Apologia of Modernity

The article considers key factors and directions of the value-institutional evolution of Modernity as a political project. It is argued that the movement of humankind towards the globalised world paradoxically turned not into a denial, but rather into a consistent radicalisation of the axiological political foundations of Modernity. The thesis of the axiological unity and institutional diversity of global Modernity is advanced in opposition to the concept of pluralist modernity as a rhetorically veiled civilisational approach. It is asserted that the constant self-adjustment of the central value system of globalised Modernity is carried out in the context of a non-simultaneity effect, providing grounds for discussions about the insurmountability of pre-modern cultural barriers and traditions of different civilisations. The conclusion is justified that the success of the globalisation of Modernity is contingent upon the possibility of building out the already existing world economy to include world politics, since the economic assimilation of the world by capitalism has largely outstripped the counterbalancing possibilities of its global political regulatory and compensatory systems, contributing to the intensification of conflicts and various inequalities. The increasingly intensive interaction and interdependence of humanity at the global level first implies the creation of ethical mechanisms of world politics based on concern for the interests of humanity as a whole. In seeking the solution to this problem, it is increasingly necessary to go beyond archaised political forms and the logic of decision-making that relates to territorial nation-states. In the discussion about the ethical and political values and institutions of the global, second or late Modernity, the positionsof those subjects capable of presenting a moral game to humanity – Received 6 June 2017 © 2017 Victor Martianov Accepted 21 August 2017 martianov@instlaw.uran.ru Published online 29 September 2017 153 Changing Societies & Personalities, 2017 Vol. 1, No. 2 open, egalitarian, universal, cosmopolitan approaches for solving general problems – will be a priori strengthened.

The fundamental importance of Modernity as a central problem for the social sciences cannot be overemphasised.According to the figurative expression of E. Hobsbawm, it was during the twentieth century that 80% of the Earth's population finally parted company with the Middle Ages and stepped into modern society.This is a society oriented toward the scientific mastering of nature and freedom to control one's own destiny.Modernity is the most ideological problem of the social sciences, the response to which is used to designate all other axiological, ontological and notional hierarchies.While we are all located in Modernity, its constantly changing face can be seen differently depending on the historical stage of a particular society and the subject of its interpretation.While sharing some common features, the versions of Modernity of the 18 th and 19 th centuries and at the beginning and end of the 20 th century can be differentiated in a number of key aspects.It is the dream of all political and philosophical doctrines, state power apparatuses and social forces to exert an effective intellectual monopoly over Modernity, due to the concomitant ability to legitimatise certain topical socio-political, cultural and economic orders.However, it is impossible to furnish a universal definition of a continuous or unfinished Modernity (Habermas, 2005) within which one is located without also presenting that position within the coordinates of the socio-political, economic and historical context in which the observer thinks.At the same time, the reflection of one's own social engagement and partiality naturally turns into a falsification of any universal concepts and systems of legitimacy that appeal to Modernity.The political project of Modernity presents itself as a globally dominant, historically heterogeneous and far from exhausted political and historical project.Since Modernity is an unfinished project, it cannot be thought of as a whole or as the subject of a final historical outcome.However, we can learn a lot about the Modernity, contemporary society and ourselves if we are able to understand the internal changes that the value-institutional political order of Modernity has undergone over the past several centuries.
Concerning the genesis, transformation, possible alternatives and threats to the dominant political project of Modernity, we can formulate the following interrelated sequence of theses.

I
Historically, the political project of Modernity came to supersede the Ancien Régime (old order), showing the construction of the social order for the first time and justifying its autonomy from the unchanging divine order.Traditional societies are fundamentally distinguished from their modern equivalents in terms of the rate of social change.Before Modernity, the rate of change was so small that during one generation the changes were almost invisible, creating a general illusion that no changes at all had taken place since the creation of the world.Therefore, the speed of change in contemporary society -in which, in fact, only the habitual way of life changes, i.e. its rituals, symbols and values -can seem almost like blasphemy from the point of view of pre-modern social groups.
The speed of social change makes it clear that all societies are explicitly constructed.As a result, the main object of criticism of Modernity is the uncovering of its ontological and axiological variability as well as the constructed nature of different social forces, interpreted in the context of the sacral tradition as inauthenticity, simulacrality, deconstruction, denial of God, distortion of sacred foundations, etc.Nevertheless, it can be remarked that tradition differs only in the sense that the drawing up of its design is lost in a historical timescale.Abolishing the earthly order is justified by the fact that it is a copy of the divine; consequently, every social evil has an apologia on the basis that everything real is reasonable.However, unpredictable results may ensue from citizens and social groups legitimising their right to change the political order.Thus, the political order of Modernity resurrects the scenario of the construction of the Tower of Babel, in which the final goal of achieving the ideal (divine) order has not been lost, but is constantly divided due to the conflicts of alternative perspectives produced by constantly transforming social groups as analogues of Biblical languages.Hence the insurmountable theoretical uncertainty and incompleteness of Modernity as the mobile constellation of modern utopias and ideologies and the impossibility of their integration into a metanarrative, which hope J.-F.Lyotard associated with the state of postmodernism (Lyotard, 1979).
