David Brooks, of New York Times punditry fame, weighs in with a re-evaluation of Samuel Huntington's famous essay and later book, "Clash of Civilizations" (see link below). Brooks says Sam H. may have gotten things a little skewed, which is what I said back in
2005.
Here is my essay on Huntington from the winter 2008 Oregon Literary Review.
Corporatism
London calling to the faraway towns
Now that war is declared-and battle come down
London calling to the underworld
Come out of the cupboard, all you boys and girls
London calling, now don't look at us
All that phony Beatlemania has bitten the dust
London calling, see we ain't got no swing
'Cept for the ring of that truncheon thing
"London Calling" The Clash
Samuel P. Huntington argues in his 1993 essay The Clash of Civilizations that future world conflict will center on religious and cultural ideas rather than traditional battles among nation- states that grew up after the Treaty of Westphalia, in 1648. Prior to the treaty, conflict arose from the economic and territorial interests of princes, emperors and monarchs, Huntington notes. With the subsequent rise of nation-states, nationalism bred conflicts between masses of people, as aristocracies and their elite armies lost power and new ideological concerns replaced them. Thus grew democracies and classical capitalism, followed by the antidotes of fascism and communism. That style of conflict is all gone, Huntington argues, replaced by nascent religious and cultural conflicts.
This is an interesting theme, but in the end it falls to pieces. What is more apparent now is a provocation by the emerging corporate fascists of the West against Middle Eastern nations which refuse to play along with the West’s extremely self- aggrandizing conceptualization of democracy. The provocation is rooted in the old capitalistic doctrines of colonization. Any concerns for cultural ideology, including Huntington’s, are disingenuously designed to disguise the hegemonic and classical capitalistic maneuvering of the West. For instance, the point of the conflict between the West and the oil producing countries of Iraq and Iran is overwhelmingly economic (Taliq Ali refers to the U.S./Iraq war as a recolonization), and not religious or cultural. If one looks carefully at the Christian and Muslim faiths and the cultures which support them, and honestly evaluates the degree to which the masses are involved in religious discordance, a “clash of civilizations” is resoundingly quiet. On the other hand, a look at the leadership of the Western and Middle Eastern nations is depressive.
Iran is led by religious zealots at the moment, but the people there are divided as to the function of religion in the political realm. Fascism, more than religious and cultural phenomena is stirring the politics there. The same could be said regarding the U.S., where a “born again” Christian has manipulated the U.S. Constitution to create an executive strangle hold on a reluctant legislative body. In both instances, politicians and their corporatist associates formulate the ideological debate for their people without meaningful religious and cultural components, as they have since the advent of modern capitalism and the withering of the Church in state affairs. This formulation is only now being refined into an advanced stage of corporate fascism.
Until they revolt, the people are important within the context of corporate fascism only inasmuch as they confirm and support corporatism's’ ideologies, which are separate from any meaningful religious or cultural qualities. Cultures are, as Jose Ortega y Gasset notes in "Revolt of the Masses," too diversified in their structure to be merely political. The less political people are the easier it is for elites to control them and thence carry on with the more important agenda—the accumulation of wealth. Cultural and religious “problems” make convenient scapegoats, then, as one sniffs out the next big movement threatening corporatism.
All of this is to say that the ideological and economic consequences of nationalism will not soon disappear, as Huntington suggests when he says the end of the Cold War has created a new phase in world politics. What he has done in his essay is place, without much evidence, the blame for the world’s political instability on religious and cultural differences. He supports corporatism’s newest shibboleths of economy by extolling, without much support for his argument, the beneficence of economic globalization. His assumption is that globalization is ultimately good. His argument reveals a concern for protecting that precept rather than seriously examining the effects of globalization on the cultures and economies of the Developing Nations. (We don’t call the Third World by its old name now, because those nations are after all doing so well under globalization).
Huntington’s essay is already dated. The future is here and the conflicts of this moment are yet rooted in nationalism, economic inequality, corporate greed, world poverty, civil war, disease, and terror. To place the root cause of conflict in cultural and religious contexts without examining socioeconomic and capitalistic ideology with a more discerning analysis is shallow. Civilization is fine. It is misconstrued and shoddy political ideology that is problematic.
