 |
|||||
|
| |||||
|
|||||
|
|
Volume 2, Number 2-i, 1996
THE FUTURE OF W. WARREN WAGAR
Stephen K. Sanderson
Department of Sociology
Indiana University of Pennsylvania
Indiana, PA 15705-1087 USA
sksander@grove.iup.edu
Copyright 1996 by Stephen K. Sanderson.
v. 6/10/96
In his fascinating book _A Short History of the Future_,
published in 1992, W. Warren Wagar lays out a futuristic
vision of the world over the next two hundred years that
draws extensively on Immanuel Wallerstein's world-system
theory. In the year 2001 began the last of the great
Kondratieff upswings of the capitalist world-economy.
That economy had come to be increasingly dominated by a
few giant corporations, so that by 2015 12 "megacorps"
had assumed control of the world-economy and the
governments of the major capitalist powers. The
Kondratieff upswing ran its course by the early 2030s
and then a devastating worldwide depression set in, the
lowest point of which was reached in 2043.
The world of the early twenty-first century was
rife with massive social problems, some of the most
serious of which were environmental in nature. The most
catastrophic event of the twenty-first century, however,
[Page 1]
was the nuclear holocaust of 2044. This holocaust
destroyed most of North America, Europe, and the Indian
subcontinent, and within a year of the catastrophe some
70 percent of the earth's population had died, either
from the direct effects of the holocaust or from the
nuclear winter that followed. Most of the survivors
were in the Southern hemisphere.
Prior to the holocaust a political party known as
the World Party had formed. After the nuclear
holocaust, this party began working for the creation of
a world socialist commonwealth, and this became a
reality in 2062. The economy was converted into a form
of socialism that was devoted to the production of
use-values rather than exchange-values. The work
specialization and work hierarchies characteristic of
capitalism were abolished, and workers were required to
learn a variety of skills and to rotate jobs over time.
Ultimately the class hierarchy came to be eliminated,
and everyone had a guaranteed minimum income as long as
they worked; those who chose not to work received a
half-share. Medical care was free to everyone, as were
such things as schooling and public transport.
On the political side the Commonwealth abolished
all national boundaries and state sovereignties. The
Commonwealth was a single world state that was organized
into 1,000 departments. There was a People's Congress,
whose members were elected to office, and every
department was allowed two representatives. The
Commonwealth established a system of world courts and a
world militia with a monopoly of armed force. Wagar
describes the Commonwealth as relatively democratic in
structure, and opposition parties to the World Party
[Page 2]
were allowed.
It is clear, though, that the Commonwealth did not
allow many of the liberties that prevail today in the
capitalist democracies. No one was allowed to form
groups that could secede from the Commonwealth, no free
economic enterprise was permitted, and religious and
other minorites had no right of self-determination.
Individuals and groups thought to be a threat to the
Commonwealth were put under surveillance, and there were
various restrictions on the right of free speech. The
Commonwealth was also characterized by a horrendous
bureaucratism.
Dissent against the Commonwealth grew over time and
new political parties formed. The most important of
these was the Small Party, which wanted to abolish the
Commonwealth and establish a highly decentralized
political system that permitted the existence of many
small and highly autonomous political communities. The
Smalls received increasing popular support over time,
and by 2147 they had won 67 percent of the seats in the
People's Congress. Once this party became the dominant
party, the Commonwealth was disassembled. In its place
grew up 41,525 autonomous communities, which were
allowed to choose their own forms of government,
economy, and religion. They were entitled to revive
capitalism if they wished, and many in fact did so. It
turned out that the Smalls had no interest in power or
self-perpetuation, and they were willing to give up the
reins of power quite happily. The party thus disbanded
in 2159, and the world it left behind was strikingly
different from the world of the Commonwealth.
