Our Great Depression of Post-Capitalism and Not of Capitalism (New Deal as the Managerial Revolution and Understanding of our Times)
Tonči Kuzmanic
University of Primorska, Slovenia
tonci. kuzmanic@fm-kp.si
The main aim of the paper is to reopen the problem of Capitalism from two different perspectives. Firstly, to reopen it from the perspective of the 'language games' in the sense of the Wittgensteinian methodology. Within this kind of'Wittgensteinian argument' the connection between the 'name' (capitalism) and the 'thing' (to pragma, this of that physical thing) is of paramount importance. The emphasis is to show that capitalism is not just a 'thing' it is much more. Secondly, paper is trying to reopen the problem of the 'Great Depression' and to show that the capitalism, as we usually understand it, had already 'evaporated' in the thirties and forties of the 20th century. The aim of this second part and simultaneously the aim of the paper is to show that the post-capitalism ('managerial revolution' not only in the sense of Burnham, but above all in that of F. D. Roosevelt) has actually already defeated capitalism: but not its own language games spoken still today. The central thesis of the paper is that without seriously re-thinking of the irreversible revolutionary (!) changes from the thirties and forties, we cannot seriously understand today's 'globalisation' and 'global crisis' (actually new post-modern depression) and are literary doomed to failure in thinking of the given 'global society.'
Key Words: post-capitalism, capitalism, death of capitalism, language games, depression, economy, managerial revolution, Big Society jel Classification: A12, N00, P16 https://doi.org/10.26493/1854-6935.17.19-49
Methodological Remark
This is not an easy text to read, let alone amuse based on post-modern bric-a-brac forms of rhetorical entertainment. Due to the complex macro objective I try to tackle, I have tried to be as simple and clear as possible. Firstly, I tried to avoid all technicalities of citations and bringing the evidence into the text somehow 'from the outside.' I am of the opinion
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that text has to stand as its own proof: it must rest in and simultaneously on itself. Alternatively, I offer some of the most important elements and units of outstanding ('classical') literature used in the paper only in the bibliography. Secondly, I have also tried to develop simple wording in the sense of repeating the simplest possible forms of language, regardless of the style and possible rhetorical attraction contained in it. In this regard I followed two authors who are - in my opinion - worth of admiration: Aristotle and Wittgenstein. My aim was not to construct anything beautiful and amusing, let alone splendid text but rather something as accurate as possible in the form of Wittgensteinian 'apodictic' sentences. The argument is mainly carried out through frequent repetitions of fussed sentences, reducing diverse possible meanings and (mis)understandings. The intention is a reduction through consistency of words regardless of the scholarly rhetorical effects, which occasionally drives the argument to the edge of simplicity, and could operate as bored. The texts I prefer are not the terrain of the artistic fire-works, neither are they of moral or 'works of love,' that are predominant in today's writing of post-modern academia. Accordingly, the price that one has to pay for achieving such a kind of 'apodictic execution' is the style. The present text is thus aiming at almost mathematical borders of the exactness itself. Namely, today's bric-a-brac post-structural, deconstructive exhibitionism cannot compete with the contemporary economic (already managerialised!) metalanguage being the core of the problem. A real battle needs exact and precise forms of thinking and arguing, already at the very level of opening the elementary logical forms of existing problems.
Capitalist Language Games
Within the proposed kind of Wittgensteinian perspective of thinking the argument about the connection between the 'name,' Capitalism1 in our case, and the 'reality,' 'thing' (gr. to pragma, ger. das Ding), is of the pivotal importance. The perspective within which the concentration is both on the epistemological and ontological problems of'being' (gr. to on) and speech/speaking (gr. logisthai and not language) is the Aristotelian and not Plato's. More precisely, the point here is not either 'name' or 'thing' perspective, but something completely different, firstly developed in Aristotle's Peri hermeneias.
This perspective of thinking (dianoia and not gnosis) is dealing with something very basic, namely with the fact that the 'being itself' is not a Thing. It is rather something that is at least two-fold if not many-fold in
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'its meaning.' Saying in 'its meaning' already stands for the language 'use' and numerous possible 'language games.' To put it in a more simple way, when one speaks about Capitalism as a 'thing' for example, and tries to ask the question of what-capitalism-is, he or she always somehow 'in advance forgets' the fundamental problem of the 'being-of-capitalism,' as Heidegger used to express this with regard to Being (Sein). In a very strange way we a priori 'forget' even to take into account the fact that capitalism 'is' (if it is at all!). To put it in more existentialist form, instead of re-thinking the very existence of capitalism (namely, that(if)-it-is), we automatically presuppose its existence, as if capitalism were something natural, a self-understandable or God-given Thing. In such a way capitalism suddenly becomes naturalised, unquestionable and out of our thoughts. The central point in this context is exactly that what should be presented and even proven in its very existence ('that-it-is'), and this - in some magic (post-religious) way of not-thinking - starts to function (in our own language games) as that-unquestionable. In such a kind of thoughtless methodological process - that is the machinery of gnosis on which all social sciences are still based - a certain Thing (for example Capitalism in our case) is appearing as always already (a priori) proven and even existing from always, so to speak from 'the beginning of time,' as well as for ever. Precisely on the basis of such a void and unquestionable presumption of'the existence of capitalism,' we then - instead of posing the necessary question about what it is supposed 'to be,' and thus instead of targeting the very existence of capitalism - comfortably and even 'scientifically' start to ask the relaxed question about What-capitalism-is. The tragedy of such a position of today's thoughtless (Arendt), and at the same time highly rhetorically developed social sciences, is that there is no bigger logical and argumentative mistake which can be made in the realm of thinking, and it thus represents the mistake of all mistakes.
My main aim in this paper is to redirect the question of what is capitalism towards the rethinking of Capitalism itself, which today means at the level of the questioning scientific meta-language games. To put it differently, the aim is not a 'critique of capitalism,' since capitalism has already been profoundly criticized: not only by authors such as Karl Marx and others in theory, but also by actors such as F. D. Roosevelt and its team in practice (see the second part of the paper). The thesis of the paper is twofold: firstly, that capitalism 'as reality of our economical, social and political life' evaporated in the thirties and forties of the previous century (New Deal). And secondly - the key point - that what remains of it and
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even expands its own existence is a vast body that appears to be Capitalisms as language games in which Capitalism itself is hyper-produced. That hyper-production, a kind of overall mumbling, is what I call the meta-language of Capitalism and which can also be called 'economic,' or better, 'social scientific fundamentalism' subsisting at the core of all our post-modern debates and problems. In these meta-language games the non-thing (of Capitalism) operates similarly as in religions, ideologies and related phenomena: the more 'God is dead,' the more religious appears the fundamentalist discourse originating from it.
THE USE OF CAPITALIST-LANGUAGE GAMES IS OUR REALITY
The given problem can be schematised in a more empirical and even political way: the so-called Left and Right are here and now endlessly 'arguing' about Capitalism. But how? Naturally, the right is 'for capitalism,' and the left is 'against it.' Similarly, as couple of centuries ago when the 'right' was 'for God' (Angels, Demons ...), and the 'left' was 'against.' Of central importance here is not either the Left or Right . . . perspective and matrix of both, but the brutal fact that they are both speaking the same language, that both are revolving around the same epicentre - that of Capitalism. This common language shared by both sides is one of the problems to be posed, since it is not at all seriously examined.
The task here is to go beyond the Capitalist rhetoric, or better, to escape the kingdom of Capitalist either-or thinking that persists in the academia and media heavens of the meta-language of today Capitalism. Consequently, the real problem is how to (re)open the debate(s) about language games of Capitalism, and - in that way - the very ground on which it functions. Or to put it in a form of more precise question: how to show the common ground of all sides which in the pro et contra 'conflict' are targeting the would-be-Capitalistic quasi reality? The decisive emphasis is that the problem is neither 'the Thing' (Capitalism) nor it is its 'Name' (singular). The problem is the plurality of the language games we are using (and are used by, since we are forced to use them, too) about Capitalism. Exactly that kind of quasi plurality of use of Capitalism-language games by all sides of today's academics and media is producing the quasi 'reality of capitalism' as its own result, or, better, which is - in the last analysis - the reality of the Capitalism itself.
