Multipolar oligarchies will not save us

What follows is my English translation of a short article by Adam Bark, originally in Italian, published on ComeDonChisciotte.org on Wednesday 20th November 2024. (All formatting original).

In a world where existence itself is claimed as booty by the anonymous Market Idol, the transition is made to a system of control that no longer needs coercive force as a deterrent to disobedience. The empty consumer society depicts the perfect marriage between the interests of financial capital and the disruptive characteristics of the current (post)-liberal ideology. Financial tyranny uses ad hoc ideological justification to break down every barrier to its absolute domination.

Having emerged victorious from the bloody 20th century, liberal ideology claims the right to declare itself the sole and total guarantor of truth. Originally characterised by the cult of the individual erected as the subject of history, it moves along the dialectic of “perpetual liberation” from all “barriers” that might hinder its maximum expression.

With the end of the bipolar world and the disappearance of real socialism, which represented an alternative to its dominance, liberalism changes its face. Following an internal logic, it evolves into the current post-ideological phase, also freeing itself from its empiricist roots and, therefore, from the burden of truth.

On the strength of this superstructure par excellence, every collective identity - be it ethnic, religious, cultural, class and even biological - is eroded and declared obsolete by the standard bearers of political correctness. Man “freed” from all barriers becomes an atomised subject, uprooted from any profound identity and abandoned to the only thing left: the crumbling anonymity of capitalism. The condition of deepening alienation is adorned with schwas and rainbows, distractions and vices worthy of the “best of all possible worlds”.

For the current dogma, freedom no longer represents its former function, but is reduced to the mere autonomy to serve the capitalist machine to the best of one’s ability. This system does not need secret police and purges to maintain its power: it possesses the means to impose an unquestionable narrative and cage minds in a prison of falsehood - in other words, it possesses total hegemony.

From the genius of Antonio Gramsci

An eloquent definition of this concept, applicable beyond the strict confines of literal Marxism, comes from the genius of Antonio Gramsci. Starting from the analysis of classical Marxism, Gramsci recognises the importance of the economic question at the basis of social relations and distinguishes society into dominant and dominated classes, where the former influence the cultural, ideological and political expressions of society, i.e. the superstructure. However, Gramsci questions: how was the Bolshevik revolution possible in Russia? How did Lenin succeed in a country that, according to Marxist theory, had not yet developed the material conditions for a revolution?

According to Marx, communist revolution should have taken place in industrially advanced countries that had fully accepted the capitalist model and in which the division between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat had developed. But this was not the case in Russia, where the predominance of the agricultural sector, the absence of a bourgeois political system, and the low presence of the proletariat made a revolution unlikely. However, Lenin had added to Marxism the possibility of creating a political vanguard. Gramsci considered the teachings of Leninism essential, which showed how, under certain conditions, the ideological and political superstructure could anticipate the economic base.

Leninism proposed a political vanguard to manage the public domain and government. For Gramsci, however, there is another segment of the superstructure, not related to the management of institutions, but to the struggle between ideas and their collective expression: civil society. Here one can speak of a true “zone of expansion”, in which science, culture, philosophy, art, journalism and all areas where ideas develop and circulate reside. It is in this sphere that one of the most crucial battles for the control of hegemony is fought: the struggle for minds.

Hegemony is thus the exercise of the dominant will to direct the culture and consequently the ideas, values and norms of a society, to the point of gaining approval and consent even from the dominated classes. In today’s context, the instrumental use of hegemony to endorse liberal ideology and its rainbow metamorphosis as the sole guardian of truth is evident. According to the propaganda of the ruling class, liberal values are universally true and must, therefore, be imposed on all peoples of the world, whatever the cost.

In defence of its class interest, power exercises full control over the superstructure, dominating both the political sphere and civil society. We could argue that while repressive power acts when rules are broken, the conquest of cultural hegemony ensures that disobedience becomes not only impossible, but unthinkable.

