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Volume 2, Number 2-m, 1996
Comment on Wagar's "Praxis"
David Wilkinson
Department of Political Science
University of California
Los Angeles, CA 90024-1472 USA
wilkinso@polisci.sscnet.ucla.edu
Copyright 1996 by David Wilkinson
v. 6/10/96
In his article, "Toward a Praxis of World
Integration," W. Warren Wagar poses the question,
"Should our society of vying tribes be transformed
into a single planetary civilization that strives to
make all people equal and free?" The question is
partly misleading, inasmuch as I believe that a global
civilization already exists, and has existed since no
later than World War I, its definitive symptom. Like
all its root civilizations, it is a polyculture. What
Wagar in fact desires, and proposes as an action
target, is more clearly stated later: "the acceptance
by the great mass of humankind of a common secular
culture derived from the intellectual revolution of
the late 17th and 18th centuries in Western
Europe--from the Enlightenment and its sequels in the
[Page 1]
19th century." Wagar desires to create a globally
dominant culture--perhaps even the first monocultural
civilization.
The "common culture" Wagar desires may or may
not entail an end to distinct languages, ethnicities,
religions, aesthetics, customs and laws; these are not
central to his discussion. Wagar is interested in
"culture" mainly in terms of political and economic
values and institutions. Thus he characterizes the
values he desires to see commonly consented to not
only as "secular," but as "democratic," "liberal,"
"socialist," egalitarian, libertarian, universalistic.
Wagar makes it clear that the common culture for
which he hopes is "grounded in certain specific
traditions in modern Western European thought, in "the
culture of the Enlightenment and its sequels, from
John Locke to Karl Marx," almost all of whose
articulators were "Caucasian males;" in "the ideology
of the Left Enlightenment." Accordingly, while
eschewing "a technocratic trampling of local cultures
by self-appointed Fabian-style 'experts,'" Wagar also
rejects a "purely relativistic multiculturalism, the
toleration of all values and all cultures, no matter
how intolerant or predatory they themselves may be."
He rather accepts the claims of "the doctrine of
democratic socialism" to "universal moral authority."
"Whenever local cultures diverge" from that doctrine's
values, "as they often do and often will, we must
assert, and persuade others to assert, the priority of
democratic socialism."
The "Left" element of Enlightenment modernism
which inspires Wagar is clearly expressed in his hope
[Page 2]
for "a socialist world-system, a system that is both
democratic and egalitarian, that provides both freedom
and equality." He would wish to see them expressed in
a socialist world government.
Wagar calls the existing order "the doomed and
polarized world-system of capitalism," "our system of
predatory global capitalism," "the capitalist world-
system." He is Wallersteinian in identifying
"capitalism" with the multi-state system, e.g. (twice)
"the capitalist world-system and its sovereign
polities." The multi-state system is condemned as
instrumental to "capitalism": "the sovereign state
system that originated in Western Europe during the
Middle Ages is a tool of the world-economy. From the
late 15th century to the present it has facilitated
the global grasp of capitalist enterprise. There
could have been no capitalist world-economy without
it." Wagar judges that "no effective and durable
alternative to the capitalist world-system is
imaginable except through a coordinated process of
world socialist revolution."
Consistently, Wagar cautions against "investing
too much hope in the nominally or apparently
antisystemic movements visible in today's world"--
workers' movements, national liberation movements,
sectarian religious movements, women's movements,
peace movements, environmental movements--to further
the objective of a socialist world government.
As a preferable transforming agency, Wagar
suggests the thought of a World Party--"a
transnational party firmly committed to the democratic
integration of all peoples is essential to steer us
[Page 3]
through the storms of the next century." The World
Party appears, at least in its novelistic incarnation
in Wagar's _A Short History of the Future_, to be
partly Fabian, partly Saint-Simonian: "above ground,
holding open meetings and publishing provocative
analyses of the world crisis of the 21st century, but
also below ground, smuggling its agents (known
familiarly as 'viruses') into positions of
responsibility in governments and corporations, which
they make it their business to betray when the time is
ripe."
