Posts Tagged ‘Francis Fukuyama’
“I think it would be a very good idea”*…
As we discuss global culture(s) or geo-politics, we often talk about “The West” (and the rest). In a review of Georgios Varouxakis‘ new book The West: The History of an Idea, Andrew Kaufmann reminds us that it’s important to interrogate that defining concept…
What is the West? Many take the idea for granted, but few can define it. In this meticulously researched, engaging, and sometimes bewildering new book, The West: The History of an Idea, intellectual historian Georgios Varouxakis takes readers on a two-centuries-long tour of the many uses, definitions, and redefinitions of the term. Along the way, readers may find their own long-held assumptions and stereotypes challenged and even undermined.
The book makes a number of arguments, but for the purposes of this review, it’s worth focusing on just a few major ones. The first and most innovative argument of the book is this: The idea of the West as a transnational sociopolitical community distinct from the rest of the world is more recent than we think. This idea received its first sophisticated and coherent articulation in the 1820s from French philosopher Auguste Comte.
While historians and other academics had long looked to past societies like ancient Athens or medieval Europe as representing the “West” against some “other,” Comte was the first to coherently put together a future-oriented political program to be adopted and followed. Most scholars locate the future-focused version of the West’s inauguration in the 1890s, when the idea was used to justify imperial and colonial expansion. By contrast, Varouxakis argues that Comte and his followers wanted to build a West that was anti-imperialist, committed to science and reason, liberated from dogmatic Christianity, and fueled by altruism and sympathy.
As a progressive positivist, Comte saw the “Western Republic” as a via media between a hyper nationalism (of the French variety) and an overly abstract universalism. He imagined a way station that transcended the parochialism of family and nation and would one day be realized and embraced all over the world, even if it would take a full seven centuries from his own writing to come to fruition (that was Comte’s timeline). Neither tied to a particular nation like France (although Paris would be the center of this Republic until Constantinople would replace it), nor embodied by an abstract and universal cosmopolitanism, the Western Republic (or l’Occident) would be set off against its Other—in particular, Russia and the Orient. Still, over time this republic would non-coercively welcome the rest of the world into its fold.
Contrary to a common conception of “the West,” it was not to be a society (or society of societies) committed to democracy, individualism, or liberalism. It was instead a rejection of the hyper-individualism of the modern period, and it was an attempt to recover an older other-centered ethic that had been lost to a prior age.
The second major argument Varouxakis presents is that despite this idea of a transnational West that had its origin in Comte’s work, and despite Comte’s legacy that his disciples clearly carried across continents and centuries, the history of the idea of the West since Comte is complicated and contested. Put another way, while the specter of Comte hovers over the entire narrative, his vision is not always fully realized, nor is the meaning of the term always stable. This complicated history manifests itself in a number of different ways and carries with it some significant implications…
… Many casual users of “Western Civilization” will often identify it as one and the same with liberal democracy. They often find that somehow and at some point Britain came to embrace the West as being just that—liberal and democratic. Varouxakis complicates this picture by showing that while a few liberal voices in Britain were certainly also champions of Western Civilization, the more consistent and coherent users of the term were disciples of Comte and therefore much more illiberal in their thinking…
… Or take the more familiar East vs. West framework we associate with the Cold War, where surely the fault lines of Eastern totalitarianism against Western liberal capitalism are clean and clear. But even here the history is complicated, as the period begins with the acknowledgement that it was indeed Soviet Russia that helped to save “western civilization.” Indeed, it took forty years of gradual evolution for the idea of the “West” to finally crystallize around the shared commitment to economic, religious, and political freedom over and against Soviet planned economies, state-sanctioned atheism, and one-party politics with no free and fair elections…
… Given the winding road of the history of the West, it is instructive that there seems to be something of a settlement on its meaning for today, even if there are differences in its application. This can be seen most clearly in Varouxakis’ penultimate chapter on the dispute between Samuel Huntington and Francis Fukuyama after the end of the Cold War. Fukuyama of course is well known for his view that the West—in its embrace of liberal democracy and capitalism—had now emerged triumphant over the defeated ideas of Marxist totalitarianism, which found its fullest expression in Soviet Russia of the East.
Samuel Huntington’s ideas of what the West embodied were not much different, but he diverged from Fukuyama in his vision of what the world’s future likely entailed. For Huntington, the coming years and decades would see a “clash of civilizations,” a conflict of the most basic sort between the West and the great civilizations of the world as we know it. He saw nothing certain about the global triumph of any particular civilizational expression, including the West. Indeed, Huntington contends that it is only the West that even believes in universal ideals, and that all of the non-Western civilizations—whether Chinese, Islamic, or otherwise—are all partial in their visions. Therefore, we see here in the latest debate about the West a return of the Comtean question: Will the West become a universal civilization, or will it endure as one of many civilizations forever in conflict with each other? While we may have some agreement on what the West stands for, we may have less confidence in its future in the world.
