What will come next? My candidate for the next big thing is some form of radical localism.
Small communities would push back against the power of multinational corporations and big government bureaucracies.
Ideally their civic and economic life would be based on a mixture of town-meeting democracy, volunteer groups, civic associations, producer cooperatives, consumer cooperatives, individually-owned businesses and large numbers of self-employed workers.
But it might be more resilient when catastrophic global climate change kicks in, the global supply chains cease to work and dysfunctional national governments lose their legitimacy.
I think the world is locked into struggle between a heartless corporate neoliberalism and a rage-filled blood-and-soil nationalism, neither of which offers hope for the human future.
Pankaj Mishra, author of AGE OF ANGER (2017), said this is part of a conflict of ideas that originated with Voltaire and Rousseau in the 18th century and is still going on, all over the world, today.
Voltaire taught that if you give up your outworn prejudices, superstitions and customs, and embrace science, reason and commerce, you will gain the power to determine the course of your life, as well as enjoy a rising material standard of living.
His enemy, Rousseau, spoke for all those who were angry because this bargain was not kept, or because they rejected the bargain in the first place.
They included millions of people in Europe and North America in the 19th century and also billions in Asia and Africa in the 20th and 21st, who have been uprooted from village communities and left to fend for themselves in an unforgiving global economy.
Voltaire, although a brave defender of religious and intellectual freedom, despised the ignorant masses. He admired “enlightened” despots, such as Frederick the Great and Catherine the Great, for trying to force their unwilling subjects to adopt modern—that is, French—ways of life.
Rousseau cared nothing for modernization. His ideal was an imaginary Sparta, an austere, primitive and close-knit society of brave warriors. He thought it unimportant that Spartan warriors were predatory and merciless to others. What mattered was their comradeship with each other, and also their manliness.
Another theme of Rousseau, in contrast to Voltaire, is the need for manliness and the corresponding need to keep women in their place. Once again, this is an example of Rousseau wanting something he didn’t have. He was never able to fulfill the traditional role of the male, which is to be a protector and provider for women and children.
The French election on Sunday narrowed the field to two candidates—Emmanuel Macron, a neoliberal defender of globalization, and Marine Le Pen, a blood-and-soil nationalist, in the run-off election May 7.
Macron is an Obama-like outsider, who offers a vaguely-defined hope and change and, in fact, was endorsed by Barack Obama, but who actually represents France’s financial establishment.
Le Pen is usually described as the “far right” candidate. She promises to protect France from what she calls the twin threats of globalization and Islam.
But she also is in favor of locking in France’s 35-hour work week, lowering the retirement age to 60, bolstering public services and reducing income taxes on low-income workers
Macron is in favor of flexibility on the 35-hour work week, industry deregulation, reduction of government spending and cutting corporate taxes. So which is the right-winger?
He favors CETA—the Canadian-European Free Trade Agreement—which, like NAFTA and the defunct proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, would restrict business regulation in the name of protecting free trade. So who is the left-winger here?
Le Pen would replace the Euro with a “nouveau franc,” reestablish border controls and repeal certain European Union laws. If the EU refused to cooperate, she would call for a referendum on whether France should secede. If the French voted to stay in the EU, she would resign.
Macron wants to strengthen the Euro and France’s ties with the EU. He generally favors current French policy on immigration. Le Pen would restrict immigration to 10,000 persons a year and kick out all unauthorized immigrants, as well as all Muslims on terrorist watch lists.
What follows is notes for the second part of a talk for the Rochester Russell Forum scheduled at Writers & Books Literary Center, 740 University Ave., Rochester, NY, at 7 p.m. Thursday, April 13.
Neoliberalism has generated an antithesis—blood and soil nationalism, which holds that the supreme human value consists of the ties of loyalty and customs among people of common ancestry who live in the same place.
Blood and soil nationalism is not fascism, although it can fit very well with fascism. It is not racism, although it can fit very well with racism.
The difference is that fascism and racism are international movements. They are disconnected from the culture and heritage of any particular place.
Loyalty to a heritage and a way of life, to kindred who live in a particular place, is the most natural feeling in the world. It is wrong to devalue this feeling.
The problem is that, for many people, local cultures and heritages have already been hollowed out by the consumer culture promoted by the mass media of entertainment and advertising. What is left is a hollowed-out version of patriotism consisting of loyalty to your own group and hatred of some other group you see as a threat.
People embrace this hollow nationalism as a way of giving a meaning to their lives that the neoliberal consumer and advertising culture does not provide.
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