Religion and Political Strategy in an
Era of Civilizational Crisis
Anthony Mansueto
There can be
little doubt that the November 2004 US General Elections represented a major
setback for those dedicated to human development and civilizational progress
worldwide. On the one hand, the victory of the Republican Party was the victory
of the most backward sectors of the US economy, which overwhelmingly funded the
Republican election effort. An analysis of the principal funding sources for
Republican candidates in this election cycle, as reported by the Center for
Responsive Politics, shows that the Republican Party represents, first and
foremost, industries based on backward, environmentally destructive
technologies such as the petroleum and automobile industries, industries which
have especially exploitative relationships with their workers, such as low wage
manufacturing activities, and other industries which depend on protection or
subsidies of some sort, such as insurance and health care and the
defense/aerospace sector. On the other hand, the election represented the
triumph of a proto-fascist electoral strategy in which voters were persuaded,
apparently knowingly, to vote against their interests and convictions on core
issues such as the economy and foreign policy by means of appeals to patriotic
and religious traditions and the image of “strong leadership” put forward by
the Bush government. Such, at least, is the impression one gets from the exit
polls compiled by CNN, which show that Bush voters were swayed primarily by a
concern for “moral values,” a fear of terrorism, and the President’s image as a
strong leader.
The
election –and the principal analyses put forward by both sides-- represented a
special defeat, however, for the religious left, as it gave the impression of a
country divided, first and foremost, between secular progressives and religious
conservatives. Those of us who were moved to support the Democratic Party –and
who have historically supported policies critical of the market order precisely
on the basis of our religious convictions— were invisible. This was especially
true of the Catholic left, which played such a vital role in resistance to the
Republican ascendancy during the 1980s, as an increasingly conservative
hierarchy, by emphasizing issues such as abortion and gay marriage over
economic justice and international law, suppressed turnouts among Catholic
voters generally and Latinos in particular, and in some cases actually swung
them into the Republican camp.
What happened? And what is the role of the religious left –of the
party of meaning and hope— in the wake of the recent election defeat?
In order to make
this case, we need to begin by considering the nature of the current situation.
Strategic thinking within the ruling class has, over the course of the past
decade, been dominated by two principal paradigms. According to the first,
advanced in 1989 by Francis Fukuyama, the crisis of socialism represents the
definitive victory of capitalism, democracy, and secularism, and the end of the
age of global ideological conflict –the end, in fact of “history” as we know
it. Any remaining conflicts, such as the intense ethnoreligious conflict in the
Balkans which dominated the 1990s or the still more intense conflict with
Islamic fundamentalism which has come to dominate the present decade are
nothing more than rear guard actions and while they may require “mopping up
operations,” they do not represent a fundamental threat to the way of life
represented pre-eminently by the United States (Fukuyama 1989). The alternative
theory, advanced in 1993 by Samuel Huntington, argues instead that we face a
“Clash of Civilizations” rooted in radically different and ultimately
incompatible approaches to the most fundamental questions of meaning and value,
a conflict which at present pits “the West” against “the rest,” and especially
against Dar–al Islam and what he regards as the Confucian civilization
of East Asia (Huntington 1993).
A similar pair of paradigms has, over the course of the past
decade, come to be used in analyzing US domestic politics as well. The first
paradigm, which reflects assumptions similar to the “end of history thesis” and
which enjoyed popularity during roughly the same period, might be called the
technocratic paradigm. It was summed up accurately by the 1992 Democratic Party
slogan: “it’s the economy stupid.” According to this view, elections are
fundamentally about economics –not so much in the Marxist sense of being about
class struggle, but in the neoliberal sense of being about stewardship of the
economy. Incumbents will be evaluated based first and foremost on their
handling of the economy; challengers will have to show that they can do better
in this arena. The opposing scenario, which has dominated most analysis of the
November 2004 US General Election, and which might be called the “culture wars”
paradigm pits “blue states” against “red states” and “seculars” against
conservative religious voters.
The liberal left in the United States –the public sector unions,
the ecological and women’s movements, and those in the peace movement not
informed by a structural analysis of imperialism-- has tended to uphold,
implicitly or explicitly, what amounts to a “left” version of the “end of
history” thesis, dissenting from neoliberal policies largely to stress the
economic advantages which accrue to countries –such as those in Europe—which
follow a “high-end” economic strategy, creating ecologically and culturally
attractive living conditions and training –and paying for—a highly skilled,
innovative workforce. Practically speaking, this has led them to pursue what
amounts to a classical popular front strategy, allying themselves with the
Democratic Party in order to defend civil liberties and women’s rights, to
contain damage to the ecosystem, and to work towards peaceful disengagement
from Iraq and to prevent further military adventurism, while arguing for higher
levels of investment in human development. The more radical left –especially
the antiglobalization movement— has tried to argue that the current regime of
neoliberal globalization is ultimately unsustainable, ecologically and
economically, and will lead humanity ultimately to the point of crisis –a
crisis on which it is banking to create a new strategic opening for the popular
movements. It is still trying, after more than half a decade, to revive the
“spirit of Seattle” and arguing that the Democratic Party lost at least in part
because it failed to speak convincingly to those “left behind” by
globalization.
I would like to suggest that all three paradigms are fundamentally
mistaken and misunderstand both the complex cultural dynamics of the present
period, domestically and globally, and the way in which these dynamics
articulate and impinge on economic conflicts. More specifically, I would like
to argue that what we are facing is not so much the end of history or a clash
of civilizations as it is the early stages of a civilizational crisis –a
profound questioning of the ideals of modernity –the utopia of scientific and
technological progress which was to remove once and for all the main burden of
human suffering and make man the master of his own destiny.
The “end of history” thesis, with its domestic corollary –“it’s the
economy stupid”-- is the weakest of the three approaches. This view is
essentially just a restatement of the principal claims of modernist social
theory: that as humanity matures and understands better how the world works it
will give up its religious illusions and instead focus on scientific and
technical control of the physical, biological, and social environment. It
differs from earlier variants of the thesis simply in regarding as “religious”
certain nontheistic modern ideologies such as Marxism, which regard matter
rather than “spirit” as the first principle, but are no less metaphysical as a
result. As such it shares all the problems of modern social theory. On the one
hand it fails to recognize the accumulating contradictions of the modern
project: a mounting ecological crisis, the failure of both capitalism and
socialism to deliver on the modern ideal, the disintegration of the social
fabric, a loss of a sense of meaning and value, etc. On the other hand, it also
ignores the persistence of both religion generally and of religious conflicts
in particular. One need only consider
the prominent role of popular religious ideologies in the mass movements for
socialism and national liberation throughout the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries or for the persistence of religious belief and practice in what is
arguably the very homeland of modernity –the United States of America, a
phenomenon which resurfaced in the November US General Elections. The
ethnoreligious conflicts in the Balkans and Islamic fundamentalism are but
recent examples of a long series of phenomena which modern social theory
generally and secularization theory in particular cannot really accommodate.
This does not, however, mean that what we
are facing is a “clash of civilizations” in the sense
understood by Samuel Huntington –much less his looser interpreters in the
neoconservative camp. First, the whole
idea of a “Western Civilization” stretching from Ancient Israel and Ancient
Greece up through the present is highly problematic. Even if one allows that a
diverse complex of cultural traditions, mostly Indo-European and Semitic,
flowed together to form an at least partially unified Western civilization
during the middle ages, this cultural sphere must be understood to include both
Christendom and Dar-al-Islam as well as a distinct Jewish minority
culture. And modernity was constituted first and foremost by a rupture
with this civilizational complex, which had been unified (to the extent
that it was unified at all) by a common Aristotelian philosophical language in
which disputed questions of meaning and value were hashed out. Neither modern
Europe and North America, nor the modern Islamic world can really be regarded as
faithful to this heritage. Second, the thesis fails to even describe correctly,
much less really explain, the main lines of global conflict in the present
period. The Jews and Christians who are most committed to sustained conflict
with Dar-al-Islam are not, for example, secularized liberal interpreters
of their tradition, but fundamentalists who actually agree with the
fundamentalist Muslims with whom they are at war on a broad range of cultural
questions, from the proper approach to the interpretation of the sacred
scriptures (literal inerrancy) through the nature of God (absolutely
transcendent and sovereign) to church/state relations (control or at least
supervision of the state by fundamentalist religious scholars) and the role of
women in society (at home). At even a rudimentary level of abstraction, in
other words, this supposed clash of civilizations turns into a cultural
convergence among groups who are, nonetheless, really and truly in conflict
with each other on the geopolitical stage. East Asia, meanwhile, has embraced
capitalism in a way which is hardly coherent with a traditional Confucian
worldview and must be read either as representing a rupture towards modernity
or a mobilization of other elements in their cultural heritage –e.g. a longstanding
mercantile tradition and a statist authoritarianism associated more closely
with Buddhism and Legalism respectively-- than with anything even remotely
resembling a Confucian ru xue.
The
antiglobalization paradigm has, on the other hand, the historic strengths of
Marxism –it points out the ultimately unsustainable character of an
economic system which at once depends on a mass consumer market and leads to
massive disparities of wealth and adds to this, at least in some cases,
recognition of the seriousness of the impending ecological crisis. At the same
time, it fails to comprehend the extent to which the crisis of socialism was
not merely the result of strategic or tactical errors on the part of the
communist movement, but reflected a global rejection of the modernist ideal on
which “actually existing socialism” was based. Popular movements for socialism
were, in large measure, movements of resistance to capitalist
modernization. When communist regimes took that popular support as a mandate to
use the state, rather than the market, as a mechanism for centralizing surplus
to support industrialization, that support rapidly waned. Mass resistance to
capitalist globalization is very real, but it will become effective only when
informed by a vision of the future in which people will no longer be turned
into batteries[1] by either
the market or the state. The antiglobalization paradigm also lacks much in the
way of an analysis of the specific dynamics of the present period or the
current conjuncture. Like the dependency-world systems trend out of which many
of its theorists came, it puts forward an economic analysis which leaves one
wondering why the revolution didn’t take place decades ago –and then leaves
that question unanswered. Partly this is a result of failing to take into
account the uneven impact of globalization. Many, even in the Third World,
especially in places like China and India, are benefiting. But it also reflects
a failure to take seriously political and cultural trends which can be
mobilized to turn resistance to the global market to the right.
Finally, none of the dominant paradigms really explain or even recognize the emergence of an increasingly powerful third force which is present
in the cultural dynamics of the present period: a pluralistic, tolerant, and
eclectic spiritual culture characterized by dialogue and seeking rather than
dogmatism and certainty. This third force had its antecedents in the powerful
religious movements for social justice which characterized the postwar period:
the movements around Gandhi in India and Buddhadasa in Thailand (Jackson 2003),
Buddhist Socialism in Burma (Sarkisyanz 1965), certain strains of Islamic
socialism (Esposito 1984), the civil rights movement in the United States, and
liberation theology in Latin America (Lancaster 1987) and other parts of the
Third World. While the crisis of socialism and the collapse of the Soviet Union
has left this trend in political disarray –something which this paper is
intended, at least in part, to address, anyone familiar with the left today
knows that, at least at the grass roots, it remains very largely a religious
movement. Even such “moral issues” as gay marriage do not pit “seculars”
against “religious” so much as people with conflicting religious commitments
against each other.[2]
An Alternative Approach
In view of these criticisms, I would like to suggest an alternative
analysis of the current situation and of the role of religion therein. Modern
social theory, whether capitalist or socialist, has tended to negate the role
of both properly material factors outside human control –the ecosystem— and of
transcendental principles in shaping human action and human social life, and
has focused instead on things subject to human control: technology, economics,
politics, and sometimes culture (though not the principles about which cultures
speak). Historical materialism (Marx 1859/1961) treats the ecosystem as
essentially raw material and ideas as merely a superstructure which can serve
to legitimate or contest the existing order. Weberian interpretive sociology,
on the other had, seems to talk a lot about ideas but ultimately treats
them as tools in an ongoing power struggle a kind of “war of the gods” as Weber
but it in Science as a Vocation (Weber 1918/1919, 1921/1968).
In order to understand the current
situation, we need a more subtle theory which, without negating structural
factors (technology, economics, politics, culture) takes seriously both the
fact that human beings pursue transcendental aims, aims which are understood
differently by different cultures (Being, Sunyata, Progress, etc.) and that
they do so under definite material conditions –in a definite ecosystem, with
particular technologies at their disposal, etc. Human civilizations, in other
words, pursue transcendental aims which they understand in a particular way
(what we will call their civilizational ideal). They do this using definite
structures (band, tribal, communitarian, archaic, tributary, petty commodity,
capitalist, socialist) and under definite material conditions.
This framework allows us to distinguish
between three very different types of crisis: a crisis of regime, a structural
crisis and a civilizational crisis. The first sort of crisis occurs
when a long established set of policies no longer allows people to realize
their aspirations, but where the contradictions are not so profound as to
require a change in social structure. The economic crisis of the 1930s and the
advent of the New Deal and European social democracy would be an example of
such a crisis, as would the end of that regime and its replacement by
neoliberalism between 1973 and 1989. A structural crisis occurs when it is no
longer possible for a society to pursue its civilizational ideal within the
context of the existing structure. The option for socialism in countries which
were experiencing difficulty modernizing under capitalism, and the transition
back when they had exhausted the limits of statist accumulation strategies,
represent responses to crises of this sort.
A civilizational crisis, on the other hand, takes
place when, generally after a succession of structural crises, people actually
lose faith in a civilizational ideal and stop pursuing it. Such a civilizational
crisis seems to have occurred at the end of the Bronze Age, at which point
humanity seems to have lost faith in the god-kings who were the principal focal
points for surplus centralization and civilizational development and in some
cases --Israel and China-- seem actually to have overthrown them. This is the
origin of what Karl Jaspers (Jaspers 1949/1953) called the “axial age,” which
gave birth to humanity’s principal prophetic and philosophical traditions. The
crisis of Roman Civilization shows how a structural crisis can lead ultimately
to civilizational transformation. The Roman Empire ran into a structural crisis
because its basic strategy –using the surplus generated by chattel slavery to
buy into the Silk Road trade network— ran into insuperable limits. Logistic and
ecological factors made further expansion impossible, bringing an end to the
wars of conquest which provided a steady supply of slaves. The empire was
forced to settle slaves on the land with families (so they could reproduce and
ensure a steady supply of labor) and to bind hitherto free tenants to their
farms, while drastically increasing the burdens of taxation and civic service
on the middle and upper middle strata. This undermined the radical distinction
between free citizens and slaves which had been central to the whole fabric and
self-understanding of Hellenistic-Roman Civilization (Anderson 1974, de Ste.
Croix 1982). Christianity assisted with this transition because (at least in
the forms in which it was adopted) it at once legitimated the continued
existence of class differences, making it palatable to the ruling classes, but
also insisted on the underlying humanity of the slaves and coloni,
disciplining the ruling classes and forcing them to stop working their slaves
to death and thus undercutting the long-term supply of labor. All were,
furthermore, engaged by an ethos of “service” which legitimated both what was
left of the empire in the East and the emerging feudal order in the West
(Theissen 1982, Kyrtatas 1987). Ultimately, however, the adoption of
Christianity ordered Europe towards a radically different civilizational ideal,
one which was no longer recognizably “Roman.” An even more radical
transformation took place in the southern and eastern Mediterranean, which Islam
took advantage of Roman weakness to carry out a comprehensive civilizational
transformation. Structural crises can, in other words, but need not, lead to
civilizational crises.
It is just such a civilizational crisis which, I would like to
argue, we are beginning to face, and which is a key to understanding the
complex cultural dynamics of the present period. The collapse of socialism
represented not the triumph of capitalism as a strategy for realizing the
modern ideal, but rather a conclusion on the part of humanity that that ideal
was either unworthy or unworkable and the beginning of a search for an
alternative. The deepest cultural cleavages on the planet are between those who
either continue to embrace variants of the modern ideal (neoliberals, the few
remaining modernist socialists and, I will argue, fundamentalists) or regard it
as the last ideal, after which there will be no others (deconstructionist
postmodernists) and those who are engaged in an open, pluralistic and tolerant
search for a new ideal which is both more respectful of the material conditions
under which we live (i.e. the ecosystem) and which, without negating the real
possibilities of scientific and technological progress, orders humanity to a
higher spiritual end. It is this latter group which represents the new and true
opposition –the party of meaning and hope in a world which at present knows
little of either.
What light does this analysis shed on the current situation? Let us begin
by looking at the results of the November 2004 US General Elections. We need first to consider the principal direct actors in the
election: the candidates and their parties. Political parties in the United
States, as elsewhere, represent fundamental social interests such as social
classes, ethnic groups, religious communities, etc. Unlike most countries in
Europe, however, which have powerful working class and religious (Christian
Democratic) parties, both the principal political parties in the United
States are, fundamentally, bourgeois parties which primarily represent the
interests of various sectors of Capital. During the current election cycle,[3]
for example, the Democratic Party received fully 65% of its funds from various
sectors of Capital. Another 33% came from groups without an obvious class
identity, such as ideological and single issue lobbies, or from the petty
bourgeoisie. Only 2% of its funds came from organized labor. The Republican
Party received 80% of its funds from various sectors of Capital, with the
remaining 20% from groups without a clear class identity or the petty
bourgeoisie.
This said, the social bases of the two parties are
fundamentally different. Most sectors of Capital, most industries, and indeed
most corporations which are serious about participating in the public arena
contribute to both parties. Even so, only one sector of Capital and a
handful of industries are strongly Democratic. Communications and Electronics
gave 58% of its funds to the Democratic Party in this election cycle. Within
this broader sector, Publishing and the Mass Media were strongly Democratic
(68%); the Computer and Internet Industries were split much more closely (52%
Democratic). A few industries either leaned Democratic or were split more or
less evenly. Investment Banking, which in the 1990s was solidly Democratic, has
been drawn partly into the Republican camp, perhaps by the promise of Social
Security privatization, but still gave 48% of its contributions to Democrats.
Business Services, which includes the large accounting and consulting firms
which help businesses adapt to the conditions of the global market, gave 53% of
its funds to Democrats. Because of its
greater economic weight, however, investment banking contributed fully 12% of
the Democratic Party’s funds and other elements in finance capital an
additional 5%; the entire Communications and Electronics sector gave the
Democrats only 8% of their funds.
Republicans, on the other hand, while they enjoyed broad support
across many different sectors of Capital, were the special favorites of the
most backward sectors of the economy: the Insurance industry (68%) and the
Health sector (62%) which are actively resisting health care finance reform,
which is badly needed not only for reasons of equity but also to remove a major
obstacle to small business development, General Contractors (75%) and
Miscellaneous Manufacturing (72%), two sectors which favor antiunion policies
and the latter of which includes low-wage low technology industries such as textiles
and big polluters such as the chemical industry, a cluster of interests opposed
to weaning our civilization off of petroleum and the automobile: Oil and Gas
(81%) and indeed the entire Energy and Natural Resource sector (75%) and the
Automotive Industry (78%), and Defense/Aerospace (62%), which benefits most
directly from the establishment of a military imperium. Commercial Banks
continue, as they have historically, to lean Republican (62%).
Democrats, in other words, represent those sectors of Capital which
promise to do well in the context of the global market, and which will gain by
investment in education and research, and by the rationalization of the US
economy to bring it more nearly into line with global norms through, for
example, national health insurance, funding for alternative energy sources and
mass transit and high-speed rail systems, and by a foreign policy respectful of
international law; the Republicans represent those sectors which are threatened
by global competition or which would be directly harmed by such
rationalization.
Both parties derive significant financial support from various
sectors of the petty bourgeoisie, but they differ radically when we look at
which sectors. The Democrats, for example, raised fully 7% of their funds from
the Education sector, which gives 76% of its contributions to the Democratic
Party. This does not include funds raised from the teachers unions and
reflects, among other things, significant investment on the part of research
universities concerned about funding for stem cell and other research. John
Kerry’s two biggest single contributors in this election were the University of
California ($603,025) and Harvard University ($340,589), which led a list
including other information and research intensive interests such as Time
Warner ($287,300) and Microsoft ($269,047) as well as the historically
Democratic Goldman Sachs ($285,750) which, however, gave more this year to
George Bush ($373,100). Democrats also raise a great deal of their funds (18%)
from lawyers and lobbyists, who give 70% of their contributions to the
Democrats. Republicans, on the other hand, raise 16% of their funds from health
professionals (mostly physicians) who give 63% of their contributions to the
Republican Party. Civil Servants split their contributions, with 56% going to
the Democrats.
This said, it is still necessary for candidates to actually win
votes. How was the Republican Party, which represents the most backward sectors
of Capital, able to hegemonize such a large sector of the US population? And on
which sectors, in particular, did it depend?
The answer
is that the Republicans –if they really did win the election-- were able to do
so because a large part of the US electorate, like US Capital, feels profoundly
threatened by globalization and by the development of an information and
education intensive economy and responded by supporting the party which they
believed is better situated to protect them. This means protecting both the US
national identity, something which is, for a large sector of the electorate,
bound up with Christianity and more specifically with Christianity understood
in an increasingly Protestantizing and Evangelical manner, and protecting
economic activities which do not require significant formal education or
assimilation of a more cosmopolitan culture (i.e. protection of the historic
anti-intellectualism and nativism of the people of the United States.)
This is
apparent when we try to analyze the election results[4]
from a class perspective, something which leads, on the face of it, to
confusing and contradictory patterns. On the one hand, Kerry did best among
voters with the lowest incomes, carrying 63% of those earning less than $15,000
and 57% of those earning between $15,000 and $30,000, but just barely edging
out Bush among those earning between $30,000 and $50,000 and losing all higher
income groups, which make up 55% of the electorate. This would suggest that the
Democrats, even if they are not the party of the working class, managed to hold
the support of that class and that the election results reflect, in part at
least, the petty-bourgeoisification of the United States. But Kerry received
only 61% of the votes of union members and, when results are analyzed in terms
of educational level, did best among those with postgraduate education (55%),
just barely carried those with no high school (50%, down from 60% for Gore in
2000) and lost all other educational levels.
We get the
same confusing results when we try to analyze the election in terms of ethnic identity,
gender, or age. Among various ethnic groups, Bush carried only Euro-Americans
(58%), but Kerry’s margin was dramatic only among African Americans (88%). Bush
gained 9% among Latinos and held Kerry’s margin to 53%. Asians and other groups
gave Kerry 56% and 54% respectively. Bush gained dramatically among women (5%)
to hold Kerry to 51% and carried all age groups except those between 18 and 29,
from whom Kerry received 54% of the vote. Voting in this age group remained low
despite massive registration and turn-out efforts
In short,
while the Democratic Party has retained the historical allegiance of the poor
and African Americans, it is losing the support of union members (though not of
the unions themselves) and of Latinos and some other ethnic minorities, while
holding its own among those who have completed a university degree.
Religion
and geography turn out to give us a better sense of what happened than class or
ethnicity. Among the most significant factors in this election was debate
around the religious question. This has been depicted as a struggle between
religious conservatives and secular liberals and this appears to be
confirmed by the fact that there is an inverse relationship between frequency
of church attendance and support for Kerry. A closer look, however, suggests
that it is not religion which is the issue, but Christianity –and especially
Protestant Christianity. Bush carried 59% of the Protestant and 52% of the
Catholic vote, and gained 3% and 5% among these groups respectively over his
performance in 2000–the latter figure suggesting that the opposition to Kerry
on the part of some Catholic Bishops did have an effect. Bush also gained among
Jews (6%), reflecting concern about events in the Middle East, but Kerry still
received 74% of the Jewish vote. Adherents of other religious traditions voted
overwhelmingly for Kerry (74%) and unlike seculars (who voted 67% for Kerry,
but shifted 1% towards Bush), increased their support for Kerry by 5%, probably
reflecting a shift in the growing Islamic vote and concern among “New
Americans” regarding the increasingly narrow definition of American identity.
Bush voters
were concerned first and foremost about “moral values” (80%) and terrorism
(86%) and only secondarily about taxes (57%). Kerry voters, on the other hand,
were concerned about the economy (80%), health care (77%), education (73%) and
the war in Iraq (73%). Bush voters wanted a president with religious faith
(91%), who is a strong leader (87%), who had a clear stand on the issues (79%)
and who is honest and trustworthy (70%). Kerry voters were looking for someone
who will bring change (95%), is intelligent (91%) and who cares about people
(75%).
This
suggests that the difference is not, as some analysts have claimed, between
religious voters and seculars, or between those who voted their values and
those who voted their pocket books, but rather between voters with dramatically
different beliefs and values.
The
clearest pattern in the election was, however, the geographical distribution of
Kerry voters. Kerry carried only big cities (60%). He split smaller cities
(49%) and lost all other types of communities to Bush. Kerry votes were,
furthermore, concentrated in the Northeast, the upper Midwest, and the West
Coast. There were, however, a few interesting exceptions to this pattern. Kerry
carried the Rio Grande Valley, San Antonio, Northern New Mexico, and the San
Luis Valley –all historically important Latino regions. He also carried parts
of Indian Country, and the Mississippi
Delta and swaths of territory through the Deep South (historically African
American). Of particular interest, however, is the fact that he also carried
much of the upper Mississippi Valley in Minnesota, Illinois, and Iowa, as well
as a swath of territory extending west into Iowa along Interstate Highway 80.
These are largely Scandinavian, German, Belgian, and Luxemburger regions with
an unusually strong continuity of cultural institutions –Benedictine
Monasteries, small Catholic and Lutheran colleges, etc.
How should
we understand these results? The data analyzed above suggest several broad
patterns. First, the Democratic Party did best among those who are best
situated to take advantage of the global economy, whether they are currently
doing so or not. The Democrats are financed largely by the investment
bankers, information and research intensive sectors of industrial capital, and
by key sectors of the petty bourgeoisie (law, education.) The Democrats get the
votes of people who are prepared educationally to take advantage of the global
economy (i.e. people with postgraduate education) or who would be situated
geographically and cultural to do so if they had the necessary education:
people in big, ethnically diverse cities in the historic centers of
civilization on this continent. They also do well in secondary civilizational
centers which may not be major participants in the global economy, but which
conserve strong local civilizational traditions (e.g. the upper Mississippi
Valley) which value excellence over submission and which –even when the are
Protestant— are not part of the hegemonic Anglo-American evangelical bloc.
Democrats did worst among people who are poorly situated to participate in the
global economy even if they have the necessary education and are currently
earning relatively high incomes in spite of this (e.g. people with high school
and some college who live outside the major metropolitan regions of the
Northeast, the Upper Midwest, and the West Coast).
