Contested Futures: Class Trajectories and Imaginations of the Future in Bulgaria
IVAN BAKALOV and NEPOMUK HURCH
This article was first published in dVERSIA’s latest edited volume “Utopia and radical imaginations“.
Discussions of alternative collective futures are often dismissed as abstract fantasies with little relevance to our everyday lives. Their contemplation is a task relegated to fiction writers and their readership, ostentatiously excluded from “real” political significance. Conversely, the contemporary political discourse is organized around a strong commitment to stability, which implies ensuring the absence of radical alternatives. Where the future in a neoliberal society is actually considered, it is either discussed in terms of updates to the existing order or in terms of personalized images of advancement. By contrast, the alternative and collective dimensions of the future are dismissed as abstract, irrelevant and even dangerous. The term “utopia” itself has acquired a dangerous connotation in political discourse. To describe a political proposal as utopian is to say that it is unworthy of political consideration because it is too reckless or radical. But if utopia – a radical imagination of an alternative future – is indeed considered dangerous, then this is at the same time a recognition of its political salience (cf. Schaper-Rinkel, 2005). In this essay, we examine this point more closely and reflect on the sources of the political relevance – indeed power – of the future. We argue that the future matters for political contestation today. In particular, we argue that its significance is not rooted in any moral superiority or automated determinism of the imagined future, nor in any divine voluntarism of its creators. The future matters because it interferes with power struggles today. We advance an argument that “grounds” the discussion of alternative collective futures by embedding it in a historical materialist analysis of class conflict.
That imaginations of the future are an important source of power is not a particularly novel insight, but an everyday part of the political arena. All political practice is tied to some form of future; it defines goals, the scope of the possible and impossible, and creates legitimization or compulsion to act (cf. Beckert, 2020). Politicians thus promise a better version of the present or spread and exploit insecurities, often both at the same time. However, imaginations of the future are a broader phenomenon (cf. Suckert, 2022). They appear in a variety of forms – for example, they include more affective, latent or implicit perceptions of the future, such as hopes, desires, worries and insecurities. The more cognitive, explicit, or manifest aspirations, goals, prognoses, programs, or plans are also part of them. They appear in images and narratives of the desired, the possible, and the probable. They can refer to different social levels and issues, as well as to different time horizons. Often, they are also embedded in larger, historically and spatially variable trends of dominant modes of the future (cf. Mische, 2009). In the following, we will generally speak of imaginations of the future also for the sake of simplicity, and only where necessary will we specifically refer to their concrete forms.
We consider imaginations of the future here principally as social constructs. For even in the mode of rational prognosis, as is familiar from the practice of economics, the imaginations of the future are not free of interests or particular worldviews that are embedded in the assumptions and premises of the models on which they are based. The future is particularly exposed to a logic of social construction compared to our conceptions of social phenomena of the past or present, since it can itself never be an empirical fact (it has obviously not yet taken place). Attaining interpretive authority over the future, or in other words, practically “occupying” the future, has been described by Pierre Bourdieu (1975) as a central mechanism of domination. Perhaps nowhere is this more evident than in the postulate of the “end of history” or in the neoliberal dictum “there is no alternative” (TINA), which has managed to define the economic, political and social realm of possibilities in a very successful and persistently destructive way (cf. Schaper-Rinkel, 1999; Séville, 2017).
However, the emphasis on the social construction of the future is not intended as a kind of post-factual (also: post-truth) argument. On the contrary, post-factual thinking about the future is designed to disempower by undermining trust in any knowledge about society and its developments in order to create so much insecurity and sense of threat that the planning and organizing capacities of democratic collectives are called into question and people become more susceptible to authoritarian “solutions”. Rather, the emphasis on the logic of social construction of the future is intended to empower and encourage by identifying and describing the mechanisms of restriction and closure of the future. Of course, these mechanisms cannot be reduced to the effects of ideas and the field of discourse, as an overly idealistic approach would suggest. Instead, they describe precisely those power constellations that determine who gets to talk about the future and how it is portrayed. That the future is constrained by domination and occupied by hegemony does not mean, conversely, that the scope of societal possibilities is “realistically” completely contingent. Of course, not every future is equally probable, possible, achievable (or even desirable). But a true “realism” of the future is permeated by much more openness than it usually appears, as Ernst Bloch (1959) elaborated in “The Principle of Hope”. We learn from Bloch that we cannot simply imagine a future into being as John Lennon would have it (in the song Imagine). In order to achieve a progressive transformation of social relations, we must study concrete historical configurations and understand the inchoate futures already nested within the present. Identifying concrete and real possibilities means making alternatives thinkable, plannable and viable. This is precisely the aim of projects such as Eric Olin Wright’s “real utopias” (2012; 2017) or the more recent “planning debate” (e.g. Beckmann et al., 2024): to make socially and ecologically sustainable transformation possibilities for societies transparent and thus to increasingly expand the margins of socially conceivable and accepted possibilities.
