Page 112 - Culture Society and Economy

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NETWORK SOCIETY THEORY

tradition of anti-capitalist communitarian conservatism – especially, but by
no means only, in Catholic parts of Europe – which celebrates the purity
of the rural community and the notion of the nation as a ‘community’ in
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this emotion-laden sense. Fritsche wrote:

From the perspective of right-wing authors, society was a realm, or a form
of synthesis of individuals, in which isolated persons act for the sake of their
selfish interests. In this view, the only bond between individuals in society
is the common assumption that each individual acts on behalf of his or her
selfish interests, while regarding other individuals exclusively as a means in
the pursuit of his or her interests. Thus, this bond is not a ‘real’ bond, since
the individuals are connected only in a superficial or – as it has been put –
in a mechanical way and are therefore not really united as all … In contrast
to society, community and the different communities – family, the village or
small town, the Volk, the nation, for some also the state – provide individu-
als with a stable identity through traditions, customs (Sitte), and feelings
uniting individuals on the deep level of ‘positive’ emotions. 17

The point here is not that Castells is a right-wing author because he man-
ifestly is not. The point is that his approach – as we shall see, similar to
the approach of many in the global justice movement – is inspired by
cultural assumptions and approaches commonly found in communitarian
anti-capitalism. What grips them is the world we have lost or are in
danger of losing, not the world which may yet come. This is a critique of
capitalism looking back to an allegedly more harmonious, more humane
form of human society, which harmony, capitalism – especially global
capitalism – has ruthlessly destroyed. This viewpoint does not accept that
the advance of capitalism is a dialectical one. It rejects the notion – common
to liberalism and socialism alike – that capitalism, at the same time as
it subordinates and exploits local communities, constitutes a profound
historical advance. This viewpoint does not agree that capitalism, while
indeed dissolving human bonds at the communal level, lays the basis for
a humanity united by an international social division of labor and a com-
mon humanity. By its globalization, capitalism, unintentionally, actually
creates the conditions in which ‘a real existing humanity’ is created in
actuality, in a truly global sense. On the contrary, in the anti-capitalist
viewpoint, capitalism is perceived and portrayed as an entirely negative
development ‘normalizing’ the local. The political challenge therefore is
not to advance to a new form of society for which capitalism has created
the foundation. The task is to use the latest technology of capitalism to
administer life-support to prolong the life of a communitarian existence
already in its death-throes.

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