Marxism and Liberalism are the same for Central Asia
Cross-regional and Blogosphere, Politics and Society4 Comments
Image by Flickr user Bret Polok (CC-usage).
Editor’s note: As the new year approaches, neweurasia debates whether an economically and politically unified Central Asia makes sense (much less if it’s even possible). Liberalism and regionalism will fail Central Asia just as Marxism did, argues neweurasia’s Averroes.
A lot of intellectuals in the West talk of Modernity’s “influence” on Central Asia and the “problem” thereof. According to their erudite view, globalization is making a “core-periphery” or “hub-spoke” mess out of the region — developing world money just gets sucked into rich world pockets.
These intellectuals like to say that they are giving a “Left” analysis or some such, and that only a “Left” solution can really fix things. But there’s nothing really especially Leftist about it. This interpretation can be both Marxist or Liberal.
Check it out: only their preferred solutions to the problem really differ, and even then, it’s only superficial. The Marxists demand that all outside intervention immediately cease; Liberals demand that loans be made to the countries in question.
Yet, both are also willing to resort to military solutions if they deem it necessary. And when you scratch beneath the surface, you find that that both ideologies fundamentally entail the same process: transferring initiative, resources, and sovereignty from the individual to multinational organizations.
Schwartz has talked about a single Central Asian currency and unifying the region into a single political zone, but haven’t we seen this already with the Soviet Union? He envisions a kind of European Union as applied to the region, but isn’t the European Union itself a kind of Liberal version of the Soviets?
This is a region that’s already going through a lot of identity shock. Have you seen what they are building in Astana and Ashgabad? The answer is not more grand-scale unification but more internal diversification and small-scale integration.
Central Asia needs to go back to the symbol of the prayer carpet: a tapestry of many handwoven threads that’s really used, not a pre-fabricated throw rug that looks good on the wall.
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Not sure I see Liberalism as being the same thing as regionalism. Or that the West is necessarily promoting regionalism in and of itself as much as it is trying to check the power of Russia and China in the region by at least encouraging a multinational organization instead of an organization dominated by one country.
In the same vein I would argue that there is a huge difference between the EU and the USSR for example. Your analogy would make dictatorship and republics the same process because it both cases initiative, resources and sovereignity are transferred to a central government. Under the USSR, Moscow could and did rule over the other countries and force a uniform ideology. The EU contains monarchies, parlimentary democracies, and republic, and no one country has power over another. No country is giving up anything it doesn’t agree to give up.
I have to say that I am totally lost when you compare ceasing outside intervention to demanding that loans be given. Giving loans comes with strings attached about how those loans be paid–that’s outside intervention. Also, I don’t really see that lack of outside intervention is a core belief of Marxism anymore than giving loans is a core belief of a liberal economic policy. Both are just instruments in the ideologies.
I would really like to see your ideas fleshed out in a longer piece.
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Averroes Reply:
March 20th, 2010 at 5:40 pm
@KZBlog, sorry for the delayed reply. Okay, to each of your points.
Whether the West would promote regionalism for its own sake or as a check to Russian power is neither here nor there as far as I’m concerned, because the result is the same: assimilation of Central Asia into the current global system.
I’ll explain my views on the EU and USSR in a separate post. With regards to Marxist isolationism vs. Liberal debt-based integration, first, I should clarify that by “isolationism” I mean more like Russia’s historically been Winnie the Pooh to the Central Asian honey.
Second, your assessment that isolation or loans are just instruments of ideology is precisely my point, as well: Central Asia will be just as imperialized by the “democratic” Liberal West as it was under Marxist Russia.
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[...] a comment from KZblog on my post, “Marxism and Liberalism are the same for Central Asia“, that needs a response: … I would argue that there is a huge difference between the EU [...]
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