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Our concern here is not to discover real alternative futures, but to reflect on how the imaginations of the future can be analyzed as an issue of class conflict. In order to do this, we first outline a framework for thinking about the power of such imaginations and their relation to existing class dynamics. We aim to provide a conceptual inventory that enables thinking and talking about the future in historical materialist terms. The proposed approach is then applied in a probative analysis of the interplay between class dynamics and the imaginations of the future in contemporary Bulgarian society. We reflect on initial observations about the ways in which alternative imaginations of the future are instrumentalized as discursive ordering devices by different class formations to navigate the ongoing capitalist transformation. We conclude by outlining a few avenues for thinking about the future as a site of political contestation.
Structural and dynamic determinants of imaginations of the future
Considering the future as a source of social power and as a mechanism of domination means, in very general terms, that the imaginations of the future (can) become social reality through the practice that follows and instantiates them. It means that the dominant imaginations tend to correspond to the interests of those in power. And it also means that these dominant futures are (or can be) challenged, or that different groups with different imaginations of the future compete against each other in political discourse and in the struggle for domination. Integrating the heuristic of social classes into the analysis of this conflict, considering them as (potential) bearers of certain futures, enables a socio-historical, i.e., material, grounding of the discussion, which otherwise runs the risk of being idealistically transfigured. The famous quote from “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte” is particularly apt here: “[People] make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past” (Marx, 1852, p. 115).
On the one hand, not everyone is equally capable of imagining (alternative) futures, let alone formulating them and introducing them into political conflict. At least since the Austrian study “The Unemployed of Marienthal” (Jahoda et al., 1975) in the early 1930s and in the context of the world economic crisis at that time, sociological field research has repeatedly shown that in processes of economic precarization, the ability to imagine the future decreases and can ultimately erode, leading to political passivity, resignation, and even apathy. In recent decades, much attention has been paid to the loss of the sense of a future of the industrial proletariat in the process of deindustrialization and neoliberalization (e.g. Beaud & Pialoux, 1989). Meanwhile, a similar process is being described for the modern service proletariat (e.g. Bahl & Staab, 2015). The living conditions of the subaltern classes can thus regularly hinder the development of effective and powerful imaginations of the future. A mere optimism about the future, such as the promise of individual advancement under neoliberalism, would not in itself create any agency either; indeed, it can have a further disempowering effect if it runs counter to real material tendencies and merely distracts from the actual structural circumstances (Frye, 2019; Franceschelli & Keating, 2018; Lamont & Duvoux, 2014; Choi, 2005). However, this is by no means a postulate of powerlessness, but rather points to the necessity of collective practices to secure the future. It is therefore consistent that E. P. Thompson (1966), in “The Making of the English Working Class”, identifies precursors of the later trade unions in small, self-administered funds with which workers insured themselves against various dangers and risks at work (starting with funeral expenses). This also marks the overcoming of messianic promises of salvation and a process toward effective, planned collective action. The fact that a broad and powerful political workers’ movement was ultimately able to develop out of this, in which the stigma of a class without a future was transformed into the self-conception of a class that holds the future in its hands, is thus not a suspension of the structural determination of the future, but rather corresponds to what Bloch described as a re-determination through real transformations of the conditions of the possible. It represents the growth of little pockets of the future already existing today.
