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"The neo-liberal nightmare is not
in a distant future. It is what we live,
and only getting worse. And with it the
category of citizen will become all the
more important as delineating the relevant
and irrelevant populations. It will become
codified, dramatically different existences
that will be reinforced through the strengthened
ability of the neo-liberal authoritarian state
playing upon popular fears of crime, the
environmental crisis and Muslim terrorism."
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I
In a lecture at Harvard during my freshman year, a professor—who may
have been Martin Peretz—offered an insight that left a profound impact
upon me. “Citizen,” the professor noted, was a unique and quite
revolutionary concept. Different from many other terms, e.g.,
“comrade,” the notion of citizen implied a specific relationship
between an individual and the polity. It specifically suggested a role
for the individual within a state system in which said individual was a
participant/actor rather than an observer.
Since the resurrection of the concept of “citizen,” in the context of
the French Revolution, the term along with “citizenship” has been
contested terrain.(1) There is no universally accepted criteria as to
how one becomes a citizen of a nation-state. Countries differ greatly
on whether being born in a particular territory is sufficient for such
definition; under what conditions one can apply to become a citizen;
how and under what circumstances can one’s children become citizens?
These questions are not answered the same way in any number of Earth’s
nation-states.
Despite this unclarity, the notion of citizenship remains a powerful
concept and one which people insist on fighting to achieve. It
demarcates freedom vs. slavery; it offers the formality of
participation. Yet most importantly, citizenship offers legitimacy and
visibility. Citizenship assumes that one’s history and life are
relevant to the larger polity and, by implication, that one shares in
the larger historical narrative. The fight to define and achieve
citizenship becomes a fight to define and achieve recognition of one’s
humanity.
II
The transformation of global capitalism over the last 40 years has
catalyzed the transformation of the concept of citizenship, in some
ways making it unrecognizable from most other periods of the so-called
modern era.
Traditional citizenship exists between an individual and a
nation-state. One is a citizen of a nation-state and has certain rights
and responsibilities. This concept, of course, says nothing about the
extent to which such rights and responsibilities are meaningful and
have any content. They exist at the level of “formal” relationships.
Neo-liberal globalization has transformed citizenship so that the
individual, within the context of a nation-state, may exist on one of
three levels. First, there is the traditional understanding of
citizenship, i.e., an individual within a nation-state having certain
basic rights. How that individual gains citizenship, of course,
is a different matter. Second, there has been the rise of
ethno-national and warlord states. Third, we have witnessed the
emergence of what might be loosely called "caste status," or what we
will reference as “sub-citizenship” which, by definition, is not
citizenship at all but a parallel existence. We will look at each of
these in turn.
Traditional citizenship remains a feature of the contemporary world,
but with increasing restrictions on both the availability of
citizenship and the rights of citizens. In the USA one can see
examples of both. The political Right, for example, has been
increasing its demand to overturn the right of an individual born in
the USA to automatically become a US citizen. Additionally, they
wish to restrict the rights of migrants with regard to achieving
citizenship. The rights of citizens, as whole, have been
increasingly restricted with the tendency for the democratic capitalist
state to evolve toward a neo-liberal authoritarian state.
The role of the citizen in political affairs has been devolving as the
capitalist state appears more and more distant from the realities of
everyday life. Neo-liberal globalization is experienced by masses of
people as taking away the decision-making power from the local or even
national levels and investing control and/or veto power, in
supra-national formations, e.g., NAFTA. While the reality is more
complex, i.e., the national political elites are advancing a
transnational capitalist project, the national citizen, rather than
feeling part of the larger polity, finds himself/herself feeling more
and more alienated from decision-making and the institutions through
which such decision-making is supposed to operate. Leaders are
elected, allegedly to look out for the national citizens, only to
seemingly betray the "national interests" in favor of multi-national
corporations, trade agreements and/or supra-national bodies. Such a
situation lays the groundwork for both left-wing and right-wing
critiques, though in the contemporary world right-wing populist
sentiment is the more significant force in responding to this sense of
alienation, at least in the global North, in part because of the
linkage of this phenomenon to race and imperial consciousness.
