Hypercapitalism and the Yellow Vests

Globalization: From Capitalism to Hypercapitalism—a Decoupling between People and Societies Globalization is the transition from capitalism to hypercapitalism—the movement from economic order predicated on a division of labor in which the means of production are controlled by the owners of companies and laborers are paid according to an agreed upon sum to an order in which labor is outsourced and offshored to the lowest bidder, which results in a hypercapitalism that ends up cannibalizing itself, as can be seen in places like France today where the “yellow vests” are lashing out at the Macron government for failing to support the laborer.

Capitalism was always dependent upon Old World virtues and order—on the gentleman’s agreement that one nation would not seek to lord it over another; yet, as the Old World virtues and order eroded under the advancing drum of Progress, Industrialization and Technology, capitalism morphed into hypercapitalism—a ravenous need to embark on a zero sum game in which everything would be under the control of a small, hegemonic group of corporate leaders.

In today’s societies, the Neoliberalist culture has decoupled a large portion of the populace from their society by failing to acknowledge their needs.

From the standpoint of dependency theory, which posits that resources flow from the developing world (where labor is cheap) to the developed world (where the ruling classes are wealthy), globalization can be seen as a form of hypercapitalism as it allows for the exploitation of the developing world, at the expense of both the workers abroad (who are paid very little) and the workers at home (who are left without jobs but taxed extensively nonetheless because of state-sponsored social welfare programs required to ensure that people at home have the benefits they want and expect).

The outcome of this arrangement is that people are cut off from their societies: the ruling class becomes richer, but the working class is marginalized and oppressed.

The “yellow vests” in France have essentially asserted themselves in the face of Macron’s globalist agenda, which is touted as being beneficial to humankind but is actually only beneficial to the rulers of the developed world—the wealthy elites who control the means of production and benefit from the cheap labor they exploit from workers in the developing nations while their own people at home suffer high taxes, more social, economic and political controls, and an inability to gain meaningful employment as a result of offshoring.

As Andersen (2000) points out, “private companies become an integral part of the political system when public services are contracted out” (p. 43). This happens because private enterprises are really and have always been intertwined with government. The Fascist rule of Italy and Germany in the 20th centuries was not really any different from the rule in France, England or America: there has never been a separation of business and state.

What happened in the wake of WWII, however, was that the world entered into the stage of globalization, wherein the leading powers of the world began competing openly for dominance of resources, waterways, outposts and access points. Everything was up for grabs—the Middle East, Southeast Asia, South and Central America, Eastern Europe—for capitalists societies entering into the era of globalization and, by extension, an era of hypercapitalism, the need to control was imminent.

The need to control, however, did not coincide with the need to support populations—either abroad or domestic. The aim of globalization as with hypercapitalism was to gain hegemonic control and to provide the means of wealth transfer: the inner circle of the developed world stood to benefit and has done so, with the working classes and developing world serving as the main source of exploitation.

Appadurai (1990) notes that the “the new global cultural economy has to be seen as a complex, overlapping, disjunctive order that cannot any longer be understood in terms of existing center–periphery models (even those that might account for multiple centers and peripheries)” (p. 296). In other words, the new era of globalization has created a global society in which dependency theory applies perfectly: wealth flows from the outside—the periphery—to the inside center where the elites rule and pull the levers of control.

Because wealth flows in this direction and is not distributed among the people, the people are essentially cut off from society, which is ruled by the elites at the heart of the system. The people are taxed to pay for their entitlements: these are not free, nor are they provided by the wealthy class. The people are put out of work, moreover, as the wealthy classes look overseas for cheaper labor and ways to benefit themselves still more. Whatever advantage they can gain, they do so.

Anderson (1991) has shown that the “nation building policies of the new states” of the new Imperial Age are not oriented towards any substantial philanthropic or cultural or religious duty but rather towards full dynastic hegemony (p. 163). The globalized world as not been resettled to promote the Kingship of Christ but rather to extend the reach of McDonald’s, the grasp of Wal-Mart, the ambitious designs of Amazon. These are the nation states of the world today.

France, as a country, is finished: the “yellow vests” are angry about it—but they are more angry that they have no stake, no share in the new nations—Wal-Mart, Exxon, Amazon and so on. They are cut out of the profits. They are like abandoned children—people marginalized by their own society which has essentially given free reign to the corporations to reshape the rules and manage the system in a way that benefits themselves primarily.

The society has cannibalized itself under hypercapitalism and the people are left with the scraps, which are few. Thus, they revolt, as they have done in Paris, rejecting their leader’s leadership and challenging his plans to continue to further raise taxes and the economic burden they have endured thus far.

In conclusion, the people want to be part of the inner circle—or rather they want the circle to comprise them as well—whether by allowing them to have labor or by allowing them to be shareholders in the companies that profit. Yet the inner circle is not interested in expanding its boundaries and borders—and the achievement gap, the process by which one group is provided with the means to succeed academically and thereby gain entry into the circle while.