The Cultural Constitution of Political Economy(2006) Seeing War of the Worlds(2006) Ward Churchill and Innocence(2005) Frodo or Gollum: U.S. Foreign Policy and Iraq(2003) Grasping the Mundane (2003) Intertwined Timelines: Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Iraq and the USA(2001) Radical Islam as a Prelude to Secularization? (2001) Does Righteousness Deliver Evil? (2001) Two Approaches to the Meanings of Terror Ithaca article and video Buzzsaw Interview

Circuits of Conversion: From 14,000 to 1 Present Dangers Wading in the Deep: Supporting Emergent Anarchies Celebrating the End of the Cold War

International Relations and the Problem of Difference Interrogating Imperialism: Conversations on Gender, Race, and War The Global Economy as Political Space

The Rites of Dispossession (PDF) Cultural Constitution of Political Economy (PDF) A Medium of Others (PDF) Savage Smith and the temporal walls of capitalism (PDF) If Only You Could See What I Have Seen with Your Eyes: Staging an Encounting Between Social Science and Literature (PDF)

Celebrating the End of the Cold War

March 1992

An Essay

by
Naeem Inayatullah -
naeem@ithaca.edu
Ithaca College

An earlier draft of this essay appeared under the title “Speculating on the Persistence of Ethnicity and Religion: The Failure of Liberalism and Marxism in Modernity.” I thank Timothy Hadeen, John Nagle, Patrick Coy, Mark Rupert, Lisa Adler, and Sorayya Khan for their helpful comments and encouragement.

The greatest practical problem of our time is the problem of the juxtaposition of incompatible and largely hostile systems of thought, morals, and belief embodied in political powers of impressive, not to say awe-inspiring, size. We sometimes talk as if this were a new problem, and certainly it is new to the modern world.

- R. W. Southern [1]

Given the recent warps, stretches, and the unwinding of the global social fabric, we are tempted to see the disintegration of the Soviet Union, eruptions in Eastern Europe, and even the Iraq war as victories of liberalism. I find it difficult to deny that there may be some validity to this mood. However, there is something about both the tone and content of this attitude which troubles me; it strikes me as both temprocentric and Eurocentric. [2] Ironically, but not surprisingly, celebrating victory in the cold war may prolong the deep trance of the cold war mentality; and it may well sustain the routine of avoiding what I consider the deeper issue which threatens to tear the global social fabric altogether. The real issue - which social science has made a discipline of avoiding - is the injustice and indignity felt by the people of the “third world.” [3] This indignity is experienced, I believe, at the hands of both liberalism and marxism. The increasingly popular and strident response to this Western colonial legacy - a response taking the form of religious and ethnic revival - has been breaking to the surface in the last few decades. In the context of this religious and ethnic revival, the cold war takes on a meaning calling for a celebration which differs from that broadcast and received through the world’s airwaves over CNN.

An understanding of this alternative celebration requires, I believe, a broader sense of history, especially history as it has been experienced by the colonized. It also requires that we expand our vision beyond the actions of the traditional European and North American states. If, however, in pondering recent events we find it difficult to acknowledge this history, and we find that we cannot but connect these happenings to our own time, then I think the relevant event is the Iranian revolution. Likewise, if we cannot re-configure our minds to avoid Eurocentricism, and must connect the source of these events to things European, let us consider these events in light of the increasing recognition of the inadequacy of the project of modernity.

Changes in the USSR and Eastern Europe, and even the Iraq war may be seen as the surface manifestations of the failure of the essentially western project of modernity. I take modernity to be a world view which originated over a longer period of time but crystalized in Europe some time in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries. I want to suggest that the sense of coherence of life offered by the project of modernity (of which I consider liberalism and marxism both parts) may be insufficient. I want to argue that while modernity brings the revolutionary idea of individual freedom to the fore of world history, it also underestimates, and loses sight of, the contributions made by the feudal world view it supplanted. In this not yet fully displaced world (usually called feudal or medieval but which I will call the pre-modern) people relate to each other and the world at large in religious, ethnic, tribal, and familial terms. The advantages of this pre-modern world view are now being revived to challenge modernity.

The pre-modern challenge, however, is seen with deep suspicion by a world dominated by the habits of modernity. Thus, while the pre-modern world continues to be seen as a form of nostalgia harbored by the primitive and irrational, the modern world is still valued as the basis of all future civilization. The net result of continuing to overvalue modernity and undervalue pre-modern life may be that:

1) we overestimate how free humans are to construct their own lives and identities, and we may fail to grasp how deeply humans are determined by historical structures; and

2) we underestimate the need humans have to recognize, integrate, and honor, this deep history. In other words, I think we have a need for a sense of historical continuity in identity formation: we have a need to be connected to, and bound by, ancestors and to the history they embodied and constructed.

I think religion and ethnicity, both residues of pre-modern life, persist because they offer us a deeper identity. While this pre-modern identity seems to limit our freedom, creativity, and initiative, it nevertheless offers us a sense of continuity and connection to a broader cosmos. In this sense, the failure of modernity lies in the narrowness of its world view, in its errant assumption that the creative power offered by the uncovering of individual freedom and the resulting reconstruction of the world is enough to sustain human beings.