III
With neo-liberal globalization nation-states have been undergoing some
complicated changes. European states, since the feudal era, evolved in
various directions, including multi-national (Austria-Hungary), unitary
(France), and linguistic-based unification (Germany, Italy). The
tendency, until relatively recently, had been to increase the size of
the nation-state either directly, through invasion and annexation, or
though colonialism. The emphasis was on securing and expanding the
national, capitalist market.
In the post-World War II period of national independence and national
liberation, nation-states in the global South tended to conform to the
borders created by the colonial rulers. Increasing the size of the
national boundaries was less important than securing the borders.
Within the borders of most such nation-states was a multi-ethnic
reality, though a particular ethnic group might tend to be in a
dominant position. Though there were particular ethnic groups that
fought for their own national homeland, e.g., the Kurds, the character
of most struggles was for national self-determination with a built-in
assumption that all who were within a specific territory were expected
and welcome to be active participants in the future of the nation-state
(assuming, of course, that they favored national liberation).
Citizenry, therefore, was open to most, if not all. Even in cases of
settler colonialism, e.g., Algeria, Zimbabwe, upon liberation the
settlers were offered citizenship and were not driven out of the newly
founded nation-state.
With the growth of neo-liberal globalization, and particularly in the
aftermath of the end of the Cold War, nation-state construction took on
a different character and, with it, the notion of citizenship. Two
phenomena have risen in prominence: first, ethno-national states;
second, warlord fiefdoms.
Ethno-national states have arisen under various banners but generally
are dominated by right-wing ideologies (though, not in every case,
e.g., the Kurds). Whether they claim they have been the victims of some
sort of national oppression or that they have been used to the benefit
of others, e.g., Slovenia, the ethno-nationalist orientation suggests
that a nation-state form must be created in order to guarantee the
safety and sovereignty of a particular ethnic group. The creation of
such forms can frequently be associated with variations on ethnic
cleansing in order to rid the given territory of peoples considered
undesirable. (Israel falls into this category despite having been
formed during the Cold War and prior to neo-liberal globalization.) The
Yugoslav wars of secession were a case in point. Each nation, within
the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, fought to ensure the purity of its
respective ethnic territory, in many cases driving out people who had
been there for generations. Ethno-nationalist projects inevitably
redefine citizenship. Citizenship and ethnicity overlap either
explicitly or implicitly. In the case of the Rwandan genocide,
for instance, the Tutsi minority were viewed and described as
“cockroaches” who were incompatible with the mythical Hutu regime that
the right-wing wished to establish. It was not enough to try to drive
the Tutsis out, which had happened on a large scale some years earlier;
now they had to be destroyed outright.
Warlord-dominated fiefdoms have also emerged in the post-Cold War world
of neo-liberalism. This phenomenon became noticeable with the breakup
of Somalia, following the uprising that overthrew dictator Said Barre.
Such states are dictatorships and citizenship, to the extent that one
can speak of such a thing, is more a matter of existence within the
territorial boundaries of the fiefdom. There is no assumed right
to political participation, nor is there a genuine collective identity.
It is an existence. All is not necessarily chaos, however. The
lack of a nation-state does not necessarily mean the complete breakdown
of everything. Warlords can be "excellent" defenders of economic
instruments as was demonstrated in Somalia or more recently with the
Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL/ISIS).
The emergence of ethno-national and warlord states can take place
precisely because while nation-states remain essential in order to
advance the interests of global capitalism, the large, multi-ethnic
nation-state is no longer necessary in this era. The
transformation of much of the world's economy with the
internationalization of production and financialization has altered the
role of the nation-state. As noted, the nation-state remains
essential, as an instrument to further the objectives of global
capitalism, but the terrain on which global capitalism operates is not
restricted to a particular national territory or set of territories. If
the political state can fulfill its role as a means of repression and
defense of key economic interests, there is less global capitalist
concern about the actual character of the state. In that sense, the
world's ignoring of the horror of warlordism and disunity in Somalia
was less a characteristic of lack of humane consciousness and more a
recognition by the elites that Somalia remaining a nation-state was
irrelevant to the interests of global capitalism.
