world party comments

>
>>        b.  should the World Party support or oppose the emergence of  a
>> global state?
>
>       It should support such a state, which is the only instrumentality
>that will have the authority and the power to clean up the environment,
>impose rational limits to growth, and redistribute wealth and resources in
>the service of worldwide social justice.  But for me there is no
>functional difference between a "global state" and the "global
>commonwealth" mentioned in 2.a. above.
>         
        I am unsure how you can serious expect a larger government to be
more representative when the issue is presently how smaller governments are
considered unrepresentative and embedded in a degradative political economy.
This requires a faith in a 'regulatory savior,' which is rather at odds, at
least in the United States, with the government itself being responsible for
much degradative activity. You are putting your faith in sustainability in
organizations that would have EVEN LESS political feedback. I suppose
desperation for 'grand ideas' drives people to consider world government.
Certainly I am unopposed to any attempts to generate legal checks and
balances between states (little use they are, however, in my opinion.) 
        I feel that any stated goal of a World Party (or Worlds Citizens
Party, or  whatever) is attempts to orchestrate a sense of politiacl
economic sustainability. If that can be agreed upon, certainly then the idea
of a world government becomes rather problematic: what type of feedback
mechanisms would keep such an entity. From where would its authority come
from? I only see something like that being used to expand a degradative
political econonmy. Certainly a great deal of faith was placed in the United
Nations. What has become of that? It's a vast court system, where there are
still kings with veto power. 
        If there is to be a World Party I feel its socioeconmic policies
should be in terms of localizing instead of delocalizing socioeconmic
relationships. Delocalization leads to huge econmic power groupings without
any political feedback poteneital. A World Party should work together, along
the lines of  what was suggested in the senseo f the World Citzens
Party--for seeing it in everyone's interests (except the degraders and the
organizations of degradation, imperialism, etc), to work to create more
effective.
        Policy One would be to get the United States and Europe off the back
of the world in general, to help to moderate and move along more sustainable
lines the vast. This is less saying that I feel that many nation-state
formations are still useful. On the contrary, I feel that many are only a
relic of a co-opted imperialism than any sense of 'nation,' per se. (With
nationalism a social construction as I certainly feel can be agreed upon,
and highly historically contingent.).
        Pragmatically, I see little way of securing 'sustainabilty' for many
human populatinos in a world regime of trade that would enforce them to
remove their desire to trade for local betterment. Sure, let groups trade.
What is important is making sure that there are political feedback
mechanisms TO THE STATES IN QUESTION from whence the majority of capital and
manufacturing items derive. There are many current 'informal' examples of
attempts to create legal precedents for 'foreign' citizens in United Statate
courtrs, for example, because what is United States is more than simply the
contiguous 48 and the 'offical' 2 other states. There are many other
uncontiguous states the world wide, with military and social 'fuinding'
support to support an externalized political economy.The term 'foreign' has
become nearly meaningness, in a natinoalist ethic sense. We are all
'foreigners' divorced from localized areas and a more envirionmentally
sensitive political econmi relationships. 
         When a political economy becomes externalized it becomes far more
difficult for any citizen feedback. As a consequence, there is a much
greater sense of 'state capture' by the organizations involved in the
externalized political econmy. Oil interests in the United States are a
prime example. Certainly it is outside the realm of the interests of the
United States AS A TERRITORIAL PLACE to utilize thes raw material substrates
for the powering and maintainance of the built environment.  A World Party
that would propose a LARGER GOVERNMENT would have have multiplied its
difficulties with political feedback instead of dimished them. A World Party
could be a platform statement, instead of a separate Party anyway, thus
working within to change the existing.
        This of course requires a policy plan. The World Party it seems to
me is a bunch of blind optimistics/progressives, instead of pragmatic 'lets
climb the slippery pole of poliics' progressives. To be durable, the World
Party would require a platform, some tenents, some analytical frame, etc,
such as marxism gave the 'workers' movement. Certainly this frame is
publicly lacking at present. It shoudl deal with an analysis of where
degradative political economies come from, what creates the, where to
interrupt them, etc. What are the factors, what strategies come from said
analysis, etc. Simply creating the Party and expecting something to show up
in terms of an analytical frame is a rather clueless way to organize any
politics of action. Organized on this idea, certainly the World Party will
only become a literary clique of idealists, something like the Fabian
society in England was, that assumed that it was some revolutoinary force,
when it was rather out of the loop of politics altogether. Please correct or
amend my analysis if I have exaggerated.
        So in short, if there is to be some sort of Party, it has to work to
localize instead of delocalize political economic power. It can see 'itself'
as a global force it if wants, which I feel it is/could be. Though its
policies should be certainly to shore up any remaning (or to create) more
localist politcal economic situations, becuase it is out of that that would
come any sense of sustainabilty and equity, instad of corruptible 'promised
redistributive' aspects of a larger government structure. 

Regards,


Mark Whitaker
University of Wisconsin-Madison