Civilization or Utter Darkness

Beyond liberalism and Marxism

Alexander Dugin condemns any compromise with the postmodern West and insists that Russia’s civilizational approach is the only possible paradigm.

We are not simply at war with the West. We are at war with the modern (and postmodern) West—with the West that as far back as the 11th century diverged from our common Christian path and has been advancing ever further, striving to reach the end of the night, deeper and deeper into the outer twilight.

The metaphysical conditions for a truce are as follows:

• Either the West, while remaining modern (and postmodern)—exactly as it wants to be and as it currently is—leaves us in peace (but this is ruled out, impossible, and not seriously considered by anyone there—Satan does not stop);

• Or the West sharply changes the direction of its movement and, following the path of the Eternal Return, decisively turns BACK towards its own (Christian, Greco-Roman) roots. These roots are common to us both (it is only that the West has wandered very, very far from them, while we have not). This is highly improbable, but not theoretically impossible (after all, Nietzsche, Husserl, Spengler, Heidegger, Guénon, and Evola represent the West as well—only the right, sane West, not possessed by progress, liberalism, and perversions).

An important point about the civilizational approach. We have now broken through the barrier: the civilizational approach is finally being taken seriously and without the previous sneering and mockery. But there is a subtle nuance here. Everyone has been pressured into accepting it—but only as an approach. That is, it is now permissible to say that civilizations exist in the plural, that they are different, unique, and that each does whatever it wants in the course of its own production (of both things and meanings). It is now an officially permitted approach.

But let’s think about this: what would any other approach look like?

And here we discover the most interesting thing: a non-civilizational approach is the belief in the universality and mandatory nature of the Western path of development—in other words, an oath of allegiance to a West-centric view of the world. In the West today, liberalism (bourgeois capitalism in its postmodern form—hence the LGBT ideology, mass immigration, and so on, all banned in Russia) reigns supreme, with confident, even totalitarian dominance. Therefore, a non-civilizational approach today means agreement with Western hegemony and, under current conditions, with liberalism. Since we are at war with the West in the Special Military Operation, a non-civilizational approach is simply a fifth column of the enemy in the cognitive war for the public consciousness of Russians.

Of course, classical Marxism remains as another non-civilizational option (its theory of the universal succession of socio-economic formations—exactly like in the West). But it mostly just gets in the way and plays into the hands of the liberals. Marx himself was, after all, aligned with the bourgeoisie at the stages when it was overthrowing Christianity, estates, and traditional values. He believed that afterward the proletariat (“we”) would overthrow the bourgeoisie (“them”). We know how that turned out. For a while it even seemed to be working (thanks to the greatness of the Russian people and Stalin’s essentially imperial, centralized power). But then came primitive capital accumulation again—the 1990s, wild capitalism, raspberry jackets,¹ thieves, contract killers, and CIA agents in the Russian government.

Thus, the relativization of the civilizational approach is:

• Either an attempt to justify totalitarian globalist liberalism (this is the most common case)—in other words, a large-scale operation by Western intelligence services in the cognitive war. Over the past 30 years, our humanities scholars have gone through every stage of systematic recruitment: grants, conferences, offers they couldn’t refuse, publication in Western citation indexes, education reforms, and so on;

• Or inertial Marxism—the phantom pain of a half-erased, chimeric ideology.

In the first case, this borders on outright espionage. We see this in the cases of foreign agents like Sineokaya and Shulman.² Everything is clear here. A liberal is an enemy of the people, practically a ready-made terrorist.

In the second case, these are the hallucinations of the older generation, of which we should be tolerant, but which should not be taken seriously. And if they are new Marxists, then it is most likely espionage again—meaning one should look for a foreign handler (male or female).

Therefore, the civilizational approach is not just an approach. It is the only possible paradigm if Russia is a state-civilization, and Putin and the authorities affirm that this is exactly what it is. Consequently, pluralism should be sought not outside the civilizational paradigm, but within it. There is plenty of room for both the right and the left, but only if they are civilizational (Russian, Eurasian) right-wingers and civilizational (Russian, Eurasian) left-wingers. In fact, for everyone—but inside the paradigm. Outside it lies utter darkness. The external twilight. One should not go there. Evil lurks there.

(Translated from the Russian)

1. Translator’s note (TN): “Raspberry jackets” (малиновые пиджаки) is a symbolic reference to the flashy, bright-red blazers worn by the nouveau-riche “New Russians”—often criminals or shady businessmen—as a stereotypical emblem of the vulgarity and wild criminal capitalism of the 1990s.

2. TN: Yulia Sineokaya and Ekaterina Shulman are well-known Russian liberal intellectuals whom the Russian state has designated as foreign agents. They exemplify the “fifth column”: liberals who have been systematically recruited by the West through grants, conferences, and academic networks, and who actively work to undermine Russia’s civilizational sovereignty from within. Both are now in exile and are regarded in patriotic circles as typical representatives of the pro-Western ideological opposition.