​       A report issued by a study group convened by Opportunity America and cosponsored by the American Enterprise Institute and the Brookings Institution has maintained that the political establishment of the United States has turned its back on the working class in recent decades, giving rise to a turn to the ultra-Right by the white working class.  It calls for specific measures that would raise the wages of low-waged workers.  It seeks to form a bipartisan consensus in support of these measures, involving the two establishment political parties and the corporate elite.  I have maintained that the study group seeks to rescue the political establishment from the consequences of its abandonment of the nation and the people since 1980, and that its assumptions and political objectives could not possibly enable a genuine renewal of the nation.  (See “The white working class ignored” 12/3/2018 and “The limits of bipartisanship” 12/5/2018 in the category Public Debate in the USA).
 
      The report laments the retreat from the social contract (OA/AEI/BI, 2018, 10-11), but it does not analyze the causes of the retreat.  Accordingly, it does not see that that social contract in the USA was not sustainable.  It was based in part on an arrangement between the large industrial corporations and Big Labor, in which management received exorbitantly high salaries and workers received high wages, making the prices of U.S. manufactured goods high in relation to competitors in the core and semi-periphery.  It also was based on social benefits financed by state deficit spending, which could work for a period, but ultimately the level of government deficits became too great to be sustainable.  And it was based, in addition, on the superexploitation of the neocolonized peoples of the semiperipheral and peripheral zones of the world-economy, which required increasingly high social control expenditures, as the peoples of the world rebelled and formed movements in opposition to the inequality inherent in these global structures.  When matters came to a head, the U.S. power elite abandoned its alliance with Big Labor and the people, and it took unpatriotic and anti-popular steps in defense of itself: deindustrialization, reduced taxes, reduced government social services, extorting profits from semi-peripheral and peripheral zones, and investment in financial speculation.  That it is to say, it abandoned the social contract and the popular sectors that it benefitted, when the inherent problems in the social contract became manifest. 
 
       The Opportunity America, AEI, Brookings study group, however, appears to understand none of this.  Why does it have such a limited understanding and analysis?  As a graduate student years ago, having encountered the fundamental differences in understanding between black scholars and white social scientists, which revealed the limited understanding of the latter, I became interested in epistemological questions.  How do people arrive to the understanding that they have?  Is anything approaching an objective understanding is possible?  This interest led me to a study of the cognitional theory of the Catholic philosopher Bernard Lonergan and of the epistemological method followed in practice by Marx (See McKelvey, 1991). 
 
     As a result of this investigation, I came to the conclusion that a universal understanding, affirmed as correct from a variety of cultural perspectives, is possible.  A universal understanding is not absolute or eternal, but it does have a high probability of being correct, enabling human action on its basis.  However, in order to arrive to such a universal understanding, the subject (the person seeking to understand) must place the desire to know above all other desires, including one’s economic interests.  In addition, the subject must be driven both to understand what is true and to do what is right.  Driven by a desire to understand, the subject above all must listen to others, taking seriously their understanding.  And with such a listening mode, the subject must seek personal encounter with persons from different horizons, cultures, nations, and perspectives.  Historical consciousness is a component of this, for the process includes encounter with the discourses of the past, left to us in the form of the written word.  Such listening and personal encounter leads to the discovery of relevant questions that previously were beyond consciousness, and this discovery leads to a deeper understanding, or even a transformation of understanding, moving the subject beyond the limited assumptions of a particular culture, nation, ethnic group, class, or gender.  Especially important is encountering the perspectives from below, particularly as expressed by the leaders and intellectuals of the social movements, past and present, of the exploited classes and the dominated nations and peoples.
 
       What are the implications of such a Lonerganian/Marxist epistemology for the issue at hand?  If we look at the abandonment of the social contract from the vantage point of the working class, we see that the social contract provided concrete benefits to the working class, but it could not prevent the historic national turn.  Evidently, the working class did have sufficient power to defend its interests.  At its height in 1953, union membership was only 36% of all workers (OA/AEI/BI, 2018, 63).  Many of the unions pertained to Big Labor, which did not necessarily represent the interests of the worker; indeed, there were in the 1960s democratic reform movements within the big labor organizations.   At the same time, the power elite has controlled both establishment political parties, such that the working class, either by itself or in alliance with other popular sectors, did not have a political organization to facilitate the clear and unified expression of its political will.  So effective weapons of resistance were not present at the critical moment of the early 1980s.  A workers’ party, socialist party, or people’s party with effective presence in public debate did not exist, and the big unions were ill prepared for the historic turn. 
 
