The higher purpose of mankind - the world federation of the future

Is the future World Federation a Communitarian federation? It's the only political, social, economic, legal and religious theory that fills the entire bill.

It's the only fully integrated political bureaucracy that is replacing internal legal systems in nations around the world, right now. It's the only all encompassing economic system that claims power over every inch of resources on the planet. It's the only social theory taught at the university level, and the academic curriculum rarely includes criticisms. There is no public debate or voting on community development programs that promote sustainable changes in the U.S. It just is.

Nobody's asking the public whether their government has the power to sign treaties that eliminate individual rights and liberties protected under local, state, and national laws. There is no ongoing public debate over subjecting nations to communitarian supremacy of law. This is astonishing when considering the fact that the Supremacy Clause in the European Union contract is a stated, published Communitarian obligation. It's not astonishing when you consider who controls what the general "masses" see and hear.

Regional governance is built on the Community model. Community, when used by the govt or an NGO, is a codeword for communitarian agencies designed specifically to bypass outdated forms of local governance. Community Development is a program for introducing global communitarian standards, norms and laws. It's called Harmonization of Norms.

So here's the second biggest Q we're not supposed to ask: Does mankind have a higher purpose? Many people hold that it does. Even Friedrich List, who we obviously misunderstood when we wrote the Anti Communitarian Manifesto, included the idea in his 1841 book on national political economy. In the opening chapter, List recommended we not militate against the goal of a future world federation. And, he called it our Common Purpose.

"But this endeavor is legitimate and rational insofar as it furthers the economic development of the nation in question and does not militate against the higher purpose of mankind, -- the world federation of the future." Friedrich List 1841, Selected readings in international trade and tariff problems, edited by Frank William Taussig

As the real and verifiable world trade federation forms, I wonder how much of the emerging "rights" agenda was part of what our economic fathers understood to be part of that glorious world federation they dreamed for us. Our founders are often accused of establishing the U.S. as just another instrument for achieving global domination. There is merit to those accusations.

I don't know if this is the right question to ask, but was it also our founders dream for the Big Idea of an Environmental Ten Commandments? Did the Americans, along with the empires who colonized South America and the ME and Asia and the post Vatican II Catholic Priests all promote the same ultimate future for mankind? Do they now?

It was a sad time for me when I realized how many of the Community Development programs were pouring grant money into tribal coffers across the U.S. Already trained in a life of subsistence living (meaning HUD housing and food stamps), Natives were perfectly prepared tunnels for introducing the idea of Rebuilding Community as a legitimate mission. First the U.S. government reduced the tribes to complete dependents, took away their villages, forbade their religions and languages, and today, because the U.S. "evolved," we are making up for all that.

'Mother Earth' to be given same rights as humans under UN plan,
By Catherine Eade 12th April 2011
Niki's comments in brackets, in red

Bolivia is drawing up a draft UN treaty which would give Mother Earth the same rights as humans, including the right to life, to pure water and clean air.

{UN human rights include safe and affordable housing and social equity. Would this concept give Big Mother the right to sue the sun, the moon, rouge planets and falling meteorites in the future Universal Court?}

The South American country wants the UN to recognize the Earth as a living entity that humans have sought to 'dominate and exploit'.

{Again, with communitarian "rights" come communitarian responsibilities, so does this mean humans can sue Big Mother for unleashing hurricanes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, droughts and other violent acts against humans?}

It aims to establish 11 new rights for nature which include: the right to life and to exist; the right to continue vital cycles and processes free from human alteration; the right to pure water and clean air; the right to balance; the right not to be polluted; and the right to not have cellular structure modified or genetically altered.

{Communitarian "logic" knows no bounds.}

Bolivia's large indigenous population is ruled by Latin America's first indigenous president Evo Morales, who was elected in 2006.

{Bolivia is an openly Communitarian State: http://boliviarising.blogspot.com/2007/06/for-united-plurinational-communitarian.html}

Morales is an outspoken critic in the UN of countries which are not prepared to limit climate change by holding temperatures to a 1C rise.

{Chastisement is called "soft communitarianism", it seeks to shame the accused to comply. The next natural and globally harmonious step is hard communitarianism.}

Bolivia's ambassador to the UN, Pablo Salon, says his country seeks to achieve harmony with nature, and hinted that mining and other companies would come under greater scrutiny.

{Big Mother is watching you.}

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1376244/South-American-countrys-treaty-giving-Mother-Earth-rights-citizens.html

This proposed treaty ties in very nicely with the objectives of the communitarian organizations active in my neck of the world. School of the Earth, WISE, the Copper River Watershed Org, the Wellwood Center, the studies of our watersheds and creeks, all adhere to the ideology of the "Salmon Nation" and eliminating all borders between people who live on salmon rivers! And their parent UN Biosphere regional expert NGO, Eco Trust, has it's hand in every pie out here.

What environmental standards are taught to youth trained to become young stewards of the earth? What perfect harmony is prayed for in public schools on Earth Day? What "god" does your child worship in school? Only the "enlightened" ones among us can comprehend it.

I like the wikipedia page called "World Government". It clarifies between the real information as opposed to the wiki page entitled "The New World Order," which is relegated to conspiracy theory. World Government is real, the New World Order is conspiracy theory. haha

Global map showing some supranational unions

"The only union generally recognized as having achieved the
status of a supranational union is the European Union.^[11]

"The most relevant model for the incremental establishment
of a global federation may be the European Union, "

"Ulysses S. Grant commented, "I believe at some future day, the nations of the earth will agree on some sort of congress which will take cognizance of international questions of difficulty and whose decisions will be as binding as the decisions of the Supreme Court are upon us."^{[2]" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_government}

U.S. President Harry Truman commented: "We must make the United Nations continue to work, and to be a going concern, to see that difficulties between nations may be settled just as we settle difficulties between States here in the United States. When Kansas and Colorado fall out over the waters in the Arkansas River, they don't go to war over it, they go to the Supreme Court of the United States, and the matter is settled in a just and honorable way. There is not a difficulty in the whole world that cannot be settled in exactly the same way in a world court." -- President Truman's remarks in Omaha, Nebraska on June 5, 1948, at the dedication of the War Memorial ^{[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_government}

A quick google search for the keywords World Federation of the Future shows many interesting results. There are think tanks:

The World Futures Studies Federation emerged from the ideas and pioneering work of such persons as Igor Bestuzhev-Lada (Russia), Bertrand de Jouvenel (France, 1903-1987), Johan Galtung (Norway), Robert Jungk (Austria 1913-1994), John McHale (UK/USA, 1922-1978) and others who in the 1960s conceived of the concept of futures studies at the global level. This resulted in the organization of the first International Futures Research Conference in Oslo, Norway, in September 1967, for which Mankind 2000 was responsible in cooperation with the International Peace Research Institute, Oslo, and the Institut für Zukunftsfragen. A Continuing Committee was created, with headquarters in Paris.http://www.wfsf.org/

There are regular conferences:

WELCOME TO TAMPERE IN JUNE 2011!

The 13th International Conference organized by Finland Futures Research Centre and Finland Futures Academy at University of Turku will deal with the different dimensions of a sustainable future.

Sustainable development is an important theme in local, regional and global scales and requires multidisciplinary and cross-sectoral cooperation. Environmentally, socially and economically sustainable development can only be achieved by encouraging knowledge sharing and cooperation between various sectors and decision makers. The decision made today shapes our future.

The methods of futures studies include tools for describing possible, probable and desirable variations of the present and drafting possible images of the future. By looking at the variety of different possibilities, we can come closer to shaping the future – rather than predicting it. Future studies offer valuable tools to understand and shape the development of our societies. This conference aims to bring together the best experts from the fields of Futures Studies and Sustainable Development and let the scientific community to interact with policymakers and representatives of companies. By developing images of alternative futures, the goal of the conference is to give new viewpoints and novel ideas to decision-makers to assist them towards more feasible decisions and a sustainable development. http://conference2011.wordpress.com/

And there's more than one religious angle:

‘Work for your life as though you will live forever, and work for the Hereafter as though you will die tomorrow.’ The Holy Prophet (S)

"On the blessed occasion of the Wiladat of Sayyida Fatima (SA), The World Federation of KSIMC is pleased to announce the re-launch of the MULLA ASGHAR FOUNDATION FUND. This gift programme has been named after Marhum Mulla Asgharali M.M. Jaffer as a tribute to his dream which was to see the success of this fund benefitting the vision and mission of The World Federation of KSIMC." http://www.world-federation.org/Secretariat/Articles/Mulla_Asghar_Foundation_Fund_planning_our_future_as_community.htm

It is our non credentialed ACL thesis that communitarianism is the ultimate, final synthesis in the Hegelian dialectic. Another perfectly valid theory has arisen that communitarianism is just another phase, and that Transcendence, as taught by the Master Illuminated ones, is the final objective. (See Bobby Garner's treatment of this subject).

Whatever it ends up being, the final synthesis is supposed to be so "perfect" it will give rise to no opposition. The ACL was used by us to prove communitarianism is not perfect, and the fact that we even objected to it meant their whole dialectically based "conclusion" was flawed. It also, by default, made our work another side in a dialectical argument. Has humanity advanced to the next stage of forced evolution? If we are indeed moving into the next dialectical stage of human social evolution, then it's time to reassess the ACL "mission.' One thing is certain. The Communitarian stage of evolution is here, now. So if there is a next stage, Transcendence is next.

Over a decade has passed since I began attempting to think outside the dialectic. I know there are still parts of me that cling to dialectical tricks, and it's hard to feel very smart when some of them have been right in front of your "critical gaze" for a long time. I've learned so much more about the plan for global governance over the years. I really should do a complete revision and update of the Manifesto, maybe even add a political or social agenda of our own to the mix!

Obama facing dilemma over protectionism

Here's a neat twist. Obama is being attacked in the left wing press for the Patriot Employers Act. Is it possible that American Democrats have a plan to subvert our free trade agreements with Canada and Australia? (Will this lead to a "stronger" contract/court of law in future agreements?) The Act includes using American made steel for the big public works programs Obama is planning. What could be the purpose of that for people openly committed to communitarian principles?

How likely is it that Obama is really a protectionist? Didn't Putin just warn the world against this very thing in his speech at the World Economic Forum? What is protectionism in the US? Who does it protect? How did economist Friedrich List describe it in 1846? Is there any remnant of 19th century protectionism in this Act? And as horrible as this sounds, didn't Hitler also combine his socialism/fascism with protectionism and call it National Socialism? I'm thinking the idea of a protected local economy is a great sell to the general public anywhere, especially to ones who thinks it means local goods and services will benefit from local made and local hire conditions. I've never met an Alaskan who wasn't happy with the local hiring laws up here. I think this Act will contribute to Obama's image in the US, and give the internationalists a great topic for their circular academic debates.

(9) Obama facing dilemma over protectionism

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5i4s37Co-txUki3IUqyBr7vLSbr3AD96291VO0

Obama facing dilemma over protectionism

By DESMOND BUTLER

Associated Press January 31, 2009

WASHINGTON (AP) — Protection language in the stimulus bill presents President Barack Obama with a dilemma: Backing the provisions could set off a trade war, but opposing them could mean a backlash from his supporters.

The "buy American" provisions would require major public works projects to favor U.S. steel, iron and manufacturing over imports.

U.S. allies and trading partners warn that favoring U.S. companies would breach Washington's trade commitments and could set off tit-for-tat countermeasures around the world.

The two largest U.S. trading partners have spoken out. On Thursday, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper expressed concern and the European Union warned that it would not "stand idly by" if such measures were passed. On Friday, Brazil's president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva also made critical comments.

In November, world leaders who gathered in Washington for the G-20 summit to consider how to help the global economy pledged to avoid protectionism. But since taking office Jan. 20, Obama has said little on trade and has yet to nominate a trade representative. While campaigning, he argued that the Bush administration's strong support of free trade agreements should be moderated by including environmental and labor protections.

"The jury is out on how this administration is going on trade policy," said Steven Schrage, an international business analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "This will be a key test."

Asked about the protective provisions Friday, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs would say only that the administration was reviewing them.

The provisions are likely to find support among Americans outraged that money from a stimulus package likely to top $800 billion could go to foreign competitors of U.S. companies.

"I believe that when taxpayer dollars are used, they should support the things produced here at home," Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., author of one of the provisions, said in a statement.