On the other hand, in the quote above, Marx points to the necessity of broadening one’s view of social conditions to include the historical perspective. Society is never completely static, but constantly changing, despite all tendencies towards reproduction. Perhaps the most important mechanism for this process, as famously described by Marx (1859), is the advancement of the productive forces, which come into contradiction with the relations of production, the resolution of which leads to a new social constellation. It is precisely this process that can be understood in terms of the (relational) dynamics of social classes. Classes rise and fall, grow and shrink, shift and restructure, new classes emerge, old ones disappear. A prominent example of this process is the historical replacement of the unproductive aristocracy by the bourgeoisie as the ruling class in the course of the development of capitalism (with which the former increasingly came into contradiction). Another example, of course, is the massive decline in the size of the rural labor force and the rapid growth of the urban industrial proletariat among the subaltern classes in the wake of industrialization and urbanization. The extreme form of exploitation of the latter, in turn, is the contradiction that led to the historical struggle for their political and economic participation or power. These trends of class development can be seen as important factors for the imaginations they generate about the probable, possible, and desirable future. Karl Mannheim (1929) has already observed this link and described it in terms of class-specific utopias. And we suggest that the overall dynamics within the social space also provide insights into the actual and potential power resources behind each of these imaginations.
It is Bourdieu, above all, who provides a relevant analytical tool for understanding the relationship between structural dynamics and temporal dispositions of classes. Bourdieu’s concept of class and his model of social space are multidimensional: in addition to the economic dimension, they also include, for example, the cultural or symbolic field of class conflict, in which struggles for the respective field-specific forms of capital take place. This multidimensionality helps not only to distinguish the different classes and their fractions according to their total capital volume and capital composition, on which their existence is based, but also to understand how the struggles in the fields are related to each other. Although the different fields have a certain life of their own, they are, of course, closely interrelated (e.g., through transferability and conversion of capitals). For example, one could analyze the strategies used by formerly dominant class fractions that are in economic decline (such as the aforementioned aristocracy in developing capitalism) to maintain their position in the field of power (for example, by promoting struggles for distinction in the symbolic field, where they still hold dominant and norm-setting positions) (cf. Bourdieu, 1982).
Another important element of Bourdieu’s model is the class habitus, a set of schemata of perception, thought, and practice that is generated in class-specific positions in social space. The concept of habitus overcomes the dichotomy between structure and practice in favor of a dialectical process. Habitus is a generative principle; it is itself part of those structures that structure it, but which it also structures itself. It is neither passive and deterministic “programming” nor some kind of voluntaristic agency. Habitus is capable of improvisation within given social logics, but it tends to contribute to the reproduction of the conditions out of which it itself emerged, because its dispositions limit the imagination of what seems possible and legitimate. This helps us to understand why it was and is so difficult for subaltern classes, for example, to question the conditions of which they are themselves a product, even if economic development actually gives them potential resources of power (as in the example given above of the growing importance of the industrial proletariat in the context of industrialization). Obviously, however, changes in class habitus are possible. This happens, for example, when there is an increasing tension, a mismatch, between incorporated dispositions and social reality. Rapid social transformations can challenge forms of practice that previously functioned without friction, forcing agents to adapt their strategies or develop new ones. This happens, to be sure, not through individual acts of will, but through collective experiences, associations and forms of organization that open up alternative social spaces in which new practices can be established. For Bourdieu, “classes” as collective actors do not emerge automatically from circumstances, but are initially “probable” groups with similar positions and dynamics in social space and similar dispositions conditioned by these. Their mobilization requires work on collective practice, which has to be constantly reconstituted (cf. Bourdieu, 1982; 1985; 2001).
For our purposes, however, Bourdieu is highly relevant because the axis of time is central to his model of social space: it is integrated through the “trajectories” that are constitutive of the classes. These trajectories include two levels. First, the aforementioned collective temporal movements of entire classes along important dimensions of social inequality or social hierarchies. We can understand this, for example, in terms of the market-induced expansion or contraction of class sizes, or the rise or fall of the importance of classes as the specific mode of production changes, or, more simply, the rise or fall of their income shares. These collective class trajectories tend to be rather long-term trends, taking place steadily and in the background, but this does not make them any less significant. For example, the contraction and economic devaluation of the industrial working class in the process of globalization, deindustrialization and tertiarization has been accompanied by its successive symbolic devaluation and political disempowerment. The latter already suggests that class trajectories do not fall from the sky either. We must not make the mistake of essentializing them, even when they are clearly market induced. After all, markets themselves are ultimately created by people and their practices. Globalization and deindustrialization, for example, are in themselves merely an expression of the progress of the productive forces, but they have been shaped by neoliberalization, as the massive attacks on trade unions show. Ultimately, it is always a question of how economic developments are processed politically. Thus, trajectories show us not only the results of the development of the productive forces (for example, in terms of changes in the size of classes), but also the results of class struggles (for example, in terms of relative income developments) (cf. Bourdieu, 1982; 1993).
