Article originally published on the site of Vivien Levy-Garboua and Gérard Maarek.
Observe the President of the world's second largest economy, the master of China, of a country jealous of its age-old culture, declared rival of the West, officiating before a thousand representatives of the Communist Party. He is dressed like a provincial notary. He wears a dark suit, a white shirt and a plain tie. Strange, isn't it? What does that reveal? Clothing is the signifier, but what is the signified?
Xi Jinping is not alone in this. The potentate who reigns in Ankara, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, wears the same outfit. The one who claims to be the successor of the Ottoman sultans, has not donned their colorful kaftan, and has not adopted the Istanbul Chechia officials of the Sublime Porte. By tracking their images on the web, we can easily verify that most of the world's leaders have adopted the same uniform, that of Donald Trump and Emmanuel Macron. Whether it is Vladimir Putin, Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune, Lula da Silva in Brazil or Cyril Ramaphosa in South Africa, all of them fierce critics of the West and its values. Strange, isn't it? Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, wearing a turban and the uniform of members of his clergy, is an exception, but his ministers have well-cut suits and have only replaced the tie with a "Mao" collar. Paradoxically, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia MBS, the King of Morocco Mohamed VI and the Indian President Narendra Modi, who are not declared adversaries of the West, are most often seen in traditional dress.
Un only world
These behaviors would remain unexplained if they were not the manifestation of a phenomenon of much greater magnitude, which does not only concern individuals, but also the structure of the societies for which these leaders are responsible.
Rather than people, let us observe cities, the capitals of the countries concerned. Tourists who visit them focus on the specificities of each of them, the layout of the avenues, the parks and gardens, the facade of its buildings, and especially the monuments that bear witness to its history and past glory. The massive fact that imposes itself on a dispassionate observer is much more the similarity of all these metropolises. They resemble each other because they fulfill the same functions, they satisfy the needs of their inhabitants with identical tools.
The city is first and foremost a place of collective habitation. The choice of high-rise buildings is dictated by the need to save space and reduce the urban land rent paid by each occupant. The city also connects economic players, artisans, employees, traders, consumers. Their proximity makes interactions more frequent and faster. All megacities around the world are proud of their business district and the magnificent skyline that their skyscrapers draw on the horizon. The La Défense district in Paris defends the colors of the French capital. But there are even more spectacular ones in New York, Shanghai and Hong Kong, in Doha, Tokyo, Singapore or Toronto.
At the foot of these buildings, a dense and colorful traffic of cars, buses, trams, motorcycles and bicycles flows. We recognize the silhouettes of the few car brands that share the world market: Toyota, Volkswagen, General Motors and Stellantis.
Capital cities also have a political function, because they are where the places of power, the presidential palaces, the parliaments and the ministries are gathered. In this area too, uniformity reigns: we find the same pyramidal organization of the executive power, the presence of elected legislative assemblies, bearing the same names with a few variations. This appearance of course conceals a great diversity of political regimes. North Korea has a constitution and formally presents the face of a representative democracy, which it is not to any degree.
What if, ultimately, globalization was not so much the intensification of the exchange of goods and capital, as it is usually defined, as the adoption by almost all countries on the planet of a single model: that of an industrial system operating within the framework of a nation-state.
We will pose the following hypothesis:[1]: this disturbing homogeneity of structures is the result of a process of imitation. The peoples colonized by Europeans until the middle of the 20th centurye century, which remained under the influence of the West, including the United States, have constantly imitated the dominant countries. Understanding that the success of the powers at the top of the scale was the result of the technological, political and societal choices they made throughout their history, the vassal countries were naturally led to make the same choices.
All the features that characterize great capitals first appeared in the West. Skyscrapers were already in the Chicago skyline at the end of the 19th century.e century. Collective housing began to benefit from running water, electricity and gas at about the same time. The railway, motor cars and aviation appeared in Europe. And, since Pasteur, medical progress has allowed for an increase in life expectancy and an unprecedented increase in the world population. In the political sphere, finally, is not parliamentary democracy an English invention; were not the ideals of equality and freedom engraved in stone in the Declaration of the Rights of Man of 1789? China, which does not claim to be one, adheres to the principles of Marxism-Leninism, and is as such the heir to socialist utopias, also born in Europe.
In short, the anthropological revolution that has shaken the West over the last two hundred and fifty years has overwhelmed the rest of the world.
The ambivalence of the selection process
No one forgets that these transformations were punctuated by wars of conquest, led to the submission of entire populations relegated to the rank of second-class citizens or, even worse, enslaved. Some have been able to call colonization a "crime against humanity."
We will support the following thesis: the violence that accompanied colonization and the civilizational advances that it allowed are two sides of the same coin. This is how the selection process works, which has the effect of creating and maintaining a hierarchy between individuals competing within the same "field"[2]"Those who, on the occasion of a more or less random mutation, implement a technical or societal innovation, a new sociocultural program, prevail over their rivals. They accumulate, by measuring themselves against them, a social capital (economic, cultural and/or relational) which makes them stronger and consolidates their chances of subsequent success.[3]. These innovations end up benefiting everyone.
The same is true of peoples and cultures in confrontation in the field of geopolitics. Shadow and light are inseparable.
However, the temptation to pass a moral judgment on the actions of the dominant powers in those years is irrepressible. With regard to colonization, the movement Woke wants to be the spokesperson, not of his victims, but of their descendants. He demands compensation for damages, humiliations suffered by their ancestors. The practice of cancel culture consists in the obliteration of the men and emblematic works of the period. The targets were Colbert, Thomas Jefferson, Napoleon, and… Christopher Columbus, their statues toppled, either actually or metaphorically.
Le wokism revisits past centuries with today's moral benchmark. However, the benchmark that was current at the time was just as full of good intentions. Here is what Victor Hugo said at the Peace Congress on August 21, 1849, about the arms spending of European countries, which he estimated at 128 billion gold francs: "Instead of tearing each other apart, we would spread peacefully across the universe! Instead of making revolutions, we would make colonies! Instead of bringing barbarism to civilization, we would bring civilization to barbarism!"
Does this mean that the Parisian avenue that bears his name should be renamed?
If the moral benchmark of an era aligns with the dominant ideology, why is the one in force at the beginning of the 21st century so different?e Would this century escape this rule? The wisest thing would be not to bother the dead with our vain quarrels.
Has an explanation been offered for the fact that President Xi Jinping wears a tie? Perhaps in a confused, unconscious way, he and his counterparts, the heads of states of the Global South, admit that, while the West's domination has had its gray areas, its contributions to civilization deserve to be acknowledged, if only in this unusual way.
