The Rise of the Rich: A New View of Modern World History

2. Modern World Political History Between Libera lism and Political Economy

26 Modern World Political History Between Liberalism and Political Economy W h e r e a s i n t h e p r e v i o u s c h a p t e r we concentrated on economics and history, in this chapter we will focus on politics and history. What we find are more examples of how New Liberalism is attempting to prop up Hegel. New Liberals appear to recognize that to do so at this point requires even more sacrifices on their part. For example, to retain the traditional West–Third World distinction found in Hegel, New Liberalism appears to be willing at this point to abandon a number of its traditional positions. This we will also find is the case in contemporary Marxism, contemporary Marxism often following the lead of liberalism, occasionally making small critical interventions. I will conclude this chapter by illustrating how the use of the Rise of the Rich provides an alternative approach to politics. To introduce New Liberalism’s politics, commonly called New Politics , I am choosing three of its concepts, these being the ones that play a demonstrable role in the conceptualization of world history. The first of these concepts is that of the Risk Society. Risk Society is a characterization of the modern West. The second of these is Fourth World New Social Movement; this in effect is a description of Third World political struggle. And the third of these is the Fallacy of Westphalianism, which is how New Politics explains the importance of the concept of empire over that of the nation-state. These three concepts are very much interrelated. Risk Society is one of the distinctive categories of New Liberalism today. It is not one that is found in the work of earlier writers in the liberal 2 modern world political history   |   27 tradition. Risk exists as a part of the earlier liberal scholarship, but it is not something that defines the society. There were always adventurers and individuals who took risks, but they were on the whole outside of society. The society itself was characterized on some other basis. Over the past generation, there has been a change. Risk Society has become central to how New Politics characterizes what is new and modern about Western society. If New Politics depicts the West as a risk-taking society, how does it characterize the Third World or underdeveloped world? Here one encounters the term Fourth World and the term New Social Movement, terms unknown to earlier liberalism. What one now finds is a virtual abandonment of such concepts as Third World or underdevelopment, terms that had been the mainstay of liberal theory for the preceding half-century. To a degree, of course, realities have changed. One could argue that underdevelopment is not the key that it once was because development is not the key that it once was. Today, some would claim, one may find poverty, but one may also find rapid development and new wealth thanks to global capitalism ; thus, it no longer makes sense to keep using the term Third World in the sense of economically behind à la the older liberalism. Some writers who want to emphasize the dated nature of the term Third World even use the phrase the “end of the Third World.” If one wants to understand these countries correctly, one needs to look at them as the opposite of risk society, and here one finds what appears to be a growing consensus. For New Liberals, this new consensus appears to be that one needs to look at these countries more in terms of culture and identity than in terms of history. To introduce this development in New Liberal thought, a logical category would be Fourth World New Social Movements. The use of the term Fourth World allows one to bypass the term Third World. It also thereby allows one to establish an alternative epistemological basis for the analysis of that part of the world. According to New Politics, the Third World nation-state is a Western imposition. Its failure on an economic and political level is proof of its unsuitability. Success for these countries would require their working from what for them would be more authentic models. Authenticity in all probability would not be found by their emulating Western political models, but it would come from the local culture, hence the 28   |   the rise of the rich use of...