One of the main resources of capitalism and its system of domination, one that has enabled it to endure alongside its permanent repressive logic throughout different eras and against the multiple forms of resistance it has provoked, is undoubtedly its ability to co-opt for its own benefit everything that opposes it in terms of ideas and concepts.
This soft power has always been the direct, and if possible preventive, complement to purely repressive options, which are always costly in terms of maintaining order.
When we talk about recovery – the act of recovering something or someone; the fact of being recovered, we must understand that this is the process of emptying any proposal of its living content in order to transform it into a dead, disembodied formulation, a mere wax figure of social life. Words and ideas that have been stripped of their original reality could be listed in a long litany, of which we will give a very abbreviated version here.
Thus, the Republic (Res Publica, the people as king) has become the very framework for the enslavement of populations under the rule of the state and its institutions. And when the staging of this institutional framework is no longer sufficient, it is nevertheless in the name of this so-called Republic that the most legitimate revolts of populations overwhelmed by so many injustices are repressed and crushed.
Democracy (demos kratos, the power of the people) has been transformed, through the sleight of hand of the representative system, into a method of effectively dispossessing the people of all power, reducing them to the status of powerless spectators of distressing political maneuvering. It should be noted that this desire for recuperation, through electoral representation, manifested itself as early as the French Revolution in response to the demands for direct democracy that were soon expressed there. Another high point of this recuperative process was the crushing of the Commune and the seizure of power by the Versaillais, who have never left the scene since.
Socialism, which began as a demand for a truly egalitarian system for all populations, has been transformed into social democracy, a simple alternative method of planned and bureaucratic management of the political economy of the capitalist system and its continuity.
Trade unionism, a formidable movement of solidarity and resistance among the exploited, which for an entire era clearly displayed revolutionary objectives, has for the most part become, by allowing itself to be drawn into the logic of capitalism, the simple defense of corporate interests, ignoring everything else and losing all connection with the realities common to all. Without a global perspective, it has ultimately allowed itself to become completely atrophied.
Worse still, the world of peasantry and all its know-how in relation to respect for nature has been gradually exterminated by its own unions, which have worked for the development and profit of agribusiness, with the ecological devastation that we know, threatening even our future.
Feminism, a powerful movement demanding the emancipation of women in a predominantly patriarchal society, has gradually withered away, forgetting the world and the organizational system in which it sought to establish its freedom. thus contributing to the accentuation of widespread separation to the point of supporting the worst logic of sordid careerism, the right to be as despicable and selfish as the worst manifestations of a nevertheless despised masculinism.
Environmentalism, initially an awareness of the harmful effects of capitalist productivism on ecological balances, whether at the local or global level, an awareness that the main production of capitalism consisted in transforming everything into waste and garbage and the world itself into a smelly dump, has been transformed into a mode of adaptation, of adaptive resilience to this same decaying world. The so-called ecological parties have pitifully abandoned the very idea of the need for a radical transformation of the mode of social organization, with the result that ecology is now perceived by many as a real turn-off and as completely disconnected from the realities of everyday life. This will certainly not help to avoid the worst.
The notions of justice and security have also been completely emptied of their substance, essentially boiling down to the establishment of a security order whose main objective is to preserve and protect dominant interests, coupled with the surveillance and control of disadvantaged populations considered potentially dangerous by the system.
The hope for an egalitarian society has completely vanished, as capitalism has succeeded in implicitly convincing people that the only real sin, the only unforgivable fault, the only unacceptable diversity, is ultimately to be poor according to its primary criterion, money.
And if the poor are poor, it can only be their fault and can only come from their unwillingness to take part in the banquet of capital. Far from any attempt to seek social equality in principle, the idea that the poor could only be lazy has been instilled.
We can therefore see that a large part of what allows ideas to be appropriated and distorted is the control of the meaning of words by emptying concepts of their meaning, gradually removing everything that was originally subversive about them. A significant number of agents of the system, paid to varying degrees, devote themselves to this task on a daily basis, starting with politicians of all stripes. The so-called news media then rush to lend a hand through commentators quickly designated by the system itself as experts.
And so it is that an idea, originally full of hope for emancipation and promise, is transformed into completely stagnant lukewarm water that no longer poses any threat to the ruling class. A successful appropriation, in other words. It is therefore not surprising that all those who claim to truly oppose the continuity and predatory nature of this type of society pay particular attention to this phenomenon.
Rebounds: