Religion and Political Strategy in an Era of Civilizational Crisis
Anthony Mansueto
Seeking Wisdom
Introduction
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?
The Current Situation
The Dominant Paradigms
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 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.
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.