01 PREAMBLE
The Indian Academy of Social Sciences (ISSA) has resolved to focus deliberations of the XXIX Indian Social Science Congress on “Facing The Challenges of Modern Civilization†with a view to evolving a new understanding of how to meet the challenges of modern civilization. This endeavour will have to be based on a critique of the existing civilization(s) and especially of the dominant one. The question is as to how to get there from within the dialectics of existing society so as to ensure a humane, just and equitable society which will be free of hunger, disease, poverty, war, discrimination and oppression ---a society which will be free, democratic, secular and peaceful, a society which is absolutely essential for creating a harmonious world order.
02. Concept of Civilisation
There are a plethora of definitions and theories of civilization and culture in history, Anthropology, Sociology, Psychology, and Political Science books. A careful reading of these definitions would show that ‘civilisation’, ‘culture’, ‘modern civilisation’ are higher-order of abstractions of internal and external-relations between and among men/women, society and nature in a given time and space and, hence very complex. What is very complex is not easily negotiable/or amenable to simple mathematical abstractions/or not comprehensible to sensory-motor-perceptual mechanism. As a higher-order of abstraction, civilisation refers to an abstraction of quality of relationships existing between and among Nature-Man-Society in a given time and space. Civilisation as such is not a thing rather it is the quality of network of relationships between and among things. Man is at the centre of all such relationships between him/her and Society and Nature. Because of the nature of relationship between Man, Society and Nature civilisation is social. Can we describe quality of relationships of modern civilisation with a single word?
Matter transforms itself from non-living to living and vice-versa, but it never dies. Civilisation too transform itself from one form to the other subject to a condition that Man and Society continue to exist. With the disappearance of Man and Society from the earth civilisation too will disappear. What still will continue to exist is Nature in its non-living form.
Like an organism, a civilisation too is a living system, it too grows, matures, decays and dies. Modern science of genetics has shown that the genes of tails of apes are very well present in the genes of modern man. Likewise one can find traces of older civilisations in the modern civilisation.
Ancient civilisations were area-specific. For example, Harappan civilisation, Babylonian civilisation, Mesopotamian civilisation and Egyptian Civilisation, Greek-Roman civilization and Chinese Civilisation were located in specific areas. But now, particularly since the inauguration of the programmes of globalisation, terms like, global capital-based economy and global village are frequently used. The advent of Information Technology, robotics and automation in production are changing all this. It is possible to speak of modern civilisation as a universal category denoting the sum total of quality of relationships or quality of networks of networks obtaining between Nature, Man and Society in contemporary world. All other area or territory-specific civilisations will be subsumed under the category ‘Modern civilisation’. Nature-Man-Society appears to be moving towards one common civilisation for the whole of humanity. It expresses itself in common production technologies, common production distribution, common market, common transportation, common education, common language or one universal language, uniform pattern of housing, living and health care, etc. All social relations are market-determined relations. All human virtues and social values are transformed into commodities. Private property is at its base. The slogans of ‘Liberalization’ and ‘Globalisation’ are the two major carriers of private property under the pseudonym of ‘Privatisation’. ‘Maximization of profit and minimization of loss settle all ethical questions’. One politics, one economy, one society and one culture would, then constitute the founding blocks of modern civilisation. Can it have any other name than modern civilisation?
Under the circumstances, can there be a space for area-specific or region-specific or racial and religion specific civilisations? Perhaps, not. All other civilisations, therefore, stand to die or be subsumed at the hands of modern civilisation. Is there evidence for it? Plenty.
Today one witnesses large number of social movements and struggles going on all over the World. All these tend to oppose the negative features of modern civilization?plundering of labour, violation of human rights and civil liberties, social, economic, political and cultural atrocities, rapes, murders and violence, racial, religious and regional discriminations, exploitation of man by man, deforestation, degradation of ecology and environment, domination of global market forces and global capital, et cetera. All these movements are now giving rise to newer forms of international social organisation/networks.rld. This then reflects peoples’ growing dissatisfaction/ alienation from modern civilisation and growing consciousness and concern for newer and better forms of civilisations.
Culture is a sub-category of civilisation. As such it refers to the subjective conditions of people by which they establish connections with the external world and develop higher order of social networks. Although invisible, culture is a very important and powerful component of civilisation. Knowledge / Science, language, art, skills, social norms, ideals constitute culture. It too grows, decays and dies. Laws of evolution apply to culture as well.
