The Fourth Political Theory

beyond left and right but against the center

The principal aim of Professor Dugin's work is not simply to deconstruct the previous failed political theories, which he lists as fascism, communism, and liberalism, but to fashion a new fourth theory, utilising what may be learnt from some of the previous models after their deconstruction rather than dismissing them outright on the basis of particulars worthy of rejection. That is not to say that the Fourth Political Theory is simply a synthesis of ideas that in their singular form have seen their day. Dugin is conscious of the necessity to bring something new to the table, with one of the principal of these novel ideas being the rejection of the subjects of the old ideologies, such as class, race, or the individual, in favour of the existential Heideggerian concept of Dasein (roughly Being or being-in-the-world. Literally da – there; sein – being) as the primary actor.

Along with the more geopolitical aspects, the Fourth Political Theory lies at the heart of Eurasianism, and constitutes its philosophical core. Drawing its roots from France's New Right, the Third Way, the German Conservative Revolution, and thinkers as diverse as Heidegger, Boaz, Evola, and de Benoist, the Fourth Political Theory could be summed up by what Alain Soral calls "la gauche du travail et la droite des valeurs" ("the worker’s left and the moral right"). It is important to note that, just like Alain Soral, Dugin rejects ethnocentrism. The Fourth Political Theory rejects not only liberalism (capitalism), but also communism (socialism) and fascism, preferring a blend of the two non-capitalistic systems in order to prevent each one’s particular shortcomings.

Even though it believes in multipolarity, Russia is central to Eurasianism, as is the goal of creating a "European Space," encompassing both Europe and Russia. The objective is clearly to shift the balance of global power from Washington to Moscow, although Dugin denies this in an interview with Arktos published at the end of the book. 

What struck me on arriving in the US was the interest in and presence of other cultures, especially in relation to spirituality. Spiritual, New Age and occult centers (or at least bookstores) existed and seemed relatively vibrant. Religion was also far more important than in England, whether that was Christianity, Judaism, Tibetan Buddhism, or something else. There was (and of course still is) a big Chinatown, where Chinese was spoken (London’s is tiny). I practiced Kung fu in the early morning at a park in Chinatown and went for tea at a Chinese place afterward; I went to read in a French cafe that was always empty and the owners were actually French; I went to the spiritual and occult bookstores; to the museums, to Japanese events with my Japanese friends; and so on. Moving to the US, my life was steeped much more consciously in the archaic and the “Traditional” than in the much older culture of England.

Capitalism, of course, always seizes on what is different and exciting, and repackages it for the mainstream, often destroying the culture-creating roots as a consequence. But, if we leave aside this aspect, and get back to the people, America’s history is one with as much depth as anywhere else. Indeed, while Britain and Europe ape the most crass aspects of the USA, Americans often look to something more integral.

I defend the plurality of civilizations, the absence of the universal (Western) pattern of social development. I strongly oppose any kind of xenophobia and nationalism as the bourgeois artificial and essentially Modern construction. 
I am not communist nor Marxist because I refuse the materialism of any kind and deny the progress. So much more correct to describe my views as Fourth Political Theory and traditionalism. 

Mao was right affirming that socialism should be not exclusively proletarian but also peasant and based on the ethnic traditions. It is closer to the truth than universalist industrial internationalist version represented by trotskyism. But I think that sacred part in Maoism was missed or underdeveloped. Its links with Confucianism and Taoism were weak. Maoism is too Modern for me. For China it would be best solution to preserve the socialism and political domination of national-communist party (as today) but develop more sacred tradition –  Confucianismand Taoism. It is rather significant that ideas of Heidegger are attentively explored now by hundreds of Chinese scientists. I think Fourth Political Theory could fit to contemporary China best of all.

