[P2P-F] Fwd: The Critique of EuroModernism: a question of standpoints

[Michel Bauwens]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Kanth, Rajani <rkanth at fas.harvard.edu>
Date: Mon, Dec 15, 2014 at 7:50 AM
Subject: The Critique of EuroModernism: a question of standpoints
To: "michelsub2004 at gmail.com" <michelsub2004 at gmail.com>



best ,
r
***
                              Understanding EuroModernism

In this  short piece,  I clarify the standpoint of my Critique of
EuroModernism  ( in the  latter section of this Note; I have carefully
defined this epochal template in previous posts, some of which are
available on my blog-site: http://theinvolutegandhian.weebly.com/ ).

I have tried to argue, in various previous posts,  that EuroModernism is
the  demoralizing , totalizing, spectre that haunts the globe today -
albeit  now in its very last tremors (though its ghoulish  tail lasheth  at
us all, willy nilly).

Its expungement will be , I have  written, a  great boon to humanity,
globally, not least to European societies themselves -  that were its very
first victims.

I have not claimed this  as a moral imperative, though it certainly is so.

Nor have I  forwarded it as an apriori political judgment, though the
Argument might not be diminished by such a stance.

Instead, I have merely posited the requisites of real, anthropic
societies: and suggested that all of Modernist presumptions  run  plainly
contrary to their  basic presumptions.

In effect,  Modernist ontology and epistemology are inherently
anti-anthropic in their thrust: and will, if allowed full rein, destroy our
anthropic existence entirely  -  thereby  fully arresting human evolution.

The prospect of a Transhuman future , which is not far off -  if unchecked
- is  quite  ineradicably written into Modernist dogmas.

To the ‘progressivist’ Modernist  such a critique  will appear
un‘dialectical’, equivalent to   ‘throwing the baby out,  alongside the
bathwater’.

Stated differently , the Loyal Critics of His Modernist Majesty have it
that it is kosher to criticize Modernist realities, but not Modernist
ideals (that they, apparently, share) - omitting to remember the critical,
umbilical, cord connecting the one to the other.

Indeed, Modernism ‘creates’ a  wholly mutant social form , alien to the
anthropic  essence,  and antithetical to its hospitable survival in a
relatively equable natural  world.

It replaces  the vital  nexus  of kinship with contractual relations, to
the point of viewing society itself as a ‘contract’ rather than an
affective  compact.

It postulates, and idealises,  an  asocial ‘individual’ who is prompted
with  self-seeking conduct as the  ontological ‘building block ‘  of this
‘civil’ society.

It also vests this luckless creature  - doomed henceforth to live out the
dual , if  still monotonic, destinies of  a producer/consumer - with
illimitable material drives  that keep it at the wheel ,like hamsters , for
the duration of its  days.

After performing this  radical caesarean , it compensates this  disabled,
rootless entity with  the promise of a slew of meretricious  ‘rights’:
equality, liberty, et.al.

Where/when these dubious benefices are  found insufficient in themselves
(as ever!)  there is that  standby, gaudy, glut of  commodities that might
help while away the idle, empty hour , where such time is available at all
: away , that is, from the daily, lifelong, grind of laboring  -  usually
for  the profit of others, which  is the  abject lot of the  vast majority.

Even were these ‘rights’ to be ‘real’  (i.e. realizable) they would only
help solidify the alienated individual  forlornly within his/her
personalized domain of  cold, ‘rational’ anomie,  floundering without the
crucial rudders of  care and  consideration , manifestly  essential to
anthropic well-being.

But they are tendentious promises only , run through , and razed, by the
designs of the rich and the powerful who manage  the ‘system’, one way or
other,  for their own ends.

To live and die within the solitary  confinement of such  a lightless,
privatized , existence, formally  ‘equal’ to others suffering  similarly
under the same common  fate,  does not , somehow, appear to represent a
cornucopia of psychic riches to be envied, or marveled,  at: let alone
being  the apex of human attainment, as EuroModernism views itself.

Indeed, it is  a condition that , perhaps somewhat more obviously, moves
sentient, feeling , creatures to the  very margins of debauchery  and
destruction (of the Self, or Others)  - as befitting a state of rudderless
anomie.

