Izazovi pozne moderne
Challenges of Late Modernity

Summary/Abstract: This article presents Milan Popović’s reflections on the two most recent and important books, General Theory of Modernity, written by French alter-Marxist theoretician, Jacques Bidet, and The States on Trial, written by Croatian political theoretician, Dragutin Lalović. The two books have been published and discussed amid the most severe and multiple crisis of the so-called “neoliberal”, i.e. late and ultra-monopolistic capitalist economy 2008-2009, and this great social and historical fact has largely contributed to better understanding and reception of these two critical studies. Milan Popović shares most of the main premises and findings of these two books with their authors. Some disagreements between him and them are of minor and technical importance. So, just to illustrate this kind of disagreements, while Jacques Bidet uses the term “alter-Marxism” to describe his own intellectual position, Milan Popović prefers the term “post-Marxism” for the same purpose. Or, while Jacques Bidet uses the term “ultimate modernity” to specify our concrete historical time, Milan Popović prefers the term “late modernity” for the same purpose. Or, finally, while Jacques Bidet uses the term “world state” to describe the emerging global polity, Milan Popović is much more cautious, he reserves the term “state” exclusively for the modern form of polity, and leaves the final outcome and term of the emerging global polity for further development, observation, and nomination. Some disagreements between Milan Popović and Dragutin Lalović are of even lesser technical and conjectural importance. The three social and political theoreticians, however, strongly agree on the most important, substantive, and essential issues of our time. So, again, just to illustrate this kind of essential agreements, they strongly agree that our time desperately needs a new global polity and governance, which would deal with the rising ecological and other technological problems of late modernity. Despite some differences about the terms and emphases, they also agree that, in the meantime, at least in several coming decades, the late modern state remains one of the most important actors in the process. Especially two of three, namely Dragutin Leković and Milan Popović, starting from the concrete political experience of Croatia and Montenegro during their wartime pandemonic 1990s, persistently insist on the complex, ambiguous, and contradictory process of simultaneous de-sovereignization and re-sovereignization of the state, as a part of the process in its late modern phase. Finally, the three theoreticians share a common vision on the substance and essence of the coming global polity. They agree that the polity should be a kind of “Universal Republic”.

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