Dear Warren, Dennis and All
i am glad that the discussion turned finally to serious issues and wish to
make some comments on Russia and goals of global practice in WST context
> From: wwagar@binghamton.edu
> On Tue, 30 Sep 1997, Dennis R Redmond wrote:
> > unforgiving. Not every semi-periphery (which is what Russia is today) gets
> > to join the metropole. Taiwan made it; Argentina didn't. In many cases,
to confuse Moscow and Russia is a much bigger mistake than to equalize NYC
with USA. Just today i returned from Moscow, now it has almost all
features of blossoming European capital, including vast middle class, all
kinds of advanced services, high-level consumption, etc. Moscow really
belongs to a dynamic semi-periphery even with many signs of a core.
On the contrary almost all provincial Russia (except maybe Nijnii
Novgorod) is still a stagnation
area of destroying military production and kolkhoses, with only one vital
branch - getting raw materials. The political background of real mass support
of communists, "patriots" (read fascists), extremists (like Jirinovski) etc
make the picture very anxious and really close to worst samples of Latin
America. That's why i qualify major part of modern
Russia as "slipping to PERIPHERY of global world system" and i would be
grateful to WST experts for feedback to this statement.
My practical conclusion may seem scandalous (especially for comrades). Russia
(major part of Russian population excluding communist, fascist and militant
leaders) DOES NOT NEED now any crisis, crash or even fast transformation of
golobal world-system. Such global crisis can only stimulate and support worst
extrimist forces in Russia. What Russia really needs is an economic growth
(like Chili, Brazilia, China) and involving in global economy in the role of
SEMI-PERIPHERY (not only periphery with gegemonic monster of Moscow that
lives on exchanging Siberian oil, gas, metals, wood for Western sigaretts,
alchogol, cars).
Dennis:
> > Somehow, we've got to find ways of democratizing the global economy,
> > making it reward the people who really produce its wealth instead of
> > rewarding greedy share-holders, and giving people a voice to make their
> > own decisions about what gets produced and how it's manufactured --
> > something which automatically excludes Party elites, one-party states, and
> > IMF sado-monetarism as much as Stalinism.
> >
i share your ideals and values Dennis, but your suggestion seems to be not
more than a mere moralistic utopia
in an brief article "Where is World Capitalism Going" (published this April,
i'll sent the version to any personal request) i tried to argue that only
splitting elits of world economy, finding allies in this camp, using all
opportunities of international organizations (even including IMF), legacy,
liberal as well as humanistic and democraic ideology can help to
ameliorate somehow the global economic regime.
Warren:
> modern world-system. Russia was part of that system in the 19th century
> and Russia is part of it today. It is a system. When Dennis talks about
> "somehow" finding ways of democratizing it, a system that is inherently
> and ineluctably exploitative and undemocratic, he implies that we can
> tinker with it and make it work for everybody the way it should. I would
> argue that this is like hoping we can turn an elephant into a giraffe. If
> world-system theory means anything, it means that the only ultimate
> remedy for the inequities of the capitalist world-system is the wholesale
> replacement of that system by another one, by a democratic and socialist
> world-government.
in fact since XVI the 'elephant' of world capitalism survived many essential
transformations, including BTW the end of slavery and serfdom, powerful
social programs in core states, decrease and almost end of racial
segregation, rise of human rights, support of women rights, ethnic
minorities, etc. Historically the 'elephant' occured to be rather flexibile
and having a very high evolutionary learning ability (to use G.Modelski's
terms).
In terms of Warren's metaphore i suspest that the only alternative
to further amelioration of existing system (that i keep suggesting) is "to
kill an elephant of global capitalism".
But dear 'comrades' (left-oriented Western scholars and students)!
Why are you sure that namely a 'giraffe of democratic
and socialist world-government' will arise from this murder?
Why not a "vampire of nuclear world war" or "jackal of global stalinist
totalitarianism" (as one can extrapolate from history of great violent
revolutions)?
Oops, you hope to avoid violence, that means that you hope to get peacefully
all political, financial and military key instruments from current world
elits and to pass them to new w-party and w-government.
But I agree with Warren Wagar when he says:
Pigs will fly before megacorporate boards abandon the
> bottom line or sovereign states lay down their guns.
>
wouldn't it be more fruitful to begin teaching pigs to fly than to keep
dreaming of bloodless end of global world capitalism?
best regards
nikolai
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Nikolai S. Rozov # Address: Dept.of Philosophy
Prof.of Philosophy # Novosibirsk State University
rozov@cnit.nsu.ru # 630090, Novosibirsk
Fax: (3832) 355237 # Pirogova 2, RUSSIA
Moderator of the mailing list PHILOFHI
(PHILosophy OF HIstory and theoretical history)
http://wsrv.clas.virginia.edu/~dew7e/anthronet/subscribe
/philofhi.html
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