My perspective is to show that this kind of would-be-Capitalism is our virtual and 'scientific' reality in which we are imprisoned. We are not living only in the midst of the 'reality of things' (as it could look from the
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post-religious perspective of today's highly mediated social sciences), but above everything in the midst of the reality of (Capitalist) meta-language games. They are our 'real virtual' surrounding, at the same time presupposing and transcending all techniques and technologies of what is usually understood as the 'virtual space' and 'virtual reality.' What we should try to grasp is thus the endless quantity and usages of language games about Capitalism. More precisely, the emphasis should not be put on a 'thing' (to pragma - something from which all pragmatisms, materialisms, empiricisms necessary begin!) but on something which is not at all 'ordinary,' let alone 'natural' language. In fact, the language which is the problem is the language of all today's (post-modern) social sciences themselves, which are endlessly mumbling about Capitalism. This should be understood as a highly problematical meta-language which desperately needs rethinking and understanding.
RIGHT-LEFT BINARY QUASI DIFFERENCES
How to pose the problem of the existing Right and Left (Capitalist) metalanguage games? Or, better still, how to open up debate about the total closure produced by Left and Right wing mumbling about Capitalism? Quite simply one of the important questions from which it is possible to start an Aristotelian process of thinking is to look at the cause or causes (gr. arhe-in, arhai). Of course not the causes in the sense of 'the Thing' (that would be Plato's direction leading to more or less absolute knowledge of the gnosis dealing with the One), but to try to think about the causes (pl.) which enable the movement and articulation of the Capitalist meta-language games and of quasi-descriptions that automatically follow from them.
Without a serious possibility of a mistake, it is possible to argue that there are basically two fundamental, important 'families' and 'grammars' (Wittgenstein2) of capitalist language games in the sense of their causes and - based on those causes - of all the quasi descriptions which are they able to produce. First of them is 'Nature,' the second 'History.' To put this in the simplest possible way - the quasi argument in 'Right' Capitalist language games (today's neo-liberalism, neo-conservatism,...) is as simple as possible: 'capitalism-is-natural'! That 'means' that the previous sentence (actually 'command' - Wittgenstein) should be read and grasped in a more profoundly and fundamental way as: 'Capitalism "is" the same as nature'! The opposite is also possible: 'nature "is" the same as Capitalism'! This kind of (tautological) meta-language is still caught at least in
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medieval theological and scholastic distinctions dealing with 'Substance' grasped as One (sing.), God's-Thing and accidence(s) (plural.) of humanthings. The 'situation' in this scholastic matrix is in the last instance to say that 'Nature' means something at least 'unchangeable' and simultaneously 'out of time,' and even 'before time.' Fixation on the 'unchangeable grammar' is the-quasi-argument in the sense of The-Thing with which one has to deal within this matrix of language which are/is? based on the quasi argument of 'Nature.'
The Left arguments (neo-socialism, neo-communism, post-communists, ...), starts from the second chain of causes in which the main -also quasi argument - is History. History is here just another name for 'Change' being made substantial, 'fundamentalised' and absolute as God functions in scholasticism. In this language game the matrix of argument is slightly different from that based on Nature. The Thing here is not Capitalism as such - which means as substantive - but it puts that 'capitalistic' in adjective form. Here the substantive is something like aperpetuum mobile of (self)changing-society (self/changing-production, self/changing-economy,...). With regard with something which is 'fixed,' 'capitalistic' is in the position of the 'accidence' (adjective). That which is fixed in the Left 'discourse,' is - in last analysis - always the same: self-changing Progress in the sense of the endless Change/Revolution (permanent revolution included), representing the same as in theology: namely, the Infinity itself (as illustrated in fairy tales about endless Progress of 'productive forces,' of'liberalisation,' of'freedom' and even 'democracy').
COMMONALITY AND COMMUNITY OF RIGHT AND LEFT
LANGUAGE GAMES
The result of both sides (Right and Left) is not philosophical - as it seems - but rather the rhetorical matrix of the language games about Capitalism. The point which I would like to emphasise here - of course in order to re-open the exit out of the given thoughtless matrix - is the following: it is not important what, why, when and how Right or Leftwing Capitalist meta-language games are arguing. What counts is the common result of the language games in the sense of blocking the possibility of our thinking, understanding, reasoning, and acting when we are trapped within them.
Moreover, I should especially underline that 'we' of today are trapped in one of these language games (Left or Right). But also we could be -and usually we are - trapped in one of the even less/more? important as-
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pects of the problem. Most importantly, the more serious problem lies in the possibility of not only being trapped in one of them (Left or Right), but trapped within both of them. Saying that, I am mainly signalling something additional: problem is - even more dangerous - located in something which can be described as the community and commonality of both Left and Right wing sayings, namely their common (Capitalist) meta-language itself. More precisely, Capitalist meta-language games are neither left nor Right - as it looks like - but are simultaneously Left and Right!
THE THIRD ELEMENT OF ENDLESS USAGE OF CAPITALIST
META-LANGUAGE
If we accept the 'naturalness,' 'reality,' objectivity of the above schematically described capitalist language games (the main row material of 'our' mind-set of today), then the only remaining way to change it is to change the alleged 'inner side' of Capitalism. We are, so to speak, academically and in media - 'free' only to choose either Left or Right quasi-position of that quasi argumentation. This means that in our quasi freedom we are literally jailed in a beautiful circulus vitiosus cage midst which we are endlessly 'looking' for the 'solution' of the circle's square. In such ('given') circumstances it is per definitionem not possible to break through the 'glass ceiling,' let alone to seriously think about the community and commonality of'both' quasi argumentative sides (Left and Right). What needs to be done is at least the strongest possible emphasis on the fact that the Capitalist meta-language games are not at all made only of One or of Two 'parts' or 'sides,' as it appears. It rather appears as something infinite in its usages.
The real problem here is thus not choosing between 'one or another' (Left or Right) as usuallywe are 'thinking.' The proper location and place (gr. topos) of the problem we are trying to tackle is exactly that the 'or' itself should be grasped and 'translated' as 'and'! The result of such understanding (and change at the same time) of or into and could be the following one: Left and Right 'argumentations' are of course exclusive (Left is exclusive towards Right and vice versa) but they are not at all excluding each other as it appears to the ordinary audience being trapped midst the media and academic discourses of Capitalism. Quite the opposite is the case: Right and Left are - as far as the meta-language of Capitalism is concerned - actually two complementary positions. Together - and only together! - they successfully produce a commonality and simultaneously
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a something as 'third element' that is actually superior to both of them. That 'third element,' resulting out of the exclusivity (but not out of exclusion!) of Left and Right, is the common master to both of them (and consequently to us in the sense of those who try to think, understand,...).
This 'Third element' is an ultra-important part of the matrix of Capitalist meta-language games, functioning at a higher (or, at least, very different) level with regard to both, Left and Right. Moreover, the 'Third element' - as far as the relationship 'between' Left and Right is concerned - is neither 'one' of the already existing Left and Right sides, nor is it the 'third side' (that is the reason why it is 'invisible'). It word for word transcends - in the Hegelian manner of ger. Aufhebung - both sides (Right and Left) and any 'side' or even 'side-ness.' 'Transcends' here means the ability to 'produce' always new and completely unexpected results 'going beyond' something 'given here.'
But why and how is that possible? It is possible mainly due to the endless appearance of the infinite chain of empty mumbling about Capitalism published in books, reviews, being at work in the air, on the radio or tv, and in other 'virtual' transmissions, capturing global audiences. This 'liquid' (mediated) form of the Capitalist meta-language quasi-spoken from all walks of life (media and academia, the so called specialists,...) is disseminated in a total and totalitarian way. It is disseminated from the top of all media and academia and also from two additional 'sides,' but these are neither Left nor Right side. These two additional 'sides' are, firstly, 'from everywhere,' and, secondly, 'from Nowhere,' thus at same time from everywhere and nowhere, since that is the definition of'media virtual space' we are forced to live today.