        An understanding of the limited power of the working class in the early 1980s invites further questions.  Why was the power of the working class so limited after so many years of working class movements and organizations?  Did the working class organizations during the course of the twentieth century give too much emphasis to concrete gains in wages and welfare, and insufficient attention to the political power of the working class?  What efforts were made in the past to empower the working class and other popular sectors?  Addressing these relevant questions would have required study of Marxist, socialist, and working class organizations and debates in the USA, beginning with the last quarter of the nineteenth century.  If such study had been driven by a desire to understand what is true, and not to defend particular interests, it would have led to a greater understanding of the factors that led to the limited power of the working class.  Said factors include the reformist cooptation of the labor movement, supported by the accommodationist orientation of its leaders, and aided by the repression of more revolutionary elements that were seeking workers’ empowerment. 
 
       An investigation of the disempowerment of the working class by various intellectuals and leaders committed to understanding what is true and doing what is right also would have resulted in the discovery of another relevant question of global scope.  To what extent were the structures of the world-system a factor in the abandonment of the social contract by the U.S. power elite?  Addressing this question would have led to the heart of the matter, namely, the inherent unsustainability of the social contract, as noted above.  The social contract pertained only to the nations of the North, and its material foundation was based on the superexploitation of vast semiperipheral and peripheral regions of the earth.  As the superexploited peoples of the earth acquired the capacity for social movements, they generated various forms of resistance, the control or containment of which would become increasingly too costly for core governments.  In addition, the benefits of the social contract were financed partially by state deficit spending, which could not be sustained in the long term.  Viewed from a global perspective, we can see that the social contract was nothing more than a temporary response to a political challenge from below, and it benefitted a minority of the world’s population at the expense of the majority.  It could not be sustained, either economically or politically, in the long term.  It had to be abandoned, in one way or another.  In response to a growing awareness of the unsustainability of the social contract during the 1970s, the U.S. power elite responded in a form that defended and promoted its short-term interests, leaving aside considerations for the well-being of the nation or of humanity, imposing its decision on the peoples of the nation and the world.
 
     The result, however, was that the working class sensed that it had been abandoned by the political establishment of the nation.  The white working class, previously for the most part in committed alliance with the political establishment, became increasingly alienated.  Not having a more scientifically informed political alternative available to them, some have turned to the ultra-Right, generating a situation of crisis for the political establishment, which fears that it is losing control and that the nation is perhaps becoming ungovernable.
 
      In response to this situation, the members of the Opportunity America/AEI/Brookings study group respond as representatives of the political establishment, seeking to restore its political and social control through concrete concessions to the working class.  The members of the study group have not placed the desire to understand what is true and do what is right above all other desires, including preserving personal privileges or protecting the interests of the elite.  They have not encountered persons of different cultures and perspectives, leading to the discovery of relevant questions that would challenge their assumptions and transform their understandings.  As a result, they are incapable of understanding the steps necessary for a genuine renewal of the nation.

References
 
McKelvey, Charles.  1991.  Beyond Ethnocentrism:  A Reconstruction of Marx’s Concept of Science.  New York:  Greenwood Press.
​
Opportunity America/AEI/Brookings Working Class Study (OA/AEI/BI).  2018.  Work, Skills, Community: Restoring opportunity for the working class.  (Opportunity America, the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research and the Brookings Institution).

​     Yesterday, I by chance viewed part of a television program on the Arts and Entertainment Network, in which Ray Chen, an award-winning Taiwanese-Australian violinist, was explaining the need for developing our capacities for profound listening.  He noted that his mother had taught him that, if you constantly talk without listening to others, you would not be able to learn, and thus would not have anything important to say.  He also observed that it seemed to him that most people listen only superficially, just enough to identify what they take to be errors in the view of the other.

