Adam K Webb seems to agree with Wagar (as have other contributors to this
discussion) that the world system can only be undone by a massive global
collapse which would cause untold human misery as always happens when
revolutionary idealists find the power to sweep away everything and declare
the year ZERO. Far better to encourage reform or evolution or subvertion
of the system by drawing "selectively" on "timeless bedrock of
precapitalist values" to subvert the capitalist world system. This sounds
good to me, although I find Webb's selection of religious fundamentalism
(he suggests Islamic, but it would seem to open the door to all such)
rather chilling.
The question then becomes: what are those bedrock values? The one thing
that all so-called traditional values share is a concern for the COMMON
GOOD and HARMONY (however they may be defined -- whose GOOD? whose
HARMONY?) over the individual and individual rights. This is a slippery
slope (as history teaches) but if it is to be pursued I think it might be
worth while to look at by Howard Wiarda's __Corporatism and Comparative
Politics__ (ME Sharpe, 1996). There he identifies a "modern
neo-corporatism ... often called societal or open corporatism" which he
says is already entrenched in "modern, industrial social-welfare-oriented
countries" where interest groups are "directly incorporated into the
decision-making machinery of the ... state on such issues as industrial
policy, social welfare, pensions, and economic planning" through
"formalized consultation between the state and its major societal
interests." "Cooperation, consultation, negotiations, and compromise are
the usual route to ... agreements, not coercion" in contrast to the
"authoritarian corporatism of the past." p. 21 and passim. This Wiarda
sees evolving to a sort of "neo-syndicalism" in which various interest
groups actually come to efectively control those govt agencies that
regulate issues vital to them -- for instance environmental groups dominate
the EPA, farmers the Dept of Agriculture, the AARP able to propose and veto
social security policies. The regulatory boards created as pillars of the
world system by the EEC, NAFTA, WTO etc. also create the structure for
corporatism to transcend nationalism and function at the international
level.
Just a thought.