Second, the trajectories include the class-related opportunity structures of individual biographies, that is, the social mobility chances unequally distributed at a given point in time. Or, put differently, the class-specific patterns of social mobility indicating the probabilities of remaining in the class, of moving upward or downward. Opportunity structures, like collective class movements, are subject to historical change, with class boundaries becoming more permeable or more closed. This level is an important addition because class boundaries tend to exhibit relative openings over the course of history. Of course, the dominant mode is still that of reproduction, enforced through symbolic violence, but it is not absolute (exceptions aside). Rather, it functions on the principle of hierarchically discriminating probabilities. A certain degree of mobility is necessary to maintain the myth of meritocracy – the main legitimizing narrative for inequalities in general and capitalism in particular – and also provides the market with a necessary recruitment pool. Opportunities for mobility also interfere with the question of whether class members focus their efforts on individual (intra- or intergenerational) or collective interests (cf. Bourdieu, 1982; 1993).
Both levels of trajectories are, of course, intertwined; for example, the disappearance of a class forces its members to leave it. But above all, and this is the most important point here, both are central to the formation of the habitus. This means that the habitus incorporates not only the conditions or positions of the class in which it was generated, but also the entire history and inherent tendencies of that class. Trajectories shape the habitus’ relation to time in general and the future in particular, and the entire system of class-specific dispositions and practices is organized around this. Trajectories transmit probabilities, possibilities, and impossibilities of the life course to the habitus. Thus, specific career aspirations correspond to specific social classes; real-life probabilities and possibilities become life goals and become embedded in class cultures. The habitus constantly aligns aspirations, desires, expectations, and objectively given possibilities. This mode of self-selection, in which habitus contributes to the reproduction and legitimation of the social relations and order from which it emerged, thus operates precisely through and by class-related imaginations of the future (cf. Bourdieu, 1993; 2000; Atkinson, 2013).
We can learn from Bourdieu, then, to consider not only class positions but also their trajectories in order to better understand who carries which imaginations of the future and why, or more precisely, who is disposed to which futures and thus more likely to carry certain imaginations than others. We can assume, for example, that in collectively stable trajectories conservative orientations toward the future are more likely to develop, which tend to favor continuity and perhaps go hand in hand with a sense of pragmatism and predictability. Ascending trajectories may be more likely to indicate future-oriented, optimistic attitudes that push for change and may be more strongly associated with risk-taking and greater flexibility. On descending trajectories, by contrast, attitudes that are defensive and regressive, oriented toward the past, may prevail; resignation or fatalism may also be more likely. We can also assume that class trajectories play a role in who carries, can develop, or is receptive to which political narratives of the future. But we can also learn that the imaginations of the future are rather more coherent with the contexts from which they emerge and to whose permanence they contribute, than with what we believe to be the “actual” interests of the respective classes. We cannot expect, for example, that counter-hegemonic futures will automatically emerge and spread in subaltern classes. The formulation of alternative futures is obviously full of preconditions. What these preconditions are is not the focus of Bourdieu, but he does not completely ignore them either. A point of reference is definitely the dynamics in the social space, especially discontinuities and ruptures, such as crises, or changes in class trajectories, which break open the persistent correspondences of probabilities and expectations. It is precisely here that the actual uncertainty of the future can come to the fore, that its actual openness can be politicized, which Bourdieu described as the basis for struggles for the legitimate world view and the basis for political transformations (cf. Bourdieu, 1985; 2001; Fowler, 2020).
Class trajectories and imaginations of the future in Bulgaria
We will now turn to the current Bulgarian class configuration, its dynamics and corresponding imaginations of the future. Which class fractions find themselves on ascending trajectories and which ones are descending? And how exactly do these trajectories transpire as imaginations of the future? We will focus here on collective trajectories, which are a rarely considered aspect of Bourdieu’s work, and the power resources on which they are based. Due to a lack of empirical data, we cannot and do not intend to apply Bourdieu’s detailed analytical tools in a rigorous way here. But we do want to elaborate and demonstrate what such an analysis could look like in the case study and, above all, what new insights it might contribute to the discussion.