      Chen was offering practical wisdom important for the personal development of understanding and knowledge in the fields of common sense and music.  His insights parallel what I have tried to formulate for the field of historical social science, which also could be called historical political economy.  The field attained its highest stage of scientific development in the West with the work of Marx, but since the time of Marx, it has become fragmented in the universities, and the separated disciplines of philosophy, history, economics, political science, sociology, and anthropology have emerged.  As a result of its fragmentation in the universities, the evolution of the field of historical political economy has occurred in the domain of political struggles for social justice, formulated by charismatic leaders, of whom Lenin, Mao, Ho, and Fidel are the most exemplary. (See various posts in this category of Knowledge).

       I have maintained that, with respect to the development of the understanding of social justice issues, especially important is listening to voices of the social movement leaders of the colonized and neocolonized peoples of the planet, inasmuch as they have a vantage point “from below.”  However, as I have observed, such encounter with the movements of the colonized is overlooked systemically in the cultures of the North, or at least not developed beyond superficiality.  This limitation affects even the understanding and the political discourse of the Left.

      What would we learn if we were to listen carefully to the voices of the Third World revolutionary leaders?  We would arrive to important insights in two areas.  First, we would arrive to much greater understanding with respect to global political and social dynamics.  We would learn that the world-system and world-economy have been constructed on a colonial foundation of peripheralization of the economies of the world, thus converting the world’s economies into providers of cheap raw materials and purchasers of surplus manufactured goods, resulting in underdevelopment and poverty in vast regions of the world and in the economic growth of the colonizing nations.  We would learn that the colonized peoples of the world, with variation in particularities and in degrees of advancement, forged anti-colonial revolutions that sought national sovereignty and social transformation; they attained political independence but not true sovereignty, thus establishing the foundations of the neocolonial world-system.  We would learn that as the neocolonial world-system entered a sustained crisis, as a result of its having reached the geographical limits of the earth, its elites launched economic and military attacks against the peoples and nations of the earth, in violation of the imperialist rules of neocolonial domination, for which the fiction of a democratic world was necessary.  We would learn that the elite attack on the peoples in the context of systemic crisis have given rise to two serious problems, namely, a new form of terrorism that indiscriminately targets civilians, and an uncontrolled international migration to core zones.  And we would learn that some anti-colonial and anti-neocolonial revolutions, notably those in China, Vietnam, Cuba, Nicaragua, and Bolivia, have forged stable political systems and growing economies and are cooperating with one another in developing new international guidelines that could serve as the foundation of an alternative more just and sustainable world-system.  We would learn these things if we were to learn to listen, because a host of Third World political and social movement leaders, academics, intellectuals, and journalists understands them.  

     Secondly, we would arrive to appreciate the importance of the art of politics, a quality that has been exhibited by social movement leaders of the Third World.  The revolutionary leaders that were successful obtaining the support of their peoples invariably demonstrated a high capacity for appreciating the issues, slogans, and discourses that would provoke a responsive chord among the people.  In addition, they understood that the people, outraged by abuses and social injustices, possess a revolutionary spontaneity, but that the people must be led toward the necessary road.

      Cultural factors influence our capacity to listen.  The culture of the United States, for example, with its historic economic development forged by commerce, the conquest of new territories, and individual dreams of upward mobility, listening to others has not been a quality of high priority.  In contrast, for the colonized peoples of the Third World, the experience of colonialism made apparent the different ways of viewing the world among the peoples of the planet as well as the necessity for cooperation and mutual listening among humans.  Now, as the multifaceted economic, political, ecological, and cultural crisis of the world-system deepens, the need for profound listening increasingly is necessary for political stability and ecologically sustainable economic growth.

     The Trump project offers an interpretation of the history of the United States that ignores a number of political and economic factors that are necessary for understanding the ascent of the United States.  And it proposes a defense of “American values” and U.S. economic interests, ignoring the moral evaluations and demands of the majority of humanity, and ignoring the serious global problems that require the cooperation of all nations (see “The State of the Union under Trump” 2/13/2018).

     We tend today to be influenced by post-modern tendencies and to view truth as relative.  We tend to think that understandings, in both the realms of fact and value, are shaped by culture, social position, and personal experiences.  Among the bewildering variety of truth claims that exist in the world today, which have the most validity?  Out tendency is to believe that it depends on your point of view.  In accordance with this belief, we often assume that all truth claims have equal epistemological standing, and that all grand narratives unavoidably distort.  With such relativist assumptions, we have no epistemological basis for challenging the historical distortions and the moral decadence of the Trump project.  