I do not mean to imply, nor do I believe, that the two variants of modernity, liberalism and marxism, have failed altogether. Indeed, I believe that they will both be around for a long time to come. Those who predict an end to either do not pay enough attention to liberalism’s and marxism’s capacity to adapt to change and the human needs they serve. Rather, I think the failure of marxism and liberalism is a failure around the specific issues of ethnicity and religion, and the general issue of identity. Liberalism and marxism are likely to be around in the future because they will, I believe, shed the cloth of their origins - modernity - and seek shelter, instead, in religion and ethnicity. [4]

Whatever form modernity’s survival takes, if I am correct that modernity’s power to convince has eroded significantly, then modernity’s transformation will hinge on its desire and capacity to converse with its challengers. The tone which modernity brings to such a conversation will be crucial. I suspect that in this coming conversation, instead of claiming universality, modernity may need to recognize itself only as part of the truth. Instead of claiming itself as outside of history, it may need to own up to its historicity. Instead of claiming to be value free, it may need to openly debate its values. Instead of claiming its agenda as simple and pure, it may need to admit it is ambiguous and diverse. In sum, instead of a tone which is used to prescribing terms it may need to participate in a global conversation.

For the “realists” among us (on both sides of the divide) who see this prognosis as little more than a wish it may be comforting to know that the “West” already has experience in global conversation. Indeed, over a thousand years ago when “Europe” was a self-acknowledged inferior in terms of knowledge, wealth, and military power, it participated in just such conversations with Islam, the Mongols, and other Asians. R. W. Southern allows us a sense of this conversational spirit in the following passage:

The date is 30 May 1254, and the place the now lost town of Karakorum, in present day Mongolia, not far from the frontier of the USSR. This time and place provide the scene of the first world debate in modern history between representatives of East and West. It was a notable occasion, and the background to it requires a brief sketch. Nine years before this date the Genoese pope Innocent IV had dispatched John o Piano Carpini, an Italian Franscican, to bring back a report on the state of the Mongols, on whose attitude toward the West so much depended. This was 1245. Four years later the first of Louis IX’s lamentable Crusades foundered in the Nile waters that had destroyed the Crusades in 1221. In the shadow of this defeat, Louis dispatched the Flemish Franciscan, William of Rubroek, on another mission among the Mongols. He reached the Mongol capital in May 1254, and here the great Khan staged the debate to which I have referred. In this debate, four groups took part: William of Rubroek spoke for the Latins, and he was faced with representatives of the three great religions of Asia - the Nestorian Christians, the Buddhists, and the Moslems. [5]

In recent times we have seen nothing resembling such a debate much less a hint of the attitude that it would require. Instead, in the last three centuries, what Southern calls the “Western sense of superiority” has been so great that it has barely been challenged. This once great heritage has now devolved into a malaise afflicting the West, a malaise which we may politely call “conversational complacency.” The predictable celebration of victory in the cold war, I fear, merely deepens this malaise.

That is the short version of my argument. Before I try to elaborate on it would like to make clear what I mean by modernity, as this is a term much in vogue today. Mine is a peculiar construction; I take modernity to be synonymous with the idea of economy. In using the common term “economy” I intend to point at something which is powerful precisely because it is everyday and routine. The problem with using common terms, however, is that they are used in diverse ways and this tempts confusion. So, let me be somewhat more precise about the term “economy” by distinguishing my usage from two others. First, economy may mean the process by which society reproduces itself. In this sense of economy, every society must continually acquire inputs from nature and from other societies in order to (physiologically) live. In this sense, in order to be viable, every society has and must have an economy. This is not exactly what I mean by economy. Second, I am not articulating the economy merely as conceived by the frictionless mechanics of neoclassical micro- and macro-economic textbooks which present economy as a matrix of technical relationships deduced from the assumed truth that all humans are always rational egoists.

While these two ideas, in varying degrees, are visible parts of the economy, I want to focus on the less visible ideology of economy. By economy I mean a set of ideas and institutions which argue for a vision of the “good society.” That is, the economy is the name of a utopia or archetype on the basis of which, it is argued, we must recreate social relations, nature, and the cosmos itself. The practical part of this (and any ideology) is to create institutions (e.g. markets, a minimal state, economic man) which construct, enforce, and realize the economy’s ideals.

The economy I am speaking of is simply another name for the project of modernity. In both, individual initiative advanced by self-interest harmoniously and immediately (the liberal version) or conflictually and eventually (the marxist version), promote the good society. Social relations are based in mutual promotion of self-interest as epitomized in acts of exchange. Nature is regarded as lifeless, will-less, and possess-able. Nature’s role is to become the property of individuals and nothing more. Metaphysical or ideal entities such as God, love, ethnicity, and ethics become epiphenomenal. That is, they are false or unreal ideas which traditional man must shed to participate in (modern) reality.

