Comrades,
In response to Warren Wager's rather obvious reasons for world government
from a democratic perspective (equitable distribution of wealth and
natural resources globally, protecting the natural environment, to
"safeguard world peace"), Richard K. Moore wrote several things:
> The vision is that an enlightened global state _somehow_ comes into
> existence, _somehow_ remains stable forever, _somehow_ is never subverted
> by special interests, and _somehow_ always adapts benignly and successfully
> to changing conditions.
Putting aside for now my problems with Warren's argument, where is Moore
getting these assumptions? Does stating that a world government is
necessary for the reasons Warren enumerated automatically imply such
ridiculous claims? Maintaining a global democratic order, just like
maintaining a democratic order of any scale, will be a formidable task,
sure. But it doesn't mean that we don't advocate one, or try to make one
happen. Beating cancer is hard work, but if you want to live you at least
make a go at it. Yeah, sure, a lot of people don't make it (and we miss
them terribly). But this is no reason not to try.
> I dispute every one of these implicit assumptions, and suggest that the
> historical record agrees with me. I'd frame my own argument along two
> lines: (1) long term system stability, and (2) the creation scenario.
Perhaps the "historical record" agrees with Richard (facts speaking for
themselves?), but until these arguments are put into some sort of cogent
form how do we know? For example, take this gem:
> (1) As regards stability - monoculture is inherently maladaptive; it is
> inferior to diversity. Just as the single-strain Irish potato crop all
> failed at once from a single blight, so would a single world government be
> all-at-once vulnerable to a special-interest takeover or to any other
> serious system perturbation (natural, economic, or political).
How do we get from world government to monoculture? Why would a world
democratic order automatically reduce all culture to a singularity? More
importantly, perhaps, why is monoculture inherently maladaptive? Is this
based on theory of natural selection mapped onto the social world? Sounds
rather Spencerian to me: "Keep world government out of natural cultural
diversity so that the process of macrosociocultural adaptation can proceed
unadulterated by the hand of conscientious women and men." Using the potato
famine as an analogy for the perils of world government is just about the
worst analogy I have yet to hear.
> Voluntary mutual cooperation among enlightened sovereign states would
> be considerably more robust over time, and would be no less difficult to
> achieve than a single enlightened hierarchical government.
Why reify states, Richard, and then have them rule (to hope for the
enlightened rule of states smacks of the silliness that Richard attributes
to Warren's argument) over the world's population? As Zinn pointed out,
Kissinger's argument that history is the memory of states hides the fact
that there are no such things as "national interests" or "enlightened
states." Ironically, under Richard's alternative scenario we may well have
a totalitarian world order constituted by the mutual cooperation of
totalitarian states (which is sort of what we have and the framework that
Richard says we should operate within).
On the other hand, the whole thrust of Warren's argument for world
government, it seems to me, is to get around the possibility of interstate
domination of the world's population, who, as Marx pointed out long ago,
have no country. If it is difficult to imagine a global democratic
government acting reasonably (I shutter anthropomorphizing such an entity
in that manner) then how in the hell may be even begin to imagine hundreds
of "sovereign states" coming to enlightened rule simultaneously and then
cooperating for the good of all people? This reminds me of the argument
that a teacher gave to me at a Christian school (Church of Christ) I
attended as a boy: it is impossible to imagine a world so complex as
self-created. My response (for which I was set out of the classroom) was
that if this was difficult to imagine, then how may we imagine a
self-caused supreme being causing the world? Some things challenge the
most imaginative minds.
> International brotherhood and mutual solidarity have a critical
> _supporting_ role to play, but the only productive focus of _primary_
> effort, under existing circumstances, is the achievement of democratic
> revolution within each sovereign state.
I must have missed something. I agree that we should struggle in our
respective nation-states, but how is it that with democracy being
dismantled, as you claim, and at the same time there is a world capitalist
state emerging, a point which I have seen you argue on this list, that
national struggle is the "only productive focus of _primary_ effort"? This
conclusion doesn't seem to flow from the position you have advanced so
frequently on this channel. From all your extensive analysis of the
transnationalization of capital and the erosion of the nation-state,
Richard, how do you come up with this conclusion?
> And the West _must_ take the lead
> - if the West remains elite-capitalist dominated the rest of the world is
> doomed, given the West's many-times-over military hegemony. And an
> enlightened West - Can you imagine it? - could be ever-so effective in
> _guiding_ (not coercing) the rest of the world to a similar enlightened
> state.
I am having trouble imagining an "enlightened West." Is your alternative
scenario dependent on this possibility?
> For _many_ reasons - even though world trade should certainly be encouraged
> - an emphasis on local self-sufficiency is called for. It should be
> recognized here, as Michael Parenti develops in "The Sword and the Dollar",
> that the Third World is by no means poor - the problem is that the West has
> been stealing (by force) its resources for the past several centuries. A
> simple cessation of imperialism (including national expropriation of
> resources and repudiation of debts, with Western cooperation) would
> immediately achieve a major shift of wealth from the First to Third Worlds.
> Forced redistribution beyond that is inadvisable.
This conclusion is unrealistic. The assumption is that operating social
laws are symmetrical. It is not usually the case in the real world that
the removal of the stimulus returns the effected object back to its
previous state. I also question the degree to which imperialism is the
predominant form of maintaining exploitation in the present global system
that is assumed in this argument. Rather capitalist hegemony has come to
predominate as a method of domination and exploitation over core
political and military domination. This is a shift from imperial to
polyarchic domination, in which the elite republican forms of government
of the core (particularly the US) are copied over into the former colonies
(this does not deny that imperialism is still in force, simply that it
does not characterize the present world-historical stage). These countries
are determined by the same overall structural logic that determines the
development of the core nations. Nations are tools of the global
capitalist class and their elites--but more than this, they are caused
components of the global structural logic that drives world history. There
is amazing reification running all through Richard's arguments, and this,
in part, explains his contradictory conclusions from week to week.
> If you want to live in the desert, you'd better know how to get by with
> what's available there, or what you can trade for.
If you WANT to live in a desert. "Hey, pal, it's your choice to live
there. Don't complain to me about lacking water. You'd better know what's
available there or just live with it, buddy." I recall a comedian who
advanced a similar line. Only his line was a joke. There is this (il)logic
called FPS (Faulty Parental Selection) that I think works well here. In
this logic we choose the parents we are born to, we choose the social
class in which we are born, and we choose the geographical region in which
we are born and will live. "Hey, if you don't like the bombs then just
move out of the way!"
> creating ecologically
> unsustainable economies all over the world, based on the centrally-planned
> massive re-distribution of global resources...would be a
> capitalist-developers dream scenario....
How do you figure?
Love,
Andy