01.12.07
Bush/Hegel
Comment from Crooked Timber blog re: Bush/Hegel/Weber
At the time of the start of the Iraq invasion I was subscribed to a leftist email list and recall an ironic comment by a (trueblood marxist) to the effect that if Leninists can invade countries to establish communism via ‘revolution’ then why can’t ‘revolutionaries’ like Bush invade countries to establish (classical) liberalism? I think this remark, while not sarcastic, correctly sensed that Bush would make a bollocks of the thing and expose American imperialism, hence deserved to be egged on.
But I think that, qua Hegel, the issue is not that Bush is some sort of ‘great man’ a la Hegel, but that, as Marx attempted to put it, globalization is itself revolutionary, garbled liberalism. The situation is straight ‘bourgeoisie in action’ since 1848: chaos in the name of the economic freedom against the horrid medievalism of all those premodern folk.
Anyway, I hate to say it, but as revolutionary idiots go Bush couldn’t be worse than Stalin. The left might have done better than that, but in fact we see Saddam was a Stalin epigone.