Paradoxically, the more normless  and amoral the real societal state  of
being, on average, the more glaring the Modernist flaunt  of Constitutions,
Codes, and Rulebooks (yes, it is an Empire , any time of day, blest with  a
commanding  largesse of Laws).

In fact,  even  a casual glance at the  civil/social statistics of
EuroModernist societies would help confirm the very palpable psychic
suffering,  alienation, if you will, that accompanies a life spent  - not
lived! – in such an arid terrain of perpetual, pitiless competition,
one-upmanship, and despoiling, extirpative conflict.

It becomes, inescapably,  a nasty, boorish , Hobbesian world where, as has
justly been remarked, ‘hell is other people’.

The urban jungles of the lead Modernist entity, the US,  illustrate this
ineffable  quality of hellishness , almost in caricature.

Small wonder that desperation, existential angst, and coruscating,
irrequitable , loneliness is the lot of so many of the true believers who
still worship at the Modernist Altar(even whilst being sacrificed on it).

Indeed,  the frantically utopian yearnings of the sensitized , within them,
are a reflex only of
the unbearable , destituting, burdens of that prostrating geist.

The conclusion may well be  indefeasible: that EuroModernism is  little
other than sheer fraud, a scurrilous  Libel upon the   - admittedly
slender  reeds of beneficence of -   the Human Race.

For desocialisation is , for us humans, dehumanization.

Stated differently , the eclipse of gemeinschaft communities by the
hypertrophic gesellschaft formations so favored by Modernist Corporatism –
for it is their choice  creation !-  presages only the slow , suffocating,
extinction of  the civilities, nay decencies, of  anthropic life.
With the latter, dies morality - a societal norm deriving from  the
domestic sphere of child-rearing (the domain, in extremis,  of societal
care and consideration).

Whence arises the amoral  ‘human’ ( a real oxymoron) , now rendered fair
game for manipulation , robotisation , and exploitation - by the powers
that be.

I have tried to point out that  deep underneath the unprecedentedly
egregious  Crises of our times is a real, titanic  struggle  between the
‘mammals’ (warm blooded/heat-seeking) and the ‘reptiles” (cold
blooded/calculating).

I have no doubt that given  time, our  species-being will , eventually,
assert itself: but it  could be  this very  vital  resource  that may be
insufficient to ensure such an  outcome  -   given the overflowing  Tribe
of  Dr Strangeloves (and worse)   that  today populates , in  increasing
overswell, the extant halls of  Power and Governance.

EuroModernism is, in short,  misanthropy, writ large.

 ***
Standpoints , in such analyses of the here , and the hereafter,  are
clearly important.

Any philosophy or ‘social science’ that elides a sound knowledge of a
realist anthropology of the species is, thereby,  simply gratuitous.

Regrettably, almost all of European speculative philosophy , since the
so-called ‘enlightenment’ – including its ‘social sciences’ -  has had
nothing but thin air as its  presumptive,  ontic foundation(whether
pronounced piously or pompously).

Marx’s Tenth Thesis on Feuerbach says: The standpoint of the old
materialism is civil society; the standpoint of the new is human society,
or social humanity.

It can now be seen that both the ‘standpoints’ referred to, above, are
flawed.
‘Civil Society’ is the quintessential artefact of EuroModernism  that
negates every axiom of anthropic society, in its constitution, being the
playground (or is it the battleground?) of ‘universal egoism’ -  where each
sees the other, and society itself,  as a means  to his/her personal ends.

But the  novel ‘standpoint’ he proffers, in its stead,  is also pure
fiction: indeed, what realist basis exists for such a  fantasy?

Now, to the extent that his ‘human society’ is none other than tribal
formations  - first overrun by European conquistadores and then  eulogized
as ‘primitive communism’ – there would be , thence, a solid  base  for a
very real, already achieved,  ‘Utopia’.

But it is not at all clear that  that is what is being referred to:
‘primitive communism’ was , undeniably, an original point of departure for
Marx, and others -   but his later ideas left that inspiration behind as he
went on to embrace a radical,  ‘left-wing’ version of Liberal EuroModernist
ideas ( I am aware that, in his very last years, Marx changed his mind
about many such issues, but his legacy and legators did not scale that into
their plans).