The history is complex, indeed. But Varouxakis also raises the question of whether Western Civilization—however one defines it—is something to defend in the first place. He considers this question several times in the book, but perhaps none more poignantly than in the Great War itself. For example, there were many who noted the hypocrisy of the “Western powers” that suddenly found common cause with the long-excluded Russia in their fight against Germany and the Central Powers. But perhaps more troubling is what it says about a civilization when it produces not the peace and altruism long promised by its founder, but instead destruction on a scale that had never been seen before in human history. One could likewise ask: What kind of civilization deliberately excludes and exploits the weakest members within its borders, such as in the treatment of African Americans in the United States and of those in the furthest regions of the colonial empires of Europe? This crisis of confidence and feeling of decline continued through the interwar years, as Oswald Spengler expresses in his Decline of the West, a fitting rejoinder to the optimism of Comte’s Western utopia.
And so, perhaps the best way to conclude for readers of all sorts—but especially Christians—is to offer two words of caution. The first is to those who would defend the “West” and “Western Civilization” as something either resonant with or even inspired by a Judeo-Christian worldview. And that word is simple: the origins of the idea of the West in one of its most dominant forms (the Comtean one) and in its subsequent historical uses is either non-Christian or even anti-Christian. Indeed, I went into the book expecting a heavy dose of Judeo-Christian connections to the idea of the West, and while the link is not completely absent, I was struck by its muted nature.
Besides the post-Christian progressive vision of Comte himself, consider the voice of Black writer Richard Wright as one representative example to follow in the Frenchman’s footsteps. As someone who identified with the West, he considered “the content of [his] Westernness [residing] fundamentally…in [his] secular outlook upon life.” The progress of the West would be realized the more it emancipated itself from the influence of “mystical powers” or the priests who would speak in their name. Armed with the tools of trial-and-error pragmatism, human life can be sustained without recourse to divine help. A West liberated from divine help is a West worth preserving, at least according to Wright.
Overall, the West as an idea has many champions who are quite open in their antipathy toward the Christian religion, and it would be foolish to ignore those influences on the meaning and use of the term for us today. Still, the second and final note I’d like to offer is a bit more optimistic. In the concluding chapter, Varouxakis urges readers to move from the parochialism of “Western” ideas to adopt a language that is universal in its appeal. What, after all, was so attractive about any of the Western projects that Varouxakis so painstakingly chronicles? It was always their global appeal.
Altruism, sympathy, love for others, freedom, individualism, democracy, capitalism. These are not ideals that belong to just a few but rightfully can be embraced by all of God’s creatures in different places, at different times, and in different ways. Certainly for Christians who embrace a global faith, the least we can do is see the inheritance of the “West,” however defined, as a mixed bag of common grace insights and ideas in rebellion against God, combined with the perspective that none of what is worth keeping in the West should ever be kept from those who would embrace its ideals…
Eminently worth reading in full: “The Idea of the West” from @mereorthodoxy.bsky.social.
For a look at the concept in current context/practice: “The Rest take on the West,” from @noemamag.com.
* Gandhi’s response when asked, “what do you think of western civilization?”
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As we ponder perplexingly plastic paradigms, we might recall that it was on this date in 1957 that “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Going On” by Jerry Lee Lewis peaked at #3 on the US pop singles charts (though it topped the R&B and country charts shortly after). It was a cover of a 1955 release by Big Maybelle of a song written by Dave “Curlee” Williams (and sometimes also credited to James Faye “Roy” Hall). Lewis, with session drummer Jimmy Van Eaton and guitarist Roland Janes, had recorded the song at Sun Records in just one take.
“A republic, if you can keep it”*…
Nathan Gardels on one of the deepest issues at play in the social and political sphere in the U.S and around the world…
It is a mark of just how deep the crisis of governance across Western democracies has become that conflict irresolvable through political competition is giving way to the reconsideration of founding constitutions and the institutions they invest with legitimacy.
At its heart, this crisis is about trust. As the political scientist Francis Fukuyama has argued, “Belief in the corruptibility of all institutions leads to the dead end of universal distrust. American democracy, all democracy, will not survive a lack of belief in the possibility of impartial institutions; instead partisan political combat will come to pervade every aspect of life.” And so it has.
The ongoing populist surge of recent years did not cause the crisis. It is a symptom of the decay of democratic institutions that, captured by the organized interests of an insider establishment, failed to address the dislocations of hyper-globalization, the disruptions of rapid technological change and the attendant creep of widening cultural cleavage. Too many were left behind and struggled while others prospered and played.
Adding danger to decay, the fevered partisans of populism are intent on throwing out the baby with the bathwater, assaulting the integrity of the very institutions which protect republics from themselves through checks and balances, or that are critical to the fair administration of complex societies. The rebellion against a moribund political class has become a revolt against governance itself and the infrastructure that goes with it.
Populists who fashion themselves as tribunes of the people have never met independent and impartial institutions they can happily abide. Believing they are the embodiment of majority will, any constraint on their power is portrayed as a contrivance by elites to keep the masses down. When cemented with cultural resentment against those at the top who look down on the unsophisticated rabble living in the sticks and outside the fashionable status sphere, anti-elitist sentiment has enough truth value to stick.
