{Alexander Dugin constructs his Fourth Political Theory from what he considers the salvageable parts of Fascism and Communism, while avoiding the pitfalls of Liberalism, which he sees as the real ideological enemy, perhaps because it’s the only one still standing.}
Alexander Dugin:
We note a positive attitude toward the ethnos, an ethnocentrism directed toward that type of existence which is formed within the structure of the ethnos itself, and which remains intact throughout a variety of stages, including the highly differentiated types of societies which a people may develop in the course of their history. This topic has found deep resonance in certain philosophical directions of the Conservative Revolution. Ethnos is the greatest value of the Fourth Political Theory as a cultural phenomenon; as a community of language, religious belief, daily life, and the sharing of resources and goals; as an organic entity written into an accommodating landscape; as a refined system for constructing models for married life; as an always-unique means of establishing a relationship with the outside world; as the matrix of the ‘lifeworld’; and as the source of all ‘language-games’.
Liberalism as an ideology, calling for liberation from all forms of collective identity in general, is entirely incompatible with ethnos and ethnocentrism, and is an expression of a systemic theoretical and technological ethnocide. 1
Ethnos and ethnocentrism have every reason to be considered as candidates for becoming the subject of the Fourth Political Theory. 2 At the same time, we must again and again pay attention to the fact that we view ethnos in the plural, without trying to establish any kind of a hierarchical system: ethnicities are different, but each of them is, in itself, universal; ethnicities live and develop, but this life and this development do not fit into one specific paradigm; they are open and always distinct; ethnicities mix and separate, but neither one nor the other is good or evil per se — ethnicities themselves generate the criteria by which others are judged, each time in a different way. We can draw many conclusions based on this point. In particular, we can relativize the very notion of ‘politics’, which comes from the normative values of the city, the polis, and, consequently, of the urban model of self-organization within the community (or the society).
Marxism is relevant in terms of its description of liberalism, in identifying the contradictions of capitalism, in its criticism of the bourgeois system, and in revealing the truth behind the bourgeois-democratic policies of exploitation and enslavement which are presented as ‘development’ and ‘liberation’. Marxism’s critical potential is highly useful and applicable. It may well be included in the arsenal of the Fourth Political Theory. But, if so, Marxism will not appear as an ideology that provides answers to a full range of emerging issues — answers that are rational and axiomatic in their foundation — but as an expressive myth or a witty sociological method. The Marxism which we can accept is mythic, sociological Marxism.
As a myth, Marxism tells us the story of the original state of paradise (‘primitive Communism’), which was gradually lost (‘the initial division of labor and the stratification of the primitive society’). Then the contradictions grew, moving toward the point when, at the end of this world, they were reincarnated, in their most paradigmatically pure form, as the confrontation between Labor and Capital. Capital — the bourgeoisie and liberal democracy — personified global evil, exploitation, alienation, lies, and violence. Labor embodied a great dream and an ancient memory of the ‘common good’, and its acquisition (the ‘surplus value’) by an evil minority gave birth to all the problems of modern life.
This myth fits neatly into the structure of eschatological consciousness, which occupies a significant place in mythologies of all tribes and peoples, not to mention the highly differentiated religions. That alone speaks in its favor for us to treat it with the utmost consideration.
On the other hand, as sociology, Marxism is tremendously useful in revealing those mechanisms of alienation and mystification that liberalism uses to justify its dominion and as proof of its ‘correctness’. Being a myth itself, in its polemical, activist form, Marxism serves as an excellent tool to expose the bourgeois ‘great stories’ and to overthrow the credibility of liberal pathos. And in this capacity — ‘against liberalism’ — it can be used effectively under the new conditions: after all, we continue to exist under capitalism, and hence, Marxist criticism of it, and the struggle against it, remain on the agenda, even if the old forms of this struggle have become irrelevant.
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1 It is interesting that Dugin accuses Liberalism of attempting to dissolve group identities in favor of a bland universal individualism, whereas the common charge against Liberalism today is that it promotes “identity politics” in which group identity outweighs the merits of the individual.
2 Dugin establishes a dualism of good ethnocentrism versus bad ethnocentrism. Good ethnocentrism, the kind Dugin applauds, is pluralistic and tolerant; it values its own ethnos, but it does not thereby devalue or condemn other people’s ethnos. On the other hand, when Dugin writes, “Ethnocentrism is the purest manifestation of racist ideology,” he is referring to an ethnocentrism based on hatred and fear of the Other, rather than on pride in one’s own roots and culture. I suspect that, in practice, it may not be so easy to distinguish between the two.
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