PRAXIS, SHMAXIS : COMMENTARY ON WAGAR 

Walter L. Go l dfrank 
Department of Soc iolo gy 
UC Santa Cruz 
Santa Cruz, CA 95064 USA 
wa ll y@cats .u csc . edu 

Copyright 1996 by Walter L. Goldfrank. 

v. 6/10/96 

What are the c o ntr o vers i es here? Wagar makes on e 
ma i n point and several subs i d i ary ones . The ma i n 
point is that a wor l d party wi ll /shou l d be the 
principal o rgan iz at io na l vehicle f o r the lo ng - run 
victory of democrat i c soc i al i sm i n a global 
conunonwealth. The subsidiary points are (1) that 
the array o f (mul t i-) cultures will/should give 
way to (o r at l east not prec l ude) agreement on the 
basic va lue s of the Western En li ghtenment; (2) that 
current l y ex i st i ng an t i-sys tem i c movements may be 
opposed to th i s or that aspect of contemporary 

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social organ i zat i on but are not really very ant i -
system i c , because they do not cha ll enge the wor l d -
economy o r t he interstate system; (3) that the wo rl d 
will mos t probably pass through a prolong e d and 
chaot i c t ime of troub l es (po ss i b l y inclu d ing s uch 
horrors as environmenta l catastrophe, wide spread 
nuclear war, or global North - South war ) before 
the integ rated, pe ace ful, ega li tar i an Utop i a 
arrives; and (4 ) t ha t wo r ld - system theory implies 
some t hing like t he world par ty as i ts comp l ementa ry 
praxi s . Th e implica t ion i s t hat world - system adep ts 
should unbu r d e n t hems e l ves of illuso r y hopes i n 
t oday ' s mot ley semi - re le v ant move ments and set ab o ut 
t he tas k of p art y form at ion . To me, not much of 
this makes sense, represent in g rath e r an awkward 
global analogy with wha t voluntarist Marx i st po l i t ical 
doctrine was ta ke n to mea n at t he na t ional le v el . 

Let me co nunent on Waga r ' s point s f r om the b o tt om 
of my lis t backwa rds . World pa rty or mov e ments? 
Sometimes Wa ga r see ms to be say ing t h at overcom i ng 
t h e mul t i - st a teness of t h e world - system is the main 
goal, sometimes a socialist world - s yst em . It i s 
p er f ect l y plau s ibl e t h at t h e e li tes of t he capita l i st 
world - eco n omy wi ll th e msel v es come v er y c l ose to 
ac hieving a s ingl e gl o b a l p o lity in th e in terests of 



effective economic regulation, and/or b io spher i c 
preser va t ion, and/or eff ici ent repression (e.g., 
on e way to control borders is to e limin ate them ). 
In thus creating a global polity, e li tes wou l d 
n u dge the world t oward global social democracy if not 
soc iali sm , but i n the face of mul t ipl e and cr i t i cal 
problems, i t migh t we ll be a step that e li tes f in d 

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worth t a king. 
As they say about old age, it's preferab l e to the 

alternative. In any case , why shou l d we do the 
el i tes' work for them? 

I s chaos/war necessary or l i kely? To some degree , O 
env i s i oned by Wagar and agreed to i n ora l commentary by 
Arr i gh i and Wallerste i n , aga i n I' m not so sure . " Two, 
three , many Vietnams " was an anti -s ystemi c slogan of 
the ' sixties ; the sages at the ASA seemed t o be 
predicting " two, three, many Soma li as, Bosnias, 
I raqs , Rwandas, Chechnyas , etc .," rep l ete with 
dep l orab l e mi series and potential spillovers and 
throngs of refugees . Perhaps . But perhaps 
not, at least perhaps not wi t h d i re consequences 
except for the lu ck l ess victims . Brush fires can be 
ext i ngu i shed, and so ca n forest fires, espec i ally if 
t he y ' re i n the per i pheral and sem i- per i pheral zones . 
More menacing: if one reasons from previous cyc l es 
of hegemony, one wou l d pred i ct that after U. S . hegemony 
is utterly defunct (say, i n f i fteen to twenty - f i v e 
years) and the fabric of condominium the U. S . i s weaving 
frays, a period of i ntense r i va l ry and conf li ct wo u ld 
ensue, leading to "c ore " wars s i mi lar to t he Thir ty 
Years War, the Napoleonic Wars, and Wor l d Wars I & II . 
While th i s sort of cyclic a l repetition i s s ur e l y 
possible, so is its transcendance, i ts sublat i on in t o 
modes of red ividing the wor l d l ess harmful to o u r 
collective health (or our ch il dren ' s) . I have 
elaborated some of the reasons th i s more tep i d 
outcome might occur in a prior publ ic at io n i n this 
forwn (Goldfrank 1995) . Clearly , one of the strongest 
trends of the present moment is the thickening of 

