[lit-ideas] Three Blind Mice (was: On the prospect of Wold Peace)
- From: Jack Spratt <dosflounder@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 4 Sep 2006 11:44:35 -0700 (PDT)
Carnegie / Barnett / Fukuyama, a nice group.
First of all, Carnegie was a 19th century industrialist who kept his workers
in poverty and responded to their protests with violence and eventually
replaced them with immigrants who would work for pennies. He then threw the
money he made from this at problems like ending war and building public baths
in his hometown in Scotland. Probably both were given the same amount of
thought. (His still surviving deli however makes a great pastrami sandwich.)
Second is Barnett, the map, rules-set guy who is dragging his power point
presentation all over Washington. He does have something in common with
Carnegie: he thinks like a 19th century imperialist. He disregards the racist
elements of his plan, but the concept of Kipling?s The White Man?s Burden is
obvious. A like minded writer Niall Ferguson, Herzog Professor of History at
the Stern School of Business, New York University, wrote in his book
Empire(2002): ?No one would dare use such politically incorrect language today.
The reality is nevertheless that the United States has?whether it admits it or
not? taken up some kind of global burden, just as Kipling urged. It considers
itself responsible not just for waging a war against terrorism and rogue
states, but also for spreading the benefits of capitalism and democracy
overseas. And just like the British Empire before it, the American Empire
unfailingly acts in the name of liberty, even when its own self-interest is
manifestly uppermost.?
While Barnett extends Fukuyama?s thesis to its ultimate conclusion of world
domination by liberal democracy, Fukuyama draws his ideas from a 19th century
philosopher, Hegel, and Plato. Fukuyama identifies the desire for recognition,
Plato?s thymos, as the driver of history and the source of liberal democracy.
Here from the introduction to his book is a quote that is in essence the origin
of the power point blitz.
?The struggle for recognition provides us with insight into the nature of
international politics. The desire for recognition that led to the original
bloody battle for prestige between two individual combatants leads logically to
imperialism and world empire. The relationship of lordship and bondage on a
domestic level is naturally replicated on the level of states, where nations as
a whole seek recognition and enter into bloody battles for supremacy.
Nationalism, a modern yet not-fully-rational form of recognition, has been the
vehicle for the struggle for recognition over the past hundred years, and the
source of this century?s most intense conflicts.?
Yet, he also says: ? For democracy to work, citizens need to develop an
irrational pride in their own democratic institutions, and must also develop
what Tocqueville called the ?art of associating,? which rests on prideful
attachment to small communities."
Fukuyama?s readers must on the one hand yield to the inevitable imperialism
of liberal democracy and on the other hand cultivate a prideful attachment to
small communities and an irrational pride in democratic institutions. Where
does world peace fit into this picture? I have no quarrel with using the past
as a guide, but to choose the worst elements of the past to emulate is
irrational. Barnett extends Fukuyama?s Hegelian thesis to its ultimate
conclusion of world domination by liberal democracy and extends Carnegie?s
capitalism to globalism. The result is racist imperialism with some undefined
trickle down economics. I do not see a formula for world peace but rather a mix
of old discredited and dangerous ideas dusted off and presented as new.
There is one other 19th century figure that embodies this analysis, Leopold
II of Belgium. Driven by the need for recognition he created a hell on earth in
the Congo, and reaped fantastic sums of money from the raw materials. Is this a
mind set we want to follow?
J.S.
The one thing we lack is a handy utopia.
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