The Politics of Survival (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Politics of Survival Peter Y. Paik (bio) Marc Abélès. The Politics of Survival. Julie Kleinman. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2010. US $22.95 (paper), US $79.95 (cloth), 230 pp. ISBN: 9780822346074 Marc Abélès makes the case that there is a fundamental shift taking place in global politics. The question of a just collective existence and how to achieve it are giving way to a more immediate and pressing matter: the problem of the survival of the human species. The urgent issues of the present day—global warming, the depletion of natural resources, international terrorism, and the volatility of the financial markets—all raise the specter of sweeping and uncontainable catastrophe, and the fears they arouse over the fate of humankind re-orients political action under what Abélès calls the "horizon of threat and survival" (xiii). The need to avoid the worst and limit the damage from the destructive consequences of economic growth and technological advancement now takes priority over such perennial left-wing concerns as social justice and economic equality. Rather than seek a better future, whether in accordance with the vision of high tech, free market prosperity of the neoliberal Right or the nostalgic egalitarian utopia of the socialist Left, Abélès calls for a more sober and pragmatic politics that focuses on addressing dangers which are by their very nature transnational and put into question the continuation of human life. Abélès opposes the politics of survival to a model of politics that he calls "convivance," which takes as its object the task of "harmoniously living together" (10). Convivance, according to Abélès, underlies a broad range of familiar stances across the political spectrum, from left to right or from revolutionary to reformist, for it refers to the basic set of beliefs that holds that, "humans [should] attempt to 'make society' by moving beyond individual interests" and that "it is possible to continually better the conditions of being together" (11). Whereas the politics of convivance pursues a model of society based on improvement, whether towards greater social justice and economic equality on the one hand or increased market efficiency and technological advancement on the other, the politics of survival responds to the "syndrome of insecurity" and the "persistent anguish concerning the durability of our world and our possible future" (102). We must therefore shift our priorities from our hopes for a better world to our fears about a worse one, from the desire to improve the status quo to the need to prevent catastrophe. Abélès is far from alone in pointing out that sustainable development entails a skeptical attitude towards progress in both its left-wing and right-wing varieties. As environmentalists are apt to observe, democratic capitalism and state socialism stand revealed as fraternal twins—both rely on industrialization that consumes scarce natural resources and despoils the environment to make good on the promise of equality and abundance. Thus, the task of sustainable development necessitates a break with the basic priorities and aims of advanced industrial economies, in addition to presenting profound challenges to the nations of the developing world. A politics of survival would seek not only to elevate the precautionary principle as the central factor in matters of policy, but also to formulate modes of thought and action that can unify and redirect the course of the globalizing world. Climate change, resource depletion, terrorism, and the volatility of the financial markets are after all problems whose consequences are difficult to contain within the borders of nation-states, making transnational cooperation more necessary than ever. Unfortunately, the institutions that exert power in the world have been devised to serve bounded collectivities, so that effective measures, ones that would be truly global in their reach, remain elusive. Although non-governmental organizations lack the state's monopoly on force, Abélès makes the case that the NGO is the indispensable institution of an emergent global politics. The nation-state is the artifact of an ostensibly bygone era, before interdependence became the governing reality of economic and political life, when the primary tasks of the state were to provide security for...