A natural way of being for a modern society consists in permanent modernisation as a set of continuously improving changes.The desire for continuous innovation in itself is becoming a key -and perhaps the only -distinctive tradition of Modernity: 'Modernisation is a "way of existence" in modernity, and it cannot end, at least until "modernity" is complete.'(Kapustin, 1998) In this case, in order to correspond to the prevailing principles of the maximisation of collective usefulness, any innovations must be publicly controlled and legitimated by being the object of a wide, constantly confirmed dynamic consensus of key social groups.Therefore, modernisation is a continuous process, carried out under fundamentally incomplete conditions of freedom and in the absence of social forces that can achieve a zero sum victory once and for all.Furthermore, this process is not identical to the movement towards an ideal final state, which often seems to be embodied in one or another political reality.
The Modernist project announced the universality of the human mind and the intelligibility of social and moral laws, leading to Weber's disenchantment of the world.In the ethical field, it is the project of independent rational substantiation of morals (MacIntyre, 1981); in the political sphere, the universal legislation of reason.At the heart of the political project of Modernity lies the desire to develop universal political legislation for all mankind.The problem is that the class differentiation of the Modern society presented a set of diametrically opposed versions of morality and reason, which are the result of the free self-determination of peoples, each of which, while striving for universal legislation, is at the same time an expression of particular political interests.An objective (universal) normative rationality (common goals, values, ideals) of the monologic political mind thus becomes impossible.However, without integral instrumental rationality, expressed in terms of the rules of the game -conflict and interaction of social interests -society itself, seen as an institutional, process-based compromise of interests, becomes impossible to sustain.It is for this reason that increasing attention has been paid both to new disciplinary practices and to dialoguecommunication of social forces, mechanisms for achieving sustainable agreements (conventions) expressed in various democratic mechanisms and institutions (elections, referenda, direct participation of citizens in making power decisions: demonstrations, rallies, jury trials, citizens ' gatherings, public hearings, etc.).
Under the conditions of Modernity, the political community for the first time developed a fundamentally incomplete system of methods for resolving internal conflicts that allow for periodic review of the terms of the social contract, i.e., dominant social forces are given legitimacy for a limited time period.This allows the abandonment of extreme political interactions, in which the winner takes all, in favour of a system of political decision making related to cooperative, dialogical, solidary strategies of various social forces that allow the interests of different parties to be taken into account and society changed in a non-violent way.
Modernity is often criticised by contemporaries both from the left, and from the right.Now as the iron cell of conformism (H.Marcuse), then as the tyranny of the egoistic mind, leading to a dehumanising depreciation of human existence as well as to totalitarianism.Thus, it seems that the real situation is more complicated.In achieving more rapid thematisation, modern theories and collective practices sharply increased the sensitivity of society itself to political problems of power, hierarchy, resource distribution, justice, freedom and solidarity in the context of unavoidable contradictions of group interests.These are political problems that have always existed; however, it is only under the glare of contemporary theoretical optics that they have become the focus of attention, bringing their historical character to light.In this way, it is shown that these problems are not eternal and can, in principle, be variably resolved by active constituents of the political order.

II
During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, most classics of European social thought analysed modern society at the ontological level according to the concepts of universal transition: from agrarian feudalism to industrial capitalism (K.Marx), from traditional to modern society (M.Weber), from organic to mechanical solidarity (E.Durkheim), from community to society (F.Tönnies), from military to industrial society (H.Spencer), etc.Thus, almost all the classical socio-political macro-theories that comprehend the transition to Modernity -and the condition of modernity itselfare built on the identification of evolutionary stages of development thus forming a type of binary time code, one of whose branches has a privileged position with respect to the future, and the other personifying the past.While this transition actually did take Victor Martianov place on a global scale, the Modernist project historically did not end there, setting in motion complex processes of internal differentiation.