In sum, our target here is, strictly speaking, not the Right or Left form of the Capitalist meta-language games, but, though/through? dissemination by the media (academia...), the language appears as something totally 'natural,' 'neutral' and even 'objective' or real, and thus dislocated into the mystical areas of unthinkable (sub-consciousness) and even 'natural.' This entirety, covered by the mist of today's media coverage and produced in the post-modern academy - mainly in social sciences: economic and managerial 'theorise' - is the Third, 'invisible element' we were looking for at least in the sense of emphasizing its meaning and importance.
The problem from the point of view of this paper is how to challenge this naturalised, so to speak Absolute, within the totality of today media-enclosed Capitalist self-picture of meta-language? My attempt goes towards rethinking of the completely forgotten and totally silent - but pow-
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erful and extremely successful! - revolution of capitalism itself (historical capitalism!), that happened in the usa of the thirties. While in the first part of the text I looked at the issues in the abstract levels of the language and language games ..., the task of the second part of the paper is 'radically' different: to put some flesh - historical flash above everything - on the already schematised bones of the language games of Capitalism.
Historical Perspective: Not of Capitalism but of Capitalist
Evaporation - New Deal
The core thesis of the second part of the paper - also of the paper as such - is that capitalism is already dead for approximately three quarters of century and that - simultaneously (but not less importantly for this paper and its arguments) - its consequences are somehow still 'alive' today.3 This, however, does not mean that Capitalism - in the sense of its language games - did not survive its 'real death.' Quite the contrary is the case (and exactly that is The problem). The language games of Capitalism persist with its own divine, 'endless' life to which I will try to pose certain additional limits. Thus the main aim of the second part of the paper is to reopen the minimal possibility of re-thinking the problem of how the 'managerial revolution'4 defeated capitalism within its own language and installed post-capitalism. The target is also to show how Capitalist language games (being tackled in the first part of the paper) actually still survived and persisted exactly on the - it is possible to say - 'basis' of the missing 'real capitalism' or capitalism at the level of reality.
The beginning of the 'practices' of dissolution (fading away and simultaneously disappearance) of capitalism took place around the years of the 'Big depression.'5 These revolutionary events are still less analysed and sometimes even systematically forgotten or not at all grasped in the proper manner. Forgetting this extraordinary - world epoch changing - revolution is mainly the result of highly ideological and militarised forms of'our' own (Western) kind of thinking, circling mainly around the already mentioned and targeted economical meta-language of Capitalism. In this kind of fundamental ideological surrounding - fundamental language games are becoming something as new, post-modern religion of our days - we are able only to 'see' the Things of 'revolutions' (Russian, Fascist, National-Socialist, ...) and wars (First and Second World War ...). My point here is that the global - to put it in Burnham (1945) parlance - 'managerial revolution' of capitalism actually took place/s (pl.!) in at least two various ways, forms and also locations. Firstly, they took
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place from 'within' the already highly developed form of capitalism (in the usa) of the thirties, and simultaneously from the 'outside' in the sense of the - revolutionary of course - changes of underdeveloped forms of capitalisms (soviet Russia, fascist Italy, Nazi Germany,...) too.
Both kinds of managerial revolutions of capitalism after wwii merged into the global post-capitalist (and not any more capitalist!) post-modern ultra-development which is The-Thing being today in a Great depression. Or to put it in more simple way of definition: what is really in depression today is not at all (that 'old') capitalism of the Great depression, since the Great depression was the End of that capitalism itself! The Big depression is - that is the main hypothesis of the paper and simultaneously also the challenge at the level of existing language games - just another name for the end-of-capitalism, and the managerial revolution being installed in these days.
Managerial revolution - that is post-capitalism, that which came after dying capitalism - was the way out of depressed capitalist surrounding into something revolutionary, radically new. That radically and revolutionary new is something which I am defining and naming as post-capitalism. Today's Great depression after 2008 is the depression of immensely more complicated and complex post-capitalist societies and not any more that of the 'good old' and radically 'simple,' even transparent capitalism which literally evaporated in the depression of the thirties.6 As far as Capitalism (not capitalism) is concerned, it is besieged by a great desperation of the existing meta-languages, especially of the fundamental economical (and managerial) one which unfortunately still controls our gaze by covering the horizons and hiding away both: any kind of new possibility and perspective at the same time.
total revolutions' of society and not only
OF economy
Of course all this is not at all something which is possible to think and grasp - let alone to accept - within the predominant meta-language games of today's economics (social sciences included, since the metalanguage of economics is the 'basis' for their kind of thoughtlessness8 as well). In this second part of the paper I will try to speak a kind of a more historical, empirical, and less formal form of speech while dealing with two crucial 'aspects' of the 'real' capitalism and not of Capitalism of today's meta-language of economics and social sciences (managerial above everything). The emphasis will be on problems of property and will also
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concern the problem of society in the largest possible sense. Let me start with the second one, since it is far more complex problem.
The mentioned fundamental and global changes (appearance of postmodern society, post-modern forms of life and ways of life, ...) whose appearance is possible to locate in time between two World Wars, did not mark the change of this or that part of capitalism, of this or that of its subsystems. Instead, it was the fundamental change of capitalism itself - of its very foundations! Or to put it differently, the point is in the capitalist system as such, the change of its whole-ness, challenging its very fundamental principles. This was thus not at all only presenting the change 'in economy,' as usually understood in fundamental economic technical 'thinking.' It was not a revolution 'in technology' or anything similar and 'partial,' but the change of the entire society, the society as such . . ., its leadership (and system of government, domination included) above everything. In Europe (also in Japan and elsewhere) this was a quite visible alteration, even though the very long chain of similar changes happened all around the (capitalist) globe of the time. More precisely, it is possible to say that it was the Change of all changes. Socialist (1917), Fascist (1922) and Nazi (1933) revolutions challenged not this or that part of 'their' societies of the day (being already in deep crisis due to the World War I), but literary attacked the very foundations of the society itself in the sense of its own fundamental principles (that of'capitalism' and 'capitalistic' included). All these visible revolutions - more or less connected with the ww i (also in the sense of the consequences of the war9) - targeted the existing society in its entirety, in its foundations, main principles at the level of the way of life included. The aims of all these revolutions were without any exception simple, but this ultimate premise is not recognised yet, let alone incorporated in our common thinking and understanding. Instead, we are still trapped into the superficially economic, actually techno-meta-language of the former capitalist forms from 19th century and we are still mumbling a kind of partial language of the 'economics.'
The aim of all these revolutions was - even at the level of the declarations and published legal documents (not to mention numerous books from that time) - exactly 'New Society.' Moreover, the purpose was even -also openly posed - to produce the 'New man,' sometimes even explicitly exposed in the sense, that the aim is the Übermensch. Only if we start to think these somehow buried and forgotten 'events' (and situations) from the perspective of totality (all three mentioned revolutions still 'bear' the name of totalitarianism) in the sense of the total change (revolution) of
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the System as such, itbecomes possible to grasp the fundamental 'spirit' of these years and decades. Emphasis here is on the System as such, and not on the change of any kind of partiality, be it economy or anything else. Of course, all these revolutions and their leaders also talked about the 'changing of economy,' 'changes in economic system,' about the 'change of this or that' part of society (changes in various sub-systems), but the fundamental emphasis was One and the same in all surroundings: the total revolution of the System as such. The System was The Target, which means the existing way of life of the time!
Only while keeping in mind this kind of explicit 'desire for totality' and starting exactly from the point of view of totality as the 'regulative idea' of these revolutions, it is possible to work out and maybe to comprehend - the historical magnitude of these very global (!) events (long chain of very painful changing events). The entire late modern history of the 'developed West' cannot offer anything comparable to these total revolutions and events ofthe thirties. There are no similar, parallel events in the whole late history of the Western (global humanity included) society. Today's 'Arab revolutions,' for example, are very far from the similar magnitude, but this is rather another question and problem. Meanwhile, the highly celebrated and mystified quasi Big revolutions of the '68, for example, were - in comparison with these events - childish games presented to the already infantilised audience by the media and propaganda of these years.
