2
Modern and Anti-Modern

The history of modernity has been accompanied from the outset by anti-modern movements. 'Modernity' describes an era of rapid social change initiated by a combination of philosophical enlightenment, scientific and technological revolution, and the rise of democracy and human rights. This stimulus is still active today and has even received a further boost through globalization. All the declarations pronouncing the death of modernity were premature. We have not entered a new era of postmodernity but rather a phase of global modernity. It is not a mere copy of the classical modernity formed in Europe and America but rather is producing a pluralistic and diverse modernity.

Modernity has never been a 'one-size-fits-all' phenomenon, but the different forms nevertheless share certain features: the transformation from agrarian to industrial societies was accompanied by rapid urbanization, higher levels of education, social and geographical mobility, distinct living styles and the growth of the middle classes. It is unclear whether this will also apply in the long term to the democratic side of modernity, the striving for self-determination and self-government. We can no longer rely on the good old 'stage theory', according to which economic modernization, rising income and education automatically lead to democracy and the rule of law. It seems likely that in the long run a self-assured globally networked middle class will not be satisfied with the material conveniences of modernity but will also demand civil liberties. There are also good reasons for assuming that the transition to an innovation-driven economy will lead to conflicts with centralized power structures and authoritarian hierarchies. Private property demands legal security; complex national economies are reliant on a transparent information flow, market-dependent coordination and a high degree of personal responsibility. But the trend towards democracy is not inevitable. Nationalism and fear of instability are strong counter-forces. The Chinese example will show whether it will be possible in the long run to keep the processes of modernization and democratization separate. It is no exaggeration to say that the future world order will depend on this question.

Escape into the community

Every new stage of social modernization engenders fear and resistance. There is a recurrent dialectic between modern and anti-modern tendencies. Scientific demystification of the world versus romanticism, secularization versus religious fundamentalism, individualism versus the longing for community, globalization versus nationalism, and permanent change versus the desire for security are all opposites occurring again and again in ever-changing forms. Karl Popper described this conflicting constellation as the opposition between 'open' and 'closed' societies. The Open Society and Its Enemies, his monumental study of the history of ideas, was published in London in 1945. Popper wrote at a time when continental Europe was dominated by the two totalitarian powers of the twentieth century. It was his contribution to the struggle for freedom.

Twenty years earlier, Helmuth Plessner had published his far-sighted book The Limits of Community, which discussed 'social radicalism' on the left and right.1 For Plessner, communism and fascism have a common core: combating modern society in the name of the community. This was not a random idea. As a response to the collapse of the empire and the 'dictated peace' of Versailles, a conservative revolutionary movement formed in the Weimar Republic calling for 'national socialism' and a foreign policy based on an anti-western alliance with the Soviet Union. One of its most influential masterminds was Arthur Moeller van den Bruck, whose major work Das Dritte Reich (The Third Reich) became a powerful political pamphlet. Moeller's main ideological enemy was liberalism as an individualistic 'community-destroying' theory and way of life: 'Liberalism is the expression of a society that is no longer a community.'2 For all their political differences - the one völkisch nationalist and the other proletarian internationalist - there was a common denominator between the fascist Volksgemeinschaft (people's community) and Bolshevism. Both were homogenizing utopias, and it is that which gave them their potential for violence. The homogenization of societies with highly differentiated social, ethnic and cultural components came down to a policy of destruction - of the 'class enemy' on the one hand and of bluts- und volksfremde Elemente (non-German and non-ethnic elements) on the other.

Community stands for the immediacy of personal relations, the continuity of traditions and the primacy of the collective over the individual. Society is the public sphere, the institutions, the functional relations, the 'art of business' and a game with changing roles. In communist and fascist anti-bourgeois discourse, society is equated with alienation. The primacy of abstraction (law, money, global trade) is contrasted with the utopia of immediacy, nearness and community. In both, it is a case of eliminating differences - be it in a classless society or in the fascist Volksgemeinschaft. The removal of heterogeneity leads to violence. The elimination of the class enemy - the bourgeoisie, the kulaks, the counter-revolutionary elements - is equivalent to the destruction of the alien race that threatens the national body. It is no coincidence that 'putrefaction' and 'purification' were central battle cries in both Stalinism and Nazism. The road to homogeneity is lined with massacred bodies.

The crucial point is that the opposition to modernity comes from within itself. This conflict penetrates as far as the awareness of individual members of society. Most people have an ambivalent relationship to modernity, albeit to differing degrees. The history of progress has two sides. It is in fact progress towards a richer life and, in the long run, also towards democracy and civility. At the same time, it is a history of losses and horrors of all kinds. Walter Benjamin expressed the negative side of progress in a deeply pessimistic picture: modernity is a whirlwind pulling us backwards into the future, while we look back on a chain of disasters. The ceaseless change makes many people tired. It was Robert Musil who coined the aphorism 'progress would be wonderful, if only it would stop.'

Two world wars, the Holocaust and the atomic bomb have deprived modernity of its confidence in progress. Its destructive potential is darkening the future. It is true that in many respects modernity is a risky historical formation. Setting free the individual also implies a loss of social cohesion. Global markets are volatile. Science and technology are enormous productive forces but they also harbour potential threats. Competition produces winners and losers. Nothing stays as it is. This produces anxiety and the desire for the support of an established community. It should not be forgotten that fascism and communism, the two major totalitarian counter-movements to modern liberalism, were born in Europe. They were combative alternatives to 'bourgeois democracy', to the individualistic and materialistic culture of the West. They filled the metaphysical emptiness of liberal democracy with a this-worldly religion, which made individuals feel as if they were part of a heroic whole. Ideology- and emotion-driven movements fulfil an elementary psychopolitical function: they respond to 'the desire of men to find and to know their definite place in the world, and to belong to a powerful collective body.'3

Alexander Dugin's crusade against modernity

Anyone studying today's masterminds spearheading the opposition to modern liberalism will stumble sooner or later on the Russian politician and publicist Alexander Dugin, the intellectual Rasputin of the New Right who operates at the border between Bolshevism and fascism. He sees 'modernity and its ideological basis - individualism, liberal democracy, capitalism, consumerism and so on' to be the cause of the future catastrophe of humanity, and the global domination of the western lifestyle as the reason for the 'final degradation of the Earth.'4 Dugin's anti-liberalism rant is in no way original. He joins a long line of nationalist revolutionary ideologues. He copies almost word for word what Moeller van den Bruck wrote in 1923: 'Liberalism has undermined cultures. It has annihilated religions. It has destroyed nations. It is the self-dissolution of humanity.'5

He agitates incessantly against the liberal universality of the West, which seeks to impose its way of life, its values and institutions on the entire world - be it through subtle mechanisms of fashion, music and cinema or through brute force. For Dugin, liberalism's claim to global validity is merely a hidden form of totalitarianism. Its passion for freedom is in reality the 'most disgusting formula of slavery' because it deludes people into rebelling against 'God, against traditional values, against the moral and spiritual foundations of his people and his culture'.6 Now that liberalism has defeated its ideological opponents - communism and...