Second, the
United States is deeply polarized along cultural lines. This division is
not between those who are religious and those who are secular, but rather
between two competing spiritualities: a spirituality of authority and
submission which is strongest among evangelical Protestants but which, with
the rightward turn in the Catholic Church has increasing salience among
Catholics --including Latino Catholics-- as well, and a spirituality of meaning and self-cultivation which is
strongest among Jews, Moslems, and adherents of various Asian religions, but which also has significant salience
among liberal Protestants, dissident Catholics, and those who (identifying
“religion” with a spirituality of authority and submission) identify themselves
as secular.[5] Another way
to understand this polarization is in terms of fundamentally different ideas
about what it means to be “American.” The first group understands the
uniqueness of “America” as entailing a rejection of the ways of “the nations”
in favor of a distinctive culture which is informed at its base by evangelical
Protestantism and which is deeply anti-intellectual. “America,” from this point of view, is the unique agent of God in
this world. Globalization is frightening to this sector because it means not only
improving skills and productivity, but also adapting to foreign cultural norms
the rejection of which has been definitive of “American” identity. The second
group understands the uniqueness of “America” in terms of its openness to
competing cultures and competing spiritualities and increasingly sees this as
not only a cultural value but as an economic asset in an interdependent world.[6]
Third, these
two polarizations are closely related to each other. The growing strength
of the evangelical right in the United States is not due fundamentally to
effective organizing on the part of the evangelical churches (though that is
certainly a factor), but rather to marginalization of growing sectors of the
population from the global economy and the global culture it entails. As people
feel unable to compete in the global economy they turn to ideologies which
provide an alternative source of identity and self-esteem and which undercut
the legitimacy of those they see as their competitors if not their oppressors.
In the case of the United States there is a ready-made ideology which serves
this purpose: evangelical Protestantism with its broader periphery of nativism
and anti-intellectualism.
When we put
our analysis of who the parties represent together with our analysis of the
election results, the implications are frightening: we are dealing with, at the
very least, a proto-fascist dynamic. Patriotic and religious
ideologies are being used to mobilize the population in support of militaristic
policies designed to protect the privileged position of the United States in
the global economy –a position which both the more backward sectors of the
bourgeoisie and the sectors of the population which support them either believe
cannot be maintained on the basis of superior creativity or (more likely) which
they do not want to try to maintain on the basis of superior creativity because
of the cultural changes that would entail.
The results of the November 2004 US General
Election are part of a larger global pattern.
The dynamics of the present period are dominated overwhelmingly by
responses to the global market. There are those who, relative to their
historic expectations, have some promise of profiting from engagement with the
global market, and those who don’t. This is not a class division nor, at least
on a global scale, even a division between sectors of the economy. In general
those actually or potentially profiting from the global market come
primarily from the information and technology or other high value added sectors
of the economy, people in the arts, sciences, and humanities who are patronized
by the first group, people who turn ecological endowments or culturally
specific knowledge into a comparative advantage, and in general people in major
metropolitan areas who have access to the education and relationships to do one
or more of these things, especially with some added public investment in
education, health care or transportation. The highest concentration of such
people is undoubtedly in Europe, but they exist in the United States as well,
and even in otherwise still impoverished countries of the Third World, such as
India and China. Politically they have supported the liberalization of trade
and capital flows while arguing for public investment to support the
cultivation of authentic comparative advantages –those based on skill or
ecological endowment rather than cheap labor. They recognize cultural diversity
as an economic asset and, where they criticize the global market, they do so
because it constrains creativity, not because it requires them to change and
grow.
Those not profiting from thee global market include those in
technologically backward and otherwise low value added sectors of the economy
as well as those which would probably be competitive on their own, but which
have nonetheless benefited from protection and subsidies of various kinds
(defense/aerospace, insurance and health care) and in general those away from
major global metropolitan centers where engagement with the global market is
possible. The highest concentration of such people is clearly in the United
States, where global political military dominance and a lack of political will
have protected backward industries, in the former Soviet bloc, and in Dar-al-Islam.
It is also this sector which provides the principal base of support for the
various types and shades of religious fundamentalism and other proto-fascisms
which have dominated the global scene in recent years (Christian, Islamic, and
to a lesser extent Jewish, Hindu and other fundamentalisms, but also the
“Eurasian” trend in the former Soviet bloc). Just as cosmopolitanism, religious
or secular, serves to legitimate engagement with the global market,
fundamentalism legitimates resistance or withdrawal.
Low technology, low wage sectors inn historically impoverished regions
stand in between these two positions. Capital in these sectors is certainly
profiting from the global market, at least for now, but is under constant threat
of being undersold by even lower bidders. Workers may experience their
engagement with the market as either the destruction of a cherished ancient way
of life or as a hard mistress which nonetheless opens up hitherto unheard of
opportunities –or as both at the same time. This explains the mixture of
creative energy and backward authoritarianism in places like China and India in
the present period.
But what does all this have to do wwith the idea of a civilizational
crisis? The question is how we interpret the significance of fundamentalism in
the long run. End of history theorists regard fundamentalism as merely a
last-ditch resistance to the inevitable, all the more irrational because it is
desperate and doomed. Clash of civilizations theorists interpret it as evidence
that one or more major civilizations may be holding out against Western
modernity. It is here that the civilizational crisis thesis suggests an
alternative reading. When we set fundamentalism in a larger comparative
historical perspective, it becomes clear that it is not so much an antimodern
ideology as it is a reassertion of early modern ideological tendencies.
Let me explain.
Medieval Europe and the Silk Road ccivilizations with which it was linked
all valued reason very highly. These civilizations also tended towards what we
philosophers call an analogical metaphysics. God was understood as Esse,
the power of Being as such, in which all created things have a share and
participate to the extent of their ability, as the tathagatagarba, the
Buddha-nature which gives all things the potential for enlightenment, as Brahman,
the creative unity between the manifold diversity of lived experience, or
as T’ai Chi, the Great Ultimate which all things seek. The moral
imperative was to promote the development of human capacities; spirituality was
understood not as opposed to but as the summit of human creative potential.
This ideological pattern legitimateed a system in which markets were
allowed to operate –and indeed did so on a grand global scale—but were also
constrained by moral norms which prioritized human development generally and
spiritual development in particular. These norms were enforced partly by the
state (especially in China and Dar-al-Islam), which used taxation to
redirect surplus in ways which promoted human development (the best example
being the Islamic wealth tax or zakat), but also by religious
institutions themselves (temples and monasteries and waqfs which
centralized surplus and invested it in the arts, sciences, philosophy, and
religion).
It was only in the late medieval annd early modern periods that this
consensus gave way –in Europe and Dar-al-Islam especially-- to a univocal
metaphysics in which a divine sovereign, who differs from us not in nature so
much as in power, presides over a universe from which he demands nothing so
much as submission: the God of Calvin, but also of the Asharites and the
Wahabis. This happened because the emerging modern state and later the
bourgeoisie felt constrained by the moral imperatives deriving from the older
metaphysics. It was against this god that modern secularists later rebelled,
pointing out, quite correctly, that greater (even supreme) power is not a
legitimate basis for authority. Their intent, however, was simply to liberate
the bourgeoisie from its erstwhile ally, the absolute monarchies, not to
reground an analogical metaphysics and a natural law ethics which might have
ordered human society to a higher end. The people, acting through either the
market or the state, simply replaced God as the supreme sovereign.
