At the end of the Cold War, Francis Fukuyama pronounced, ‘what we may be witnessing [is] the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government’? What was predicted as the acme of civilizational development has instead turned into a perennial catastrophe for humanity, even the planet we inhabit.
Liberalism has failed. It has ‘become more fully itself.’ A political philosophy, emboldened by globalization, that was aimed at reforming the world order, investing more autonomy in individual rights, and promoting human dignity and liberty, has slowly morphed into a kind of neo-fascist ideology, eventually exacerbating human conditions in the name of giving more choices and freedom. Let’s say, for example, it is far easier to imagine an alternative world on Mars than to churn out conditions for our habitability on this planet, much in the same way, as globalization promises free circulation of goods and capital but restricts the movement of migrants across borders. Liberalism’s virtues have died essentially because these have been hijacked by the core principle of wealth generation under the guise of choices and freedom. In other words, freedom of individuals has been replaced by an unchecked freedom of the market, thus treating citizens as consumers, and states as collaborators.
In 2013, Stephen M. Walt, the Harvard Professor put this phenomenon very starkly. He asked, ‘Are you a liberal imperialist’? [Who] are like kinder, gentler neoconservatives: like neocons, they believe it’s America’s responsibility to right political and humanitarian wrongs around the world, and they’re comfortable with the idea of the United States deciding who will run countries such as Libya, Syria, or Afghanistan.’ Evidently, Pankaj Mishra avers, ‘Uncontrolled liberalism, in other words, prepares the grounds for its own demise.’
What the world essentially needs is, therefore, liberation from the distorted ideology of liberalism itself. Its Janus-faced character has not only been largely exposed but also severely infected. This reminds me of the hilarious joke offered by the Slovenian Philosopher, Slavoj Zizek, in which Yuri Gagarin, the first cosmonaut, on his return from the space visit, was welcomed by Nikita Khruschev, the general secretary of the Communist Party. Gagarin told him confidentially: ‘You know, comrade, that up there in the sky, I saw heaven with God and angels — Christianity is right!’ Khrushchev whispers back to him: ‘I know, I know, but keep quiet, don’t tell this to anyone!’ Next week, Gagarin visited the Vatican where he met the Pope, to whom he reveals: ‘You know, holy father, I was up there in the sky and I saw there is no God or angels …’ ‘I know, I know,’ interrupts the pope, ‘but keep quiet, don’t tell this to anyone!’
The joke essentially sums up the self-contradiction ingrained within liberalism. As suggested, the liberal idea of the market offers a plethora of options for us. For example, anyone suffering from cancer has an abundance of choices for treatment (if time allows), only to realize later that all such choices are primarily tied to one’s purchasing ability. No wonder, the Christian Prosperity Church in the USA preaches that faith and financial seeds (donations to the Church or leaders) can lead to God’s blessings, including financial prosperity and physical healing, which reinforces the notion that if you are rich then God is happy with you. The concomitant vulnerability and loss of public infrastructure are thus fait accompli of our liberal world order. That said, the liberal market categorically prioritizes a form of meritocracy that has its moorings in a robust economic system. The nexus is such that the favours are ephemerally designed for ‘generational succession’ and, therefore, the very notion of civic duties, responsibilities and democratic ethos has been downplayed by the paradoxicality of liberalism.
What W.B. Yeats said more than a century ago, ‘the Centre cannot hold/Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world’ still gains relevance for our liberal order. It won’t be wrong to claim that the centrality of social order has given way to the centrality of the market principle. Life is available only to the extent that one is able to pay for it, to consume for its necessities, and to sanctify the market demands. It is largely for such reasons that liberalism is often termed as an incubator for authoritarianism. The marriage between liberalism and human dignity was always already doomed for failure. The immunity granted to global market forces are such that it tends to extract even from the remaindered life available to many in the global South. Seen this way, the disorganization of life and life forms are the organizing principles of liberalism, which I prefer to term, ‘brutalism.’
The pivotal principle of brutalism, aided and abetted by liberalism’s leitmotif, lies in the explicit claims of redistribution of wealth with no motifs to overthrow or demolish oppressive modes of labour and state-capital nexus. The promises of well-being are immense, but the intentions and actions are already predetermined and controlled by the exigencies of the market: ‘Sorry to be such a slave to petty-bourgeois respectability, but would you mind actually wearing some clothes during the degree ceremony?’ Such has been its perpetual pathology that the unequal and unjust system is replaced not by coercive measures or violent methodologies, but ‘with the population’s full acquiescence, premised on the ongoing delivery of increasing material prosperity along with the theoretical possibility of class mobility.’
Under brutalism, life and liveability are no longer contingent on a democratic setup but are instead dictated by the exceptionality invested in the state-capital nexus, splitting the world into liveable and non-liveable zones, underpinned as it is by the deep state’s exclusive predatory rights. The brutal living conditions in peripheral zones are symptomatic of a quotidian reality that reinforces the notion of incremental violence – a kind of violence that does not come across as threatening or disabling – rather it is in proportion to one’s absorbing capacity. The irony, nonetheless, lies in the fact that this absorption has no limits. The limitless choices rendered by liberalism demand limitless consumption and a 24*7 work culture. In so doing, brutalism, divorces normativity from worldmaking processes. Evidently, the post-1990 world has witnessed a colossal absence of unions at workplaces. In the absence of unions, there are no rights, what prevails and dominates is the untenable sense of duty. Such a system then warrants the unchecked surveillance of human lives, even intervening in personal spaces, thus undermining all notions of human dignity and freedom.
So, while the crude realities of globalization keep accentuating by way of its virtue-signalling gesture and the subsequent beatific visage, it is equally vital to understand the methodologies of brutalism that undergird liberalism and the global market. In the same way, global economic rule is mostly maintained and governed by the West, while the battle against brutalism is fought at local levels, without much impact. Despite the extent of the damage already caused, the untenable puerilism of our powerful echelons is such that it continues to believe that liberalism ‘must be more liberal than ever before, it must even be radical, if civilization is to escape the typhoon.’
Pitted against this ongoing war of survival and future habitability, are the pressing issues of survival and futurism. In light of the marginalization and cancellation of life, Judith Butler underlines that beings are mostly devoid of a ‘right to life’ by virtue of their aliveness since life and its forms are seen as resources by extractive forces. This embodiment of pervasive cruelty and everyday precarity defines the core of brutalism, which functions ‘without external limits.’ No wonder, the iterations of the apocalypse are already a living reality in the global South and self-determinism is not just precarious but also a mirage. Brutalism is linked to the ideation and rendition of ‘collapsology’, evidently found in abundance in the global South. The discourse of collapsology ensures that the global South’s future is pulverized and pushed to the margins of a circle that keeps moving without reaching its destination. Or to put it differently, the future and life in the global South are ontologically denied protection, since both are conditioned and shaped by extractive regimes of brutalism that systematically obliterate the exit door for many of us.
It is not surprising, that one witnesses in the global South an acute degree of emergency that is routinely normalized, symptomatic as it is of the brutal life conditions. In fact, one is reminded of a passage in Shakespeare’s King Lear – “What wouldst thou do, old man? Think’st thou that duty shall dread to speak, When power to flattery bows?” Brutalism, the next liberal order of the 21st century has already ensured that democratic institutions bow to marketing principles.