Class positions
Bulgaria’s contemporary class configuration is defined by a market-radical version of neoliberalism that emerged in the process of post-socialist transformation (Bohle & Greskovits, 2012, pp. 217-222). The restoration of capitalism in Bulgaria has been conditioned by an enduringly weak state capacity leveraged by large capital and political entrepreneurs to ensure control over a fragmented, depoliticized, and resigned working class. The contemporary class configuration is formally expressed as an institutional framework characterized by: a meager welfare state, a regressive tax system (flat income tax plus a cap on social contributions minus a minimum income threshold), macroeconomic austerity, high rates of income inequality, high rates of wealth concentration – to name a few key indicators. In order to gain a more substantive impression, the contemporary class configuration in Bulgaria can also be described in terms of a historical formation with particular power relations embedded within a particular ideological context or what Gramsci (1971) describes as a “historical bloc”.
At the core of this formation stands a cross-class alliance between a rent-driven capital fraction that reaped the benefits of privatization in the 1990s and early 2000s, on the one hand, and political entrepreneurs who manage the political and institutional reproduction of the system, on the other. Drawing on Gramscian terminology, the form of this dominant class alliance could be termed a “ruling bloc”. Within the ruling bloc, the fraction of large capital controls the main income-generating sectors of the economy, including but not limited to energy, construction, light and heavy industry. The political entrepreneurs manage financial flows through public procurements and policy-making in a way that reproduces the social positions of the two class fractions, while still leaving some room for independent economic activity. In exchange for fulfilling this function, political entrepreneurs extract rents from economic transactions that serve as a binding mechanism within the ruling bloc. While often described as “corruption” to emphasize a moral dimension, this insider rent mechanism can be more productively understood as a structural feature of the contemporary historical formation (Dzarasov, 2014). Large capital extracts rent from its concentrated control over material resources and means of production, while political entrepreneurs extract rent from their control over political institutions. The limited capacity of other groups to access these rents is what reproduces the configuration of power.
There are several peripheral groups that gravitate toward the core ruling bloc. They benefit in important ways from the existing historical formation, but are not part of the ruling bloc. They generally support the underlying neoliberal ideology, even if they disagree with some of its constitutive features (e.g., “corruption” or the decaying social infrastructure). First, there is a profit-driven fraction of capital (contra rent-driven fraction) that specializes in less resource-intensive, but higher value-added sectors, such as IT, services, and some industries. It is emerging, not yet established in a political-institutional sense as the rent-driven capital fraction, and while it benefits from certain aspects of the market radical configuration, its growth potential is limited by the arbitrariness of the ruling bloc’s insider rent model. Second, there is a transnational fraction of capital that controls important sectors of the economy, including banking, telecommunications, retail, and resource extraction. While the neoliberal policy framework benefits “impatient” foreign capital ready to flee at the first sign of instability, the decrepit social infrastructure – the flip side of the neoliberal policy framework – is repelling more “patient” long-term foreign investment in productive assets (Bohle & Greskovits, 2012, p. 206). Third, there is a fraction of labor that is employed in high value-added sectors or high income companies. This fraction of labor is relatively well established within the system, as it can attain a higher-than-average living standard in Bulgaria and has access to means of self-development. Its ascending trajectory, however, is also hampered by the decaying social infrastructure that undermines social reproduction and by the austerity-driven fiscal logic that suppresses wage growth.
Finally, there is a large pool of subaltern groups whose precarious living and working conditions both enable the reproduction of the overall class configuration and constrain the prospects for social development. Perhaps the most important characteristics of this social milieu are its fragmentation, depoliticization, and resignation. The subaltern groups are fragmented both in terms of the absent institutional framework for collective action (e.g., negligible independent trade union coverage especially in the private sector, no political representation) and in terms of the absent sense of horizontal solidarity (e.g., encapsulation within the family unit). Despite the common source of deprivation – a market radical version of capitalism – the diversity of subalternity is carved up in a variety of ways depending on the major identity fault lines of the day (e.g., nationalism, homophobia, racism, anticommunism). Precarities are compared and contrasted to produce hierarchies of deprivation that drive horizontal hostility among subaltern groups and that prevent vertical class contestation. The failure of political institutions to provide a channel for the expression of subaltern class interests results in a deep-seated depoliticization, as evidenced by the exceptionally low voter turnout (Bankov et al., 2024). This failure is reinforced by the core neoliberal dictum of “there is no alternative” to produce a total resignation that goes beyond mere disinterest in the institutional political process to ridicule any form of social action or interaction as naivety. The resignation to “the way things are” provides a fertile ground for the mystification of social life through a variety of superstitions (incl. religion, conspiracy, fatalism). This is particularly relevant in discussions about the future.