Fukuyama's main tenets

never getting to the core of things – "We [USA] are not good at democratizing countries". But then again, who in the world asked you to do that "for us"? This question has to be answered honestly—as a matter of fact, it is Paikin not asking this that proves the show to be sold in advance;

replacing truth for political correctness – "Liberal democracies don't fight each other". The idea is mischievous at least for three reasons:

the problem with this assumption relies not only in the accuracy of the claim itself (there has been wars between democracies), but also in the fact that its credo is precisely what leads to war against other kinds of regime, who are considered intrinsically a crime punishable by war; therefore, the claim recognizes its prejudicial vision of the Other as a phenomenon and legitimizes the necessity of their killing.

Russia, for its part, is seeking to implement a new geopolitical axis with Beijing and Tehran, a factor of multipolar balance of power opposed to the Atlanticist endeavors. The Chinese, after long procrastination, are no longer hiding their desire to “de- Americanize the world.”  Yet, the future of Russia, a great power, albeit still fragile, in a similar way as China, with its own inner contradictions, remains uncertain. Countries of Eastern Europe are still hesitant  as to which path to follow—all the more so as Germany is seeking to replace the former USSR as a federating factor in Eastern and Central Europe.

We are witnessing a restructuring of the forms of world domination. The United States, with its financial markets, its armed forces, its language and its culture industries remains the leading world power. Its economic impact, however, is decreasing bit by bit (its share of global industrial output has fallen from 45% in 1945 to 17.5% today), with the dollar representing today only a third of world trade in comparison to more than a half in 2000.  The process of “de- dollarization” has already and simultaneously begun, in oil and gas trading and on the monetary front. Russia and China, emulated by other Third World countries, are using more and more their national currencies in trade and investment. The project of trade in energy and raw materials, without resorting to the dollar, is beginning to take shape. Meanwhile, the purchase of gold is gathering momentum. The advent of a new international reserve currency, designed to replace the dollar, seems inevitable.

From our examination thus far, it should be obvious that there are too many misconceptions about Alexander Dugin’s thought being circulated among Right-wingers. These misconceptions are being used to dismiss the value of his work and deceive members of Right-wing groups into believing that Dugin is a subversive intellectual who must be rejected as an enemy. Many other important Right-wing intellectuals have been similarly dismissed among certain circles, due to practices of a kind of in-group gleichschaltung, closing off any thinker who is not seen as readily agreeable. It is important to overcome such tendencies and support an intellectual expansion of the Right, which is the only way to overcome the present liberal-egalitarian hegemony. People need to take a more careful and unbiased look at Dugin’s works and ideas, as with other controversial thinkers. Of course, Dugin is not without flaws and imperfections (nor is any other thinker), but these flaws can be overcome when his thought is balanced with that of other intellectuals, especially the Revolutionary Conservatives and the New Rightists.

According to Alexander Dugin, the twenty-first century will be defined by the conflict between Eurasianists and Atlanticists. The Eurasianists defend the need for every people and culture on Earth to be allowed to develop in its own way, free of interference, and in accordance with their own particular values. Eurasianists thus stand for tradition and for the blossoming variety of cultures, and a world in which no single power holds sway over all the others. Opposing them are the Atlanticists. They stand for ultra-liberalism in both economics and values, stopping at nothing to expand their influence to every corner of the globe, unleashing war, terror, and injustice on all who oppose them, both at home and abroad. This camp is represented by the United States and its allies around the world, who seek to maintain America’s unipolar hegemony over the Earth. The Eurasianists believe that only a strong Russia, working together with all those who oppose Atlanticism worldwide, can stop them and bring about the multipolar world they desire. This book introduces their basic ideas. Eurasianism is on the rise in Russia today, and the Kremlin’s geopolitical policies are largely based on its tenets, as has been acknowledged by Vladimir Putin himself. It is reshaping Russia’s geopolitics, and its influence is already changing the course of world history.

