Thank you Chris for turning discussion to the most basic points.
At the same time I still wonder why so much Western left (or progressive)
scholars (including you?) so much overestimate the Principle of State
and underestimate the Principle of Law.
In political-economic area Wallerstein distinguishes only two basic types of
super-societal historical systems: world-empires (with the logic of
centralized extraction and redistribution of tribute) and world-economies
(comments not needed in this list).
As far as I know nobody after Wallerstein suggested any other basic and
persuasive type of stable super-societal entity.
We all agree, as I hope, that Modern Global World System belongs to the type
of world-economy. All talks about transforming it into (or creation
over it) some World State with World Government (or World Party fighting for
it, etc) mean for me the (unconscious?) attempt to transform Global World-
Economy into Global World-Empire.
The last 'good' or 'progressive' World-Empire
is expected to extract tribute from, say, 'naughty' Transnational Companies
(in form of world taxes, etc) and redistribute it for progressive humanistic
goals.
Here I direct you to recent clear and very persuasive Greg Ehrig's
msg concerning allocation resources among Government's needs(G),
Investement(I), and Consumption(C).
Dear historians, am I not right that all world history is full of examples
of permanent intention of world-empires to minimize I and C in order to
maximize G ?
History of socialism also tells us that the interior logic of centralized
redistribution always prevailed over best humanistic principles and traites
of socialists - fathers of system.
Have contemporary progressivists and 'world socialists' any real arguments
that allow not to extrapolate these historical rules to their desired
'World Party', 'World State'. or 'World Government'?
And the last, why not to focus attention and forces to
humanistically oriented modernization of international LEGAL SYSTEM
concerning economic relations between core, semiperiphery , and periphery?
Why not to try to create new legal-economic options that should make
humanistic/ecological activities profitable and exploitive/antiecological
activities non-profitable?
I cannot believe that the grand intellectual polential of modern political
economists (and first of all w-system tradition) is not sufficient for
at least designing the conceptual project of this global-legal-modernization
task.
My best regards, Nikolai Rozov
> From: chris chase-dunn <chriscd@jhu.edu>
> To: WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK <wsn@csf.colorado.edu>
>
> The "New World Order," economic globalization and neo-liberalism are
> understandably receiving long-due criticism from popular forces. A conference is
> being held in Washington about the costs of globalization. Phil McMichael's
> article, "The new colonialism: global regulation and the restructuring of
> the interstate system," (pp. 37-56 in David A. Smith and Jozsef Borocz
> (eds.) _ A New World Order? Global Transformations in the Late
> Twentieth Century_ (New York: Praeger 1995) makes the case against
> economic globalization.
>
> But progressives need to be wary about joining up with economic
> nationalists like Buchanan. The progressive attack on neo-liberalism
> needs to be organized at national, international and global levels if it is
> to succeed. Socialism at the national level has never worked in the past
> and it certainly will not work in a world that is more interlinked than ever
> before. In the same Smith and Borocz collection is a thoughtful article
> by Andre Drainville about new forms of Left internationalism. It may be the
> case that the old forms were somewhat premature, and that internationalism
> has finally become not only desireable but necessary.
>
> This does not mean that local, regional and national-level
> struggles are irrelevant. They are just as relevant as they always have
> been. But they need to also have a global strategy and global-level
> cooperation lest they be isolated and defeated.
>
> The international segment of the world capitalist class is indeed moving
> slowly toward global state formation. Rather than oppose this move
> progressives should make every effort to organized social and political
> globalization, and to democratize the emerging global state. We need to
> prevent the normal operation of the interstate system and future hegemonic
> rivalry from causing a future war among core powers. And we need to
> transform the emerging world society into a global democratic commonwealth
> based on collective rationality, liberty and equality.
>
> To do this we need to construct a new philosophy of democratic and
> egalitarian liberation. But this will not require throwing out all the
> ideals of the European Enlightenment. It was not the Enlightenment
> philosophy that caused Europe to dominate and exploit the world. Rather
> it was the military and economic power generated by capitalism that
> made European hegemony possible. The ideals of the Enlightment had often to
> be stretched or ignored in the process.
>
> Of course many of the main ideals that have been the core of the Left
> Wing critique of capitalism are shared by non-European philosophies.
> Democracy (in the sense of popular control over collective decision-making)
> was not invented in Greece. It was a characteristic of all non-hierarchical
> human societies on every continent. My point is that the new universalism
> can incorporate quite a lot from the old universalisms. After all,
> national self-determination and multiculturalism _vis a vis_ religion
> have been important features of liberalism. It is not
> liberal ideology that caused so much exploitation and domination. It was
> the failure of real capitalism to live up to its own ideals. That is the
> problem that progressives must solve.
>
> chris
> Prof. Chris Chase-Dunn
> Department of Sociology
> Johns Hopkins University
> Baltimore, MD. 21218 USA
> tel 410 516 7633 fax 410 516 7590 email chriscd@jhu.edu
> Nikolai S. Rozov
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