Many analysts say the measures reflect the interests of small sectors over the larger economy, which could suffer from reduced trade and higher steel prices.

"The result, according to my calculations, is that the U.S. will lose more jobs than it will gain," said Gary Hufbauer, an economist with the Peterson Institute for International Economics, a Washington think tank. "We are going to poison the wells of world commerce if we do this."

The provisions are in a bill already approved by the House and a different version under consideration in the Senate. The Senate version states that none of the funds from the stimulus may be used for a project "unless all of the iron, steel and manufactured goods used in the projects are produced in the United States." The House version leaves out manufactured goods.

Obama, who has argued that stimulus measures are urgent, is unlikely to block passage of any bill approved by the Congress. But he could press lawmakers to remove the protectionist measures before it is passed.

"The problem is that Obama has not said anything yet," said Dan Ikenson of the libertarian Cato Institute.

Both versions of the bill include language that would allow the president to waive the protectionist measures if he decides that would be in the economic interests of the United States. But passage of the measures could in itself unnerve trading partners and encourage other countries to take similar protective action.
Hosted by

Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Sun Yat-sen's economic philosophy similar to Friedrich List's, not Marx's

Nordica found and printed Friedrich List's National System of Political Economy (1846) in the winter of 2003. We were living in Wyoming then, having moved there after I was "dismissed" from the Dawson legal team. I tended bar three nights a week at the Little Chicago down in Worland, and Nordica was Shalee's babysitter half-way up the Big Horn Mountains in Ten Sleep. Most of the ACL website was produced during that winter, and finding List was like finding the missing link. Nordica called me every night for a week after she got the boys to bed and read List out loud to me over the phone.

It was as if I'd never been taught anything about the American system. We were both sick to death of reading Hegel and Marx and had almost threw out our entire ACL thesis on several occasions. At that point we still had not found anyone who could verify what we saw to be true. All available writing seemed to point in the same Marxist direction. To find out that our America, for a very short time, had a whole political and economic system based on something way outside the "Smith capitalist free trader" versus "Marx communist free trader" ideology was amazing.

List never felt the need to hide reality, history, or his practical, scientific observations behind bogus social and political evolution theories. We have still found no verifiable scientific data that proves "the inevitability of class struggle."

We eventually added Friedrich List's global economic studies into our ACL thesis with this:

A: The [your nation goes here] System of Political Economy (List 1841)
+ B: State-controlled world communism
= C: State-controlled global communitarianism

The following excerpt helped me better understand why Marx and Engels dismissed List and the American system so easily from their theory of inevitable social evolution.

From Peter Myer's elist:

(2) Sun Yat-sen's economic philosophy similar to Friedrich List's, not Marx's

{this material was sent by Arno Mong Daastoel . He could supply missing bits if you wish}

Marxism, China and Development: Reflections on Theory and Reality

A. James Gregor

Transaction Publishers

New Brunswick (U.S.A.) and London (U.K.)

Copyright © 1995 by Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick, New Jersey 08903

Preface

This work is conceived as a small contribution to the enduring effort toward understanding the collapse of Marxism-Leninism as a political and economic system. Part of the academic community has undertaken a retrospective in order to identify and catalogue the factors that led to the disintegration of an arrangement, welcomed with so much enthusi-asm, that had its origins in the Bolshevik Revolution at the end of the First World War. That is an effort that has only just commenced.

Another part of that community has occupied itself with the task of rehabilitating the Marxism of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Its spokesmen argue that Marxism-Leninism was always an uncertain heir to the Marxist legacy. Neither Marx nor Engels anticipated the enor-mities of Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong. Marxism, they argue, of-fered something better than that. It was misinterpreted by its Bolshevik and Maoist practitioners. Stalinism and Maoism were to be attributed to human failings rather than to any shortcomings intrinsic to the work of Marx and Engels.

Still another identifiable segment of the intellectual community con-tinues to entertain the conviction that Maoism (if not Stalinism) embod-ies a laudable ideal. More than that, they imagine it to be the Marxism for our time. They lament the erosion of Maoism that followed fast on the heels of the "Chairman's" passing. The reforms of Deng Xiaoping are indicted as betrayals of the Marxist vision. ...