What are the prospects for such an agency? "I
am not wildly optimistic. The World Party does not
yet exist. I see no inkling of it on the political
horizon."
* * *
There are several points at which I might take
issue with Wagar's generally systematic, clear and
logical argument. On one I have already remarked--
that the origin of a planetary civilization, which
need not and probably should not be idealized, is in
the past, not the future.
The concepts of "capitalism" and "socialism" are
no more ambiguous and vague in Wagar's article than in
general discussion, but also no less. It is not very
enlightening to characterize the current and recent
world-economy as "capitalist." Privatizations, tariff
cuts, and other trends may make that description less
misleading in the future, but only somewhat: beyond
subsistence, the main appropriation of human
[Page 4]
production is almost certainly to "land," not to
"capital" and/or entrepreneurship, via rents, not
profits and/or interest. This has probably been true
since civilizations started up; and their increasingly
dense-packed urban character has made rent-seeking
behavior ever more inordinately rewarding. Absent a
theory of the nature, forms, scope, politics,
management, appropriation, growth, limits, uses and
abuses of rent, I doubt that unreconstructed "Left
Enlightenment" economics can overcome its past
theoretical errors any better than its "Right
Enlightenment" opposition.
The World Party issue is a very different, and
livelier, can of worms. The globalization of
civilization was preceded by the globalization of the
world economy, was marked by the globalization of war,
diplomacy, power, and the balance of power, and was
followed by a proliferation of organizations--churches,
corporations, networks--with extensive outreach.
It should be no surprise if a global party
structure were to develop. It should also be no
surprise if the first (or next--do the Internationals
count?) global party were to call itself "socialist,"
though it might be Green.
But rather than work out scenarios by which some
global party might achieve global power, I would think
we should speculate on what other parties would likely
form, by way of reaction.
The fissile and sectary character of "socialism"
since Owen and St. Simon, and the diverse and
incompatible contemporary claimants to that label even
in its current eclipse, suggest that at least three
[Page 5]
international "Socialist" "parties" should be
anticipated:
1) "Democratic Socialists," in other venues aka
"Social Democrats" (a sore point in itself). An
electoral-democratic party, critically or
scornfully tolerating or accepting private
property, economic corporations, individualist
ethos, confessional churches and religiosity,
but working, by taxation, regulation, education,
and campaigning to contain, reduce or
marginalize them in constitutional democracies,
while on the contrary promoting their growth in
non-democratic states. Probably based in West
Europe, growing out of existing "Socialist,"
"Labor," and "Social Democratic" and Second
International parties via EU collaboration.
Abused by its domestic enemies as "socialist,"
by its foreign enemies as "neo-imperialist,"
"social-imperialist," "neo-colonialist," etc.
Probably in practice closest to Wagar's scheme,
but insufficiently single-minded, theoretically
lucid, revolutionary, anti-nationalist, power-
focused, militant and ruthless to realize his
objectives. Global visions optimistic,
materialistic, secular, democratic, egalitarian;
praxis reformist, moderate. Capable of
alternating as governing/opposition parties in
states and unions of states.
2) Several regional fragments unable or
unwilling to align with (1), perhaps including:
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(a) a self-defense grouping of ruling
unreconstructed Communist parties (China, N.
Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, some USSR successor
states) objecting to electoral democracy, but
with no positive global vision, and needing
none, since they have state power and can
suppress opposition, at least prior to economic
collapse through mismanagement; (b) a mutual-aid
grouping of palaeo-, neo- and ex- Communist
parties in shaky electoral systems (Russia and
some of the USSR successor states), unwilling to
reject electoral democracy, occasionally
successful but rarely triumphant in electoral
politics, unable and increasingly even unwilling
to monopolize state power, but unacceptable to
(1) as full partners for various reasons.
