Who is Portugal For? (and what's the point of democracy anymore?)

> Perhaps a people beset by these problems ought to consider alternative political economies that have already shown promise, be they one-party states like Singapore and Japan, or even the de facto monarchy of Botswana.

In everyone's favorite family-owned city-state, one sometimes encounters locals with recognizably Portuguese family names such as Pereira, Theseira (Teixeira), Gomes. I only considered the origin of these names much later when exploring the legacy of Roman Catholicism in town. One of the older churches, St. Joseph's Church, which was under the patronage of the Holy See and the Kingdom of Portugal (cf. padroado), seemed to have served the Portuguese community.

Younger me in my infinite ignorance had somehow equated Europeans in the city with Anglophones, i.e. the British administrators, so it was a surprise to find out about a group of Eurasians who celebrated Carnival. Turns out that some of the navegados who used the volta do mar to get around were also passport bros and had set up a settlement in Malacca. The settlement exists to this day, and so does a community of their descendants in Singapore.

It does sound quite Portuguese, even after so many generations:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_l3bArOHHIM

But I'm not sure about the solutions offered by Singapore, Inc. They are good at marketing, and susceptible to the same issues that Mr. Burja points out with regard to industrial society.

https://web.archive.org/web/20170720215841/https://bloodyshovel.wordpress.com/2013/03/26/lee-kuan-yew-drains-your-brains-for-short-term-gain/

It depresses me to consider that so many southeastern Chinese worship the money god. Then again, most people in the developed world seem to be caught up in the death cult these days.

> Perhaps a people beset by these problems ought to consider alternative political economies that have already shown promise, be they one-party states like Singapore and Japan, or even the de facto monarchy of Botswana.

I will say something further, but I wanted to comment on this...

Japan is used as an example earlier in the piece of an example of a place where the same "dismal story" is playing out. I think that's right. The Liberal Democratic Party, whatever it accomplished, has been for three decades a revolting blob. Singapore, too, might have a history that provides lessons, but at present is not in an enviable position. I can't say I know anything about Botswana.

I can think of healthier, more durable currently extant illiberal regimes. They are less loveable than Singapore and Japan, however, being run by theocrats, fascists, and nationalistic technocrats.

I would say that I don't put much faith in the importation of foreign models, except piecemeal, very selectively, heavily modified. I believe in the idea emphasized by Chinese authoritarians, which is that political projects must be carried out according to national essence, or unique national conditions, or however one would like to translate the ambiguous Chinese term. This is next step, for a place like Portugal.

And so, I understand that it is taboo to talk about applicable lessons in illiberal governance from recent Portuguese history, but I think that's the place to look.

> And so, I understand that it is taboo to talk about applicable lessons in illiberal governance from recent Portuguese history, but I think that's the place to look.

Ah. Information of this nature... is sometimes hard to find in English.

But one might find out How One Relieves A State en français.
Or perhaps better, em português.

>>1039
>I understand that it is taboo to talk about
well, my anonymous friends, this here anonymous (political) philosophy forum is designed precisely in such a way that we can break ridiculous taboos while staying respectable and high quality. So do feel free to push the boundaries a bit. --admin

I’m only curious why the author doesn’t mention Salazar. Maybe there’s no taboo. Maybe it’s simply the case that, as someone said above, he would be unknown to many readers of an English-language article on Portugal, or understood only in the narrowest sense as a fascist.

I wasn’t observing the taboo, but only trying to save myself from looking uninformed.

But I think it’s worth talking about, especially if we want to answer the headline question.

So, I’ll start with a general idea, before I get back to Salazar… If the peculiar, local solutions of twentieth century authoritarianism cannot be recovered, then they might provide a method to think about how governance must be calibrated to a unique national essence.

The negation of the authoritarianism of twentieth century regimes by their liberal successors has been too thorough, too successful.

It’s possible to make a general statement, here, I think, because, unlike their idiosyncratic authoritarian predecessors, nations under a globalizing liberal order looked about the same, and used the same methods for denigrating the regimes they took power from.

The success of the negation means that even when the former regime, or something further back, is invoked by supposed opponents of the liberal order, it is mostly a nostalgic fiction, or intended to serve only as an opportunistic vehicle for more current ideology, or twisted to attack present-day scapegoats.

Another outcome of complete negation of the illiberal past: these campaigns are mostly agitating for a different type of liberalism, or merely to punish some more minor enemy. In some cases, I realize, it is actually illegal to go further than that.

But so, like franchises of the liberal order, the campaigns of dissenters have begun to look the same everywhere. This makes sense, since diverse peoples face similar problems, inflicted by the same forces, but the final destinations must be different.

