European Studies, Vol. 1 No. 1, 2015.
Original scientific paper
Age of Oligarchy
Žarko Paić
; Faculty of Textile Technology of the University of Zagreb
Abstract
The author discusses the analysis of philosophical-political aspects concerning the formation and rise of oligarchic rule in modern democratic and authoritarian regimes in globaly networked societies. Demonstrating that the problem boils down to the relationship between economics, politics and culture of neo-liberalism and meritocracy, consideration is based on the historical-structural analysis of three interrelated parts: 1. offsetting the power of mass within the democratic paradox of our time; 2. reversal in the manner of representation of the informational or cognitive capitalism in which psycho-controling techniques of human desire crossing the borderlines in the age of economic management to the stage of marketing policy; 3. the birth of the dark side of Other in the neoliberal strategy and discourse of the ruling in the global order – mafia, that is no longer something abhorrent outside the system, but rather makes the structural foundation of the distribution of economic and political power today.
In close-reading the Foucault's notion of governance (gouvernmentalité) and Ranciere's critique of "liberal consensus", the author concludes that the oligarchical model demolition of democracy cannot be understood without the basic reason occurrence of this phenomenon, such as the end of the sovereignty of nation-states and the penetration of techno-scientific logic of corporate management world. In this way the political and policy from its irreducibility has been transformed into an instrument of power corporatism without a subject.
Keywords
oligarchy; democracy; neoliberalism; politics; marketing; mafia; gouvernmentality
Hrčak ID:
150722
URI
Publication date:
30.10.2015.
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