ABSTRACT
In his landmark work of political philosophy, Politics and Vision, Sheldon Wolin identified the essential ideological shift which both accompanied and facilitated Western civilisation’s passage to modernity: the supplanting of the political by the economic (Wolin, 1960:195-285). It was a phenomenon most keenly appreciated by Karl Marx, whose theoretical construct of the ‘base’ (the social relations of production) essentially determined the nature of the ‘superstructure’ (state and civil society). The ascendancy of the economic continues even today, as governments routinely acknowledge the perceived verity that success in other aspects of life is dependent upon economic growth and prosperity-‘It’s the economy, stupid!’ Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign slogan merely stated what the leaders of the two major opposing political economic systems of the twentieth century had believed since the Russian Revolution of 1917. Yet, as C.Douglas Lummis highlights, economic development, under whatever political guise, has brought about the often savage uprooting of old ways and customs in the name of progress (Lummis, 1996:50ff ). Tony Blair’s mantra of ‘modernisation’ is simply more of the same: justifying fundamental change in the name of irreversible, inevitable ‘progress’. Economic development and growth are promoted as and perceived to be of absolute necessity in humanity’s pursuit of happiness. Surrounding this central tenet is a pot pourri of rationalisations (ranging from the elaborate to the downright crude) for why this should be.
