Ni Jingjing: Crisis and Transformation: Reflections of the French Left on the Crisis of Contemporary Capitalism
Since the 2008 financial crisis, capitalism has embarked on a new round of global expansion under the banner of neoliberalism. Against this backdrop, developments in globalization, financialization, and digitalization have made issues such as trade disputes, political polarization, and value conflicts increasingly prominent. The French Left has reflected upon the deep-seated causes, new characteristics, impacts, hazards, future trajectories, and alternatives regarding the "contemporary crisis of capitalism." They point out that "the current crisis is one of the four structural crises experienced by capitalism since the end of the 19th century... but this crisis is not a simple financial crisis, but rather a crisis of the unsustainable social order of neoliberalism." This crisis, as the renowned French anthropologist and economist Paul Jorion has frankly stated, fully exposes that "capitalism has always been an unstable system."
I. Crisis: "Capitalism has always been an unstable system"
Marx spoke directly in Capital about the "secret of primitive accumulation," namely that the initial generation of capital was driven by "conquest, enslavement, robbery, murder, in short, force plays a great part." Evidently, from the moment of its birth, capital carries unstable factors such as "violence." To demonstrate the instability of capital, Marx used the commodity as an entry point to analyze the internal contradictions of the capitalist mode of production—namely, the relationship between the socialization of production and the private appropriation of the means of production—further discovering the laws governing the generation of surplus value and the secrets of capital exploitation, finally reaching the conclusion of the infinite accumulation of capital. This conclusion itself foretells that capital will irreversibly accumulate without limit and end up in the hands of a small number of people, thereby causing an increasingly widening gap between the rich and the poor. In Capital in the Twenty-First Century, which is known as a contemporary Capital, French economist Thomas Piketty analyzed the dynamic changes in the capital/income ratio since the Industrial Revolution and found that the long-term capital-labor split is not so stable; there is a powerful mechanism that alternatively drives the convergence and divergence of income and wealth, and those long-standing forces promoting instability and inequality do not automatically weaken or disappear. Both of their discourses aim to reveal the "instability" inherent to capitalism itself. However, French Left scholars further point out that this "instability" is an instability of the capitalist system. Specifically: the contemporary crisis of capitalism is not only a financial, credit, or debt crisis dominated by neoliberal thought, but a "total" or "multidimensional" crisis of the capitalist system itself; "behind the crisis lies hidden a holistic mode of thinking." It can be said that the contemporary crisis of capitalism is "economic and financial," but also "political, ecological, and social."
(1) The Crisis of the Mode of Production: The "Implosion" of the Principle of Infinite Capital Accumulation
It is well known that after the "Glorious Thirty" [1] (1945–1975), France emerged as a typical consumer society. By studying the phenomenon where "needs" in a capitalist production-oriented society are replaced by "desires" in a consumer society, Baudrillard demonstrated that we are in a situation where consumption controls the entirety of life. Yet he simultaneously pointed out that this contains the force for the "implosion" [2] of capitalist society. This so-called "implosion" refers to capital "expanding its own boundaries to the maximum possible extent, until it finally loses all characteristics and is re-absorbed by any other field." Baudrillard used the concept of "implosion" to explain the hazards of capital appreciation in a consumer society. He pointed out that after the emergence of the consumer society, all substantive existence would be deconstructed into a purely intentional symbolic existence; the logic of capital would also become a logic of signs, or a logic of symbolic consumption. The logic of consumption not only changes the forms of production and appropriation of surplus value—allowing the phenomenon of "consumption as production" to emerge—but its existence itself represents a model of insatiable and irrational desire. Governed by this insatiable and irrational desire, "in order to better entice consumers... they always find ways to open paths of signaling, inducing people to fall into the impulse to shop within the commodity web, and according to their own logic, inducing and heightening this until maximum investment is achieved and potential economic limits are reached." When the logic of consumption expands its boundaries to the maximum possible range, society, values, freedom, aesthetics, and culture will be homogenized, eventually leading all fields to collapse in successive rounds of "implosions." Inspired by this, Gaullot, a researcher at Sciences Po, continues to use Baudrillard's concept of "implosion" to analyze bridge-burning phenomena caused by contemporary capitalist modes of production, such as overproduction, shrinking markets, and the intensification of the wealth gap. Gaullot points out that the contradictions of the contemporary capitalist mode of production are concentrated in five aspects: (1) fierce market competition leading to overproduction; (2) reducing production costs leading to an imbalance between market supply and demand; (3) unconstrained accumulation of capital intensifying the gap between rich and poor; (4) unconstrained accumulation of capital triggering ecological crises; and (5) the logic of capital, guided by the principle of profit maximization, causing a decline in the quality of products and services. Gaullot believes it is precisely these five aspects that intensify the internal contradictions of the capitalist mode of production, giving the contemporary capitalist crisis cyclical and permanent characteristics.