From the moment of its inception in the 1920s, Eurasianism has always opposed the global domination of the West, European universalism, and supported the uniqueness of the Russian civilization. Therefore, Eurasianism is, indeed, an anti-Western ideology in the sense that it rejects the Western society’s right to impose its criteria of good and evil as the universal norm. Russia is an independent Orthodox-Eurasian civilization, rather than the periphery of Europe, insisted Eurasianists, following their ideological predecessors, the Slavophiles, along with other Russian conservatives.

Gradually, Eurasianism was enriched with the methods of classic geopolitics that were based upon the dualism of the Land and Sea civilizations. Englishman Halford Mackinder introduced this concept in the first half of the twentieth century; it was further developed by American strategists such as Nicholas Spykman and Zbigniew Brzezinski. Here, Russia serves as the core of the Land civilization, Eurasia’s Heartland, and is thus doomed to carry out a centuries-old battle against the Anglo-Saxon world. In the past, its core was the British Empire, and, from the second half of the twentieth century onward, this was the United States. Therefore, Eurasianists oppose Western hegemony, American expansionism, and Liberal values and support the distinct Russian civilization, religion, and tradition. Furthermore, Eurasianists not only oppose the West, but also Russia’s own Westernizers and moderates: Liberals, first and foremost.

In Ernst Jünger’sIn Ernst Jünger’s writings, four great Figures appear successively, each corresponding to a quite distinct period of the author’s life. They are, chronologically, the Front Soldier, the Worker, the Rebel, and the Anarch. Through these Figures one can divine the passionate interest Jünger has always held toward the world of forms. Forms, for him, cannot result from chance occurrences in the sensible world. Rather, forms guide, on various levels, the ways sensible beings express themselves: the “history” of the world is above all morphogenesis. As an entomologist, moreover, Jünger was naturally inclined to classifications. Beyond the individual, he identifies the species or the kind. One can see here a subtle sort of challenge to individualism: “The unique and the typical exclude one another,” he writes. Thus, as Jünger sees it, the universe is one where Figures give epochs their metaphysical significance. In this brief esposition, I would like to compare and contrast the great Figures identified by Jünger.

We can also hear the words of some indigenous masters from Brazil, saying that each person has the responsibility of making the intercultural dialogue happen inside themselves, because we can only recognize the differences as being both unsurmontable and yet all too natural. As such, this dialogue occurs only in a situation of double-endedly openness:

1. open to the culture of the Other, whom we recognize as being not an Object, but a full Subject of his own, having, then, as much right to existence as we do;

2. being entirely open to our own culture, or being open to it in its entirety, because otherwise there is no way to be fully recognized as a Subject in turn, and demandSujbec. This second point has two meanings to be conjugated:

a) it is almost impossible to be fully recognized as a Subject by the Other without an inner understanding of such;

b) it is not possible to know what to want when one does not recognize themselves as a full Subject; in this case, one easily "swallows" anything that is given to him without further thinking, becoming, by acting so, a mere Object.

Like Dugin, one discovers in Heidegger, whom Dugin routinely calls “the greatest thinker,” a combination of traditional philosophical interests with self-consciously modern concerns. But again, like Dugin, Heidegger was a reactionary modernist, someone who combatted modernity by underlining its defects and shallowness and by trying to prove that the modern enterprise was headed in a very bad direction. Heidegger tried to do this without returning to metaphysical assumptions that he believed belonged to a vanished past. This, too, as in the case of Dugin, is not as simple as it would first appear. There is something backward-looking in both thinkers, as the past is for them a source of creativity. This is totally different from the kind of “cultural conservative” this writer has often encountered: a tedious eccentric who manifests his “conservatism” by making himself the butt of gentle jokes. Such a person may frequent clubs where tea and crumpets are served or may introduce himself as a liturgical traditionalist with an ostentatious interest in Gothic architecture, but he is, above all, an expert at staying out of controversy that could threaten his career or social calendar.