In institutional terms, Modernity is expressed in the complexity of the social subsystems -economics, politics, science, art, etc. -each of which acquires a certain autonomy, with its own value system and language of description.At the same time, Modernity does not entirely displace previous social relations.The value system of Modernity functions in parallel with the previous norms of social regulation, gradually coming to displace and replace them.Thus, along with reciprocal and distributive exchanges, patrimonial political order and patron-client relations of elites of different levels, are formed civil nation-states, a self-regulating market, rational bureaucracy, mass parties, trade unions, civil organisations, representative bodies of government, etc.In all modern societies, without exception, we can observe the simultaneity of coexistence and the imposition into various spheres of life of reciprocal (gift-exchange, family, clan), distributive and market relations, as well as a long-term, gradual change in their correlation in favour of the latter.New social norms and regulators seldom replace the old all at once.Typically, this displacement takes the form of a transplant, when the values of Modernity at the institutional level are partially mixed with those of an obsolete cultural tradition.Thus, the displacement of old values in the historical perspective creates transitional institutional effects, which are often erroneously explained in terms of the cultural and civilisational specifics (uniqueness) of a particular society.Now, the problem of global transformation of the model of national, class-industrial and predominantly Western Modernity into the late, post-national, cosmopolitan Modernity is at the centre of discussions.In the world as a whole, the national model of Modernity, which derives habitual everyday life from historical social ideals and utopias, is becoming increasingly irrelevant for describing the actual socio-political and cultural regimes of a large part of mankind in the twenty-first century.Transformations of the basic national model of Modernity were facilitated by: the saturation points of global markets and intensification of non-market competition, leading to the crisis of idealised capitalism; another technological revolution related to automation and robotics; acceleration of the dynamics of changes in late-modern societies without economic growth or mass labour; transformation of the social structure of society and the principles of its stratification, ever less connected with the market; an increase in the internal heterarchy and heterotopy of territorial nationstates due to various internal and external challenges; multiplication and strengthening of non-governmental political subjects in the globalised world (TNK, city networks etc.).However, despite convincing criticism, Modernity remains the basic political model for the relevant description and legitimisation of global cultural and economicpolitical reality, which has not yet been pushed to the periphery of history by alternative political projects.For this reason, despite the constantly observed institutional and axiological changes, leading researchers emphasise that when we refer to the realities of our society we are nevertheless dealing with Modernity, be it the singular modernity of F. Jamieson, the fluid modernity of Z. Bauman, the hyper-modernity of A. Turena, the cosmopolitan, second or late Modernity of U. Beck or A. Giddens' concept of radical Modernity.In the globalised world, the intensity of intellectual challenges to Modernity is growing from the side of the post-industrial, post-Ford, networked information society, knowledge society, etc. (Postfordism, 2015).However, the main challenge is not merely institutional, but a more universal value-ethical challenge, whose sources are more widely defined.As a result, none of the concepts that claimed a global alternative to Modernity were able to displace it from the dominant positions.These include postmodernism, post-industrialism, communism, alterglobalism, world empire (M.Hardt & A. Negri), religious fundamentalism, civilisational theories, theories of autarky and isolationism and a variety of utopian and traditionalist projects (Fishman, 2008).
It should be noted that the most heuristic critical challenge to the political paradigm of Modernism was issued by postmodernism.Persuasive examples of the axiological and methodological criticism of the theories of Modernity can be found in the works of J. Baudrillard, J. Derrida, J. Deleuze, J.-F.Lyotard and others.For example, Jameson argues that the intellectual map of Modernity has largely developed its heuristic potential in social theory terms, to all intents and purposes becoming a synonym for capitalism.However, in throwing a real challenge to Modernity, postmodernism itself failed to become a global utopia, merely morphing into the instrumental cultural logic of late capitalism (Jameson, 1991).Over time, postmodern theories, which initially claimed to represent a global alternative to the value core of Modernity, came to be reabsorbed into it on the basis of critical self-reflection.
Postmodernism revealed and studied the dark side of Modernity from a theoretical perspective (J.Baudrillard).Postmodern theories turned out to be heuristically strong in the study of various kinds of breaks, boundaries, peripheries and cultural contradictions of the political project of Modernity, connected with criticism and challenges directed by various peripheries (geographic, economic, cultural) at the prevailing values and centres.However, postmodernism was unable to offer a global postmodern political project, since it lacks the ability to generate universality and totality in the area of values and aims.The hierarchical values and principles of a political attitude, structured around the criticism of any overwhelming periphery of centrism, proved to be unrealisable in practice.One of the networks or communications must remain ordering and dominant; otherwise, we are only dealing with a radical anarchism connected with a denial of the need for society as such.Thus, if Modernity is connected with individual and collective liberation as well as conscious and goal-oriented transformation of the world, postmodernism turns into forced reactive strategies connected with the adaptive accommodation of individuals and their groups to social, technological and axiological changes, over which they, in fact, do not exercise any power.