(2) The Crisis of Democracy: The Subjugation of "Dissensus" by the "Police"
In addition to the crisis of the mode of production, the "Yellow Vests" [3] movement in recent years has once again pushed French socio-political issues into the eye of the storm. The root cause is the result of long-term accumulation of social contradictions—namely, the failure of the traditional representative democratic system leading to public dissatisfaction with elite rule. The French Left generally believes that under the contemporary capitalist system, political relations that should embody freedom, democracy, and equality between people have given way to economic relations that advocate for free capital competition. However, maintaining society through economic relations of free capital competition seemingly benefits the development of productive forces, but in substance, it intensifies the tense class and social relations caused by the separation of capitalist economy and politics, resulting in "more and more compatriots tending to deviate from the institutional structures of representation." For instance, Fabien Roussel, National Secretary of the French Communist Party (PCF), has stated multiple times in the media that current Western democracy has become a mere formality; it is only a system, a structure, a mechanism, and an operational procedure—an instrumental democracy manipulated by the exploiting class. In the eyes of the post-Marxist Jacques Rancière, this instrumental democracy is a political game of the ruling class. Rancière believes that current society has already been divided into different parts based on specific attributes of subjects such as bloodline, race, and function. Current politics—namely, the "police" [4] (la police)—is a set of procedures for achieving collective aggregation or consensus, the organization of power, the distribution of spaces and roles, and the system that legitimizes this distribution. The "police" is essentially "not just oppression, but the universal control of living beings, framing the boundaries of human behavior, and executing that violence of maintenance." Therefore, although the "police" superficially includes heterogeneous subjects—such as vagrants, undocumented immigrants, or international refugees—it actually excludes these people; they are existences within the capitalist system but excluded from the mainstream world "without a share." Their "dissensus" (mésentente) is suppressed by the ruling class's rational "police" logic and turned into "noise." It is evident that existing democratic politics is merely shaping public identification with a singular identity in the name of democracy, so that the ruling class can adopt a "count-as-one," elite-style representative method to achieve the political goal of de-democratization. Regarding this, the Marxist philosopher André Tosel pointed out that the current trend of de-democratization is continuously strengthening, and an unprecedented process of de-democratization is prompting people to constantly question the civil rights inscribed in the core of democratic politics. Therefore, the French Left believes that if this democratic model continues long-term, it will either cause public "distrust of representation, making them retreat into themselves and stop voting," or cause "the individual's free choice, which is the democratic creed, to lead precisely to its opposite—voting becomes extremely coercive."
(3) Spiritual Crisis: Spiritual Emptiness Leading to the Loss of a "Sense of Meaning"
Capitalist industrial production has not only caused the homogenization of the material world but also led to the standardization of the spiritual world. Just as the scene Camus once described in The Myth of Sisyphus: here, people have nothing to say, nothing can be understood, and nothing is necessarily so; they are just there by chance, saying things others cannot understand; they spend their lives in idleness, with nothing that must be done. During the "May 1968" [5] storm in France, slogans such as "Refuse to die of boredom" and "All power to the imagination" were precursors of the spiritual crisis of contemporary people. Entering the 21st century, the unique capitalist modes of production and consumption have pushed human spiritual crisis to its peak. In a consumer society of material abundance, the spiritual crisis manifests as: money, as symbolic meaning, governs all things in a completely abstract way. This soft mode of totalitarianism cancels the diversity and sense of meaning of things, causing people to increasingly sink into the fleeting pleasures brought by the impulse to consume. As French economist Robert Rochefort pointed out, "consumption is instantaneous and increasingly egocentric." People increasingly immersed in the pleasure of consumer impulses more or less experience uncertainty regarding life goals and a sense of lack of social meaning; thus, at this time, they often attempt to express their spiritual anxiety through various intense means, whether by leaning toward political extremism or by defying reason and indulging in violence in their behavior.
(4) Ecological Crisis: The Internal Contradiction Between Capital's Profit-Seeking Nature and the Finitude of Natural Resources
Human material production activities cannot be separated from the consumption of natural resources. Therefore, corresponding to the crisis of the mode of existence is the ecological crisis induced by the profit-seeking nature of capital. The French Left believes that the ecological crisis cannot be reduced to a simple ecological problem; ecological problems are, in the final analysis, an epitome of economic, political, and social problems. Looking across the history since the Industrial Revolution, it is not difficult to find that the capitalist mode of existence, dominated by economic rationality, points toward higher quantitative goals; even specific material content is not important—what matters is only the rate of growth. Thus, under the dominance of the principle of "profit first, the more the better," the production model of "massive extraction—massive production—massive disposal" has overextended nature's ability to pay, thereby triggering environmental pollution, resource shortages, and ecological imbalances. The French government noticed ecological problems as early as the 1950s and enacted ecological regulations including the Water Act, the Air and Odor Pollution Act, and the Waste and Resource Recovery Act. At the start of the 21st century, the precipitous rise in sea levels caused serious saltwater intrusion in many French coastal lowlands, such as the Camargue region. In 2019, environmental issues rose to the top of French people's concerns for the first time, tied with employment issues. In recent years, facing the increasingly severe ecological crisis, participants in the Citizens' Convention on Climate stated frankly, "We are facing an unprecedented ecological and social crisis," and therefore demanded that the Macron government reaffirm its ecological "commitments" and fulfill the provisions of the Paris Agreement. Furthermore, according to the annual SOSI (State of Science Index) released by the 3M Group, French residents view marine plastic pollution as the primary manifestation of the French ecological crisis, ranking it even above Covid-19. France's increasingly serious ecological crisis exposes the destructive developmental momentum of capitalism. Consequently, some Left scholars believe there is an internal contradiction between the "profit first" principle practiced by capitalist economic rationality and the finitude of natural resources, and this internal contradiction is "dragging human society into an increasingly dangerous and uncontrollable vortex through an unmanageable risk."
Naturally, the French Left also believes that the "total" and "multidimensional" crisis is also manifested in social crisis and other areas. As far as the social crisis is concerned, it is a true reflection of the political crisis. In France, social discontent seems commonplace. Previously, the "Yellow Vests" movement protesting fuel tax hikes lasted for a year. In 2019, protests against the Macron government's "pension system reform" drew hundreds of thousands of people into the streets and triggered the longest transport strike since 1968. Furthermore, according to a report by the French "Observatory of Inequalities" (Observatoire des inégalités), the poverty rate among 18–29 year olds rose from 8% to 13% between 2002 and 2018. By 2021, the income of the richest 10% was nearly seven times that of the poorest 10%. Even now, impacted by the global Covid-19 pandemic, the French government decided to implement a $100 billion economic recovery plan; however, only $800 million of it was allocated to the impoverished population, and among the so-called impoverished population, less than 40% actually live below the poverty line.
