naming a world party

Naming a world party "World Party" has implications. I assume that "World
Party" is not the final name for the world party discussed on wsn. Here are
some thoughts about naming "it".

The semantic component "party" carries already meaning which may or may not
be intended. Alternatives might be "congress" (as in "African National
Congress") or "league" (as in "Jewish Defense League") or "union" (as in
"labour union") or "army" (as in "Salvation Army" or "Irish Republican
Army") or "alliance" or other.  Generally, "party" seems to imply the notion
of a hierarchy.

The semantic component "world" is in the vicinity of "global" and
"globalist" and can be confused with those. The drift of the debate so far
has been that the party would have an anti-capitalist-globalization stand.
However, the semantic component "world" could be construed as
"pro-globalist".

Another problem with a name like "world party" is that it has only two
components, instead of three. Many political parties in various countries
have tripartite names -- e.g., Communist Party of Italy, where the
components are (a) "party" (=type of organization), (b) "Communist"
(=ideological orientation), (3) "Italy" (=geographical scope). In "World
Party" it is not clear whether "World" refers to geographical scope or
ideology. If "world" refers to ideology, then the meaning could be construed
as "a party which wants to build a world state".  A Japanese contributor to
the recent debate on wsn has a web site for a "Liberal World Party". Here
you have an ideological orientation (="Liberal") and a geographical scope
(="world"). So there is no confusion about the meaning of the name. The
"thing" which is called "world party" in the wsn debate  could have a
variety of different names with different meanings -- e.g., "World Party"
(confusingly simple), "World Socialist Party" (relatively clear), "World
Communist Party" (relatively clear), "World Party of Democratic Socialism"
(relatively clear), "Salvation Army for the New Millenium" (relatively
obscure), "World Congress of Democratic Socialists" (the component
"congress" would put an emphasis on decentralized character of the
organization), and so on. A shortcoming of all of the above names is that
they do not mention any ecological concerns. A world party most Canadians
could agree with would be a "world beer party".

Gert Kohler
Oakville, Canada