     Not that the Trump project is a radical departure from recent and historic trends in U.S. history.  Since its establishment as an independent nation, the United States has taken a road of aggressive, ethnocentric nationalism, justifying it through ideological distortions.  It conquered the indigenous nations and peoples as well as Mexico, ignoring their rights and claims.  It built its economic wealth through commerce related to slavery, in both the U.S. South and the Caribbean islands.  It turned to imperialist policies in the twentieth century, using a variety of interventionist means to gain access to the natural resources, human labor, and markets of various regions of the world, especially Latin America, thus fueling its economic growth.  These various stages of conquest and exploitation were justified with blatant and subtle forms of racism.  Following the Second World War, the United States turned to the permanent militarization of its economy and society, accompanied by the ideological distortions of the Cold War.  And in subsequent stages, it expanded the militarization with the conservatism of Reagan, the neo-conservatism of Bush II, and the neofascism of Trump, at first justifying it with the Cold War ideology and later with the so-called War on Terrorism.

       The Left did not have an effective response to the aggressive, ethnocentric nationalism of the United States, even before relativist tendencies dulled the Left’s epistemological reflections.  With the deepening of the crisis that humanity confronts during the last forty years, the emergence of post-modern and relativist epistemological assumptions forms part of the problem.  Post-modern assumptions provide justification for personal indulgence and retreat from social responsibility, and they promote a sense of hopelessness with respect to the possibilities for the development of a more just and truly democratic world.  They undermine possibilities for the formulation of a scientifically informed grand narrative that effectively calls the people to the construction of a more responsible, just, and truly democratic nation.

      Trump does us the favor of making clearer the urgency of the situation, and thus calling us to self-critical reflection.  Can we of the Left not now see that we need to reconstruct our discourse and our strategies?

     Our reconstruction must begin at the foundations, addressing the philosophical question of how we know.  What is the basis for distinguishing what is true from what is false in both the realms of fact and value?

      As we have seen, Marxism-Leninism has taken the lead with respect to the development of scientific knowledge (see “The significance of Marx” 2/16/2018).  This legacy of the Left, unfolding on a global scale, is an important dimension of the necessary reconstruction of the Left in the United States.  With pedagogically effective methods, we must teach our people that, although the universities claim to be centers of knowledge, they have in fact developed forms of philosophical, historical, and social scientific knowledge that are fragmented and Eurocentric.  The universities, with the encouragement of their rich benefactors, have evolved in this manner in reaction to the wisdom that was emerging from the movements of the people.  The universities have effectively disseminated among our people the false epistemological claim that Marxists and Leninists are ideologues, when it fact it is the universities that have cast aside the quest for truth in the defense of particular interests, which is precisely what ideology is.

      Marxism-Leninism, as it has evolved in the Third World, provides an alternative narrative that pertains to the realms of fact and value and that provides a foundation for a universal human knowledge.  It has empirically demonstrated that the modern world-system is constructed on a foundation of colonial and neocolonial domination, and as a result, the logic of the system requires the negation of the true sovereignty of nations and the social and economic rights of the people.  Marxism-Leninism has shown, in theory and practice, that an alternative, more just, democratic, and sustainable world-system is possible and necessary (see various posts in the category Marxism-Leninism and its evolution).

      The evolution of Marxism-Leninism to this understanding has dovetailed with tendencies in Christian epistemology and theology.  Many years ago, I encountered black nationalist thought, and I could not overlook the fundamental differences in assumptions and understanding between white social scientists and black scholars.  This led me to an investigation of the problem of the social foundation of knowledge, and to the question of whether objectivity in the social sciences is possible.  In the pursuit of this question, I arrived to Fordham University, where two Jesuit priests, sociology professor Joseph Fitzpatrick and philosophy professor Gerald McCool, introduced me to the cognitional theory of Bernard Lonergan.  The eminent Jesuit scholar was investigating whether or not there was any basis for affirming the validity of Thomist philosophical and theological claims in the modern era, and this led him to an investigation of the various forms of human knowledge.  He arrived to the understanding that an objective knowledge is possible, not a knowledge that has certainty, but a form of knowledge in which claims of truth have a high probability of being correct, if the person seeking to understand were to explore all relevant questions through personal encounter with persons of different social positions and cultural horizons.  Knowledge formed in this way, although not characterized by certainty, has far greater validity than claims formulated in a form that ignores historical understandings and disregards understandings that were emerging in other cultures and societies.  True knowledge, for Lonergan, is a continually evolving understanding that transcends cultural differences, and it pertains to the realms of fact and value, that is, it includes understanding of both the true and the right (see “What is personal encounter?” 7/25/2013 and “What is cross-horizon encounter?” 7/26/2013 in the category Knowledge).