All the aforementioned phenomena reflect the fact that "capitalism has always been an unstable system." Precisely for this reason, the economist Gustave Massiah points out that "the current crisis manifests as a financial, monetary, and economic crisis, but it is far more than that. It is also a social, democratic, geopolitical, and ecological crisis—in short, a crisis of civilization. The crisis has brought to the surface issues that were never resolved in previous major crises; although the developmental dynamics of capitalism managed to contain certain problems, they failed to solve them fundamentally." In this context, the urgent task, as the economist Paul Boccara notes, must be to "shift from a diagnosis of crisis to the contemplation of alternatives... which, of course, must also be systemic."
II. Transformation: "Another Way is Possible"
Ever since former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s "There Is No Alternative" (TINA) signaled a turn toward privatization and deregulation, capitalism has run rampant under the guise of neoliberalism. The French Left points out that "solutions to problems can only come from those who understand the essence of the problem. However... those who could truly call for the establishment of a new framework and demand tangible reforms are actually the financiers... Only they are clear about the reality of this system, but the actual situation is far from what they are willing to disclose to the public. When there is no other choice, financiers might take action. But do not place too much hope in them; we must come up with a real plan ourselves."
(1) Political Economy: A Research Paradigm of "Society as a Whole"
Political economy provides a research paradigm for understanding capitalism, a paradigm that evolves alongside capitalism itself. This demonstrates the importance of political economy for analyzing capitalist society. However, the reality is that since the 1980s—with Habermas's The Theory of Communicative Action serving as the last theoretical attempt at a macro-critique of the entire capitalist system—the "critique of political economy" seems to have been removed from the themes of critique. In French Leftist theory, although post-structuralism launched various critiques of capitalism, most avoided questions of political economy. Regarding this, Étienne Balibar pointedly noted, "Once political economy is no longer thought of and practiced as a political system, factors such as religion emerge... Today we no longer have enough political economy, but we have too much political theology." It is evident that reaffirming the research paradigm of political economy is an urgent matter for the French Left. Fortunately, during the period of neoliberal capitalism, the different dimensions of politics, economy, and culture—driven by the logic of capital—have become increasingly and complexly intertwined. This has provided a timely opportunity to reaffirm the critical paradigm of political economy, especially the Marxist critique of political economy.
Thomas Piketty, in a context where social science disciplines had lost most interest in the social class issues of wealth distribution, reintegrated wealth distribution into the core of economic issues by analyzing the history of income and wealth distribution since the Industrial Revolution. In Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Piketty critiqued the research paradigm of mainstream capitalist economics for "blindly pursuing mathematical models and pure, highly theorized speculation at the expense of historical research and the methods of integration with other social sciences." Instead, by collecting historical data covering nearly three centuries and spanning more than twenty countries to analyze the "balanced growth paths" of Solow and Kuznets, he challenged the prevailing dogmas of neoclassical economics. He proposed the First Fundamental Law of Capitalism ($α = r \times β$) and the Second Fundamental Law ($β = s/g$) to demonstrate that $r > g$ (the rate of return on capital being greater than the rate of economic growth) is the core contradiction leading to inequality in income distribution under capitalism. Thus, Capital in the Twenty-First Century employs an interdisciplinary research paradigm that takes "society as a whole" as its object, linking the normative principles of capitalism with an inherent diagnosis of the times. As Piketty himself stated, "This book is as much a work of history as it is a work of economics."