Class trajectories
The particular historical formation of Bulgaria’s market radical capitalist system reached a relatively stable equilibrium around the 2000-2010s, in which the ruling bloc got its way while allowing peripheral others to make relative gains as well (Barnes, 2007). However, the period of hegemony has recently been punctuated by an emerging conflict between the fractions of rent- and profit-driven capital. Paradoxically, this is partly due to the success of the insider rent model as it provided enough stability for new fractions of capital to emerge within the system, but not enough space for their full-fledged development. The contradiction arises from the unfulfilled growth potential of the peripheral capital fraction, which is impeded by its limited access to growth opportunities. The creation of these opportunities would go against the interests of the ruling bloc because it would undermine its current position and possibly threaten the power positions of the ruling class fractions (potentially even the existence of certain class fractions, e.g., political entrepreneurs). Since profit-driven capital would outperform rent-driven capital on an even playing field, and since political entrepreneurs would become redundant if state capacities were reinforced, the ruling bloc is clinging onto its control of political institutions in order to remain relevant. Left unchecked, the ascending trajectory of the profit-driven capital fraction would disrupt the stability of the current ruling bloc and is likely to put it on a descending trajectory. Just as the bourgeoisie once dislodged the aristocracy.
Specifically, the opportunities for growth demanded by the profit-driven capital fraction include protection against economic raids and aggressive takeovers, guaranteed property rights (for those lacking access to the means of coercion), fair access to finance and credit, fair access to public procurement, fair administrative and judicial treatment. Usually reduced to the terminology of “anti-corruption reform,” this framework of political contestation corresponds to a deep-seated (potential) transition from one stage of capitalist development (based on extensive growth) to another (based on intensive growth). The coalition of ascendant class formations, which generally benefits from the existing capital-friendly class configuration, defines the problem as “corruption,” thereby reducing it to a personified malfunction in the system that can be remedied by changing a few people without touching the core configuration. In contrast, the historical materialist perspective advanced here defines the problem as a core feature of the system: a function of the market-radical neoliberal transition and subsequent market saturation. In this sense, corruption is not a glitch, but a feature of the system.
Depending on the specific power dynamics, this contradiction could be addressed in different ways. First, a compromise between the different fractions of capital could ensure the continued stability of the ruling bloc by mitigating the ascending trajectory of profit-driven capital. Such a compromise cannot be sustainable in the long run because it does not resolve the underlying contradiction, although it can postpone its resolution for a prolonged period of time. Second, the ascending capitalist class fraction could seek to build a new ruling bloc, thereby reconfiguring the existing class structure. In the absence of political-institutional leverage and access to means of coercion, the ascendant capitalist fraction could enter a cross-class coalition with (fractions of) the subaltern in order to overcome the resistance of the existing ruling bloc. This means accepting the political representation of their class interests by abandoning the market radical version of neoliberal capitalism and by abandoning the discursive class antagonism. Third, the existing class configuration could be radically reasserted without any concessions in a reactionary upheaval. The rent-driven fraction of capital could seek a different form of political representation that would reverse any ascending class trajectory by fomenting fear and resentment among the subaltern and by enlisting them in the radical reassertion of the very system that oppresses them. Each of these scenarios corresponds to a different class configuration and provides a different image of the future, whereby the exact image of the future corresponds to the interests of those expressing it.
Imaginations of the future
The ruling bloc is leveraging an image of an anti-future in which chaos would ensue if they were not in power. According to this imagination of the future, both peripheral and subaltern actors had better learn to appreciate the present because their situation could get much worse. At first glance, this seems to be a narrative grounded in common sense materialism. It is about “what we have already achieved” (e.g., building highways, metros, sports facilities), finding solace in mediocrity (“you may be earning low wages, but at least you have a job”), and ensuring stability (social, political, fiscal). On closer inspection, however, this narrative promotes a mystical and, to some extent, religious narrative. It expects subaltern groups to resign themselves to their plight and abandon the idea that there can be a better future in this particular country. Some transcendental force (i.e. fate, God, “nature”) defines the limits of the possibility of progress in Bulgaria (“it’s like that here”, “тука е така”). An alternative future is only possible in other countries, just as in religion where it is only possible after death. It is a “just so” argument that elicits compliance by relying on the subaltern’s habitus, i.e. the shared structured understanding of the organization of social space and the corresponding class-specific positions that developed in the process of capitalist development. The ruling bloc’s imagination of anti-future leverages the subaltern habitus to limit the scope of thinkable futures.
