Abstract
We now come to the crux of our problem: how do people successfully organise themselves into stable societies? Today, most societies are far from stable. In many Third World countries, growing economic inequality, exacerbated by exploding populations, means rising instability. The Second World — the USSR and communist East Europe — has remained ‘stable’ over four decades only through imposing oppressive coercion. Even the industrial democracies, which still seem stable on the surface, face powerful internal tensions in the face of material shortages and an end to economic expansion. Understanding today’s world means understanding the factors that determine social stability and instability, including aspects of human nature (gleaned in Part II), and of the Western world-view (from Part III), which now dominates so much of the global economic and political power structure.
Civilisations are in crisis … Modern civilisations are in a transition stage from order based on coercion to an order that is self-sustaining, a transition from positive law and central control to some form of social organisation, the nature of which eludes us, that enables individual development and participatory control. The transition is inevitably a critical stage in evolution and from which civilisations will emerge only if goals are clearly perceived and deliberately pursued. John W. Burton, 1984†
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Notes and References
John W. Burton, Global Conflict: The Domestic Sources of International Crisis (Brighton: Wheatsheaf Books, John Spears (distributed in US by The Center for International Development, University of Maryland, College Park, MD), 1984) p. 36.
M. Mead, Culture and Commitment: A Study of the Generation Gap (Garden City, NY: Natural History Press, Doubleday, 1970) p. 61.
G. Mische and P. Mische, ‘The National Security State’, Chapter 3 in Toward a Human World Order (New York: Paulist Press, 1977) pp. 44–68.
J. Schell, The Fate of the Earth (first published in The New Yorker, 1, 8, 15 February 1982); quote is from 15 February 1982, p. 103.
I. Berlin, ‘The Counter-Enlightenment’, Chapter 1 in Against the Current: Essays in the History of Ideas (New York: Viking Press, 1980) pp. 1–24.
R.M. MacIver, The Web of Government (New York: The Free Press, Macmillan, 1965) p. 37.
K. Marx and F. Engels, The German Ideology (New York: International Publishers, 1947) p. 39.
Marx and Engels, The German Ideology, pp. 40–1.
Burton, Global Conflict, p. 12.
S. Weil, The Need for Roots, translated by A. Wills (New York: Putnam, 1952) pp. 123, 127.
quoted by C. Lasch, ‘Mass Culture Reconsidered’, democracy (October 1981) p. 22.
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quoted in S.S. Wolin, ‘The New Public Philosophy’, democracy, 1 (4) (October 1981) p. 33.
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Niebuhr (Moral Man, p.187f.) points out that the Russian revolution was due mainly to the stupidity and brutality of the Church and aristocracy rather than to the industrial-economic forces predicted by Marx.
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The frank governmental control of the media in the USSR is public knowledge. The control of the media in America is far more subtle, but in that sense, far more dangerous for giving the appearance of ‘openness’. For a detailed analysis of this point, see Herbert Schiller, The Mind Managers (Boston: Beacon Press, 1973), especially Chapter 1, ‘Manipulation and the Packaged Consciousness’, pp. 8–31.
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The 1990 United Nations projections for these cities are: Bombay, 11.8 million, Sao Paolo, 17.5 million, and Mexico City, 21.8 million: U.N. Estimates and Projections of Urban, Rural and City Populations, 1950–2025: The 1980 Assessment (New York: United Nations, 1982) Table 8, p. 61.
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The Defense Monitor XIV(9) (1985) pp. 1–9. This entire issue of this publication from the Center for Defense Information is devoted to ‘The Myth of American Mineral Vulnerability’. See also arguments for stockpiling by MacGeorge Bundy, ‘The Inevitability of the Unexpected’, in E.N. Castle and K.A. Price (eds), U.S. Interests and Global Natural Resources (Baltimore: Resources for the Future, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983) pp. 132–3.
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B. Tuchman, The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1984). Her entire book is devoted to this notion.
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Klare and Arnson, Supplying Repression; the quote is from pp. 3–4, and the data in the preceding paragraphs are from p.118f. Emphasis in original.
P. Lernoux, Cry of the People: The Struggle for Human Rights in Latin America — The Catholic Church in Conflict with U.S. Policy (New York: Penguin Books, 1982) p. 10. Ms Lernoux is recipient of the Columbia University Maria Moors Cabot award (1980) for her writing on Latin America, and of the Sidney Hillman Foundation book award for 1981 for Cry of the People.