Furthermore, other French Leftist scholars have continued the critical study of "capitalism as a whole" via political economy from their respective research backgrounds. Emmanuel Renault, for instance, by examining Marx's path of critiquing the capitalist market, argues that Marx’s critique involves a comprehensive judgment spanning the political, social, and circulation spheres. Jacques Bidet, building on a re-reading of Marx's Capital, published the research treatise Que faire du Capital? (How to Deal with Capital?). In this work, Bidet points out that Marx's Capital encompasses two distinct structures; although both stem from a critique of political economy, their logical and political implications are entirely different: one involves commodity circulation and the "form of value," while the other involves various means of exploitation that incorporate labor into the organization of production. This distinction arises from Bidet's attempt to use the critical perspective of Marxist political economy to conduct a panoramic survey of the relationship between capitalist markets and organizations, revealing the ternary schema of modern social class structures and seeking a new theory of the subject. Gérard Duménil and Dominique Lévy, also based on a study of Marx's Capital, focus on issues such as capital ownership and management rights during the era of managerial capitalism, new phenomena of capital exploitation, and the world market in the era of financial globalization. As Duménil and Lévy point out, "The analysis of neoliberalism is directly related to another aspect of Marx's work—namely, the theory regarding the transformation of capitalist property relations in the third volume of Capital. This analysis allowed Marx to begin studying what is called the separation of ownership and management in the contemporary context, explaining one of the keys to capitalist dynamics since the beginning of the 20th century." The two intend to use the capital exploitation model of managerial capitalism to examine phenomena during the neoliberal period such as widening income gaps, intensifying social inequality, and the return to the production mode of absolute surplus value.
From the research mentioned above, it is easy to see that the French Left's reaffirmation of the political economy research paradigm provides us with a scientific fundamental guide to finding "a satisfactory concept of the essence of capitalism, a concept capable of establishing an adequate analysis of the changing conditions of capitalism, and a concept capable of grasping its basic structure in a way that points to the possibility of its historical transformation." Contemporary capitalism is as the French historian Fernand Braudel pointed out: "In terms of structure, capitalism is like a chameleon; the chameleon changes color, but it remains the same chameleon." As the research paradigm of political economy changes along with capitalism itself, it provides a scientific reference for us to accurately grasp the new changes and characteristics of today's capitalism.
(2) Reconstructing Political Ontology: Returning to the Nature of the Political through the "Event"
While some Leftist scholars tend to reaffirm the research paradigm of political economy toward "society as a whole," it is undeniable that in the face of a neoliberal capitalist political agenda that declares "there is no alternative," other Leftist scholars remain committed to reconstructing the relationship between politics and philosophy. Among them, contemporary French radical Leftist scholars, represented by Alain Badiou, have turned to a new political ontology, attempting to return to the nature of the political through the "event" [6] and seeking a new path of resistance against capitalism.
Badiou points out that political philosophy in today’s Western world still focuses on traditional ontology—that is, the question of the origin or arche of "being as being"—intending to use this to shape the political subject. But the problem is: traditional ontology—whether it uses metaphysics to explore the political subject through epistemological categories or pure ideal modes, or whether it constructs an acting subject solely in the realm of empirical facts without any ontological or metaphysical framework—is in essence still a generic exploration of the formal question of being. For instance, John Rawls, a representative of general ontology, views reason as a holistic form and attempts to resolve the antagonisms of the actual world through legal procedures. This results in ignoring the changes in contemporary classes and the complexity of the actual environment. When faced with an "excess" in real life—a "surplus" that cannot be reduced by the established cognitive framework—the generic concept of the formal subject cannot be transformed into a practical force. Consequently, politics becomes either a "moral politics" emphasizing proceduralism (as in Rawls), a "life politics" [7] emphasizing empirical facts (as in Giddens and Beck), or a deliberative politics of neutralized games (as in Habermas), thereby forgetting the nature of the political. Since traditional ontology cannot thoroughly resolve the antagonisms of the real world, there is an urgent need to establish a new ontology that can reflect the nature of the political. In the view of Badiou and others, this is "evental ontology."
