entrepreneurial dynamism has little precedent, and they are at the forefront of technological change: computer and social networks, energy sources, space development, autonomous vehicles, artificial intelligence. The motto of one of them portrays them all: “move fast and break things.” Their political commitment and national loyalty are fluid. In some cases, like Mr. Gates’, they are philanthropic ogres. For them, countries are only investment zones and many have also become dependent subjects.
I will give an example. Since the end of World War II, the superiority of the United States as a hegemonic power was guaranteed by the state’s push for domestic industry in what President Eisenhower, alarmed, called the “military-industrial complex.” Today the State is asking for help and permission to use rockets and install satellites from Mr. Elon Musk’s company X. It is a reversal of power relations and therefore affects the entire geopolitical system.
Already in the 19th century, Karl Marx wrote that modern capitalism knows no borders. His fellow traveler, the businessman Frederick Engels, dared to predict that, with the advance of the working class and the future socialization of capital, the State would become unnecessary and would wither away.
However, it did not turn out like that. From the end of the 19th century, and in particular with the chancellor of a then new nation – Bismarck in Germany – the State imposed itself on capital. It encouraged it, but with conditions; it molded it, corrected it for its excesses, and subjected it to a redistributive social policy. In the periodic crises of the capitalist economy, the State saved capital, but it subdued it and imposed limits on it. Capitalism ceased to be stateless as Marx thought, and socialism, contrary to what Engels dreamed of, would become national and supported by a strong State.
It is only today, in the 21st century, that the State is lagging behind, above, below, and on all four sides. To give some examples we can cite a note from the newspaper Clarin which refers to a recent confrontation between Elon Musk and the Brazilian state:
“After comings and goings, the Supreme Court of Justice had to suspend the operations of X [Musk’s company, formerly Twitter] in that country for refusing to comply with court orders. In addition, the tycoon is being investigated for obstruction of justice, criminal organization, and incitement to crime for refusing to block a series of accounts where fake news had gone viral.” And this article also notes the growing tension between the big media companies and the European Union.[1] In this struggle only the largest states, or blocs of states such as the European Union, are capable of standing up to the new technological monopolies and their powerful condottieri[2]. But the fight is unequal for most states that are overtaken by platform monopolies and financial flows, and its outcome is uncertain for large states as well.
Let’s go to the sociological roots of this topic. In his monumental work Economy and Society, published posthumously in 1922, Max Weber defines the State as “a political organization of an institutional and continuous character.” It is a particular type of social organization, characterized by the element of territoriality and by the existence of an administrative body that monopolizes the legitimate use of physical violence. For Weber the State was the highest organization of power on earth. In terms of geopolitics, Weber conceived a world space where nations struggle in a field that is always one of latent or explicit conflict. The State is the cornerstone of realist theories of international relations, in the style of Weber, Kissinger, and Mearsheimer. Struggle and conflict are permanent and relentless, and always between states.
Today all that is changing.
The State is ceasing to be the highest organization of power on earth. It is no longer a closed receptacle but a strainer through which asymmetrical wars, terrorist networks, drug trafficking and human trafficking networks, criminal organizations, and war networks of power and violence in the style of the so-called Islamic State—which is not a state but a movement of conquest of an extreme religious nature—are filtered. Power in the world is increasingly diffuse, fragmented, and above all de-territorialized. The very concept of sovereignty is, in my opinion, already obsolete.
For quite some time now, big capital has escaped from national control and moves easily between tax havens and open or disguised investments everywhere. Tax evasion is a normal part of international trade. Just as capital escapes borders, so too are entire populations of displaced beings, refugees, climate and/or economic migrants trying to do so, but with great difficulty (at the end of the Second World War there were 40 million displaced people; today 60 million are declared, but in reality, they are close to 100).
In the face of all these “leaks” beyond its control, the State is waging a rearguard struggle – in most cases from the right – to “contain” illegal immigration, tax flight, ethnic mixing, and egalitarian movements. It is in this sense that I interpret the current trend to withdraw from democracy in favor of authoritarian states, or more subtly in favor of “plebiscitary democracies with charismatic leaders.” More than a return of the State in its classic sense, I see in them a desperate gesture.
In short, I intend to repeat what I argued in a previous issue of Opinion Sur. The State is being surpassed in its basic dimensions, namely:
- Loss of the monopoly of violence
- Fiscal weakening
- Erosion of legitimacy
- Challenges to sovereignty
- Institutional fragmentation
For a detailed analysis of what is happening, I propose that the reader refer to an article dissenting from the contemporary media consensus, by someone who in my opinion thinks well and independently, from his residence in Delhi. In 2018, Rana Dasgupta published a diagnosis whose general guidelines I share, and which is worth updating. The English Independent Newspaper The Guardian called it “The Decline of the Nation State”.[3]
Beyond the desperate attempts to recover a past that will not return (the case of pseudo states persons such as Trump, Orban, and Putin), in the face of contemporary anarchy, the world expects a different and superior overcoming os stateless forces. In the absence of a true world government, only a Society of States (closer to Woodrow Wilson’s vision than to the United Nations of today), perhaps by blocs in its beginning (a European bloc, an Asian bloc, an African bloc and a bloc that includes our America), will be able to put a fairer order to the current disorder. The states that compose them will be sometimes democratic and others times authoritarian, but in their various ensembles they will be better able to face social and climate challenges and to pacify existence.
[1] Ver https://www.clarin.com/opinion/versus-tecnologicas_0_FhJLUBPA2j.html Recently the European Supreme Court ultimately ruled against Google and Apple in their appeals. These large companies will have to pay many millions in taxes and penalties for their past actions in Europe.
[2] Originally, the condottieri were mercenary leaders in the service of the Italian city-states from the late Middle Ages to the mid-sixteenth century. They are a power figure that predates the modern nation state, founded in Europe in the seventeenth century.
[3] https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/apr/05/demise-of-the-nation-state-rana-dasgupta. I look forward to the publication of his theses in a larger book, entitled After Nations, announced by Collins in London and due out in 2025.
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