Dugin: The Fourth Political Theory (Book Review)

Alexander Dugin's 2012 book 'The Fourth Political Theory' is possibly his best known work. In it, Dugin attempts to outline the contours of a political alternative to rival and ultimately overthrow the victorious but now rapidly decaying liberalism that conquered the twentieth century, became the sole representative of modernity, ushered in the "end of history", and created the spiritual and physical decay we now call postmodernity. Postmodernity includes transgenderism as well as the transhumanism that will eventually replace mankind with robotics and cyborgs. Liberalism's victory was a dead-end, a disastrous triumph that humanity must now suffer under. However, as human beings with free will, we still have the option to rebel against this slow death. Dugin's Fourth Political Theory is supposed to be a platform upon which we can launch this rebellion against the West's rotting unipolar domination of the world.

There were three political theories or ideologies that fought in the competition to define and control modernity. The first political theory was liberalism, the second was Marxist communism, and the third was fascism. Each theory had a different idea about who the subject of history was supposed to be. Liberalism said the individual was the primary subject of history and possessor of human rights. Marxist communism said that classes were the subjects of history. Fascism said that races or states were the subjects of history. Fascism was destroyed after World War II, and Marxist communism was destroyed after the Cold War. In 1991, liberalism emerged victorious. Francis Fukuyama proclaimed the "end of history", and the entire twenty-first century has been nothing but the slow exhaustion of liberalism's final opponents: religious identities and totalitarian governments. However, liberalism's complete triumph has caused its own irrelevance and death, and this death has given way to postmodernism, which is basically a zombie version of liberalism. Everything in postmodernism is merely a simulacrum of liberalism recycled for entertainment. Nothing is real, it's all just a game.

Instead of sinking into this postmodern zombie state, however, we have the option to try to restart history and become real again, and this is the ultimate objective of the Fourth Political Theory. The first step in this process is to form a multipolar front to overthrow the American Empire. For Dugin, the United States is pure liberal-postmodernism. America is the embodiment of liberalism's historical development, and thus America is the ultimate form of modernity and the hyperpower that holds the world captive inside the zombie prison of simulacra. Dugin is not so naïve, however, as to think that America merely blundered its way into world domination, he argues that America rules precisely because liberalism is the logical culmination of Western history. The Western philosophical trajectory that began in Greece twenty-five centuries ago finally reached its zenith in the American Century. America is the embodiment of two and half millennia of civilizational development.

However, Dugin feels that all that development was a failure, and the whole spiritual philosophical edifice of Western Civilization must now be overthrown by a coalition of the world's anti-liberal forces. In the place of the West's failed imperialistic domination must rise a truly multipolar world in which each civilization is left alone to develop its own internal logic to its highest form. In place of unipolar Western globalization, we will have incredible diversity across the planet, each civilization will become a world unto itself.

Dugin rejects the idea of universal truth. He believes that every civilization has its own internal truth that cannot be judged by or even effectively communicated with other civilizations. This deep belief in diversity leads him to condemn the West for believing the world should be unified or converted to a single way of thinking and acting. Dugin writes that true globalization is impossible because civilizations don't exist inside the same experiences of time, their deep structures are incompatible. People from one civilization can never understand the people from another civilization, and thus they should simply stop trying to understand each other. Globalization is impossible, so the West's obsession with promoting it is inherently evil and contradicts reality.

I found this argument difficult to accept because it seems to ignore the way our modern "large space" civilizations initially formed by absorbing smaller civilizations. According to Dugin, this should not have been possible because one civilization can't really communicate with nor be converted to another civilization's worldview. However, the worldview differences between the ancient Egyptian and Babylonian civilizations were greater than the contemporary differences between America and Russia's Orthodox-Slavic Civilization; so, how were Egypt and Babylon absorbed into Islamic Civilization but somehow it's now impossible for Russia to be absorbed into and become an authentic part of American Civilization? Perhaps Dugin has addressed this issue in another forum, but I've never yet heard him explain the historical phenomenon of civilizational formation.

If liberalism must be overthrown, then the liberal individual must also be removed as the subject of history. Classes and races should not be used as primary subjects because Marxism and fascism already failed to defeat liberalism. Who or what should become the new subject of history? Dugin proposes that Heidegger's dasein become the new subject of history within the Fourth Political Theory. He goes on through several chapters to propose new approaches to various aspects of life including gender, conservativism, practice, and anthropology in light of dasein's new position as subject.

There are numerous insights contained in 'The Fourth Political Theory' and many creative suggestions that might lead readers to see the world in new ways. I found Dugin's outline of modern history to be reasonable and interesting. I've written about some of the things I enjoy about Dugin's philosophy in my two previous reviews of his books. In 'The Fourth Political Theory' I found some interesting thoughts tucked away in the second appendix that were especially helpful in understanding some of Dugin's more confusing tendencies.

