The struggle to take back our democracy within the United States will not and cannot succeed unless we can establish a global solution in the form of a global democratic social contract. The U.S. military has a global imperial reach in the service of global transnational corporations located within the U.S. Even if a populist movement were able to reclaim democratic rights and institutions within the U.S., the system of global imperial exploitation of people and nature would not likely change. This imperial system was in place long before Neoliberal ideology was invented and, as sociologist Immanuel Wallerstein has shown, has long been integral to the modern world system itself. [11] Impending climate collapse and the very real threat of nuclear holocaust will continue to sweep humanity toward planetary apocalypse unless we establish a global social contract in the near future.
Our struggle must be simultaneously at the local and global levels. We must work to establish a popular movement within the U.S. directed toward reclaiming legitimate democratic government, and we must simultaneously work toward establishing legitimate democratic government for the Earth. Our fate is not discontinuous with the fate of all humanity. All persons and societies are linked together in the 21st century, and the fate of the Earth itself hangs in the balance. We need to promote the Earth Constitution in every venue, both as a model for the kind of democratic Earth we want, and as the most viable option for achieving a decent planetary society. If we are fighting, as progressives, for 'all' within the United States, then we must begin to really mean 'all' when we say 'all'.
(Glen T. Martin is professor of philosophy and chair of the Program in Peace Studies at Radford University in Virginia. He is also president of the World Constitution and Parliament Association (WCPA). His website is www.radford.edu/gmartin.)
Notes:
[1] Brown, Ellen Hodgson (2007). Web of Debt: The Shocking Truth about Our Money System. Baton Rouge, Louisiana: Third Millennium Press.
[2] Green, Thomas Hill (1964). Political Theory. John R. Rodman, Ed. New York: Meredith Press, p. 53.
[3] Finnis, John (1980). Natural Law and Natural Rights. Oxford: Clarendon Press, pp. 154-55.
[4] Whitehead, John (2013). A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State. New York: Select Books.
[5] Giroux, Henry (2014). Neoliberalism's War on Higher Education. Published on Truthout at http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/23306-neoliberalisms-war-on-democracy.
[6] Korten, David (2001). When Corporations Rule the World. Second Edition. Bloomfield, CT: Kumarian Press.
[7] Chossudovsky, Michel (1999). The Globalization of Poverty: Impacts of IMF and World Bank Reforms. London: Zed Books LTD.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
6
5
3
