[lit-ideas] Re: Three Blind Mice (was: On the prospect of Wold Peace)
- From: "Lawrence Helm" <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 4 Sep 2006 12:17:45 -0700
Jack,
Please tell me you just made that stuff up to see if I really read the books
I mentioned.
I read Fukuyama's The End of History and the Last man twice (the second time
because someone claimed it to contain some things I didn't recall -- they
weren't there) and Barnett's book once. I read Niall Ferguson's Colossus,
the Price of America's Empire and have another of his volumes partially
read, maybe it's the one you refer to. I couldn't find it just now.
No, Fukuyama doesn't propose that America take over the world. He sees
Western Liberal Democracy as inevitably succeeding as the End of History.
He uses the Hegelian professor Kojeve to say that Hegel was right after all,
i.e., that Capitalism (modern day Liberal Democracy) would comprise the end
of history.
Barnett is more muscular about things, but he doesn't see anything like what
you describe. He urges that the non-integrating gap nations be brought into
the functioning core. The Functioning Core is made up of successful
nations. To bring a failed nation into the functioning core is to cause it
to become a success. That is not a racist proposition.
I'm not very impressed with Niall Ferguson. He keeps urging the US to
become an Empire, but that is unlikely in the extreme. I know he talks on
and on about it, but I'm not sure many in the US are still listening. Lots
of Americans are still isolationists at heart. The last thing we want is an
Empire. He talks of a global burden, but note that the Democrats want to
bring the troops home immediately -- no burden for them. Even the Bush
project isn't an empirical one. It is more a Barnett one, bringing Iraq
into the Functioning Core. In the Functioning Core they become functioning
members. They will not be subservient to the US anymore than Europe has
been as a result of our bringing them into the Functioning Core after WWII.
Also, Bush has taken so much flack over trying to export Liberal Democracy
to Iraq that I doubt anyone else is going to try it any time soon. So much
for Ferguson's empire.
Neither Fukuyama nor Barnett proposes anything remotely like Imperialism.
The End of History comprises all the nations of the world functioning
together as Liberal Democracies. Barnett's Functioning Core is also all the
nations of the world functioning together as Liberal Democracies.
Lawrence
_____
From: lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of Jack Spratt
Sent: Monday, September 04, 2006 11:45 AM
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [lit-ideas] Three Blind Mice (was: On the prospect of Wold Peace)
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.
Other related posts:
