A-Infos (en) Italy, UCADI, #206 - CHAOS AFTER POSTMODERNITY (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

Before suffocating (or breathing) in the prison (or paradise) of a 
postcapitalist global empire or a postcapitalist global market society, 
humanity could burn in the horrors (or glories) of the growing violence 
that accompanied the liquidation of the Cold War world order. In this 
case, too, the history of capitalism would come to an end, but this time 
through a stable return to the systemic chaos from which it originated 
six hundred years ago and which has reproduced itself on an 
ever-increasing scale with each transition. Whether this will mean the 
end of the history of capitalism or the end of the entire history of 
humanity is anyone's guess.
(G. Arrighi, "The Long 20th Century" 1996-2014, p. 392)

"Everyone knows everything about the beginning but no one can talk about 
the end"

(F. de Gregori. "Air disaster over the Strait of Sicily", 1976)

ONLY ONE THING WE CAN SAY

It can be thought that knowing history is useless and irrelevant to 
making predictions about the future based on the present. Especially if 
we have understood history as a rectilinear, homogeneous, teleological, 
and almost theological path. However, given that humans have only 
appeared on this planet for an extremely short time, we cannot avoid 
analyzing the present by starting from what we already know, which often 
appears to repeat itself periodically, or by presenting new content in 
old containers (or vice versa).
This is also because there is no other way than to grope in complete 
darkness, in an abyss of reason that is difficult even to fathom.
However, even admitting that history is not a completely legible and 
sensible path but a reconstruction of a bumpy journey in which we try to 
grasp at least some thread that unites and makes a rough sketch, a 
sinopia, comprehensible, it is truly complicated to navigate 
contemporaneity using only the usual tools.

WE SAW THEM COMING

The birth of fascism comes to mind, for example, a birth that very few 
were able to grasp in all its overwhelming novelty. And where single-key 
analyses failed to grasp a magmatic movement (magmatic for the founders 
themselves) that ultimately paved the way for the absolute novelty of an 
unprecedented totalitarian project.
Not the purely economic analyses, not the liberal ones, not the 
patriotic or para-Risorgimento ones (all these were absorbed by 
fascism's anti-ideological path, later spewed out in an almost 
mythological figure: the hircocervus).
And yet we cannot help but work with the material we have, avoiding 
oracular tones but also not being frozen in the face of the world before us.
We are faced, today, with something unprecedented, whose roots, however, 
must be sought in the past thirty years.
Let's be clear: everything could have gone differently, but what didn't 
happen could perhaps be of interest for counterfactual analyses and 
parlor games, or in some parallel universe according to string theory.
But in the context we're in, that's how it happened, and we can only 
analyze it that way.
The path that led to the end of the universe of so-called "real 
socialism" was not at all a triumph of some libertarian wave. It was 
instead the crushing and vengeful victory of the most violent 
capitalism. Salt was poured on the ashes of socialism, achieved or 
possible, and not even the honors of war were granted. De André 
understood this well from the start, so much so that in 1990, in that 
masterpiece "Sunday of the Dead," he said: " The pyramid of Cheops 
wanted to be rebuilt on that feast day, rock by rock, slave by slave, 
communist by communist." That battle was fought, it should be 
remembered, not (or not only) by the fascist and post-fascist right, 
but, above all, by the liberal component of society and its leading 
mercenaries.

