The World Revolution of Westernization. - book reviews

Monthly Review, Dec, 1988 by Val Moghadam

Colonialism, communist movements, fascism, nationalism, war, decolonization, cultural imperialism, anti-imperialism, the struggle for development, regional conflicts in the Third World, weapons proliferation, the threat of nuclear war: These global phenomena, the salient features ofthe twentieth century, are reviewed and interpreted by Theodore Von Laue, in this eminently readable and provocative book, as so many facets of "the world revolution of westernization." Von Laue, a scholar of Soviet history and author of Why Lenin? Why Stalin?, argues that even anti-Western movements are part of the problematic of Westernization: their language, criteria, and objectives have been deeply affected by the inexorable spread of Westernization. Herein lies the paradox: Westernization has been at once immensely liberating and profoundly disturbing. Now, toward the end of the twentieth century, the global community has bccome both uniform and anarchic. Westernization has been a mixed blessing at best, a disorienting, confusing, ultimately counterproductive force at worst.

If this thesis sounds both strange and strangely familiar, it is because it has some parallels with Marxism, even though it is offered as an alternative to Marxism. (To Von Laue, Marxism itself would be considered an aspect of Westernization.) In his introduction, he eschews concepts such as capitalism (which he everywhere puts in quotation marks), socialism, class struggle, and even class. For him, the appropriate signifiers are "culture," "psyche," "statc," and "power." But the book's similarity to Marxism lies in its method: dialectical, historical, global. Moreover, his approach and attitude toward Westernization recalls that of Marx toward capitalism; for Marx, capitalism had both exploitative and emancipatory features. Further, Marxist social scientists have noted the contradictory effects of the internationalization of capital: the process is at once homogenizing and heterogenizing. However, here the similarities end, for Von Laue's analysis is far from being a materialist one; he privileges cultural, psychological, and sociopsychological factors, and ultimately explains economic disparities and uneven development in culturalist terms. In this sense, Von Laue's study fits in nicely with the current trend in social theory toward cultural studies and cultural analysis.

And yet Von Laue's essay is informed by a humane and compassionate vision which most academic studies lack. Indeed, his study was motivated by his concern about contemporary sectarian strife, interstate conflicts, ecological disasters, superpower rivalry, and antiWestern movements mired in nostalgia and resentment. What is to be done to correct this dubious culmination of the world revolution of Westernization and create a more livable world? The answer he offers, spelled out in the opening chapters and in the appendix and alluded to throughout the text, is "a transcendence-oriented cultural relativism." By this he means a new process of reculturation predicated upon the idea that cultures are different from each other but not, as a result, unequal. Borrowing from Frantz Fanon's metaphor of the West as the Sleeping Beauty, Von Laue avers that the self-centered West, so blindly convinced of its superiority, must wake up.

Von Laue argues that it is necessary to recognize the dynamics of culture, of cultural conditioning,and of intercultural contact. just as human beings could not fly until they had understood the law of gravity and a host of other necessities, they cannot coexist peaceably in ignorance of the causes of tension in a multicultural world united by one dominant culture. . . . [C]ompassion has to guide both the agents and the victims of cultural change, with special protection offered to the human dignity of the most helpless, so as to ease the hardships of inevitable prestructured cultural change. All must humbly strive to transcend their inherited cultural limitations and search for more inclusive human bonds. (p. 315)

This entails overcoming "cognitive imperialism," wherein one's mental picture of the world is based on the power relationships established by Western political and cultural expansion, and breaking out of the prison of cross-cultural incomprehension. At a time when the popular media and politicians in the United States are obsessed with upstart little Third World countries (Nicaragua), the rage of Islam (Iran, Lebanon), and the Soviet Union, and when Democrats and Republicans alike are intent on "making America number one again," Von Laue's appeal for understanding and humility, and his thoughtful and balanced critique of Westernization, is most pertinent.

The main text is divided into seven parts; thc book begins with an introduction and a statement of the thesis and ends with an appendix on method and assumptions regarding culture and intercultural comparison. Part I covers the First World War and the postwar 1920s; it is followed by a review of the prewar 1930s and the Second World War. Von Laue then examines the United States, "the foremost superpower," first as "a most privileged nation" before 1945, and then wit"exceptionality eroded" after thc war. This section is followed by a discussion of "the other superpower: victim, rival, and counterrevolutionary," in which the author treats both the problems of building a state in backward Eurasia and the strains of catching up with the capitalist West. Part VI is devoted to the Third World: decolonization, independence, and development. Chapters treat the Bandung Generation(where Von Laue focuses on four of the leaders: Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser, Ghana's Kwame Nkrumah, India's Jawaharlal Nehru, and Indonesia's Sukarno); Chairman Mao; the burden of development; and the United Nations as an agent-albeit largely ineffectual-of Westernization. In the final part of the book, Von Laue reflects on the contemporary age, discussing some of the explosive confrontations around the world and offering an assessment of the liberating discipline of globalism.