Re: Ethnic Hegemony and World-System

On Sat, 24 Mar 2001 Threehegemons@aol.com wrote:

> Warren--you've posted so many positions today its difficult to know where to 
> start--but let's see...  Are you really saying that so long as capitalists 
> have the good sense to buy some allies (you mentioned the Western working 
> class, one could also name a couple of others) its hopeless to try to change 
> things?

        Not hopeless, just damnably difficult, as you well know.

> Surely the losers greatly outnumber the winners (and lets recall 
> that capital hasn't been all that nice to its 'allies' in the Western working 
> class for the last thirty years).  Its not the place, but an inventory of the 
> balance of forces in the world would need to explore many facets of the issue.

        The losers greatly outnumber the winners, but the losers are
either mesmerized by the bullshit disseminated by the winners or divided
into innumerable faiths and factions that pose no concerted threat to
the world-system.
   
> Has the spread of the enlightenment faith generated any societies that value 
> human rights etc (and do not do so at the expense of others!!)?

        I think there has been some progress in the direction of human
rights, for some significant fraction of the human race, compared with
pre-modern times.  Some of that progress has come at the expense of
others, some has not.  But I refuse to blame the Left Enlightenment for
the atrocities of capitalism.

> Or do you 
> judge various pre-modern traditions by what they actually achieved, and 
> modernists by what they say they want to achieve?  By these standards 
> (judging by ideals, rather than effect) Christianity or Buddhism is at least 
> as impressive as modernity.

        I respectfully disagree.  And again, "modernists" come in more
than one flavor.  Lumping them all together as if they were one camp is
simply wrong.

> The debate I refer to is not between enlightenment and Islam, Buddhism, 
> Christian Fundamentalism, etc.  It is over whether their should be a 
> universal faith at all, what its character should be, what the relationship 
> between universalists and those who reject universalism is etc.  I suggest 
> Ivan Illych, Michel Foucault and Ashis Nandy as representative (and diverse) 
> 'post-enlightenment' thinkers.  Enlightenment has certainly not been a 
> pacific faith.  Its generated at least as much war as any other religion 
> fanatically pursued. Left wing enlightenment WAS a major player in the world 
> in the last one hundred years.  It tended to turn into liberalism, rather 
> than oppose it.  The Soviet Empire is the quintessential example.  Whatever 
> the differences regarding the ownership of enterprises, their rulers, as much 
> as in the west, believed that scientifically trained elite could manage 
> society best without the intrusion of the masses. In this sense, it was 
> indistinguishable from Western liberalism.

        The Soviet Union became a technocracy, but at the outset, in the
minds of many of its champions, it was a serious effort to put the
ideals of the Left Enlightenment into practice.  Too bad that effort had
to occur in a country that had barely left the Middle Ages.
  
> Faced with the failures of the last hundred years, you recommend that at some 
> distant date in the future the enlightenment will get things right--once 
> capitalism stops buying allies (but why would it?).  Others, faced with 
> failure, suggest we 'lose our religion' and rethink everything.  Given these 
> options, I think the second is the realistic one.
 
        It's a good thing for Christianity that the early Christians
didn't throw in the towel around A.D. 133.

        Warren