The Fourth Political Theory

beyond left and right but against the center

Geopolitics in its present form is undoubtedly a worldly, “profane”, secularized science. But maybe, among all modern sciences, it saved in itself the greatest connection with Tradition and traditional sciences. René Guénon said that modern chemistry is the outcome of the desacralization of a traditional science — alchemy, as modern physics is of magic. Exactly in the same way one might say that modern geopolitics is the product of the laicizing and desacralizing of another traditional science — sacred geography. But since geopolitics holds a special place among modern sciences, and it is often ranked as a “pseudo-science”, its profanizing is not so accomplished and irreversible, as in the case of chemistry or physics. The connection with sacred geography here is rather distinctly visible. Therefore it is possible to say that geopolitics stands in an intermediate place between traditional science (sacred geography) and profane science.

The two primary concepts of geopolitics are land and sea. Just these two elements —Earth and Water — lie at the roots of human qualitative representation of earthly space. Through the experience of land and sea, earth and water, man enters into contact with the fundamental aspects of his existence. Land is stability, gravity, fixity, space as such. Water is mobility, softness, dynamics, time.

These two elements are in essence the most obvious display of the material nature of the world. They stand outside of man: everything is heavy and fluid. They are also inside him: body and blood. (The same happens also at a cellular level.)

This article is a brief introduction to the life and central ideas of the controversial Italian thinker Julius Evola (1898-1974), one of the leading representatives of the European right and of the « Traditionalist movement » (1) in the twentieth century. This movement, together with the Theosophical Society, played a leading role in promoting the study of ancient eastern wisdom, esoteric doctrines, and spirituality. Unlike the Theosophical Society, which championed democratic and egalitarian views, (2) an optimistic view of progress, and a belief in spiritual evolution, the Traditionalist movement adopted an elitist and antiegalitarian stance, a pessimistic view of ordinary life and of history, and an uncompromising rejection of the modern world. The Traditionalist movement began with René Guénon (1886-1951), a French philosopher and mathematician who converted to Islam and moved to Cairo in 1931, following the death of his first wife. Guénon revived interest in the concept of Tradition, i.e., the teachings and doctrines of ancient civilizations and religions, emphasizing its perennial value over and against the « modern world » and its offshoots: humanistic individualism, relativism, materialism, and scientism. Other important Traditionalists of the past century have included Ananda Coomaraswamy, Frithjof Schuon, and Julius Evola.

The end of capitalism. The development of capitalism has reached its natural limit. There is only one path left to the world economic system — to collapse in upon itself. Based on a progressive increase of purely financial institutions, first banks, and then more complex and sophisticated stock structures, the system of modern capitalism has become completely divorced from reality, from the balance of supply and demand, from the production and consumption ratio, from connection with a real life. All the wealth of the world is concentrated in the hands of the world’s financial oligarchy by complicated manipulations of constructed financial pyramids. This oligarchy has devalued not only labor, but also the capital connected to the market fundamentals, secured through financial rent. All other economic forces are in bondage to this impersonal transnational ultraliberal elite. Regardless of how we feel about capitalism, it is clear now, that it is not just going through another crisis, but that the entire system stands on the verge of total collapse.
No matter how the global oligarchy tries to conceal the ongoing collapse from the masses of the world’s population, more and more people begin to suspect that this is inevitable, and that the global financial crisis, caused by the collapse of the U.S. mortgage market and major banks is only the beginning of a global catastrophe.

Alexander Dugin is a popular, well-connected, and academically respected professor at Moscow State University. Unlike his North American and Western European counterparts, his ideas are not censored by Russia’s mainstream media, and he more or less enjoys the favor of Putin’s Russian government. While he’s indubitably the most prominent New Right thinker in Russia, his domestic influence and his ambitious efforts to build international partnerships and relationships have made him arguably the most prominent New Right thinker in the world. 

Does financial capitalism represent just a random variant of the common essence of the development of the capitalist system ? Or is it rather the definitive incarnation of its whole logic, its triumph ?

