The present world financial crisis marks the conclusion of the damage
done by the liberal ideology which, having appeared during the epoch of
the Western Enlightenment, has for decades dominated most of the
planet.
Disturbing voices and criticism started during the end of the last
century, with the rise of such phenomena as globalisation and
one-worldism. This criticism sounded not only from outside opponents –
conservatives, Marxists and indigenous peoples- but started within the
camp of the Western community. Researchers noticed that the modern shock
of globalisation is a consequence of universal liberalism, which
opposes any manifestation of distinctions. The ultimate program
of liberalism is the annihilation of any distinctions. Hence,
liberalism undermines not only cultural phenomena, but also the social
organism itself. The logic of contemporary Western liberalism is that of
the universal market devoid of any culture other than the production
and consumption process. [1]
Historical experience has proved that the Western liberal world has
tried to forcibly impose its will upon all others. According to this
idea, all public systems of the Earth are variants of the Western –
liberal - system[2] and their distinctive features should disappear before the approach of the conclusion of this world epoch.[3].
Jean Baudrillard also states that this is not a clash of
civilisations, but an almost innate resistance between one universal
homogeneous culture and those who resist this globalisation.[4].
Universal Ideologies
Apart from liberalism two more ideologies are known for having tried
to achieve world supremacy: Namely Communism (i.e. Marxism in its
various aspects) and Fascism/National Socialism. As Alexander Gelyevich
Dugin fairly notices, Fascism has arisen after the two ideologies and
has disappeared before them. After the disintegration of the USSR the
Marxism that was born in the 19th Century has been definitely
discredited as well. Liberalism based mainly on individualism and an
atomistic society, human rights and the State-leviathan described by
Hobbes emerged because of bellum omnium contra omnes[5] and has long held on.
Here it is necessary to analyse the relation of the aforesaid
ideologies in the contexts of the temporary times and loci from which
they emerged.
We know that Marxism was a somewhat futuristic idea – Marxism
prophesied the future victory of Communism at a time that nonetheless
remained uncertain. In this regard it is a messianic doctrine,
seeing the inevitability of its victory that would usher the culmination
and end of the historical process. But Marx was a false prophet and
the victory never eventuated.
National Socialism and Fascism on the contrary, tried to recreate the
abundance of a mythic Golden Age, but with a modernist form[6].
Fascism and National Socialism were attempts to usher in a new time
cycle, laying the basis for a new Civilisation in the aftermath of what
was seen as a cultural decline and death of the Western Civilisation
(thus most likely the idea of the Thousand-year Reich). This was
abortive too.
Liberalism (like Marxism) proclaimed the end of history, most
cogently described by Francis Fukuyama (the End of history and the last
man)[7].
Such an end, nonetheless, never took place; and we have instead a
nomadic-like “information society” composed of atomised egoist
individuals,[8]
that consume avidly the fruits of techno-culture. Moreover, tremendous
economic collapses take place worldwide; violent conflicts occur (many
local revolts, but also long-term wars on an international scale); and
so disappointment dominates our world rather than the universal utopia
promised in the name of “progress.”[9]
Fourth Political Theory and the Context of Time
How should the experts of the new fourth political theory
frame their analyses in the context of historical time epochs? It should
be the union with eternity about which conservative-revolutionary
theorist Arthur Moeller van der Brück espoused in his book Das Dritte Reich.
If humans consider themselves and the people to which they belong not
as momentary, temporal entities but in an ‘eternity perspective’, then
they will be freed from the disastrous consequences of the liberal
approach to human life, whereby human beings are considered from a
strictly temporal viewpoint. If A. Moeller van der Brück’s premise is
achieved, we shall have a new political theory the fruits of which will
be simultaneously both conservative and bearing the new values that our
world desperately needs.
From such an historical perspective, it is possible to understand the
links between the emergence of an ideology within a particular
historical epoch; or what has been called the zeitgeist or “spirit of the age.”
Fascism and National Socialism saw the foundations of history in the
state (Fascism) or race (Hitlerian National socialism). For Marxism it
was the working class and economic relations between classes. Liberalism
on the other hand, sees history in terms of the atomised individual
detached from a complex of cultural heritage and inter-social contact
and communication. However, nobody considered as the subject of history
the People as Being, with all the richness of intercultural links,
traditions, ethnic features and worldview.
