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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 inter20 ‘Wilhelm Ropke: Third Way: The Social Crisis of Our Time. Chicago University Press, 1950.
