单一理念系统
伊格纳西奥·拉莫内特
越陷越深。 在今天的民主国家中,越来越多的自由公民感到陷入困境,被一种粘性教条所束缚,这种教条正在暗中通过抑制、干扰、瘫痪来吞噬任何相反的思维方式,并最终使其陷入瘫痪。通过将其挤压关闭。 这一教条就是“单一思想体系”,这是一个看不见但无所不在的舆论警察所允许的唯一思想。
自从柏林墙倒塌、共产主义政权垮台、社会主义运动普遍丧失自信以来,这本新福音书的傲慢、厚颜无耻和傲慢已经达到了如此高度,以至于人们可以放心地将这种意识形态狂热描述为:现代教条主义的名称。
什么是“一个想法”系统? 它是将经济力量(参与者?)的利益,特别是国际资本(代表)的利益,转化为所谓的普遍意识形态前提。 事实上,“同一个理念”体系早在1944年的布雷顿森林会议上就已被定义和公布。它大多源于世界银行、国际货币基金组织、OCDE、GATT、 欧盟委员会、法国银行等。通过资助这些机构,它们能够在全球范围内招募众多研究中心、大学和基金会。这些反过来又完善和传播福音。
这种匿名言论随后被经济信息的主要提供者采用并转载,其中最突出的是银行家、股票经纪人和投资者最喜欢的报纸:《华尔街日报》、《金融时报》、《经济学人》、《远东评论》、《Les》、Echos、路透社等(不用说……)这些机构在很大程度上属于大型工业或金融集团。 几乎在所有地方,(大学的)经济系、记者、散文家和政治家都将这些新的十诫定为自己的,并通过大众媒体转述令人作呕的咒语。所有这些都表明,在我们这个完全媒介化社会的时代,重复意味着证据。
单一思想体系的主要前提更加强大,因为(显然是心不在焉的)马克思主义者不会与之相矛盾。 它指出经济领域优先于政治领域。 正是基于这一前提,仅举一个例子,法国(储备)银行等主要政治工具于 1994 年(独立于政府)独立出来,而且没有引起明显的反对。 正如他们所说,该银行“一直被搁置在变幻莫测的政治中”。 法国央行首席执行官让·克洛德·特里谢 (Jean Claude Trichet) 表示:“法国央行是独立的、非政治性的、跨党派的,但我们确实要求(政府)减少预算赤字,并且我们确实追求 稳定的货币战略”,就好像这些目标不是政治目标一样!……正是以(同样的)“现实主义”和“实用主义”的名义,阿兰·明克先生得出了以下声明:“资本主义不会崩溃 ,因为资本主义是社会的自然状态。民主不是社会的自然状态。市场才是。”,并继续让经济“掌舵”。 当然,我们在这里谈论的是一个已经从社会领域的尴尬中“解放”出来的经济,这种可怕而可悲的束缚被指责为我们衰退和经济危机的根源。
单一理念体系的其他关键特征是众所周知的:市场,这位“看不见的手纠正资本主义的粗暴和功能障碍”的神,最重要的是金融市场,它的“信号指导和决定了资本主义的总体趋势”。 经济”;竞争和竞争力,“通过引导企业进入永久和有益的现代化过程来刺激和激发企业活力”; 无国界自由贸易,“商业交流不断增加的源泉,从而也是社会发展的源泉”:工业生产和金融流动的全球化; 国际劳动分工,“控制工会的要求并降低劳动力成本”;强势货币,“一个(重要的)稳定因素”;放松管制;私有化;“越来越少的国家”,一种永久的仲裁,有利于来自资本的收入高于来自工作的收入。并且完全无视所有生态后果。
几乎所有政客,无论属于左派还是右派,都在所有媒体上不断重申这一新的教义问答,这赋予了它如此令人恐惧的力量,以至于扼杀了任何自由思考它的尝试,并使之几乎不可能实现。任何反对这种新蒙昧主义的行为。
人们几乎会想到,1740万欧洲人失业、内城区的崩溃、普遍存在的不安全感和边缘化情绪、普遍的腐败、城市外围高层贫民窟的骚乱、环境大屠杀、宗教、政治和种族主义极端主义,以及被排斥者的崛起,都只是幻觉,不,是犯罪幻觉,它们严重破坏了对所有可能世界中最奇妙的世界的想象,而这个世界是由一个理念为我们和我们麻醉的良心建造的系统。
最初发表于《外交世界》,1995 年 1 月。
阿姆斯特丹大学帕特里斯·里门斯 (Patrice Riemens) 译。
Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of the communist regimes, and the socialist movement's generalised loss of self-confidence, the arrogance, impudence and haughtiness of this new Gospel have reached such heights that one can safely characterise this ideological frenzy by the name of modern dogmatism.