In contrast, the peripheral fraction of capital seeks to overcome the negation of progress and leverage a positive imagination of the future. This is crucial to their claim to power, as they must provide a compelling narrative of how their rule is a constitutive feature of the future. However, they have not provided any radical image of the future worthy of popular enthusiasm. Crucially, their imaginations of the future are detached from the lived experiences of the subaltern and from the material conditions of their existence. The future narratives are usually about Bulgaria becoming a “normal European country,” which is a banal statement and a remnant of an earlier stage of capitalist development, when the juxtaposition with the Western European context was a powerful source of attraction that could mobilize public support. This was a borrowed future that did indeed drive social transformation for a while, but in the absence of local representations of its key features, it gradually lost its appeal. The “embedded” neoliberalism of the European core – with welfare protection and development opportunities for many – was never intended for export to the Eastern periphery, where the market radical version ruled supreme (Bohle, 2006). But the borrowed future is outdated because the subaltern now has personal experience of the West where they engage in precarious work under exploitative conditions. Furthermore, growing problems of social inequality and disorder in the core itself undermine the overall appeal of the imagination. Thus, becoming a “normal European country” is no longer a future that can foster subaltern support for the peripheral group’s claim to power. By failing to produce an appealing imagination of the future that would embed a cross-class coalition, the peripheral fraction of capital cannot rely on subaltern support to accelerate its ascending class trajectory.
The subaltern group, through its fragmentation, depoliticization, and resignation, represents an imagination of an absent future. Their imaginations of the future have acquired the features of the past: it cannot be changed. Past, present, and future are fused into a worldview that denounces history as a transformative process. If anything, history is merely a repetitive record of a pattern that inevitably leads to the same configuration. To be sure, alternative futures are still possible, but only on an individual level. There are still dreams of a better life, but only as a personal transition to another class fraction, not as a possibility for reconfiguring the class structure itself. In this sense, any discussion of alternative collective futures is for them a distraction from individual future trajectories. Engaging in collective action and building horizontal solidarities in the pursuit of social transformation smacks of naivety, as it diverts resources from the pursuit of personalized future scenarios. The subaltern image of an “absent (collective) future” is as much an expression of the successful dissemination of the ruling bloc’s “anti-future” narrative, as it is an expression of the failed attempt by the contending capital class fraction to promote “borrowed” imaginations of the future. Most importantly, it also reflects the failure of progressive forces in society to articulate recognizable alternative imaginations of the future that could break the ideological grip of the ruling discourse.
At the same time, the features of subaltern imaginations of the future create conditions for the rise of hostile reactionary forces that promote a future of “refound glory”. Chauvinist ideologies appropriate the past (i.e., “our” history, “our” heroes, “our” traditions) by advancing selective extracts and limited interpretations of history that tend to reinforce the contemporary class configuration and provide it with a corresponding symbolic scaffolding. Once appropriated, the past can be arbitrarily modelled in a variety of ways, irrespective of the internal contradictions (e.g., drawing on socialist nostalgia to justify far-right tendencies in domestic policy and imperialism in foreign policy). Crucially, such narratives invert the logic of passive compliance into active subordination. If the future is like the past because it does not change, then the subaltern can do nothing but resign to their plight. This is how the ruling bloc currently seeks to perpetuate popular passivity. But if the arrow of time is indeed reversed, like in the imaginations of the chauvinist reactionaries, then any alternative vision of the future advanced by peripheral voices could be framed as a threat to the past of the subaltern. Such an imagination of the future would imply that the subaltern groups, already enduring the material deprivation necessary for the reproduction of the market radical version of capitalism, are now threatened with a further ideational loss that may feel even more significant. This loss is derived from the hierarchy of deprivation that pits the subaltern against each other: the “other” is out to get the last thing that your group still possesses despite all the material deprivation (i.e., national identity, traditional values, consolation in superstition). Although this loss is an expression of phantom pain, because it is based on a post-factual rejection of reality, its implications are quite material. The reactionary forces in society exploit the fallacies of tunnel vision (induced by the reversal of the arrow of time) to foster fear and anxiety among the subaltern in order to coopt them into a radical reassertion of the historical configuration that produced their miserable plight in the first place. This is an imagination of the future that would ensure the ruling bloc’s position of power without any concessions to the ascending fraction of capital, because it mobilizes the subaltern as a counterweight. It is, however, a future that would amplify the contradictions of the contemporary class configuration. Gramsci’s (1971, p. 276) reflection on the genesis of fascism is particularly apt here: “The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear”.
