Antisystemic Movements [Anglais] [Relié]

Historical analyses and outright predictions by eminent scholars can throw an insightful light on more or less important historic tendencies and events.

Anti-systemic movements triumphant
In the 19th century, two principal varieties of anti-systemic movements emerged: the social one (based on class struggle) and the national one (clash between the core countries and the periphery of the capitalist system). Both movements understood rapidly that control of the State (the key political structure) and its apparatus was the only way to conquer power.
In the 20th century, the social movement split into a social-democratic fraction, which wanted to win power through legal and democratic means (elections), while the communist fraction sought all-out power by revolution (coups d'état).
All fractions were triumphant of course in different parts of the world. There are no `political' colonies anymore. The social-democrats could form governments in Western Europe, while the communists took power in Russia, China and Eastern Europe.

Political and socio-economic evolutions
Despite anti-State rhetoric by the capitalist establishment, there was everywhere a marked increase in the centralization of the State, together with a centralization of capital (transnational companies and institutions - IMF, World Bank, WTO) and an axial division of labor (from the core to the (semi-) periphery).
The authors were correct in predicting an erosion of the US hegemony as well as the diminishing abilities of the State to control its civil societies.
However, they did not foresee the implosion of the plan economies in the USSR and Eastern Europe and neither the sharp U-turn in China under Deng Xiaoping, who clearly understood that the only way for the Chinese CP to keep power, was a marked increase of the living standard of the population (Julia Lovell).

May 1968, a rehearsal
The authors stress the all importance of the May 1968 events. However, those protests were not anti-systemic, not in Paris (a student protest against numerus clausus) and not in the US (a protest against conscription for the war in Vietnam War).
Their conclusion about the 1968 events is astonishing: we have no answer to the question: 1968, rehearsal for what?
There could be an answer, at least for the Paris riots: how to manipulate street violence in order to replace a President, your inveterate enemy, by your mole in the government? (V. Jauvert: L'Amérique contre De Gaulle). What about the `Arab Springs'?

This book is a stimulating read, although mute or not correct in its predictions.