If we consider various alternatives, even nominally ‘socialist’
countries have adopted liberal mechanisms and patterns that exposed
regions with a traditional way of life to accelerated transformation,
deterioration and outright obliteration. The destruction of the
peasantry, religion and family bonds by Marxism were manifestations of
this disruption of traditional organic societies, whether in Maoist
China or the USSR under Lenin and Trotsky.
This fundamental opposition to tradition embodied in both
liberalism and Marxism can be understood by the method of historical
analysis considered above: Marxism and liberalism both emerged from the
same zeitgeist in the instance of these doctrines, from the spirit of money.[10]
Alternatives to Liberalism
Several attempts to create alternatives to neo-Liberalism are now
visible – the Lebanese socialism of Jamaheria, the political Shiism in
Iran where the main state goal is the acceleration of the arrival of the
Mahdi and the revision of socialism in Latin America (reforms in
Bolivia are especially indicative). These anti-Liberal responses,
nonetheless, are limited within the borders of the relevant, single
statehood.
Ancient Greece is the source of all three theories of political
philosophy. It is important to understand that at the beginning of
philosophical thought the Greeks considered the primary question of Being.
However they risked obfuscation by the nuances of the most complicated
relation between being and thinking, between pure being (Seyn) and its expression in existence (Seiende), between the human being (Dasein) and being in itself (Sein).[11]
Hence, the renunciation of (neo)Liberalism, and the revision of old
categories and, perhaps, of the whole of Western Philosophy are
necessary. We should develop a new political ideology that, according to
Alain de Benoist, will be the New (Fourth) Nomos of the Earth.
The French philosopher is right in remarking that the positive
reconsideration of collective identity is necessary; for our foe is not
“the other”, but an ideology which destroys all identities[12].
It is noteworthy that three waves of globalisation have been the
corollaries of the aforementioned three political theories (Marxism,
Fascism, and Liberalism). As a result, we need after it a new political
theory, which would generate the Fourth Wave: the re-establishment of
(every) People with its eternal values. And of course, after the
necessary philosophical consideration, political action must proceed.
Leonid Savin is Head of Administration of the “International
Eurasian Movement”; Editor-in-Chief of the “Geopolitics of
postmodernism” internet media (www.geopolitica.ru); Senior Expert at the
Centre of Geopolitical Research; and a Fellow of the Centre of
Conservative Research, Faculty of Sociology, Moscow State University.
Ω
Published in Ab Aeterno magazine No. 3.
[1] Gustav Massiah, « Quelle response a la mondialisation » , in Après-demain (4-5-1996), p.199.
[2]
For example, the insistence that all states and peoples should adopt
the Westminster English parliamentary system as a universal model
regardless of ancient traditions, social structures and hierarchies.
[3] « Les droits de l´homme et le nouvel occidentalisme » in L’Homme et la société (numéro spécial [1987], p.9
[4] Jean Baudrillard, Power Inferno,
Paris: Galilée, 2002. Also see for example Jean Baudrillard, “The
Violence of the Global” (<
http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=385>).
[5] In English: War of everybody against every body.
[6] Hence the criticism of National Socialism and Fascism by Right-Traditionalists such as Julius Evola. See K R Bolton, Thinkers of the Right (Luton, 2003), p. 173..
[7] Francis Fukuyama The End of History and the Last Man , Penguin Books, 1992.
[8] G Pascal Zachary, The Global Me, NSW, Australia: Allen and Unwin, 2000.
[9] Clive Hamilton, Affluenza: When Too Much is Never Enough, NSW, Australia: Allen and Unwin, 2005.
[10]
This is the meaning of Spengler’s statement that, “Herein lies the
secret of why all radical (i.e. poor) parties necessarily become the
tools of the money-powers, the Equites, the Bourse. Theoretically their enemy is capital, but practically they attack, not the Bourse, but Tradition on behalf of the Bourse. This is as true today as it was for the Gracchuan age, and in all countries…” Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West, (London : George Allen & Unwin , 1971), Vol. 2, p. 464.
[11] See Martin Heidegger on these terms.
[12] – Ален де Бенуа (Alain de Benoist), Против Либерализма (Against Liberalism), Saint-Petersburg : Амфора, 2009, pp.14 -15.
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