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I firmly believe that the future historian, under the hypothesis that some intellectual effort of this sort will continue to exist, will look at the year of 2014 and find in it some important clues about the subsequent development of human condition. At the same time when there is wide spread evidence that the so called 99% exasperatedly gave up any political passion, any social ambition, any aspiration for a higher end, the global elite out of nothing and without any evident provocation brought the theme of social and economic inclusion to the forefront of mainstream global agenda. This event might escape the eyes of its contemporaries, mostly because of its contradictory nature, but the astute observer of the future will, I believe, agree with my assessment, and wonder: why?

Why would the global elite at its most extravagant expression of political and economic oppression decide that it is time to reverse the trend? Is it because the inner contradiction of the ongoing route has become too evident to ignore? Which contradictions? To my mind, the most relevant one is the dissociation of claims of wealth and wealth itself. Marxist doctrine got a few things right, and of these is the understanding of wealth as a social phenomenon: wealth is nothing but the actual capacity of potential usurpation of others fruit of labor. If we understand wealth as a social reality we can contrast it with the accounting notion of wealth, and there is no a priori guarantee that both will coincide.

Everyone can interpret the fact interest is zero in almost the entire developed world according to his mindset. My own is that this is a mere consequence that the absurd levels of claims of wealth do not correspond in any reasonable proportion to the social expression of wealth. If there is no wealth behind the claims of wealth, there are three alternatives: we can have a parabolic spiral of debt, we can have a jubilee moment of widespread haircuts or we can deprive wealth of its natural consequence, namely, income. The parabolic route was the one prevalent up until the subprime crisis. The jubilee was the route until the central bankers united to put an end to that bizarre ancient tradition. The total deprivation of social manifestation of wealth is what we have seen in the last couple of years.

So what is new? What is new is that in 2014 people began to understand that the central bankers were unable to provide a bridge to somewhere. They have simply deprived imagined wealth of its social implications, and this was not temporary, but a permanent solution. This recognition is not devoid of meaning: collectively the global elite understood that they could pretend to be collectively wealthy only if they did not exercise their “natural” rights of wealthy citizens. They might have some extravagant habits here and there, if there is some new credit or fiscal deficits, but always very measured. Perhaps they did not like what they recognized. This is a very unstable equilibrium: it is all a big lie until someone understand it is a big lie, and then it is a dangerous lie. Therefore, they should better reclaim their social responsibilities from the almighty central bankers and try for themselves to build a bridge to somewhere. A bridge of social and economic inclusion. One should not underestimate the potentialities represented by the current state of human ingenuity: the domain of nature by man is now so extreme that, under proper incentives and organizing forces, a tremendous prosperity is achievable. Moreover, with it the reification of those claims of wealth. It remains nonetheless a dangerous path. Keep your eyes and ears on any billionaire talking about inclusion: there might be something in my detoured reasoning.