On one hand, the emergence of "evental ontology" means they are no longer concerned with the question of the unity of the world (the question of "being as being"), but rather with the question of "how a new being is possible"—that is, the question of "how something comes from nothing" (ex nihilo). Its emergence is inseparable from the division of two types of politics: "the political" (masculine: le politique) and "politics" (feminine: la politique). Badiou regards "the political" as an ordered and normalized politics representing a "state of the situation" (état de la situation). In this "state of the situation," politics is nothing more than "a self-preserving compromise." The occurrence of an "event" signifies the happening of an indiscernible thing that cannot be grasped by the existing political framework—the appearance of the "uncounted" (non-compté). Badiou points out that the "event" is a state of exception to our conventional knowledge framework; as a rupture that cannot be accommodated by rationalized formal metaphysics, it possesses ontological significance. Its appearance makes it impossible for us to simply reduce it to some naive idealist thought, or to understand it simply as the will of some deity or a Prime Mover; the event itself is this force. On the other hand, the emergence of "evental ontology" also signifies the appearance of the "nature of the political." In Badiou's view, the "nature of the political" does not consist in resolving the antagonisms of the real world through legal procedures to lead democracy toward consensus, as liberalism claims; rather, it lies in a possible scheme of breaking with what exists. The fact that the contingency of the event "has happened" represents the appearance of the essence of politics. Thus, for Badiou, "the firmness (fermeté) of the essence of politics depends on the precariousness (précarité) of the sudden event." Therefore, only through a politics of struggle characterized by sudden rupture can a mass politics emerge—one that does not require any form of representation and truly reflects the living conditions of the masses. Jacques Rancière holds the same view. Rancière points out that "politics itself is separated from the police [8]. Politics is first and foremost an intervention in the visible and the sayable; politics is essentially about making dissent manifest." Only through the "part of no part" intervening in what is visible and sayable—after the logic of the police encounters the logic of equality—and by "adding to the community those parts that were already supposed to be included, and forcing in those parts that were not supposed to be included," can "politics be separated from the police." Only when political subjects who have no status and appear out of nowhere can enter the public sphere as equals can the nature of the political appear. Therefore, "outside of conflict and illegality, there is no politics whatsoever."
From the above, it can be seen that regarding the nature of the political, Badiou and Rancière hold the same view: they both attempt to subvert the original politics dominated by rational algorithms, re-distinguish politics from moral and economic standards, and return to the nature of the political within the "event." The appearance of the "event" breaks the original political order of "counting as one" and makes the invisible visible. While the "event" seems to lead toward an impossible new being, it actually implies the hope of a new political community characterized primarily by heterogeneity.
(3) The Aesthetics of Existence in Everyday Life: "Self-Transformation" Against "Self-Fragmentation"
As previously mentioned, the French Left has already perceived the problem of human "self-fragmentation." Consequently, some scholars believe that when facing the "mind-body dualism" caused by human "self-fragmentation"—and the resulting loss of a sense of meaning and value in life—it is necessary to emphasize the aesthetics of existence in everyday life, using the "self-transformation" of the aesthetics of existence to combat "self-fragmentation."
In Critique of Everyday Life, Lefebvre attributes "self-fragmentation" to the alienation of everyday life, arguing that it is precisely reification that triggers the "self-fragmentation" of the human being. He points out that the everyday life of modern people has degenerated into a medium of control for the "bureaucratic society of controlled consumption," because "commodities, markets, and money have taken hold of everyday life through their own incomparable deduction," rendering reification ubiquitous. In a reified world, things become the sole reference standard, prescribing the various relations of the human world. Under its dominion, the division of labor, the labor process, and labor positions all become coercive conditions imposed upon people. This results in the comprehensive suppression of man by things, triggering the problem of "self-fragmentation"—that is, when facing the reified world, man no longer acts as a "subject" characterized by the unity of soul and body and rich potential subjectivity, but rather as an "object" of the social organizational system. Consequently, in the face of a world where things comprehensively suppress people, Lefebvre proposes the idea of the aestheticization of everyday life, hoping to use creative aesthetic states to establish a conscious aesthetic relationship between humanity and its objects and the world, thereby breaking the rule of things over man. Foucault’s aesthetics of existence provided further elaboration on this point.
