Friends,
I've gotten lots of feedback, and now I'm in the process of
revising the Guidebook and integrating the material from the
Manifesto.
The thesis of this section is that globalization has sown
the seeds of the regime's destruction. Perhaps you can think of
other examples to include, and of course critique is always
welcome.
cheers,
rkm
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II.a. Globalization - crisis and opportunity
"How well we know all this! How often we have
witnessed it in our part of the world! The machine
that worked for years to apparent perfection,
faultlessly, without a hitch, falls apart
overnight. The system that seemed likely to reign
unchanged, world without end, since nothing could
call its power in question amid all those unanimous
votes and elections, is shattered without warning.
And, to our amazement, we find that everything was
quite otherwise than we had thought."
- Václav Havel, 1975
The Chinese symbol for 'crisis' embodies a bit of folk wisdom
- it is made by combining the symbols for 'danger' and
'opportunity'. In Part I of this Guidebook we looked at the
_danger part of globalization - the tyranny of the
new-world-order WTO regime, and the destruction of our
societies and resources caused by capitalism's need for
ever-more 'growth' opportunities. In Part II we will be
looking at the _opportunity offered by by globalization - an
opportunity for humanity to find a common voice, to rise up
peacefully in the 'right kind' of movement - and build
together a livable world. To begin, let us consider some of
the changes in the global society which have accompanied
globalization. In the debris of these changes we can in fact
find seeds of hope.
Among these changes, the most significant is perhaps the
shift that has occurred in the relationship between
capitalism and nationalism. For centuries the leading Western
nations competed with one another for empires and spheres of
influence. Capitalist industry provided the muscle of empire,
and employment for Western workers. Strong economies gave the
Western middle classes a privileged position, and this
provided a solid base of support for the capitalist system.
Strong Western militaries - backed by capitalist industry and
by nationalist sentiment - were able to dominate the globe.
The interests of capitalism were fundamentally aligned with
Western national ambitions, popular patriotism, and with
national prosperity. In _those days capitalism and its elites
were indeed well entrenched in power.
In pursuing globalization, elites have abandoned this
time-honored success formula. Western economic health is
being sacrificed to market forces, while democratic
sovereignty is being superseded by WTO authority. Our elite
rulers are betting that their new-world-order system - with
its elite hi-tech warriors and sophisticated media propaganda
- will protect them in their new WTO fortress. But this
fortress has no real popular constituency - their entrenched
power has become largely illusory. Before 1945, it would have
been nearly impossible to assemble a majority movement in the
West around a post-capitalist agenda. The system was working
to the benefit of too many segments of the population.
Globalization has changed all that. Based on objective
conditions, it is now in most Westerner's overwhelming best
interest to rise up and replace the reckless, greedy,
self-serving regime. A latent social demand for political and
economic transformation now exists in the West - fertile
ground for the right kind of movement.- and we can thank
globalization for this.
In addition, globalization has created a sense of _global
community_ in the world's population: television brings
events instantly into homes in every nation; everyone in
every backwater knows Clinton, Saddam, and the characters in
"The Simpsons"; the media talks about an 'international
community' that can make moral decisions, and intervene
humanely to right wrongs. Perhaps these feelings of 'global
community' are largely a media illusion, but the consequence
is that people generally are beginning to think of problems
in global terms. Their leaders tell them that 'market forces'
point the path for the global community to follow, but people
worldwide are waking up to the fact that this path is not
delivering on its promises. Globalization has thus created an
'openness' in the world's population to new initiatives, and
new solutions - solutions which address the world's problems
from a global perspective. This 'openness' provides a basis
for the right kind of movement to organize globally - a
movement which appeals to the sense of global community and
which offers sensible and practical solutions to world
problems.
One of the crises brought by globalization has been the
acceleration of resource depletion, and the reckless
stressing of environmental limits. This survival-threatening
crisis has motivated scientists to explore alternative ways
of doing things. We now have a rich literature - and a
considerable amount of real-world practice - regarding
sustainable economics and agriculture, energy-saving methods,
appropriate technologies, and the like. This crisis has given
us the impetus to develop the core principles and prototype
the technologies of a sustainable, post-capitalist world.
The course of world events, for the first time in history, is
now largely controlled by a centralized global regime - a
regime which is not serving the needs of most people - and
whose agenda ensures that conditions will continue to
decline. The regime's only defense is that 'free markets'
will 'someday' make everything all right. More and more
people are rejecting that shallow propaganda lie, and a
movement is rapidly taking form around an anti-globalization
agenda. The movement is popularly perceived as being made up
of 'leftists', 'tree-huggers', and 'anarchists', but the
fundamental appeal of the movement is universal - essentially
everyone is being screwed by modern capitalism. As diverse
elements in the movement find ways to work together - and to
bring in new constituencies - the energy and scale of the
movement is likely to increase very rapidly. The times are
definitely ripe for the right kind of movement, with the
right kind of vision - and globalization has created the
conditions which give such a movement a reasonable chance for
success.
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