2005.
Here is my essay on Huntington from the winter 2008 Oregon Literary Review.
Corporatism
London calling to the faraway towns
Now that war is declared-and battle come down
London calling to the underworld
Come out of the cupboard, all you boys and girls
London calling, now don't look at us
All that phony Beatlemania has bitten the dust
London calling, see we ain't got no swing
'Cept for the ring of that truncheon thing
"London Calling" The Clash
Samuel P. Huntington argues in his 1993 essay The Clash of Civilizations that future world conflict will center on religious and cultural ideas rather than traditional battles among nation- states that grew up after the Treaty of Westphalia, in 1648. Prior to the treaty, conflict arose from the economic and territorial interests of princes, emperors and monarchs, Huntington notes. With the subsequent rise of nation-states, nationalism bred conflicts between masses of people, as aristocracies and their elite armies lost power and new ideological concerns replaced them. Thus grew democracies and classical capitalism, followed by the antidotes of fascism and communism. That style of conflict is all gone, Huntington argues, replaced by nascent religious and cultural conflicts.
This is an interesting theme, but in the end it falls to pieces. What is more apparent now is a provocation by the emerging corporate fascists of the West against Middle Eastern nations which refuse to play along with the West’s extremely self- aggrandizing conceptualization of democracy. The provocation is rooted in the old capitalistic doctrines of colonization. Any concerns for cultural ideology, including Huntington’s, are disingenuously designed to disguise the hegemonic and classical capitalistic maneuvering of the West. For instance, the point of the conflict between the West and the oil producing countries of Iraq and Iran is overwhelmingly economic (Taliq Ali refers to the U.S./Iraq war as a recolonization), and not religious or cultural. If one looks carefully at the Christian and Muslim faiths and the cultures which support them, and honestly evaluates the degree to which the masses are involved in religious discordance, a “clash of civilizations” is resoundingly quiet. On the other hand, a look at the leadership of the Western and Middle Eastern nations is depressive.
Iran is led by religious zealots at the moment, but the people there are divided as to the function of religion in the political realm. Fascism, more than religious and cultural phenomena is stirring the politics there. The same could be said regarding the U.S., where a “born again” Christian has manipulated the U.S. Constitution to create an executive strangle hold on a reluctant legislative body. In both instances, politicians and their corporatist associates formulate the ideological debate for their people without meaningful religious and cultural components, as they have since the advent of modern capitalism and the withering of the Church in state affairs. This formulation is only now being refined into an advanced stage of corporate fascism.
Until they revolt, the people are important within the context of corporate fascism only inasmuch as they confirm and support corporatism's’ ideologies, which are separate from any meaningful religious or cultural qualities. Cultures are, as Jose Ortega y Gasset notes in "Revolt of the Masses," too diversified in their structure to be merely political. The less political people are the easier it is for elites to control them and thence carry on with the more important agenda—the accumulation of wealth. Cultural and religious “problems” make convenient scapegoats, then, as one sniffs out the next big movement threatening corporatism.
All of this is to say that the ideological and economic consequences of nationalism will not soon disappear, as Huntington suggests when he says the end of the Cold War has created a new phase in world politics. What he has done in his essay is place, without much evidence, the blame for the world’s political instability on religious and cultural differences. He supports corporatism’s newest shibboleths of economy by extolling, without much support for his argument, the beneficence of economic globalization. His assumption is that globalization is ultimately good. His argument reveals a concern for protecting that precept rather than seriously examining the effects of globalization on the cultures and economies of the Developing Nations. (We don’t call the Third World by its old name now, because those nations are after all doing so well under globalization).
Huntington’s essay is already dated. The future is here and the conflicts of this moment are yet rooted in nationalism, economic inequality, corporate greed, world poverty, civil war, disease, and terror. To place the root cause of conflict in cultural and religious contexts without examining socioeconomic and capitalistic ideology with a more discerning analysis is shallow. Civilization is fine. It is misconstrued and shoddy political ideology that is problematic.
-------
So there. Call me prescient, or whatever you like.
Here is Brook's essay.
TS
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