Through an investigation of the knowledge-power-ethics triad in modern society, Foucault discovered that since Western culture shifted from medieval Christian culture toward modern epistemology, the modern concern for "knowing oneself" has replaced the Ancient Greek concern for the "care of the self" [9]. Investigations into issues such as "truth," "democracy," and "science" replaced inquiries into "subjectivity" and "the true, the good, and the beautiful," leading to the decline of contemporary aesthetics of existence. The practice of the "care of the self" principle in the aesthetics of existence provides a reference path for resolving the "self-fragmentation" of the person. Foucault pointed out that the Ancient Greeks esteemed freedom and the care of the self, advocating for a way of life aimed at "self-transformation" achieved through "technologies of the self"—self-management and self-cultivation—to break through the manipulation of the ruling class's "technologies of power dominance." This way of life, aimed at "self-transformation," establishes the practice of "seeking the cause within oneself" [10] by regarding the person as "establishing oneself within the world, or treating oneself as commensurate with the world." This practice of cultivation is a "technology of the self for aesthetic existence." Characterized by individual virtue, this "technology of the self for aesthetic existence" advocates that "individuals, through their own power or with the help of others, perform a series of operations on their own bodies and souls, thoughts, conduct, and ways of being" to achieve self-transformation, "thereby obtaining a certain state of happiness, purity, wisdom, perfection, or immortality." It should be noted that in Foucault’s conceptual mapping of "existence as art," there always exists a game of checks and balances between voluntary "limit-experiences" and prudent "ascetic moderation." If "limit-experience" represents the individual's infinite pursuit of extreme pleasure, "ascetic moderation" implies the individual's control over infinite desire. The two appear contradictory but actually contain the ideological core of the aesthetics of existence: by transgressing the proper boundaries of society, one both escapes the domination of the subject by disciplinary power and avoids the subject's sinking into endless desire. From this, it is evident that the proper meaning of the aesthetics of existence lies in generating bodily actions, psychological representations, and ultimately subjective functions through one's own power—maintaining a state of life that is balanced and "full but not overflowing" [11] in the bidirectional interaction between desire and cultivation, and constructing an aesthetic relationship between the individual and the self, others, and the world through autonomous life-skills, making artistic aesthetics a survival strategy for diagnosing and transforming reality.
In fact, Foucault's use of "seeking the cause within oneself" as a life-skill to resist neoliberal survival strategies profoundly influenced the aestheticized existence schemas of contemporary French leftist scholars. Examples include Deleuze's exploration of the inherent potential of artistic resistance through the sensory generation of "affect," Bourdieu's use of cultural aesthetics to break free from the soft enslavement of "symbolic capital," and Rancière's path toward radical democratic politics through the revolution of "detourned" [12] imagery. Such aestheticized existence schemas all reflect the emergence of aestheticized transcendence programs that use artistic expression to practice a scrutiny of capitalist modern politics.
(IV) Ecosocialism: Ecological Rationality Replacing Economic Rationality
Faced with the total crisis of contemporary capitalism, France—as the birthplace of communist thought—has also seen a trend of research reaffirming the Marxist analytical framework to revive socialism and communism. Within this trend, leftist scholars represented by André Gorz have attempted to replace economic rationality with the ecological rationality of Ecological Marxism, reviving the concept of ecosocialism.
