Woke and Radical Islam are Strange Bedfellows
Both view Western civilisation as their main enemy
INTERVIEW ⟩ Woke and Islam are strange bedfellows, US professor says
Andrei Znamenski interview to Martin Ehala, Postimees (Tallinn, Estonia), November 13, 2023
Political ideologies are the modern surrogate religions that have taken the place of traditional ones, says Andrey Znamenski, professor of history at the University of Memphis (USA): «It is because people need to believe in something».
We met and talked about the role of ideologies in our turbulent world in a cold October morning in a large shopping mall in Tallinn, just days before the Hamas attacked Israel.
Martin Ehala: You have travelled extensively, taught at the Hokkaido University in Japan, the University of Toledo, were a resident scholar at the Library of Congress. But you were born in the USSR, in provincial Samara…
Andrei Znamenski: Yes, I was born in Samara. Fortunately, my parents gave me good education. I was interested in American Indians, the history of the Wild West. My father encouraged me to study English and hired me an English teacher. And when the Soviet Union collapsed, I was prepared to emigrate – I could understand English perfectly but could not speak well because of lack of practice.
Martin Ehala: You have written a disillusioned history of socialism. Did your family have a dissident background?
Andrei Znamenski: My family had an intelligencia background. They were no dissidents at all, they were regular Soviet people. My mother was a teacher of literature, and at some point, a vice rector of a medical college. She had little time for home and family. My father was professor of chemistry and geology, and he had more time for me.
He had a peculiar attitude towards the Soviet regime: don’t object anything they tell you, superficially agree with whatever they tell you, but don’t give a damn about them, don’t trust them, mind your own business. Follow your interest, follow your hearth, pretend that you believe…
Martin Ehala: I know the attitude, it was the same here, the double consciousness.
Andrei Znamenski: Exactly, the double consciousness, it is the best way to describe it. But there was something that very much upset me when I was a young adult. When I was finishing my high school, I planned to become a historian. My naïve expectation was that all roads were open to me. I passed my university entrance exams well, but they did not accept me. By chance I found out that this happened because they thought I was a Jew - my name Znamenski sounded Jewish to them. At that time in the Soviet Union (1978-79), there was an unofficial practice to limit the admission of Jews into Soviet universities, and because of that, they did not accept me. When I learned about that, something broke inside me, because it was so disgusting. I thought, what was going on? It was just unbelievable. I felt that I was kicked out of the system.
Martin Ehala: And this is when you lost your faith in socialism?
Andrei Znamenski: Not exactly. At that time, I started thinking that the Soviets distorted socialism. I happened to go to Moscow where in the foreign language library (so-called Inostranka) I started to read books on Western socialism – I read Herbert Marcuse, and other the New Left scholars. Something was going on in my mind, I thought we should upgrade socialism, we should improve it. Yet, at the same time, my major goal was to go to university and to become a historian, and then to get a candidate of historical sciences degree (a Soviet PhD type degree) My long term plan was to become americanist – that is how at that time they called scholars who studies the United States. It was my dream because I knew I could not get out of the Soviet Union. Eventually, I must say, I did accomplish my goal by being able to wiggle myself into a university, then to a graduate school. In fact, I was also able to teach World History at the Samara Pedagogical Institute between 1986 and 1991.
Martin Ehala: How did you act upon the idea of upgrading socialism?
Andrei Znamenski: In 1989 there was a guy, he was a democratic socialist, his name is Boris Kagarlitski, proponent of the New Left ideas; by the way, the Putin regime recently threw him into prison. He came to Samara to visit some of his friends, and I was introduced to him. It was when Gorbachev started perestroika. We created a discussion club. It was called Perspectives.
So, Boris Kagarlitsky had a dream to set up a Western-type Democratic Socialist Party in Russia. In fact, I took part in an inauguration meeting of this party. Of course, it was an absolutely failed project. At that time, observing people around me, I realised that they did not want socialism, they wanted to get rid of everything remotely reminding them of socialism. Still, I naively assumed that maybe, if I go to the West, there may be some ideas in the West for us to create a good socialism, maybe in Sweden, maybe in Finland where they mixed some socialism with capitalism. And that was how I eventually came to the United States. It was 1991.
Martin Ehala: In New York, you made a connection to a Marxist humanist activist group? How did you find them?