The economy, in this view, is seen not as a cultural discovery offered by a particular society or age which may contain aspects of truth. Rather, economy is seen as Universal in a double sense. Economy is universal across cultures, meaning all cultures are potentially modern - they could become immediately modern if only they would give up their “traditional” ways. Economy is also universal within a society, meaning, for example, that even the institutions of “family” or “state” operate according to the logic of immediate self-interest. Accordingly, no institution needs separation or protection from the economy, and every social problem is allowed to have a market solution. The economy is also Natural in a double sense; because egoism is intrinsic to humans and because Nature constructs humans to be egoists.

This ideology of economy has a long history. The history of the evolution of its thought dates back to Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan (1648) and especially Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations (1776). The history of the construction of its institutions, i.e.the history of capitalism, goes back to Fifteenth and Sixteenth Century Europe. To draw out the implications of a Universal and Natural economy, and by way of summary, I offer the following list:

1) The economy is seen as ahistorical, meaning regardless of the historical epoch, in one way or another humans have always been and will always be egoists.

2) The economy is seen as acultural, meaning the economy is impervious and indifferent to cultural differences between societies. Instances of cultural differences are illogical residues of pre-modern societies revealing imperfection.

3) The economy is seen as value free and unambiguous, meaning it is not the case that the economy is one argument among many for how to construct our world - this is what as a competition or conversation of values implies. Rather, the truth of economy is somewhat technical. Much like a technique or tool it is (i.e. it is thought to be) value free, beyond argument, beyond values, beyond ambiguity, and beyond doubt.

There is more to modernity, however, than this short list. The most onerous, because they are the most deeply hidden, aspects of the project of modernity are at the core of modernity’s epistemology. [6] Modernity comes to know the world by dividing it and subdividing it until all its parts become individual monads arranged in discrete categories. Its logic is essentially divisive, that is, it focuses on the differences between all the parts of the world and pays little attention to how all those parts cohere as part of the whole. Of the most important of these divisions is the one which bifurcates the world into those elements which have no will, nature (animals, environment, the planet and most things in it), and that which has will, humans. Humans, claims modernity, have will, are free, and most importantly, are responsible for their own welfare.

Individual welfare can be secured in three ways. Individuals can 1) appropriate goods provided directly by nature (Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau); 2) use their own labor to produce property (Locke and Marx); and 3) use the labor and property of others which can be secured through exchange. (Smith and, implicitly, Marx).

Nations, while they are composed of individuals and are reducible to the sum total of their wills, are also seen as a type of aggregate individual within the international system. As aggregate individuals, they have the same characteristics as individuals within society: they have will, are free, and are responsible for their own welfare. They secure their welfare in the same way as individuals, they acquire wealth through exploitation of claimed natural resources, through their own labor, and through acquiring the property of other nations which can be had through exchange.

The liberal variant of this modern narrative can be traced through Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Adam Smith, and David Ricardo. Such assumptions also find their way to the heart of Marx’s work, specifically from Locke’s labor theory of property to Marx’s labor theory of value.

In this narrative there is one question which I think is particularly important for understanding past and future conversation between the first and third world. What accounts for the “underdevelopment” (or, backwardness, primitiveness, retarded nature, barbarism) of the “third world” (also referred to as tribes, nations, hoards)?” Consistent with its epistemology, modernity answers this question by looking at the part and scrutinizing its character. Thus, the particular nation, say Brazil, is underdeveloped because it lacks some combination of the following: skilled labor, capital, technical know-how, education, civic virtue, honesty, enterprise, democracy, proper leadership, or rationality. An obvious drawback to this explanation is that little mention is made of historical or global-structural connections between first and third worlds. This is especially true in the liberal variant of modernity. The brutal history of colonialism is conspicuously absent from an analysis of the causes of underdevelopment.

Such an absence is not surprising. Modernity creates distances and differences neglecting continuities and connections. Thus, the idea that the wealth of the “first world” should have anything to do with the poverty of the “third world” is not so much rejected as not considered. Even when history and the structure of the global political economy are acknowledged, as by Hegel and Marx, it is nevertheless the case that the vision of capitalism’s heartless obliteration of traditional society is considered necessary to bring the essentially “static” and “backward” societies of Asia into the fold of world history.

It was only in the second decade after the end of World War II that modernity’s answer to the causes of “backwardness” were seriously challenged. Informed by the real experiences of third world societies, and in response to the Eurocentricity of both the liberal and marxist variants of modernity, “dependency theorists” challenged modernity by turning it on its head. The dependency theorists argue that creation of wealth and poverty are systematically related; that the creation of wealth in Europe and North America implies the creation of poverty in the third world.

The challenge created a debate. The general issue revolves around whether colonialism is responsible for the wealth of the West and the poverty of the third world. The specific question is whether contact and exchange between the two worlds can be seen as unequally beneficial or exploitative of one of the parties. There seems to be no end to this debate. Evidence and argument around such questions fills our libraries but does not seem to resolve the debate. Nevertheless, the debate was necessary to make a dent in the overly self-serving world view of modernity and to return to third world societies a sense of pride in themselves.

