information technology and psychological and pharmaceutical
discoveries for surveillance and control to a greater extent than even
Hitler or Stalin achieved. What should not be done is to assume that
every regime described as communist or fascist shares all these
characteristics. In practice there is no clear line of division between
autocratic or authoritarian regimes and the more extreme totalitarian
variant. Late Soviet or present-day Chinese government could be
seen as in either category – particularly as market-led economic
reform reduces the direct power of the party.
Logically one can have some sympathy for Marcuse’s contention
that the capitalist system is moulding everyone’s perceptions and
behaviour – we may be being ‘brainwashed’ into becoming good
consumers. Thus an analogy is drawn with Hitler’s attempt to create
pure Aryans or the Soviet Union’s programme to create ‘New Soviet
Man’. Marcuse’s use of ‘totalitarian’ to describe this phenomenon is
however somewhat misleading in that there is no deliberate co-
ordinated political direction to this process. Nor are we robbed of our
freedom of choice on pain of imprisonment. Alternative lifestyles are
not censored – though they may be swamped. Prisoners of war who
were ‘brainwashed’ in Korean prison camps would surely distinguish
this process from the effects of voluntarily sitting in front of
(capitalist) television programmes.
Islamic government – breaking the mould?
In Chapter 4 we saw that Islam is now increasingly seen as the
alternative to capitalism and democracy as the way forward for the
South, but the major problem is to create distinctive and effective
economic and political institutions for any proposed Islamic state.
Whilst the Koranic tradition does have some positive statements
to make on economic matters – the immorality of interest payments;
the duty to make payments to the poor (zakat) – these have proved
difficult to institutionalise in a modern (i.e. capitalist) economic
context. Similarly the Koran makes it clear that the umma
(community of the faithful) should be ruled by those faithful to its
religious prescriptions, be united, and that rulers should listen to the
voice of the community – but no concrete political and religious
institutions are laid down. The two major Islamic traditions – the
Shi’ite and the Sunni – differed early on the succession to the
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