I was unable to send this post out yesterday; it kept coming back
to me marked undeliverable. Perhaps the computer gods are angry. I shall
defy them once more.
Warren
On Mon, 6 Oct 1997 wwagar@binghamton.edu wrote:
>
> Dear Richard and All,
>
> Just read the following, as well as Andy's debate with you. I
> have interpolated a few comments.
>
>
> On Sat, 4 Oct 1997, Richard K. Moore wrote:
>
> >
> > 10/02/97, Warren Wagar wrote:
> >
> > > World government is essential for at least three reasons:
> > >
> > > 1. To ensure the equitable distribution of wealth and
> > > natural resources among the world's peoples. ...
> > > 2. To protect the biosphere. ...
> > > 3. To safeguard world peace. ...
> >
> > I see. 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.
>
> That would be nice, but nowhere did I or do I foresee such wisdom
> and benevolence and good fortune. The goals of a world-government are one
> thing; its success in achieving them quite another. As a practicing
> historian, I would expect the world-government to perpetrate all kinds of
> horrors, deliberately or otherwise. But I maintain the hope that it would
> perpetrate fewer horrors than the modern world-system and that its
> establishment would represent a net gain for humanity in the long term.
>
> > 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.
> >
> > (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). 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.
> > It is instructive to note here that voluntary cooperation among
> > major European powers has been achieved _in advance_ of the upcoming (and
> > retrograde) European federal state.
>
> Who spoke of monocultures? And even if I had spoken of
> monocultures, does the "historical record" suggest that Japan, Norway, New
> Zealand, and Saudi Arabia are more dysfunctional than Nigeria, Bosnia,
> Brazil, and Sudan?
>
> > (2) As regards the creation scenario - one must have a plan/scenario by
> > which the goals are to be achieved, by which the future system is to come
> > about. As argued in the response to Adam Webb, I believe "salvation
> > through apocalypse" is demonstrably a dead end - is jumping from the fying
> > pan into the fire. The best hope for enlightened governance of _any_
> > variety is through orderly change with ongoing stability preserved. And
> > with democratic institutions being rapidly and systematically dismantled on
> > a global scale, there is an historical necessity to organize for peaceful
> > revolution with extreme urgency and singleness of purpose.
> >
> > 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. 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.
>
> Now who's being utopian? Not to mention Eurocentric.
>
> > At every stage the MEANS IS THE END: (1) the organizing and popular
> > "uprising" required to achieve democratic revolution is in fact the
> > creation of the popular infrastructures necessary to support enlightened
> > governance in a modern Western state; (2) the unfolding mutual cooperation
> > of revolutionary democratic Western states, and the collective experience
> > of supporting the rest of the world in joining, is in fact the creation of
> > the very collaborative paradigm that is needed to enable ongoing world
> > peace and cooperation.
> >
> > ---
> >
> > In closing, I dispute one of Warren's goals: "equitable distribution of
> > wealth and natural resources among the world's peoples".
> >
> > 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.
> >
> > I contend that "equitable distribution of resources" is ecologically
> > unsound - if what you mean, for example, is that desert dwellers should
> > have the same access to water as, say, a Norwegian. 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. Otherwise we'd be creating ecologically
> > unsustainable economies all over the world, based on the centrally-planned
> > massive re-distribution of global resources. This would be a
> > capitalist-developers dream scenario, not the dream of one seeking a
> > sustainable world.
> >
> What if your desert-dwellers have nothing to trade for, and next
> door some other desert-dwellers are rolling in oil? Kuwait is rich, Yemen
> is poor. Is that okay? Even your not-so-enlightened Western sovereign
> states recognize the need to help resource-poor or otherwise disadvantaged
> regions inside their own boundaries develop their human and/or natural
> resources. Under your formula I suppose Appalachia and southern Italy and
> northern Brazil should be turned loose to fend for themselves. In the
> long term, in a democratic world, all regions would learn to be
> self-sufficient, but there would have to be a transitional period to level
> the playing field. And what about safeguarding the ozone layer, stemming
> global warming, preventing the destruction of tropical rain forests,
> protecting the oceanic food-chain, keeping high-tech societies from
> gobbling up all the mineral wealth on the ocean floor, banning plutonium
> from outer space, letting countries downstream have their share of
> fresh water, etcetera, etcetera?
>
> Cheers,
>
> Warren
>
>