The government works on the basis of executive, legislative and judicial authorities, which have certain powers, though they are quite limited. They are limited by their very nature as instruments of the system and, due to deterioration that diminishes social support, even though it maintains its legal form.
Juan Diego García
Power, in its decisive forms, rests on capital as the foundation for social order. That is to say, in the ownership of the means of production (in its multiple forms) that ultimately decides real power.
The government and political activity in general constitute only the management that should ensure the good performance of social order.
The instruments of power to this end are many, and they go from the legal forms that they impose (peacefully or violently, according to what is required) to much more subtle mechanisms that seek to ensure obedience of at least a majority sufficient to ensure legitimacy.
To ensure legitimacy, a favourable social consensus, culture in all its forms plays a central role.
It has always been like this. It is enough to remind us of the role of religion as a support of the feudal regime and of capitalism.
The instruments to ensure support sufficient to social order are ensured (or sought) by education, mass media, magic thinking (religion) and other similar ones that support the vision of the bourgeoisie order as “natural” and condemn any alternative to change as a dangerous affair.
In both cases, the prevailing social order is justified as a type of divine mandate or natural law.
The current crisis of the capitalist system that fully affects its legitimacy is produced not only by the economy’s own structural fluctuations (rise, equilibrium and fall) that the neoliberal model has only exacerbated (although it promised to end them), but also by the severe deterioration of the so-called “three powers”, which are expressed in the enormous weakness of the governments.
Basic power, the big bourgeoisie, seems undecided between a return to some form of Keynesianism in order to calm the population’s general unease by fundamentally maintaining the neoliberal model with small changes, or taking neoliberalism to its extremes even if it has to be given greater space to do this (without excluding the government itself) to the extreme right, which is nothing other than modern fascism.
For the big bourgeoisie, it is a risk not to make a decision on time. This chance of indecision, with the risks it entails, could be understood because no imminent danger to the system is seen. In fact, though social discontent has spread, the alternatives to the political and social organizations of the left have been swept up in their own crisis.
The end of the so-called “really existing socialism” produced almost the disappearance of the communist parties, while the almost total abandonment of social democracy towards neoliberalism ended up ruining the real alternatives of these parties and, in general, of almost all popular organizations, so that the traditional left stopped being a danger to the system.
The new political manifestations do not seem to be in a position to offer solid alternatives and – the same as the bourgeoisie – seem to swing between a force that protests, but only to recover some of what was lost (the welfare state, for example) and, in the best-case scenario, to try to formulate reforms that serve as a starting point for the future construction of a new social order.
Real power is only affected as a result of the crisis of the system; it does not feel threatened by a social force putting it in immediate danger. Nowhere is there a revolution in progress threatening the essence of the social order; in any case, this would occur on the periphery – in the poor world – confirming that “the chain is broken by its weakest link.”
The greatest concern of the bourgeoisie is reduced to finding solutions to political order, to the ways of governing; today so subjected to enormous challenges due to their loss of legitimacy.
Thus, their dilemma between returning to some form of Keynesianism or taking a punt on deepening neoliberalism, a proposal from the extreme right.
In any case, if events aggravate the crisis in its various forms, there is always the extreme solution of fascism.
(Translated by Donna Davison. Email: donna_davison@hotmail.com) – Photos: Pixabay
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