Everything that exists at present has a past and future. Its past is in its present and its present contains its future. It applies to the modern civilisation as well. To the question, when did modern civilisation arise, it can be said with certain degree of certainty that the Industrial Revolution and renaissance gave birth to modern civilisation. Has it reached its peak by the end of 20th century and is it in a process of decay? Whether the modern civilisation has reached the zenith is problematic and needs to be investigated.
How is the modern civilisation linked with the earlier civilisations? Anthropological, archaeological and sociological researches seem to show modern civilisation having a history of several thousands years. It is said to be rooted in ‘private-property’-based social formation. That is to say, ‘private-property'’ is its genome. This needs to be investigated and well understood.
With October Revolution in Russia a new civilisation emerged on the earth in 1917. Soon it spread like a wild fire and half of the globe came under its influence by 1950. It was based on welfare of all and democracy for all. It was and is described as 'scientific socialism based civilisation’. Its achievements in the field of education, employment, health, housing et cetera were very high. It had removed poverty, illiteracy, disease and exploitation of man by man within a very short period of time. With the collapse of USSR in 1989,and China moving back to capitalism from socialism, the socialist camp has yielded place to socialism as a social alternative. Thus, the term Modern Civilisation may mean capitalist civilization as well as socialist civilization. However, after collapse of socialist world system, there is a common tendency to talk about unipolar world in which case Modern Civilisation means global capitalist civilization. Since the nature of global capital is hegemonic / imperialist, one can describe modern civilization as imperialist civilization or by any other suitable name. This, of course, will be narrow meaning of modern civilization simply because it connotes imperialist as well as socialist civilization. The question that needs to be examined is does ‘scientific socialism’ have the necessary potential for creating a new civilization? Is it superior to the imperialist/capitalist civilisation? Can thoughts of Karl Marx and M. K. Gandhi may prove helpful in evolving a new theory of such a civilisation? What would be the theory of new civilisation? What would be its parameters? What is to be done?
0202 INDIAN CONTEXT
In recent years Digitisation has also emerged an important and integral part of the development agenda of Sovereign Socialist Secular Democratic Republic of India; ‘Digital India’ is an enthusiastic rhetoric of the present Government.
Historically, Digitisation in India entered in the ninety fifties, like in the western countries , through scientific research requirements in areas like nuclear physics and cosmic rays. Observations by electronic devices in these areas gave digital data that required processing and analysis or computation. In India Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) was engaged in cosmic ray and nuclear physics. Homi Bhabha supported by Nehruvian thrust on science, nucleated a team to work on digital and computer technology. By 1959, the team succeeded in bringing out a functional computer christened by Nehru in 1962 as TIFR Automatic Calculator (TIFRAC); a first generation machine using vacuum tubes, germanium diodes and resistors. Over 50 organisations including research laboratories, universities, and government agencies regularly used the machine for research purposes.
By 1960s, however, in industrialised countries more advanced computers with faster online proc-essing speeds using new computer languages had been developed. Although TIFR and its public sector partner Electronics Corporation of India Limited (ECIL) did further work on a model more advanced than TIFRAC, in the absence of supporting electronic component fabrication facilities in India, they could not keep pace with the advancement taking place abroad. However, perusing policy of developing indigenous research capabilities, in 1963 IIT Kanpur for research work got an IBM 360 machine under the Indo- American aid programme through personal efforts of Nehru. Also, P.C. Mahalanabis, for performing sta-tistical calculations for planning commission, got an imported Hollieth Computer at Indian Statistical Institute (ISI). Indeed, ISI in collaboration with Jadavpur University did come up with a transistor based computer which was specifically used for research purposes.