A second factor, which is particularly relevant to the matter of the
ethno-national state concerns the issue of resource wars in the era of
neo-liberal globalization and environmental crisis. The
ethno-national state has become a means to fight over diminishing
resources. This is an almost classic Hobbesian scenario of a war
of all against all. The ethno-national state determines,
sometimes quite mythically, who the relevant population or 'citizenry'
can be and then posits that it—the ethno-national state—serves as the
protector of this population. The 'relevant' population asserts
its own identity, thereby claiming that its demands are the only ones
to be legitimate compared with the 'other.' Again, by reference
to Rwanda, the genocide took place in the context of an economically
strapped Rwanda which had acceded to neo-liberal/structural adjustment
demands. Focusing the popular fury of the Hutus on the Tutsis was
part of the process through which the right-wing Hutu regime was able
to distract the attention of the population from the real
enemies—global capitalism—and, instead, suggest that the Hutu state
was, allegedly, the protector of their interests.
IV
If the traditional nation-state is shifting its character in a highly
authoritarian direction, with a corresponding restrictive definition of
citizenship, and we are witnessing the growth of ethno-national and
warlord states, this situation poses a question regarding the fate of
masses of people who are, de facto or de jure excluded from the ranks
of the ‘relevant’ population.
Twenty-first century capitalist states have increasingly come to rely
on something that is actually not new, but has been revised. We can
call it “caste status” or “sub-citizenship.” There is probably a
scientific term but what we are speaking to here is more than a class
relationship to the means of production and more than specific forms of
oppressive social control (e.g., racist oppression; national
oppression; gender oppression/patriarchy). Sub-citizenship includes
migrants, the structurally unemployed, prisoners, ex-felons, as well as
communities that have been victims of historic forms of oppression.(2)
Sub-citizenship speaks to the relationship of a group(s) to the larger
society and the extent to which it has formal or real rights to which
others are bound (or not) to respect.
Some segments of this sub-citizen sector may have formal rights. In the
USA, the structurally unemployed from among whites, African Americans,
Native Americans, and non-immigrant Latinos and Asians, have formal
rights as citizens but they actually live on the margins of society and
their situation is so depressed that the existence of their formal
political rights are almost meaningless. They see little advantage in
political and/or civic participation, summarized in the notion that
“…my vote does not really count…”
Migrants to the global North, another sub-citizen category, frequently
exist in a shadow world. In science fiction, the robot stories of Isaac
Asimov are among the closest glimpses into the world of the migrant.
Migrants, the metaphoric robots, are neither seen nor heard, but
fulfilling certain functions that the capitalist state needs done and
done under conditions in which the worker is not only rarely
acknowledged but lacks a mechanism through which they can achieve
justice and respect.
Labor unions are an instrument to struggle against sub-citizenship
which, in many respects, constitutes part of the explanation as to why
they are being viciously attacked. Neo-liberal capital needs the
sub-citizen category not only as a source for increasing their profits,
but also as a means of eliminating or reducing the size of the relevant
population (thereby reducing the demand for the provision of social and
human services to huge segments of society).
The existence of a sub-citizenry carries with it genocidal
implications. The sub-citizens not only lack rights, but it is also the
case that their existence is considered largely irrelevant. In that
sense the Rwandan Hutu disparagement of the Tutsis as “cockroaches” is
globally significant. The sub-citizen is seen as a pest in capitalist
societies or, at best, a necessary annoyance (as in the case of certain
groups of migrant workers, particularly in the global North). The
sub-citizen has no past and no future. They exist and, in the minds of
the “citizens,” though especially the elite, they take resources that
could otherwise serve the legitimate or, to borrow from Ronald Reagan,
the ‘deserving’ population.
The sub-citizenry must ultimately be “retired,” to use a powerful term
from the science fiction classic Blade Runner. This does not
necessarily mean concentration camps but instead a reality that permits
the slow but steady erosion of living standards and generalized
conditions.
V
The neo-liberal world is a world of vast inequalities. In the last
several years the matter of economic inequality has received
significant attention.(3) Yet the neo-liberal world contains other
forms of inequality, not the least being between the citizen and the
sub-citizen. The inequalities exist on multiple levels including
relationship to the police; housing; education; employment; and
healthcare.