My wife, Professor Maria Hsia Chang, was helpful without measure. ...

6

Alternatives

One of the stranger things that happened to classical Marxism in the century and a half of its intellectual life was its transformation into an ideology of industrial development and economic modernization. Origi-nally scripted as a postindustrial revolutionary doctrine, after the Bol-shevik Revolution it was pressed into service as a strategy for rapidly increasing industrial yield and modernizing retrograde economies. What-ever was done was justified in the name of the inherited doctrine - irre-spective of any evident lack of coherence. There was little serious effort to provide a convincing rationale for the transformation. The "creative developments" of Marxism were almost always ad hoc, frequently shar-ing little affinity with the original doctrine, and sometimes entirely de-void of plausibility.

For Marx and Engels, the existence of a market testified to the ex-istence of private property, and private property required profit for its survival. ... However much the sub-stance of Marxism was altered to conform to the realities that faced Stalinists and Maoists, rejection of the open market and of market-gov-erned exchange remained constant. ... Throughout the years between the two world wars, for example, Stalinism was rarely considered anything other than an agent of international revolution. Only after the Second World War was it identified as a "developmental success" and a potential model for developing countries. It began to be dealt with in those terms as more and more nations emerged out of colonialism as independent and aspir-ing states. The industrialized nations proceeded to put together strate-gies for economic growth and development. By the 1950s, those recommended by the non-Marxist democracies began to display evi-dent similarities. ...

In his more mature works, Karl Marx devoted his energies to the provi-sion of an account of why modern machine production must necessarily be "exploitative." and why, as a consequence, the "vast mass" of "proletarians" must inevitably rise up to abolish the system of "bourgeois pro-duction and exchange" - to establish a society "in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all."17

At a time when the vast majority of the world's communities lan-guished in economic underdevelopment, Marx and Engels were preoc-cupied with postindustrial revolution. In fact, Marx and Engels, in the mid-nineteenth century, spoke of "modern industry" as having already drawn "all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilization... [compelling them] on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production."18

By the time Marx and Engels entered into the discussion, the advo-cates of an interventionist, protectionist state had clearly articulated a program that not only distinguished them from the advocates of tradi-tional laissez-faire and free trade, but identified them as developmentalists, the advocates of rapid industrialization and economic modernization for less-developed nations. Though often neglected, they were to exercise influence in less-developed and developing nations throughout the end of the nineteenth and into the twentieth century. Friedrich List was to become one of the most prominent among them. He was a contemporary of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.

Born in 1789, by 1844 List had produced works that were to exercise a powerful influence on the economic development and industrializa-tion of Imperial Germany.26 He proposed a policy that focused specifi-cally on the national economic concerns of his native Germany as opposed to those "universal free trade" policies presumably implied in the semi-nal work of the father of all free market economists and free traders, Adam Smith. ...

Central to List's arguments was the notion that nations constituted the critical vehicles of economic development. List maintained that he had perceived "that the popular theory [of laissezfaire and free trade] took no account of nations, but simply of the entire human race on the one hand, or of single individuals on the other."29 For List, nationality was understood to serve as the intermediary between the individual and humanity in its entirety. As such, the nation is the community in which the individual finds fulfillment and matures into a citizen of the greater world community. Between the time when a less-developed community first encounters more advanced economies and when that community attains industrial and economic maturity, government is obliged to con-sciously promote "the growth of manufactures, fisheries, navigation and foreign trade" through specific state policies.30

List maintained that the prevailing "cosmopolitan theory" of laissez-faire and free trade failed to take into account the separate and real inter-ests of economically less-developed nations. The uneven development of industry throughout the world afforded some communities undeni-able military and political advantage in the adversarial environment of international relations. Differential economic and industrial development meant a differential distribution of power ...

List clearly distinguished this developmental program from the eco-nomic notions of the "cosmopolitans," those opposed to state interven-tion in the economy and any constraint on the free flow of trade. By the first quarter of the nineteenth century, those like Hamilton and List were generally spoken of as "protectionists" - given their advocacy of the protection of domestic infant industries - and were so identified by the young Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.37

The treatment accorded the protectionists by the first Marxists was unresponsive - at best. Neither Marx nor Engels considered the issues addressed by List worthy of serious consideration. Marx and Engels were totally unconcerned with national economic development.