Andrei Znamenski: Once, wandering New York streets, I noticed a poster hanging on a bulletin board at the Columbia University campus. The poster announced that there was a Marxist-humanist meeting. This is how I was introduced to that group. It was founded in 1950s by Raya Dunayevskaya, she was once a personal secretary of Leon Trotsky in Mexico. When he was killed, she returned to USA to promote Trotskyite ideas.
Marxist-Humanists and like-minded groups had eventually realised that the proletariat (the industrial working class that was expected to liberate the world from capitalism) did not want to go to the barricades, but they did not want to give up on that “chosen people” of classical Marxism. So, Raya Dunayevskaya began working to mix ideas of proletariat with race and gender, searching for new groups that could act as allies for the proletariat or even as a surrogate proletariat. Among primary candidates to the role of these new revolutionary «movers and shakers» one could find African Americans, American Indians, Hispanics, and women. Later, that type of neo- Marxist thinking that was pursued by Dunayevskaya and various left ideologues in the 1960s-1970s laid the foundation for Cultural Marxism and, more broadly, for the so-called Woke mentality that is currently the dominant mainstream trend on the left in North America, UK, Australia, and New Zealand.
This New Left woke mentality was emerging right in front of my eyes when I came to the United States. In the summer of 1992, when I happened to be in Chicago for a Marxist humanist conference, there were the infamous Los Angeles riots, when some marginal segments of African Americans vandalized numerous LA stores and facilities, being upset that one black criminal on parole (Rodney King) was beaten by the police after a car chase when he refused to comply. And the Marxist humanist crowd cheered: oh, right, here we go – first sparks of a revolution were ignited in LA! For me it was the first big red flag, because the rioting people were just looting, destroying the stores, and the Marxist humanist celebrated them as the spontaneous spearheads of the revolution. Since the working class did not rise, it was these «people of colour» who were to take the torch.
Martin Ehala: When did your academic interest turn to the history of socialism?
Andrei Znamenski: Strange as it may sound, this came from my interest in American Indians, as I was originally an historian of religion who was exploring Native American spirituality; while still in the Soviet Union, I translated Black Elk Speaks (1961), memoirs of a famous Sioux Indian medicine man, which is considered a classic of Native American literature. And I started to ask myself why people in the West were so obsessed with the non-Western people and culture. In the course of my research, I noticed that Western people heavily romanticised China, India, the black people, and the Native Americans.
Furthermore, I noted that it also had something to do with the idealization of people who were viewed as oppressed. If they said something, everybody was expected to stay silent and listen to their «wisdom». Later, I realized that I was dealing with a grand change in the left thinking that in the 1970s-1980s was giving up on idealizing the proletariat and moving toward the new «chosen people» whom they located in the Third World, in Native American reservations, and Black ghettoes.
There was a funny episode when I was for the first time introduced to that type of «progressive» thinking. In 2001, I went to a conference in Quebec, Canada. There was a panel, three speakers, each had 15 minutes to speak. One of the speakers happened to be an American Indian, he was speaking more than 15 minutes, he was speaking 20 minutes, 30 minutes, 45 minutes. I started looking around me trying to figure out what was going on.
While they were trying fight against racism, they created another moral monster, that we call the Woke mindset, a semi- religious ideological frenzy when people constantly police the behaviour of surrounding individuals, looking everywhere for an evidence of racism, sexism, and homophobiaMy colleague who got my eye, a Jewish-Russian immigrant who had lived there for a long time, whispered to me, «He is native American, you should not interrupt him». What I see in US and Canada, while they were trying fight against racism, they created another moral monster, that we call the Woke mindset, a semi-religious ideological frenzy when people constantly police the behaviour of surrounding individuals, looking everywhere for an evidence of racism, sexism, and homophobia. The current American life is full of examples of woke moral panic when entire crowds literally go crazy over something that frequently turns out to be false alarms. A several years ago, a Dominican monk in his traditional white gown who happened to visit the Indiana University was mistakenly taken for a KKK member, and in a few hours the entire campus was put on a high alert being caught in a severe panic over the «racist invasion» with students and staff running around and screaming.
Woke is in fact the recycling of the old Marxist idea. In old times, the bourgeoise were the oppressors and proletarians were considered oppressed. In our days, the mainstream left considers the entire white majority oppressors, whereas all sorts of minorities are declared the oppressed, and, as such, they are automatically admitted in the category of protected people. The «oppressor» is expected to constantly repent. Instead of assessing people as individuals, instead of assessing them on the basis of merit, the current cultural left wants to pigeonhole society into different groups, locking people into their identities. It is a very dangerous trend.