      Lonergan’s investigation of human understanding did not include study of the work of Marx.  But as Father Fitzpatrick sent me on my way, he counseled that my next step should be a study of Marx, with attention on epistemological issues.  In my subsequent study, I found that Marx had followed an epistemological method that illustrated the validity of Lonergan’s cognitional theory.  Marx systematically studied forms of knowledge that were beyond his native horizon of German philosophy, in that he obsessively studied British political economy and French socialism after his arrival in Paris in October 1843 (see “Marx illustrates cross-horizon encounter” 1/7/14 in the category Marx).  Marx gave cross-horizon encounter a class dimension: he encountered the working class, or more precisely, the social movement in Paris organized by artisans, workers, and intellectuals in defense of the working class.  Marx here discovered the key to the evolution of understanding in an integrated philosophical-historical-social science: encounter with the social movements of the dominated, taking seriously their insights and their vantage point, thereby discovering questions relevant to the issues at hand.  This epistemological foundation established by Marx’s pioneering work was ignored by the universities, who organized study in a form that constrained the evolution of knowledge of social dynamics.  Such structural limitations on understanding were consistent with the interests of the dominant class, inasmuch as understanding of the dynamics of domination and exploitation constitute the foundation for the emancipation of the people.  As has been noted, the evolution of understanding from the foundation established by Marx proceeded from the practice of revolutions in Russia, China, and the Third World, at the margins of the Western universities.

      Therefore, in our day, the alternative epistemology and political philosophy that is the foundation of the Left’s response to imperialism, neoliberalism, and neofascism must be discovered and developed through encounter with the Third World revolutions, whose key insights have been most fully and clearly articulated by their most outstanding and committed leaders.  But the Left in the North, by and large, has not done so.  How many Leftist intellectuals and activists of the North have studied the speeches and writings of Lenin, Mao, Ho, Fidel, Chávez, Correa, and Evo?  How many have sought to understand the dynamics that were shaping the achievements and setbacks of the revolutionary processes of Latin America, Asia, and Africa?

      The reconstruction of the discourse and strategies of the Left, necessary for effectively responding to emerging neofascism, must be based on a foundation of learning from the popular revolutions that have been forged by the neocolonized peoples of the earth.  The leaders and intellectuals of the movements of the neocolonized peoples constitute the vanguard of the struggle for human emancipation, as were the intellectuals and workers of the Western European working class movement in the time of Marx.

Posted March 6, 2017
​
​     All societies have grand narratives. They are constructed through the selection and organization of historic and present facts, philosophical and theological assumptions, and ethical beliefs.  They are necessary for the functional unity of the society.  Grand narratives have various degrees of consistency to actual historic facts, but regardless of their veracity, they must have credibility among society’s members.

      With the emergence of the modern nation-state, each nation developed a national grand narrative.  And since the nation-state was a central actor in the development of the modern world-system, each national grand narrative had some component that explained the place of the nation in world history and in the world-system.

     Since the 1970s, the modern world-system has entered a sustained structural crisis.  The grand narratives of the nations of the North do not recognize the global systemic crisis as such, but they are aware of its symptoms: stagnating corporate profits; financial volatility; unemployment; global poverty; global political instability; a new form of terrorism; uncontrolled international migration; and international criminal networks that traffic in drugs, arms, and persons.

     The crisis of the world-system makes indispensable national grand narratives with a scientific basis, if humanity is to respond intelligently to the global crisis, and rescue itself from chaos and possible extinction.  Mere credibility among the people in the nation is not enough.  Two additional qualities are essential: the grand narrative of each nation must see the nation in global terms, as part of the modern-world system; and it must have validity and truth value, well connected to actual historic and present reality.

      But how do we arrive to an understanding with a scientific basis?  What is the process through which opinion makers of a nation arrive to formulate insights that transcend the vantage point of a particular class, race or ethnic group, or national culture?