As important as dependency theory may be, I think that its debate with modernity ultimately fails to pose the right questions. Given the long history of economy/ modernity what may be more important than the question of ‘who exploited who’ is to notice how long the debate on this question had been avoided. Until the 1960’s, the leaders, scholars, and peoples of the third world more or less completely accepted the liberal and Marxist interpretations of history. So powerful was the seemingly obvious superiority of the West that no real intellectual resistance was offered. Instead, the hierarchical relationship was internalized, even those who spoke for victims of colonial and neo-colonial arrogance and against greed and force blamed the victims themselves. Such has been the power of economy.

Obviously my tone is critical of the ideology of economy, and yet I risk being misunderstood. I am willing to concede that modernity’s spirit of absolute certainty coupled with some rather useful elements which such a vision contains have offered the world two things it has never seen in such relative abundance, namely wealth and freedom. Neither, however, has the world seen such utter poverty and servitude.

We often believe that poverty is age old and that poverty is the problem that modernity proposes to fix. [7] This, perhaps is the greatest myth economy hold out to us and this central myth is unlikely to be true. Economic anthropologists have argued that both wealth and poverty are modern creations. Marshall Sahlins, in a survey of ‘hunting and gathering societies’ concludes that the problem of these societies is not poverty (they work only a little more than three hours a day to feed themselves), but boredom. [8] Political economists, such as Hegel, Marx, and Polanyi also agree that the great dilemma of modernity and its ideology of economy is the simultaneous production of great wealth and great poverty. [9]

My own assessment echoes those of the great tradition of political economy. I am also uncertain as to the net gains or losses which the project of creating the economy offers. However, I am somewhat sure that the economy is not what economists (in the broad sense of any thinker who accepts the logic of the economy) [10] claim. Take any economics course or read any economics text and what you are likely to find is that economy is not so much offered as a possible way of life, one among others to be debated, rather it is projected as the essence of life itself. To proponents of economy its strength is its absolute unquestionable universalism; to critics the assertion of universalism reveals, beyond a shadow of a doubt, its ideological and hegemonic nature.

Such critics (I count myself among them) propose that the economy is really historically, culturally, and ideologically constituted. Much like critics of religious orthodoxy before them, critics of economy find themselves generally rebuked and dismissed. This is not surprising because their critique (which amounts to the idea that the economy is a particular not a universal vision) undermines the very core of the economy’s power to compel us. And it is compelling. Whatever its benefits and defects, this idea of economy has sculpted our global landscape. I believe, however, this power to convince is now diminishing. [11] Why is this? Not because it failed (or will fail) to deliver the goods. The answer I suggest is that I do not think that we, as humans, find in it either what we hope for, or what we fully need.

Before I say more about this inadequacy, perhaps I need to give a better sense of what the project of modernity or economy highlights or accents. I want to stress that in offering this short list I remain ambiguous about the net benefit of this project. I also want to suggest that the liberal variant of modernity fits this list better than the marxist variant. In my view, relative to pre-modern life, modernity and economy highlight:

•individuality over the collective,

•freedom or agency over a sense of determinism or fatalism,

•equality over the principle of hierarchy,

•private property and contract over traditional social obligations,

•control of nature over its worship and celebration,

•creation of wealth and poverty over pooling and redistribution of nature-given resources,

•coming to consciousness about process (what we sometimes call “democracy”) over unconscious acceptance of commands,

•reformulation of geopolitical space into relatively decentralized and formally equal and autonomous spaces based on the principle of sovereignty of nations over the hierarchical (but nevertheless loose) consolidation of empire building,

•linear over cyclical history.

I believe both Marxism and liberalism to be part of this project. [12] In my reading they are both essentially economistic [13] as opposed to anthropological. Nevertheless, I cannot allow myself to put the two on exactly the same footing. Marxism is far more historical and critical in spirit. It attempts to liberate itself from the project of modernity. Even so, marxism cannot conceal its contempt for the culture of “traditional societies.” The contempt for traditional society can be revealed to us by posing the rhetorical question: “What can Marxism learn through contact with traditional society?” As far as I know, this question is never asked because Marxism assumes that the future of the third world can be seen in blueprints written in Marxist logic. This one-sided (or non-dialectical) aspect of Marxism reveals the European arrogance which is its birthright. [14] From the point of view of the Iranian revolution, religious revivalist movements, and third world ethnicity, marxism’s greater self-consciousness and historicity is not enough. From such a “third world” vantage point, liberalism and marxism can be made to reveal a common heritage and, more importantly, a common tone.

If their power to convince is losing its hypnotic suggestiveness, where do liberalism and marxism fall short? What do “we” [15] need that they do not provide? While their achievements are great, they fall one crucial step short: I think they claim sufficiency, they claim to provide everything humans need, but they do not.