BIG SOCIETY & SMALL SOCIETY
Where to start from in order to understand The problem we should try to face? From the Big depression! Yes, but how?! Simply asking in genitive (genesis/genesthai method in Aristotle's terminology): Big depression 'of-what'? The answer is: the point was not the Big depression of economy (only economy, to put it in more simple form) as it was - and still it is - falsely presented in connection with our own today's fundamental depression of society (depression after 2008 is of similar magnitude and is not only dealing with economy, but with society as such). It was the case of the Big depression of the entire society, of its deepest (that means 'capitalist'!) foundations, principles and causes (gr. stoicheion and arhein). To put it differently, it was a total depression of capitalist society (in its most developed form in us), and exactly that was the reason for the appearance of the phrase Big (society) and its 'family' (Wittgenstein) of language games which we have to try to understand.
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Firstly, how to comprehend that 'Big'? What was that 'Big'? The 'Great,' 'Big' was not anything in the sense of quantitative 'Big thing' only. It was a qualitative Big in the sense of something completely, revolutionary New, of something which was not seen ever before. In order to grasp the main point in the 'family' of language games about that 'Big' one should get rid of the 'déjà-vu' matrix which is the main obstacle in thinking of the 'New' which we are trying to pose as The Problem/Target of thinking and understanding. Otherwise we are forced to make the very elementary (logical included) mistake of reductio ad absurdum and translate everything that-is-new into something 'already seen,' that already 'had been.' That form of logical mistake at the level of conclusions is going extremely well together with already mentioned - actually technological -meta-language of economy, with the neo-theological mumbling and void rhetorical argumentations 'based' on 'Nature,' 'Un-changeable,' etc. To put it in Wittgensteinian way: only the perspective of not confounding 'quantitative' Big (in terms of mathematics and statistics, for example) with 'qualitative' Big (for example in the sense of philosophy) language games, opens the chance for understanding the next two very important notions from these important years: that of'New Deal' and of'Big Society' itself.
F. D. Roosevelt was the first to spoke seriously (at the level of the concept, idea) about the New Deal in political and not injust economic terms. That is something which appears in connection with the elections, which he won exactly on the political platform based within the language games of the 'Big society.' Why is so important to emphasize so 'obvious' element of analysis? The reason was that in the circumstances of the 'Big depression' - that type of argument was the starting point for his administration - the Old Deal (and that is 'capitalist society') was not functioning well any more and (even) was not even possible any more (in the sense of the previous form/s of its functioning). 'New Deal' - in radical difference to Old Deal - was not Roosevelt's pre-ordered and planned enterprise in the sense of any kind of violent revolution in European sense of party revolutionaries (as in Italy, Germany,...) It was rather something into which he was forced and even not prepared for (how to be prepared for the 'death' of something or someone?).
Besides, in the given circumstances of the usa of the time, the force and violence were not primarily on the side of the party revolutionaries (subjectively producing revolutionary violence), but it was rather on the side of the Old (capitalist and in crisis/depression!) System itself! Roosevelt and usa as such, grasped as system's totality, so to speak were
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forced by the given (unexpected) events and circumstances - such as hunger, unemployment, threat of Left and Right revolutions (in European sense from the beginning of the 20th century) - midst the dissolution/implosion of the entire capitalist society. In that kind of'unexpected New reality' - without any preparation for it ... - the New Deal itself was so to speak an 'emergency exit' and hope for usa as such. Simultaneously, the New Deal in the narrower sense was as kind of New Method of building something as the New society.10 New Deal appeared as the possibility to escape the existing capitalist trap of depression. 'Capitalist trap'?
Of course! It was - for the generations from the thirties (not before and not afterwards) - a kind of 'capitalist trap' which captured the entire (capitalist!) society, its citizenry, producers, owners, all forms of life, within a definite dead end! How is it possible to explain this - according to my understanding - most important point (even in the 'ontological sense' if I am aloud to use that kind of designation)? My answer is: only outside of the dominant meta-language of today's economics. What I'm trying to emphasize is also that Roosevelt's argumentation was not at all revolving around economy of the time (for example 'for or against capitalism,' 'for or against productivity and efficiency,' and similar types of thinking/arguing). It was - it seems to me that nothing else was possible
-	spoken out mostly in terms of 'entire society,' trapped and self-blocked within the capitalist dead end. Of 'entire society'? Definitely! If it were not the entirety of the society under the threat, it would not be at all possible to generate exceptionally important revolutionary concepts, opening the possibility of entirely new, Big Society.
Our next important question posing the problem is: what were the political and rhetorical functions of the 'Big Society' at the level of language games of that time? There are no serious doubts that Big Society was the key concept ('meta language' of the rime) that was - above everything
-	critically targeting exactly its opposite. Moreover, Big Society was the powerful (linguistic, rhetorical, political and analytical) device at least for opening the new prospects for tens of millions of citizens, workers and farmers who supported the president. One should thus ask about the reason(s) (arhein) of the application of the very term 'Big Society' and its family of language games? The term (entire family of terminology revolving around it) was functioning as completely New revolutionary language game targeting something of the highest importance. The problem here is that exactly the most important thing, it's opposite (opposite
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of 'Big Society'), was not even mentioned and really functioned chiefly as an 'invisible-No-Thing.' This invisible could and should be termed as 'small society,' without any prospect of making a mistake. To put in short form, in order to grasp the full 'meaning' of the 'Big Society,' its central and most decisive role in the language games of the time, we should first of all discuss the problem of its opposite, that of the 'small society.'
What was, what could be the 'small society'? The answer: everything concerning the 'Old society,' the capitalist society being in depression, the form of society being not desired and not possible any more, the society which came into a dead end exactly with the appearance of the 'Big depression.' But why would one employ the name 'small' (society) in order to understand the proper meaning of 'Big Society'? The reason is again rather simple one. As a matter of fact New Deal was presented as literally The-Deal-For-All: for ordinary people (workers, farmers, intellectuals, whites, blacks, even foreigners,...) and not only for 'the few' (as Roosevelt used to speak of it).11 Finally, the main point of distinction between 'Big' and 'small' in the dominant family of society language games of those terrible days, was radical and revolutionary (all conservatives immediately realised the dangerous revolutionary potentials of Roosevelt's position). New Deal was articulated in terms of inclusiveness and not exclusiveness, to put it in another, today probably more understandable perspective.
Synthetically speaking, Roosevelt's 'New Deal' grasped as Big Society's revolution was not 'violent revolution' against something (as it was the case in Europe in all above mentioned revolutions: socialist in Russia, fascist in Italy and nazist in Germany) but rather silent revolution 'for something.' That 'for something' - and not against (for example 'against capitalism,' as was the logic of socialist revolution in Russia, partly also in Italy and Germany, and only partly) - was and remains the Big Society itself as a kind of a 'positive new project,' to put it in today's managerial parlance. The 'Big' here - within the societal language games of the time -meant primarily inclusiveness of the Society for all inhabitants of the usa (decades later, L. Johnson was repeating the same' Big Society' language games in times of Vietnam war, of racist conflicts in the South, and the same - in vain, of course - tried Obama, even Trump today).
SILENT AND FORGOTTEN TOTAL SOCIETAL REVOLUTION
OF INCLUSION
Who and what was the target of 'Big Society' and the 'New Deal' approaches and practices? Abstract answer is already given: small society
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was the target, and the old deal was the target as well. But that is only one, in my understanding less important side of the highly important coin we are trying to understand. The question needed here is: what was the 'concrete meaning' of that kind of revolution midst the given desperate circumstances of the thirties? Analysis of the Roosevelt's legislation and governmental measures shows that in reality his main target was primarily Big Capital (that is the reason for opposition coming from these sides of society, for big fights against the New Deal,...). Exactly Big Capital was the epicentre around which was organised that which was - from Roosevelt's administration - targeted as 'small society.' Exactly Big Capital -as the epicentre of small society12 - was 'The-reason' for the problems of (Big) depression. In order to reach the Promised Land of Big Society (that of inclusion of all Americans), Roosevelt was forced (observing from his perspective there were no other solutions!) to somehow exclude or at least to diminish exactly the role of the Big Capital. Consequently, through targeting Big Capital and only (only!) in this indirect way (difference with regard to more direct Europeans leaning on party violence) of targeting the capitalism itself, it was possible to hope and even to develop Big Society and get a highly desired New Deal. This goal was reached primarily through the numerous governmental (and managerial!) measures.