03. Context
The deliberations of the XXVIII Indian Social Science Congress were centered on “The Crisis of Modern Civilizationâ€. Various aspects of modern civilization, namely, economic, political, social, scientific, technological, educational, health, cultural, linguistics, etc. were deliberated upon to understand the nature of the crisis facing the society. The deliberations showed that there are several civilizations, which co-exist simultaneously today even if the dominant one is the western imperialist civilization. The question then is as to why the older civilizations became subordinate to the later dominant one. Is it meaningful to revert to the earlier civilizations, or to innovate and advance further from the existing one to achieve the cherished characteristics of a human society? Does the dominant civilization face a crisis? Is it a fact that the connected but subordinate others also do so, or does each one of the current civilizations face a relatively separate and independent crisis? It needs to be also asked what we understand by a crisis. Is it to be defined in the larger sense of a faulty vision underlying a civilization or can we also talk of it in the narrower sense of different aspects of existence in a society facing problems or conversely/concurrently the defective fundamentals are expressed through a plethora of apparently disparate, unrelated pathological symptoms? Often analysts talk of the latter and from that they project that there is a larger crisis in society. Is this correct? Are there several crises or is there one single crisis manifesting itself differently in each of the areas of people’s existence? These issues need resolution if we are to suggest ways of facing up to the Crisis of Modern Civilization.
The understanding of Nature that is evolving with the advances in physical, chemical and biological sciences needs to be taken into account. Are they going to create further problems or will they be a part of the solution enabling us to face the challenges ahead? The ethical issues involved in genetic engineering (cloning, etc,) need a deeper understanding. What it would imply for evolution of life on this planet needs exploration to understand the desirability of this kind of research. We need to identify those aspects of society that propel scientists to do research that other thinking people see as undesirable and threatening. We can also ask, why is there a lack of faith that research will not be to the good of humanity? Reflection on these issues will help us understand whether there need to be any restrictions on research at all. Will such restrictions be a reversion to times when parochial thought became sanatana —eternally stagnant, with repetitive drudgery- ridden crafts production existing stagnant in the dark, narrow niches under a dominion of feudal authority which kept the profane mercantile urges in subordination? Or to invoke the “other†civilizations and societies, will such restrictions resurrect the eras of inquisitions, of book-burning by Nazis, the witch hunts of McCarthyism, or the perpetuation of currently pervasive insidious influence of imperial corporate cohorts acting with and through their regional/sub-regional subordinate agents— public/private corporate funding which imposes objectives and performance criteria for goals other than and even antagonistic to the scientific ones.? The insidious imposition of an incompatible patronage diverting priorities from the legitimate enquires into the understanding of cellular-differentiation and its reversibility, of the natural repair and regeneration of living tissue, of the process of increasing entropy and aging (perhaps to ameliorate the latter), diverts focus away from and compromises scientific values and integrity under urges to make a “fast-buck†and the megalomaniac urges of the narcissistic super-affluent to clone themselves to eternity like the embalmed pharaohs. This is, indeed, an insidiousness which blinds protesting intellectuals to direct their attacks not on the imperialist corporate decision-making, which overwhelms them with its charity, but to attack the subaltern generic scientific and technological processes which alone can empower and be empowered by the peoples at large.
The modern civilization, which has its root in private property—has generated mutually two opposite social processes: (a) a process of enrichment of the few and (b) a process of impoverishment of the majority; the operation of these two processes has resulted into a very high disparity between the rich and the poor on the one hand, and destruction of environment and ecology on the other. Science and Technology have become instruments for generating wealth for the few and marginalisation, and in some places pauperization, of the vast multitudes of the total population. The consequences of all this translates itself into a bottoming out of global reality. Each day, the great financial centres impose their laws on nations and groups of nations. At the end of readjustment and reordering operations carried on under these laws, there arises a peculiar excess: “left-over†peoples, who are simply disposable. They are not necessary for the “new world orderâ€, who do not produce or consume, who do not use credit, whose only company are cardboard and plastic bags. It is time for us to decide how to face up to challenges posed by the continuous growth of the “left-over†human beings who are not only subjected to the brunt of the most cruel poverty, but who do not matter, whose only end is to somehow collect a morsel of leftovers and to wander through the streets without a fixed direction, without a permanent shelter or work, without a minimal stability of family or social ties. Is it not proper that the major focus in social science research should be directed toward the suffering humanity? Is it not a fact that the whole world of loneliness, poverty and pain, helplessness and humiliations make a mockery of our civilized existence?