How realistic is this scenario of the future? We
[Page 3]
know that capitalism is filled with numerous contradictions, and that it only has so much life left in it. It has turned out to be a much more flexible, vigorous, and adaptive system than Marx and early Marxists ever thought, and thus it has survived much longer than predicted. Nevertheless, it will eventually run up against its limitations, and this is likely to occur within the next century or so, perhaps even less. So any prediction of the demise of capitalism is quite sensible. Will capitalism be replaced by some sort of socialism? This is perhaps as likely an outcome as any other, and it is certainly more than realistic. I find it quite interesting that Wagar chose to place the development of the Commonwealth only after a massive nuclear holocaust had occurred. In my initial reading of the book, I assumed that Wagar was implying that a socialist world state only had a chance in the aftermath of some massive crisis. But in his paper "Toward a Praxis of World Integration," which he presented at the American Sociological Association annual meetings in 1995, he denies that this was his intent. "It was never my intention in choosing this particular scenario," he writes, "to argue that only in the aftermath of a ruinous world war that destroys the core nations and drastically reduces the earth's population can humankind find a way to build a democratic and socialist world order" (1995:13). Perhaps not, but I think that for socialism to have a chance in the near future some sort of massive crisis will be needed as a precipitant. However, I myself would choose an ecological and economic catastrophe rather than a nuclear one. Certainly the chances of nuclear war within the next [Page 4]
half-century are fairly high - at least 50-50 according
to Christopher Chase-Dunn and Kenneth O'Reilly (1989).
Yet I would argue that the chances of ecological
devastation are considerably higher, almost a certainty
perhaps, within the next 50 years.
In their recent book _Beyond the Limits_ (1992),
Donella Meadows, Dennis Meadows, and Jorgen Randers ran
a number of computer simulations that seem to show that
a number of dramatic economic and ecological changes
need to be made, and be made very soon, to permit an
ecologically sustainable world. The authors ran 13
computer simulations involving various restrictions on
industrial output or population growth, and only one of
these yielded a sustainable world. For a sustainable
world, Meadows, Meadows, and Randers showed that every
single one of the following restrictions must be put
into effect: pollution control, land yield enhancement,
land erosion protection, a more resource-efficient
technology, faster development of new technology, the
limitation of every couple in the world to two children,
and the reduction of the industrial output of the
advanced capitalist countries to approximately the level
of South Korea. Anything short of this fails. Can it
be done, or perhaps the better question is, will it be
done? It is extremely hard to see how. The only way
couples in Third World countries would limit themselves
to two or fewer children is through the implementation
of strict fertility policies by highly authoritarian and
repressive governments, something along of the lines of
what China has been doing since the 1970s. It can be
done, but it is very difficult to imagine that it is
likely to be done. As for the voluntary restriction of
[Page 5]
industrial output by capitalists, this is almost
impossible to imagine. Robert Heilbroner (1980) argues
that private individuals and groups will not voluntarily
accept such restrictions but will have to be coerced,
and this means the necessary rise of highly
authoritarian governments that could easily lead to the
collapse of our basic democratic institutions. The
restriction of industrial output on the part of
capitalists would be economically suicidal in the short
run, and every capitalist knows it. Capitalists all
over the world will continue to bet that the doomsayers
are wrong, and thus will mortgage the future. Inasmuch
as the expanded accumulation of capital is the driving
principle of the modern world, I can imagine capitalists
abandoning that principle only under the most extreme
circumstances. To my mind, it is likely to be abandoned
only when a genuine crisis has ensued, and by that time
it will probably be too late. As for governments
compelling capitalists to reduce their industrial output
markedly, I have serious doubts about that too given the
enormous control that capitalists normally have over the
actions of states. Governments would probably be
willing to exercise such coercion only when the crisis
had arrived.
Wagar claims that a world state is essential to
deal with the problems created by modern capitalism, and
I couldn't agree more. But is Wagar's particular
conception of what this world state would have to be
like a reasonable one? For Wagar, this must be a
socialist world commonwealth. As he says, "no effective
and durable alternative to the capitalist world-system
is imaginable except through a coordinated process of
[Page 6]
world socialist revolution" (1995:15). But is this the only way? Wagar's Commonwealth seems to me to go considerably farther than what is really required. I would prefer a different kind of world state, one that had considerable coercive powers but that would nonetheless be less coercive and less overwhelming than Wagar's Commonwealth. I have in mind a world federation that would exist in conjunction with a large number of nation-states, the latter being allowed to retain a certain amount of sovereignty, cultural distinctiveness, and self-determination. This federation would be a political structure above the level of the nation-state that would have the power to do two fundamental things: impose sharp limitations on the military operations of the individual nation-states, and engage in economic planning that would allow for a substantial amount of redistribution of wealth from the rich countries to the poor and that would help to produce an ecologically sustainable world. This world federation would not itself be socialist in outlook, but would attempt to combine the best features of capitalism and socialism while minimizing their most unattractive features. In my view, the more positive features of capitalism are its promotion of enormous scientific and technological development (despite the downside of this development); its promotion of enormous increases in economic productivity and the creation of wealth; its association with parliamentary democratic governments that, whatever their limitations, have been a vast improvement over the various despotisms of the past; and its promotion of enormous opportunities for the realization of human potential even if these opportunities have not been [Page 7]
extended to the entire population. I see capitalism's
main weaknesses as its creation of very high levels of
economic inequality both within, and, especially,
between nations; its generation of forms of work that
have been associated with very high levels of boredom
and alienation; its promotion of the intense
commercialization of economic and social life and a
consumerist mentality that has increasingly pushed other
human values, especially those related to aesthetic and
intellectual endeavors, into the background; its
debilitating effects on the level of cultural life (as
a result of its intense commercialization); and, as we
know all too well, its dramatic impact on the natural
environment.