It was reached, for example, through the 're-setting' of the old existing financial 'settings' (Roosevelt's first move after the elections targeted financial/banking sub-system), and through opening of the society (that is New Deal and New Society as the new direction of post-capitalist development!), through the enormous legislative production at the beginning of the thirties/3 Of substantial importance here is to understand that just at the point when - economically understood - industrial production of things has stopped ('Big depression' of small capitalist society!), the enormously legislative productivity of Roosevelt government started. Started to do what? It started to unlock the possibilities for development of the New Society, of the Big Society, of the New Society of inclusion. The point was not at all solely to open the possibility for the 'new economy' - that was a socialist perspective, for example in Soviet's nep (new economic politics) during Lenin's and Stalin's years and conservative perspective in the usa - but for the New Society in the largest sense. Economy as 'production of things' remained more or less the same in all these years. Rapidly changing was the very context, the entire New Society in the sense of 'implementation' of completely, revolutionary new Inclusive Society (Big Society) which 'resulted' in post-capitalism/4
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But this is only one side of a rather multifaceted coin. It cannot be underlined enough that this completely extraordinary situation of depression should under no circumstances be termed in categories of free-will (as usually is the case in social sciences, especially among those leaning to the left). This would as a rule result in language games about 'making revolution,' or 'manufacturing revolution,' by this or that 'revolutionary subject.' Roosevelt and his government were not any such kind of (revolutionary) Subject, and Post-capitalism was not at all in advance planned form of New society by any sort of a free subject or any subjective free will whatsoever. Post-capitalism was thus not firstly premeditated and then implemented grandiose project (as socialism, for example), it was and remains incrementally established counter-system (counter to capitalism), born out of the purest possible necessity of Big/Great depression. It was somehow the 'only' solution within the given extreme circumstances and not any kind of choice being open to this or that kind of free will. The usa and Roosevelt came to post-capitalist 'anti-position' and 'anti-system' not through attacking capitalism but from the opposite direction: by defending it! Post-capitalism was not longed for but happened as an entirely unpredicted result of the struggle for elementary survival of the System of society as such. Exactly such silent and unpredictable path of post-capitalism's materialisation amounts to the explanation why there is almost no serious sign of the recognition of the very existence of post-capitalism whatsoever.
Anyway, here it is possible to isolate at least four basic moves of Roosevelt's government, but only in an abstract way, of course. First, already mentioned financial consolidation, connected with the numerous 'faith' and 'trust building' procedures. These were the task for governmental legislation, but consisted to the large extent of the rhetorical (and political) 'food,' being packed in numerous presidential speeches which aimed at the 'trust building,' or better, at the creation of hope midst the completely hopeless surrounding of the day. Radio speeches and newspaper dissemination were the paramount vehicle for this kind of hard governmental work, lasting for a few of the harshest years. Second, rather careful and step-by-step marginalisation of the decisive influence of the richest ('anti-trust,' anti-monopoly legislation, diminishing profits for private enterprises, . . .) took place, and simultaneously a promotion of the 'activity' of 'ordinary working people' (opening the space for trade unions, new strike legislation, etc.). Third, only on the basis of two additional elements was it possible to rebuild the social trust: with the control over
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the prices (wages of farmers & workers, 'prices' of capital & interest rates included) and with enormous investments into the work force, and not in Capital (that was conservative conception, and this difference is the central one for understanding the 'concept' and idea of New Deal). All these (and much more of them not even mentioned) measures were promising only on the basis of highly sophisticated (for that time) managerial (governmental) control over the role of the 'blind' Market forces.
INVESTMENTS IN SOCIETAL BEINGS
At this essential point we reached now with regard to investments, we should be extremely cautious and as exact as possible. They were not investments into the work as such but rather, the investments into the workforce. The question is how to grasp this sensitive, and not so ordinary conceptual difference correctly? There were not only investments in hungry people and their possibility for survival, but also into something as 'their dignity,' and exactly that was a highly important 'moral side' of the Roosevelt project, which cannot seriously be tackled here/5 However, as far as this element is concerned, as it is consisting of the so called 'public works,' I should say a few additional sentences about it. Public works were the Roosevelt's revolutionary project which perhaps even saved the us of the time (in the sense of 'from the violent revolution' at least). Public works (electrification, road & bridge building, infrastructure,...) were not at all profitable in any of possible hard economic terms or meta-language games of Capital(ism)! Quite the opposite was the case: judged from the point of view of economic efficiency and Capital(ism) they were completely 'unproductive' (exactly that was the ground for the attacks on them from the conservatives). These huge investments were in a way explicitly anti-capitalist (anti-small-society), and simultaneously -that is the core of my thesis - post-capitalist! Observing from the point of view of capitalism ('small society' being in Big depression) there were par excellence new kind of investments. Besides, such a move was only possible on the basis of the already mentioned 'Roosevelt's morality' and due to the launching of 'virtual' ('not-yet-existing') money-profit which was taken from the next generations, creating the problem of debt, still present in uSA.
Nevertheless, the central emphasis in this connection is the following one: although they were not 'productive' - observed from the perspective of narrow economic language games (and from the point of view of capital/ism in the sense of many-profit), they were extremely productive from
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the point of view of the Big Society (post-capitalism) and its endurance. It was the investment into the foundation of the New, Big Society which was the 'real object' of Roosevelt's 'desire' and his ideals. The crux of the matter here is this one: the very inner logic of escaping the Great depression developed by Roosevelt's government was not at all economic one! It was rather the societal (and social - here is the location of the mentioned Roosevelt's morality). These two different 'logics and principles' (economic and societal) are not at all the same and One logic and principles! They are not the same language games resulting into the same politics and action and into the same results. As already emphasized above, the investments which took place were not invested in capital(ism), not in production grasped in economical way (in productivity, efficiency), but into the work force, and later on - especially in ww ii, when the opportunity appeared - also into the working places.
The important - if not even decisive - question here is: what that 'work force' meant, how to understand that revolutionary new point (especially from the perspective of the history of the us)? It was simply the investment in the working people in the sense of the all members of Big (not any smaller) Society. To put it in more direct way, these investments did not go to the members of this or that enterprise and factory any more (that is something that 'new capitalist' himself had to do), but in the completely new, social and societal direction! The investments went to the members of the Big, inclusive Society (a kind the us form of'welfare state') of social beings. The underlying logic of Roosevelt's government was not economy & capital (capitalist logic) any more. That logic was even seen as a kind of 'ill object' in desperate need of larger/societal and social care. The underlying logic of Roosevelt was (Big) Society itself. Exactly that revolutionary change in emphasis form/from economy to Society as such (which is not possible to 'see' from the perspective of economical/capitalist fundamentalism) was The revolutionary new paradigm which was - if at all - only partially and marginally present in the context of the previous, pre-depressed (small) capitalist society. The point was: in that radically new perspective, human beings, men and women, were grasped as social beings ('Thomistic element' from which the new morality progressed) within the new notion of Big Society, within New Society. Individual in Roosevelt's eyes was not only homofaber any more (as in economic fundamental capitalist form of conservative thinking of these and latter days) but was rather a social being (ens socialis in Aquinas parlance).