However, even in a situation of total hegemony, intellectual rebellion and the emergence of a battle of ideas are not only possible, but inevitable. Gramsci states that despite the dominance of the ruling class, the adoption or rejection of hegemony depends on the free will of intellectuals. Most of them, whom Gramsci calls “traditional intellectuals”, will put their intellect at the service of the dominant view, becoming, today, guarantors of liberal totalitarianism. In contrast, the intellectual who rejects this hegemony becomes an “organic intellectual”, whose mind becomes a weapon in the struggle for a more just society.

The autonomy to choose sides reflects the independence that Leninism had shown in the political context. Just as the Bolsheviks had anticipated material conditions, so the intellectual has the possibility to explicitly reject the values promoted by the ruling class. The struggle for hegemony is thus not merely an economic or political issue, but also includes conscience and society. In civil society this battle is played out, where those who are aware of their historical duty can challenge the dominant view and work to build an alternative.

Multipolar oligarchies will not save us

The current post-ideological phase of capitalism requires, however, an evolution of Gramsci’s thought. With the rise of geopolitical multipolarism that undermines US imperialism, a fundamental question emerges. The Western system is facing a serious challenge, its hitherto undisputed hegemony is being threatened by the emerging bourgeoisies of the BRICS coveting a slice of power. Geopolitical unipolarism is being replaced by a new world that no longer recognises the sanctity of Western institutions nor the supposed universalism of the liberal model.

Multipolar capital sees itself at this stage determined to unhinge the superstructure imposed on it by the West in the name of the interest of its own national bourgeoisies bent on claiming greater autonomy. By adopting policies according to their own interests, these states deny the unquestionability of the previous superstructure and change the nature of hegemony.

Multipolar oligarchs, however, are certainly less inclined to abandon the aspect to which the “Western logos” undoubtedly devotes primacy. The founding dogma of hegemony, of which, every other aspect is the product, is the cult that the West dedicates to the Market Idol and its empty religion of perpetual consumption. Capital, after all, has no flags, it dominates regardless of the poles in which it is distributed. From this, there is no doubt that the profound changes taking place do not represent a denial of the universality of the Western philosophical product but rather an adaptation of hegemony to the interests of its own ruling classes.

Let the Counter-Egemony of the Future arise

By definition, counter-hegemony must represent a dialectical surpassing of established hegemony. Since hegemony is a product of the capitalist economic system to which it in return avails itself of a sacred aura, the counter-hegemony must stand as a dialectical overcoming to it. Constructing a counter-hegemony cannot be limited to proposing a reorganisation of the same system into multiple poles: it would be like treating the symptoms of a cancer without removing it.

In a context where capital reconstructs itself in new geopolitical configurations and hegemony fragments, the counter-hegemonic bloc is in its essence the radical rejection of the economic and cultural paradigm that sustains the dominant system. A genuine opposition that must not simply accept the chimera of a redistribution of power between geopolitical poles, but aspire to a construction of an alternative that subverts the founding values of capitalist hegemony: the idolatry of the market, consumerist alienation and the dissolution of collective identities in the name of an artificial universalism.

Genuine counter-hegemony must present itself as the dialectical overcoming of the existing order, capable of proposing an ethics of limitation as opposed to the narrowness of consumption, and of promoting a vision of the human being rooted in community and relationship, rather than atomised individualism. Hence the importance of civil society as a battleground for intellectual and cultural struggle, and the need for a reworking of collective identities in a non-reactionary, but emancipatory key.

The construction of this counter-hegemony needs organic intellectuals capable of articulating an alternative worldview, supported by a political force equal to the enemy. A narrative must emerge that is not limited to denouncing the contradictions of global capitalism, but that is able to concretely indicate a way out of the system that generates it, through a cultural, political and economic project capable of uniting the local to the global, the particular to the universal.

In this sense, the crisis of unipolarism offers a historical window: not to consolidate a capitalist pluralism, but to start building the foundations of an order that recognises the intrinsic value of communities and peoples, freeing them from capitalist dogma and its cultural hegemony. Understanding the criticality of the historical moment and the nature of power makes action indispensable. It is our duty to prepare this ground and make the collective consciousness fertile, so that it is ready for a new “Future”.

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