Who will bring order to the anti-civilizational disorder?
This article distinguishes between individual and civilizational injustice, arguing that the latter constitutes a systemic threat to a society’s ontological capacity for self-development. While individual injustice can be addressed through legal mechanisms, civilizational injustice — manifested in the structural suppression of technological progress, cultural degradation, and the erosion of collective agency — requires a paradigmatic transformation. Drawing on constitutional precedents such as the U.S. Declaration of Independence, the UN Charter, and the USSR Constitution, the paper asserts the right of a civilization to self-determination. It introduces the concept of an anti-civilizational order — a system that, under formal sovereignty, reproduces mechanisms of internal colonization: resource extraction, elite complicity, and the psychological subjugation of the populace. The article concludes that when a civilization is systematically denied its right to self-development, the responsibility for change lies not with external actors, but with the civilization itself — if it chooses to reclaim its subjectivity. Keywords: justice, civilization, anti-civilizational order, internal colonization, self-determination, social ontology, elite responsibility, systemic injustice, civilizational subject, post-colonial theory.
This statement is so commonly accepted that it borders on a platitude. Yet, its meaning remains ambiguous. When we speak of injustice, we usually refer to violations of individual rights — unfair wages, legal bias, corruption, or social exclusion. These are individual injustices, which, in principle, can be addressed through legal redress. But there is another form of injustice — not personal, but civilizational. It does not target a person, but a people; not a right, but a future. It is not a failure of law, but a perversion of history. This is the injustice committed against a civilization — a historical community with its own memory, language, cultural code, and potential for autonomous development. This article argues that when a civilization is systematically prevented from evolving — when its technological progress is reversed, its resources usurped, and its collective consciousness eroded — we are no longer dealing with inequality, but with an anti-civilizational order.
2. Individual Injustice: The Limits of Legal Justice
Individual injustice is a breach of fairness in the treatment of a person. It is a matter of rights, duties, and remedies. It can be litigated, judged, and — ideally — corrected. Yet, as post-Soviet societies have shown, widespread perceptions of injustice often persist even in the presence of functioning legal systems. Why? Because the pain is not only personal — it is existential. People do not merely feel wronged; they feel derailed — as if their entire historical trajectory has been blocked. This suggests that the framework of individual justice is insufficient. We must expand our inquiry to the level of civilizational justice.
3. Civilization as a Subject of Justice
A civilization is not merely a state or a nation. It is a historical subject — a community that carries its past into the future through language, culture, memory, and the capacity for innovation. Such a subject, I argue, has a right to self-development. This right is not purely theoretical. It is enshrined in legal and political traditions: - The U.S. Declaration of Independence (1776) affirms the people’s right to alter or abolish a government that becomes destructive of their ends. - The UN Charter (Article 1, para. 2) recognizes the right of peoples to self-determination. - The Constitution of the USSR (1977, Article 72) formally guaranteed the right of a republic to secede. These norms, though politically contested, establish a principle: a community has the right to resist structures that deny its autonomy.
4. The Anti-Civilizational Order: Internal Colonization
When a society is: - Systematically de-technologized, - Economically exploited under the guise of development, - Culturally infantilized through education and media, - Politically managed by elites serving foreign or narrow interests, — it is not merely underdeveloped. It is colonized from within. This is internal colonization — a condition where colonial mechanisms (extraction, dependency, cultural subordination) are reproduced domestically, under the façade of sovereignty. The population is not enslaved in chains, but in debt, bureaucracy, and psychological dependency. As Frantz Fanon observed, the colonized mind is the final prison. In such a system: - The elite act as capos — intermediaries between the center of power and the subjugated masses. - The people become a herd, managed through fear, illusion, and scarcity. - Consciousness, self-respect, and the will to resist are systematically extinguished. - Chains are no longer on the body, but in the pocket — in the form of loan agreements, mortgages, and lifelong servitude. This is not a deviation from civilization. It is its negation — an anti-civilizational order.
5. The Right to Civilizational Self-Determination
If a people have the right to overthrow a tyrannical government, then a civilization has the right to reject an anti-civilizational system. This is not a call for secession or fragmentation. It is a call for awakening — for reclaiming agency, redefining development, and rebuilding institutions on the basis of self-responsibility. The question is not whether such a transformation is possible, but who is responsible for it. If the leadership fails to serve the civilization — if it acts as an administrator of a colonized system — then it becomes complicit in its subjugation. It must either awaken to its duty or be replaced by those who do.
6. Conclusion: Justice Beyond the Individual
Individual injustice is a tragedy of the person. Civilizational injustice is a tragedy of history. The world may be unjust to an individual. But it must not be unjust to a civilization. When millions feel dispossessed, it is not because they are weak or lazy. It is because the civilization itself has been disempowered. A court can restore justice to a person. But who restores justice to a colonized civilization? Only itself. If it chooses to be a civilization.
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National Archives. https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration - Charter of the United Nations. (1945).
United Nations. https://www.un.org/en/about-us/un-charter - Constitution of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (1977).
Constitute Project. https://www.constituteproject.org/constitution/USSR_1977 - Fanon, F. (1963).
The wretched of the earth (C. Farrington, Trans.). Grove Press. (Original work published 1961) - Rawls, J. (1971).
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