The formation of the analytical model of late Modernity is carried out against the background of a historical non-simultaneity effect, at a time when some regions of the world are entering the postindustrial stage of Modernity, while others are merely living through the process of being forced to play catch up with modernisation and the institutional adaptation to Modernity in the form of nation-states.The classical Victor Martianov programmes of social knowledge of the original era of Modernity were oriented towards the nation-state as the legitimate political form of its practical embodiment.It is for this reason that Marx could still draw upon English political economy, German philosophy and French utopianism.Under the conditions of globalised or late Modernity, any national schools or theoretical models of social knowledge lose their self-sufficiency.Nations become only private or special in comparison with universal laws, which are relevant only to the extent that they apply to humanity as a whole.
At the same time, some popular theories, especially in the field of economics, continue to use ontological modifications of the classical transit discourse no longer in substantiating the transition to it, but in describing the very formation and subsequent transformations of Modernity.For example, D. Nort, D. Wallace and B. Wyngast describe modernisation as a transition from the natural state to the open access society, carried out by means of a transformation of the interaction of elites.The latter cease to be closed and begin to be guided by impersonal rules (North et al., 2009).A similar course of thought is present in D. Acemoğlu and D. Robinson, who describe the history of modernisation as an institutional transformation of societies in which extractive institutions are dominant, to societies with a predominance of inclusive institutions (Acemoglu, Robinson, 2012).However, more insightful and more convincing in this discourse are the optimistic ideas of R. Inglehart and K. Welzel based on many years of global sociological surveys on the transformations taking place in the value systems of modern societies.They consist in a justification of the general transition from the material survival values guaranteed for the majority of citizens during the deployment of the early industrial Modernity to the postmaterial values of self-realisation, associated with post-industrial societies (Inglehart, Welzel, 2005).
In a radical and idealised form, the concept of universal transition was applied by the apologist of the end of history F. Fukuyama, who attempted to argue that all modern societies move "naturally" in the direction of the domination of the market and liberal democracy (Fukuyama 1992).Supporters of the movement towards the flat earth and end of history present rationales for the ethical and political unification of mankind, with globalisation being interpreted as the erasure of pre-modern cultural differences (J.Bhagwati, T. Friedman, I. Wallerstein, A. Maddison, A. Touraine, V. Inozemtsev, F. Fukuyama and others).Accordingly, continuing Modernity can be adequately explained only from within its own value coordinates.And the more we are unable to explain the observed diversity in the logic of Modernity itself, the more it will not turn out in the framework of the more localist and irrational discourse of civilisation that Modernity has supplanted into the field of history.
Finally, there have been enough productive and, perhaps, too hasty attempts by Z. Bauman and U. Beck to model a late-modern society from the latest -however unstable -trends, individual signs and changes in the outlook (Bauman, 2000;Beck, 1992).In this same connection, there are concepts that predict the turn of modern society towards new mechanisms of self-organisation.Such include, for example, concepts of the post-industrial society, post-Fordism (S.Lash, J. Urry et al.), the network society (M.Castells, A. Bard, et al.) and information society (D.Bell, E. Toffler, F. Webster, V. Inozemtsev, et al.) -all of which had a significant impact on public opinion at the end of the twentieth century.However, these theories turned out to be too hastily grounded in some peripheral tendencies in social development, which consequently turned into utopias with overvalued social expectations.Theories of the information society, knowledge society or creative class turned out to be somewhat naively optimistic, a pie whose slices were not intended for dividing equally among all societies and classes, and implying a rather more rapid transition to the future than the actual capabilities of even the most advanced modern societies.

III
In its most general form, the value kernel of the political project of Modernity represents the historically mobile construction of interrelated narratives that organise the institutional space of a post-traditional society.First, it consists in an aggregate of modern ideologies/utopias, as well as the conflict inherent between their value justifications, representing the dynamics of the clash of social forces rooted in capitalism.This research tradition relies mainly on the classic works of K. Marx, K. Mannheim, A. Gramsci, H. Marcuse, F. Jameson and others, in which the appearance and transformation of Modernity is due to the new social ontology of capitalism and the class structure of society that it engenders.
The basic modern political narratives are comprised of capitalism, liberalism and nationalism.Capitalism generates a constant increase in resources and assigns the dominant stratification of society into economic classes, each determined by its relation to the market.The strategy of obtaining moral and political compensation for the negative externalities and social costs of capitalism is implemented in the form of a constantly-revised liberal consensus (I.Wallerstein) appearing as a fundamental fusion within the institutionally implemented liberal normative field of different versions of conservatism, socialism and left-right radicalism.