Other parties would probably be constructed from
existing parties, factions and tendencies.
3) "Religious Democrats." Formed in reaction to
the socialist and secularist tendencies of (1).
Syncretizes social values of "liberal"
Christian, Jewish, Islamic, Buddhist and Hindu
sects and persons. Party model German:
Christian Democrats, who broadened their appeal
to reach out to German Protestants opposed to
the narrow sectarianism attributed to its
predecessor, the (Catholic) Center Party, but
even more opposed to the perceived statism of
the Social Democrats. Linguistic model
American: "Judeo-Christian," an invented and
[Page 7]
syncretizing term designed to emphasize
intersectarian similarities and commonalities
rather than differences, in reaction to a
perceived secularizing trend hostile to both
traditions. The "Religious Democrats" would
soon be competitive with (1) on a global scale,
but usually in defense of some status quo; often
pragmatically compromising, but alert to any
tendencies of (1) to espouse "materialism,"
"class war," or alliance with (2). Financial
support might well come from persons and
organizations threatened by the economic (rather
than the secularist) agenda of (1). Global
vision even vaguer than that of (1), to whom
they would be the "safe," "moderate"
alternative. Capable of alternating as
governing/opposition party in states and unions
of states.
4) Several particular confessional parties
alarmed by, and formed to avoid submergence in,
(3), which they would unite in regarding as
overtly heretical (while dividing over the
character of its heresy), and as covertly
secularistic because of "pragmatic" tendencies
to compromise with (1)). Cf. Israeli religious
parties; cf. also cleavage lines in Algerian and
Egyptian Islamic politics. Regionally based,
drawing from those members of regionally
dominant religions most threatened by, or
militantly opposed to, secularism. Global
presence mostly via diasporas. No positive
[Page 8]
global agenda, but capable of pragmatic
cooperation to obstruct threatening initiatives
of (1) and (3). Capable of functioning as
opposition parties or minor coalition partners
in states; tend to split or change character if
accidentally too successful.
5) A loose alliance of monopolistically ruling
parties with ethnic, military, or personality-
cult bases, unable therefore to align with (2)
except situationally, against "intervention."
Collectively concerned to resist pressures for
"human rights," "electoral democracy,"
"structural readjustment;" to suppress external
support for ethnic-secessionist movements; and
to secure economic redistribution from "rich
countries" to state elites of "poor countries."
Threatened by the international activities of
both (1) and (3), and occasionally by the
internal activities of (4) and (6). No global
vision; member parties generally disinclined and
unable to act beyond their state boundaries.
6) "Fourth World." A loose alliance of many
mini-parties claiming to represent the thousands
of "nations without states." Juridically active
in rights agitation vis-a-vis governments run by
(1) and (3); sporadically militant vis-a-vis
governments run by (2a) and (5), with financial
support from (1) and (3). Global vision:
universal national liberation; a state for every
nation. Because of ambiguous relations with (1)
[Page 9]
and (3), some inclination to democracy and
federalism, especially when out of power, but
also towards ethnic monopolism and ethnic
cleansing, especially when in power.
7) A residual category of global movements only
occasionally and locally organized as parties,
more usually pressure groups, caucuses,
tendencies: Greens; Libertarians; feminists;
gays and lesbians.
8) A residual category of electoral-democratic
parties very disinclined to "internationalism,"
cooperating only to obstruct "globalism," but
able to compete in elections for international
parliaments as defenders of regional interests.
Tending to limit, dissolve or secede from
international institutions they cannot dominate.
British Conservatives, and French Gaullists,
seem to be examples in the European context, and
the PQ in the Canadian; US Republicans, and
probably also Democrats, would likely come into
this category in any global system of
representation.
This kind of global party structure seems likely
only if, and only as long as, enormous global
disasters of the kind envisioned by Wagar and others
are delayed. A global famine currently seems the most
likely such disaster; it might incite a global Green
party, accelerate the formation of (1), or both.
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