In Political Sciences, the concept of totalitarianism is subtended in communist and fascist ideologies, who openly proclaim the superiority of the whole (class and society in communism and socialism; State, in fascism; race in national-socialism) over the private (individual).

According to Prof Alexander Dugin, Vladimir Putin stands at a crossroads. Throughout his career as the President of Russia, Putin has attempted to balance two opposing sides of his political nature: one side is a liberal democrat who seeks to adopt Western-style reforms in Russia and maintain good relations with the United States and Europe, and the other is a Russian patriot who wishes to preserve Russia's traditions and reassert her role as one of the great powers of the world. According to Dugin, this balancing act cannot go on if Putin wishes to enjoy continuing popular support among the Russian people. Putin must act to preserve Russia's unique identity and sovereignty in the face of increasing challenges, both from Russian liberals at home and from foreign powers. Russia is no longer strong enough to stand on her own, he writes. In order to do this, Russia must cooperate with other dissenting powers who oppose the new globalist order of liberalism to bring about a multipolar world, in which no single nation wields supreme power, but rather several major powers keep each other in balance. Russia is crucial to this effort, in Dugin's view, and indeed, its own survival as a unique and independent civilisation is dependent on a geopolitical shift away from the unipolar world represented by America's unchecked supremacy. This fascinating book, written by an informal advisor to Putin and a Kremlin insider, is the first of its kind in English.

http://www.arktos.com/our-authors/alexander-dugin/alexander-dugin-putin-...

The forest in sacred geography is close to the mountains in a definite sense. The symbolism of the tree is related to the symbolism of the mountain (both the former and the latter designate the world axis). Therefore in tellurocracies the forest also plays a peripheral function — it, too, is the “place of the priests” (druids, magi, hermits), but also at the same time the “place of demons”, i.e. archaic residuals from a vanished past. Neither the forest zone can be the centre of the overland empire.

The tundra represents the northern analogue to the steppe and the desert, although the cold climate makes it much less significant from a geopolitical point of view. This “periphericity” reaches its apogee with ices, which, similarly to the mountains, are deeply archaic zones. It is indicative that the eskimo shamanic tradition implies departing alone among ices, where to the future shaman the world beyond is opened out. Thus, ices are a hieratic zone, the threshold of a different world.

  Philosophy is not only a science, like the other scientific disciplines, but it is primarily a state of mind. The very meaning of the word philosophy (derived from the Greek compound philo + sophia  love of wisdom) indicates a special attitude and a special purpose. In particular, philosophy is a free and unprejudiced quest for truth, for the sake of having a vision of the truth (i.e. theorizing) and for the sake of the human being whose consciousness is motivated, attracted, and enriched by the quest for the truth. Thus, even though philosophy can be considered as a science, its object consists of all the objects that are studied by the other sciences. Moreover, philosophy is the creation of a world of meanings that expresses the spiritual freedom of the human being. 

    The main areas of philosophy are the following: (i) ontology (or metaphysics): it is concerned with questions about the nature and the mode of being of the world and of God; (ii) epistemology: it is concerned with questions about the validity of knowledge, and it investigates how we know what we think we know; and (iii) ethics: it investigates how we discern right from wrong, and, also, it is concerned with the meaning of ‘good life’.

The hatred of Strelkov is that by an enemy race, not in the biological, but in the spiritual sense. The race of technologists, con artists, bureaucrats, manipulators, and merchants. Werner Sombart used to say that there are two types of people: the race of merchants and that of heroes. Europe of Modernity is the result of triumphant merchants (capitalism) over the race of heroes (Middle Ages). Strelkov is the Russian Middle Ages. After all, Orthodoxy itself cannot be “modern”: this would be a parody, a simulacrum. It could either be Ancient or Medieval. “Modernity” is the patrimony of the Antichrist. Thus, Strelkov is from that which once passed. But not that which once passed, and is no more, but rather that which truly was, and still is, as the core of our souls, as an arcane center of the Russian identity.