Finally, the territorial national state acts as the dominant political form, combining the principles of territorial sovereignty, power apparatus and citizenship.The nationstate permits the establishment of an acceptable balance between the market and the various background, non-economic factors that provide for its existence -which factors capitalism and its theories prefer to bracket out.This consists in a combination of capitalist production, exploitation, competition and the accumulation of capital with the institutional consolidation of a broad list of inalienable guarantees, rights and freedoms of citizens.
The concept of democracy, most consistently worked out in the Habermasian idea of communicative consensus, bears responsibility for the coordination and reconciliation of conflicting collective interests in a given modern society.The comprehension and legitimation of the constant changes of modern society as social norms are represented by the concepts of progress and revolution.The immanent theory of progress (modernisation) institutionally represents the differentiation of the new autonomous (self-referential) subsystems of an increasingly complex society, involving a delegation of the functions of social regulation and the power to produce norms.These narratives form the value and functional unity of Modernity along with the basis for its self-description, reproduction and legitimation of the social order.However, under the conditions of the historical evolution of modernity, each of the indicated narratives undergoes substantial changes.The narrative of liberalism demonstrates a tendency to abandon the liberal consensus of collective political interests a) on the basis of modern ideologies and b) within individual nations in favour of shaping the contours of global liberal ethics based on agreement on universal human rights and freedoms and the development of moral conventions for maintaining the legitimacy of post-national political institutions.A negative trend running in parallel to this is the loss of ideological content on the part of the liberal consensus.It thus begins to express itself, not at the level of ideology, but at lower rhetorical levels, e.g.those of common sense, populism and pragmatism.
The narrative of democracy is undergoing an evolution, with the principles of the dictatorship of the majority, the mobilisation of the masses and the expansion of the circle of citizens endowed with political rights giving way to problems of the coexistence of a multi-component society, access to civil rights and equal opportunities for citizens and immigrants.The evolution of the narrative of nationalism is connected with the movement from the sacralisation of territorial sovereignty to extraterritorial principles of open law and cosmopolitanism.Territorially organised nations in a flat world (T.Friedman) lose credibility in the field of developing dominant political values.Under conditions of reflexive modernity, global openness of borders and increasing mobility, the process of legitimation inevitably shifts from nations to humanity as a whole.
Thus, the political logic of nation-states no longer corresponds to the increasingly intensive interaction and interdependence of humanity at the global level.The transition to late Modernity is characterised by a kind of disintegration and loss of legitimacy on the part of normative nationalism in terms of unity of individual rights, collective autonomy of citizens and territorially limitations to sovereign space.The factor of space as a sacralisation of limited territory ceases to be significant.Accordingly, all nations as territorial communities are experiencing an increasing deficit of legitimacy.The same assertion relates to nationalism supporting territorial political communities as well as to concepts of sovereignty in terms of the historical, ethnic and linguistic proximity of members of the territorial community.In this way, the historical realisation of the utopia of national Modernity in the form of nation-states for the greater part of humanity simultaneously turns into its profanation as a consequence of the loss of the transcendental dimension to the political sphere.
In addition, if nationalism emerged as a historical means for integrating and internally unifying a heterogeneous political space during the centralisation of large states, now it can also be rethought as a way of protecting a particular society from the global expansion of the world economy, which polarises national communities and increases their dependence on external factors, actors and contexts of interaction.For a certain historical period, the effects of modernisation served to obscure the moral limitations and inhumane goal-orientedness of the capitalist world-system.The complete globalisation of capital and technological revolutions devaluing working people make it necessary to reconsider the classical narrative of capitalism associated with constant geographical expansion and market competition in favour of its rental models (Martianov, 2017).
It should be especially noted that the value kernel of the political project of Modernity is ambivalent: it is simultaneously a method of explanation, but also of remoralisation/legitimisation of practices within capitalism.Modern ideologies and utopias are designed to mitigate the permanent moral deficit provoked by capitalism under the conditions of the expansion of the limited model of homo economicus, which is absolutely inadequate for keeping society from decay (Martianov, 2017).In turn, capitalism tends to identify itself with Modernity by reducing it to neutral theories of modernisation, progress, development, specifically designed to mask the absence in it of any social goals and collective hopes (Jameson, 2009).Thus, capitalism does not have a general political goal or any socially utopian horizon and cannot therefore produce effective self-legitimation that relates to society as a whole.Therefore, capitalism has to resort to palliative options of non-economic justification of its economic practices, primarily to an identification with Modernity as the embodiment of the idea of the infinity of progress.Nethertheless, the original logic of the expansion of capitalism in terms of colonialism and progressorism [term introduced by the Strugatsky brothers] was subsequently subjected to substantiated criticism.Equally critical was the expansion of capitalism into all spheres of social life, which went beyond the limits of market exchanges, giving rise to the total commodification of all other social relations.