     Many years ago, I read that the slave understood more about the characteristics and essence of slavery than did the master.  This insight was expressed by songwriter Paul Simon in 1964: “The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls, and tenement halls.” This is the key to an epistemological moral imperative.  For all who live in positions of privilege or relative privilege, there is a moral obligation to understand the true and the right, and the key to understanding is listening to the voices from below.

      Karl Marx practiced the epistemological moral imperative in a systematic way.  Having been formed in the tradition of German philosophy and German radicalism, Marx, after moving to Paris in October 1842, encountered the movement formed by Parisian workers, artisans and intellectuals, many of which had studied idealist socialism.  At the same time, Marx obsessively studied the British science of political economy.  By 1844, Marx was beginning to write an analysis of human history and of modern capitalism that was based on a synthesis of German philosophy and British political economy, formulated from below, from the point of view of the worker (see McKelvey 1991).

        Marx’s achievement established the possibility for significant advances in understanding human societies and political-economic systems.  But these possibilities were contained by the subsequent bureaucratic organization of universities:  the fragmentation of knowledge into the disciplines of philosophy, history, economics, political science, sociology, and anthropology functioned to marginalize the work of Marx.

       In the second half of the twentieth century, when the Third World project of national and social liberation was approaching its zenith, Immanuel Wallerstein did something similar on a scale that transcended Europe.  He encountered the African nationalist movement during the 1950s and 1960s, which enabled him to understand that African nationalists looked at the world from the vantage point of the colonized, trapped in the colonial situation.  Wallerstein’s encounter with African nationalism enabled him to arrive at the insight that the Western social scientific assumption of the “society” as the unit of analysis was dysfunctional for understanding, and that historians and social scientists ought to take the “world-system” as the object of their investigation.  He proceeded describe the historical development of the modern world-system, beginning in the sixteenth century.  His work established the foundation for understanding the colonial foundations of the world-system, consistent with the vantage point of the colonized (see “Immanuel Wallerstein” 7/30/2013).

     Wallerstein, however, did not continue his encounter with Third World movements of national and social liberation.  His development came to be more influenced by French thought than by the leaders and intellectuals that were central to the development of the Third World project.  He never arrived to understand the possibilities for human emancipation that the project was seeking to formulate, in theory and in practice.  Thus, Wallerstein’s work would reflect a subtle form of Eurocentrism (see “Wallerstein: A Critique” 7/31/2013; “Wallerstein and world-systems analysis” 3/25/2014; “Wallerstein: Europe-centered or universal?” 3/27/2014).

      I arrived to appreciate the epistemological problem of Eurocentrism in the early 1970s.  At the time, I was one of a handful of students of European descent at the Center for Inner City Studies in Chicago.  Its African-American and African professors were formulating a black nationalist perspective and a colonial analysis of the modern world from the vantage point of the colonized.  I of course could not overlook the fundamental difference in assumptions and analysis between black thought and mainstream social science.  I wondered if an objective analysis of society were possible, and if we ought to recognize that there is a black historical social science that exists alongside a white social science, fragmented into distinct disciplines.

      Seeking to distance myself from the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant world that was principally responsible for the development of colonial structures in the United States, I sought to find a place in Catholic higher education.  I continued to investigate the epistemological question in a doctoral program in sociology at Fordham University, where Father Joseph Fitzpatrick and his philosopher colleague Father Gerald McCool introduced me to the work of the Catholic philosopher Bernard Lonergan.  Lonergan maintained that an objective understanding is possible, insofar as we truly desire to understand, and insofar as we move beyond the limitations of the horizons of particular cultures through a process of encounter with persons of other horizons.  In cross-horizon encounter, we take seriously the insights of others, which enables us to discover relevant questions that previously were beyond our consciousness (see “What is personal encounter?” 7/25/2013; “What is cross-horizon encounter?” 7/26/2013).

      Cross-horizon encounter is the key.  Marx was engaging in cross-horizon encounter when he encountered the Parisian working-class movement and British political economy in the 1840s, and Wallerstein was practicing cross-horizon encounter when he took seriously the African nationalist voices of the 1950s and 1960s.  Cross-horizon encounter moves the insight of Paul Simon to a more advanced level, for it establishes the epistemological moral imperative for persons who occupy positions of privilege and relative privilege in the societies of the North.  Our duty it to encounter the social movements constituted by the movements of the colonized peoples of the earth, and taking seriously their insights.

