Having been requested to compose a short preface to this French translation of the text, I realised that it gave me an opportunity to address the current state of politics and the rather dire situation in which democracy now finds itself. We are living in a time of upheaval, a time of inflection, after which things could go in a number of directions, some extremely unpalatable. Democracy does now strikingly appear to be in retreat, a fact recognised even by those at the top of politics. The current American Vice-President, J.D. Vance, stated categorically in an interview that the current order will meet its ‘inevitable collapse’. Peter Thiel, the billionaire venture capitalist and political activist, has said that he does not believe that liberty and democracy are compatible. The list of critics of democracy today goes on and on. A large number of people have finally realised that democracy as practised leads to a tyranny controlled by an oligarchy. Its critics are growing. Its stalwart defendants tend to be part of what Curtis Yarvin has termed ‘the Cathedral’ – the interconnected bureaucratic network of academics, media elites and government bureaucrats who set the bounds of acceptable opinion and police it. The bureaucratic element of this situation is sometimes referred to as ‘the Deep State’, the Swamp, or the Blob. The natural response to this is expressed in the desire to dismantle this edifice or to ‘drain the swamp’. Then the question arises: what political structure should then replace ‘democracy’?
There are a number of alternative possibilities currently being put forward. Most prominent, of course, is the swing to the right in the form of populist nationalist authoritarianism, including a hankering for some form of ‘monarchy’ or rule by a single all-powerful leader. This seems to be common to all the alternatives currently being presented.
One possibility offered, and considered by some, owing to the power of Big Tech companies, to be already in operation, is techno-feudalism under the leadership of a techno-oligarchy with an all-powerful CEO, resembling a capitalist company. Curtis Marvin, the blogger formerly known as Mencius Moldbug, and Nick Land, the philosopher behind the ‘Dark Enlightenment’ and Neoreaction, advocate an accountable ‘techno-monarchy’ structured on the model of a start-up company. However, this is unworkable when faced with the reality of a large complex system. Therefore others propose a multitude of city-states under technocratic CEOs and look fondly at Singapore, Dubai and Hong Kong, although the latter did not work out so well. Yaneer Bar-Yam, a specialist in complex systems, asks the question: ‘Why should governments fail?’ and then gives the answer:
Because leaders, whether self-appointed dictators, or elected officials, are unable to identify what policies will be good for a complex society. The unintended consequences are beyond their comprehension. Regardless of values or objectives, the outcomes are far from what they intend.
(Teams: A manifesto, New England Complex Systems Institute (July 31, 2016))
There is also the solution posed by the entrepreneur Balaji Srinivasan of Network States which develop from an online community. It is an interesting solution, but can a state exist without physical territory or actual real (non-digital) currency? Is it possible to re-engineer money into cryptocurrency alone when, by its nature, it is highly speculative?
‘Neoliberalism’ refers to the political-social set of beliefs and assumptions which has held sway since the 1970s. Vesting power in the markets, it empowers those with capital – the investors and entrepreneurs – and disempowers those who are employed, under the specious banners of democracy and equality (which lack any substantive meaning). Neoliberalism is really a construct of impulses used to maintain market and intellectual dominance with minimal government interference, presenting a facade of morality while actually obscuring its underlying racialism and its belief in the superiority of Western civilisation. It is, in fact, only the successful oligarchy who are the beneficiaries of the system.
Global neoliberalism appears to be coming to an end. Most trace the beginning of its demise to the 2008 financial crisis. There were other things also happening at the time which paved the way for that crisis - like Putin’s first aggression against Georgia, the breakdown of the WTO and unproductive climate talks. Of course, all this did not come out of the blue. The disintegration of the gold standard in 1971 ultimately led to the unrestrained financial dealings which led to the crash of 2008. In addition, the psychological and financial impact of Covid exacerbated what Hannah Arendt points out as the problem of loneliness, which is a seedbed for totalitarianism, because it fosters an angry, aggrieved desire to escape the current situation. The term she uses is Verlassenheit, which means a state of being abandoned and hence left alone and alienated which accurately describes what the current system does to individuals.
In spite of the marketing assertion that a market untrammelled by government intervention would lead to optimum well-being, neoliberalism has, in fact, given rise to incredible inequality. The latest World Inequality Report shows that the richest 10% of people in the world own 76% of all wealth, while the poorest 50% have virtually none at all and many have negative wealth or debt. This stark disparity inevitably leads to isolation, despair and anger. ‘Democracy’ clearly is not working for the majority of the human race.
Most of the ‘alternatives’ to the current political system have been devised by people with some connection to Silicon Valley. Why then are the techno-oligarchy so unhappy with the prevailing status quo? Obviously the system has given them vast wealth and clout - just look at their prominent positions at the inauguration of Donald Trump. Yanis Varoufakis aptly designates them as the barons of techno-feudalism, based on their control of cloud capital. In fact, going back to 2008, they were helped by the central banks’ reaction to the crisis which resulted in the handing out large quantities of money to them while most people were enduring austerity. Notably, nine of ten dollars spent by Facebook (now Meta) on cloud capital came from the money gifted to them by the central banks. That was where the money that was meant to go to households and small businesses ended up. Therefore the human cogs that physically make the system run are, justifiably, unhappy and angry.
