At 10:34 AM 12/29/97 -0500, Doug Henwood wrote:
>fantasies of localist simplicity as an alternative. Across the political
>spectrum people have ceased to believe in anything like "progress," which
>is a serious blow to any socialist hopes of doing better than capitalism
>has with the tools that capitalism has given us. Things are pretty grim,
>Gar, though they don't have to be forever. Happy New Year.
That reminds me of a supposedly true story told of a certain Polish Jew who
went into hiding (for obvious reasons) when the Nazis invaded Poland in
1939. He created an intricate network of connections that allowed him to
remain incognito for really long time, but when he learned in 1940 that the
Nazis took Paris, he committed suicide. For that man, Paris was the epitome
of civilisation, and the fall of that city signified to him the end of
civilisation as we know it -- thus further hiding made no sense anymore.
The moral of the story is that the poor fellow remained in the constraints
of his own viewpoint, he looked West but did not bother to look East - and
that essentially prevented him from seeing Stalingrad amidst the fall of
Paris. True, the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact was still in place in 1940, but it
was not that difficult to see that this pact would not last forever given
the specific geopolitical context.
As I see, the latter-days left is in a similar state of mind -- after the
capitulation of Moscow to McDonalds and Wall street, the hopes for socialism
are very bleak indeed. But when and how will the free market storm toopers
finally arrive at Stalingrad?
Here are some possibilities:
1. Global warming will trigger changes in the climate that will bring a new
ice age that will devastate Europe (for technical details see an article
"The Great Climate Flip-flop" in January 1998 issue of _The Atlantic
Monthly_); that in turn will upset the current Pax Americana and possibly
trigger a global conflict;
2. As productive potnetial increases faster than the ability to consume the
manufactured goods, competition between corporations or corporation-states
for the markets for their products will increase, and that will eventually
lead to international conflicts whose effects to the Pax Americana will be
similar to those competiton for access to oil had for the world before 1939:
it fueled the German Drang nach Osten - toward the oil rich Caspian sea and
Persian Gulf - and forced the Japanese to kick the Gringos out of the
Pacific to secure unthreaten access to oil supply.
3. A cosmic event, like a meteor hitting the earth or an alien invasion will
take place, and will upset the Pax Americana, or some other Deus ex machina
solution will appear.
In any case, competition, conflict and war is what we should hope for, after
all democracy was born in the conflict- and war-torn Europe, whereas the
relatively peace and stablity in Asia solidified the rule of despotic elites
who faced few challenges untli the Europeans uprooted them. Now the Asians
can return the favour and uproot the elite rule solidified by Pax Americana.
Following that train of thought: War on Earth and a prosperous New Year.
wojtek sokolowski
institute for policy studies
johns hopkins university
baltimore, md 21218
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
voice: (410) 516-4056
fax: (410) 516-8233
