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Wealth is the source of power
under capitalism while reverse was the case under previous
systems. In other words, the law of value governs all aspects
of life under capitalism. The world has seen unprecedented
development of productive forces since 1800 under capitalism.
Marx’s prognosis about the emergence of objective conditions
for a worldwide socialist revolution on account of the
inherent contradictions of the capitalist system has not come
true mainly because of its immense flexibility to overcome the
crisis. However, this is not a permanent feature as thought by
many and Amin is emphatic that the flexibility of capitalism
will not prevail over its ideological and institutional
limitations.
Unlike
dogmatic Marxists, Amin lays due emphasis on the role of
culture in social transformation. He is convinced that no
social revolution is possible in the absence of cultural
revolution. Capitalism is not to be reduced to its economic
dimensions alone. The modern capitalist world is based on its
own specific culture. It has three leading components: first,
individual freedom; second, the autonomous character of human
reason liberated from the bonds of religious faith; and,
third, an indissoluble link between reason and liberation.
Renaissance, Enlightenment and the Social Contract are three
decisive stages in the crystallisation of this cultural
revolution. This historical process was a necessary prelude to
the industrial revolution after which capitalism acquired its
concrete shape.
However, this
is not a linear process as thought by Max Waber (protestanism
giving birth to capitalism). The process is much more complex
and there is rather a concomitant transformation of culture,
economy and politics. The simplified notion of culture has
given rise to "culturalist" strategies applied by
numerous intellectual currents as diverse as communitarians,
religious fundamentalists, the Greens, and post-modernists.
These trends, opines Amin, are cooptable and are impotent to
contest capitalist globalisation.
Among what
Amin calls current intellectual fashions, postmodernism is the
most important and potent movement that has turned many
assumptions upside down. Modernity, a project of the
Enlightenment, painted a rosy picture of the future of
mankind, treating progress as a linear and unending process.
Post-modernity, as emphasised by post-modernists, negates this
smug assumption. However, Amin does not believe in the
dichotomy between modernity and its subsequent avatar,
post-modernity.
Earlier it
was assumed that there was a governing cosmic order that
imposed itself on human beings and their societies. Man’s
task was to seek out the divine commandments controlling his
life, often through the utterances of prophets. The modern
era, an era of freedom, but also of insecurity, began with a
philosophical break from that past. With freeing of political
power from divine sanction and the natural world from magical
influences, the way to the free exercise of human reason was
opened. This rupture from the pull of the cosmic order defines
the modern world. For Amin, there is no other definition of
modernity and this philosophical rupture shapes the core of
modernity. Thus, modernity is an unending process and it is
illogical to close it, to be followed by what is termed as
post-modernity.
Modernity
presumes that human beings make their own history and this
process is a long way from being outlived. History acquires
meaning through social action. Post-modernism negates this.
This makes it, in Amin’s opinion, a negative utopia in
contradiction to positive utopias, which calls for the
transformation of the world. Modernity can progress only by
going beyond capitalism and post-modernists incorrectly deny
this.
Amin agrees
with Michel Foucault, a powerful figure of post-modernist
thought, that language is, for power structures a medium of
domination and repression. It is an important contribution to
a radical critical theory aimed at human emancipation.
However, he fails to identify the sources of and causes for
the existence of these power structures.
Likewise,
Amin finds fault with the analysis of other important
post-modernists like Jacques Derrida and Jean Francois Lytard
and dismisses post-modernism as "a wayward concept".
Post-modernists might legitimately retort that Amin’s
analysis is too simplistic and facile. Post-modernists may
have no answer to many ills pestering modern or what they
would like to call the post-modern society but their diagnosis
of the ailing system is too powerful to be brushed aside in
such a cavalier fashion.
Communications
is another important intellectual fashion analysed by Amin.
Radio, telephone, photography, cinema, television, fax,
computer and internet are its important tools. Marshall
McLuhan’s well-known formulation that medium is the message
is treated as naive because communication is taken as an end
in itself and proper importance is not attached to its
content. Technological progress, though highly important, does
not directly govern history, which is rather a matter of
struggle for control over the way the technologies are used.
This underscores the importance of class struggle, the outcome
of which finally decides whether technology is used for the
furtherance of vested interests or for the liberation of the
individual in society. New technologies are undoubtedly
powerful instruments that would greatly decide the future of
mankind the shape of which would largely depend on the social
forces that control these technologies.
Pure
economics is another intellectual fad these days. Economics is
rated as a science like physics. This ignores the basic
difference between social and physical sciences. Its various
fields like prices, wages, incomes, rates of interest,
exchange rates, total employment, etc. are analysed with the
aspiration of scientific truth. Society is not made of direct
encounters among individuals. It is a much more complex
structure made of classes, nations, states, business,
collective projects, and political and ideological forces.
Exponents of pure economics take no notice of these realities.
Mankind is lucky that doctors have not made up a ‘pure
medicine’ after the fashion of ‘pure economics’.
Pure
economics presumes that the market functions with the force of
natural law, producing a ‘general equilibrium’. This
serves a fundamental ideological need to legitimise capitalism
by making it synonymous with rationality. Thus, capitalism can
be portrayed as something eternal and immutable. Pure
economics is used as a tool for crisis management but this is
definitely not a way out of the crisis.
In this slim volume Samir
Amin succinctly examines several thought currents and trends
that poses a serious challenge to classical Marxism. One may
differ with some of his formulations but nonetheless, they are
thought provoking.
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