Martin Ehala: A disturbing trend, indeed. But why in history, the leftist ideas have been so immensely popular, what is the secret of their success?
Andrei Znamenski: A good question. In the modern In the modern time we have a decline of the traditional religions, especially among the educated people. But you must believe in something, you cannot live without a faith. It reminds me the famous novel by Ivan Turgenev, «Fathers and sons». He describes a dialog between an old aristocrat and a nihilist, a student-leftist. The student says: «I do not believe in anything, I am atheist». And the old aristocrat asks: «Do you really believe this?» and the student says «Yes!». So, the aristocrat replies: «You see, you still believe in something». Basically, we must believe in something.
When the traditional religion started to collapse, a surrogate religion in a secular guise came in to fill the void. Liberalism and nationalism are surrogate religions, too, but socialism was one of the most powerful ones, particularly Marxist socialism. Because the Marxian socialism gives you the science and faith in the same package.
Marx and Engels promoted themselves as people of science. At that time there was a literal obsession with science, and in the 19th century many educated people elevated it to the role of religion, believing that a better society could be engineered like a machine according to some natural laws. In fact, the Jacobines, the intellectual children of Enlightenment, during the French revolution were the first to create the so-called Religion of Reason. Into their teaching that they advertised as hard science, Marx and Engels were able to instil a very powerful element of faith in the form of the socioeconomic transformations – from slavery to feudalism to capitalism and finally to communism.
Martin Ehala: Historical materialism, as it was called.
Andrei Znamenski: Yes, correct. The founding fathers of Marxism presented it as a scientific theory, but it was also a profoundly Christian theological narrative: in the beginning there was a paradise – the primitive communism – as they called it. And then the downfall followed, the unavoidable evil. It was unavoidable, they argued, because without the “oppressive” stages from slavery to capitalism, humankind would not be able to create wealth, according to the so-called «laws of history». After these stages, finally the «chosen people», the proletarians (who are equivalent of Jews that are the chosen people in the Bible), liberate the whole world, and they bring that future golden paradise called communism. And there is also the secular version of final judgement here in the form of a socialist revolution.
Martin Ehala: Yet after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the communism was literally dead. And even at present you do not see Marx or Engels quoted very often. Is the Marxist enterprise still viable, is it marching on?
Andrei Znamenski: Of course, it is! The Marxian socialism repeatedly failed, the Soviet Union collapsed, China partially decomposed socialism, India rejected socialist ideas, etc, etc. But this did not mean that the socialist ideas died. Right now, Marxism tries to revive itself in a new guise. As I pointed out earlier, they have found the new «chosen people» - the racial, ethnic and gender minorities.
It did not happen overnight, it happened gradually. When Lenin said that that the working class is a tiny minority, and it needed allies, and that peasants are going to be allies, he already made a first crack in the classical Marxian philosophy. When Mao Ze Dong in China came to power in 1949, they did not have any proletariat. So he broadened this definition by saying that Chinese peasants were going to be surrogate proletarians headed by the Chinese Communist Party.
This was when Franz Fanon, the third world theoretician, wrote his book called «The wretched of the world». He picked up the Maoist idea that peasants would be new surrogate proletarians and expanded that idea to the African peasantry and linked it to the national liberation struggle against colonialism in 1960s. That was how eventually the New Left got its revolutionary classes.
In US and the Western countries, Cultural Marxists innovated even more. There were no revolutionary peasants or proletarians in the first world, so they needed something different. They said: if a group’s average income was lower than the «white people», it meant that group was oppressed. And they came to cultivate them as a revolutionary class. This was how the New Left shifted from raising the “proletarian consciousness” to cultivating identities of various minorities.
In 1962, sociologist C. Wright Mills wrote a «Letter to the New Left» in which he summarised the ideas about what should be done. He said that we needed to get rid of the Victorian Marxism. The old idea that we had to rely on the proletarians and the old idea that we had to always to nationalise economy, these did not work any longer.
He too was looking for new classes to do the work of revolution. Mills believed that intelligentsia represented by university professors and disgruntled students was going to become the new proletariat. In their turn, two more New left theoreticians Stuart Hall and Herbert Marcuse argued that it was black people and gender minorities that were designated to become new «movers and shakers». So there was a wide debate among the New Left on who was to become the new class of «chosen people». Eventually they agreed that it should be the intelligentsia and the racial and gender minorities.