Solutions must be peculiar. If we take successful subversions of the liberal order, there are not many that could be exported: the fusion of indigenous philosophy and ethics with Marxist scientism in China since 1978 could not be attempted in even neighboring states, and multi-ethnic Singaporean communitarianism under strong state administration is not the solution anywhere else, and even with another sect substituted for Shia Islam, Iran’s theocracy is not going to hold anywhere else.

This is not the case for all present-day alternatives to the liberal order, but I think a shortcut, in a lot of cases, is to rediscover in a genuine way the idiosyncrasies of twentieth century authoritarianism (I’m not using this precisely, here or anywhere else, but as a shorthand for many things that are illiberal).

To get back to Salazar, I wouldn’t argue that Salazarism could be reconstructed and resurrected in present-day Portugal. I couldn’t argue against it, either.

The negation was too thorough. It seems that Salazar is most often merely a nostalgic figure, or a thumb in the eye of aging socialists, or a symbol that can be adopted, since his negation has been so thorough, to stand for many things. It seems that he provides, as I said, a method to master the unique national essence. His solutions, if we can take them in the kindest light, were based on his understanding of Portuguese history, restricted by his need to manage powerful opponents, and informed by Catholic beliefs that were universal but also confined to the context of Portugal. And so, if Salazarism does not need to be resurrected, then it provides a way to start thinking about particular, local, effective alternatives to global liberalism (and whatever alternative, however extreme, comes from left or right).

>>1036
Re: Singapore et al, there are clearly at least two different structural pathologies of modernism, or two levels of decay perhaps. The first set of issues is the ones Singapore and China and especially Korea face: that industrial society is incompatible with human society. It seems impossible to sustain a basic "social technology" stack of continued biological and social existence in the presence of industrial-style economic mobilization (especially of women). It seems even impossible to sustain mobilization once a certain level of development is achieved, or at least we all stopped for some reason in 1973. All industrial and post-industrial regimes face this problem, and are physically and socially dying out. Samo Burja's article is the seminal classic on the subject:

https://www.palladiummag.com/2021/03/24/the-end-of-industrial-society/

America places it's (never "our") hopes on the devil's bargain of being able to treat its own biological substrate (ie "ourselves and our posterity") as a disposable resource that can used up and replaced with fresh blood mined out of the ruins of less "progressive" societies. It's no secret that I hate this "eunuch slave" regime. It's unclear how long it will take for the bill to come due for this, though.

In Japan and Europe and to some extent America as well we have the second problem, which is the democratic voting-class/landlord-class vampirism Vasco describes in the Portugal case. Here, an obsolete political regime locks the society into a death spiral of class war by the old (and land-owning) against the young (and productive), to some extent and in some cases using a possibly imported underclass as scab labor, voting bloc, and political client class. As the other anon points out contra the OP article, Japan seems very much on this track these days, with less immigration (yet).

I have my hopes that dispensing with the farce of democracy could allow us to cut a new deal between ruling class and productive class without the death spiral, but of course the first (industrial) death spiral would still remain unless solved by additional measures. You probably need a new ruling class too.

>>1044
>>1045

As for Salazar and other illiberal alternatives to global "liberalism" (whatever that means anymore), I suspect Salazarian semi-fascism is way too milquetoast to break out of our civilizational decay spiral. Basically we have a whole world order bent on unsustainably exploiting and subverting what remains of the (formerly) noble and productive peoples while being utterly unwilling to allow them (us) any regenerative self-determination or unshackled self-consciousness. It's clear where this leads: to the end of the age and the collapse of this civilizational cycle. The only thing that could break out would have to realize it was fighting an existential war against the the entire current moral order and its partisans. Not to paint too bleak a picture; I think the breakout is inevitable. But we might have a while to go, and let's not lack vision about how comprehensive (global, existential) the situation and necessary solutions are.

I don't think even China is actually on a track to break out. If they were, they would get a much harsher treatment from global liberalism. North Korea is closer in some ways, but their ideology is too mainstream to really challenge things. Japan almost had the real sauce in the before times, but it seems to have been nuked out of them.

> But so, like franchises of the liberal order, the campaigns of dissenters have begun to look the same everywhere. This makes sense, since diverse peoples face similar problems, inflicted by the same forces, but the final destinations must be different.

Well, all happy families are alike. Even if they look different, they tend to share certain traits that lead to happiness.

An example of Mr. Burja's theory that social change is driven by functional institutions with regard to Singapore and Japan is the dependence of their governance systems and social philosophy on the culture of the Tang dynasty, generally considered to be a civilizational golden age. Japan imported various technologies ranging from writing systems to weaponry to urban planning. The inspiration of the Tang capitals of Chang'an and Luoyang can still be clearly seen in Kyoto's urban layout. In later Chinese dynasties, drinking ground tea leaves largely fell out of fashion, though the Tang custom persists in Japanese matcha desserts. The Japanese have adjusted and refined many aspects to their geographical and social conditions, but they did pick out various functional technologies from the golden age. The Japanese largely were not too impressed with the later Chinese dynasties, for good reason in my opinion. Most southeastern Chinese people (i.e. many of those who went to Singapore and elsewhere), generically refer to "Chinese people" as "Tang people" (cf. the Chinese name for Chinatowns). Again, various memories of the golden age persist. The Renaissance in Italy and France provides a similar example in Western Europe I suppose.

