As globalization progresses, more and more people would like to escape it by returning to an idealized nation in splendid isolation, even though the slightest attempt at originality raises storms and forces a return to the past. External pressure is undeniably homogenizing, just as prices tend to converge in open markets. Lamenting or rejecting this fact does not change anything, except to build a wall between us and the rest of the world, which is no longer tenable. We are part of this world and this time, just like this weak Europe. The only territory we have left is that of proximity, which is not insignificant and is the place for local alternatives to commercial globalisation, but it will not prevent the world from continuing to unify.
There was a time, not so long ago, when globalism seemed to be nothing more than an ideology of cosmopolitan elites, whereas we now seem to be belatedly discovering the effective erasure of borders, which is manifesting itself loudly in tax exile, among other things. On taxation, too, we have therefore lost the possibility of deviating too far from the European norm. National democracy has lost much of its substance. We can legitimately feel a sense of dispossession. We undoubtedly belong to a larger empire, which could still break apart in these times of crisis, but that would not restore us to our former glory and would instead hasten our decline, while a united Europe would once again become, at least for a time, the leading power.
However, this is only part of the question, because we are seeing the emergence of a kind of world government of the economy, particularly through the coordinated policies of central banks and the regulation of financial markets—but not of currencies, which remain national. It is therefore impossible to know whether this solidarity will withstand the currency war that has begun, but this would undoubtedly be only a hiccup in the longer-term movement towards world unification, which is already largely effective, with a universal state in the making for a long time.
Some see the emergence of a supranational state as the result of an American conspiracy, or even more specifically of the Rothschilds, with Kojève in particular lending a helping hand! History would thus be nothing more than a series of evil intentions, as in police conceptions of history that ignore material forces and underlying trends. Instead, we can see the unification of the world as a consequence of universal entropy and the development of communications. It is this entropic dimension that we will examine here and which René Passet believes he finds in the interpretation of the end of history and social classes as the homogenization of populations alongside the differentiation of individuals.
The expression “universal and homogeneous state” comes from Kojève, who interprets the end of Hegelian history embodied by Napoleon in Jena, bringing with the civil code individual freedoms and universal reason as the legacy of the great revolution. The rest of history would be nothing more than the fulfillment of this founding act, including Chinese communism interpreted as the Westernization of China. It is doubtful that this is a truly Hegelian conception, which remains attached to the particular minds of peoples and is reluctant to transcend its own era. Hegel speaks more enigmatically of the end of time itself in the Phenomenology (which Kojève interprets as a world that can no longer be denied by action, p. 467), but there is no trace of these speculations later on, notably in the Principles of the Philosophy of Right. Kojève paradoxically claimed to have a Marxist reading of Hegel (he considered himself to be Stalin's conscience, even though he had fled communist Russia and participated in the construction of Europe!). It is in this capacity that he speaks of the homogeneous nature of the future society as a classless society (where everyone would have the satisfaction of being recognized by others).
In his masterpiece on “Les Grandes Représentations du monde et de l’économie, à travers l’histoire” (The Great Representations of the World and the Economy throughout History), René Passet links economic theories with the scientific paradigms of the time, which allows him to renew the meaning of the abolition of classes and the end of history as a state of maximum entropy. I must say that I find it very difficult to believe that this could correspond to the thinking of Marx himself, whose dialectic remains rather mechanical in the abolition of classes by the lower class, a negation of negation that is not of the order of dispersion, but rather of an implacable logic that turns itself inside out like a glove (the last shall be first). This does not prevent an unconscious contamination of later Marxism, nor, above all, does it prevent the reformulation in a new scientific paradigm from revealing a completely different truth that changes our view of globalization.
In any case, the homogeneous nature of the universal state postulated by Kojève demonstrates its entropic character. For a historian like Toynbee, the trend towards globalization began with the first civilization, while for Norbert Elias, it was more a matter of “the dynamics of the West,” an expansionism that began with the first kings of France, who extended their territorial power starting with Montlhéry! It cannot be said that they did not have the idea of homogenizing populations, but only as a consequence of the expansion of the Empire or, for Elias, a “society of individuals” with no immediate connection to the unification of the world. It is the link between spatial expansion and general uniformity that shows the similarity with thermodynamic phenomena.
Heidegger blamed the standardization of the world, which he feared above all else, on technology and mass industry (“for this uniformity is the surest instrument of complete empire, because it is technical, on earth.” Chemins p99), but technology is here only the vehicle of a more universal law. When, in 1960, Ernst Junger wrote “The Universal State,” it was neither an apology for statism nor a condemnation of the destruction of borders, but simply a statement of fact. This may seem all the more surprising given that there were two opposing blocs at the time, but it was precisely from their identity that he deduced the formation of a universal state (one might even smile at the copyright notice, which at the time specified “including the USSR,” testifying to their integration). He goes so far as to endow this future state without enemies, which he therefore imagines to be minimal, with anarchic tendencies, without fear of making the anarchist, a man without ties, the very prototype of the citizen of a universal state! He does not seem to fear uniformity, however, and even less so the loss of our humanity, as all reactionaries constantly threaten us with in the name of values, family, nature, and culture (“Man, as a species, advances invulnerable through the ruins of generations, peoples, and cultures,” p. 58). What is interesting, on the threshold of the 1960s, is to note the already evident standardization of the sexes, adding to the homogenization of peoples and cultures and reinforcing its entropic character.