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international organization , IGO and NGO, off i c i al and 
informal, corporate and professional . This trend, along 
with the "no- winn er s " natu re of nucl e a r wa r , makes 
nation - state - based core wars a l ess lik e ly feature of 
futur e h e g e monic cycl e s than of past on e s . By no means 



impossib le , but not foreordained, either. As for 
generalized North-Sou t h war, again, i t is no t impossible, 
but l et 's not fo rget the discovery of the sem i-pe r ip hery . 

Is the "fami ly of anti -sys tem ic movements" rea lly 
an ti -sys tem ic? Probably not so much as Wallerstein 
would lik e i t to be, but probably more than Wagar 
th inks. Let 's be clear abou t th is: we are in a period 
in which the century-plus of Marxism as world movement 
and set of world parties has ended, and the new 
overarching vision has barely begun to be e nuncia ted . 
Earth-destroying, militaristic, patriarchal, 
racially-inflected capitalism continues to genera t e 
mind-numbing in equa li t i es and dangers to human 
livelihood. The movements that we have, mostly 
local or national, mostly si ngl e -i ssue , keep alive 
in impo rt ant and often dramatic ways the rational 
and egalitarian alternat i ves to th i s world - system 
we are stuck with for at leas t the medium run. 
I t is ou t of the i r sometimes conflictful visions 
that an oppositional ideology for the 21st century 
will emerge . If that vision turns out to be more() 
to go to meetings three times a day? 

What about Enlightenment versus multiculturalism? 
Is the r e really s o great an opposition as Waga r po s i ts? 
From Montaign e and Pasca l to Dostoy evs ky and Una muno, 
" Caucas i an males" have done the i r share to balan ce, 
wi th in Western culture, rationalist control -f r eakism 

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with intuition, passion, l oca li sm, and respect for 
difference . In other words , DWEM cul t ure i s not the 
monolith i t is often caricatured as be i ng . Perhaps 
more importantly for th e po li t ical future of th e 
world, the principal bearers of that culture have proved 
remarkably adept and flex i b le both at accomodat i ng 
cultu r a l difference (why, at McDonald's in Maine 
you can even get a McLobs ter! ) and at in struct i ng 
non - Western e lit es in th e mystica l virtues of liberalis m. 
The c urr e n t defensive/assertive postures of today's 
fractionated communities are not etched i n stone, and 
we can r eas onably expe c t more coalit i ons and more 
cooperation amo ng c ul t ur ally distinct i ve subord i nated 
groups than we se e today . In add iti on , we can r easonably 
expect that as it becomes mo re global, " Western " 
c ul t ur e itself will incorporate subt h e me s drawn from 
other c iviliz at i onal traditions, as i t has with 
African music, Asian religion, and pagan sensu ali ty . 

Finally, do we need a world party to a rri ve at 
global socialism? As claimed above, such a party does 
not seem t o be a necessary vehicle for o ve rcoming the 
multi - stateness of the capitalist world - economy: the 
el it es will manage this on their own, with a little 
help fr om in ternat i onal c ivil soc i ety . Once that 



has been accomplished, i t's not c l ear to me that a 
"revolu t ionary" par ty alo ng t he line s of past Socia list 
or Communist parties would be worth the tr oub le . Perhaps 
it will turn out to be better simply to demand more a nd 
more jus tice and more and more equality without en t e rin g 
fo rmal political competition, all the while voting , 

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lobbying, demonstrating, d is rupt ing, in the int erests of 
equalization and liv e lihood protection. Do we really 
want to be in the business of constructing coun ter -
bureaucracies when we might be able t o get the existing 
ones to do the right thing? 

One of Wagar's contributions, then, i s to ha ve 
formulated clearly the party path to world s ocia lism . 
(Maybe he's a party animal? I don't know him 

personally.) I have argued that the party path 
is probably not necessary for "worldnes s " and possib ly 
not useful for socialism. Since Wagar sets the date 
for founding the World Party in 2035, neither of us is 
lik e ly to face a dec i s ion about joining i t , and in the 
meantime we should all g et back to the busin ess a t h an d . 

REFERENCE 

Goldfrank, Walter L. 1 995 . " Be y ond c y c l es of hegemony : 
Econom ic , soc i a l , and mi li tar y factor s ." Journal of 
Wor ld- Systems Resear ch 1 , 8. http: // jws r .uc r . ed u / 

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