State and market have competed everr since as agents of modernization,
with the state generally favored by those who are behind[7]
and the market by those who are ahead. But backward sectors of Capital face a
particular difficulty. They need to rein in the market –and especially the
global market-- without calling capitalism fundamentally into question.
Fundamentalism offers them a way to do just this. On the one hand, by
privileging particular identities, it sanctions at least partial withdrawal
from the global market. On the other hand, it cultivates a spirituality of
authority and submission which at once discourages resistance to exploitation
and stakes identity on something other than cutting edge creativity. It is, in
other words, a way to legitimate the use of force to make up for the fact that
one’s society, whether through poor ecological endowments, internal structural
problems, bad decisions, or external oppression, has fallen terribly behind and
lacks the will to invest in cultivating real creativity. In the United States
fundamentalism has been mobilized to build a mass base for a global military
empire which will secure the position of the most backwards sectors of the US
economy. In Dar-al-Islam it is being used to mobilize support for what
would presumably be an Islamic state partially delinked from the global market,
except for its ability to extract petroleum rents from those regions which had
not seriously invested in alternatives. A Eurasianist Russia –having
established itself as a principal supplier of petroleum to Europe (or China)--
would undoubtedly attempt something similar. It is a strategy which smacks of
fascism –whoever attempts it.
In the long run, however, neither tthe neoliberal defenders of the global
market nor its fundamentalist opponents will carry the day. That is because
neither can respond adequately to the mounting ecological crisis and neither
can actually answer the aspirations of the vast majority of humanity for both
civilizational progress and spiritual development. It is this situation
which creates a strategic opening for the religious left. But in order to seize
that opportunity we will have to radically transform ourselves, renouncing our
status as subaltern allies of the secular left and offering humanity a new
civilizational ideal –along with the structures and policies necessary to
realize it.
A Road Forward
A New Civilizational Ideal
What would such an ideal look like?? What structures would it require?
Civilizations are not designed, and are always the product of a dialogue among
many voices, never the dictates of one. But we can, at least, suggest a few
directions.
Our starting point in this regard iis the crisis of the late middle ages
which, the reader may have noticed, we did not characterize as either a
structural or a civilizational crisis. This is because, I would like to
suggest, the outcome of that crisis is still at issue today. A significant part
of the population of Europe, enticed by the forbidden liberties of capitalism
and terrified by the ravages of the Black Death did indeed abandon the medieval
civilizational ideal: the cultivation of human capacities, natural and
supernatural, historical and transhistorical. Others, however, held on to these
ideals while challenging the structures which kept them from realizing those
ideals fully: feudal impositions by the warlord elite, a hereditary
understanding of aristocracy, and the world-denying aspects of Christianity and
the other postaxial salvation religions. Often the resulting outlook was
difficult to distinguish from and even merged with forms of modernism: witness
the strain of modernism which looked not so much to the dominance of nature as
to the formation of a community or autonomous rational subjects dedicated to
right action and the cultivation of their latent potential.
It is out of what is left of these traditions, I would like to suggest,
that the next civilizational ideal will emerge. It will be an ideal centered on
an open-ended search for a meaning which a mature humanity understands is too
complex to be comprehended by any one creed –a radical democratization of the
dialogue in which scholars alone participated in the Silk Road Era, and which
the people incorrectly imagined modernity would allow them to make their own.
It will be an ideal of democracy understood as neither popular
sovereignty nor the defense of rights, but rather as just precisely this
dialogue, coupled with an attempt to draw out its implications for our lives
together. It will be an ideal centered on creativity rather than either
productivity or consumption. Rather than seeking to dominate nature humanity
will seek to nurture her latent potentials. Rather than working in order to
consume we will consume in order to create. Rather than imagining that we human
beings make laws, we will understand democracy as a dialogue about just what
laws already govern the universe and how best to apply them in our own
circumstances. Rather than trying just to understand how the world works we
will seek to understand why it is that way and what larger meaning or purpose,
if any, it reveals. The modern ideal of sovereignty, divine or human, will give
way to a new spirituality of meaning and self-cultivation.
Such an ideal can and will be accommmodated by many competing structures.
Markets –local and global-- will not disappear, but neither will they be
allowed to function as the principal resource allocator. After all, they have
no way of knowing which activities actually promote the development of human
capacities. On the one hand, religious institutions and other nonmarket,
nonstate institutions, as well as cities and larger political jurisdictions
will act to help their communities cultivate authentic comparative advantages
–advantages based on ecological endowments or superior knowledge, whether
cosmopolitan or culturally specific-- rather than on cheap labor. On the other
hand, they will regulate the way in which surplus is used, prioritizing
activities which promote human development in a way pure markets cannot while
avoiding long-term subsidies for stagnation. This is, in fact, a pattern we
already see emerging in context as outwardly diverse as the grassroots
development community and the municipal policies of “world cities.” It is the
sort of policy which has made Europe the envy of the world.
States, similarly, will not so muchh disappear as cease to be “states” in
strict sense of institutions which have absolute authority over a territory and
its people. A network of competing and overlapping jurisdictions, local and
global, is already emerging which is taking over the terrain historically held
by the nation state. Most of these jurisdictions are far from democratic, but
their policies are already being challenged and shaped by “nongovernmental
organizations” motivated by spiritual or at least moral aims. Such
organizations will gradually build the power they need to hold the new global
authorities accountable –without themselves being able to gain a political monopoly.
Sovereignty, one of the great diseases of the modern era, will disappear.
Spirituality, finally, will no longger be opposed to the secular, but
will be seen as its natural culmination. Becoming more fully human, we seek
ultimately to be more than human. But we will continue to disagree as to how.
Secularism and confessionalism will give way to a dialogue among diverse
approaches to fundamental questions of meaning and value, secular, religious,
and somewhere in between.
It should be clear
by now why I believe the religious left has an historic opportunity in the
present period. We –and we alone— represent a fundamental alternative to the
two dominant political and ideological trends on the planet today: a modernist
secularism focused exclusively on a spent ideal of technological and economic
progress and a fundamentalism bent on using modern technique to enforce a
spirituality of authority and submission. We offer instead a spirituality of
meaning and self-cultivation. We recognize that human civilizational progress
is but a participation in a much larger reality which we can only begin to
understand. On the one hand we affirm that life does, in fact, have a larger
meaning. On the other hand we recognize that neither we nor anyone else
understands that meaning perfectly –and also understand why people could
reasonably doubt the ultimate meaningfulness of the universe altogether. We are
not dogmatists who claim to know the Truth or sophists who claim to show that
there is no Truth but rather seekers of wisdom who honor the object of our
search with humility as well as conviction.