The existence of these inequalities is largely considered collateral
damage by the elite; acceptable losses, in certain respects, in an
otherwise healthy socio-economic system. Thus, the dystopias predicted
in science fiction are not seen as catastrophic in any real sense as
long as the situation is managed or manageable.
Neo-liberal capitalism, therefore, does not pretend to offer an
idealistic vision of the future. There is no further sense of
satisfying a collective future in which we are all in this together.
Neither is there a sense that one can expect, even as a citizen, that
one’s living standard will continue to exist, let alone improve. The
elite, the common citizen, and the sub-citizen have all been in the
process of being trained to measure and modify their expectations of
life.
Neo-liberal capitalism, then, proves itself to be a peculiar form of
‘social barbarism.’ It appears to be civilized yet is anything but. It
promotes the expansion into the global North of the differential that
existed between the global North and the global South. It is this
reality that has been so difficult for populations in the global North
to fathom. It was one thing sit back, observe, and accept the treatment
of billions of people in the global South as subhuman. It is a
completely different thing to import that into the global North through
both the expansion of sub-citizenship and the denigration of the formal
citizen himself/herself. The citizen of the global North repeatedly
asks what is it that distinguishes or should distinguish their life and
existence from that of the sub-citizen. Despite increasing immiseration
of the mass of citizens of the global North, they are, nevertheless,
prepared to take up arms against the sub-citizen, seeing in the
sub-citizen a threat to the existence of the citizen and the few links
to the possibility of a good life that they may have.
The neo-liberal nightmare is not in a distant future. It is what we
live, and only getting worse. And with it the category of citizen will
become all the more important as delineating the relevant and
irrelevant populations. It will become codified, dramatically different
existences that will be reinforced through the strengthened ability of
the neo-liberal authoritarian state playing upon popular fears of
crime, the environmental crisis and Muslim terrorism. Such fears lend
themselves to scapegoats and the sub-citizenry is there waiting to be
forced to play such a role.
It is only through the route of systemic change that such a future can
be challenged. And challenging it must occupy many spaces including the
realm of ‘common sense.’ The neo-liberal world has posited that there
are and can never be utopias that benefit the billions. It is not
simply Margaret Thatcher’s assertion that there is allegedly no
alternative. There can be no alternative that benefits the majority of
humanity and, as a result, we are called upon to accept the
polarization of the planet as human fights humans over diminishing
resources. A political project of the dispossessed, therefore, is
essential in order to respond to the despair and fatalism encouraged by
neo-liberalism. I would describe it as “anti-dystopian” rather than
utopian in that it must be a project that is very much in touch with
reality, fighting for a future that breaks with neo-liberalism and
barbarism, and encourages hopefulness. But such a future must take
account of the 20th-century socialist efforts at creating an
alternative to capitalism that, regardless of their strengths, entered
crisis, and in most cases, collapse.
VI
The world of science fiction grasped the importance of the question and
evolution of the category of citizenship much sooner than many
political scientists and social movements. As mentioned earlier,
Asimov’s robot stories raised significant questions concerning the
nature of humanity and sentience, but within that, the question of the
bi-furcation of society. In Asimov’s case, the vehicle was the
existence of robots vs. humans. But robots, in practical terms,
substituted for a sub-citizen race.
Film and television have offered very provocative and insightful
examinations of the question of citizenship. As with all science
fiction, there is a combination of metaphoric critique as well as
futuristic speculation. Perhaps one of the most powerful can be found
in Blade Runner (1982). Ridley Scott’s film rendition of the Philip K.
Dick novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, explores a neo-liberal
future of economic polarization plus environmental destruction in which
human-like androids, known as Replicants, do the work of and serve
humans who have settled other planets. Those replicants that revolt are
chased down by assassination teams known as “blade runners,” the
equivalent of special operations units.