What counts here is different understanding of something very funda-
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mental still today. No more investments in capital and in workers (as it was in socialism, fascism and nazism) and consequently in 'production of things,' but above all in a completely new creature: that of a buyer, consumer grasped as 'social being.' To put it differently, the largest context that needs to be grasped about Roosevelt's fundamental moves is that his point and emphasis was not only production and economy (as in capitalism, socialism, fascism and national-socialism included), but rather investment in societal beings and their 'societal' consumption which started to function as new - now it is possible to say and properly understand -'societal economy' (post-capitalism). That was the beginning of 'social economy' about which all today's managerial (not economical in the narrow sense anymore!) theories are speaking when arguing about 'social capital' and similar 'new paradigms.'16
Fourthly, and most importantly, Roosevelt's government took the initiative which is completely unthinkable in any kind of former capitalist arrangements (understanding capitalism as a whole). It took the position of the Manager of the entire (Big) Society in silent, invisible, but deeply revolutionary manner. Various governmental bodies - employed and led by government, even by Roosevelt himself - started to lead the entire body of usa Big Society as being one and big family/social enterprise. To put it differently and in slightly oversimplified form: the role that once upon the time (before Big depression) was played by capitalist (in capitalism) at the level of the factory (enterprise, company) was somehow overshadowed and even overtaken by the revolutionary new supreme role of government, led now by governmental managers. In these circumstances Roosevelt himself became The Manager of all (his) managers. They managed not this or that company, but now the entire Big Society of America-As-One-Big-Company.
That New Big Society of the usa was not understood any more as society (die Gesellschaft) or community (die Gemeinschaft) of workers and capitalists (company, enterprise, economic type of fundamental miss understanding) in previous sociological and economic language games. It was rather grasped in a radically different way and developed ('social constructivism'), as a lively organism in terms of the total 'Social Body' (Aquinas). For example, the 'enterprise' was not any more the centre of society (as it was in capitalism and socialism, consequently the role of economy as a kind of 'basic-all discipline,' 'science'), it was not 'the central cell of society' anymore, but only of economy (schematically speaking: predominance of society over economy in usa, and predominance
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of state over economy in Europe,...). In that way a completely New kind of Enterprise (social, societal enterprise) in the sense of the 'Enterprise of Big Society' took the supreme, most decisive role which is still not yet at all grasped in entire social sciences, still trapped in economical fundamentalism. Only from that kind of the fundamental revolutionary changes (the changes in the fundaments of the 'fabric of the social') and on that Roosevelt's 'basis' from the thirties it was possible that 'international' and 'big enterprises,' 'multi-national-enterprises' which appeared after ww ii, shape our entire today's existence. Solely on that 'societal' post-capitalist (and not capitalist anymore!) basis from the thirties globalisation has become possible . . .
Management of the Big Society as the New Paradigm
of Post-Capitalism
There were three outstanding points and sets of new forms through which it is possible to understand the 'silent' - still in a way invisible - Roosevelt's post-capitalist revolution aiming at the Factory of Society or projecting the Big Society as productive Factory that include all Americans. Firstly, it was already mentioned that there was complex of macro leadership of (governmental) managers functioning, of course, from top to the bottom of entire Big Society. Secondly, there were crucial, revolutionary important changes in the complex of investments (especially in the mentioned concentration and the direction of investments), and thirdly, there were, consequently, radical changes in the complex of property.
manager as the key person in total societal
revolution of the big society
Besides what was said above we should also strongly emphasise the very logic and magnitude of changes in leadership (managerial leadership-of-Big-Society). Traditionally, capitalism was grasped as led by the 'invisible hand,' which meant that the sovereign role of the market was somehow central to any capitalist economy. But that is - as already shown - only the economic (partial) side of the societal coin which was of paramount importance for Roosevelt's revolutionary project. Society could not be led in the same way (that is the point which conservatives of all walks of life were never able to understood), especially not in an allegedly democratic surrounding. On the contrary, society is desperately in need of something more and different from the capacities of the invisible hand. Speaking at
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the metaphorical level, society desperately needs something like 'visible hand.'17
Such metaphorical 'visibility' is not just about 'the government being visible,' or that the 'governmental business' should be 'transparent,' as it is usually argued in conservative and liberal literature which is based on the meta-language, still fundamentally mumbling about economy. Neither is it about setting down 'basic parameters' for 'business' (the 'minimal state' post-modern ideology in various forms). The problem of society-leading and of total, societal (not only social!) leadership, is revolving around the problem that the leaders of society should somehow plan and even predict the 'coming' events. Or better, they should plan and even produce the events and (post-festum) re-present them as 'inevitable.' These events - at the level of society - cannot function like the 'natural phenomena' in the sense that their appearance is left to society's own 'natural laws' (as fundamental meta-language of conservative economy uses to put it when speaking on Market/invisible Hand).
Society-leading means much, much more: it means the ability of - literally - manufacturing events in the sense of production of the society itself (society as self-production). 'Producing society' here means to produce 'fitting' societal relations and 'right,' proper social forms of'normal' relationships and behaviour at large (in totality). To put it in the form of a very old distinction: the economic logic is a logic which can function at the level of this or that kind of 'production of things' (commodities, their consumption included). The societal (not necessarily social) logic is mainly the logic of the 'production of people,' to put it into Marxian words, of their physical, social, psychological, and 'behavioural existence' in the sense of becoming 'social' and not 'anti-social beings.'
This extremely large, not any more minimal 'machination' of the people enclosed in the factory, is approximately that which Foucault detected as 'bio-politics,' and should now be present strictly in every cell of the Big Society itself. It mustbe ingredient of planning immigration, jobs, schooling, social behaviour, of the very planning of the rates of mortality and even of 'normal' criminality (not to speak about the planning of Wars). Leadership of total, Big Society, should not count on the regulative institution/fiction of Market as its automatic organiser (Descartes' idea of automaton). There is no - not in the nature and not elsewhere in human creativity - such a thing as a man or a woman 'as thing.' The point that we should face today - understood in an extreme form - is the following: if one (regardless of whom and why) wants to produce such kind of
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commodity - man and women as the thing, as commodity - one must be able of far reaching, so to speak total, planning. One has to be able of total (total!) organisation, of total producing and controlling of the societal ('bio') enterprise of society! Exactly that was the point in Roosevelt's revolution based on the people (Big Society, 'American people') and not on 'things' - the pattern which died together with the Roosevelt's fundamental revolution of old (capitalist) society.18
The crucial point here to understand is the very centrality of that historically new person, of the Manager as a new form of social being (ens socialis) or a Social-being-proper. There is no doubt that from the point of view of economic (and economic meta-language games) capitalist (private ownership, private initiative, private investments, the role of the market) and capitalism are the very centre of the system. But observed from the point of view of the entire society (Big Society not known in the us a before Roosevelt's revolution), the very economy (and capitalist, commodity production included) has become just one of (or among) subsystems of the Big Society and nothing more!
fundamentalI' revolution in (governmental)
PUBLIC INVESTMENTS
Roosevelt's macro analysis concerning the 'small society' and 'old deal' - in the meaning of capitalism which led to the crisis and depression -was in a fact very simple one and simultaneously quite exact and elaborate. Investments (based also on credits and banks which caused problem of financial looses in 1929) were mainly in private (capitalist) hands and their interest groups and larger groupings. In order to struggle against the depression Roosevelt's team targeted exactly that areas of small society which were based on old deals among big capitalists (magnates, tycoons, . . .), especially those tightly knitted around the banking, financial sub-system. New managers from the Roosevelt's government strictly blocked the money flow towards these groupings ('small society') and redirected it. They redirected it in the first place towards the government (themselves), and towards the Big Society as explained above. In result the government (its managers!) suddenly became the very epicentre of all the revolutionary events, and/or the main investors. The government also became (in the forties, especially due to the World War ii) the main 'spending factor' ('militarisation of society' was described in usa sociology only in fifties and sixties, after epochal speech given by Eisenhower!) at the level of entire Big Society. Exactly spending (under the influence of
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Keynesianism from Europe) has become the dominant form of regulation of the entire metabolism of society (Body Society). To put in another parlance, the spending (and not production!) has become the very epicentre of the planning of entire 'fabric of Big Society.' And that was already the very foundation of the post-capitalist problems we are facing in our own depression of today (2007/2008 and onward).