The current standardization of the sexes is one of the symptoms of the aspiration that heralds the advent of a universal state. It is not the only one. In this context, we must understand the leveling of races, states, and classes, as well as major natural divisions, such as the seasons or day and night. p79
However, instead of attributing this standardization to natural entropy, he sees it as a triumph of the norm, which is not at all the same thing, giving the illusion that it could be reversed, when in fact what we are seeing is a weakening of sexual norms and a liberalization of morals that will be more difficult to reverse (even if many dream of doing so). It is understandable that critics (such as Clouscard) might interpret the dissolution of social norms as normalization, given that in the absence of imposed norms, it is no longer really possible to change them, but this is a complete misreading of the transformations underway (confusion between entropic homogenization and social norms). In fact, it can be said that the more democracy extends individual freedoms, the more it limits the scope of democratic decision-making, leading to the decline of the state and democracy alongside the democratization of society. These are the contradictions we have to deal with, and they are not only those of the market but also of freedom (the freedom of modern people, which Benjamin Constant contrasted with the freedom of ancient people—there is nothing new in these underlying trends).
When I read Ernst Junger's essay, I strongly disliked it, not only because it was a little too similar to the Nazis, but because the universal state seems to condemn us to impotence, a form of totalitarianism, certainly, since it has no exterior, and I still believed in the national level at the time, but it is not enough to deny the facts in the face of an increasingly effective and invasive globalization, regardless of our protests. René Passet played an important role in recognizing this fait accompli by substituting alter-globalization for anti-globalization, particularly for ecological reasons, faced with global problems such as climate change, but it is not certain that there is an alternative at this global level. While it can always be said that globalization was desired and voted for by parliaments, and that it took a human hand to open the gas bottle, it is much more difficult to put the gas back in the bottle! It is even the definition of entropy that we cannot go back. It is clear that if the universal state is not the result of evil intent but of simple human entropy, it can no longer be “denied by action” (except locally), but at most corrected through negotiation. Undoubtedly, the more individuals differentiate and mix, the more we lose control over this “multitude”; that is a fact. There is no longer any global alternative possible in a society of free individuals. It is clear that highly ordered and hierarchical structures can be easily changed by changing leaders or organizations, but that we no longer have any control over a restless and undifferentiated mass, where we can only strike at the water with our swords.
The term “empire” is not appropriate for a power without an emperor, which is formless and distributed, impossible to overthrow. Nor should we pretend that the process is complete, but if we could already speak of a universal state when the world was divided, what can we say since the collapse of the USSR? This is where we usually date the beginning of globalization, then called the “New World Order,” which was the first draft of a universal state combining the UN, WTO, IMF, G20, and central banks. Its biggest impact has been the development of the most populated countries, which has led to a clear standardization of countries, even though they still have their own identities—but these are already becoming folklore. It does not seem that Islamists, who are the last opponents of the world order, will be able to resist this general enrichment for long. On the contrary, within individual countries, we are witnessing an exacerbation of inequalities. The abolition of classes can be put on hold, which seems to contradict the entropic tendency towards equalization (of temperatures). It is not enough to stick to the thermodynamics of closed systems or even to invoke Prigogine's dissipative structures. Rather, we need to apply systems theory with its energy flows (of matter and information) to understand that the more energy we put into a system, the more the flows exacerbate inequalities by exacerbating differences in the capacity to capture this energy. Thus, we can be sure that when money is poured into a remote corner for one reason or another, it will not be distributed equally but will be monopolized by the most cunning or the most active. We therefore have a dual movement of global homogenization on the one hand and individual inequalities on the other. There is also a dialectic of entropy and different temporalities, as time can be constructive in the longer term and the improbable becomes increasingly probable with time.
It is therefore a little more complicated, and while we may regret the loss of borders as traditional landmarks, or even local traditions dating back to prehistoric times, we would like to see much more entropy on the income side, even though the removal of borders restricts our room for maneuver and pushes down tax pressure: it could be said that global entropy prevents local entropy from increasing. It seems that we are losing on both sides, but the reign of universal entropy is no surprise to us; the absence of divine providence is not a discovery. This is no reason to become passive, since living beings are nothing more than the triumph of entropy, although this triumph can only ever be local, having no effect on the universality of entropy, which can only be reversed locally and through constant, repeated action. It is therefore absolutely not a question of claiming that we should just let things be, but rather of abandoning our fantasies of omnipotence and world domination by taking stock of the phenomena that are part of universal entropy in order to calibrate our strategies (rather than blaming everything on technology, money, capitalism, neoliberalism, or the market). Every intervention aimed at reversing entropy at a higher level through collective organization reduces our share and our room for maneuver while increasing the timeframes depending on the masses involved.
Each level has its relevance, but we must not confuse face-to-face or small-group democracy with representative democracies, which are the arena for power struggles and compromise. At the level of the universal state, it is even worse. To have any influence at this level, which is possible, we must go through what are known as NGOs, among other things. However, we are far from reaching maximum entropy. There are still differentiated and more or less hostile blocs. This could play a role, particularly in currency wars, at least until world unification is complete, which could take quite some time... We just need to take into account the new conditions of political activity and its necessary refocusing on the local level, not abandoning the global but thinking about it from a local perspective. If another form of globalization is possible, it will be based on a network of local experiences.
In fact, the intensification of digital communications, which contributes to human entropy and the unification of the world as well as to inequalities, is also what can multiply local networked initiatives. This other way of connecting with the rest of the world could be the beginning of a kind of planetary organism that maintains its own living conditions, taking the fight against entropy from the local level to a higher level that is still science fiction but for which we already have all the means. This has nothing to do with a revolutionary romanticism that dreams of directly attacking the whole (which would yield to our strength of conviction), but is a perspective more suited to what is undoubtedly the end of history as we have known it, without this being the end of political struggles, the transformation of the world, or the progress of our freedoms, but along entirely different, more progressive paths, which, for the most part, will have to be built patiently from the bottom up, with the universal state ensuring the stability of the environment (like the ancient Pax Romana).
