rkm's manifesto

Having requested a pithy statement from Richard K. Moore, I feel
duty-bound to respond.  Sorry for the delay.

1)
RKM's 2001 Manifesto opens with an analogy between biological and social
evolution, emphasizing its episodic nature.  First, this is an ongoing
controversy among biologists (Gould and Eldredge's punctuated equilibrium
versus Dawkins, Dennett and others who stress the continuity of natural
selection).  But more importantly it is ONLY AN ANALOGY with social
evolution.  I'm not any more impressed with Wallerstein when he starts
talking about the chemist Prigogene's theory of "dissipative
structures."  

2)
The main problem with the Manifesto is its overstatement of
U.S./Western power.  "The domestication of societal evolution," one
section is titled, which says "Western power has now superceded other
evolutionary forces...  ...we could say that the Western regime has
`domesticated' global society." 

WOW!  We might as well give up.
But fortunately this is not sound analysis, just dramatic poetry.

Given the magnitude of the problem, it is not surprising that the proposed
solution ("a massive, global, grass-roots movement") is totally vague and
apparently ill-equipped to take on the Global Masters.

*** *** *** *** ***

I strongly recommend that RKM and everybody else steep themselves in some
world-system research.

For starters, the opening chapter to "The Spiral of Capitalism and
Socialism" by Terry Boswell and Christopher Chase-Dunn (Lynne
Rienner/2000) is a great summary of recent scholarship on "The Political
Economy of the World-System," including cycles and trends in the system.  
A key insight of this theoretical perspective, and its empirical research,
(though certainly not unique to it) is that hegemons rise and fall.  
Neither Fukuyama, nor RKM, nor Hardt & Negri, nor anyone else to my
knowledge, has argued persuasively that the U.S./Capitalist Empire is the
end of history.

That means we can still make history, but we'd best operate, not on the
basis of poetry and fantasies of omnipotence, but rather on our best
understanding of the "circumstances directly found, given and transmitted
from the past."  (Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire, 1852)

One secular trend (as opposed to cycle) we can't ignore is the degradation
of the ecosystem, and the massive wave of extinction now underway.  So we
had best act with alacrity, within the structural circumstances that we
are presented with. 
 

Richard Hutchinson