In this context, the ideological genesis of political Modernity is evident from the crisis in Christian morality, which was caused by the birth and development of the capitalist world-system.First emerging in sixteenth century Europe and subsequently developed through the cycles of bourgeois revolutions, processes of colonisation (Westernisation) and globalisation of cultural, economic and mass media communications, the principles of the capitalist world system, freed from the limitations of traditional Christian morality, gradually came to embrace the whole world.
Founded by liberal consensus, the concept of human rights and freedoms has emerged as a distinctively post-traditional means by which Christian values in their humanistic interpretation can coexist with the functional logic of capitalism, which is largely built on the systematic violation of these values.Modern ideologies were used to substantiate hybrid intellectual constructions reconciling Christian principles of charity, equality, brotherhood and mutual assistance with the values of the market, competition, personal success, the endless accumulation of capital and the class inequality of people inherent in the social relations of the era of capitalism.As a consequence, the axiological field of Modernity is characterised by a duality that is not inherent in traditional societies: the gradual separation and autonomisation of private and public spheres in such a way that Christian morality still prevails in the field of private life, while the rules of the public sphere are determined by the more limited pragmatic or utilitarian morality of homo economicus.
As an effective strategy for the constant ethical self-correction of Modernity, theories of justice are advanced in the field of political philosophy that allow a utopian dimension to be maintained.In terms of theories of justice in modern political thought, the theory of repair of late Modernity is gaining popularity in the context of maintaining the legitimacy of the status quo.However, from a future perspective, it is not the discourse of repair (J.Alexander), a return to an ethics of virtue (A.Macintyre) or the preservation of some universal model of Modernity (F.Fukuyama) that is required, but the fundamental ability to construct ever more universal political and ethical grounds for Modernity's existence.

IV
Concerning the continuing internal unity of the political project of Modernity, it is possible to assert its axiological integrity despite (or perhaps because of) the variability of its institutional implementation.Modernity can thus be viewed as an open constructor of values and the various possibilities for their interaction, including institutional.However, the presence of an axiological interpretation space neither abolishes the conceptual unity and finality of the value set of Modernity, nor its hierarchical structure.Otherwise, the very confirmation or recognition of the political project of Modernity as a holistic concept and/or phenomenon would be extremely difficult if not impossible (Wagner, 2008).
In the course of the historical evolution of Modernity, it is possible to observe the successive processes of its disengagement with the European version, which has nevertheless continued to assert itself as canonical and the only correct one in the discourses of colonialist theories that refer to catching up with modernisation, Westernisation, civilisation and transitology.Postnational Modernity, then, consists in a geographical extension to the whole world of its original European model, which has rid itself of its particular cultural and historical content and traditions in favour of political ideas and institutions that have become universal.At the global level, post-national Modernity jettisons its nontransitive, unique features in favour of such properties that are actually universalisable through building on any previous traditions and cultures.
However, while postnational Modernity may be normatively universal, in terms of an institutional plan for the realisation of its value kernel it is quite heterogeneous.This competition of institutional versions of Modernism is a prerequisite for its flexible, nonregulatory and competitive development throughout the world.The non-simultaneous development of Modernity in different parts of the world was conditioned by the fact that, in addition to the European version, all the later versions of the institutionalisation of a modern society already had ready-made models of modernity to which reference could be made in entering into various cultural conflicts and interrelations.
Thus, if the initial cultural-historical nucleus of Modernity was determined by the West, then, concerning the growing cultural indifference of post-national Modernity, it can be subsequently argued to have achieved autonomy from path dependence (dependence on the previous development), something that is confirmed by many examples of the effective modernisation of states and regions culturally different from Europe.In searching for the social laws of modern society, the globalisation of Modernity confirms the greater relevance of the formational argumentation approach of the Hegelian-Marxist philosophy of history than the positions of the civilisational theories (Ch.Taylor, S. Huntington, P. Buchanan, J. Thompson, etc.), which emphasise the importance of cultural differences between societies.Moreover, attempts to synthesise the formational and civilisational approaches into a third entity, for example, taking the form of the sociocultural approach embodied by the concept of multiple modernities (S.Eisenstadt, J. Arnason, W. Schluchter, B. Wittrock, etc.) are heuristically less satisfactory and methodologically more contradictory (Eisenstadt 2000).The main methodological problem of these theories is that ideas based on the idea of a particular civilisational norm necessarily describe the entire diversity of societies that fit into them only as temporary deviations.As a rule, however, deviations do not disappear in the course of time, but continue to accumulate, while the legitimacy of the norm itself is not questioned, including also for the civilisation that spawned its historical model; nevertheless, it inexorably retreated more and more from it.Undoubtedly, during the expansion and intensification of Modernity there are receding waves and rejectionist reactions to excessively rapid processes of catching up or the authoritarian modernisation of the semi-periphery and periphery of the capitalist world-system.At the same time, it is tempting to counter-modernise these waves and adopt reactionary positions proving the existence of irresistible cultural differences and advocating a return to tradition along with an apologia for the civilisational uniqueness of specific societies, which determines the inapplicability of modern values to them.However, acknowledging the challenges of modernisation is by no means the same thing as repudiating Modernity per se.
