sme-ch5-worldatlarge

8/2/2019 SME-Ch5-WorldAtLarge

1/5

Chapter 5

THE WORLD AT LARGE

The discussion here should be of vital interest to peoples outside the advanced economies.Much of the time my discussion will be from the perspective of someone in an advanced

economy, but in fact the subject is much broader than that. Peoples everywhere are in the path

of the onrushing changes in the world economy that offer such unbelievable promise at thesame time they are profoundly threatening.

A realistic given should be that it simply won't be possible for the industrialized

nations to give more than token support to the worlds burgeoning billions. The globalpopulation is too vast and deep an ocean for that. Nor would those billions' self-respect as

individuals and in the context of their own cultures welcome near-total support even if it were

possible. (I realize that a certain mental revolution is needed if one is to grasp the truth of this.It flies in the face of the morally satisfying but deeply unrealistic feel-good frame of mind of

so many well-intending Americans today who believe that the worlds peoples can be morethan nominally helped by Westerners dabbling in a wide variety of Third World projects.

This is a mentality that has roots that go back centuries; it includes the Social Gospel and itsmany religious and ideological predecessors.)

The various countries of the world will find that since "the market" will

simultaneously offer both utopia and displacement with the latter removing the possibility oftotal reliance on the market as we have known it --, political action will be essential. The

market has no way to address the issue of distribution-in-the-absence-of-work. Political

action will be vital if the benefits of the coming technology are to be realized by entirepeoples, if vast suffering and anti-civilizational revolutionary chaos are to be prevented, and if

(for its own sake and in support of both these purposes) there is to be assurance that

everybody in a given society will share in the means of life.And what will this action call for? In the advanced economies where innovation and

continuing production can be predicated on what already exists, a "shared market economy"

will be a fitting solution. But in a country like Pakistan, whose economy is almost entirely

agricultural, the very real question arises about how it is to have any economy at all in a worldwhere indoor farm-factories and mechanical planting and harvesting come to undercut

outdoor farmers everywhere. In much of the world, if a given societys economy cannot

maintain an industrial system sufficient to supply the people with the products of industry, therecourse may have to be for the government to perform the industrial function itself. This will

involve its operating on the old socialist prescription "production for use, not for profit." In

such case, where government or non-profit institutions use the technology directly to produce

and to distribute, that will be socialismper se.Far from being desirable in itself, this will pose the dangers that have loomed so large

in the thinking of all opponents of socialism: that, as Lord Acton admonished, power tends to

corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." It will be for everyone (including hopefullysocialists themselves) to ask how the central power can be restrained. The cultures of the

world are so diverse that the answers to that question will likely take many forms. History tells

us that a hopeful solution, avoiding tyranny, is often not attained.In terms of their own self interest (in addition to their fellow-feeling for other human


2/5

beings) the peoples of the advanced economies will have reason to be concerned about the

well-being of the other peoples of the world. The needed concern for those peoples will be far

removed from the impractical sentimentality to which I have referred. Hundreds of millions in fact, billions of displaced people will become bitter and desperate adversaries if

displacement becomes their fundamental reality and if their societies are unable to cope with

it. In an age of terrorism and of potential nuclear, chemical and biological warfare, it will be adisaster for everybody if hatred looms so large. Still further, by physical migration those

billions will "swamp out" the richer nations, such as is portrayed in Jean Raspail's haunting

novel The Camp of the Saints. (This is a swamping that societies centered on a broaddistribution of income, such as in a shared market economy, can ill-afford and will be

disinclined to allow if they value their own continued existence. This is because resources for

distribution at any given time will be finite, although subject to expansion as productivity

grows; and the influx of additional mouths to feed will dilute the distribution.)The belief that American society, or any free society, can only be safe if it remakes the

world in the image of a liberal democracy sounds good, but is unspeakably presumptuous

culturally and extremely dangerous. Any people that attempts such a remaking of the world is

committing itself to endless conflict. (Here again, our intellectual odyssey requiresrethinking something that is widely believed today. Neoconservative and liberal

internationalism are each centered on a messianic mission vis a vis the world. It is likely thatit will take much more bitter experience before such a notion is fully discredited.)

In contrast to the messianism, the cultural historian Samuel Huntington came out

strongly for a live and let live policy. Avoidance of a global war of civilizations dependson world leaders accepting and cooperating to maintain the multicivilizational character of

global politics. He was critical of western universalism, which assumes that Western ways

of doing things are obviously best for all; and points out the differences in perspective: The

non-Wests see as Western what the West sees as universal. The insistence that all nationsbecome Westernized is immoral, he argued, because this can only be achieved through power.

The issue is so important that Western intervention in the affairs of other civilizations is

probably the single most dangerous source of instability and potential global conflict.1Rather than to continue on such a mission, what we can do is to share something the

advanced societies can in fact afford to share: technology and knowledge, and perhaps some

capital. While the advanced economies can't directly support the other peoples other than inthe superficial ways evident in the great many token efforts underway today, they will

nevertheless be able to help those peoples gain the means to support themselves.