REVOLUTIONARY CHANGES IN THE STRUCTURE
OF property: mandatory property
Today's reasoning about property is usually trapped into still important but simultaneously oversimplified distinctions made by Berle and Means (1968) theories, targeting the 'difference' between possession (property) and its 'use.' The 'management' of property in this 'distinction' is understood in a way that capitalist simultaneously somehow represents both, owner and manager, while the manager is just someone managing/using capitalist property. The problem with this quite important distinction, which has become 'classical' in social sciences as such, was and remains that it simultaneously opened a new possibility of thinking but it also kept secret - if not even completely hidden - something even more important: namely, the very appearance of a new form of property, that which somehow transcends the private property. The point is that Berle and Means' (1968) 'distinction' was still made under the fundamental and monistic (Locke's!) quasi understanding of property in the sense of private property horizons as absolute ones.
As already strongly emphasized, the very central figure in the revolutionary post-capitalist new situation of the thirties was not capitalist any more. It was rather a completely new kind not of proprietor but that of the leader, actually ofManager. As far as the property was (and is!) concerned it is important to realise that the manager was not any more 'playing' any kind of'production game' with and for his own, private money, property and financial resources. He was rather playing the game with something radically else and mostly 'invisible': namely - and that is the pivotal point of the paper - with public money or to put in a better form, with public debts! The new game of post-capitalism was played through the so-called 'financial industry,' mostly through the 'politics of debts' and trading also with debts: first with credits and later on with leasing (during and after ww ii, starting with land-lease 'projects' Roosevelt-Churchill.. .20). Our problem of thinking and understanding the contemporary situation in that2! connection is that today is not enough to speak about produc-
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tion or trade or commerce and similar 'economical problems.' Today we mainly have problems with production, trade and commerce with debts. We are in radically different non-position and non-situation: we are not in any 'positive position' but rather in totally 'negative situation,' we are not dealing with money, but rather with debt!
If one wants to put here the (here) merely tackled problem of property into the 'pure form' of a model, then it is possible to say that for capitalist (within the circumstances of capitalism in which the figure of capitalist is the central one) it is completely normal and even natural (that 'naturalness' is crucial for entire economical meta-language of today fundamentalism) that in the game of production (of things!) he (or she) is going to win or lose his (or her) own private property. This means that he or she is per definition extremely responsible to him/herself (looses in crises witnessed tens and perhaps hundreds of suicides of capitalists, but how many managers in 2007/2008/2009 took their lives?). And yet, what is for capitalist normal, is for the manager (central post-capitalist creature) - for a very good reason - not normal at all, but rather completely abnormal! Manager - and this is very important - is not the owner in the sense in which the capitalist used to be the owner of almost everything in the production (except of the work force that was hired). Moreover, if manager lost, that means that the public and not his own, private money was lost as well as maybe also his or her employment ('working place'). This radically new situation - unknown in history before the managerial revolution and post-capitalism - appears as 'illogical' and even immoral (quasi argument of 'greed' so often present in today neo-Thomist economic moralizing) only within the highly sophisticated and totally mistaken economic meta-language of today's thoughtless matrix. The problem is radically different and it must be grasped from an entirely different perspective: the fact that while losing, managers ('bad managers') are still gaining - also in times of total depression and great loses - is something completely normal in the sense of their leader-work as employees and not as capitalists any longer.
The central feature and new 'basis' of post-capitalist life (not only in the us a) which has not yet been seriously recognised and analysed by economists (let alone social scientist) was and remains the invention of a completely new form of property.22 This was a kind of 'public' or even 'societal' or 'socialised property' which - in times of Roosevelt - was first concentrated and then administrated (through huge public investments at the level of totality of society) exactly by the governmental managers
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of the Big Society themselves. The point here is that there was no escape from capitalist depression and economy in the late twenties and thirties without exactly this kind of revolutionary innovation in the field of property. Concentration of almost all societal resources (resources of entire society) in the hands of the government, projected debts as the main tool for investment, centralisation of all funds and investments, concentration of the entire capital of the nation/society, is just another way of describing the new form of'public,' 'societal property.'
Such an exit from the depression was not at all possible within the old, small society of capitalism revolving around the private property and of invisible hand of market surrounding. A new brand of post-capitalist Big Society, now revolving around the public (mostly clouded in debts), 'societal' property, has come to existence. Moreover, within these revolutionary circumstances the production was not based on former, past accumulation (in hands of private capitalist) any longer but was shaped as the quasi production established on the (non)accumulation yet to come in the future. Because of the political circumstances in the usa in which the elections are the same as the fight for management of total 'societal' investments of exactly this 'public,' 'societal' property, I call this new form of property 'mandatory property.' The winner of the elections is by definition winning exactly the mandate to manage (total management) the property of entire nation/society, that of private investors in banking systems, insurances, etc., of course, included.
To put it more philosophically: if by now the property used to function (still today's fundamental rhetoric of economy) as 'to have' (gr. ehein) complex, after the post-capitalist Roosevelt's revolution it has become the question of'to be' (gr. einai). Moreover, in our times it developed into the problem of 'to be or not to be,' which is just another way of definition of what today's globalisation is about as well as about its own, now visible, horizons and absolute limits.
***
In sum, mainly due to typically Western and ad infinituum exaggerated preoccupation with wars and 'political' (violent) revolutions, definitely The biggest and The most important revolution of the 20th century - that of New Deal! - still remains completely invisible. The Big depression and the New Deal as a response to the depression of the time in the usa was not any kind of the 'continuation of the capitalism with another means,' but it was rather the revolutionary turning point of no return! It was the way out/beyond of capitalism and towards the post-capitalism.
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Thus capitalism, as we usually understand it, evaporated already in the thirties and forties of the 20th century. But its own language games still persist as the document of former times in which we are still trapped. These language games are becoming even more and noisier: they are literary shouting on us and even blocking our elementary potentials for thinking and understanding our own time. These increasingly fundamental and simultaneously completely void Capitalist language games of the previous dominant form of life sill persist mainly within today's new managerial forms of knowledge, in that of economics and social sciences at large. Moreover, they persist above all in our own quasi natural language, highly mediated and manipulated by the media machinery. It is mainly language of today academia and media. This is why the desperately needed criticism of managerial and economical as fundamental meta-language of today's social sciences is one of the most crucial necessity for serious re-thinking of our own time and its global problems.
In order to go 'beyond' these problems (as a matter of fact to reach 'here' and to 'come back' from the heavens of religions, ideologies, sciences and knowledge, preaching endless managerial Progress) it is completely out of place to try to explain what capitalism was. We rather need to understand what post-capitalism is about. Even less appropriate is, in order to come to grips with our own, existing depression of post-capitalism, to celebrate the alleged hopeful past of capitalism. We must be aware of and at least try to face the existing reality of nothingness which is exactly the nothingness of the post-capitalism itself. We have no problems with capitalism any more, our problem is post-capitalism, capitalism is not any more in crisis - it is dead - that which today is in crisis is post-capitalism.
Notes
1 I am using 'Capitalism' with capital 'C' to illustrate 'the ontological extent' ('substantial') of language games, while 'capitalism' with small c-letter stands for anti-political (republican and not democratic!), economic and social system in its Western existence ('existential,' to put it in scholastic parlance). The very fact that the reality of Capitalism is obviously 'stronger' in today prevalent reductionist and deductionist kind of thinking and argumentations, and that it even hides the very possibility of thinking that-which-is outside of the intense generalised Capital-mumbling (ideological, political, pro et contra with regard to Capitalism), is among the reasons for my 'attack' on Capitalism as the kind of meta-language. The aim in
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this level of argumentation is to emphasize that capitalism is not material, empirical, 'real' pre-supposition of or for Capitalism, but that the contrary is the case: meta-language of Capitalism itself - its endless ideological language games, polemics, pro et contra 'argumentations' (from right, left and centre of spectrum) - is literally producing something as quasi Capitalism (mumbling capitalist language games) in its infinity. In that kind of 'bad infinity' we are mainly trapped as in our own golden 'scientific' cage.
2	The idea of 'language game/s' is mainly developed in Wittgenstein 1998 that of'grammar' - connected with the concept of language games, of course -in Wittgenstein 2004.