As I have written elsewhere,  the underlying vision of Marx, like so many
of his  ‘progressive’ contemporaries,  is  not too far apart - with some
hyperbole -   from a  secular version of the Judeo-Christian ‘kingdom of
heaven’.

The irony of otherwise materialist philosophers, plim with fanciful ideals
is far from  a trifling one.

Most European ‘enlightenment’ philosophers , in this genre, theorized even
more  ‘speculatively’,  much like the US ‘declaration of independence’
positing boldly,  , one presumes with  a divinely granted perspicacity,
various human attributes given us by an invisible  ‘Creator’.

I do not, given such discouraging precedents, advocate, in turn, yet
another  ‘pie-in-the-sky’ Program leading to a Promised Land: instead, I
point to ‘actually  achieved utopia’, i.e.,  the innocuous,
self-sustaining, anthropic communities that lived contentedly (if within
unbreachable anthropic limits) on the basis of  affective,  kindred based,
convivial relations - almost ‘dialectically’ antipodal to any and all
versions of EuroModernist societies.

As I have  written, we can’t simply  ‘imagine’ ourselves into a ‘new
world’  (despite the fact that there is, as has been noted, ‘a hidden value
to day-dreaming’) , on the basis of a grand, even noble,  ‘camaraderie of
ideals’, which is largely the way EuroModernists  went about their plans –
to unscalable human misery such as  has chararacterised social engineering,
Capitalist and Socialist, in the Twentieth Century.

Anthropic society is real: it is not difficult to fathom -  if studied
seriously, without  the aids of colored or discolored lenses.

It is neither good nor bad: it is what it is.

I argue that the essence of our species-being lies in kinship : and ,
accordingly,  I suggest that societies that are based on that live
possibly more satisfying lives, in consequence.

I point to the universality of the family as the ultimate warren of
nurturance , care, and warmth for the human animal as providing  powerful
testimony in support of that supposition.

This is not utopian banner-waving, nor does it constitute  unduly wishful
thinking: au contraire, it is a serious argument  that is  as yet ,
providentially ?, verifiable empirically  :   given that  a  few such
societies still  exist where, by sheer inadvertence, the Modernists, be
they European or Otherwise, have not annihilated them completely.

As such , the Argument  is in  point of fact, for better or for worse,
realist in the extreme.

One Final matter: Modernism is the motherlode from which both Capitalism
and Socialism derive.

Putting aside Socialism , that derived from  an appreciation of the more
egregious defaults of EuroCapitalism (obvious to both Dickens  and Engels,
for example, in England), the issue might  be posed: which came first,
Modernism or  Capitalism?

Unlike the chicken-or-the-egg conundrum (‘solved’, apparently,  to their
own satisfaction by Brit researchers sometime ago), this one is rather easy.

It is Modernism that first validates individualized,(i.e. anti-social) ,
unilateral, self-interest, unmindful of the community interest,  as
socially appropriate: it is this glaring watershed that separates not only
Europe from its own history,  but also from the history of ALL  existing
societies , globally.

That idea found  its resonance in the subsequent approval of the ill-fated
Profit-motive ( that so disfigures all scapes of Europe,  forever after)
which is the mantra, and mainstay,  of Modernist Capitalism.

So, yes, EuroModernism was the foster-nurse and midwife of EuroCapitalism.
                                        REFERENCES
R. KANTH,  BREAKING WITH THE ENLIGHTENMENT, 1997
______,      AGAINST EUROCENTRISM, 2005
______,      THE CHALLENGE OF EUROCENTRISM, 2009
______,      THE POST-HUMAN SOCIETY, 2013
---------,       TWO LECTURES  ON EUROCENTRISM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDwQrpfom9M<
https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v1/url?u=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v%3DZDwQrpfom9M&k=AjZjj3dyY74kKL92lieHqQ%3D%3D%0A&r=Ul8alR2l08keT7LU6kfGk%2FLPjA2GeWA1tJYXAdjLdto%3D%0A&m=l80kmrQP5oD9Yn9GW3wVClP85XRBN%2FmCVzJs2Jxsw8M%3D%0A&s=86a419fc904ebbfcaf93be689bd47970ffd28239a7951a7b16c96396fd034db4
[© R.Kanth 2014]


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