Concluding remarks
In this essay, we follow the approach that imaginations of the future constitute a source of power in societies, that they are politically contested, and we propose a historical materialist framework for analyzing the structural dynamics behind discussions of individual or collective futures. Drawing on Bourdieu, we emphasize the relationship between power constellations and dynamics within class hierarchies on the one hand, and class dispositions toward time in general and the future in particular on the other. Of course, the power over the future is unevenly distributed; the dominant futures are usually the futures of the ruling classes. Participating in the conflict is full of preconditions; in precarious situations, for example, the capacity for imagining and articulating alternatives erodes. And ruling class fractions can use their power also in the symbolic field to enforce and secure their futures, even against general interests and growing antagonisms. But social space never stands still, and it is precisely in its dynamics and trends that the contours of probable futures as well as real possible alternatives can be studied. We thus extend the analysis of class positions to consider class trajectories in order to understand the social forces enabling, hindering and driving imaginations of the future. Specific class trajectories (e.g., stable, ascending, descending) tend to resonate with corresponding concepts of the future (e.g., passive-fatalistic, progressive-utopian, hostile-reactionary).
This heuristic framework has already enabled us, in our preliminary analysis of Bulgarian class society, to embed the imaginations of the future of certain classes in their structural positions and dynamics, and to identify contradictions and lines of conflict between them. In particular, our probative analysis suggests that fatalistic imaginations of an “anti-future” can reinforce the stability of the material configuration of power, just as limited imaginations of a “borrowed” future can undermine the ascending trajectory of an aspiring class fraction. Put differently, the disjuncture between the productive forces (i.e., rising profit-driven capitalist fraction vs. declining rent-driven capitalist fraction) and the relations of production (i.e., the insider rent model that defines the contemporary historical formation) has failed to produce a transition in the stage of capitalist development in the absence of a resonant imagination of an alternative future. Whether this failure is attributable to a strategic decision to limit the possibility for fundamental changes in the capital-friendly social order (by “borrowing” a secondhand future) or to an unintended side-effect of a deeply ingrained aversion to engaging the subaltern in political alliances (i.e., elitist class habitus) we cannot determine based on our analysis. The fact is that no future has emerged from the ongoing political contestation, and the “morbid symptoms” are growing stronger by the day. A more precise and detailed analysis of Bulgarian class trajectories and imaginations of the future is, of course, still pending.
The class configuration in Bulgaria does not provide any example of a political subject advancing a radical imagination of an alternative collective future. Does this mean that another future is not possible? Certainly not. We learn from Bourdieu that the condition of a predominantly occupied future is rather the rule than the exception. But the social space never stands still, and with it the conditions of the future also change. Among the directions of time, it is precisely the future that is never set in stone. The future will certainly not emerge under self-selected circumstances, but it will definitively emerge through social practice. So, following Bloch, we should extend our analysis beyond the formalized contestation in the political process and look for inchoate formations of alternative futures already emerging in various modes of social praxis and interaction. This means, for example, looking at local experiences of spontaneous solidarity that disrupt the dictum of neoliberal fragmentation, depoliticization and resignation of subaltern class fractions. From resistance to dehumanizing legal interventions (e.g., protests against transphobic legislation in 2024) to solidarity with rank-and-file workers in the impoverished health and education sectors (e.g., mobilizations in 2019, 2021, 2024), from resistance to corporate arbitrariness (e.g., protests against electricity monopolies and against high consumer prices in 2024) to solidarity with international subalternity (e.g., support for refugees since 2015). We need to learn from these experiences: how do collective practices generate new imaginations of the future, on the basis of which material contexts and dynamics can they manage to build smaller and larger coalitions, and how can the power to define the future be opened up and democratically appropriated? And we need more discursive space for disseminating the alternative imaginations of the future that they carry. The future is being born on the fringes and we need to make sure we don’t miss it.
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Cover image: Boryana Krasimirova
