Page 135 [135]
What can I hope for (from politics)? 1133
‘Thus, the rejection of global capitalism is not synonymous with that
of the market economy. I hold the distinction important, because I see
globalism and its catastrophic consequences as the organic consequence
of modern industrial society. To those who seek a way out, what they
wish to be free of is not irrelevant. They settle for the elimination of
capitalism, seen as the greatest evil (let us not explain now how they
imagine this) or recognise that globalism is the fulfilment of the
internal contradictions that are tearing the order of modern industrial
societies apart. This affects the system as a whole, so it cannot be treated
by eliminating one of its parts. The renewal of Western civilisation —
after it has destroyed all other civilisations — cannot occur without the
complete rethinking of its fundamental moral principles, political
institutions and technical apparatus. This recognition prevents us from
misunderstanding the demand of revision and interpreting it as
rejection. We simply do not have the foundations needed for a total
negation; apart from anything else, because categorical rejection as a
possible answer is itself a symptom of the one-dimensional thinking
which prevents Western man from confronting the true nature of
things.
It is hard to avoid here the connection between the above and the
third way concepts that appeared in the first half of the previous
century. Both are characterised by a belief in progress and the
condemnation of consumerism, the protection of traditional ways of
life from massification and a repugnance of laissez-faire capitalism, but
of the socialist-collectivist versions of industrial society even more.
According to Wilhelm Rôpke, the author of The Third Way, the latter
are characterised by “a veritable orgy of technology and organisation”,
the militarisation of work, the massification of society and the moving
away of its way of life from nature.9 "We had to recognise," he writes,
,that nothing other than a tendency to tyranny can be expected from
either the state, which has always had a natural tendency towards it,
or from the masses as such. Ít is therefore clear that one must seek for
support for freedom elsewhere, for anti-collective counterweights that
can be found in neither the state, nor the masses. Only the lovers of
freedom can be its guardians: the elite of society who commands its
respect and the true community that stands above, below or around
the state. Montesquieu called these true communities corps inter¬
20 ‘Wilhelm Ropke: Third Way: The Social Crisis of Our Time. Chicago University Press,
1950.