“The future world should be characterized by multiplicity; diversity should be taken as its richness and its treasure, and not as a reason for inevitable conflict; many civilizations, many poles, many centers, many sets of values on one planet and in one humanity. Many worlds.

But there are some who think otherwise. Who are aligned against such a project? Those who want to impose uniformity, the one (American) way of life, One World. And their methods are force, temptation, and persuasion. They are against multipolarity. So they are against us.”
– Alexander Dugin, “The Fourth Political Theory” (2012)

Alexander Dugin is a Russian political philosopher and advisor to President Putin. In one of his books, ‘The Fourth Political theory’, he lays out an alternative to the Western, liberal, modern way of being in the world. Professor Dugin says that the three political theories that spread across the world over the last 200-250 years are – Liberalism, Communism and Fascism. And they appeared in the world in that order. Liberalism with its basis in the Individual, Communism with its basis in Class and Fascism with its basis in the Nation State, Professor Dugin says, are all different aspects of the same project of modernity, based on Cartesian materialism. And all these appeared on the world stage at the cost of the then existing diverse traditional human societal systems.

Professor Dugin says that all the three systems are totalitarian in nature and believe in universalism. Which means that they think that their way is THE ONLY way for mankind. Since Liberalism has triumphed over both Communism and Fascism, we live in a unipolar world of individualism. It is easy to see that Communism and Fascism are totalitarian, but Liberalism? Professor Dugin tells a story in an interview recorded in September 2020 and referenced later in this note. He says that his YouTube, Twitter and Gmail accounts were cancelled and he was banned from Amazon. He goes on to say that he is not unhappy about it because it proves his point about the totalitarian nature of the Western liberal establishment.

Professor Dugin says that if humanity has to be saved from its current suicidal path, we need to get out of unipolar, liberal modernity and embrace a multi-polar, multi-civilizational world of what he calls the Fourth Political Theory. Towards the end of the book he summarises the theory and says that:

“Social justice, national sovereignty and traditional values are the three main principles of the Fourth Political Theory. It is not easy to put together such a varied alliance. But we must try if we want to overcome the foe.”

His idea is to form what he calls a concentration camp for modernity by encircling it from both sides; using pre-modern traditional values and post-modern egalitarianism. The Wikipedia article on Professor Dugin says that “On 11 March 2015, the United States Department of the Treasury added Dugin to its list of Russian citizens who are sanctioned.” He must be on to something!

Links:

The Fourth Political Theory website is at: http://www.4pt.su/en
The Fourth Political Theory book is available for reading and download here.
A YouTube video with Professor Dugin explaining his theory is available here.