One of the ideologues of the "new world order" Jacques Attali describes the future as a nomadic world. It will be based on “information nomads” without a stable address and family: they will carry on themselves and in themselves everything that will make up its social significance (smartphones, self-diagnosis devices and replaceable organs). The social ideal of health and knowledge is the driving motive for compliance with the norm, for fear of becoming an exception. In this society, high incomes will be the lot of those who have the rent of knowledge or information; capital will go to the place where labor will be most creative, whatever its costs, and to where non-creative labor will be at the lowest price. Attali is confident that a Continental Union will emerge: EU + Russia, which will oppose global nomadism.
Vladimir Levchenko in the book “Attali Jacques. Aide to François Mitterrand”(IP Er Media, 2008) describes the life of this French politician, one of the main architects of the current European Union. In the preface to the book, Levchenko briefly explains how Attali sees the past, present and future world.
“Jacques Attali is a French political scientist, economist and writer. Special advisor to President Mitterrand since 1981, member of the State Council of the French Republic. He headed (until 1994) the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, whose task was to make the transition from a planned centralized economy to a market economy less painful for the countries of Eastern Europe. The author of the concept of a "new world order", which is the apogee of the liberal direction of societies, thought with its installation on the spread of Western values (free market, pluralistic democracy) throughout the world.
Sacredness, Strength and Money
In the upcoming "hyperindustrial" society, the service system itself is being transformed into consumer goods, based on information manipulation technology (computerization, microprocessors, etc.). Attali gives his synthesis of the previous social development. Every social form of organization of people must learn to manage Violence - both from the side of people and from the side of nature. Until now, there have been three forms of violence management: Sacred, Power and, finally, Money. Each of these forms determines the order corresponding to the type of society. One social form replaces another, without displacing it completely; moreover, all three are represented in our everyday life. The need to manage violence does not disappear, and at the same time the “three-functional trilogy of power” remains.
In the early Middle Ages in Europe, a radically new way of managing Violence, opposed to the Sacred and the Force, arose - Money, and with it the market and capitalism. In this new order, power is measured by the amount of money controlled - first by Force, then by Law. In contrast to the two previous orders, where social forms can coexist on a rival basis, the market order is organized each time around unities, a form that claims to be global influence. From form to form, the faction of social relations ruled by the Market that controls the Violence is expanding; there is a growing part of the world where the "Law of Money" reigns.
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Ninth order form
Today we are entering the Ninth Form of this order. Each of the eight preceding forms was characterized by the following common features:
1) Its center is a city ("heart"), in which financial, technical, cultural (but not necessarily political) power is concentrated. Its elite regulates prices and profits, and funds artists and researchers.
2) Around the “heart” an “environment” is formed, consisting of numerous countries and regions, consumers of products.
3) Then follows the “periphery”, which is still partially in the Order of Power, and sells its raw materials and labor to the first two, without having access to the wealth of the “heart”.
Each form implements a technology more efficient than the previous one in terms of energy use and communication. It remains stable as long as it provides sufficient demand for its products and profits. When this mechanism stops, the form disintegrates: until a new form takes its place, society is going through a crisis. The market form has a very short duration compared to the long periods of crisis, which Attali considers the "natural states of society."
From the 13th to the 20th centuries, the market order changed eight forms, which characterized:
- Eight "hearts": Bruges by 1300, Venice by 1450, Anvers by 1500, Genoa by 1550, Amsterdam by 1650, London by 1750, Boston by 1880, New York by 1930.
- Eight main technical innovations, of which the most important: aft steering wheel, caravel, steam engine, internal combustion engine, electric motor.
- Eight social functions performed by the service sector (feeding, dressing, transporting, maintaining, entertaining, etc. have consistently become commodities).
Today the world is at the end of a period of crisis and at the dawn of a new - ninth - market form, which promises a "long period of abundance." Attali sees the main reason for the crisis in the rise in prices not for energy, but for education and health care, which absorb an increasing part of the value produced and reduce the profitability of the economy.
Time of nomadism
The advent of the ninth market form heralds new technologies, which Attali defines as "the automation of information manipulation"; new items, replacing services that were previously provided by people, he calls "nomadic (nomadic) items." Unlike the dominant forms of consumption of the previous era, which were in the house and required plugging in (refrigerator, washing machine, TV), “nomadic items” are portable, not tied to a place, they can be carried or carried in a car. Portable phones and computers are transforming the way work is organized. These are the harbingers of more important subjects that, as a mass, will become sources of profit, structuring a new economic and sociocultural order. Self-diagnostics, self-treatment and medical prosthetics items,and subjects for training will reduce the need for doctors and educators, but will increase the number of specialists in the field of information manipulation: a great future for this industry is assured.