The thesis of multiple modernities presupposes the preservation of pre-modern cultural differences in the value system of Modernity, turning into a civilisational approach that only uses the modernist conceptual apparatus and rhetoric for its effective refutation.This approach attempts to integrate the universalism of the values of Modernity -the background patterns of human development that go beyond the limit of any civilisation -with the obvious difference between cultural environments and models for their realisation.The vulnerability of the methodological compromise inherent in the concept of multiple modernities consists in Modernity in the form of competition between various cultural programmes being transformed into an attempt to present some particular societies as civilisational models of Modernity, determined by the historical and cultural characteristics of world civilisations.However, this does not mean that Modernity abolishes the historical civilisations that preceded it; on the contrary, civilisations become modern without losing their irresistible cultural differences.Thus, the multiplicity of modernity is transformed into a conserved set of civilisations in the era of Modernity, comprising an aggregated set of unconnected modernities.
It seems that in reality the fundamental conflict between Modernity and individual culturally-based civilisations is essentially impossible since under the conditions of modernisation the previous cultural differences invariably depart to the periphery of public life.The cultural norms of Modernity may have first appeared in the West, but this does not by any means imply colonisation and westernisation when spreading beyond it.However, the acceptance of market values, liberalism, democracy, human rights, progress, etc. is not equivalent to an undermining of the foundations of any non-Western culture: these pose a challenge to any previous traditional culture, including those of the Western tradition.Therefore, the increasingly popular culture-centric concept of multiple modernities results in a fundamental conceptual stretchcultural Victor Martianov factors refer to significant pre-modern differences in human communities, but are unlikely to retain such a form under the conditions of global Modernity (Martyanov 2010).In this context, any culture is important, but cultural versions cannot be considered as dominant explanatory factors within Modernity, whose cultural anamnesis comprises the history of the West, albeit freed from its particularity.It seems that the problem of the influence of cultural factors in the context of global Modernity is more complex.The difficulty lies in the fact that each society seeks to pick up more subtle sociocultural settings conducive to an effective combination of market and state regulation in the implementation of modern values, taking into account the dependence on prior cultural development.Here the adjustment of the cultural environment to the deployment of Modernity in a concrete historical society consists solely in a particular problem that is overestimated on the increase and located by the proponents of multiple modernities at the centre of their conceptual constructions.
The problem is that the global deployment and intensification of Modernity are carried out under the conditions of historical non-simultaneity of different societies.This gives rise to intellectual speculations about the insurmountability of cultural barriers and traditions of different civilisations, although in fact the cultural unity of any modern nation-states was formed simultaneously with their economic and political consolidation and did not precede it at all.Moreover, globalisation processes affecting politics, culture, economy and law in the modern world dominate the secondary reaction to these processes, expressed in attempts at the cultural, ethnic, religious fragmentation of the world.Therefore, drawing on the resources of further development in pre-modern discourses -historical analogies, civilisational approach, traditionalism, fundamentalism and cultural genetics, insurmountable identity or models of ethnonationalism -appears as an increasingly effective enterprise.
Globalised Modernity presupposes the ability of a particular society to live in accordance with transnational, universal political rules, while still in the process of developing them; to think from universal human positions, taking into account more universal laws and background factors that go beyond the limits of sovereign territoriality and historical national myths to embrace all of humanity.If the national version of Modernity appears as the institutionalisation of a liberal utopia, then the movement towards a post-national Modernity turned paradoxically not into denial, but a radicalisation of its value bases.For example, A. Giddens views globalisation as the process of Modernity's axiological radicalisation, encompassing the whole world, as it transitions from its limited origins to the mature version (Giddens 1990).This transition is characterised by the growing dynamics of social changes and the triumph of individuality, radically exempt from external regulators and expressed by the growth of conscious or "reflective" sociality that comes to replace the social order regulated by society.Globalisation appears as mega-trend, increasingly adopting a non-Western view, embracing the world as a whole and challenging the customary system of nation-states.
