Foreign Affairs, is, as its name suggests, a bi-monthly journal on, well, foreign affairs- foreign to the United States that is. While it has a fairly conservative, U.S. centric bias, I’m willing to endorse it for the generally high standard of writing, and the quality/importance of the commentators who regularly contribute articles.
I was struck by an article in the January/February 2009 edition, entitled ‘The Myth of the Autocratic Revival’, written by Daniel Deudney- Professor of Political Science at Johns Hopkins, and John Ikenberry, Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton. Unfortunately, I can only link to the abstract, not the full article, but it should be enough to give you the gist of things.
www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/63721/daniel-deudney-and-g-john-ikenberry/the-myth-of-the-autocratic-revival
I think the core argument made by both men is encapsulated in this quote: “The foreign policy of the United States should continue to be based on the broad assumption that there is ultimately one path to modernity- and that is essentially liberal in character.” But is this necessarily the case? I should point out that the article is really a criticism of autocratic capitalist states, namely Russia and China (I don’t think China could really be considered communist/socialist), and call for universal democratisation. Now while, I agree with the call for the call for democratisation, I’m not entirely convinced that this should necessarily go hand in hand with liberalism. The article says little about the current financial crisis (a hobby horse that closet Marxist’s love to flog, I know), and says little about problems associated with liberalism internal to the United States: vast inequities in wealth, a failing health care system, significant disenfranchisement of minorities and so on. It also fails to examine states which successfully combine liberalism and socialism, perhaps most notably- Norway, Sweden and Denmark. Granted, historical factors do seem to be on the side of liberalism/capitalism, but what about the other side of the coin? What if the Soviet Union hadn’t been ruled by autocrats/dictators. What would a genuinely democratic socialist state look like?
I’m quite interested in the Praxis School of Marxism, which I think had its origins in the former Yugoslavia. In the light of this discussion, one noteworthy point they made, was that communist regimes, like the Soviet Union, were an embodiment of state based capitalism, i.e., the state became the capitalist- Marx’s criticisms of capitalism still applied- alienation of labour, reification etc. However, instead of having concrete antagonists- the capitalists/industrialists, one side of the dialectic takes on an abstract character- the state. Here one can see the same kind of inversion articulated in Marx’s criticism of religion, coupled with the autocratic nature of religious institutions.
The point I’d like to make, is similar to that of my previous post: black and white distinctions are often unhelpful, or to cite my favourite cliché- don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. Liberal and Socialist positions both have something to offer, some aspects are incompatible, granted, but it seems to me that these aspects are often negative anyway. Take the best and leave and consign what doesn’t work to the annals of history.