The robot/android serves as a metaphor for Philip K. Dick and, in film,
Ridley Scott, following from Isaac Asimov. The question haunting Blade
Runner is one of who actually is human. The answer to this question is,
quite literally, a matter of life and death. To be human, in the Blade
Runner universe does not guarantee one a good life. It only guarantees
life, or better put, non-execution. The forces of the state are arrayed
against the replicants. The replicants cannot be easily distinguished
from humans and, thereby, constitute an existential threat, at least
from the standpoint of the state. The replicants, despite the brutality
of those at the center of the story, seem only to want life.(4)
The replicants live the lives of the sub-citizen. Always on guard, in
effect exiles, they have no legal existence on Earth, and a subordinate
status on Earth colonies in space. Their search for an extension of
their lives is a search for their admission into humanity.
Blade Runner leaves the viewer with this sense of ambiguity. While the
chief character, Deckard, played by Harrison Ford, kills most of the
replicants, he is ultimately saved from death by Roy, the leader of the
replicant escapees. Ford’s character must then flee due to the fact
that he fell in love with a replicant who he wishes to save from
“retirement.” But he may also be fleeing his own retirement since Blade
Runner hints at but never answers the question as to whether Deckard
(Ford) is, himself, a replicant.
The line between the citizen and the sub-citizen in Blade Runner is
convincingly blurry and reminds the viewer of such a reality in
contemporary society. It equally paints a future where the consequences
of that line, however, are deadly.
Blade Runner does not suggest an ‘out’ from this dystopia other than
individual action. It reminds the viewer of the humanity and legitimacy
of the demands of the sub-citizenry, and also suggests to the viewer
that in the absence of answering these demands the responses will be
increasingly violent on the part of the sub-citizenry. Though Deckard
(Ford) undergoes a series of ethical challenges through the film, his
answer to these challenges and to this dystopian environment is very
individual: run.
Television offered a very compelling look at the near-future and the
matter of citizenship. In a two-part episode of Star Trek: Deep Space
Nine titled “Past Tense,” three members of the senior staff of Deep
Space 9 (5), as a result of a temporal accident, find themselves on
Earth in the year of 2024—which seemed a long time off when these
episodes were first aired (1995). The team (Commander Cisko, played by
Avery Brooks; Dr. Bashir, played by Siddiq El Fadil; Lieutenant Dax,
played by Terry Farrell) lands in San Francisco, but a San Francisco
where there are three distinct existences, which I would distinguish as
the elite citizens; sub-citizens without criminal records; and
sub-citizens with criminal records. The elite citizenry live a grand
life. The sub-citizens with criminal records are only mentioned in
passing in the episodes, but one can infer from that that they are
either totally repressed or otherwise excluded. The sub-citizens
without criminal records are those who are the main characters of this
story. They are the unemployed and/or the homeless; the redundant
population. It is for them that every major city has constructed or
walled off sections of territory which are called “Sanctuary Zones,”
constructs that remind one of the ghetto districts established or
reorganized by the Nazis where Jews were restricted prior to their
deportation to concentration camps.
The two-part episode revolves around an uprising and hostage taking in
one such Sanctuary District which ultimately involves, by accident,
these DS9 officers. The uprising is suppressed by the
state—violently—yet the rebels are able to make a public appeal
regarding their cause and the viewer later finds that this massacre
shakes the public and results in significant changes. The DS9 staff
return to their own time surprised that humanity ever made it out of
the 21st century.
The vision of the future presented by DS9/”Past Tense” appears quite
plausible. The story does not rely on the metaphor of robots/androids
or aliens in order to directly address a very realistic neo-liberal
dystopia. The horror of this dystopia is that it is reminiscent of much
of what we experience today. The Sanctuary Zones may, at first glance,
appear melodramatic instruments aimed at making a social critique
except when one considers the proliferation of ‘dead cities’ throughout
the global North (and especially here in the USA) which have become
reservations or ‘sanctuaries’ for redundant populations. Settled in
such dead cities are a range of sub-citizenry, including migrants who
are not permitted to live in the major metropolitan areas—in contrast
to the experience of European immigrants who arrived in the 19th and
early 20th centuries—as well as the structurally unemployed, among them
the remnants of populations from the sites of major manufacturing from
an earlier era.