New portable things of the "modern nomad" - telephone, video, artificial organs, etc., will prepare in the near future the individualization and industrialization of services in the field of leisure, teaching, diagnostics, treatment. In this society, the so-called. “Nomadic culture”: in the conditions of a liberal market culture, “new nomads” - rich citizens-consumers will wander, acquiring goods, information, new impressions and sensations. This is the kingdom of carnival, an apology for narcissism, individualism. Everyone will be able to change himself in a short time thanks to the means of self-education and self-treatment.
A person of tomorrow, a nomadic worker, temporarily employed in enterprises that also wander in search of the lowest wages for unskilled labor, a consumer of "nomadic" things, his own master, who has information and means of manipulation, will be both a sick doctor, a teacher and a student, a spectator and an actor, a consumer of his own products, mixing fantasy and reality into a world with vague outlines. In this society, high incomes will be the lot of those who have the rent of knowledge or information; capital will go to the place where labor will be most creative, whatever its costs, and to where non-creative labor will be at the lowest price.
They will be confronted by "poor nomads" who are fleeing the "needy periphery" in search of food and shelter.
In this new social form, a person will become a nomad without a stable address and family: he will carry on himself and in himself everything that will make up his social significance. The social ideal of health and knowledge is the driving motive for compliance with the norm, for fear of becoming an exception.
Nomadism as insurrection
The logic of the development of science and economics leads Attali to predict the emergence of "genetic prostheses": "life itself will become a nomadic subject." Man will be reproduced serially as an object or like an animal. Attali warns against the illusion of the infinity of changes in the process of improving the material world. A person should be saved from himself, put restrictions on his own chimeras. Man is a "tenant" on the planet: without distinguishing between good and evil, without a "sense of the sacred", without a "new covenant" between man and nature, his survival is impossible.
Attali points to the need for a transition to a higher level of international organization - "Planetary political power, requiring compliance with norms in areas where life is at stake."
Nomadic subjects, this factor of freedom and personal autonomy, are at the same time a factor of rebellion. One who is not attached to anything is ready for anything; new items do not fill the lack of meaning and stability; freedom, if it is “freedom of boredom,” seeks to fill the void with travel, including those from which they never return - drugs.
Where will this new form develop? First of all, in Asia: over the past 20 years, this continent has developed 3 times faster than Latin America, and 6 times faster than Africa. Japan plays the leading role here. Then comes the United States - "a nomadic society in essence, the chosen land of the media."
Finally, Europe or "Europe", which remains a hostage of its own concepts - nation states, identity, societies, service, social security, etc. This translates into high labor costs. If Europe does not want to become a market for “nomadic things” produced outside its borders, it must adopt a new institutional framework and create a “democracy without shores”, as opposed to the limited community that is being born now.
Europe, according to Attali's definition, is a continent - a nomad par excellence: it is present in different places to a greater or lesser extent. First of all, it is present in America: at least the USA, Canada, Mexico and Brazil emerged as European nations; more European nations live in New York, Chicago, Vancouver, Buenos Aires and Mexico City than in Paris, Madrid or London.
The United States responds more quickly to the needs of "Eastern Europe" than Western Europe itself. Until recently, history has turned the Atlantic into an "inland sea" that unites continents. Attali is attracted by the possibility of a Euro-Atlantic community that could replace the European Community. But this is unlikely to happen: the emerging identity of the entire American continent is more likely to orient it towards the Pacific Ocean. However, they need a strong Europe in order to share with it the burden of the problems of the world's poor peoples, the environment, and also to take care of Eastern Europe and Russia.
On the other hand, are Europa limited by the Urals or extend beyond it? For a long time, the answer was simple: the boundaries were determined by the spread of Western Christianity. Today Europe also includes Orthodoxy and Islam as its constituents. “Europe” is located beyond the Urals: for if Russia is a European country, it stretches all the way to Vladivostok. They continue to the south: Georgia and Armenia, as Christian countries, but also the countries of the Maghreb and Central Asia, can be included in Europe. Thus, Europe finds itself without definite borders with Asia and must first of all define itself as a place of multicultural memory, as a “spirit”. To stay on the level of new challenges, Europeans must choose the image of the future Europe.
A Franco-German alliance would be especially necessary for its success.
America interested in a strong Europe will favor the Continental Union. Its task is to give all the peoples of the continent confederal institutions without dissolving the European Union. The Continental Union, the main driving force of which will be the European Union and Russia, can become a pole of stability in the world, constituting a counterweight to the American empire.