A Brief History of the Future: A Brave and Controversial Look at the Twenty-First Century
Authors: Jacques Attali
a brief history of the future
a brief history of the future
a brave and controversial look at the twenty-first century
___________
jacques attali
translated by jeremy leggatt
Copyright © 2006, 2011 by Librairie Arthème Fayard English-language translation copyright © 2009, 2011 by Arcade Publishing
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.
ISBN: 978-1-61145-013-2
Printed in the United States of America
Alas! It is delusion all;
The future cheats us from afar,
Nor can we be what we recall,
Nor dare we think on what we are.
—Lord Byron, “Stanzas for Music”
Nomadism, Cannibalism, Sexuality
Ritualization, Sedentarization
The Judeo-Greek Ideal: The New and the Beautiful
Bruges 1200–1350: The Beginnings of the Mercantile Order
Venice 1350–1500: The Conquest of the East
Antwerp 1500–1560: The Triumph of the Printing Press
Genoa 1560–1620: The Art of Speculation
Amsterdam 1620–1788: The Knack of the Flyboat
London 1788–1890: The Power of Steam
Boston 1890–1929: The Heyday of the Machine
New York 1929–1980: The Triumph of Electricity
Los Angeles 1980–?: Californian Nomadism
The End of the American Empire
The Beautiful Future of the Ninth Form
Is a Tenth Mercantile Form Possible?
First Wave of the Future: Planetary Empire
The Spread of Market Democracy: A Polycentric World
The Object as Substitute for the State: From Hypersurveillance to Self-Surveillance
“Surveillance”: Masterword for the Times Ahead
The Deconstruction of Nation-States
The Absolute Marketing of Time
Hypernomads: Masters of Super-Empire
Virtual Nomads: From Sports to Live Show
Infranomads: Victims of Super-Empire
The Governance of Super-Empire
In the Name of Freedom, the End of Freedom
Second Wave of the Future: Planetary War
Wars of Scarcity: Petroleum and Water
Border Wars: From the Middle East to Africa
Wars Between Pirates and Sedentaries
Third Wave of the Future: Planetary Democracy
The Vanguard of Hyperdemocracy: Transhumans and Relational Enterprises
The Institutions of Hyperdemocracy
The Market’s Place in Hyperdemocracy
The Collective Result of Hyperdemocracy: The Common Good and Universal Intelligence
A
s I write this, the shape of the world in 2050 and its likely configuration in 2100 are being determined. Depending on how we act today, our children and grandchildren will either inherit an enhanced, habitable world or else will toil, loathing us, in a sort of hell. To ensure that we hand down to them a livable planet, we must start thinking now about what the future holds. We must strive to understand the origins of that future, and what needs to be done to help shape it.
One may doubt, or scoff at, the very notion of anyone daring to predict the future even twenty-five, fifty, or especially a hundred years from now. So many imponderables, so many unanticipated events or people will intervene between now and then to change the course of history.
A few examples should make this clear. If Napoleon Bonaparte had not ascended over his contemporaries in 1799, the French Revolution might have given birth to a parliamentary republic and stolen a whole century from history. If an assassin in Sarajevo had missed his target in 1914, the First World War would probably not have broken out — or at least not in the same way. If Hitler had not invaded Russia in 1941, he might have
died in power and in his bed, like Spain’s General Franco. If Japan, in the same year, had attacked Russia instead of the United States, America might not have entered the war and liberated Europe, just as in real life it never went on to liberate either Spain or Poland — and France, Italy, and the rest of Europe might have remained under the Nazi heel at least until the end of the 1970s. And finally, if the general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party had not died prematurely in 1984, and if his successor’s successor had been — as was planned — Grigory Romanov rather than Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet Union might well still be in existence. Still, as I believe I shall demonstrate, if we first look back before looking forward, we shall see that history obeys laws that allow us to make predictions and channel its course.
Here is where the history of the future, by definition unpredictable, begins. So many coincidences could transform a local incident into a planetary episode, so many people could affect geopolitics, culture, ideology, and the economy that one may even doubt the very questions we might ask ourselves about the future, even that closest to us. Here are a few specific questions we need to ponder and address in the near term:
- Will peace in the Middle East one day be possible?
- Will global birth rates in some countries recover as mysteriously as they declined?
- Will oil supplies run out in twenty or fifty years?
- Will we find substitute energy sources?
- Will poverty and inequalities in wealthy countries become the wellspring for new violence?
- Will Arab countries one day experience a democratic movement like that of Eastern Europe?
- Will the Straits of Hormuz and Malacca, through which the bulk of the world’s oil flows, be blocked by ships sunk by pirates?
- Will North Korea end up using nuclear weapons?
- Will the West use force to prevent Iran from acquiring them?
- Will a terrorist attack in the West topple a government?
- Will it lead to the installation of authoritarian police regimes?
- Will new technologies make new forms of dictatorship possible?
- Will religions become tolerant?
- Will we discover new ways of doing away with cancer, AIDS, obesity?
- Will a dominant new religion or ideology emerge?
- Will the exploited workers in Chinese or
Bangladeshi mines rise up in revolt? - Will the American credit crisis plummet the world into another great depression?
- Will genetically modified food or nanotechnologies prove a threat or an opportunity?
- Will the climate one day be so degraded that life on earth becomes impossible?
- Will a religious war once again pit Christianity against Islam?
- Will new forms of sexual relations undermine morality?
The answers to each of these questions — and many more — will direct the coming decades on a very particular course, for better or worse. This is in fact the peculiarity of the times ahead: a glaringly obvious instability and such rooted interdependence that any revolt, any new idea, any technological progress, any terrorist act, any coup d’état, or any scientific discovery could change the world’s course. Any one of these events might impede the circulation of ideas, goods, capital, and people — and therefore of growth, jobs, and freedom.