Interestingly DS9, while presenting a dystopian future, does not
present one lacking hope. The residents of the SF Sanctuary choose to
organize and revolt. The revolt is not a riot or any sort of
self-inflicted wound on the residents of the Sanctuary itself, but has
a clear political aim to change the conditions of those trapped in the
Sanctuary Zones. This vision stands in contrast with much dystopian
literature in science fiction, including but not limited to Blade
Runner where, as noted earlier, the chief character chooses to run and
seek a life outside of the view of the state.
DS9/”Past Tense,” however, presents the dystopia of the Sanctuary Zone
period more as a reflection of a sort of cavalier human attitude toward
the poor and dispossessed. The solution becomes the equivalent of the
end of Spike Lee’s film School Daze, where the characters call upon the
viewers to awaken. The Sanctuary Zone uprising in DS9/”Past Tense”
supposedly leads the larger population of the USA to awaken to the
horrors of this segregation.
What is missing is a systemic analysis, something for which I am
actually not critical of DS9 given its mainstream production and
audience (not to mention sponsors). The fact that the creators of DS9
were even able to make the extensive critique that they offered was,
itself, an accomplishment. Yet, despite this accomplishment, it
presents the situation of the Sanctuary Zone as a matter of the callous
treatment of the unfortunate that can simply be reversed by public
opinion. One would wish this to be the case, however, neo-liberalism is
not a reflection of public opinion; rather it is an approach adopted by
major segments of capital (beginning in the mid to late 1970s) in order
to address a specific crisis that it faced beginning in the late 1960s.
That approach, over time, engendered a world view that included the
points we have discussed here, e.g., redundancy and inequalities, as
acceptable in light of the final goal—the unimpeded achievement of
capital expansion.
While influencing public opinion, as contained in the story-line of DS9
episode, is critical for change, it is the influencing of public
opinion to move not against the symptoms of the problem but to
challenge neo-liberal capitalism and, ultimately, capitalism itself,
which counts.
Sub-citizenry is not an ancillary component of neo-liberalism but an
essential element. In connection with the scientific-technological
revolution that has laid the foundation for the altering of work and
communications, neo-liberal capitalism has declared populations
unwanted and, frequently, unnecessary. DS9/”Past Tense” dramatizes this
reality quite keenly.
A similar theme can be found in 2013’s Elysium, starring Matt Damon and
Jodie Foster. From the director of the 2009 stunner District 9 (Neill
Blomkamp) the film deals directly with matters of citizenship and
sub-citizenship. (6) Taking place in 2154, humanity is divided between
an elite population living a near idyllic life on an off-world colony
satellite called “Elysium;” while the rest of humanity remains on Earth
in obscene conditions, at the service of the elite and policed by
militarized robots.
Though taking place more than a hundred years after the scenario from
DS9/”Past Tense,” the situation is quite similar, however, the
atrocious conditions are far more graphic in Elysium. Migrants who
attempt to illegally reach Elysium are destroyed. Max Da Costa (Matt
Damon) is drawn into a plot within Elysium when he is accidentally
poisoned but then promised a cure on Elysium if he cooperates in a
theft of key information. Ultimately Max finds himself in the midst of
a coup carried out by what might be described as a ‘lumpen proletariat’
element within Elysium that chooses to overthrow the elite that it has
served, and rule on its own. The coup implodes and Max releases a
computer program that opens up citizenry to all of those on Earth,
thereby making them eligible to obtain the high tech medical assistance
that prevails on the orbital colony.
Elysium starkly presents the citizen/sub-citizen contradiction. The
sub-citizenry is neither robot nor alien, but human beings of all walks
of life who have been locked into a caste-like existence, deprived of a
suitable living standard. They are servants of the elite—an immiserated
proletariat—and there are no mechanisms for them to exercise any rights
and demands outside of forms of rebellion. Somewhat reminiscent of
1995’s Johnny Mnemonic, the rebels against the order are small bands of
high tech activists. Not driven by a discernable ideology, they appear
to represent dissatisfaction with the status quo and are defenders of
the poor and dispossessed. The Da Costa character ends up doing the
‘right thing,’ but contrary to the DS9 scenario, Da Costa is not what
one could describe as a conscious revolutionary.