By now, that became the mainstream view on the left. To be exact, to the present day there are still some debates. The classical proletariat- oriented Marxists still accuse the Woke that they have betrayed Marxism. Moreover, these traditional Marxists sometimes compare current identity-oriented left with Hitler because of that obsession of the mainstream left with race and identity. The Woke replies – no, you are the ones who have betrayed Marxism, because Marx and Lenin said to be creative, and we, the cultural left, are creative.
Martin Ehala: This is the situation in the US and the West. But what kind of socialism is there in China? Are they traditional Marxists or they have innovated, too? What is the situation there?
Andrei Znamenski: China is a fulfilment of the Leninist idea of the NEP (The New Economic Policy). Remember, Lenin argued that socialist state can and should rely on the capitalist economic basis if they built socialism in an underdeveloped country. They should use the capitalist «cow» to provide «milk» to the emerging socialist state. And this is what China is doing right now. Deng Xiao Ping, he used Leninist works to justify change from the radical Maoist bone-breaking policy to the new policy of limited private enterprise under the communist control.
When I try to explain to my students the situation in present-day China, I usually draw a pyramid, and divide it horizontally in the middle. The upper part is the so-called commanding hights – the power that is in the hands of the Communist Party and the Secret Police of China who control everything. By the way, regarding Ali Baba, Huawei – you cannot become a CEO of such a company without being approved by the secret police and the communist party. That is what many westerners do not understand. At the same time, the bottom of that pyramid is capitalist, or to be exact, a limited private enterprise. We need to remember that local communist bureaucracy controls Chinese economy and its direction. The free flow of capital from China is not allowed without state permission; Chinese peasants are still not allowed to privately own their land – they lease it from the government for a fifteen-year period and then have to renew the lease.
Economically and ideologically, China is at the crossroad. They are still trying to sit on two chairs by encouraging that type of market socialism that they dubbed «socialism with Chinese characteristics». Yet, eventually they must decide either want to kill their economy for the sake of ideological purity by promoting socialism or they will have downsize socialism to give capitalism a chance to develop. I will put it this way: you cannot be a little bit pregnant: you are either pregnant or not.
Martin Ehala: If the communist top is not able to control the situation, and the capitalist ideals take over, would China be a liberal capitalist state?
Andrei Znamenski: Unfortunately, I am pessimistic. What I see right now in China, what I sense and what I heard about talking with Chinese people is that the alternative that is going to replace socialism will be some form of Chinese nationalism – a Chinese version of Putin’s regime in Russia. Moreover, currently nationalism in asquires xenophobiс features with strong anti-foreign sentiments.
Unfortunately, I am pessimistic about China. What is going to replace socialism is a form of Chinese nationalism – a Chinese version of Putin’s regime in Russia.So, if you remove the communist party from China, what is going to replace it will be die-hard nationalism. And, by the way, we have seen it in post-soviet countries. What comes to replace socialism, is nationalism – stronger or milder forms of it. The ideal situaiton is of course to have civic nationalism, but unfortunately we do not see it in such countries as China or Russia.
Martin Ehala: If the socialism as a surrogate religion fails, is there any possibility that the belief in real metaphysical God will return?
Andrei Znamenski: It is a very important question. To some extent, we currently observe a revival of religion. Not necessarily church-oriented Christian religion or any other traditional religion, but it is a more individually oriented religion. Think of Reformation when the hierarchical power of the Pope had been destroyed and religion became more individualised.
Now we might be going through the same process, a second Reformation so to speak.
We are still in this process of individualisation. We cannot live without religion. Something will return, the idea of God. I feel it myself. Being raised as an atheist I have become agnostic right now, because I believe that there is something unknown in this world. We are so arrogant to think that we know everything about the world. Religion will return.
Martin Ehala: What will be the role of Islam in the future, in the near future, say in 15-20 years.
Andrei Znamenski: Islam is a fairly young religion and unfortunately, we now have to deal with its radical stage. Christianity had been in the same situation in the 1500s-1600s when we had had religious wars in Europe. Thousands of peoples had been killed over religion during those wars.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somalian refugee and former politician, who is an important secular conservative thinker, and an ardent critic of Islam, wrote a book called «Infidel» in which she says that Islam did not have Reformation, and it needs one. So, we, the Muslims (she speaks from her Islamic perspective) are dangerous to the world. The sooner Islam goes through the process of reformation the more tolerant it becomes. Unfortunately, we have what we have - Hamas and all their atrocities.