The impact of genetic and medical research on longevity of life and the concomitant need for new social responses has to be worked out consistent with scientific values/integrity and its non-authoritarian democratic cum objective decision-making. What will be the implications of the emerging Man-machine systems and the changing nature of medicine for Humanity? The rapidly increasing biological load on the Earth and its implications need analysis. The implications of the disappearance of a large number of species in a short span of time has to be worked out.
The explosion in information technology and communications is resulting in a variety of challenges and also in deepening of the divide between the haves and the have-nots. The use of this and automation has implications for nature of work and employment. There is the potential threat of the emergence of a new division of labour, even more misanthropic. Clean technologies are located in advanced nations and the dirty ones in the developing nations with consequent implications for the poor in the latter set of countries. How would we cope with its social implications needs to be understood.
The newer understanding of space-time-matter and possibilities of additional dimensions (in addition to space and time) of which we are as yet not aware or the possibilities of existence of many Universes or Multiuniverses opens up philosophical questions of our view of Man and existence. This has the potential of changing our views of Society and Nature and, therefore, of our own civilization. The exploration of outer space and its possible colonization in the coming decades opens up new challenges—a brutally ravished planet to be joined by others to be equally brutalized.
Institutions of global governance and democracy are facing newer challenges. Democracy has been facing a crisis where it seems to be limited to voting and there is a lack of choices available to the people subject to irrational, emotive manipulation and disinformation by corporate media. In cases, apparently democratic governments are not responsive to their own people’s needs. The people were fooled into believing that Iraq war was necessary and there were countries in which the vast majority of people were against the war and yet they became allies in the war. The manner in which the International institutions of governance, including the UN, have been often utilized by the dominant world powers to push their own agendas on others is a matter of concern and requires resolution to create a just world. War in preference to social welfare needs to be challenged in any alternative vision of society and in the struggles to achieve it.
Growing criminalization and terrorism the world over needs to be understood in the wider context of the marginalization and the alienation of many people and the non-responsiveness of the governments of whatever hue, cravenly submissive towards the international financial institutions and their principal imperialist stake holders. It is also true that many of the governments are themselves involved in various kinds of autocratic and illegal actions (including the violation of civil rights and human rights) which then causes an opposite response from those adversely affected.
Media has expanded and transformed like never before with newer forms of it emerging rapidly with all their dialectical potential. Its domination by the corporate sector has also grown rapidly as it has become highly resource intensive. A domination by imperial corporates shall be terminated only when the emergence of peoples’ initiatives unify and federate and to that end utilize the available generic scientific/technological knowledge to innovate their versions of media/communication technology which incorporate action within immediate communities to world wide networking. Its use by governments, as in the case of recent use of `embedded journalists’ in the Iraq War, has thrown a challenge to independence of Media. It has enabled the advanced countries to dominate over others and helped their cultures to rapidly penetrate and at times overwhelm the “lesser†cultures and often lead to the marginalization of these cultures. Literature and Arts are the expression of the creativity of people and adverse effects on them have repercussions for the dynamism of these societies. There is a serious impact on the languages of indigenous people. The erosion of the diversity in language and cultures is to the detriment of the long-term interest of the World since it lowers the capacity of the World to survive adversity.
The new forms of media that are amenable to corporate control and which are using/making available sex and violence as forms of entertainment/advertising are having a serious impact on the thinking processes of people and perhaps leaving them confused and turning them apolitical. News has become a pure commodity for earning the highest profit and less a social responsibility for keeping the public well informed and alert. The links between media, people and politicians and businessmen have created their own problems of objectivity of news. However, there are newer possibilities emerging from the use of internet and world wide web which must be explored in building highly accessible, democratic alternatives through, as said, the emergence of peoples’ initiatives which unify and federate and in that process and to that end utilize the available generic scientific/technological resource to innovate their version of media/communication technology networks which incorporate action within immediate communities to world wide networking & coordination.
Legal and Ethical issues are posing serious problems with the changing nature of international laws and new laws being implemented under WTO to strengthen property relations. Intellectual property rights in the form of copyrights, TRIPs and other such instrumentalities are attempting to consolidate the control of the few over the many. The dilemma faced by the developing world is that the scale of investment in R&D in some areas like, aerospace, electronics, fusion energy is beyond their capacity so that they are rapidly getting locked into backwardness. And yet in areas of daily existence interwoven with the peoples’ productive lives are the unstoppable, ongoing heuristic innovations by artisans/technicians to ease and make more productive the lives of the peoples, by adapting existing hardware to these different purposes.