This stance offers us a unique opportunity to simultaneously
diffuse the culture wars, protect, extend, and deepen the democratic
revolution, and make decisions regarding resource allocation at least in
principle subject to substantive judgments of value. And yet we are invisible.
Before we can move forward we must understand why.
I would like to suggest that the reason for our current impotence
is not hard to find. The religious left has simultaneously conciliated both the
secularism of the left and the spirituality of authority and submission. On the
one hand we have failed to say clearly and publicly that there is something
wrong with a worldview which denies meaning –that in denying meaning the
secularists simultaneously deny hope and deny justice and that this is why, in
the end, secular modernity has been a failure. It is one thing to recognize
that people can legitimately have doubts and to create a public arena which
allows those doubts to be expressed and worked out; it is quite another thing
to fail, in the context of such a public arena, to teach effectively what we
believe to be true.
At the same time, the religious left has, been dominated by its own
variants of the spirituality of authority and submission. In a Christian
context this has meant the left-wing Franciscan Augustinianism of the
liberation theologians, which idolizes the poor and oppressed and indeed all
things downtrodden and humble, or of the pacifists, who idolize peace at all
costs, and reduce virtue to the single act of opting for the poor and/or for
peace. This represents every bit as much a negation of the drive towards
excellence which defines humanity as the right-wing Augustinianism of the
fundamentalists. In non-Christian contexts it takes the form of a conciliation
of the Asharite strain in Islam or an embrace of the more otherworldly forms of
Hinduism and Buddhism.
The practical implication of this spirituality has been an
understanding of justice in terms of redistribution rather than investment in
excellence and to the promotion of victimology[8]
and identity politics rather than the creation of an authentic pluralism.
Taking advantage of the current conjuncture will require a
fundamental re-orientation of our political-theological perspective. First, we
will have reject left-wing Augustinianism and all other authoritarian and
world-hating spiritualities as cleanly and clearly as we reject the religious
right and instead promoting an authentic spirituality of meaning and self
cultivation. Such a spirituality will value reason while recognizing that there
are truths which transcend our current level of intellectual development. It
will understand the universe as an organized, meaningful totality developing
toward ever higher degrees of complexity and developing ever more complex
capacities, and recognize humanity as a participant in and leader of that
process –a catalyst for the cultivation of complex organization. It will
embrace contradiction and struggle as necessary components in both
cosmohistorical and spiritual development and see them not as demonstrating our
sinfulness or our insignificance but rather as stretching us to gradually
become both more and more than human. And whether it stresses the idea that
there is a first principle behind this process –what the Western tradition
ultimately identified as Being as Such—or understands it instead as vast
network of interdependent causation it will recognize the principle to which it
appeals as lure and catalyst rather than coercive sovereign.[9]
Second, we need to reject the politics of monopoly without
rejecting a commitment to political effectiveness. With the collapse of the
Soviet bloc, the religious left has, very largely, abandoned its stance as
strategic reserve for the secular left, working to help secular socialists come
to power while demanding little or nothing in return. But the tendency has been
to revert to the essentially apolitical stance of the Augustinian left: trying
to convert people one by one to the religion of the poor and of peace. There is
an alternative: create a new kind of public arena, one which is democratic and
pluralistic but also meaning and value-based –which is, in fact, constituted
by debate around fundamental questions of meaning and value.
What does this mean? Democracy has, throughout most of the modern
era, been closely associated with secularism. Democratic public arenas have
either been radically secularist, such as that in France, or else formally
agnostic about questions of meaning and value, such as that in the United
States. This has meant that, in practice, the aim of the modern state
had been taken as given: the modernist utopia of technological and economic
progress; debate has been confined to the means by which that end should
be pursued.
But democracy did not always have such a narrow scope. Greek
democracy, scholars are increasingly recognizing, was as much about opening up
the religious arena as it was about increasing participation in political
decision making. The chief magistracies remained priesthoods; it is just that
they were elective rather than hereditary. The principal civic feasts remained
religious; but one, at least –the feast of Dionysus— featured a drama festival
in which participants debated the meaning of their city’s common
religious traditions (Milbank 1991). Later, in the middle ages, the idea
developed that government was not about legislation so much as about the interpretation
of natural law. Because this was an exercise of reason, it was something in
which all human beings could, at least in principle, participate, even if it
benefit from guidance by those who excelled in wisdom and prudence (Goerner 1965,
Gilson 1968, Mansueto 2005).
Our own context affords a unique opportunity to carry this older
democratic revolution forward in exciting new ways. Now, as never before,
meaning has been called radically into question. And yet now, as never before,
people are entering common public arenas informed by radically different
approaches to fundamental questions: not only by one or another variant of
secularist modernism, but by a wide array of religious ideologies which inform
the way in which they approach political questions. We need to create fora in
which those differences around fundamental questions of meaning and value can
be engaged in an environment in which pluralism and civility are taken for
granted, but in which principle and values are taken seriously.
This will do three things. First, it will neutralize the claim that
the left is irreducibly secularist and hostile to religion. On the contrary, we
will be opening the public arena to debate around the most fundamental
questions and essentially all religious traditions as well as modern
secularists will have a “seat at the table.” Second, it will extend the
democratic revolution into the religious realm, forcing religious (and secular
intellectual) leaders to contend with a literate, philosophically and
theologically engaged laos in a way they never have before. Each
tradition would, of course, retain the ability to make internal decisions
according to its own norms, but the leaders would be increasingly compelled to
actually persuade rather than simply arguing from authority. This would by
itself begin to undercut the spirituality of authority and submission. Third,
such a public arena would call radically into question the modern ideal and
open up the possibility that aims other than technological progress and
economic development, whether measured in terms of net profit or in some other
way, might be considered. This is the precondition for subordinating resource
allocation to substantive judgments of value.
In short, such a public arena would answer Antonio Gramsci’s demand
during the first struggle against fascism that the left develop a strategy for
hegemony: that, rather than engaging in a frontal assault in which it seeks
either to persuade the majority of its aims, or else impose them by force, that
it restructure the public arena, changing the rules of the game so that they
are more favorable to the aims of human development and civilizational
progress. The strategy we are proposing leaves ample room for a alliance with
the defenders of secular, liberal modernity against the dangers of
fundamentalism, but it shifts the terms of such an alliance in our favor by
putting a premium on the capacity to address questions of meaning and value in
the context of pluralism and civility.
Finally, we need to reject the politics of redistributionism in
favor of a politics of investing in and democratizing excellence. The historic
aim of the left has never been to redistribute wealth from the rich to the poor
in the context of a zero sum game, as a kind of collectivized almsgiving, but
rather to promote human creativity –something which we believe to be held back
by capitalism. While there will, no doubt, always be people who fall through
the cracks and need assistance, even permanently, our starting point must be
the conviction that every human being has the potential to be creative and that
all we need to do is to unlock that creativity and nurture it. And this aim
must take precedence over a commitment to any specific social structures.