Global Modernity is less and less consistent with the cultural, geographic and historically classical theories of modernisation, trying to build the universal modernist hierarchy of the world on a global scale, where the countries of the centre of the world system will set the example of the end of history for the ever-lagging periphery, which strives towards capitalism, democracy, nation-state formation, rational bureaucracy, autonomy of the individual, separation of power and property, etc.When common ideological universals are realised in practice in different regions of the world, institutional invariants of the fusion of liberalism, democracy, nationalism and capitalism inevitably arise within Modernity.However, the transfer of the model of a specific national Modernity in an unchanged form to any other sociocultural reality is impossible.For example, political norms in the foundation of a united Europe differ fundamentally and in many respects deny the original principles of the European nation-based Modernity.Therefore, it is inevitable that the organisation of a political society will be transformed into the form of sacralisation of the territoriality of nationstates in favour of more universal projects that presuppose the whole world and all mankind as their place of action.
It seems that the intermediate stage of the movement from nation-states to the global politics of Modernity can be the strengthening of the regulatory role of intercountry associations, for example the European Union, various customs and currency unions, free trade zones, common markets, etc.Thus the axiological and institutional integration of humankind implies a weakening of the geographical and political centre in global politics.The centre will function not as an economic monopoly or a political hegemon, but rather as a place for the accumulation of resources and the imposition of hierarchies and networks across different areas.The centre will be less capable of expressing itself institutionally, but more at the level of general rules and objectives, i.e. axiologically.

V
From the perspective of its further development, the political project of Modernity simultaneously faces significant obstacles and challenges while at the same time its potential for maintaining its global dominance is undiminished.In the context of the complex processes of modern globalisation, one of the key axiological challenges involves the possibility of completing the already existing capitalist world economy to conform to a world politics.The increasingly intensive interaction and interdependence of humanity at the global level requires the creation of more effective world political mechanisms for the regulation of issues concerning the interests of mankind as a whole.This problematic preserves the utopian dimension of Modernity, its openness to the future and capability of further value-institutional improvement and dominance in relation to any alternative projects.
Presently, increasingly archaic territorial political institutions govern the economically globalised world.The economic integration of the world has far outstripped the political and ethical.The globalisation of the value bases of Modernity thematises the ethical foundations of the limited interests and strategies of nation-states.Global politics assumes the alignment of the political, economic and legal space of nations, while allowing the maximum cultural diversity: ethnic, religious, linguistic, etc.For the first time in human history, global Modernity contains the possibility of creating a global politics in which the political domain loses its external space, i.e. the one that is traditionally populated with potential enemies.
Potentially, any country and any communicative association -even individual people -can become initiators and conveyors of more universal principles of Modernity.In the global political discussion about dominant values players will have a greatly strengthened a priori position who are able to present to humanity the most egalitarian, cosmopolitan variants of solutions for general problems, i.e. those problems emanating from the long-term interests of all mankind and not primarily to the benefit of individual elites, classes, nations or regions of the world.Such idealistic logic does not always bear direct and tangible dividends to the actors and societies that initiate it; moreover, these actors often stipulate material costs that are only paid off symbolically.As, for example, in the case of the USSR, which helped the world national liberation movements and raised its own periphery to the level of the metropolis.
The new task of states that have lost their habitual functional status of key modernisers is not so much the control and distribution of resource flows, but rather the provision of infrastructure to support the necessary conditions for the individual and collective modernisation of society, which is expressed in the concept of the service state.Effective connection to global Modernity and the world economy assumes the path of organic modernisation.Here the driving force of social changes is associated with the creation of institutional opportunities for expanding the available range of the selfrealisation of citizens in the context of the increasing influence of post-material values.
Any nation can improve its position in the world system not only in economic terms, but also in terms of caring about a common future in which there is a worthy place for everyone (Martianov, Fishman, 2010).The future comes first of all as an ethical turn towards a new value system.We do not know what the future will be, but we can know how it should be.Elements of global political ethics are currently being developed in alternative globalisation, communitarian, cosmopolitan, environmental, anarchist and technocratic discourses, including those directed against the costs of the dominant neoliberal model of modern globalisation.In particular, the work of researchers including S. George, A. Buzgalin, B. Kagarlitsky, A. Callinicos, E. Laclau, C. Mouffe, F. Jameson, S. Žižek and others, who advocate alternative mechanisms for the globalisation of Modernity, also obtains a significant ethical charge through its adherence to a neo-Marxist or post-Marxist vision of the globalised world.However, this kind of ethics is typically built on opposition to the secondary costs of globalisation, acquiring the character of extremist endeavours seeking to turn the history of mankind back to some idealised fork at which it left the true path of development, whether that be fundamentalism, terrorism or extremism.In reality, such criticism, exaggerating all the complexity and duality of the development processes of the modern world, only strengthens its objects.