| Considerations Regarding "The Ultimate Social System" |
The article was referring to the recently published manifesto of capitalist wishful thinking entitled The End of History? put forward by Mr. Francis Fukuyama, deputy director of the U.S. State Department's policy planning department. In it, Mr. Fukuyama contends that the American political system appeared to represent the ultimate in social and political evolution.
As he himself put it,
"What we may be witnessing is not just the end of a particular period of postwar history, but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government." {B205}
In light of the fact that a State Department spokesman can publicly promote such delusions of grandeur for a system that only two years ago suffered a failure of its economy that almost mirrored the disastrous crash of 1929, and for a system which now has the dubious distinction of being the world's leading debtor nation, one must seriously resist the temptation to burst out laughing.
When the murder capital of Mr. Fukuyama's ideal society is also the seat of its government and one of its major centers of drug abuse, it would appear that, if nothing else, he doesn't demand much of an ideal system.
In any case, the American elite have in desperation resorted to this feeble attack on socialist theory. Although this story is only in its infancy, it is showing all the signs of being earmarked for a major coordinated and sustained media propaganda campaign, so get prepared to hear over and over again that the American system has at last triumphed over the ideals of socialism.
His attempt to wrap Feudalism and Neocolonialism in the stars and stripes and hoist it up onto a pedestal for the world to pay homage, is little more than another attempt to pull the wool flags down over the eyes of gullible readers. Whether or not he will succeed in influencing the American public to renew their allegiance to Feudalism has yet to be seen. He does nevertheless provide a patriotic focus to divert attention away from the serious hardships faced by the working class, and buys time to allow the elite to complete their withdrawal of equity from the American economy.
He went on to state that as for Marxism-Leninism, "while there may be some isolated true believers left in places like Managua, Pyongyang or Cambridge", no large state that espouses it as an ideology even pretends to be in the vanguard of history.
Mr Fukuyama appears willing to overlook that not only did Russia put the first man in space, she currently leads in space station technology. The State Department seems only too willing to play down the present and future significance of Russia's pioneering leadership at the forefront of man's cosmic debut.
He went on further to say that, "The egalitarianism of modern America represents essentially the attainment of the classless society envisioned by Marx".
I could be wrong, but I don't think Marx dreamed of an "egalitarian" Utopia where the richest 1% would own more assets than the bottom 90%. {B206} Perhaps he has also overlooked that unlike America, neither China nor Russia (which have approximately five and a half times the number of citizens to feed clothe and house) allows their citizens to go hungry or live on park benches and under bridges.
Although Mr. Fukuyama's thesis amounts to little more than
a desperate attempt to mask and ignore the seriousness of America's
social, economic, and political deterioration, it does draw attention
to the need of honestly considering "the nature of an ultimate
social order". To do this, we will consider the best
and worst characteristics of our existing social systems.
We must focus on the reality that humanity is a functioning element of a much larger entity, the survival of which depends on man's ability to control his baser instincts of selfishness and greed. The economic elite must recognize how their role of dominance as well as their claim to the bulk of global wealth, have both lost their validity.
In his book, The Critical Path, Buckminster Fuller shows that the planet's resources are still so abundant as to clearly indicate that famine, hunger, and poverty are artificial conditions imposed on humanity unnecessarily. {B207} And that is the pity. There is no rational need for the bulk of humanity to endure the hunger and deprivations brought on by the activities of a few selfish individuals.
My personal experience in traveling through nearly forty countries has shown that the average human being, irrespective of nationality, readily and eagerly extends generous hospitality and friendship to strangers. The more I traveled, the less I felt allegiance to any particular race, religion, culture, country, or political system. Perhaps it was this freedom more than anything else that allowed me to see somewhat objectively that racial, political, cultural, and religious barriers don't naturally occur in man, but are the hangover of collective social actions organized by a mere handful of powerful individuals who have manipulated whole populations to support their personal appetites for wealth and power.
The bulk of humanity would prefer to be left alone to live simple peaceful lives. Instead, they are made to bear the economic and political backlash of a small minority of economic elite around the world, who are busily exploiting both the human and natural resources of the planet to make fast and easy personal fortunes with virtual disregard for the social repercussions that follow in the wake of their activities. Hence, poverty, hunger, and war continue to overtake man's struggle for basic needs.
The destruction of the Brazilian rain forests is a very important case in point. As was discussed earlier, the rain forests are being destroyed mainly because the rich can avoid taxation by doing so. The planet's air supply is being jeopardized to line the pockets of a few wealthy Brazilians. {B208}
Whether we adopt the modern concept of mankind living in a global village or as crew members of spaceship earth, we must begin to live more harmoniously by focusing less on our separateness as individual nations, and concentrating more on global cooperation. We cannot, however, allow domination by an economic oligarchy to be confused with true global cooperation.
A global government run by the economic elite would mirror the inequities of feudal conditions but on a greatly magnified scale.
Both Feudalism and Colonialism are diametrically opposed to global cooperation!
Many other species before us have learned to cooperate and
have probably had to go through similar struggles at a different
level of awareness. We will have to do it too, and we can start
by acknowledging the respective strengths and limitations of our
existing ideologies in an effort to replace fear and hatred with
understanding.
Capitalism is an economic and social system that evolved from the association of individuals who possessed an ability to dominate their respective societies. Because of their dominance, it provided these individuals with an opportunity to exist and flourish relatively free of restraints. A free spirit is the natural breeding ground for innovative discoveries, and rapid development, as the rapid progress in Western technology triumphantly confirms.
The dominant members have therefore always promoted the system as the ultimate expression of freedom for an individual. That certainly might be true for the dominant members, but the reverse is true for the remaining members of that society. This type of economic system surfaced in earlier Western societies as Feudalism.
It seems a truism that an excess of anything leads to problems, and in that sense, extreme individuality and independence