Date: Sun, 2 Nov 1997 08:59:02 -0500 (EST)
From: louisgodena-AT-ids.net (Louis R Godena)
Subject: M-I: Re: Huntington and the "Challenger Civilizations"



Paul asks:

>Do you think "the West" values democracy and cares about its universal
>triumph? Do you think "the West" would settle for just the triumph of
>capitalism? That is, will "the West" be very disappointed if Huntington
>rather than Fukuyama is correct? By the way, what do you think of
>Spengler - refreshing?


I am only going to respond to Paul's queries about Huntington, and will
ignore the rest of his idiotic post.

The central thesis of Huntington is the general discordance between the
West's -- particularly America's -- efforts to promote a universal Western
culture and its declining ability to do so.

The "collapse of communism" exacerbated this discordance by reinforcing in
the West the view that its ideology of democratic liberalism had triumphed
globally and hence was universally valid.  The West, and especially the
United States, which has always been a missionary nation, believe that the
non-Western peoples should commit themselves to the Western values of
bourgeois democracy, free markets, limited government, human rights,
individualism, the rule of law, and should embody these values in their
institutions.  Minorities in other civilizations embrace and promote these
values, but the dominant attitudes towards them in non-Western cultures
range from widespread skepticism to intense opposition.  What is
"universalism" to the West is "imperialism" to the rest.

The West is attempting and will continue to attempt to sustain its
preeminent position and defend its interests by defining those interests as
the interests of the "world community".  That phrase has become the
ephemistic collective noun (replacing "the Free World") to give global
legitimacy to actions reflecting the interests of the United States and
other Western powers.  Through the International Monetary Fund and other
international economic institutions, the West promotes its economic
interests and imposes on other nations the economic policies it thinks
appropriate.

Non-Westerners also do not hesitate to point to the gaps between Western
principle and Western action.  Hypocrisy, double standards, and "but nots"
are the price of universalist pretensions.  Democracy is promoted "but not"
if it brings Islamic fundamentalists or communists to power;
nonproliferation is preached for Iran and Iraq "but not" for Israel; free
trade is the elixir of economic growth "but not" for agriculture; human
rights are an issue with China "but not" with Saudi Arabia; agression
against oil-owning Kuwaitis is massively repulsed "but not" against
oil-owning East Timorese.  Double standards in practice are the unavoidable
price of universal standards in principle.

Having achieved political independence, non-Western societies wish to free
themselves from Western economic, military, and cultural domination.  East
Asian societies are well on their way to equalling the West economically.
Asian and Islamic countries are looking for shortcuts to balance the West
militarily.

In the emerging world, the relations between states and groups from
different civilizations will not be close and will often be antagonistic.
At the microlevel, the most violent fault lines are between Islam and its
Orthodox, Hindu, African, and Western Christian neighbors.  At the
macrolevel, the dominant division is between "the West and the rest," with
the most intense conflicts occurring between Muslim and Asian societies on
the one hand, and the West on the other.  The dangerous clashes of the
future are likely to arise from the interaction of Western arrogance,
Islamic intolerance and Sinic assertiveness.

This is Huntington's basic thesis.  I believe it is an important one, and
one with which Marxists can engage.  I do not endorse every tenet of
Huntington's scenario, but I believe he comes the closest of any recent
bourgeois writer to dilineating the fuzzy outlines of future conflicts.
Last winter, I stated that we as Marxists had to consider seriously the
hypothesis that the world revolution of which the October revolution was the
first stage, and which will complete the downfall of capitalism, will prove
to be a revolt of the colonial peoples against capitalism in the guise of
imperialism rather than a revolt of the proletariat of the advanced
capitalist countries.  I have not seen much since then to retract that
gloomy view.  In fact, the sight of the cosseted, overfed, AFL-"CIA"
leadership at the anti-China demonstration, rubbing shoulders with hardened
fascists and anti-communists, only reconfirmed that feeling that workers are
congenitally incapable of thinking politically for themselves.  Indeed, I
would go further and say that most workers today prefer to face the slow
decay of capitalism, hoping that it will last out their time, rather than
face the surgical knife of revolution, which may or may not produce socialism.

It is, sadly, a tenable point of view.

Louis Godena     

   



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