I have six points to raise.

• Point One. I like the expression "antisystemic movements," as expounded in the oft-quoted 1989 volume of that title co-authored by my Binghamton colleagues Giovanni Arrighi, Terry Hopkins, and Immanuel Wallerstein. But I disagree with the way they use this expression. I think they are too generous, much too generous. Among the older antisystemic movements they list Social Democracy, Communism, trade unionism, and movements for national liberation; and they also speak of the "new" antisystemic social movements, which include the Peace, Green, and New Age movements, the women's movements, and the minority rights movements. Now, I submit that none of these was or is antisystemic except portions of the Social Democratic Second International in its pre-1914 heyday; and portions of the Leninist Third International in the period from 1919 to about 1923, together with various small Trotskyite movements in later years. "Antisystemic" should mean what it says: against the system, against the capitalist world-system with its globalized world-economy and its various sovereign nation- (or rather would-be sovereign, would-be nation-) states. (Actually, none of them is sovereign and very few, fewer than 10%, are one-nation-states.) Antisystemic should mean against the system--the whole system, lock, stock, and barrel, the world-system.
• Point Two. Most of the purported antisystemic movements were and are movements--whatever their ideological trappings--to wrest a share of power and wealth from the owners and managers of the world-system on behalf of the segmental interests they represent. This is true whether we are talking about Indians or Amerindians, women or gays, trade-union members or Untouchables. They all seek a piece of the action, but within the system. Within the system. For example, what do most Palestinians want? They want land, restitution, recognition. They want full membership in the United Nations, the authority to send and receive ambassadors, the right to print pretty postage stamps, and have their own national airline--perhaps PalAir? Is the movement for Palestinian independence antisystemic? Don't fool yourself. In the current world situation, and given all that the Palestinian people have endured since the mid-1940s, I strongly favor the creation and recognition of an independent Palestinian state. But such a state would not be, could not be, antisystemic--nor for that matter are the PLO, Hamas, and Hezbollah. The point is that the modern capitalist world-system is not intrinsically white, male, straight, and European. It did historically originate in a white, male, straight, European milieu (unless you're a disciple of Andre Gunder Frank), but now that it has been fairly launched, anybody can play. If the population of the world in the next century should suddenly be slashed to nothing but parthenogenetic Nigerian Lesbian Buddhists and gay Japanese Presbyterian clones, the capitalist world-system could nevertheless persist and flourish.
• Point Three. The rest of the so-called antisystemic movements today--now I'm thinking of the Greens, the Peace folks, and the New Agers--do not necessarily represent segmental interests and may have a genuinely global focus, but very few of them are really against the system as such. Rather, they just want the system to be composed of good people, with lofty spiritual values, and a vast desire to save the planet. Most of the members of these movements have no fundamental quarrel with the system as such, only with its wicked ways, which can be mended with a good healthy dose of mystical or pacifist or ecological fervor. The best proof that they have no fundamental quarrel with the system is that the system shows no fear of them and, by and large, lets them alone. Even world federalists are immune from surveillance, since their idea of world government is prosystemic. A world federal government, as they see it, would simply protect the nation-states and economic arrangements and cultural differences that already exist. Far from creating a new world civilization, it would help to stabilize and perpetuate the old one.
• Point Four. There is no possibility of global democracy in the world of 1997 or of any year or decade soon. The system has been on a winning streak since at least the mid-1920s, and moves inexorably from strength to strength. Nothing, not the Great Depression, not the second World War, not the breakup of the European colonial empires, not the rise and fall of the Soviet Union and its bloc, has done anything but strengthen it. And not one authentically antisystemic movement of any significance exists in the world today to oppose it.
• Point Five. The modern capitalist world-system will not enter into decline or attract significant opposition until and unless it begins to fail, and fail spectacularly: through such disasters as the wholesale declassement of its middle classes, a series of global environmental calamities resulting in the implosion of the world-economy, or an apocalyptically ruinous North-South total war.
• Point Six. Even then, antisystemic movements will prove ineffectual until and unless they develop a deep cosmopolitan socialist humanism transcending all segmental creeds and loyalties, and until and unless they collaborate on a global scale to oppose the force of the world-system with their own unrelenting force. The notion of a popular front of all kinds of disgruntled elements linked by no common thread except dissatisfaction with the status quo is a notion doomed to fail. We've been there, done that, and it doesn't deliver the goods. Seular socialist humanism--by which I mean rational faith in democracy, civil liberties, public stewardship of capital, and the unity and common destiny of humankind--must lead us out of the cultural anarchy and reaction of the now-expiring 20th century to a new commonsense global republic of working men and women. What drags us down is our desperate allegiance to segmental cultures long outgrown; what can lift us up is the flickering but persistent flame of reason. Without the psychic cohesion that only a common world-view can supply, all would-be oppositional movements are just whistling in the dark. This does not mean that segmental beliefs and loyalties must be abandoned, if and when they are compatible with secular socialist humanism. But such beliefs can never take precedence over our common world-view. We have to believe, and believe more powerfully and effectually than everybody else, in our common world-view, or the struggle is lost. So I am not speaking here of compromises or coalitions or half-measures. I am talking about a binding rational faith in human unity and destiny that demands and receives our paramount loyalty.
  
  W. Warren Wagar August 11, 1997 Toronto, Ontario, Canada, Civitas Mundi