What is the One Idea system? It is the translation into allegedly universal ideological premises of the interests of an assemblage of economic forces (actors?), especially those (represented by) international capital. As a matter of fact, the One Idea System had already been defined and announced at Bretton Woods in 1944. It mostly originates from the big monetary and economic institutions such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the OCDE, the GATT, the European Commission, the Bank of France, etc. By way of funding these institutions (are able to) enrol numerous research centres, universities, and foundations across the globe. These, in turn, refine and disseminate the Gospel.
This anonymous discourse is then picked up and reproduced by the main providers of economic information, most prominently by the bankers', stockbrokers' and investors' favourite papers: The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times, The Economist, The Far Eastern Review, Les Echos, Reuters, etc. (Needless to say that...) For a large part, these organs are owned by big industrial or financial groups. And almost everywhere, economics departments (of universities), journalists, essayists and also politicians make these new ten commandments their own, and incant them ad nauseam, relayed by the mass media. All in the knowledge that in our age of thoroughly mediatised societies, repetition means proof.
The leading premise of the One Idea System is all the more powerful since (avowedly absent-minded) Marxists would not contradict it. It states that the economic sphere takes precedence over the political one. It is on the basis of this very premise that, to take but one example, a major political instrument such as the (Reserve) Bank of France was made independent (of the government) in 1994, and this without noticeable opposition. The Banque has been, as they say, "shelved from the vagaries of politics". "The Bank of France is independent, non-political, and cuts across the parties" states its CEO, Jean Claude Trichet, only to add: "We do however ask (the government) to reduce the budget deficit (and) we do pursue a stable currency strategy" As if these objectives were anything but political objectives!... It is in the name of (this same) "realism" and "pragmatism" that Mr Alain Minc comes to the following statement: "Capitalism will not collapse, because capitalism is the natural state of society. Democracy is not the natural state of society. The market is.", and proceeds to put the economy "at the helm". And of course we're talking here of an economy that has been "freed" from the embarrassment of the social sphere, that horrible and pathetic straightjacket which stands accused of being the root cause of our recessions and economic crises.
Other key features of the One Idea System are well known: The market, that deity whose "invisible hand corrects the asperities and dysfunctions of capitalism", and then most of all, the financial markets, whose "signals guide and determine the general trends of the economy"; competition and competitivity, who "stimulate and dynamise enterprises, by inducing them in a process of permanent and beneficial modernisation"; borderless free trade, "source of an unending increase of commercial exchanges, and thus of the development of society": globalization, both of industrial production and of financial flows; international division of labour, which "keep the union's demands in check and lowers the costs of labour"; strong currency, "an (important) stabilising factor"; deregulation; privatisation; liberalisation, etc. "Less and less State", a permanent arbitration in favour of incomes deriving from capital above those deriving from work. And an absolute disregard for all ecological consequences.
The constant reiteration of this new catechism in all the media by almost all politicians, whether they belong to the left or to the right, endows it with such an intimidating power that it stifles any attempt to think freely about it, and renders next to impossible any opposition against this new obscurantism.
One would almost come to think that the 17.4 million jobless Europeans, the collapse of the inner cities, the widespread sentiment of insecurity and marginalization, the generalised corruption, the riots in the highrise ghettos of the urban peripheries, the environmental carnage, the return of religious, political and racist extremism, and the rising tide of the excluded are mere phantasms, nay, are criminal hallucinations which culpably disrupts the envisioning of that most marvellous of all possible worlds which is being built for us and our anaesthetised consciences by the One Idea System.
Originally published in Le Monde Diplomatique, January 1995.
Translated by Patrice Riemens, University of Amsterdam.