For Marx and Engels, the preoccupation with national industrial de-velopment was either the consequence of invincible stupidity or con-scious hypocrisy. In the first place, it was clear to Engels that "the proletarians in all countries have one and the same interest, one and the same enemy." That enemy was not underdevelopment, or a foreign na-tionality, but an international class: the bourgeoisie. "The great mass of proletarians are," according to Engels, "by their very nature, free, from national prejudices and their whole disposition and movement is essentially... anti-nationalist."38

For Marx and Engels the primary reality of the modern world was the constant, irremediable, and irreducible conflict between classes. The "nationality of the worker is neither French, nor English, nor German, it is labor....His government is neither French, nor English, nor Ger-man, it is capital. His native air is neither French, nor German, nor En-glish, it is factory air."39 His enemy was not underdevelopment, or a foreign nation, it was an indigenous and exploitative class. ...

As a consequence, Marx saw little to choose between developmental strategies. He recommended free trade and laissez-faire to less-devel-oped economies only because under their auspices the contradictions of modern industrial society would mature most rapidly - accelerating the circumstances that would "eventuate in the emancipation of the prole-tarians"56 through abolition of the market.

Marx and Engels conceived economic development, industrializa-tion, and modernization, in general, as part of an inevitable process of historical maturation that must necessarily involve all peoples and all parts of the globe. Because of its inevitability, they were indifferent about how economic growth and development might be achieved. They were even prepared to grant that the policies recommended by protectionists like Hamilton and List might be recommended in some circumstances. In various places Marx and Engels spoke of the United States, Ireland, Canada, Australia, and China, together with some of the colonized terri-tories, as making recourse to all the strategies recommended by List in order to transform traditional economies into those that were industri-ally advanced.57

Marx understood List's system as an effort to establish "manufacture upon a large scale in any given country." While prepared to grant as much, he went on to argue that whatever the intention, the "national system" of development, by fostering industry, would ultimately drive the developing community into the world market - to engage the same reality of social revolution faced by nations that had achieved industri-alization without the benefits of protectionism.58 Engels had made es-sentially the same argument as early as 1845.59 ...

Like List, Sun Yat-sen conceived the critical challenge of the modern world to be the industrialization and modernization of retrograde econo-mies. Like List, he understood the most appropriate vehicle for industrialization and modernization to be the nation - and the most efficacious tool for the implementation of a developmental program the revolution-ary, interventionist state. More important than that, perhaps, was the fact that Sun Yat-sen, like Friedrich List, conceived the medium in which all this might transpire to be a market-based productive system. What-ever "socialism" there was to be in an industrializing and modernizing national economy, it was to be predicated on the prevailing domestic and international market system.

After a century and a half of disappointed expectation, false starts, lost opportunities, tragic costs, failed enterprise, and shattered illusions, the "Marxists" of contemporary China are searching for a developmen-tal alternative to the flawed Maoism they have abandoned. It cannot be found in the recommendations of dependency theorists who urge the abandonment of market modalities and "delinking" from international capitalism. The core of present developmental policy in China is its de-pendency on the recreation of an effective market and the traffic of goods, technology, skills, and investment with the advanced capitalist economies.

A new developmental policy cannot be found in the wistful vision of a nonmarket cooperative "proletarian internationalism." China's current program of development is rooted in the firm soil of Chinese national-ism. It cannot be socialist in any traditional Marxist sense because the essentials of both a competitive market and private property have made their reappearance in the course of present reforms. More and more, contemporary China is beginning to look like the China anticipated by Sun Yat-sen.

It was H. W. Arndt who recently reminded us that it was Sun Yat-sen's program for the economic development of China that "more than anything else written before 1939, anticipated post-1945 thinking," and that it was Sun who "was almost certainly the first to advocate eco-nomic development in something like the modern sense and use of the term,"61 More than any Marxist old or new, Sun spoke to issues critical to an economically backward but emergent China. That has become in-creasingly apparent to everyone - including China's last Marxists. ...