THE MARKET GOD

Now, I don't want to bore the reader here with things that have been 
written a thousand times, but it is essential to remember that the fuse 
that led us to the current situation was lit in those years. What 
re-emerged from the depths of the sewers into which it had been thrown 
was not only the fascist horde, but also (and I would say fundamentally) 
an economic theory that had been given up for dead and buried: 
ordoliberalism.
I certainly cannot go into the guidelines of this true capitalist 
dystopia here[2], but it should be remembered that, unlike liberalism, 
this totalitarian ideology does not approach the economy according to 
the dictates of the now outdated "free market", but goes to integrate 
the whole of society. Not "less-State" but, rather, "more-State" and 
placed at the service of capital (capitalism is not a state of nature 
and therefore its ideology must be constructed). Competition placed at 
the service of all human knowledge (from healthcare, to schools, to 
universities, to the world of work). This is the dominant ideology on 
which the EU was built.
The US Empire had already experienced it in the coup in Chile, with the 
Chicago Boys. In that case, unlike the EU, as has often happened in the 
history of capitalism, unbridled neoliberalism was accompanied by bloody 
and brutal repression. Capital never disdains the use of force when 
moral suasion fails. This is why the state is fundamental, contrary to 
what amateur economic theorists believe.
That capital lacks the "reasoning" to advance its own "rationality" (in 
the theological sense of the term) should be clear to everyone by now, 
even if its hegemony seems to have won hearts and minds.
After 1989, a triumphant capitalism also becomes the master of the world 
and poses as a benevolent but also punishing God.

I AM THE LAW

In this sense, the massacre of the first and second Gulf Wars against a 
Third World country today appear not as examples of a reaffirmation of 
"international law," but of the creation ex nihilo of the law of empire.
A signal that was missed, except by a few (Danilo Zolo, for one). But 
when, after the euphoria of the dismantling of the wall (which fell 
entirely upon the lower classes) and the foaming mouths of the liberals, 
as always accompanied by the fascists, new and not secondary players 
appeared on the world stage, the Empire began to falter. China, with an 
extraordinary performance (to use the neo-speak) became in just a few 
years the major player on the global economic scene; Russia, after the 
humiliations of global pariahship suffered under Yeltsin, reemerged as 
an authoritarian state, but one that no longer asked for "permission," 
not to mention the other gigantic countries that today make up that 
strange and composite entity known as BRICS.

CHAOS IS ME

This new dislocation of the world has brought an unprecedented backlash 
to the Western world. And if the first Trump appeared as a demagogue 
battling the globalist elites, after the foolish election of the 
less-than-lucid Biden (responsible for the military escalation in the 
Ukrainian conflict), the second truly presents himself on the scene as 
the epitome of a declining empire, a sort of Social Republic a thousand 
times more virulent. Having cast aside every idea of "soft power," he 
has, through gangster-like language, demolished every vestige of 
"international law," even the imperial law of his predecessors, throwing 
himself headlong into creating chaos that, upon closer inspection, truly 
gives the impression of absolute and devastating nihilism.
Although, obviously, history, as important as individual personalities 
are, certainly does not advance in the shoes of one man alone. Enormous 
military interests, the need to pave the way for the final conflict with 
China, the conquest of resources...this new hircocervus truly contains 
everything, but it's so tangled that it's difficult to grasp its 
meaning. This is also because we are in a period in which a genocide 
committed live and on all networks has not only gone uncondemned, but 
has received the support of the entire (or almost entire) Western world. 
We are truly, to quote the philosopher, at a "transvaluation of all 
values," even those that for 80 years have been served up to us as 
"never again."
But we know that liberals, the ruling classes, when forced to choose, 
will always consider Hitler the lesser evil if forced to do so.

VOLUNTARY SERVITUDE

I have remained silent about Europe, or rather the EU. Because there is 
nothing to say about it. The political insignificance of this 
euro-shaped entity now seems clear. And if we wanted to say something, 
it is that never before, not even in the harshest years of the Cold War, 
has there been such submission, far beyond decency, to a master who now 
openly despises us, and the more we subserviently act, the more 
(rightly) we disgust him.
A group composed of the lowest level ever reached by an inept, ignorant, 
arrogant, and cowardly ruling class that will drag us into the abyss.

Andrea Bellucci

[2]The bibliography on the subject is now vast. A fundamental text 
remains that of Pierre Dardot and Christian Laval, The New Reason of the 
World. Critique of Neoliberal Rationality , Derive Approdi, 2013

https://www.ucadi.org/2026/03/28/caos-dopo-la-postmodernita/
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