Page 81 - Culture Society and Economy

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CULTURE, SOCIETY AND ECONOMY

discarded by the ruthless march of American monopoly capital – especially
the export of millions of jobs overseas. Islamic fundamentalism arises in
societies which have a low level of capitalist development and which also
are subordinated by global finance capital. In the first case, Christian fun-
damentalism is part of a sharp turn to the right and provides a popular base
for the militias, for anti-black and anti-Semitic racism as well as for extreme
neo-conservatism. In the second case, Islamic fundamentalism is part of a vir-
ulently extremist plebeian third world nationalism. The social and political
significance of these two fundamentalisms is quite different.
What is more, by one-sidedly conceptualizing fundamentalism as
primarily one of a social psychological reaction against the erosion of
tradition, the problem is assimilated to that of yet another emotional
reaction, in the long list of non-rational reactions to modernity, as in the
second half of the nineteenth century in Western Europe. But by this
approach the basic reality of the world dominance of monopoly and
finance capital is obscured. The problem is not ‘modernity’ in general but
the very specific form of ‘modernity’ produced by monopoly capital. It is
the reality of grossly intensified global, regional and national inequalities
of economic and political power and of military might. The white worker
in upstate New York who finds himself thrown into unemployment by
the decline of manufacturing notices that this is occurring while spectac-
ular profits are being made by a few not so far away on Wall Street. He
may well be attracted to Christian fundamentalism and join a right-wing
militia as was the case of the Oklahoma bomber, Timothy McVeigh. What
is driving such a person to fury is by no means a simple rage at the inex-
orable march of modernity eroding the not-so-rustic New York wilderness.
What infuriates such a person is the injustice of it all and his complete
powerlessness before the bankers and the state which facilitates them.
This is the root of the fundamentalist response and not simply a general-
ized anti-modernity as such. The point is that the ‘erosion of tradition’ is
not proceeding under conditions of relative equality, democratic discus-
sion and consent. It is increasingly obvious to millions of people that this
is far from being the case. The reason why the response to globalization
and the erosion of tradition take a virulently fundamentalist form in
some and is likely to grow more so, is because globalization is proceeding
under such manifestly unjust and unequal conditions with such glaringly
harsh consequences for the vast majority of humankind, including tens
of millions in the United States itself.
The erosion of tradition is a real issue in its own right, although there
is also much evidence of a willingness of hundreds of millions to embrace
new ways of life when given the opportunity to do so. However, it is

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