3	What I'm trying to emphasize is that we are somehow still living the same 'historical epoch' which started at the end of the twenties of the former century. 'The world economy is still struggling with its most severe crisis since the Great Depression, which started in 1929 and lasted until the mid 1930s. On the one hand, the present crisis is a financial crisis which started with the collapse of the subprime mortgage market in the us in summer 2007, which then gained momentum with the breakdown of Lehman Brothers in September 2008 and which reached another climax with the euro crisis in early-mid 2010. Under the conditions of deregulated and liberalised international financial markets the financial crisis has rapidly spread all over the world. On the other hand, the present crisis is a real crisis, which started well before the financial crisis, with an economic downswing in the us. The financial crisis and the real crisis have reinforced each other, and the world economy has been hit by a decline in real gdp in 2009 - something not seen for generations. Major regions in the world are only slowly recovering from this decline, in particular the Euro area, the uk and Japan.' (Hein and Truger 2010,1)
4	The 'managerial revolution' is quite important, but mainly overlooked and simultaneously undermined concept of James Burnham (1945), which tried to emphasize the epochal historical changes which took place during the thirties.
5	The very designation of 'Big depression' is grasped in this paper as that which - as something 'already worse' - has happen before Roosevelt and not that he made the 'depression worse.' The second, still today quite usual type of argumentation s coming from his critics, see for example in Higgs
(1995).
6	Today depression (or at least crisis) could be also seen as the kind of continuation of the depression from the 1929/1932 (Hein and Truger 2010).
7	The language of revolution is something quite normal in today interpretations and understanding of New Deal, but it was different decades ago. Among probably the best explanations of literature in that sense is Franklin
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Our Great Depression of Post-Capitalism and Not of Capitalism 47
D. Roosevelt and his Third American Revolution, by Mario R. Dinunzio (2011). Dinunzio is emphasizing that the revolutionary 'measure of security and well-being for Americans became more explicit (exactly) in the New Deal.' (p. 2) So the New Deal is appearing as the visible and important historical revolution being paralleled with 'traditional' American Revolution ..., and put in the same line with revolutionary historical events as decolonisation of usa.
8	Speaking about thoughtless/ness I, of course, have in mind Hannah Arendt and her argumentations dealing with Eichmann.
9	'The very violent post-World War I downturn in 1920-1921 was the last of the "classical" recessions, where there was not significant consumer debt in the economy, and so prices could be allowed to drop precipitately. Once there was significant consumer debt outstanding, a drop in prices - deflation - was catastrophic because debt repayments then had to be made in more expensive dollars.' (Richards 2010, 7)
10	Top 10 New Deal Programs and agencies of the 1930s in the sense ofbuild-ing New Society and organized at the level of government were: Civilian Conservation Corps (ccc), Civil Works Administration (cwa), Federal Housing Administration (fha), Federal Security Agency (fsa), Home Owners' Loan Corporation (holc), National Industrial Recovery Act (nira), Public Works Administration (pwa), Social Security Act (ssa), Tennessee Valley Authority (tva), Works Progress Administration (wpa) (Kelly 2018).
11	Roosevelt usually spoke and emphasized the points in this rhetorical way: 'The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.' (Example is from second inaugural address, 20. Jan. 1937).
12	Exactly that is the very (short, of course) 'definition' of the problem, as it was seen from the perspective of the new-dealers: 'Big Capital as the epicentre of small society,' Big society as the alternative to 'small society,' which means to Big Capital.
13	See more in Hawley (1966) and Hein and Truger (2010).
14	'Several of fdr's New Deal programs continue to help Americans today. Some of the more important programs that still exist offer the following benefits and protections. 1. A National Pension System. The Social Security system pays out old-age pensions (and has been expanded to include aid to other groups). It is funded through taxes on employers and employees. 2. Oversight of Labour Practices. Created by the Wagner Act, the National Labour Relations Board (nlrb) oversees labour unions. It also investigates disputes between management and labour. 3. Agricultural Price Supports. This program pays farmers to raise crops for domestic use rather than
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export. To receive payments, farmers must agree to limit the space they devote to certain crops. 4. Protection for Savings. After the bank holiday of 1933, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (fdic) was created. The fdic insures bank deposits up to $100,000. It replaces the deposits of individuals if banks close. 5. Regulation of the Stock Market. A federal agency called the Securities and Exchange Commission watches the stock market. It makes sure companies follow fair practices for trading stocks.' (https://www.quia.com/files/quia/users/nygardgeo/TheGreatDepression/ Effects-of-the-New-Deal)
15	Short, comprehensive and easy graspable some important macro data concerning the Great Depression and New Deal is possible to see in Richards (2010), for the 'humanitarian' aspect of the New deal see Eliot (1992).
16	The kind of arguments being implemented by Roosevelt is moral, not economical one. The most important word of those days was 'charity,' also in the sense of his 'charitable government.'
17	See well elaborated Chandler (2002).
18	Critique of F. D. Roosevelt usually still today emphasizes another side of the coin in the sense that 'There are many economists, who feel that f d r's New Deal not onlyweakened capitalism, but that it also prolonged the Great Depression' (Rememberingtherepublic.blogspot.com 2015). This kind of total misunderstanding the point being the case in New Deal is not the subject of this paper.
19	Another important meaning of the 'fundamental' - which is not discussed here - is that dealing with the 'new class,' that of 'proletariat,' or to put in precise Dinunzio (2011, xi) parlance: 'Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal transformed a proletariat into a new class and in doing so fulfilled one of the promises of the original American Revolution. In the process Roosevelt saved American capitalism from its own excesses and won the enduring hatred of those thus rescued. Their venom was stirred not only by the cost of economic reform (any suggestion of even modest levels of taxation implied the demonic), but also and perhaps more intensely because this new revolution threatened the privileged status in American society that reserved to them a self-defined superiority.'
20	See Clarke (1982).
21	Not new as such but new in the context of the usa history, while Europe and other parts of the world were already familiar with various forms of public, common and numerous another forms of property.
22	'People' ('American People,' 'American Nation') was radically redefined with the appearance of the Big Society. It has - among other 'things' - lost any political emphasis in terms of 'la nation' of the French revolution!
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References
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Burnham, J. 1945. The Managerial Revolution or What is Happening in the World Now. London: Penguin.
Chandler, A. D. jr. 2002. The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business. London: Belknap.
Clarke, R. 1982. Anglo-American Economic Collaboration in War and Peace, 1942-1949. Oxford: Clarendon.
Dinunzio, M. R. 2011. Franklin D. Roosevelt and his 'Third American Revolution.' Santa Barbara, ca: abc-clio.
Eliot, T. H. 1992. Recollections of the New Deal: When the People Mattered. Boston, ma: Northeastern University Press.
Hawley, E. 1966. The New Deal and the Problem of Monopoly. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Hein, E., and A. Truger. 2010. 'Finance-Dominated Capitalism in Crisis -The Case for a Keynesian New Deal at the European and the Global Level.' Paper presented at the 7th International Conference Developments in Economic Theory and Policy, Bilbao, 1-2 July.
Higgs, R. 1995. 'How fdr Made the Depression Worse.' The Free Market 13 (2). https://mises.org/library/how-fdr-made-depression-worse
Rememberingtherepublic.blogspot.com. 2015. 'fdr's New Deal Weakened Capitalism.' http://rememberingtherepublic.blogspot.com/2015/10/ fdrs-new-deal-weakened-capitalism.html
Richards, G. 2010. 'How Did the New Deal Work Out?' American Thinker, 29 June. https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2010/06/how_did _the_new_deal_work_out.html
Kelly, M. 2018. 'Top 10 New Deal Programs of the 1930s.' ThoughtCo, 7 September. https://www.thoughtco.com/top-new-deal-programs-104687
Wittgenstein, L. 1998. Philosophical Remarks. Oxford: Blackwell.
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This paper is published under the terms of the Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (cc by-nc-nd 4.0) License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4-0/).
Volume 17 • Number 1 • 2019