Re: World party

Dear all

Interesting comments followed my suggestion that individuals form the core
constituency or at least the active portion of a world party via the
Internet, and that such a grouping could serve to counterbalance the
existing organizations - the UN and governmental types and the various
clusters of big business, industry and corporations.  

Having worked with disability organizations, I know the strong desire to
begin organizing at the real grass roots, and work upwards, but the reality
is that the means of organization are slender, most slender, among those
who are severely disadvantaged.  Universal access is impossible, for sure.
But the internet penetrates all sorts of places, quickly and accurately,
and best of all, each individual involved can communicate directly with
each other individual.  The internet is growing by leaps and bounds, and
the users
now represent a third force in the sense that individuals, not corporations
and governments, are able to use the machinery for expression of their own
thoughts.  This is a revolutionary change, freeing up individuals from
having their ideas channelled through controlling hierarchies that often
work to exclude rather than promote individual interests.

Individuals are the semi-periphery, if you think about it.  Governments and
Corporations are central to decision making and creation of change, and
individuals are being left out.  Individuals, working together via
Internet, could begin to address these big issues, and push for the rights
and responsibilities of individuals to block government and corporate
hierarchies from acting irresponsibly.  Individuals, working together via
Internet, could raise awareness of other individuals, about injustices,
about opportunities, about actions that could build a world we could be
proud to inhabit, rather than a degraded, desolate, dump.

I am enjoying the discussion - keep it going!  bob gregory

********************************************

Forget the internet as the main tool.  It can only be an
adjunct and form maybe be the backbone to link local/national
offices, not for all individuals, especially not those who
need change the most.  2/3 of the world's population could
not even afford telephone service if the line ran by their
house.  So let's forget this starry-eyed internet business
for all.  I am 1000% for using the internet and we even have
a proejct to make a virtual global election in October 2000
during the UN Millennium Summit of heads of State, as a PR
coup, but forget universal access.  The digital divide is
growing faster than ever !


=====
Troy Davis, President
World Citizen Foundation/Fondation des Citoyens du Monde
Secretary, Global Coalition "World Democracy 2010"
Secrétaire, Coalition "Démocratie Mondiale 2010"
__________________________________________________



From: Bob Frantz <bobfrantz@csi.com>
To: "R.J.Gregory" <R.J.Gregory@massey.ac.nz>
Subject: RE: A WP stuck in the past?
Date: Mon, 15 Nov 1999 10:09:13 -0500
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Two comments:

(1) We need to understand the growth of the internet. I have established
links all over the globe including remote areas in Africa. The recipients of
this e-mail can realize they have global backing and pass this on to those
in there geographic area through other media means where computers may not
be available. Every college and university in the world has internet
capabilities and their students will therefore be on line.

(2) I agree with Kia Kaha, that we are better off with a buttoms-up
approach. If we focus on those regions initially that are currently building
economic ties or have the potential for such ties, they will have the
stability that will allow democracy to grow. We need to identify the core of
these regions and plant the seeds of the world party there. As the regional
confederations grow they will begin to overlap and ultimately resolve into a
global federation.

Bob Frantz

At 16:36 15/11/1999 -0500, christopher chase-dunn wrote:
>on constituency:
>In my Global Formation (Blackwell 1989, Rowman and Littlefield 1998) I
>critiqued both Workerism and Third Worldism as missing a key dynamic of
>the way in which world-system transformations have worked in the past
>(and will probably work in the future).  The main most powerful agents
>of systemic transformation repeatedly come from the semiperiphery. The
>all of the modern hegemons (Dutch, British and U.S.) were formerly
>semiperipheral, and the most important revolutions of the 20th century
>occured in semiperipheral locations (Russia, China, etc).  I expect that
>there will be a new round of democratic socialist regimes that will come
>to power in the semiperipheral countries in the next decades. these,
>with allies in both the core and the periphery, will likely be the heavy
>lifters if we are to construct a democratic and collectively rational
>global commonwealth.
>
>The semiperiphery now is Brazil, Mexico, India, China, Argentina, South
>Africa,as well as the more developed smaller countries -- Korea, Taiwan,
>etc.  These are countries with strong workers movements in which
>socialist parties can come to power by electoral means.
>
>Terry Boswell and I have presented an analysis of the spiraling
>interaction between expanding capitalism and anti-systemic movements and
>we have thought about how a global socialist society could feasibly be
>organized in our forthcoming
>_The Spiral of Capitalism and Socialism: Toward Global Democracy_
> Terry Boswell and Christopher Chase-Dunn, Lynne Rienner Publishers,
>Boulder, Colorado, USA
>http://www.rienner.com/viewbook.cfm?BOOKID=460&search=boswell
>
>
>Chris Chase-Dunn
>
>
>
Pacific Means Peace

Robert J. Gregory
School of Psychology
Massey University
Palmerston North, NEW ZEALAND

Phone 64 6 350-5799 extension 2053
FAX   64 6 350-5673
E-Mail R.J.Gregory@massey.ac.nz