Numerous commentators, including myself, have noted that Dugin seems to contradict himself in obvious ways. For example, he often denounces America and liberalism as inherently evil but also regularly reminds his readers that there's no objective truth that can be used to judge other civilizations. But if Dugin, who belongs to Orthodox-Slavic Civilization, cannot judge liberal Western Civilization, then why does he so persistently judge the West's universalist liberalism as evil? If Western globalism follows the internal truths of Western Civilization, then, according to Dugin, it cannot be judged as evil by an outsider like himself. This is where Appendix II comes in.

The title of Appendix II is "The Metaphysics of Chaos", and its basic idea is that Western Civilization's worldview was founded upon the exclusivist masculine concept of the logos. Logos is rational, ordered, domineering, and does not accept any reality but its own. Anything outside of logos is not supposed to have any existence at all. However, according to Dugin, logos has failed. Logos led Western Civilization into liberalism and then into the rotting zombie state of postmodernity. If humanity is going to survive, it must overthrow globalized logos and find another way forward. This is how Dugin interprets Heidegger's hope for a "new beginning" that restarts everything from another point and thus avoids ending in liberal-postmodernity.

Dugin proposes replacing logos with something even more primordial: chaos. Chaos is the thing that exists before logos. Chaos is the formless "waters" of Genesis 1 which were given order by the Logos. Unlike logos, chaos is inclusive and feminine. Men regard women as entirely "other" from themselves, but women regard men as a part of themselves because they give birth to men, and men were once inside of them. Feminine chaos should be consulted in the formation of a new philosophical beginning precisely because she includes logos within herself and thus knows us and can guide us. Dugin admits that this is a mystery, and he does not know what chaos will reveal to us as a new starting point, but she is waiting alongside logos. She is the water that we can dive back into and refresh ourselves with innovative new ways of being.

Because chaos is all inclusive, and she does not exclude other truths from herself, Dugin's apparent contradictions appear to be part of his philosophy of communion with chaos. Dugin states throughout his works that we're living in postmodernity, we are postmodern people, whether we like it or not. Dugin believes himself to be postmodern and therefore also post-truth. As much as Dugin might wish to escape liberal-postmodernity, he also seems to revel in the possibilities it presents. Postmodernism is swimming in the waters of chaos looking for new ways of being. Within this worldview, Dugin is not disingenuous nor paradoxical, he's perfectly consistent with his deeper convictions. The contradictions in his worldview are valid components of his thinking rather than defects.

What should Christians think about Dugin and his Fourth Political Theory (4PT)? I'm not ready to condemn Dugin, he claims to be an Orthodox Christian, and I will not be the one to judge his soul. However, there are certainly disturbing elements in his deep philosophy. Appendix II appears to come close to actual blasphemy when Dugin writes that "logos needs a savior". As a Christian, it's hard to read his views on chaos without feeling anxious. Chaos is leviathan, chaos is a watery dragon, chaos might even be Satan. Is Dugin really suggesting we should sidestep God and return to the primordial formless water to revive ourselves and our civilization? Dugin must be aware of these disturbing implications because he's a professing Christian and writes extensively about religion, and his obvious deep understanding is why I'm willing to suggest that some of these writings might be blasphemous. He should know better. Having said that, there are many components of his worldview that I simply don't understand. There's enough spiritual and intellectual meat in his books to keep readers thinking, and I've personally recommended Dugin in discussions with several friends and debate partners. He has certainly expanded my own mind.

Finally, I want to point out certain parallels between Dugin's thinking and the current geopolitical theories emanating from communist China. Dugin writes that the three pillars of 4PT praxis are social justice, national sovereignty, and traditional spirituality. In recent years, China has recognized the need for building similar walls in its fight against the liberal world order; however, they have made some modifications. Complete national sovereignty, meaning the ability to do anything a government wants inside its own borders, has long been an obsession of the Chinese state, and it manifests in China's recent insistence that the genocide of Muslims in Xinjiang belongs exclusively to its own "internal affairs". Chinese propaganda echoes Dugin in its constant claims that foreigners cannot understand China because China is its own civilization that cannot be judged from the outside. China has also pushed for the revival of faith in Marxist communism as a national ideology capable of pushing back against liberalism. Xi Jinping has pressured every level of society to begin resuscitating Marxism as the spiritual core of China. The broader point I'm trying to make is that Dugin's thinking is being internalized in some parts of the world, specifically in those entities like communist China that have an interest in restarting history and fighting Western liberal globalization. For these reasons, Dugin is worth reading and thinking about. His ideas are resonating in many places around the world and effecting real events and lives.