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See M. Manley, Jamaica: Struggle in the Periphery (London: Third World Media (distributed in US by W.W. Norton, New York), 1982).
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Two official reports on the Iran—Contra affair are available from the US Superintendent of Documents, Washington, DC: The Tower Commission Report and the Report of the Joint Committees of Congress. ‘The Affidavit of Daniel Sheehan’, available from the Christic Institute (1324 North Capitol St, NW, Washington, DC, 20002), an interfaith public interest law firm, further charges that profits from drug smuggling have been used to finance CIA-backed extralegal activities: heroin in Southeast Asia and cocaine in Central America.
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For a discussion of the Green parties’ development, see F. Capra and C. Spretnak, Green Politics (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1984).
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Quoted by Harold Baron, ‘Innovation in Italian Politics Is in the Cities’, In These Times (30 January-5 February 1985) p. 11.
M. Jaggi, R. Müller and S. Schmid, Red Bologna (London: Writers and Readers Publishing Cooperative, 1977) p. 36. This unusual book, written by three German news correspondents who stumbled onto the existence of Bologna’s political system while covering a nearby bomb incident, is valuable reading for everyone interested in modern local politics.
See Harold Baron, ‘A New Approach to Politics Is Forming in the Cities of Italy’, In These Times (23–29 January 1985) p. 17.
See also Jane Jacobs, Cities and the Wealth of Nations (New York: Vintage Books, 1985), for an economic argument for more decentralisation of political power. Jacobs unfortunately focuses mainly on economics, per se paying little attention to natural resources on the one hand or to cultural needs on the other.
Y. Andropov, ‘The Teaching of Karl Marx and Some Questions of Building Socialism in the USSR’, Soviet Life (May 1983) pp. 6–9, 44; reprinted from Kommunist.
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B. Bonpane, Guerrillas of Peace: Liberation Theology and the Central American Revolution (Boston: South End Press, 1985) 119 pp; quote is on p. 18. See also Lernoux, Cry of the People. For descriptions of the Vatican’s response to Liberation Theology, see articles in The Nation by T.M. Pasca (2 June 1984 and 26 January 1985), and by P. Lernoux (27 August 1988).
C. Reich, The Greening of America (New York: Random House, 1970).
M. Ferguson, The Aquarian Conspiracy (Los Angeles: J.P. Tarcher, 1980).
MacIver, The Web of Government, p. 143.
According to Nuclear Free America (325 East 25th Street, Baltimore, MD, 21218) as of the end of 1987, 150 US communities had declared themselves ‘nuclear free zones’, barring the siting or construction of atomic weapons within their boundaries.
J.L. Aucoin, ‘Missouri’s Resourceful Sales Tax’, Environment (May 1985) p. 44.
T. McCall, ‘Daddy Domino: Oregon’s Land Use Program at Its Critical Juncture’, The Amicus Journal (Spring 1982) pp. 55–60.
For a fuller history see Kirkpatrick Sale, ‘Bioregionalism — A Sense of Place’, The Nation (12 October 1985) and his book, Dwellers in the Land: The Bioregional Vision (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1985).
A. Sweedler, ‘The U.S.-Mexico Border: Caught between Washington and Mexico City’, an unpublished manuscript available from the author (Physics Department, San Diego State University, San Diego, CA, 92182); quote is on p. 4.
D. Mathews, ‘We the People…’, National Forum (Phi Kappa Phi Journal) (Fall 1984) pp. 46–8, 63–4; quote is from p. 63.
Pericles, quoted by Mathews, ‘We the People… ’, p. 64. For an interesting proposal that in the United States, legislators ought to be chosen by lot, as are jurors, and serve as a matter of responsible citizenship rather than as competitors for political office and public power, see E. Callenbach and M. Phillips, A Citizen Legislature (Berkeley/Bodega, CA: Banyan Tree Books/ Clear Glass, 1985). Those who stand for office among Green party candidates in Western Europe are often ordinary members of the party, not professional politicians.
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© 1989 Mark E. Clark
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Clark, M.E. (1989). Politics: Worldviews in Action. In: Ariadne’s Thread. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-20077-1_14
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