Look, today everyone puts forward completely utopian projects and do not hesitate to do it. Either universal gay-parade with post-human beings possessed by virtual currency and physical immortality (liberals). Then the global caliphate (wahhabis).
That messianic world center in Israel that feed rod of iron ger-toshav (Zionists). The "realists" and supporters of the status quo (say, nothing will happen and everything will be so as it is now as usual, as if everything had been so as of now, nonsense - everything was always different and it depends on what we are as free human beings want deeply in our hearts) grumble full absurdity - there is nothing more utopian than the desire to preserve all, that exists at the moment. In anyway, we are led by big projects.
Why should we, as traditionalists and fundamental conservatives hide behind the façade of our plans and projects of dry rational calculations (no one believes us anyway). Therefore, it's possible to speak openly: our goal is Indo-European Empire - from Vladivostok to Dublin. Under the banner of Christ and the Great Monarch. The People's Empire, ruled by the wise and courageous. Merchants and polit-technologists, oligarchs and usurers won't exist there. 
Everyone who does not like it can go out or sink in the other, disgusting, in my opinion, utopias.

We aren't going to limit ourselves by annexing Crimea. That for sure. Yesterday the reunion with the Crimea was a victory for us. Today this is infinitely small thing. Rates rise. The peoples of South-East of Ukraine are waking up gradually. It is exactly that "long at harnessing" and "swift in riding" (old Russian proverb) .

All the important is yet to come. We do not expect a quick victory. Everything is to be paid for. Now we are witnesses of a birth of a new political reality, that is why everything acquires a special significance. This is not a technical enterprise, not a bargain. This is history itself. The struggle for Ukraine - is a struggle for reunification of slavic peoples. Today it is clear that this reunion should be geographically different. Galicia and a number pro-western areas, and as well a large part of Kiev do not strive to Unity. We understand that. We won't drag anyone by force. But we will not leave nor betray ours. However, for everything you have to fight and struggle to create a new political and historical reality.

Great Antonin Artaud, who spontaneously and being a real madman opened and lived through the deepest doctrines of Tradition, wrote about a special "new schizophrenic body”, to which strives the dark depths of the will of the researcher after a painful, unbearable understanding of the decay of flesh, after "dismemberment" and "self-dismemberment”.
This "new schizophrenic body" does not have separate organs, members. It’s head – is without eyes, mouth, ears, nostrils, etc. Just a "head". Likewise, the rest of the body - which, by the way, in this case, can not be strictly separated from the "head" or, more precisely, what are said to be conditionally "head" - has no division into "hands" and "feet", more over on "internal organs" and "external". The essence of the "new schizophrenic body" in that it is fundamentally indivisible, that it - postcriminal, over-sacrificial, has no chance of becoming neither a victim, or to act as an executioner. This reality – is the reality of the soul, taken in its most free and independent form. It is much closer to the real "I" of the person.

The concept of a “Russian civilization” undergirds the vision of the Russian Eurasianists. This is both a political theory and a source of foreign policy decisions. The “imperial mission” of a society is not about local values, but cosmic ideas. In politics, these “imperial ideologies” serve as the foundation of global rule.

Eurasianism as foreign policy refers to Russian geopolitical space.  Russia is a “cosmos,” it takes smaller “solar systems” under its wing to create a loose federation of allied nations and states.  In some instances, it rejects the very notion of “nation-statism” in that a true civilization can be only a federation, not a state.

Prior to the well known Alexander Dugin, Eurasianism has a rich ideological heritage unknown to those who cannot read Russian.  PM Bitsilli (1953) took a broad look at global history.  “Rhythm” is specific to a people.  It is dialectical both in that it is becoming (rather than being) and takes the familiar trinity as undifferentiated unity – fragmentation – reflective unity.  This also was essential to the metaphysics of Karsavin.  Rhythms differ radically, but they still partake of the same formula.