Elysium serves as both an excellent metaphoric critique of the current
neo-liberal world and a sober warning regarding the high tech evolution
of this world into two separate worlds. Such a trajectory is not in the
least bit farfetched. Elysium resembles a guarded and gated community
of today’s rich and superrich, only that Elysium exists in orbit around
Earth. Given the environmental and political crises that Earth is
currently undergoing, there is little question but that the elite
envision a similar such escape. (7)
VII
Science fiction, through stories such as those mentioned,(8) is an
important vehicle in critiquing the current reality of neo-liberal
globalization, but also in offering warnings of the direction that
neo-liberalism is taking the planet. Generally the ‘answer’ to the
dystopias that are projected in science fiction takes the form of the
courageous individual, or in some cases, a small group of individuals,
either escaping or leading to some sort of overthrow of the evil clique
(rather than system) that has brought about this horrendous existence.
While this makes for exciting drama, it is politically misleading.
The crisis of citizenship in the 21st century is a direct outgrowth of
the evolution of capitalism. The polarization of wealth along with the
transnationalization of capitalism has dramatically changed the terrain
for nation-states, increasingly advancing the repressive side of the
role of the state as the resources for the so-called social safety net
are robbed by the global elite. The state becomes a mere symbol—though
a highly effective and dangerous one—allegedly representing the
relevant population against the barbarian, greedy “other” who seeks to
abscond with the ‘goods’ of the deserving or relevant population. The
state seems to be the vehicle to ensure that the relevant population
preserves what is “theirs.” Thus, smaller and smaller groups lay claim
to the need for a state in order to protect themselves and to ensure
that they get “theirs,” while the rest of humanity is left to rot in
hell, or, at best, to succeed on its own.
The crisis of citizenship cannot be resolved outside of the larger
socio-economic questions facing humanity. To the extent that
neo-liberal globalization remains hegemonic, there will be a greater
and greater tendency toward the polarization of wealth and resources in
favor of the elite. This will mean that there will be less for those at
the bottom and, therefore, a greater tendency toward genocidal wars
carried out in the name of protecting this or that ethnic-national
group or warlord fiefdom against everyone else.
One can conclude that this gives particular urgency and relevance to
the alternatives posed by Fredrick Engels and, separately, Rosa
Luxemburg more than a century ago: socialism or barbarism? To put it
differently, the exit from a dystopian future does not rest with a
brave individual or a small group of high tech activists who undermine
the state. Rather, it rests in winning the confidence of millions that
there is an alternative to chaos and dystopia that is not to be found
in one or another variant of authoritarianism. This is the challenge
for the global Left, and a challenge that it cannot afford to ignore.
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Notes
1 Resurrected in the sense that it found its origins in the Greek city-states.
2 Historic forms of oppression rather than discrimination. There are
sectors of the population that fall victim to a time-specific
discriminatory regime. Some European immigrant groups, for instance, in
arriving in the USA would be in that category. They may face vicious
discrimination, but such discrimination is not built into the system
itself and is normally resolved when that group comes to be absorbed
into the “white bloc.”
3 With a great deal of well-deserved attention to the work of Thomas
Piketty. Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century,
translated by Arthur Goldhammer (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 2014).
4 Due to their almost super-human strengths and abilities, replicants
have a very short life-span. As the creator of the replicants, a
billionaire scientist Dr. Eldon Tyrell, explains: “The light that burns
twice as bright burns half as long…” The rebel replicants in the film
seek a means to extend their lives and to have such lives without the
ever present threat of “retirement,” the euphemism for assassination at
the hands of a blade runner unit.
5 A space station that the United Federation of Planets—through Star
Fleet—administers in the 24th century on behalf of a Palestinian-like
population known as the Bajorans; a station once run by the
Cardassians, who had occupied Bajor.
6 Interestingly, so too does District 9, though in D9 the director uses
the vehicle of alien refugees to address a series of issues including
migration and repression.
7 Or, perhaps, the creation of underground or enclosed cities on Earth
open only to “citizens” acceptable to the state structure dominating
them.
8 To which one can, of course, add many others including the
hard-hitting In Time from 2011, starring Amanda Seyfried and Justin
Timberlake.
This commentary was originally published in AlterNet
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