Martin Ehala: And despite what Hamas is and does, the identarian left, the Woke and progressive liberals are still OK with radical Islam.
Andrei Znamenski: Yes, they are strange bedfellows. Since the 1970s when the traditional Marxian left started to lose their proletarian basis, they went to shop around to find allies, and radical Islam was seen as such an ally.
Among the first to say this were the UK Trotskyites who started to argue, when radical Islam become powerful in Iran, that we do not like those die hard Islamic people, but they are good, because they are fighting against Western capitalism. And since Western capitalism is our major enemy, they should be our allies.
And, in fact, Michel Foucault, one of the gurus of the current mainstream left, went to Iran in 1979, and interviewed mullahs, because he thought that the revolutionary guards of Iran were to inspire the West to become revolutionised. This was bizarre how the left Western intellectuals shifted towards cultural Marxism.
And to the present day, even though Muslim radicals hate the West and Western values, still the western Left sees them as their potential allies. It might appear as very strange. But there is certain twisted logic here: since the Western civilisation is the main enemy both for the radical Islam and for the Cultural Marxists, they advocate that alliance. Of course, it is a very masochistic, suicidal attitude on the part of the Western left.
Martin Ehala: It is suicidal, indeed. If they help Islam to prevail in the West…
Andrei Znamenski: I will tell you more. Right now, there is a threat towards the Western civilisation from both outside and inside. From outside, it is the emerging alliance of three authoritarian powers: Russia, Iran, and China. From inside it is the cultural identitarian Left or Woke who work to destroy the Western civilisation from within. It is the biggest challenge. How do we handle this challenge?
Martin Ehala: I agree with your assessment that the West is being undermined from within and from outside. But it is very hard to handle, too many people are blinded by this political religion, particularly the young.
Andrei Znamenski: You see, the major problem here is education and media that were seized by the left for the past sixty years as part of their strategy of the «long march through institutions». Much of what the New Left accomplished since 1960s and 1970s, we must undo now. And there are in fact examples in US when liberty-minded activists literally took over some failed leftist universities, and now they are trying to shape them according to the ideals of classical liberalism.
For example, in Florida, the New College of Florida which was a top notch Woke liberal arts college was taken over by activists who are rebuilding it by introducing programs that put stress on intellectual diversity by replacing the ones that were focused in cultivating racial and gender identity and separatism. That university has been restructured into a classical liberal college. In fact, students started to receive real grades. Prior to that, this college did not have grading system at all, because under the earlier «progressive» system there was an assumption that if you gave a grade to a student, the student could be traumatized. And that’s why they were failing.
Martin Ehala: I think that because classical liberal system was open and tolerant, it made it easy for the Left to infiltrate the educational institutions and the media. And then, when they were in power, the Left got easily rid of intellectual diversity because they are intolerant of traditional liberal ideas.
Andrei Znamenski: Exactly, it was easy for the New Left to exploit the classical liberal system! And now the people who promote classical liberal views, became marginal, because the mainstream left controls the narrative.
What helps classical liberals, though, is that the situation is turning bad, the society is degrading, and this makes the criticism of the Woke credible. Classical liberal views become more popular; society is becoming more receptive to these ideas.
When in the US people ask me, how to fight against the Woke, I tell them that there are two simple ways. First, ask questions, because they the Woke people do not like questions, and that is why they want the media censored. And, second, use the «weapon» that we had relied on at the Soviet time, which means making fun of their dogmas, ridicule them, and share anecdotes. They do not like when people laugh at them.
Martin Ehala: But do Americans have such jokes as we had during the Soviet times? Everybody told these jokes because everybody knew that the system was rotten. But it seems to me that in America, the majority just believes the mainstream, and this is why they do not have this double consciousness and ability to ridicule the system.
Andrei Znamenski: It is true, and this is a profoundly more dangerous situation, because at that time, we had been pressured from the up above, but in US and other Western countries it is something that comes from within, and that is why the situation is more challenging than in the Soviet Union. It has something to do with the mindset of people.
And that is why I am talking about the role of education. Society needs to return to classical liberal values. Little kids should be introduced to the values of individual liberty, self-reliance, appreciation of reading, fairy tales, Greek and Roman wisdom, Estonian folklore, why not.