So far as capital assistance is concerned, there will be a limit on how much aid the

advanced economies will be able to provide (or want to, in light of their own peoples needsfor a broad distribution). This is particularly true unless the recipient cultures and their peoples

are receptive to the proper maintenance and use of capital. Such receptivity is seriously

lacking in much of the world, such as in sub-Saharan Africa, where there is a general lethargytoward keeping property and infrastructure in good order. At bottom, each of the worlds

peoples will be on its own in avoiding desperation, and will have to deal with its own

cultural conundrums.The Internet has given rise to a movement in favor of open source information.

That should be taken seriously in light of the need that all peoples will have for advanced

scientific and technical knowledge. The world should perhaps move away from the patent

system, which rewards innovation by granting a temporary monopoly over new products


3/5

and inventions, to an alternative system of incentives. If it does, the incentives will need to

be ample enough to keep the dynamism alive. There is even an open source movement

for the free availability of literary work, music and university lectures.

It is likely that the tendency toward a worldwide mixing of cultures and diminution of

national identities will continue. The ever-growing ease of communication, transportation andtravel will push in that direction. At the same time, the world has seen a significant counter-

tendency as ethnicities have embraced themselves and sought autonomy. The need for

political solutions (by whatever institutions are viable) points in that direction. In today'sworld the primary institutions are the nation-states. Despite much hopeful thinking to the

contrary, a "world government" would necessarily be run at much too high a level to allow

genuine democracy and would be a dangerous center of power, given both the civilizational

differences among cultures and the present level of civilization per se in a world whereexperience has shown that its evolution has taken it only to the twilight between civilization

and barbarism (a theme of my bookUnderstanding the Modern Predicament).

If the nation-state is to be the main center for addressing the needs of peoples under thecoming circumstances, and if affluence is achievable, a by-product will be that it should

become possible for peoples to retain their respective cultures, cultivating the local texture oflife that adds so much to the richness of human experience (as well as so much that the

outsiders to a given culture may find repugnant), if they desire to do so. There is no need to

allow the hurricane-like winds of a global market to dictate otherwise. The global market willno longer be the tail that wags the dog, since the phenomenon of economic displacement

will have forced other things to the fore. Retaining identity will be especially meaningful for

the Islamic countries and for the West, but it will also be important for any society

Orthodox, Sinic, Hindu, Japanese, or others with a culture its people value. With both non-Western cultures and the West, their future existence is now threatened, given the trends of the

past.

Not only will national entities be called upon to see to it that their peoples benefit from(as the alternative to suffering calamity from) the coming age's technology, they will also be

able to create the framework for modes of life that the people may choose, even though the

relentless cost-cutting of the market would not itself allow them. Factory farms, for example,may turn out the foodstuffs needed, but millions may choose to live a rural existence based on

something we might call "hobbyist" farming. When scarcity is no longer the central economic

fact and there is a mechanism for assuring everyone's participation in the output of the

economy, there can be a blossoming of freely-chosen ways of living.

No doubt there will be differences of opinion about whether it is desirable for any given

culture to survive and, if so, that will be a flash-point of conflict. (This may seem strange,since the right of any people to retain their culture may seem a given; it is, however,

something that is very much at issue in recent decades for Europe and the United States. I

have been on panel discussions with "minority activists" who take great offense at the barestsuggestion of perpetuating Euro-American culture.)

The erosion of European and American identity has to a large extent come, however,

from policies that have reflected the attitudes of an intellectual subculture that has been

alienated from the main bourgeois culture for almost two centuries. That subculture, in


4/5

combination with the global elite, presently has controlling voice in the media and major

institutions, dictates what is "politically correct," and champions minorities of every kind as

against the mainstream population. It is possible, of course, that in a radically transformedworld this alienation, which lies at the heart of the Left, will cease to exist or may moderate

considerably. If that were to happen, the search for unassimilated and disaffected allies may

disappear and the whole internal "attack upon the West" may evaporate.It is to be remembered that the West has been the milieu from which science,

technology and the market economy have sprung. As such, it may play an indispensable role

as the economic and technical underpinning of the world's immense population that nowexists and that is coming into being. Billions of people have come into life only because of

that underpinning, and could well perish without it. That itself is ample reason to care for the

continuity of the West. Science, technology and an advanced economy don't just come into

being by themselves, but have civilizational prerequisites.The threat to the West deserves emphasis because a major fact of our time is that a

convergence of demographic, intellectual and moral forces is leading to the radical

transformation of European and American civilization from anything like the form we have

known it.Consider the statement made by the Prime Minister of Malaysia, Mahathir Mohamad,

to the heads of government of twelve African nations in 1997 warning of the Northsintention to recolonize the South by globalization. He advised that we should migrate

North in the millions, legally or illegally, if we are going to be global citizens. Masses of

Asians and Africans should inundate Europe and America.2 Dr. Mahathir's statement merelysets forth starkly the reality of what is actually happening. In fact, the migration he calls for

will increasingly occur whether he wills it or not. Demographic predictions are that

Americans of European extraction will be a minority within the United States shortly after the

middle of the twenty-first century, if not before. A migration similar to the one the UnitedStates is experiencing is also changing the face of Europe.

The West has so long been under attack from outside, but most significantly from

within its own ranks, that it no longer feels itself able to make a meaningful intellectual ormoral defense against the demographic swamping-out.

ENDNOTES


5/5

1. Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order(New York:

Touchstone Books, 1996), pp. 21, 66, 312.2. Mahathir Mohamads comments were reported in The Australian, May 7, 1997.

sme-ch5-worldatlarge

Documents