System overthrow or reform ?

Feedback please...

Regards,
Geoff Holland


SYSTEM OVERTHROW OR REFORM ?
The World System is in a precarious balance, as evidenced by the 
disasterous deviations from peace and security this century - the two 
World Wars, the Korean and Vietnam Wars, genocide in Armenia, 
Europe, Kampuchea, Rwanda, major famines in China, Biafra, Bangladesh,  
Ethiopia, Sudan etc, the nuclear arms race, and the threat of 
accelerating ecological deterioration, to name some of the worst 
examples.

To ‘overthrow’ a system is highly risky.  We may not end up with the 
intended alternative, and may possibly end up with something much 
worse than we have at present.  The noble experiments of 
Communism in the Soviet Union and China demonstrate this.

Instead of calling for the overthrow of neoliberal economic 
globalisation, a general ideology, to be replaced by community-based 
economic development, another general ideology, we need to set 
targets for environmentally sustainable and socially just economic 
development, and bend the economic system (eg through regulation 
and innovative market mechanisms) so that it meets those targets.  
This is the global process which could be said to have officially begun 
at the 1992 Earth Summit, but which has so far been unacceptably 
slow, weak and largely ineffectual.

The problem is, or course, that targets are constantly being set (eg to 
eradicate poverty), and constantly failing to be met.  How else can 
pressure be brought to bear on the captains of capitalism other than to 
work for the overthrow of a system and an ideology ?