The answer to this question can not be found within the classics of economic theory, their horizon being limited to the industrial phase of development - the general trend and the full economic significance of which they (and above all the Marxists) did investigate completely and correctly. Post-industrial society is still in many ways an obscure reality.  
In its analysis there are no adfirmed classics, although many authors have cast a deep-searching look upon this phenomenon. The task of understanding "financism" is ours, whether we like it or not.

Even to move the first steps in the direction of a consistent overview of this theme, we have to consider the whole history of the economic paradigm, and individuate there the place of "financism"- not just from  the point of view of quantitative chronology, but from the point of view of the qualitative relevance of this phenomenon in the general development of economic models.

Have secret societies and occult brotherhoods been active behind the scenes of world events for thousands of years? Do these guardians of secret wisdom shape the growth of human consciousness and influence the destiny of nations? Are hidden masters of occult knowledge empowering and infiltrating certain political, cultural, spiritual and economic movements, in fulfilment of an ancient plan? Could it be that man’s great upheavals, wars, and revolutions, as well as his pioneering discoveries in science, literature, philosophy and the arts, are the result of a ‘hidden hand’? Can we decode history and find the mysterious interface between politics and occultism, thereby uncovering the real movers and shakers in our modern world?

The Fourth Political Theory is a book that is clearly not short on ambition. I haven’t actually read it, but I already know more or less what is in it from past writings by its author Professor Alexander Dugin, as well as the lengthy video presentation he gave of his ideas at the Identitarian Ideas conference held earlier this year in Stockholm.

Dugin believes there have been three great ideologies in modern history – Liberalism, Communism, and Fascism/National Socialism – and that we are now seeing the formation of the Fourth, which is still waiting to be properly christened and so is known by an ordinal. In the footsteps of Locke, Marx, and Mussolini, we now have Dugin.

I greatly respect and like Dugin. With his Tolstoyan beard and aura of an old church father, he’s a personable and reassuring presence. But I also know how the academic world works, and how it finds all sorts of clever ways to serve different masters, and Professor Dugin is certainly well-connected to a lot of people in the Russian establishment. Is it a coincidence that his ideas support the existence of the Russian Orthodox Church or the multi-ethnic imperialism that is the unavoidable basis for a strong Russian state?

 As a whole, the process of globalization is very abstract, and so requires an assessment from within and between various discrete fields of the social sciences.  David Harvey notes that “…if the word ‘globalization’ signifies anything about our recent historical geography, it is most likely to be a new phase of exactly the same underlying process of the capitalist production of space". Anthony G. McGrew , a professor of International Relations at Southampton University, describes globalization as “a process which generates flows and connections, not simply across nation-states and national territorial boundaries, but between global regions, continents and civilizations. This invites a definition of globalization as: ‘an historical process which engenders a significant shift in the spatial reach of networks and systems of social relations to transcontinental or interregional patterns of human organization, activity and the exercise of power”.

Based on this fact, I have put forward the following idea: since there are two types of people with polar ideologies, the conservatives and the liberals, in our society, we, as the conservatives, in order to influence the educational and information policy, need to have at our disposal half of the broadcast instruments, half of the educational institutes and half of media expert Community. We, the conservatives, are actually a large part of society, but in the media environment we are the minority, and this discrepancy,  injustice, and usurpation of the powerful discourse concerning the principles and values by the liberals should be eliminated. My ideas were  approved  by everyone in the Club. Someone started to say that we need more than 50%, others - that we need to somehow appear in the  field of ideology and information, but the general direction was totally supported. All agreed that we, conservatives, have to go to the counter.

For Dugin, triumphant liberalism is embodied by Americanism; the United States, through its origins as an Enlightenment project, and through its superpower status in the twentieth and twenty-first century, is the global driver of liberal practice. As such, with the defeat of Marxism, it has created, and sought to perpetuate, a unipolar world defined by American, or Atlanticist, liberal hegemony. Russia has a long anti-Western, anti-liberal tradition, and for Dugin this planetary liberal hegemony is the enemy. Dugin would like the world to be multipolar, with Atlanticism counterbalanced by Eurasianism, and maybe other “isms.” In geopolitics, the need for a fourth political theory arises from a need to keep liberalism permanently challenged, confined to its native hemisphere, and, in a word, out of Russia.