Civilizational Essentialism

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Discussion

By Benjamin Studebaker:

From the article:

* The Triangle of Essentialism: Žižek, Huntington, Dugin, and the Demise of Universalism

URL = https://substack.com/@bmstudebaker/p-151721068

""There is now a single way of thinking common to self-described communists (e.g., Slavoj Žižek), liberals (e.g., Samuel Huntington), and conservatives (e.g., Aleksandr Dugin). This single way of thinking is neither communist, nor liberal, nor conservative - it conflicts with the highest instantiations of all three of those traditions. Its prominence, across all three domains, is a sign of their shared morbidity.

This single way of thinking conceives of the world as being ontologically divided up into essentially distinct civilizational blocs.

...

"In treating the world as always already split into essentially distinct civilizational blocs, the theorists of the triangle neglect the interdependent relationships that have developed among these states. They also neglect the degree to which people in all of these states want the same things. Everyone - regardless of religion, race, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, creed, or color - wants to consume more or work less. We do not have an eternal struggle among essentially distinct civilizations with incommensurable values. We have a set of contingent conflicts the stem from two facts:

The world system does not make it possible for every state to be a consumer state.

The world system does not have political mechanisms for easily redistributing niches, for redistributing (and, eventually, winding down) human labor.

Why do the theorists of the triangle neglect the globalized character of the world system?

...

In the 1990s, globalization was an evident fact. It was highly present at every level of the discourse. The ostensibly subversive, radical position was to argue against globalization. To argue against globalization was to argue against the emerging unitary character of the world system, to instead emphasize difference. This resulted in defenses of nationalism by conservatives and group identity by liberals. It also resulted in civilizational thinking, in the positing of essentially distinct civilizational blocs.

Together, these theories - nationalist, identitarian, and civilizational - allowed people to avoid confronting the reality of globalization. There was no possibility of resisting globalization. There wasn’t even a possibility of maintaining a second world system alongside the first. Nevertheless, these people waited for a mystic oriental empire to “challenge” the world system, forgetting that even if a new great power were to be generated in the East, that state would itself be just another expression of the world system. It would be created in and through globalization, and never against it.

It doesn’t matter whether the theorist chooses the side of the United States (Huntington), the side of eurocommunism (Žižek) or the side of an unrealized Eurasian empire (Dugin). In thinking of the world as divided up into sides, the most important facts about our world are elided. The shared problems we face, as participants in a shared world system, are obscured.

And, over time, these theories undermine the consciousness of communists, liberals, and conservatives. Instead of thinking of the world dialectically, they invite us to choose sides in it. A century ago, communists were internationalists, liberals were institutionalists, and many conservative Americans still hoped for a universal Christian republic. Now all three have retreated into narrow, parochial particularisms, obsessed with whatever small, petty distinctions each can erect to distance themselves from various “others.” "

• What is neglected is the planetarity of the system, argues Studebaker:

"we might think of the world as a total system. Different states occupy different niches within that system. Some of these niches are more desirable than others.

What are the niches? Currently, in the world, there are really three different types:

• The consumer niche, where goods and services are consumed.

• The producer niche, where goods and services are produced.

• The extractive niche, where food is grown, and minerals are extracted.

All states (or very nearly all) do all three things, but most states specialize to a greater or lesser extent in one of these three directions. It tends to be inefficient - and uncompetitive - to try to do all three equally well.

Some roles are more lucrative than others. States in the extractive niche that export oil tend to do better than states that export rice, because oil is scarcer than food. States in the productive niche that produce microchips tend to do better than states that produce plastic toys, because microchips are more useful than plastic toys. But consumption is the scarcest good of all. There are very few states that have large numbers of consumers who are able to sustain the necessary purchasing power required to devour the enormous amount of stuff everyone in the world produces and extracts.

The United States is the most powerful state in the world not simply because it has a technologically advanced military, but because it is better at consuming than any other state. It has a highly advanced system of marketing and logistics that both creates a desire for consumption in its citizens and makes it extraordinarily easy for those citizens to act on that desire quickly. Americans come to believe they need things most people in the world don’t even want. They buy things most people in the world would not even think to sell.

This fact about the United States has given every country in the world that produces or extracts a strong incentive to support the ability of Americans to consume. Rich people all over the world constantly find new ways to put money in the hands of Americans so that Americans will go on buying stuff. This is the most important fact about the world system, and it’s something very few people understand. The whole world gets rich only because Americans exhibit an enormous number of what we would conventionally understand to be vices. The world system runs on American gluttony. Billions of people would be impoverished if Americans became enlightened and desisted from purchasing garbage.

Of course, this need to constantly support the ability of Americans to purchase garbage is frustrating for people in other parts of the world, who would like to consume more of what they produce.

...

"Elites all over the world work very hard to prevent the world system from splitting. They also create contingency plans, so that if a split does occur, the consequences of the split are as manageable as possible. BRICS is not an attempt to construct an alternative to a “western” system - it is a hedge against existential risk. In the event that a rogue United States tries to eject China from the world system, China needs to have the infrastructure necessary to rapidly create new trading relationships. The Belt and Road Initiative is about ensuring that if the world system collapses, China has the necessary capacity to operate a backup system.""

(https://substack.com/@bmstudebaker/p-151721068)