This said, there is ample evidence regarding the impact of various
economic structures on human development. Neither capitalism nor historic
socialism was ever about cultivating excellence. They were, rather, attempts to
gain total control over the labor process and over the social surplus project
in order to advance the modernist civilizational ideal or technological
progress leading ultimately to total control over the natural environment. This
said, each system had its advantages and disadvantages. Socialist systems were
very good a big projects which benefit from the centralization of resources
–cosmonautics and the ballet for example—and it is important to defend these
achievements. But they were very bad at
things which require decentralization and innovation, and we need to be honest
about this. Capitalism provided more flexibility and room for the emergence of
entirely new and unplanned development, and it is important to acknowledge
this. But, as Marx predicted, it ultimately puts profits above progress.
Any new economic structures must exclude total control over either
the labor process or the social surplus product and opt instead for nurturing
and where necessary regulation. It behooves us, in this regard, to reconsider
what has probably been the default preference of most of humanity for the past
2500 years when it comes to economic structures: petty commodity production,
i.e. a system in which goods and services but not labor or capital are
commodities. When peasants and workers can choose their own destiny they overwhelmingly
choose to become small producers. Higher quality can be encouraged by
refounding guilds which exclude the incompetent and reward those who set a new
standard of excellence. Where larger concentrations of capital are required,
corporate charters can be more closely written to ensure that resources are
used to promote human development rather than luxury consumption (what we call
the social charter system) and creative minorities can be encouraged to pool
their resources in service to higher ideals in a kind of neomonastic movement.
The same flexibility is required with respect to economic policy.
There is no reason to protect mediocrity and stagnation from effective
competition. Such sheltering should be reserved for new initiatives which still
require time to develop. At the same time, we need to distinguish rigorous
between authentic comparative advantages based on access to resources or
superior capacity and taking advantage of cheap labor or weak environmental
regulation. Markets should be structured, in other words, to permit competition
on the basis of quality but not on the basis of cost.
We must also radically rethink our approach to tax policy. On the
one hand, we must clearly reject the idea that people have an unlimited right
to use their resources however they see fit, since this risks privileging
consumption over creativity. On the other hand, we must also reject the view
that whatever is not taxed away will be squandered. One way to do this is to
tax wealth rather than income –i.e. to revive the Islamic zakat or
something like it. Such a tax is progressive –the poor pay little or
nothing—and it creates an incentive for economic innovation and progress –if
the rich do not increase their wealth it will eventually be taxed away, but
there is no disincentive to earn more in any given year.
To those who charge that this sounds like an abandonment of the
historic ideals of the left, I answer that it is a straightforward, if
nondogmatic application of Marxist principle: economic structures must serve
human development. When they do not, when the become obstacles, they must be
discarded.
The question, of
course, is how we go about building a constituency for such a
political-theological perspective. A complete consideration of tactics is
beyond the scope of this article, but it should be clear that the direction we
are proposing promises to catalyze a fundamental political and cultural
realignment. The core constituency for our vision remains the working classes
–those whose creativity is being held back by existing structures and existing
policies and who refuse to be held back any longer. This includes:
v
peasants and workers who are either
themselves skilled or who seek to become so,
v
high value added sectors of the petty bourgeoisie
v
those sectors of the intelligentsia whose
training inclines them to seek and teach meaning but who find that they are
discouraged from doing so by the dominant neoliberal and postmodern culture.
v
those sectors of capital (mostly in high
value added sectors) who recognize the impending ecological and civilizational
crises and whose commitment to human civilization is greater than their desire
for profit.
In regional terms,
we will appeal both to people in major metropoles who, their current prosperity
notwithstanding, recognize that the current global order is unworkable and, in
any case, holds them back from realizing their full potential and people in
secondary civilizational centers bidding to be among one of the rising cities
of the future.
Politically, our
strategy will divide dividing both “liberals” and “conservatives” along
radically new lines. We stand to draw to our side those liberals who are
authentically dedicated to excellence and to rational autonomy –and to lose
those who confuse liberty and license. We stand to gain authentic conservatives
whose first commitment is to human civilization and simply believe that it
requires the cultivation of discipline as well as creativity –and to lose those
who have made authority and submission ends rather than means.
The perspective I have outlined will no doubt be threatening to many on
the religious left who have compensated for their impotence by priding
themselves on their moral purity. They do not want to consider change because
–like the fundamentalists they supposedly oppose-- they believe they have the
truth. I have no time for such individuals. Our deepest commitment must be to
actually promote human development –to help human beings along on their long
march towards God. In this journey, like the wise scribe, we produce from our
storehouses both old and new (Matthew 13:52), conserving what is good and
discarding what no longer helps, knowing that the only final truth is beyond
us, at once luring us and sustaining us on the journey. The struggle continues.
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[1] The image is from the popular Matrix trilogy in which, after a long war which destroys the ecosystem, the Earth has been taken over by intelligent machines which continue to breed human beings for the electricity our bodies generate. Humans are kept in pods but fed a steady diet of “virtual reality” which makes them imagine they are living a “normal” early twenty-first century life.
[2] We must remember that the conflict over gay marriage was a conflict within the churches before it became a conflict within the state. Many gay couples are deeply religious and seek formal recognition not only of various legal rights but also of the sacred character of the bond which unites them.
[3] The campaign finance figures used in this analysis are from the Center for Responsive politics and may be accessed at www.opensecrets.com.
[4] The following data are from CNN election polls and may be accessed at www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2004/US/P/epolls.0.html .
[5] This thesis could be tested by comparing the voting patterns of “hard” and “soft” seculars: the former being those who actually deny any principles of meaning and value, the latter those who simply reject religious dogmatism and authoritarianism. I would wager that the 37% of secular voters who voted for George Bush come from the first camp.
[6] A kind of litmus test for membership in these two groups might involve attitudes towards France. The first group is viscerally anti-French, with the anti-French hysteria associated with the run up to the Iraq war merely tapping into a tradition which goes back to the War of 1812, when (then strongly evangelical and Protestant) Connecticut almost seceded from the Union and allied itself with Great Britain. The second group rather favors French culture but is a bit puzzled by French intolerance for public expressions of religious diversity, which seems silly to people from cities like New York or Chicago.
[7] Historic socialism has, in this sense, a profoundly contradictory character. Popular movements of peasants, artisans, and recently proletarianized peasants and artisans who were resisting capitalist modernization brought to power secular modernizing elites who used statist accumulation strategies to jump start industrialization in countries which would otherwise have languished in underdevelopment.
[8] This term is due to John McWhorter whose Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America (McWhorter 2000) documents the ways in which identity politics has held back rather than promoting authentic development in the African American community.
[9] For an outline of such a spirituality see the final chapters of Mansueto 2002 and Mansueto and Mansueto forthcoming.