Although Gorz noticed that the profit-seeking nature of capital and the economic rationality of the infinite pursuit of interest are inseparable from the category of capital, he differed from leftist scholars such as O’Connor and Foster, who viewed the capitalist economic crisis merely as the root of the ecological crisis and believed that eliminating the ecological crisis first required eliminating the economic crisis. Building on a focused critique of labor alienation in modern industrial society, Gorz attempted to combine the Marxist critique of political economy with a critique of capitalism from an ecological perspective, advocating for the use of ecological methods themselves to set limits on capitalist production, ultimately realizing the ecological turn of socialism. In Gorz's view, this so-called ecological turn of socialism is not a simple combination of ecology and economics, but an organic union of ecology and politics. In short, Gorz believed that a simple combination of ecology and economics—using eco-technical methods to limit economic rationality and devolving the responsibility for ecological protection entirely to administrative agencies possessing technology and knowledge—would lead to the expert-ization of everyday decision-making and the technocratization of environmental protection, making phenomena like political totalitarianism and bureaucratic rule likely to appear. For this reason, Gorz attempted to construct an ecological path to suppress economic rationality in a political sense, advocating for the full exercise of human self-determination in environmental protection. He argued for integrating environmental awareness into everyday life and placing the principle of economic rationality (the pursuit of maximized profit) beneath value goals such as ethics and morality, cultivating ecological consciousness within political and cultural movements that include ethical-moral objectives. For him, the ecosocialist movement, which roots ecological rationality in social institutions to transcend economic rationality, is a direct testament to movements involving ethical-moral goals. As Gorz pointed out, "the core conflict giving rise to the socialist movement is the question of the limits of arbitrarily expanding economic rationality—where are the limits of the free expression of economic rationality?" Ecosocialism contains a higher rationality that transcends economic rationality. Its advocated mode of production and lifestyle of "producing less, living better" makes the social relations of production clear, which is conducive to ending market rule and commodity fetishism and terminating the exploitation of some by others. In Gorz’s perspective of political ecology, ecosocialism is a social form that takes ecological concepts as its fundamental pursuit. It aims to break away from capitalist society's pursuit of profit, implement fiscal and regulatory measures aimed at environmental protection, and make significant changes to people’s lifestyles [26]. In such a social form, if "economic rationality is subordinated to social and cultural constraints, then the reality of socialism will become prominent as never before."
Conclusion
In summary, faced with the contemporary crisis of capitalism, the French Left has not only pointed out that this crisis is a total crisis but has also called for a re-examination of the new changes and characteristics of contemporary capitalism in terms of research paradigms, political nature, lifestyles, and future paths. This is of great significance for our scientific view of the total crisis of contemporary capitalism and for strengthening our confidence in the theory and path of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics.
First, the French Left’s reaffirmation of the research paradigm of political economy regarding "society as a whole" inspires us to remain sober at all times, objectively grasp the global situation, and deepen our understanding of Marx’s theory of the critique of capital in the New Era. Second, the construction of a new political ontology to resist the suppression of "disagreement" by "policing" inspires us to earnestly attend to the interest demands of diverse groups and truly implement the political nature of "serving the people." Furthermore, the advocacy for replacing economic rationality with ecological rationality inspires us to properly resolve the relationship between economic development and environmental protection in the New Era, integrating the concept of green development into the construction of Chinese-path modernization. Finally, using the "self-transformation" of the aesthetics of existence to combat the "self-fragmentation" of the person inspires us to focus on the physical and mental health of the people and strive to create a harmonious and unified social environment.
Today's world is one where the total crisis of capitalism is fully manifest, and also one where all countries are realizing modernization. Since the beginning of Reform and Opening-up, and especially since the 18th National Congress, the Party Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at its core has emphasized the great significance of independent exploration with high political consciousness. As Comrade Xi Jinping pointed out, "China is a large developing country; persisting in the correct path of political development is a major issue concerning the fundamentals and the overall situation." Therefore, in the context of the New Era, we must resolutely uphold the Party's core leadership position and unswervingly follow the path of socialist development with Chinese characteristics. Just as the French sociologist Alain Delaunay believes, China's greatest advantages lie in having a strong state, a tradition of labor, social cohesion, and a strong national consciousness. For this reason, China has become the country that has benefited most from the process of globalization. However, we should also see that capitalist countries still dominate the globalization process. In the era of neoliberal capitalist globalization, facing a social environment where the "two systems" (socialism and capitalism) coexist and compete, we must strengthen our confidence that "capitalism will inevitably perish and communism will inevitably triumph." While maintaining confidence in our path, theory, system, and culture, we must unswervingly follow the path of socialist development with Chinese characteristics and actively push forward the steady progress of our country's socialist cause.
Network Editor: Tong Xin Source: Journal of Shantou University (Humanities and Social Sciences Edition), 2022, Issue 06.