Huntington’s “The Clash of Civilizations?” and Marx and Engels’s Manifesto of the Communist Party are probably two of the most commonly assigned readings for courses on international relations. Interestingly, they are both commonly seen as “wrong”. I argue that the reason for this interpretation is both authors’ overgeneralizations in their attempts at creating broad theories on the future of human interaction.
In “The Clash”, Huntington sees civilizations as the broadest form of association of human beings and in his analysis, the only one that will truly matter in the future of international relations. Although he seems to have prophesized such conflicts as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the issue of radical Islam, and the events in Darfur, his conclusion that all these major disputes will occur upon civilization lines is absurd. People have an extensive set of social ties. They share families, nations, religions, and bowling leagues. To neglect all of these and say that all major conflict, is to ignore the various levels of conflict throughout history. Moreover, Huntington’s logic fails. If the size of the group with which people primarily associate themselves has increased throughout history, why would it stop at civilization? Why couldn’t there be a human affiliation in the future that prevents all conflict from ever happening?
Marx, on the other hand, generalizes too far in that direction. People lose all sub-human level associations. Everyone is of the same class, families are abolished, and society will be conflict-free, Marx argues. As does Huntington, Marx rejects not only the significance of the variety of social ties, but also the importance of individualism. Individualism brings both good and bad. Most of the great improvements in technology and quality of life have come from individual endeavors. Conversely, individuals can make the decision to engage others in conflict or to avoid it.
Although both theories provide correct insights in parts, the complexity of human social ties is the reason these two views are commonly criticized as “wrong”.
1 comment:
While I definitely agree that Huntington's concept of Civilizations is obviously a generalization (I think that tends to be inevitable when you try to categorize people into distinct groups with distinct interests and ideas that "never" diverge from one another), I think you're oversimplifying it.
Huntington defines civilizations as "the highest cultural grouping of people and the broadest level of cultural identity people have short of that which distinguishes humans from other species" and I think that encompasses the social ties you are talking about. In reality the civilizations he talks about are very broad and therefore mostly hard to refute.
Furthermore, I don't think he ignores the various levels of conflict throughout history, but rather that his argument is that from now on the nature of conflict as we know it will be differnet. that we're in a different era of international conflict.
Additionally, logically speaking unless all humans feel legitimately threatened by some external force (which has as of yet not presented itself) I don't think there is any realistic argument or any glimmer of hope for a "human affiliation...that prevents all conflict from ever happening". That can only be charaterized as wishful thinking for the future or perhaps a normative concept but nothing truly prescriptive, which is what Huntington's conceptions are. And not only are his ideas prescriptive, they were foretelling.
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