Teleology in History and Intellectual Responsibility

Abstract

This concluding chapter assesses the divergent notions of teleology—that of empire, representing the accumulation of value for private gain, on the one hand, and that of the anti-imperialist emancipatory movement, representing community and solidarity, on the other, but both representing contradictory interpretations of the Enlightenment’s legacy. This assessment demonstrates the empire’s logic of growth and expansion, conditioned by a supremacist ideology couched in liberal terms conflating democracy with accumulation of value, individual freedom with social justice, and human progress with conquest and domination. Legitimated by the rules of neoliberal globalization, this imperial logic has, in reality, meant no less than the subjugation and subordination of others, the exploitation and ravaging of the environment, and the holding of mankind’s future hostage to a nuclear holocaust in a bid to maintain US imperial hegemony. A final note from San Juan affirms the verity of historical materialism and upholds the anti-imperialist ethos of emancipatory movements in the Third World and elsewhere.