{Endnote 121 to chapter 6: H. W. Arndt, Economic Development: The History of an Idea (Chicago, 111.: University of Chicago, 1987), 16.}

7

Sun Yat-sen

In October 1992, an editorial in the Far Eastern Economic Review opined that:

By now the "Taiwanese miracle" in economics has almost graduated into a cliche: the world's 14th largest trader, with foreign reserves topping U.S.$86 billion and a per capita income that at U.S.$8,813 is more than 25 times that of the mainland. Less well known, and completely unpredicted by most of the world's China "experts," has been a political revolution of historical proportions: the transformation of Taiwan into the world's first real Chinese democracy.... Unfortunately, Taiwan's splendid achievements have thus far gone largely unnoted and unrewarded.

The account concluded with the affirmation that Taiwan - the Re-public of China - has become an "indispensable beacon" for a "new China."1 As the Marxist People's Republic of China on the mainland thrashes about for a new developmental strategy and a new sustaining ideology, the Republic of China on Taiwan concludes its trajectory of growth and development - informed by the ideas of Sun Yat-sen.

There is no longer much resistance to the suggestion that the "miracle" on Taiwan received its inspiration and much of its substance from the thought of Sun.2 While Maoism, as a developmental strategy, was being dismantled on the mainland of China, on Taiwan Shih Chien-sheng maintained that it was Sun Yat-sen's "principle of the people's liveli-hood {minsheng zhuyi]" that served as "the cornerstone" for the rapid industrialization and economic modernization of the Republic of China.3 ...

Having escaped to Hawaii while still a child, Sun was overwhelmed by the accomplishments of the Western "barbarians." He recognized the evident material abundance of industrial capitalism, the attendant mer-its of law and public order, the advantages of meeting social wants through impersonal institutions, and stood in awe of the power embodied in machine production. He came to deplore the backwardness and corrup-tion of China - a sentiment that found expression in his intense opposi-tion to the oppressive Manchu dynasty that ruled his homeland. The overthrow of the Manchu and the introduction of Western law and in-dustry became the motives that drove his revolutionary activity.8

Wittfogel argued that Sun's program appealed to the rising domestic bourgeoisie. For Sun, the rule of law offered the protection of property without which enterprise would prove fruitless. Despotic rule and law-lessness not only exacted its toll from the peasantry and the defenseless, it hobbled initiative and economic growth. Thus, while the secret societ-ies - composed of elements of the lower classes - lent their support to Sun, the involvement of the "better classes" provided the funding that made revolutionary activity possible. The emerging bourgeoisie found a spokesman in Sun.9

Wittfogel made a case typical of those advanced by Marxists. He reminded his readers that the intellectuals who gathered around Sun were almost invariably the sons of merchants, bankers, officials, and wealthy landlords, as though intellectuals might originate elsewhere. The overseas Chinese who advanced funds were almost all merchants and petty businessmen, as though alternative sources were easily avail-able - or that Marxists would never accept funds from such donors. In effect, and according to Wittfogel, Sun's movement and its sustaining ideology were bourgeois in inspiration, membership, and intention. According to Wittfogel, its bourgeois character was underscored by Sun's rejection of one of the most critical elements of Marxism: the inevitability of class struggle. ...

Are there any American scholars who are embarking on this same course? Who's finding out how and WHY the United States quit using the American National System? What caused our government to turn away from the political and economic system that made our nation so prosperous in the first fifty years of its existence?

When did the U.S. federal government assume power over trade between the citizens of each individual free state? The feds were only allowed to regulate commerce between the individual free states and to make treaties for trade with foreign merchants. The original American system was designed to protect local traders. It promoted a balance between industry and agriculture and real ways to provide real loans to start-up real businesses that supplied essential local needs. List shows us what happens when a nation shuts down imperialist free trade and cheaply produced (slave labor) imports. Citizens step up and immediately begin filling the gaps. They start making and producing necessary things. They rebuild their local economy from within.

Somehow the American idea of freedom got twisted into promoting a "balance" between individual, local traders and the global free market corporate community. Is Lyndon LaRouche the only American who bases his FDR New Deal political platform on List?

Should Taiwan's success story be an inspiration to Americans living with the loss of our manufacturing and agricultural balance? There's a reason why the communitarian government wants to train everyone to get a "job." God forbid anyone here should want to open a business and provide a local product or service! How utterly absurd!