Specifically, what liberalism and marxism have not yet been made to enable is a deeper meaning to life. They do not easily uncover a continuity between the self and 1) the wider cosmos (the universe, God, nature, and our relation with these), 2) historical heritage (our connection to the particular space and time of our birth as it relates to all spaces and times; that is, the meaning of our specific heritage as it relates to the heritage of all others), and 3) fellow humans (our need to be with and listen to others in order to be ourselves).

One potentially fruitful way to think about the shortcoming of modernity is to focus on one of its central principles, namely self-interest. The project of modernity (certainly in its liberal version but also aspects of its marxist version) assumes humans are self-interested. What is contested between liberalism and marxism, it seems to me, is the content of interest, they degree to which interest is individually or collectively defined. Both highlight the idea of “interest” but assume the “self” as unproblematic. [16] Herein lies a weakness which leads me to suggest that the idea of self-interest is not so much wrong as under-explored and underdeveloped by modernity. Perhaps we need to focus on the “self” of self-interest.

I may agree that my interest is in promoting my self, but the problem is that at a given moment I do not know what that self is. This simple idea is so alien to our modern minds that we may best approach it indirectly through an analogy with nature. Alfred North Whitehead’s famous comment on nature may help us develop an insight on the self. Whitehead makes a claim about nature that ‘there is no such thing as nature in an instance.’ I take this to mean that nature as a whole and all its parts are in perpetual process of some type. If this is true, then there are two mistakes we can make in trying to understand nature. First, we may think that we can “know” any part of nature by studying that part alone. If nature and all its parts are in perpetual process ,then understanding any part means understanding how that part fits into and constructs the whole. Without this total vision we have a (dangerously) partial knowledge of nature. Second, we may think that we can know nature at a particular moment. But, perpetual process suggests that not only do we need to know how parts fit into and define the whole, but also we need to know how parts and wholes “move” and are “moved” by the process. To try to know nature, therefore, is to try to understand this process. Nature can never be grasped in an instance because it is the process as a whole which defines nature.

This idea of knowing something by understanding how it is part of a process may be applicable to the self. We may say “there is no such thing as a self in an instance.” I take this to mean that not only nature but all of (global) social life is also in perpetual process of some type. If this is true, then again, we can make two mistakes. First, we may think that we can come to know any particular self by studying it alone. However, if social life and all its parts (individual selves) are in perpetual process, then understanding any self means understanding how that part fits into the whole. Second, we may think that we know a self (or our self) at a particular instance. However, perpetual process suggests that coming to know (and make) the self is itself a process; we spend (at least) a lifetime coming to understand this process and, thereby, spend at least a lifetime coming to know the self. With Whitehead’s help and by focusing on the “self” part of “self-interest,” we arrive at two potential insights about the idea of self-interest: 1) that knowing the self is a process that occurs over time; and, 2) getting to know the self means knowing its relationship with various others.

If we assume that knowing a self involves understanding the relation and process between self and various “others” (cosmos, history, fellow humans), a problem arises. More often than the modern mind is usually willing to admit, and despite the advances of science and technology, such relations and processes involve contingency and fate. This implies that knowing the self is beyond our immediate knowledge and control.

Perhaps the most dramatic way to understand this is to focus on death, accident, and fatalities. The modern project (including especially the so called “young Marx”) highlights agency, freedom, human re-creation of institutions and structures. It hides the degree to which life is still a matter of fate. A somewhat long quotation from Benedict Andersonmay help articulate what for the trained mind of modernity is a difficult idea:

If the manner of a man’s dying usually seems arbitrary, his mortality is inescapable. Human lives are full of such combinations of necessity and chance. We are all aware of the contingency and ineluctability of our particular genetic heritage, our gender, our life-era, our physical capabilities, our mother-tongue, and so forth. The great merit of traditional religious world views (which must naturally be distinguished from their role in the legitimation of specific systems of domination and exploitation) has been their concern with man-in-the-cosmos, man as species being, and the contingency of life. The extraordinary survival over thousands of years of Buddhism, Christianity, or Islam in dozens of different social formations attests to their imaginative responses to the overwhelming burden of human suffering - disease, mutilation, grief, age and death. Why was I born blind? Why was my best friend paralyzed? Why is my daughter retarded? The religions attempt to explain. The great weakness of all evolutionary/ progressive styles of thought, not excluding marxism, is that such questions are answered with impatient silence. [17]

As modernity became dominant, neither fatality nor the need to make fatality meaningful [18] departed. The need to construct meaning out of that which seems arbitrary continued, I believe, to resonate with humans. However, in the stunning brilliance of modernity with its emphasis on individual effort, human control over nature and society, and its general homage to agency, perhaps it seemed only a matter of time before all fatality was overcome: explained scientifically and transformed technically. With this promise in the air, institutions which focused on the meaning of self and traditionally interpreted fatality were compelled to recede underground, to become recessive.

Recessiveness does not, however, mean elimination. Perhaps humans had a deep intuition or perhaps it is just the tragic common sense of everyday experience which tells us that modernity’s promise cannot be fulfilled. Be that as it may, the institutions which filled the need to make sense of fatality survived in the forms of religion and ethnicity.

Religion offers us old but honored answers to the problem of explaining accident and contingency. It undermines modernity by attacking its most essential promise: human control. As Lasch points out,

Religion reminds us of the inescapable limits on human power and freedom. Far from endorsing comfortable superstitions, it undermines the most important superstition of all - that the human race controls its own destiny. [19]

Religion asks us to be humble, to accept power far greater than any one human or collection of humans, to submit to that which we cannot know. It suggests that what seem like accidents and contingencies are no such things, and our naming them as such reveals only our inability to understand the grand design of the supreme being. If I may cast this in terms of the language of self-interest, religion suggests that the self is a valued but nevertheless a subordinate part of something far greater. The self is valued because it is part of the grand plan for the history, humanity, and the cosmos. It is nevertheless subordinate because the self is (finally) unable to understand that plan. The “interest” of the self is in community (the community of the faithful) and in humility (to God).

The attraction of such answers seems beyond doubt even in modernity. Recall, if I am correct, that modernity produces both great wealth and freedom on the one hand and great poverty and servitude on the other. Modernity’s implicit answer to the question of “why am I poor and servile?” is “because you do not work hard enough.” But suppose I do work hard, or think myself to do so. In such a condition if I still see myself as poor and servile relative to others, then not only may I begin to doubt the sincerity of modernity, but I may also be attracted to answers which echo my feeling that I do not construct my own fate.

Ethnicity also strikes out against the premise of control of one’s own destiny. It reminds us that much of our fate is not so much connected to our “work” but to accidents of birth. It reminds us that modernity’s lack of attention to the ethnic constitution of the world’s wealth and respect is really two faced. On the one hand, the controlling powers (whether they be global powers or national powers within a multi-ethnic state) parade the ideology of “effort leads to reward” in order to justify their own superior position. On the other hand, the distribution of rewards which they control is really based on ethnic discrimination, demonstrating that those who embrace modernity and control rewards acknowledge the continued relevance of their own ethnicity. If my relative poverty and servility is connected to my ethnicity (and your relative wealth and freedom to your ethnicity), then I may embrace my ethnicity as a form of resistance, solidarity, and empowerment.

Paradoxically, then, if the reason for turning to religion and ethnicity is due to disbelief in modernity’s slogans of “knowledge,” “control,” “effort,” and “reward” then result of this turn - to the degree such a turn empowers people - may be a gain in knowledge, control, and reward. Paradoxically, while modernity is severely challenged by religion and ethnicity, it may also need ethnicity and religion to more fully realize its ideals. [20] The paradox hints at a possible future synthesis but a synthesis which needs that which is in short supply: patience with the pace of change.

We have waited a long time for modernity to deliver on its claims. Whether it can or whether it will are important questions, but not necessarily significant for our understanding of the current mood. The significant occasion is the increasing belief in our capacity to recover our (fore-) sight as we survive and create within the shadows of modernity. We are beginning to see explicitly that modernity’s light shines through the ether of European hypocrisy. We are beginning to understand that to end its hypnotic suggestiveness requires terminating our eager complicity. As patience with modernity gives way to frustration, recessiveness seems to be giving way to increasing dominance.

This explicit consciousness that modernity and economy are insufficient is now a significant theme in the global process. Consider that both ethnic (Quebec, Croatia, Kashmir) and religious (Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu) revivals cut across geopolitical and developmentalist grids. That is, these movements occur in both“Capitalist” and “Socialist” states as well as in “First,” “Second,” and “Third” worlds. This is not so difficult to see. However, there are two cases which may fit this pattern, but are not usually so incorporated.

Consider the case of the ex-USSR: perhaps the cold war would be far from over had Soviet leaders not “allowed” the disintegration of the USSR. Is it not possible to interpret their hesitation to slaughter citizens as a loss of confidence in the future of the marxist version of modernity? Perhaps marxism was not worth fighting and killing for if it did not even spiritually sustain those who benefited most. In contrast, leaders of the US have seemed not to lose their nerve as challenges emerge to their liberal version of modernity. However, given the absence of any real military threat [21] , perhaps the nervous over-commitment of resources, troops, and emotion to the recent war and the following pulverization of Iraq can be seen metaphorically. [22] Cannot the US be seen to have run amok in Iraq? Cannot this madness be read as an attempted obliteration of internal doubts? Recession, de-industrialization, long-run decline of average income, polarization of rich and poor, rise of the urban underclass, open warfare in cities, are some indications that the “American dream” is beyond reach. We can understand the fear that if modernity slips, then those at the top of its hierarchy must fall the hardest. Does not fear of this fall cause the US to grip tighter, to hold on more desperately to the “illusion of permanence”? [23]