Martin Ehala: Yes, because Greek and Roman tales are based on the Aristotelian virtue ethics that the left has been dismantling for over fifty years, now. What are the chances of the political turn in US? Has Trump a chance to win?
Andrei Znamenski: Right now, the US is a very much divided country, the lines even go through families. The fact is that in the Republican party 60 percent of people support Trump, even if some of them do not like him. The rational here is very simple. Many republicans and independents view him as a very useful person who by his «no prisoners taken» tactics will help to clear the ground for civic nationalism and liberty ideas.
Martin Ehala: Can you specify this?
Andrei Znamenski: Trump speaks his mind, and he promotes civic nationalism. Many people in Europe think that Trump is a soil-and-blood nationalist, which is wrong. He is a civic nationalist who promotes the idea that all citizens of the United States irrespective of their race should be treated equally by the law. He says: I close my borders for illegal immigrants, but the citizens whoever they are, minorities or not, they should be treated equally.
This is why he is against the BLM that insists that “white” people are inherently racist and these “whites” should repent, and that the so-called people of colour not only should be elevated through quota-based programs but also should receive special treatment from the legal system. BLM literally says that colour-blind system of justice, which is the foundation of the Western legal system, is racist! BLM says that as the “black” and “brown” people are oppressed, they should be treated differently. But Trump promotes colour-blind justice. Yet in the eyes of the left liberal mainstream, the colour-blind justice is reactionary.
BLM literally says that colour-blind system of justice, which is the foundation of the Western legal system, is racist! BLM says that as the black people are oppressed, they should be treated differently. But Trump promotes colour-blind justice.Trump is not perfect. He is not even religious. But majority of the religious people chose to vote for him as they see him as the one who could destroy the woke culture and the hegemony of the left in the mainstream. So, Trump acts like an ice breaker. Other, more shrewed and sophisticated people will come after him to use the ground he would clear.
Martin Ehala: No doubt «interesting times» will follow when he is elected.
Andrei Znamenski: Life is unpredictable, in a normal Western country a politician might or might not be elected, and that is what makes life scary and interesting and fresh at the same time unlike such countries as Iran, Russia, and China which, as people joke, have predictable future and unpredictable past.
Martin Ehala: I agree that life is unpredictable. But messianic ideologies see history as being driven by one general principle towards one single goal, such as justice. These ideologies are like Newtonian physics, they see the world as determined.
Despite what conventional wisdom says, there is no determined path to the final judgement, the ways of the world are totally unpredictable and that is what frequently drives people crazy. And the God’s advice is often contradictory in different parts. And this is how the world is. You cannot reduce it to a single principle as Marxism does by peddling its natural laws of history, you must balance between different principles.
The same with equality. Every religion has some commands for reducing inequality, but religions do not aim towards the absolute equality. They acknowledge that inequality exists in our world, and it has its purpose.
Andrei Znamenski: A very interesting point you made. Whether we like it or not, the world is unfair, but this is what the leftist won’t accept. They want to make the world perfect – yet the way to hell is paved with good intentions.
source: https://news.postimees.ee/7894414/interview-woke-and-islam-are-strange-bedfellows-us-professor-says
HALLIKI KREININ Objection to Professor Znamenski
Postimees (Tallinn), November 19, 2023
I am writing in response to Martin Ehala's November 9, 2023 article, FOCUS US Professor: Woke and Progress preachers colluding with radical Islam, interviewing Andrei Znamenski. Znamenski is known in libertarian and radical market fundamentalist circles like the Mises Institute, but his fame comes from of deep ideological opposition to racial justice and welfare.Outside these circles he lacks recognition as an academic.
"Ideology, like bad breath, is what others have." (Terry Eagleton)
While I agree with Znamenski's assertion that political ideologies "are modern-day pseudo-religions that replace religion," it is important to note that Znamenski himself espouses a specific and potentially dangerous radical ideology—free-market fundamentalism. Znamenski's affiliation with the radical market fundamentalist Mises Institute clearly reveals his ideological worldview, so he does not simply represent US academics. In my brief commentary, I would like to critically analyze the mentioned deeper ideological worldview and offer an alternative to Znamenski's radical market-centered ideology. Diverse perspectives are valuable, but it is customary in journalism to contextualize the views of the interviewees, especially when the views are rooted in radical ideology.
