Praxis

        I have been alternately praised and condemned for introducing
history into our WSN discussions, but the latest battle, between
communitarian anarchism (Richard) and Scandinavian reformism (Paul) leads
me to try once more.  A whole lot of reinventing of wheels seems to be
going on, which I respectfully decline to believe is needed at this pretty
horrible juncture in global affairs.

        First off, the hope that we can dispense with hierarchy, power,
politics, leadership, ideology, is itself an ideology with long and
venerable roots in political (or anti-political?) thought.  In the Western
tradition, I refer you to William Godwin, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Prince
Kropotkin, and George Orwell.  It is an evergreenly seductive philosophy,
one in which we might all wish to invest our hopes, but which, in my
fallible judgment, has no foundation in human history or human behavior.
Its basic premise, that people are good and society is good and that
everybody can or will work together for the common welfare, is
contradicted by every page of human history.  This is not to posit a
theory of human nature as ineluctably evil, but rather to say that we are
all acculturated by our sociocultural milieux to pursue certain private or
collective goals that may and usually do clash with what an outside
arbiter might term the long-term best interests of humanity as a whole.

        Second, as Richard has patiently over and over again explained
to Paul, capitalism is capitalism.  The essence of world-system theory,
whether Wallersteinian, Frankian, or otherwise, predicates much the same
point.  Capitalism is the relentless accumulation of capital for the
acquisition of profit.  Capitalism is a carnivore.  It cannot be made over
into a herbivore without gutting it, i.e., abolishing it.  I think, for
example, of the "prosperity" of today's Ireland, which was achieved by
allowing the pulverization of most locally initiated enterprise and
welcoming its replacement by multinational corporations eager to exploit
Irish labor.  In the short run, Ireland wins.  In the longer run, God help
her.

        Let's not kid ourselves.  There is no real "movement" out there.
The vast (99%) majority of the human race today has no commitment to
revolutionary transformation, either out of ignorance and abject poverty,
or misguided hopes of joining the microscopic elite that runs everything.
You or I are not going to play messiah.  It is our solitary task to
witness to the promise of better times, keep flickering flames burning,
and never let the dream die.
         
        Warren