Dear Mark and All,
as far as i know this list is designed not for political debate but
for academic discussion of world-system approach and theory with
possible application to global practice,
i answer Mark here first
because our correspondence occured to be of interest for other
wsn-ers and second because i see an essential connection between
rights and w-systems, that i wish to discuss below
it is known the human rights and their previous forms (defence of
person and property, principles of legal equality, liberties, civil
rights) were always developed in more scale and degree in the cores
of world-systems.
I use to distinguish two forms of rent (Tilly's
principle and my terminology): the rent by extraction (of
tribute) and the rent by attraction (of capital).
The first form was
more useful in large agricultural territorial massives (Eastern
Europe, agricultural France, continental India, Northern China),
the
second form is a charachteristic of trade and protocapitalist, later
capitalist regions (Western Europe, especially Venice, Genova, marine
France, Netherlands, etc according to classical Braudelian history,
also trade cities in Arabo-Indo-African bassein and Southern China
with Malacca, etc).
Braudel writes that everywhere (not only in Europe) large
commercial cities had much more tolerance for religion, styles of
clothing, behavior, guarantees for property, defence of life and
privacy, etc. - that is the political-ecomic basis (just in Marxian
terms) of human rights. Without these guarantees the capital simply
flows to other places.
The rent by extraction need not following by powerful elits to
these high legal (or traditional) standards because peasants cannot
pick up and take away the land as merchants can change trajectories
of their trade trips.
This fundamental basis was integrated (and mutually supported) in
Europe and later US with ideas of democracy, civil equality,
with liberal ideology etc.,
and eventually an idea of human rights
emerged first as an antidote against return of fascism, then as a
main instrument of liberalism agains communist ideology (that's why
the flame attack of marxist-leninist Mark Jones's was no wonder for
me).
I don't think that good ideas are spoiled if once in history they
served for somebody's utilitarian purposes. The rejection of slavery
in US during Civil War can be understood eventually also just as
instrument of Northern capitalists, but does it mean that to forbid
slavery as a bad idea?
In the world of our days we have in fact the same picture of
parallel between the place of country in WS-hierachy and
development of human rights in this country (with some civilizational
nuances).
[Those Westerners (especially leftist professors of social
sciences) who reject the primacy of human rights ideology seem to be
extremely naive and fanny from the viewpoint of non-Westerner (f.e.
me). They think that the fact that they are not afraid each night to
be arrested, then tortured and murdered after criticising government
or president is a natural state of things just as daily sunrise, they
do not see all modern merits of save social system just like fishes
do not see water...
Of course a definite sociological law works here:
normalcy of order sooner or later leads to decrease of demand of this
order.
But the fact is that only one billion lives now in conditions
of normalcy of human rights order: core countries and top level of
semieriphery. All other billions suffer not only from povertu and
hunger but from absence of normal, minimal or even any human rights
order.]
As for Russia, she unfortunately slopes down from semiperiphery to
periphery (in spite of Moscow that managed to grasp even some
features of the core and greatly impresses Westerners who think that
Moscow is an image of Russia),
my parallel (see above) sayes that we
must expect great and tragical losses in human rights order (with the
apogee of new dictatorship and totalitarianism - the single possible
output of "war communism or some equivalent form of mass
mobilisation" that proclaimed Mark Jones )
I surely agree with Mark in his care for savenes of Russians (and
anybody else) from mass death, colonialism, and imperial plunder.
But he just defends human rights here!
It is a right for life, a
right to live in a sovereign country (politically and economically),
also there is a right to be saved from inflation, a right to have
banking accounts defended, a right to live in a country with food and
energetic security. Last mentioned rights were violated by our
Russian stupid rulers, not by 'world emperialism'.
Capital always
goes to most profitable and save niches and our Russian elits (by
idiocy and/or greediness) gave only those niches (extraction of raw
materials and financial speculation) that really led not to
development but to degradation of Russia. Nothing is more wrong than
to think that modern misfortune of Russia is only an effect of
insidious world capitalism that wished to make harm for innocent
Russians.
and i really never will agree with appeals from old nice Europe and
still blossoming US for 'war communism and mass mobilization' in
Russia or anywhere. The effect will be isolation, totalitarianism,
return to the rent by extraction, mass repressions (if not new
wave of grand terror), later - inevitably peripheral position, new
corruption of elits, new dissidense, new trial for perestroika in
much more weak position, etc
finally and briefly on the possible positive program: the struggle
for human rights sooner or later must lead to thinking of and then
negotiations and consolidation in work on POLITICAL, ECONOMIC and
LEGAL GUARANTEES for human rights,
including mentioned above rights
to live in national sovereignity (here i support Richard Moore's
program), rights for food, energetical, political, ecological
security, rights to save money and property from inflation and too
high taxes (or extracted tribute), etc.
It is a program of not
rapid romantic revolution (as Mark seems to starve for) but of
long routine construction of social institutes, norms, standards,
development of infrastructure, industry, and agriculture.
I have no illusion of future equality of countries. Moreover I am
sure that US will rest a world leader for many decades (because of
fortunate investement in science and education, a factual
monopolization of international services in this area that now has
the same status as spices had in XV-XVI),
but i see no theoretical contradiction in the picture of one core
(say 'golden billion') and the vast 'second level' where
countries and world regions are all 'semiperipheral' because in
various fields they play role of 'patron' or 'client' to each other.
Evidently the human rights order will be more weak in this 'second
level" than in the core, but i believe that the abyss of human
right violation (in revolutionary massacres, world wars, slavery,
mass terror) can and must be avoided first of all and forever
that's why I appeal for a new grand alliance:
1)human rights movement,
2)intracore anti-mainstream movements
(includings offended world capitalist elits like South-Eastern Asian,
and intellectuals like global practical bias of CSF and WSN) and
3)world leftist and nationalist ('anti-imperialistic')movements,
because the last two (2-3) can provide the real basis and
guarantees(see above) for human rights, and (1) can provide
plausible universal humanistic ideology (or value onsciouness in
my terminology) for the struggle and work of (2-3)
sorry for so long msg but the subject is really serious
best from Siberia
Nikolai Rozov
rozov@nsu.ru
On 8 Sep 98 Mark Jones <Jones_M@netcomuk.co.uk> wrote:
> Nikolai, do you think this kind of activity will help prevent
> your fellow Russian citizens from starving this winter? How will
> they be fed -- thru Amnesty International proclamations or by means of
> of war communism or some equivalent form of mass mobilisation?
>
> But of course, you are opposed to communism: perhaps you think that
> the lives of millions of Russians are a small price to pay for the
> benefits of having a 'civil' society and a western path of development,
> ie, de-development, colonialism and imperial plunder?
>
> Mark Jones
>
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Nikolai S. Rozov, PhD, Dr.Sc. Professor of Philosophy
E-MAIL: rozov@nsu.ru FAX: 7-3832-397101
ADDRESS: Philosophy Dept. Novosibirsk State University
630090, Novosibirsk, Pirogova 2, RUSSIA
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