Communism or capitalism, Labour or Conservative,
democracy or dictatorship, republicanism or monarchy,
rule by any name, we are ruled by modernity.
WHEN
But the goal of passing through progressive stages of modernity has come into question It has even been rejected outright as an orientation for the future by one of the most widely respected leaders of the postcommunist nations. In February 1993, Vaclav Havel, president of the
I learned a good deal about their situation when I was invited to give a series of talks there in the summer of 1993. I spoke over a period of five days to a gathering of young professionals held near the Malta Fatra Mountains of northwest Slovakia, was then driven to the southwest corner of the Czech Republic to address a protest camp at the construction site of a nuclear power plant (opposed by sixty of the sixty-two local mayors but pushed through by new federal government in Prague), and was subsequently driven back across the southern Czech Republic into Slovakia to address a group of philosophy professors in Bratislava. For all three audiences, I ended up putting aside my prepared lecture notes until I had addressed a subject that came up repeatedly during my stay, a perplexing paradox that seemed to weigh heavily on everyone I met.
MY FIRST INKLING of the matter occurred during the thirty-minute drive from the
When we passed by the first cluster of high-rise apartment buildings jutting starkly from a distant ridge, the engineer pointed toward it and declared contemptuously over the engine noise, "That's socialism!", sitting in the back seat, thought to myself, "No, that's modernity. Do you think we don't have those sterile, towering boxes in
In the days that followed, as I became acquainted with more and more people living through the postcommunist experience, I saw that they regarded State socialism as a historical aberration best forgotten. Moreover; they were largely battled that so much of the texture of daily life has remained the same since they made that 180-degree shift from communism to capitalism, which had always been portrayed by both sides as polar opposites. An entirely different world was supposed to have manifested, a new society sparked by unleashed human potential.
The implicit promise of the capitalist West had been that of a radically different existence; the proposed euphoric scenario portrayed liberation from a paralysing malaise, followed by the unfettered dynamism of a modernized economy and unbounded prosperity for all. Factories, banks and retailing would have to be modernized in the former Eastern bloc, of course, but then it would be full speed ahead. Already, by the time of my visit, Viennese advertising agencies had plastered Bratislava with commercial posters, one of them so "advanced" as to skip the car altogether and feature only an attractive young woman and huge lettering: TOYOTA.
AS WE NOW KNOW, the various postcommunist countries were fated to suffer through severe economic crises. That aspect of the new era, however, was not the main cause of the unarticulated puzzlement I encountered in
The answer lay in an understanding of the larger context: modernity. Marxism-Leninism was one of several economic systems that share the assumptions of the modern worldview. If one were to plot these systems on a spectrum of left-to-right political economies within modernity, "Marxist-Leninist socialism" and its variations would occupy the far left, to the right of which would be "democratic socialism", followed by "regulated capitalist democracies", followed by "laissez-faire (corporate controlled) right-wing capitalist democracies", followed by "fascist corporatism in quasi-military dictatorships".
Modern ideology asserts that each of these orientations shapes life in a mould that is entirely different from the others. That perception, however, reflects a central bias of modernity: economism, the tendency in modern societies to regard economics as the fundamental determinant of everything else. Such a perspective obscures the common ground shared by all of those political economies: they each subscribe to the following values of modernity:
The human is considered essentially an economic being, homo economicus. Consequently, the arrangement of economic matters is believed to be the wellspring of contentment or discontent in all other areas of life. Economic expansion, through industrialism and computerization, is the Holy Grail of materialism, the unquestioned source from which follow abundance, well-being, and the evolution of society. That evolution is understood to be decidedly directional: the human condition progresses toward increasingly optimal states as the past is continuously improved upon.
Modern socialization structures our understanding of the world via objectivism, rationalism, the mechanistic world-view, reductionism and scientism. The design and organization of work in modern societies are based on standardization, bureaucratization and centralization. Modern interactions with nature are anthropocentric and are guided by instrumental reasoning. Above all, modern culture defines itself as a triumphant force progressing in opposition to nature. As such, it harbours contempt for non-modern cultures, which are seen to be "held back" by unproductive perceptions such as the "sacred whole" and reciprocal duties toward the rest of the Earth community.
Modern life is compartmentalized into discrete spheres: family life, work life, social life, political life, love life and spiritual life, the last of which is devalued for being the furthest from rationalism. In modern societies, higher education is also tightly compartmentalized into insular disciplines. There, as in law and government, intensely agonistic modes of discussion shape all possibilities. The preference for competition and a dominance-or-submission dichotomy as the structure of relationships in all spheres of modern life reflects the extent of patriarchal socialization. Modern societies are sometimes called "hypermasculine" because "masculine" traits, such as the persona of rationalism, are valued much more highly than "feminine" traits, such as empathy.
The faces of my audiences in
Extracts from The Resurgence of the Real by
