Conunents on Wagar' s "Toward a Praxis of World Integ ra tion" 

Richard Schauffler 
Pacifica, CA USA 
ryseye@aol.com 

v. 6/ 10/96 

Copyright 1996 by Richard Schauffler. 

Warren Wagar's 199 5 ASA paper is an attempt to art i c ula te a view of 
global 
political praxis culminating in a "d emocratic, lib era l, and s o c i al i st 
world 
commonwealth." This is an admirable id ea , but do the i deas in th a t 
paper get 
us closer to its realization--I think not. As I will arg ue b e l ow , 
Waga r 's 
paper i s nothing more than the Third Internationa l wr it lar g e , a 
polemic on 
o rgan izational form i r onically tied to a Eurocent ri c Second 
Int ernat ional 
view of the world that appears to ignore the histo ri ca l l esso ns o f both 
e ffo r t s . 

Wagar i ns i sts on t wo key po i nts : 1) only t h e va lu es of the 
En li ghtenment 
(wh i ch he turns in t o the "L eft Enl i ghtenment " wi th a wav e of his mag i c 

wand) 
prov id e the b as is for th is new world order; 2 ) only a single, 
transnationa l 
political party prov i des t h e organ iz at i onal basis for t opp ling the o l d 
world 
o r d er and bringing i n the new . 

With respect to the firs t point, i t i s obvious that there is noth i ng 
i nherently " soc i al i st " or "L eft " about t h e En li ghtenment . It has se rv ed 
adm ir a bl y as an i deo l og ical corn e rs tone of cap i talism for hundreds of 
y ears , 
a nd will lik e l y continue to do so . How Wagar propo ses t o c o nv i n ce t he 
wo r ld ' s 

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peoples that it is the o nl y basis for a hum a ne s ocial o rd e r i s a 
mystery. One 
mig ht ju st as well argue the same line about any o f a number of 
i deolo gie s , 
in cl uding Ch ristianity . Just as Wagar acknow l edges t ha t suc h religi o us 
movements were " vect o rs o f capitalism," s o might we ar g ue that the 
Enlight e nme n t ha s bee n a vector of capita li s m. In o ther words, a l though 
Wagar 



desperately wants t o claim o therw ise, i t i s only his sub j ective 
p r e f e r ence 
that makes the Enligh tenment superior t o any o ther set of ideas as the 
basis 
for a ne w soc iali st world order. One might ask, why is it necessary to 
in s i st 
on th i s point? If o ne were tr ul y in terested in the practical pol i t i cs 
of 
building a political mov ement , on e woul d realize that even whi le one 
migh t 
want to argue to many of the idea s of the Enlighten ment , i t wou l d be 
politically self-defea t ing t o argue for t hem in the way that Wagar 
d oe s . 

Wagar dismisses various anti-systemic movements because " their agendas 
are 
very different from ours." Who are "we " ? The study group that will 
found the 
Wo r l d Party? Professors at the ASA? True part isan s of wo rld revo lu t i on? 
Graciously, Wagar admits that "Th ere are s ur ely many thousands of 
people, 
even many hundreds of th o usands of pe o p l e , around the wo rld who are 
fundament all y opposed to [the modern world system ]." No, there are not . 
There 
are not even hundreds of th ousands of peop l e who have even heard the 
term 
"world system ." They may be ob j ec tiv e l y opposed t o t he wo rl d sys t em, 
in sofar 
as they oppose those man if estat i ons of i t t ha t affect the i r dai l y 
lives, but 
they are not sub j ect i ve l y opposed to i t, i n the sense of being 
potential 
members of a consc i ous movement with a clear understandi ng of the 
global 
nature of the system that exp l o i ts and oppresses them . And that is the 
crux 
of the revol ution ary prob l em : how to organize the masses of people who 
ob j ect i vely are i n oppos i t i on to the system i nto a subjective 
opposition? 

How to do t his? Wagar appears to believe this can b e done by fiat . The 
" only 
way " is " to insist on a tra nsn at i onal and transzonal f ram ework for a ll 
poli t ical ac t ivi t y a t t he local or nat i ona l l evel ." This is precisely 
what 
soc ialis t , conununi st , na t ionali st and other movemen ts ha ve been t rying 
to do 

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for much of the last 80 years . Waga r offers no insight in to h o w h is 
version 
of this practice will produce any be tter results . How will the World 
Party do 



this? By arguing about slogans , 1 ike the various part i es of the New 
Conunun i st 
Movement d i d i n the 70s and 80s when they l ed and / or derailed local 
ref o rmist struggles? By " holding open meetings " a nd distributing the 
" provocat i ve ana l yses " wr i tten by Wor l d Party cad re? This appears to be 
noth i n g more than same practice of the myriad study gro ups tu r ne d 
myr i ad 
c o nununist parties in the U. S . and elsewhere in the wo rld in the 1970s . 
Hav i ng 
participated in the same , and having been an eight - year member of a 
party 
that tr i ed to make wor l d systems ana l ys i s the theoretical core of its 
pract i ce , I f i nd noth i ng i n Wagar ' s proposa l that suggests how his 
vers i on 
mi ght be d i fferent that the prev i ous efforts . 