We’ve seen versions of this over recent years where the previous governments in Poland and Brazil, as well as the present government in Israel, have sought to politicize the top courts and limit their independence from the powers that be. Hungary under Viktor Orbán, an outright proponent of illiberal democracy, has done the same, seeking further to stifle independent media, think tanks and civil society organizations for good measure.
In Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum, the president-in-waiting elected by a landslide earlier this year, has pledged to continue pursuing President Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador’s plan for popular election of that nation’s Supreme Court, thus making its slant coincide with the interests of the ruling party. Sheinbaum, like her predecessor, is also bent on disempowering the independent electoral commission that oversees the polls and certifies voting outcomes.
With the U.S. Supreme Court already dominated by ultra-conservative judges, partisans of Donald Trump have turned their attention to slashing the powers of what it calls “the administrative state” — those agencies with the discretionary authority under legislative mandate to regulate private sector activities in realms from environmental impact to food and drug safety to publicly traded securities to the monopolistic conduct of large companies. Most of these agencies have been in place since the early 20th century as the Progressive Era’s response to the vast inequality, child labor, unsanitary industry, crony corruption and robber barons of the unregulated Gilded Age.
The aim of modern-day populists is to both diminish and politicize the regulatory technocracy to fit their agenda. The famous Project 2025 plan prepared by the Heritage Foundation in anticipation of another Trump presidency has gone so far as to propose the abolition of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration — the key body monitoring climate change, which they don’t believe in. My colleague Nils Gilman aptly calls this endeavor “institutional vandalism.” [See here for a taste of Gilman’s sharp thinking on the more general issue at play.]
Though the Trump campaign has sought to distance itself from the details of Project 2025, which may scare sensible voters in the runup to the November election, few have any doubts that it provides the essential roadmap for action if Republicans come to power.
Following verdicts to overturn Roe vs. Wade on abortion, blunt the scope of regulatory agencies and codify presidential immunity, the realization of what a stacked Supreme Court means has prompted President Joe Biden to engage the battle over institutions head on.
As his last stand after bowing out of the presidential race, the president is embarking on a quixotic quest to undo the impact of recent rulings and seek a constitutional amendment to reform how the Supreme Court works. First, arguing that “no one is above the law,” he would repeal the presidential immunity recently granted and impose a “binding code of conduct” with strict ethics guidelines prohibiting political activity by justices and requiring transparent disclosure of gifts.
The core structural change of Biden’s proposal is to get rid of lifetime terms and limit them to 18 years, with staggered appointments every two years (when one of the terms expires) to avoid the enduring sway of justices chosen by one political regime and ideological persuasion. In short, a process which would perpetually unstack the highest court instead of invite and enable its stacking.
This is an uphill battle, for sure, since amending the constitution would entail a 2/3 vote of both houses of Congress and approval of ¾ of all state legislatures.
“Defend the institutions” is hardly a rallying cry that will stir the passions of the public in the same way as the instinctive appeal of demagogues who promise simple solutions to complex problems while blaming all misfortune on the world outside or perceived enemies within. But repairing and restoring the integrity of democracy’s infrastructure is the only path back to trust. That is a tall order in the short term.
Popular emotion is the Achilles heel of democracies. Institutions that temper emotion through the cool deliberation of disinterested reason are what make the system work to the benefit of all.
As Fukuyama rightly says, democracies can’t survive without at least a belief in the possibility of impartial platforms for the administration of justice and governance. That proposition will be tested as never before in the battle over institutions in the near years ahead…
A challenge to democracy’s infrastructure: “The Battle Over Institutions,” from @NoemaMag, with @FukuyamaFrancis and @nils_gilman.
* Benjamin Franklin’s response to Elizabeth Willing Powel‘s question in 1787: “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?”
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As we rally around the rudiments, we might recall that it was on this date in 1935 that President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act, part of his New Deal program that created a government pension system for the retired.
By 1930, the United States was, along with Switzerland, the only modern industrial country without any national social security system. Amid the Great Depression, the physician Francis Townsend galvanized support behind a proposal to issue direct payments to older people. Responding to that movement, Roosevelt organized a committee led by Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins to develop a major social welfare program proposal. Roosevelt presented the plan in early 1935 and signed the Social Security Act into law on August 14, 1935. The Supreme Court upheld the act in two major cases decided in 1937.
The law established the Social Security program. The old-age program is funded by payroll taxes, and over the ensuing decades, it contributed to a dramatic decline in poverty among older people, and spending on Social Security became a significant part of the federal budget. The Social Security Act also established an unemployment insurance program [only a few states had poorly-funded programs at the time] administered by the states and the Aid to Dependent Children program, which provided aid to families headed by single mothers. The law was later amended by acts such as the Social Security Amendments of 1965, which established two major healthcare programs: Medicare and Medicaid.
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