At the core of any local, effective alternative to global liberalism will be an understanding of what it means to live well. Only then can one claim to be a source of civilization, in line with Salazarism and our various discussions on alternatives to liberalism. For the West, those Catholic beliefs also have a layer of pagan practices. It seems important to understand the rationale for these practices in providing spiritual orientation, and when they might not be applicable. Holding Carnival at the end of the Southern Hemisphere summer, for instance, just doesn't seem to quite work. Carnival there, and the associated chaos, seems to continue all the way through Lent, possibly even the rest of the year.

Salazar called his regime the New State. The "New" part meant that he was not appealing to any particular legacy ideology. He took for granted the elements of Portuguese culture that he deemed healthy and load-bearing, and nothing else.

It's hard to remember how well Salazar was thought of in the 1930's and 40's. Here's a video of British delegation from Oxford conferring an honorary degree on him in 1941, two years into the war.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNIm71lAMj0

People call his regime "fascist," but only because they call a huge range of things that aren't administrative liberalism "fascist."

It's conceivable that someone could come along in 2030 and do something analogous to what Salazar did –– but that would include never mentioning Salazar.

The description of two levels of decay is useful, and, taking this into account, it does limit the promise of resurrection in any way of older systems on the present foundations.

Salazar's semi-fascism, if nothing else, points the way to a local solution to the second level of decay. It can’t be resurrected, and much of it needs to be jettisoned, some elements must be fictionalized or invented; it can’t, as someone else suggested, be referred to at any point by name; but it might, if nothing else, work as a starting point to think through what the present arrangement lacks. The most romantic, fanciful version of Salazarism is rule according to a national essence, an idea of who the Portuguese people are and were, as well as the inculcation of a spirit of personal sacrifice, elements of mystical and political, earthly Catholicism, respect for premodern hierarchies… You could argue for another strand in local political thought serving the purpose better, I suppose.

I have a bias for rediscovering or inventing indigenous wisdom.

There are limits to what this can achieve. I can’t fault the creativity of political extremists in Portugal, since I, too, have trouble imagining taking the next step.

This is tangential, but maybe it’s more interesting than Salazarism-by-another-name as a quarter step forward. I was thinking while writing about Portugal of the two Koreas.

What I see working in North Korea is some version of this idea of rediscovering indigenous systems of governance to run modern software—a shamanistic monarchy leading a state in ritual industrialism, mixing diverse mythological and religious traditions (these are themselves, taking Chondoism as an example, often already syncretic), Stalinism, Marxist scientism, Japanese imperial tradition... They have put new names to it, though, which is crucial, since it allows greater flexibility. There are limits.

It is hard to maintain Stalinism-animism-Chondoism in one country. In the end, a creative leadership needs to point out the next step forward.

South Korea has been, it seems to me, trying to do precisely what I’m talking about, with taking up as a starting point an idea of illiberal governance negated after the country was absorbed into the network of global liberalism. I’m talking about the New Right and the attempt to move away from postcolonial nationalism, promote a positive historical narrative, to talk about the errors of democratization, and resuscitate the dictators. It’s no surprise that, as in North Korea, there are syncretist cults involved in all of this. There are limits.

It is hard to recreate Korean fascism on the foundation of a system that is hostile to it. In the end, a creative leadership needs to point out the next step forward.

As always, it's helpful to start with a conservative vision, but in all these examples some brave creativity is required. It's hard to imagine the breakout.

1050 > It's hard to imagine the breakout.

It could be that the breakout always sounds fake when simply stated in words prior to successful execution. If Bukele had just said when first running for office, "well, we'll just put all the gangs in jail –– and promote bitcoin," that would have sounded pretty fake. Do it, and it stops sounding fake. Many such cases.

>>1050
>>1051
Indeed. The difference between what seems possible according to the world of ideas and what actually is possible is potentially large and always the essence of the game. This is why I'm not sure we can put too much stock in the "it can't reference or be mistaken for fascism" idea. That idea is part of the political AIDS of the current order, which has defined any system which resists the entropy and subversion death spiral as "fascism". We obviously have to overcome such absurd taboos.

That said, the other anon is right if interpreted as saying that whatever comes next can't be a simple going back, a simple revival, or any kind of "retvrn" kitsch. It should have its own vocabulary and its own mythos and its own story. But if it is occasionally open about being inspired by our temporarily disparaged visionary predecessors, that's fine as long as that is done with discipline and seriousness and isn't just played for pre-caricatured internet shock-effect spectacle.