The Mises Institute, named after the Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises, represents Austria's radical school of economics (Austrian School of Economics). Their ideological market fundamentalist theory is considered by many to be unscientific because it is not supported by empirical research. The ideas of the mentioned school have found more resonance in the United States than in Austria. Emphasizing property rights and individual liberties, it justified historical wealth and racial inequality, spoke primarily to a privileged elite, and gained a good footing in the unequal society of the United States. The Austrian School, which advocated minimal government intervention in the economy and total reliance on free markets, gained momentum at the turn of the 19th century among predominantly wealthy, white, male financial executives, bankers and businessmen precisely because it justified wealth inequality and inherited privilege. Not surprisingly, its focus on a priori principles and the ideological tenets of methodological individualism have led to its rejection in the social and economic sciences. Although this economic ideology and theory has receded from science precisely because of its empirical failure, it persists in certain institutions in the United States whose members wish to preserve and justify their privileged status.
Instead of the market fundamentalist ideology of the Mises Institute, I propose to consider the social and economic theory of another Austrian (but not Austrian school) economist, Karl Polanyi. In his 1944 work "The Great Change", Polanyi highlighted the danger of subordinating society to markets only, i.e. only to economic goals. The economy is embedded in society and the environment. Polanyi emphasized that the more markets expand, the more society to implement control mechanisms against negative effects. His perspective questions not only methodological individualism but also the notion of self-regulating free markets (à la Znamenski or Mises), supporting the need to understand markets in their social, political and historical contexts and emphasizing the necessity of social and political control to to protect society and its members from the harmful effects of free markets, such measures include the prohibition of slave and child labor, environmental protection, and other prescriptions.
As early as 1944, Polanyi (himself a Jew) saw the rise of fascism in the early 20th century partly as a reaction to the destructive effects of a deteriorating market fundamentalist system. Polanyi also criticized communism, especially its attempt to completely subjugate society to the needs of a planned economy through authoritarian measures. Polanyi's lucid analysis showed that fascism arose as a response to the failures of unregulated capitalism, manifested in growing poverty and inequality. Fascism also blamed the failures of the market system on Jews and other unwanted social groups (Roma, disabled people, gay and transsexuals, women who did not obey traditional gender roles). Similarly, Znamenski, relying on market fundamentalism, believes that the poor, marginalized, and oppressed people are to blame for the failure of the free market system in the United States. But blaming certain races, classes, or nationalities is just an illusion that deflects attention from the failures of the free market system—and also from those privileged individuals who benefit from that system.
Polanyi's science-based research is in line with the current functioning of the Austrian society because the economy is characterized by defense mechanisms against the threats of the free market. Austria's economy works well and takes care of its citizens. Austria is one of the most livable countries in the world, with low crime, socioeconomic equality, high life expectancy, free education and healthcare, and cheap and fast public transportation. In contrast, the free-market USA is characterized by high crime, high inequality, relatively low and ever-shrinking life expectancy, expensive education, extremely expensive health care, and expensive or non-existent public transportation.
I would like to suggest that, given the growing inequality and poverty in Estonian society, we should take seriously Polanyi's call to set limits on the economy in order to avoid the dangers associated with authoritarianism. In a time of growing inequality, Polanyi's ideas offer a better alternative than Znamenski's (and Mises's) market fundamentalism and the illusion of scapegoats, be they Jews, queers, other races and religions, or the woke.
Best wishes,
Dr. Halliki Kreinin, Doctor of Social and Economic Sciences Researcher, Chair of International Relations and Sustainable Development, University of Münster, Germany / Helmholtz Institute, Potsdam, Germany foreign researcher, Institute of Ecological Economics, Vienna University of Economics and Business, Austria
Postimees, November 19, 2023
Andrei Znamenski REPLY TO HALLIKI KREININ “You attribute views to me that I have never shared”
Dear Dr Kreinin,
I appreciate your response to my interview. Unfortunately, instead of critically addressing the major points made in that interview, you decided to ideologically “contextualize” my personality, which is OK. Thus, you alert readers that I have no credibility as an academic because of my association with the “dangerous” ideology of “free market fundamentalism” of the so-called Austrian School.
To clarify for readers what we are talking about here, I need to explain that “Austrians” (Ludwig von Mises, F. A. Hayek, and their followers) and many other libertarians believe in economic liberty and small government. They expose harmful effects of state bureaucracy when it seeks to control prices and production, to squash local autonomy and initiative, and to create inflation by printing money, eventually distorting economic and social life, and causing stagnation. Rather than speculating about such abstract categories as race, gender, and class, “Austrians” focus on individual human beings with their passions, interests, and aspirations. Overall, libertarians (Hayek, “The Use of Knowledge in Society”) stress that centralized planning and centralized knowledge harm economy and society, whereas decentralized and local knowledge leads to creativity and prosperity.
