‘Russia Against Modernity’ — a different perspective on the war against Ukraine

Alexander Etkind’s Russia Against Modernity examines the Putin regime and his war against Ukraine in a totally new light for me

Although in recent years I have come to believe that the super-rich petrostates of the Persian Gulf are an overlooked threat to the planet’s climate, Alexander Etkind’s Russia Against Modernity, published last year and which I am reading in the Bailleau Library, shows that the problems of the Gulf petrostates are actually more widespread than I had assumed from merely studying their basic distinctive features. This study is one that has increasingly occupied my attention as more and more evidence of runaway climate change with no sign of increasing pressure on undoubtedly culpable super-rich Gulf royal families, nor even academic assessment of the role they have played blockading change ever since the Kyōtō Protocol. The Al Saʿud are the richest family in the world and the Al Thani, Al Ṣabaḥ, Al Nuhayan and Al Maktum must be close rivals. I have come to understand that, for Austrian School economists like Hans-Hermann Hoppe, these tax-free petromonarchies are the best political model available because they extract no wealth from capitalists, earn their money like a business would, and given them absolute freedom as to their workers’ wages and working conditions, whilst denying their workers any human rights.

It was nonetheless surprising to read that the Russian regime of Vladimir Putin, whom many observers consider the most powerful man in the world, has the similarities with the Muslim petromonarchies that it does. Etkind in Russia Against Modernity notes that the growth of Russian oil exports under Putin has allowed rents to account for half of Kremlin revenue, and that it has a flat income tax and no inheritance tax — a policy far beyond even the US under the Republican Party. What is most startling is that he believes that the Russian invasion of Ukraine has as its goal stopping the decarbonisation of Europe. Etkind believes that if Europe decarbonises completely it will constitute both an example for the rest of the world and eliminate Putin’s primary revenue stream.

The most important thing about Russia Against Modernity is that it puts a whole new perspective upon a war that is commonly viewed as aiming to re-established the old Stalinist-type USSR. What Etkind does not understand, though, is that any effort to contain the hegemonic petrostates and settler colonies who form the new global elite is in a sense a struggle against modernity itself. Much more than Ron Rogowski understood a third of a century ago, the top one percent or so in the petrostates and the settler colonies monopolise their nations’ wealth gains of the past half-century of sustained globalisation. What Etkind does note, though, is how these elites have united against the rest of the world to blockade overdue transitions from fossil fuels. However, he still lacks the historical perspective needed to understand how this system was created and why — because the global super-rich were seeking an alternative to a tax state that they, in a topsy-turvy manner, viewed as parasitic on them.

Even with these real deficiencies, Russia Against Modernity was an interesting read for me today. One can learn a fair bit that is not discussed in the news or in conventional analyses of Putin and his war against Ukraine.