Rapid changes in technology commissioned by imperialist corporates have created new situations at an unprecedented rate so that social change addressed to human well being is unable to cope with it and new understanding is several steps behind the change so that solutions under existing regulatory mechanisms are outdated by the time they are worked out. Responses are often short term and ad hoc and result in more problems later. By the time it is realized that a mistake is made, it maybe too late to correct it. Time horizons have narrowed so that no one is even looking for the admittedly difficult long term solutions, thereby creating a vicious cycle.
The march of modern imperialist civilization toward homogenization – one economy, one politics and one culture is highly devastating and destructive. It has reached its zenith and lost all its power to solve current social, economic, cultural, economic and ecological problems. Question arises, is there a way out?
The current character of knowledge generation needs to be understood. Its hegemonic control by the vested interests to propagate their own interests needs to be understood. The problem is more severe in the developing countries whose intellectuals are mostly recycling the knowledge from the advanced countries. Not only are the poor of the advanced countries marginalized by the manner in which knowledge is generated but those of the developing countries are even more marginalized by this process. Solutions given their partial characteristics have often turned out to be non-solutions for the West and when applied to the developing countries have created greater problems.
The above analysis and the issues raised suggests that there is a need for building a theory for understanding society and evolving a new practice. We would have to consider the various alternatives that present themselves to us, say, the Marxian and the Gandhian approaches, to make a beginning. The Gandhian with its instinctive/intuitive empathy for the tiny, marginalized small producers and their limited social-control over local resources; the Marxian with its scientific, uncompromisingly humanist agenda to democratically organize the dispossessed unorganized, to democratically unify the marginalized into a social-force capable of struggling and expanding their social-control over natural and productive resources; one a starting point and the other a direction which can only be effected through and realised by innovating systems of production technology serving the peoples’ needs and under their social-control. These would themselves have to be subjected to critical scrutiny in the current context to evolve the alternatives for the future. One would have to understand how social consciousness would transform and whether it is ready for the radical changes needed in society? This throws up the issue of whether change has to be evolutionary or whether it can be radical. The long term lessons from the experiences of Soviet Union and China in the last century in creating alternatives need careful scrutiny.
We would have to consider what view we would take of private property which has dominated social dynamics under capitalism and the inequality it has led to in modern market-based and/or technocratic societies, both nationally and internationally. The impact of commodification and commercialization on society would have to be analysed in the context of the ongoing process of marketization of all social relations. The lop-sided view of Man as ‘homo-economicus’ needs to be challenged, as also the very same CEO’s schizoid perception of human irrelevance to automated system of production with its output subject to an irrational system of spoils played out on the bourse. While law has always been a hand maiden of the vested interests in society, peoples’ movements the world over had induced a sense of fairness between the haves and the have-nots. In the current wave of marketization, law is increasingly being determined by the dictates of the markets. Fairness in Law towards all sections of society has to be achieved in any alternative. The nature of current Science and Technology and its role in the dynamics of capitalism and the social impact it has produced would have to be taken into account critically.
The relationship between democracy and markets and the role they play in the life of the individual and the family need to be restructured. The nature of the current globalization and its domination by forces of international finance capital have to be changed. How the cultures of various marginal groups can be protected needs to be in built. The impact of the process of homogenization and what this implies for the future of mankind needs to be factored in. The right of people to develop in different directions and at their own pace has to be protected. Their democratic rights need to be protected and in the post 9/11 phase, it is essential to ensure that those fighting for their democratic rights do not get branded as terrorists. The emerging international division of labour and the problems of global public goods and the damage to the international and local environments needs to be factored in.
It is essential that the alternative which is suggested is accompanied by a conception of how it will be achieved. A road map is essential. This must also take into account the strengths of the current systems to overcome their local and temporary crises that they face from time to time. One of the strengths is to prevent people from seeing the broader picture by keeping them befuddled and allowing them only a keyhole vision which gives them a false hope for the future and generates a complacency. And yet there is the peoples’ capacity to learn en masse from their realities, to congeal sheerly by person-to-person transmission a subterranean resolve to question and to unseat redoubtable regimes whose legitimacy remained in absolute powers of emergency.