The accusation of “laziness” levelled by the Japanese Prime-minister at U.S. workers bores to the core of the U.S. psyche. It is familiar because it is usually discharged by Americans at others. The accusation infuriates not because it is true but because like a caste off and abandoned child finding its way in the world it has finally come home. Perhaps this is a just dessert, but the pain is no less real. May be the USA can learn from the third world what the third world might have suspected all along, that one can work hard, know much, and still not be properly rewarded. Currently, however, such learning is not on the agenda. The mood is otherwise. Unlike the ex-USSR there is little examination of internal doubts. Awareness of the coming slip from the top is blamed not on a lack of knowledge, lack of control, or lack of effort. Rather, demonstrating a loss of belief in ideology of modernity, the national pastime is the search for external bogies - Libyans, Latin Americans, and Iraqis, - individually represented (in true liberal fashion) by Kaddafi, Noriega, and Saddam Hussien. These targets have done nicely so far but, other cases could have been used with equal effectiveness. I suspect that it is not their specific embodiments which were at issue, but rather their belonging to the general category of “third world.” It seems, now more than ever, third worlders - the traditional representatives of laziness (not to mention authoritarianism, dirtiness, and evil) must be made to perform their usual role. [24]

I believe that the current outpouring of pride in the United States may have little to do with the end of ideology or victory in the cold war. Rather, it may be an injurious cry for a regeneration of U.S. potency, a cry to bring back an era of spontaneous superiority and faith. But, of course, such nostalgia and the accompanying hollowness of the call speaks more to the crisis of confidence; one needs a regeneration only if decay is imminent. The loss of hope in the future of modernity necessitates a purifying process which exterminates internal doubts by decimating an external representative of that doubt. Iraq happened to be that representative. This time.

In this story, the significant event in understanding the contemporary condition is not so much the end of the cold war, nor the disintegration of multi-ethnic nations such as the USSR, nor the military reassertion of US power. Rather, all of these can be seen as differing reactions to the implicit recognition of inadequacy of the modern project. The Iranian revolution, its effects on Muslim nations especially Pakistan, but also Malaysia, the recent victory of Muslim revivalists in Algeria, the rise of Hindu revivalism in India, such events perhaps foreshadow the failure of modernity most dramatically. In failing to come to terms with these “third world” events and by continuing to see the disintegration of the Soviet Union as the result of the victory of liberalism we celebrate the end of the cold war by perpetuating its mental constructs. The threat of communism is replaced with the false joy of ideology victory.

One thing has not changed, however. Both the threat and false joy serve to cover up the implicit recognition of what has always been the most serious issue since the voyages of Columbus: the injustice and indignity offered by the Europeans and more or less accepted by non-Europeans. [25] In my view, this tragedy has two victims. The third world is one because as it imports the benefits of modernity, it unquestioningly accepts its hidden defects. The first world is the other because, while it propounds the benefits of modernity it fails to notice its own sickness. This conversational complacency contains a symmetrical pathology which denies, I believe, what each needs and values most: recognition and respect followed by healthy criticism.

In closing, let me note that I have merely tried to evoke an alternative reading of recent events and have said little about whether the return of religion and ethnicity is positive. Indeed, while I welcome any attempt which may overcome the alienation, poverty, and injustice of modernity, I do not altogether relish the often violent exclusivity, rigidity of thought, and natural hierarchy which I associate with both ethnicity and religion. However, if violence and conflict are on the horizon so too is the power of creative synthesis. If liberalism and marxism have much to learn about deeper meanings from religion and ethnicity, surely the latter have something to learn about forms of wealth, individuality, equality, freedom, and democracy from the former. In this view, the question becomes how can we further a process of conversation between the two. In our post-cold war (dis)order, which is the same five hundred year old (dis)order with one less distraction, consideration of this question may be cause for celebration.

[1] p.2, Western Views of Islam in the Middle Ages, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. 1962.

[2] I include North American ethnocentrism as part of a Eurocentric world.

[3] The use of this term to indicate a common experience of postcolonial societies strikes me as useful. Despite the controversy surrounding term I prefer to use the term “third world” over “postcolonial” for two reasons. First, it implicates modern colonizers (I include the USSR among these). These societies, despite their calls to the principles of equality, self-determination, and reward through effort, have a history steeped in the suffocating ether of arrogance. Their practiced sense of hierarchy, intervention, and exploitation allow them to think of the “third” in “third world” as ‘last in the race of history.’ Worse, “third world” is also seen as the third term in the triad “us/ them/ field of battle,” where “field of battle” represents a de-humanized and naturalized space. Uncovering such crude representations while using the familiar term “third world” allows us to expose European hypocrisy. Second, and more importantly, the term “third world” also allows for constructive resistance. “Third” can mean ‘not this or that, but another.’ Here are some hints of how we may think of “third:” not liberalism nor marxism but something else, not masculinity nor femininity but perhaps androgyny, not modernity nor tradition but perhaps traditions of modernity, not assimilation nor isolation but perhaps a connected heterogeneity, not unconscious acceptance nor angry rejection but perhaps synthesis, not tedious religiosity nor empty secularity but perhaps faithfulness. In sum, with this imagery “third” evokes not a position in a hierarchy nor objectification, but the possibility of creative re-constitution of all worlds. This idea of “third” has the added benefit of allowing “first worlders” the possibility of participating in this creative re-constitution.