What then are the strengths and weaknesses of
socialism? Its main strengths lie in its much more
humane concern for the welfare of all individuals in
society and for a more egalitarian and economically
democratic form of social life. Its main weaknesses are
well known. These are its tendency to centralize
economic planning to an extent that produces a range of
inefficiencies and other economic problems that lead to
serious difficulties in the long run (cf. Kornai, 1992),
and its tendency to concentrate political power in a
huge bureaucracy that limits human freedom. Because of
these difficulties, I am much less optimistic than
world-system theorists and other Marxists concerning
socialism's capacity to produce a mode of human
existence truly superior to capitalism. I have
gradually, and somewhat reluctantly, arrived at the
conclusion that perhaps the best we can do, at least in
the foreseeable future, is to extend to as much of the
[Page 8]
world as possible something like the Swedish model of
social democracy. This means a capitalist system with
a large number of built-in social and economic
protections and a large amount of social and economic
planning. A world federation that would seek to combine
the best features of the plan and the market in the
nation-states over which it exercises a substantial
amount of control seems to me the most appropriate path
to follow.
Wagar wants a world commonwealth, it should be
noted, only as part of a grand historicist (sensu
Popper) future design. His Commonwealth is only
a way-station to something better, a stage of historical
development that must exist in order to produce the
ideal future. And what is this ideal future? It is, as
we have seen, a strongly decentralized world in which
many small and highly autonomous political communties
coexist. Putting aside the question as to whether such
a denouement would be socially or politically desirable,
is it realistic from a social-scientific point of view?
Not from mine. As Robert Carneiro (1978) has
convincingly shown, the overall trend of political
evolution over the past 10,000 years has been from
decentralization to centralization. From tens or
hundreds of thousands of tiny bands and tribes of long
ago we have been evolving in a direction marked by ever
fewer and ever larger political units. The ultimate
outcome of this political evolution, Carneiro argues,
will be the formation of a single world state, which he
predicts is not all that far away. From this
perspective, what sense does it make to assume that a
gigantic Commonwealth will give way -- and quite
[Page 9]
harmoniously, it might be added -- to tens of thousands
of little political islands each going its own way? Not
much. Such an outcome overwhelmingly contradicts the
evolutionary flow of all of world history and
prehistory, and is extremely dubious.
But there is another problem, and that is that
Wagar assumes that the transition to thousands of tiny
political communities will be a fundamentally peaceful
and harmonious process resulting from democratic action.
A gigantic world state with enormous coercive powers
simply says, "Okay, guys, we see what you want; no
problem, come and get it." And thus the Smalls take
over. But there is more to behold, for the Smalls turn
out to be very unusual individuals in that they have no
interest in power or self-perpetuation, and as a result
voluntarily put their political party out of existence
only a few years after it achieved what it wanted. Is
this the way politics works? Not for sociologists who
appreciate Max Weber, who characterized social life as
essentially a continuous struggle for power. In fact
when you think of it, there is remarkably little
political struggle going on anywhere in Wagar's
futuristic scenario once capitalism has been defeated
(actually, the defeat of capitalism hardly seemed to
involve any political struggle either). One has to
wonder, exactly what kinds of human organisms are these
that populate Wagar's world?