Yet most of these events will have only a fleeting impact on the world’s development. For beyond the problems that today seem major and will one day be resolved (we shall see later on in detail what obstacles have to be overcome), other powerful movements, seemingly unchanging, will continue their work.
Viewed from an extremely long-range standpoint,
history flows in a single, stubborn, and very particular direction, which no upheaval, however long-lasting, can permanently deflect:
from century to century, hu-mankind has asserted the primacy of individual freedom over all other values.
It has done so through progressive rejection of all forms of servitude, through technical advances aimed at minimizing human effort, and through liberalization of lifestyles, political systems, art, and ideologies. To put it another way: human history relates the individual’s assumption of his rights as an entity legally empowered to plan and master his fate free of all constraints — except respect for the right of his fellow man to the same freedoms.
I predict that in the course of the twenty-first century, market forces will take the planet in hand. The ultimate expression of unchecked individualism, this triumphant march of money explains the essence of history’s most recent convulsions. It is up to us to accelerate, resist, or master it.
Carried through to term, this evolutionary process means that money will finally rid itself of everything that threatens it — including nation-states (and not excepting the United States of America), which it will progressively dismantle. Once the market becomes the world’s only universally recognized law, it will evolve into what I shall call
super-empire
, an entity whose structures remain elusive but whose reach is global.
If — even before it struggles free of its past alienations — humankind balks at such a future and cuts short the process of globalization through violence, it could well fall back into barbarous, devastating wars, pitting nations, religious groups, terrorist entities, and
free-market pirates against one another. I shall call this era of struggle
hyperconflict.
Finally, if globalization can be contained rather than rejected, if the market can be held in check without being abolished, if democracy can spread planetwide while remaining accessible to all, if imperial domination of the world can be brought to an end, then a universe of infinite possibilities will be within reach, an era of freedom, responsibility, dignity, transcendence, respect for others, and altruism. I shall call this era
hyperdemocracy.
It will culminate in the creation of a democratic world government and an assortment of local and regional institutions of governance. Through future technologies, it will empower everyone to advance toward disinterestedness and abundance, sharing equitably in the benefits of the commercial imagination, protecting the freedom of its own excesses as well as those of its enemies, bequeathing a better-protected environment to coming generations, and — with all the world’s accumulated forms of wisdom — generating new ways of living and creating together.
These market forces, this mercantile freedom, has already contributed to the birth of political freedom. Its first beneficiaries were a privileged minority. Then (on paper at least) the privilege was extended to the many and across ever-expanding territories, displacing religious or military power almost everywhere. In short, dictatorships give birth to the market, which in turn engenders democracy. Thus, in the twelfth century of our era, the first
market democracies
were born.
By slow but steady degrees, their geographical
space expanded. The centers of power in the regions controlling these market democracies gradually shifted westward. The twelfth century saw the center of market democracy move from the Middle East to the Mediterranean, then to the North Sea, the Atlantic Ocean, and finally to where it holds sway today: the Pacific region of North America. Later I shall pinpoint the twelve cores, or world mercantile leaders, as history has moved steadily westward.
If this millennia-long history continues to unfold over the next half century, markets and democracy will expand wherever they are still absent. Growth will accelerate, standards of living will improve. Dictatorship will vanish from those countries where it still holds sway. All toward the good. But on the other hand, water and energy will become scarcer, and the climate will be further endangered. The gap between rich and poor will widen, leading to aggravated social tensions. Conflicts will flare, and vast population movements will begin.
After a very long struggle and in the midst of a serious ecological crisis, the still dominant empire — the United States — will finally be defeated around 2035 by this same globalization of the markets (particularly the financial ones), and by the power of corporations. Financially and politically exhausted, like all other empires before it, the United States will cease to run the world. But it will remain the planet’s major power; no new empire or dominant nation will replace it. The world will temporarily become
polycentric
, with a dozen or so regional powers managing its affairs.
By 2060 at the earliest — unless the human race has disappeared beneath a deluge of bombs — neither the
American empire, nor hyperempire, nor hyperconflict will be conceivable. Driven by ecological, ethical, economic, cultural, or political necessity, new forces, altruistic and universalizing, will seize the reins all over the world. They will rebel against the tyranny of monitoring, of narcissism, and of norms. They will lead steadily toward a new balance (planetary this time) between the market and democracy — hyperdemocracy
.
Exploiting ever newer technologies, global or continental institutions will organize collective living, imposing limits on the production of commercial artifacts, on transforming life, and on the mercantile exploitation of natural resources. They will prefer freedom of action, responsibility, and access to knowledge. They will usher in the birth of a
universal intelligence
, making common property of the creative capacities of all human beings in order to transcend them. A new, synchronized economy, providing free services, will develop in competition with the market before eliminating it, exactly as the market put an end to feudalism a few centuries ago.
Like every summary, the foregoing might seem arbitrary, even pat, a mere self-caricature. Yet the whole object of this book is to demonstrate that this represents the most probable face of the future. Readers familiar with my work will again encounter (in more fully elaborated form) theories articulated in my earlier essays and novels. In them I predicted (well before they became common coin) the world’s geopolitical tilt toward the Pacific; the financial instability of capitalism, culminating in the increasingly dangerous financial bubbles that have or soon will become global; climate issues; the fragility of communism; terrorist threats; the arrival of nomadic
forces, which I shall explain and elaborate on later; and the major role of art — particularly of music — in fostering global diversity. Attentive readers will note certain changes in my thinking — which after all (and most fortunately) did not descend from heaven in finished form.
And finally, since every prediction is first and foremost a meditation on the present, this essay is also a political work. I hope that you will be able to use it to your best advantage at a time when so many major choices are looming.