But what do the new techno-oligarchs want? They offer no viable solutions to the current situation in the form of policy or helping those who are alienated or addressing the heart of the problem. Their answer is to simply eliminate any government interference and unleash unrestrained capitalism, forgetting that the original problem was brought about by precisely the same methodology. Or, cynically, perhaps with full awareness of it. So, in fact, the demise of neoliberalism is not what is actually taking place: it has even been referred to as the ‘strange non-death of neoliberalism’ (Colin Crouch). What is really being advocated is the jettisoning of any social responsibility for those in need and the removal of any state control over their interests. It is not surprising that the proponents of the ‘Dark Enlightenment’ are enamoured of the Middle Ages which was truly feudal with proper lords and serfs.
Thus the neo-right are also part of the project of neoliberalism. None of this constitutes post-neoliberalism, but is rather simply a mutation of neoliberalism, since the goal of neoliberalism is the empowerment of the entrepreneurs and untrammelled freedom of markets. This is, as the historian Quinn Slobodian says, ‘a bastard neo-liberal strain of crack-up capitalism.’ The populist nationalists remain neoliberals in respect of the market, but with a xenophobic solution which posits that removing ‘others’ will solve the problem they face. They do occasionally take pot shots at certain aspects of the neoliberal structure, but it is largely out of yearning for a return to a fabled golden past. Steve Bannon and his fellow travellers - of which numerous examples are found in political parties in Europe - are traditionalists: they want to go back to a golden past by destroying the corrupt present. This requires an authoritarian leader, so at least they agree with the techno-feudalists on this point. And it further entails the dissolution of large state bureaucracies and inter-national institutions like the U.N. and the European Union, and international trade blocs. All of this noise is nevertheless useless against the insuperable capitalist imperative.
The nation-state is a paradigm that has only existed since the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 which ended the Thirty Years’ War. It paved the way for the separation of religion and state and legitimised usury (a consequence of Calvin’s hermeneutical interpretation of Scripture). Neoliberalism has moved political power from the nation-state to the markets and now views the interference of national governance to be a hindrance to the capitalist project. This is where we find ourselves today and it is clear that no one is happy with the status quo – not even the obscenely rich. None of the solutions offered by the political movements outlined in this discussion address the underlying cause which has ultimately created the situation in which we now find ourselves. Bannon, for instance, believes in capitalism, but in a ‘Judeo-Christian capitalism’, which fails to acknowledge the pernicious root problem which is usury which enables the excessive accumulation of wealth in the hands of a few.
If one abandons the nation-state, there are two possible directions to take. One is centripetal, resulting in a return to empires, but the isolation engendered by the modern world works against that. The other direction is centrifugal, meaning the creation of smaller political entities. We see this in the proposal of smaller city-states or network states.
Instead of attempting to revive a romanticised Gilded Age, forgetting (or perhaps not) all the inequalities and injustices that took place in it, real alternatives need to be considered, which is why I believe we should put the model of Islamic governance on the table. I do not mean the Islamist model which arises when someone picks up a copy of Islam for Dummies and then adds their own misogynist, authoritarian, violent, or fantasist view and ends up with something that in no way resembles any past society based on Islamic principles. Nor does it mean trying to bring back the past. A principle of Islamic jurisprudence is ‘urf, or the normative practice of the people. For instance, in the past in the Middle East, a man was not considered to have judicial integrity if he did not wear a head covering, be it a turban, fez, or whatever. This did not, however, apply in western North Africa because that was not the custom, or ‘urf there. ‘Urf allows for customs that are in common practice to be applied in law as long as the custom does not go against an explicit text. This allows for flexibility and adaptability.
In the Islamic paradigm, the function of the ruler is to protect the weak against the strong, and part of that is to prevent the disproportionate accumulation of wealth in the hands of a few at the expense of the poor and to remove corruption from the courts of justice and other domains. In the Qur’an prayer is coupled with zakat. The market is not a sphere of interest which is independent of morality. If you do not solve the problem of usury, from which capitalism and neoliberalism spring, you cannot solve the social and political problems prevalent in today’s world. It is only the Islamic paradigm that makes this imperative paramount.
Everyone of you is a shepherd, and everyone of you is responsible for his flock; the caliph who rules the people is a shepherd, and he is responsible for those whom he governs.
If you read Shaykh Uthman dan Fodio’s description of the ruler, it is evident that this role is very different to that of a CEO of a capitalist company. While network state has potential, its digital nature and lack of physical presence in both territory and currency is in danger of turning it into a LARP (Life Action Role Play) project. Nevertheless, that model could potentially facilitate connections between smaller communities.
More importantly, the Islamic paradigm is more than just a political project, because the principal function of governance is to enable the Muslims to fulfil their obligations both to Allah and to the other people in society. This negates the Verlassenheit or loneliness/isolation which Arendt posited as a seedbed for totalitarianism and for all the mutant forms of decayed neoliberalism prevalent today. This objective must never be forgotten. If it is, what happens will turn into a project disconnected from the worship of Allah and the establishment of social justice, and one that will almost certainly lead to people falling into the same traps that have ensnared all those others we have mentioned who are now seeking for something beyond ‘democracy’.
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