[4] For example liberation theology may be seen as a synthesis of marxism and religion. Likewise, the disintegration of large multi-ethnic states into smaller states might be seen as the synthesis of ethnicity with the largely liberal idea of world containing a multiplicity of sovereign states.

[5] Op. cit. pages, 47-8.

[6] My favorite account of the deep structure of modernity is offered in R.G. Collingwood’s The Idea of Nature, Oxford University Press, 1945.

[7] See, for example, the “Plan of the Work” in Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations.

[8] See, Marshall Sahlins essay “The Original Affluent Society” in Stone Age Economics.

[9] See my “Respecting Ambiguity: Constructing the Economy Historically, Institutionally and Ethically.”

[10] In this sense many, if not most social scientists are economists.

[11] Why modernity’s power is diminishing at this time is a huge and open question, well beyond the scope of this essay.

[12] Let me add that without each other their lives would be short lived indeed. Without the liberal project, marxism would have nothing to critique and without the critical spirit of which marxism is a manifestation, capitalism would not have survived two generations. Karl Polanyi in The Great Transformation (Beacon Press: 1944) has much more to say about this symbiotic relationship.

[13] The fact that Marx was among the first and still the most powerful critics of economism should not distract us from his own participation in economism. Because we cannot altogether eliminate the influence of our own age, and because that which we critique invariably finds its residues in our new constructions, we should be not be surprised when that which we fight against finds its way back within us. For Marx, the battle was against economism, but he was also its victim.

[14] See for example, Marx in “On Imperialism in India,” in The Marx Engels Reader. See also, Shlomo Aveniri [missing cite].

[15] The self-conscious reader may object to my use of “we,” especially since I criticize both marxism and liberalism for their universalism. I do not object to universals, indeed, I need them to offer a critique of the West. My critique is that liberalism and marxism speak with the voice of the first world and therefore are not universal enough. It is not universalism I find problematic but undialectical, homogenizing, process-less, undemocratic visions of universalism. I owe the articulation of this point to Mark Rupert. For an excellent elaboration of this point see, Samir Amin’s Eurocentricism (Monthly Review Press: 1989).

[16] Again, marxism fares better than liberalism on this score. In this essay I have found it difficult to both simplify my argument and be altogether fair to marxism.

[17] page 18, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism. Verso 1983.

[18] On the need to make what Anderson calls ‘fatality’ meaningful and the relationship between various constructions of this meaning and the parallel constructions of history, see the evocative discussion by Mircea Eliade in Myth of the Eternal Return: or, Cosmos and History. Princeton 1954.

[19] Christopher Lasch, in a speech covered in Harper’s (July 1991).

[20] My thinking on this paradox was moved by comments from Stuart Thorson.

[21] Perhaps with effort some could swallow that Sadaam Hussain was the reincarnation of Hitler. But did anyone really believe that pre-war Iraq could, in any sense, be compared to pre-war Germany? The comparison reveals desperation - a desperation connected not to a real threat called “Iraq” but to the loss of security within the self.

[22] This is not, of course, to deny the real quality of the damage done.

[23] This phrase is borrowed from Stanley Hutchins’ The Illusion of Permanence: British Imperialism in India. Princeton, 1967.

[24] What is deeply unforgivable to the American mind about the Japanese Prime Minister’s accusation is not that the Japanese are harder workers than the Americans. This seems to be acknowledged if not celebrated by Americans. What is unforgivable is that Americans are put in the same category as third worlders.

[25] For the purposes of this essay I do not claim that there was, or is, actual injustice. Such a claim would need a prior discussion of what constitutes justice itself. However, that injustice and indignity are felt by the peoples of the third world at the hands of parts of the first world would seem beyond dispute. For the reader not familiar with the history and arguments which would defend this felt injustice and indignity as, in fact, real there are many good accounts. Here are some of my favorites: For an overall historical picture see L.S. Stavrianos’ Global Rift: The Third World Comes of Age, (Morrow, 1981) and Eric Wolf’s Europe and a People without History. For accounts of the psychological damage done by colonialism see, Frantz Fanon The Wretched of the Earth, and Albert Memmi’s The Colonizer and the Colonized (Beacon: 1965). In terms of literature most novels by third world authors take up the issue of colonialism in one way or another. Some of my favorite are, Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, Nadine Gordimer’s July’s People, Ngugi wa Thiang’o’s Petals of Blood, Isabelle Allende’s House of Spirits, John Nichols’s Milargo Beanfield War, Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children. For arguments which take up the issue of how colonialism harms the colonizer, see Memmi (op. cit), Ashis Nandy’s, The Intimate Enemy, and Traditions, Tyranny and Utopias, Tzvestan Todorov’s The Conquest of America, Hutchins (op. cit). Of course, the arguments of Edward Said, especially in Orientalism inform much of the tone of today’s third world dissent - both popular and intellectual.