Re: Ethnic Hegemony and World-System

Warren--you've posted so many positions today its difficult to know where to 
start--but let's see...  Are you really saying that so long as capitalists 
have the good sense to buy some allies (you mentioned the Western working 
class, one could also name a couple of others) its hopeless to try to change 
things?  Surely the losers greatly outnumber the winners (and lets recall 
that capital hasn't been all that nice to its 'allies' in the Western working 
class for the last thirty years).  Its not the place, but an inventory of the 
balance of forces in the world would need to explore many facets of the issue.

Has the spread of the enlightenment faith generated any societies that value 
human rights etc (and do not do so at the expense of others!!)?  Or do you 
judge various pre-modern traditions by what they actually achieved, and 
modernists by what they say they want to achieve?  By these standards 
(judging by ideals, rather than effect) Christianity or Buddhism is at least 
as impressive as modernity.

The debate I refer to is not between enlightenment and Islam, Buddhism, 
Christian Fundamentalism, etc.  It is over whether their should be a 
universal faith at all, what its character should be, what the relationship 
between universalists and those who reject universalism is etc.  I suggest 
Ivan Illych, Michel Foucault and Ashis Nandy as representative (and diverse) 
'post-enlightenment' thinkers.  Enlightenment has certainly not been a 
pacific faith.  Its generated at least as much war as any other religion 
fanatically pursued. Left wing enlightenment WAS a major player in the world 
in the last one hundred years.  It tended to turn into liberalism, rather 
than oppose it.  The Soviet Empire is the quintessential example.  Whatever 
the differences regarding the ownership of enterprises, their rulers, as much 
as in the west, believed that scientifically trained elite could manage 
society best without the intrusion of the masses. In this sense, it was 
indistinguishable from Western liberalism.

Faced with the failures of the last hundred years, you recommend that at some 
distant date in the future the enlightenment will get things right--once 
capitalism stops buying allies (but why would it?).  Others, faced with 
failure, suggest we 'lose our religion' and rethink everything.  Given these 
options, I think the second is the realistic one.

Steven Sherman