Thus , what is disturbing about this paper is that it fails t o t ake i nto 
account any of the concrete h i story of a tt emp ts t o c r ea te s ocia list 
movements 
in this country or anywhere else . The organizationa l strategy 
( i nf i ltrate 

governments and corporat i ons ) used to be known i n the Third 
Internat i ona l 
days as " bor i ng from wi th i n ." The not i on of d i stri buting " provocative 
ana l yses of the wo r l d c r i s i s " has been pract i c ed ad nauseam around the 
world . 
The idea that national organizations should be subordinated to a g l oba l 
cause 
was the basis of the Third International; the hi story of those part i es 
and 
that organ i zat i on speaks v o l umes about the prob l ems with that app r oach . 
Yet 
Wagar can blithely write that all must subordinate themselves to 
Ci v i tas 
Humana, and since the Wor l d Party i s the on l y vehicle that can bring us 
t here, to t he party itself . That is t he kind of l o gic that g o t Bukhar i n 
killed, a nd more than that, forced h i m to utter the rule of th i s 
organization 
logic t ha t condemned him: the Party is always rig ht . 

Yet none of th is is referred to by Wagar . There is no notion th a t 
anything 
has been tr i ed or t h at anything has been l earned . No d i scuss i on of the 
problem of middl e class radical int e ll e ctua l s trying to lead work i ng 
c l ass 
a nd peasant movements . No ide a of var iou s organizational forms that 
have been 

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used, their stre ngth s and weaknesses. No concept of how to move from 
re fo rmist to revo lution ary practice . No, in Wagar 's v iew " we " 
infilt rate 



c o rp o rat io ns and g overnments (why defer power and income while wa i t i ng 
fo r 
the rev ol ut io n? why suffer i n a trade un io n o r peasan t associat i on?), 
wr i te 
" pr ovo cative ana l yses " and wait for the apparently inevitable collapse 
o f the 
wo r l d system , at wh i ch po i nt " we " l eap o ut and proclaim oursel v es as 
leaders . 
Th i s i s not ser io us p oli t i ca l th o ught , i t i s s i mpl y a po litic al 
fantas y, an 
e x press i on of cyn i c i sm, powerlessness , and profound detachment from th e 
everyday l ives of most peop l e typica l of most i ntellectuals . 

And a ll this accompanied by an apparent d i sda i n fo r th ose in whose name 
Wagar 
wo u l d l ead the rev ol ut io n . The masses , we are told, are d i sappo i nt i ng 
us 
again : " the initia l response of the disempowered and th e marginal i zed 
t o o ur 
[s i c] cr i s i s everywhere has been fl i ght ." Whose c risis ? The theoret i c a l 
crisis of inte ll ectua l s? The crisis of g l oba l auste rit y capi t a l i s m? 
What 
nerve i t takes to d i sm i ss the da il y strugg l es of peoples t o surv i v e i n 
such a 
manner! 

But never mi nd . Wagar has determ i ned that " a consensus must e merge 
among 
progress i ve forces " and that the " real i st i c " next st ep i s the format i o n 
of 
ant i - ca pita l ist inst i tut i ons . At the end of the 20th century , th i s does 
not 
seem like a profound i ns i ght . Nor does i t seem like a profound c ri tique 
to 
suggest th a t th ose who a re i gnorant of the i r h i sto r y are condemned to 
repeat 
it . 

Why not take a serious look at a recent att empt to build a 
transnational, 
tr anszonal movement? He re I refer to the Un i ted Nations women's 
conf erence 
held in China . This was t he fourth world conference on wome n, the 
res ul t of 
serious political efforts for years to bu i ld a mov ement lik e that Wagar 
describes . The result of this conference was a 120 - pa ge Plan for 
Act ion, 
agreed upon by some 5,000 delegates from 189 coun tr ies, encompassing 
i ssues 
from spirituality to abort ion rights to nutrition, worked out in som e 
3 , 000 

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