In the first half of the last century, when statism (US New Deal) and totalitarianism (Communism, National Socialism, Fascism) were running amok, scholars like Mises and Hayek were indeed marginal; Mises was in fact blacklisted by National Socialists and had to escape from Austria. Yet, since the 1970s-1980s, with the crisis of welfare states in the West and the collapse of socialism in Eastern Europe, libertarian ideas have been gradually gaining popularity. As a sign of the growing recognition of these ideas was the Nobel Prize that was awarded to Hayek in 1974. Incidentally, since the 1970s, among the left, one too can see a gradual shift away from the statist mentality toward the local, unique, and individual (e.g. Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (1989) by left scholar James Scott).
I am indeed affiliated with the Mises Institute as an associate scholar. However, this does not mean that I embrace everything Mises and Hayek had to say. Neither do I agree with simplistic assumptions that markets regulate themselves. It is obvious that for free markets to function properly we need a strong judicial system, contractual law, respect for private property, and appropriate cultural habits.
To make a point that I cannot be trusted as an academic because of being too ideological, you also quote Terry Eagleton who once remarked that we are eager to criticize other people’s ideologies without paying the slightest attention to the “bad breath” of our own ideologies. Ironically, it never occurred to you to “contextualize” your choice of authority on that issue, who is an openly ideological British Marxist and the author of a book titled Why Marx was Right (2011)!
Strangely, by “contextualizing” me and my “bad” Misean ideology as outdated and unscientific, you commit the same ideological “sin” that you try to blame me for. You literally announce to us that you know the “good” and “correct” socio-economic alternative that you associate with social democratic economist Karl Polanyi. Moreover, you reveal to us that Polanyi found the best way of how to organize our socio-economic life. Then you begin to praise the Austrian state as the embodiment of his “best” possible socio-economic model. Simultaneously, you criticize the United States as the den of various social and economic vices. Don’t you think that all this sounds one-dimensional and ideological? Somehow you forget that the Unites States is a very diverse country. If you go to California or New York cities, you indeed will find many of those vices you mentioned. Yet, if you go to Vermont, Maine, Idaho, or South Dakota, you will see the standards of living that are very much like those you find in Austria. I also want you to ask yourself why, for example, ethnic Swedes in the United States enjoy higher living standards than Swedes in Sweden?
You also stress that my “fame” comes from a “deep” ideological opposition to racial justice and welfare. You are right on the first and wrong on the second. If people voluntarily from below agree to establish a generous welfare state, it is their choice, and I have no problem with this. That is why I have no intention to dismiss your “correct” alternative as flawed. If people of Austria voluntarily chose the “Polanyi way” and if it works for them, that is fine. What I don’t like is when a bunch of (Washington, Moscow, Vienna, or Brussels) bureaucrats and scholarly experts seek to impose their “correct” ways on other people. If something works for Austria, it does not mean that this should automatically work for Estonia or another country.
As for those who promote racial justice and argue against individual (color-blind) justice, they step on a slippery slope, trying to tilt law in favor of specific “oppressed” groups. In fact, recently we have vocal voices on the left who are very much disturbed by the harmful effects the obsession with racial justice produced in our society (Shivani, “Time to give up on identity politics”(2017); Mounk, The Identity Trap (2023); McWorther, Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America (2021)
I am also puzzled by your statement that “Znamenski, relying on market fundamentalism, believes that the poor, marginalized, and oppressed people are to blame for the failure of the free market system in the United States.” You clearly ascribe to me the views which I never shared and simply cannot share. What I am (and other libertarians) “guilty” of is my conviction that it is the state bureaucracy in collusion with large monopolies that is responsible for the failure of the free-market system.
And the last thing: you stressed that outside of “market fundamentalist circles” I lack recognition as an academic. I want to correct you: it is precisely outside of those “circles” that most of my “fame” and scholarly recognition had come from: much of my scholarship (five books and numerous articles) deals with indigenous religions of North America, Eurasia, and modern Western New Age:
https://memphis.academia.edu/AndreiZnamenski
With my warm regards, Andrei Znamenski
Wonderfully informative and thoughtful conversation and debate - simply brilliant!