Despite its insights, Marxism has always suffered
from a number of fatal flaws. With respect to the
concerns taken up by Wagar, the most serious flaw is the
unbelievably naive conception of politics held by Marx
and many Marxists since Marx's day. The state is
[Page 10]
largely there to serve the interests of a ruling class,
and when such a class is no longer on the historical
stage the state's ruling functions disappear. The
events of 1917 in Russia, of 1949 in China, and of 1959
in Cuba have made mincemeat of this idea. But Wagar
still seems to hold onto it, or something like it, and
it creates major problems for his futuristic
projections.
One of the things that impressed me most about the
paper Wagar presented at the 1995 ASA meetings was his
exposing of contemporary multiculturalism for the folly
that it most surely is. In this vision, somehow
"radical feminism, fundamentalist Islam, populist
libertarianism, militant Hinduism, Marxian socialism,
born-again Christianity, megacorporate capitalism,
Bosnian nationalism, Serbian nationalism, and all the
other colliding forces at work in our whirling world
somehow lie down together like lions and lambs in the
New Jerusalem and agree to eat grass, or better yet,
develop the capacity to feed themselves by
photosynthesis" (Wagar, 1995:1-2). As Wagar comments,
this is a wonderfully "nice" solution to the huge
problems of the contemporary world; the only problem
with it is that it is hopelessly wrong. A number of
years ago the sociologist Orlando Patterson wrote a book
entitled _Ethnic Chauvinism: The Reactionary Impulse_
(1977) in which he argued that ethnic pluralism was a
prescription for disaster and the only hope for
humankind was some sort of large-scale blending of
cultures. Wagar would seem to agree, and this kind of
thinking is no doubt what is behind his notion that a
single world state is necessary to prevent extremely
divisive ideologies like Islamic fundamentalism from
acquiring political legitimacy. I find myself in
agreement with both Patterson and Wagar on this point,
[Page 11]
but there is a serious inconsistency in Wagar's
thinking. If Wagar anticipates the horrendously
divisive results that multiculturalism is likely to
produce, then why on earth does he favor a highly
decentralized world future in which people live in small
political communities notable for their sharp cultural,
economic, and political differences? Won't this lead us
right back toward the kind of divisiveness he wants to
avoid, and, moreover, won't the way be paved for a
resumption of capitalism and of the evolutionary process
whereby many small political units eventually become one
big one? On the other hand, perhaps this will be
avoided, because Wagar's 41,525 political communities of
the twenty-third century don't really interact with each
other much and just sort of live happily ever after!
I admire Wagar's book and think that it gives us
some enormous food for thought about some of the things
the future is likely to bring. It is an extremely
important contribution, and I don't want my criticisms
of it to be seen as some sort of casual dismissal. I
certainly don't feel that way about it. In closing I
would simply like to raise a question: Is it rational
for people in the world of the late second millennium AD
to form the equivalent of a World Party and struggle for
a better world. Yes, I think it is, although I have
little idea as to just how that sort of thing should be
done. At this point in history, we are in serious
trouble and unless some dramatic changes are made one or
another type of catastrophe awaits. Yes, let's form a
World Party, but let's also be realistic about its
possibilities. If it can, theory should lead to praxis.
Yet we all know how difficult good theory can be, and
[Page 12]
let us not forget that good praxis is undoubtedly even harder. REFERENCES Carneiro, Robert. 1978. "Political Expansion as an Expression of the Principle of Competitive Exclusion." In Ronald Cohen and Elman R. Service (eds.), _Origins of the State._ Philadelphia: Institute for the Study of Human Issues. Chase-Dunn, Christopher, and Kenneth O'Reilly. 1989. "Core Wars of the Future." In Robert K. Schaeffer (ed.), _War in the World-System_. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Heilbroner, Robert L. 1980. _An Inquiry into the Human Prospect_. New York: Norton. Kornai, Janos. 1992. The Socialist System: The Political Economy of Communism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Meadows, Donella H., Dennis L. Meadows, and Jorgen Randers. 1992. _Beyond the Limits: Confronting Global Collapse, Envisioning a Sustainable Future_. Post Mills, VT: Chelsea Green. Patterson, Orlando. 1977. _Ethnic Chauvinism: The Reactionary Impulse_. New York: Stein and Day. [Page 13]
Wagar, W. Warren. 1992. _A Short History of the Future_. 2nd edition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ________. 1995. "Toward a Praxis of World Integration." Paper presented at the annual meetings of the American Sociological Association, Washington, D.C., August 19-23. [Page 14]
|