There seem to be three different levels of movement
"antisystemicness" (?) under discussion here.
The most limited is that of Woronov, who sees antisystemic as
entailing any modification to the dominant order, however accidental,
haphazard, and gradual. Particularly noteworthy is his use of the phrase
"wrenching some domain of freedom...within a host system." The term
"freedom" illustrates the painfully obvious tendency of the "new social
movements" to demand that the current order live up to its own proclaimed
ideals. This is neither a material challenge nor, at the fundamental
level, an ideological challenge, and thus is the most contained and
unthreatening variety of activism. It is no accident that this variety of
mobilisation and self-congratulatory "radicalism" has long been the sole
activism remaining among the global elite and in the educational
institutions that train that elite.
The intermediate level of "antisystemicness" is that of Wagar's
envisioned World Party, which fundamentally challenges the material
arrangements of the hegemonic order. This set of demands goes well beyond
asking that order to live up to its own rhetoric of individual liberation,
and indeed beyond economic redistribution within the constraints of that
system. Indeed, little could be more radical than a wholesale
transformation of ownership and political structures.
But my intent is to stress the third and highest level of
antisystemic challenge, which also would carry through material
transformation but goes even further to reject the evaluative yardstick
and philosophical foundations that the hegemonic order would carry forward
into a "socialist democratic world federation." All the historical
perspective on the last five thousand-odd years afforded us by
world-systems theory will come to nil if we also neglect the insights that
flow from the "thick moralities" of precapitalist civilisations. We must
judge contemporary capitalism based on the widest possible sampling of
alternatives to it, for only that perspective can fully disengage us from
its insidious influence.
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Adam K. Webb
Department of Politics
Princeton University
Princeton NJ 08544 USA
609-258-9028