Essays
CHALLENGES OF LATE MODERNITY
Milan Popović
; Faculty of Law; Faculty of Political Science, University of Crna Gora, Podgorica, Montenegro
Abstract
This article presents Milan Popović’s reflections on the two most recent and
important books, General Theory of Modernity, written by French alter-Marxist
theoretician, Jacques Bidet, and The States on Trial, written by Croatian
political theoretician, Dragutin Lalović. The two books have been published
and discussed amid the most severe and multiple crisis of the so-called “neoliberal”,
i.e. late and ultra-monopolistic capitalist economy 2008-2009, and
this great social and historical fact has largely contributed to better understanding
and reception of these two critical studies.
Milan Popović shares most of the main premises and findings of these two
books with their authors. Some disagreements between him and them are of
minor and technical importance. So, just to illustrate this kind of disagreements,
while Jacques Bidet uses the term “alter-Marxism” to describe his own
intellectual position, Milan Popović prefers the term “post-Marxism” for the
same purpose. Or, while Jacques Bidet uses the term “ultimate modernity” to
specify our concrete historical time, Milan Popović prefers the term “late modernity”
for the same purpose. Or, finally, while Jacques Bidet uses the term
“world state” to describe the emerging global polity, Milan Popović is much
more cautious, he reserves the term “state” exclusively for the modern form
of polity, and leaves the final outcome and term of the emerging global polity
for further development, observation, and nomination. Some disagreements
between Milan Popović and Dragutin Lalović are of even lesser technical and
conjectural importance.
The three social and political theoreticians, however, strongly agree on the
most important, substantive, and essential issues of our time. So, again, just to
illustrate this kind of essential agreements, they strongly agree that our time
desperately needs a new global polity and governance, which would deal with
the rising ecological and other technological problems of late modernity. Despite
some differences about the terms and emphases, they also agree that, in
the meantime, at least in several coming decades, the late modern state remains
one of the most important actors in the process. Especially two of three,
namely Dragutin Leković and Milan Popović, starting from the concrete political
experience of Croatia and Montenegro during their wartime pandemonic
1990s, persistently insist on the complex, ambiguous, and contradictory process
of simultaneous de-sovereignization and re-sovereignization of the state,
as a part of the process in its late modern phase. Finally, the three theoreticians
share a common vision on the substance and essence of the coming global polity.
They agree that the polity should be a kind of “Universal Republic”.
Keywords
late modernity; altermarxism; socialism; state; “world state”; Bidet; Lalović
Hrčak ID:
47207
URI
Publication date:
23.12.2009.
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