      So if the grand narratives of the North are to form part of a constructive response to the sustained structural crisis of the world-system, they must be formulated on a foundation of personal encounter with the Third World project of national and social liberation.  It is the Third World that constitutes the great majority of humanity and that has been formulating from below an integral understanding, expressing itself in theory and practice.

     The neocolonial, neoliberal and neofascist grand narratives of the nations of the North are not rooted in scientific knowledge.  They all ignore the processes of colonial and neocolonial domination, thus failing to take into account the essential condition of the great majority of people on the planet.  In ignoring empirical evidence on a significant scale, the grand narratives are limited in understanding, and they are incapable of responding to the sustained crisis of the world-system in an intelligent form.  Under their direction, the various symptoms of the global crisis will continue.

      An alternative, scientifically-based grand narrative must be formulated by the Left.  Indeed, it can only be formulated by the Left, which has historically assumed the task of defending the excluded on the basis of the moral principles formulated by the democratic revolutions of the late eighteenth century.  The European Left emerged during the course of the nineteenth century as radical thought, contrasting itself to liberalism and conservativism, and reacting to the evolution of the democratic republics toward political-economic systems controlled by and serving the interests of the bourgeoisie. The European Left emerged as a synthesis of, on the one hand, the defense of the working class and the poor, and on the other hand, a moral commitment to rights proclaimed and promised by the democratic revolution.

      The Left today must play its historic role, but with a global perspective.  The poor, the excluded, and the superexploited today are of the Third World, and they can be defended only on the basis of listening, as did Marx and Wallerstein.  Only by listening to the historic and contemporary voices of those who have been colonized can it be possible to develop a peaceful, harmonious, stable and sustainable world-system.

     The Left in the United States must reject post-modern tendencies and recognize that the difference between true and false and right and wrong can be known.  It must affirm what the Honduran activist Sara Rosales said to me a number of years ago: “Our children do not have enough beans to eat.  This is wrong, and everybody knows that it is wrong.”  It must seek to understand the true and the right through sustained encounter with the voices of below, demonstrating a persistence in seeking to understand that is equal to the determination of the peoples of the Third World in their quest for social justice.

Reference
 
McKelvey, Charles.  1991.  Beyond Ethnocentrism:  A Reconstruction of Marx’s Concept of Science.  New York:  Greenwood Press.
 
 

Posted October 5, 2016 

​    From October 1843 to August 1844, having recently arrived in Paris to serve as co-editor of a newly formed German-French journal, twenty-five-year-old Karl Marx encountered the Parisian proletarian movement.  During this time, Marx also obsessively studied the science of political economy, taking him beyond his previous doctoral study of German philosophy.  These experiences were the basis of a profound intellectual and moral conversion.  And they provided the experiential foundation for the insightful imagination of a critique of political economy from the proletarian point of view.  Beginning with the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 and continuing for the rest of his life, Marx proceeded to formulate a critique of political economy and an analysis of human history.  In doing so, he moved European scholarship beyond the limitations of a bourgeois point of view (see McKelvey 1991, especially Chapter Five, “Marx’s Intellectual Development”).

       More important than Marx’s conclusions, which necessarily were shaped by his time and social and geographical place, was his example.  He provided a model for a method of seeking to understand, a model that is particularly relevant for intellectuals and academics who pertain to relatively privileged positions in a social system.  The method involves encounter with the social movements forged from below, by the exploited, superexploited, and excluded sectors.  Marx did not formulate the method explicitly; rather, he expressed it implicitly through his writings on the proletarian point of view and by the example of the approach that he used as he sought to understand.  

     During the course of the twentieth century, the philosophy of social science would arrive to understand that knowledge of social dynamics is rooted in the social position of the person who seeks to understand. The Catholic philosopher Bernard Lonergan moved beyond this formulation.  He showed through study of human understanding in various fields that the limitations imposed by social position can be overcome through personal encounter with persons of different horizons, taking seriously the understandings of these persons.  We can reformulate Lonergan with attention to the example of Marx: persons in relatively privileged social positions can arrive to a universal understanding by encountering social movements that are formed by the excluded and exploited.

        In the 1970s, Immanuel Wallerstein, on the basis of his encounter with African nationalism in the 1960s, came to the insight that what historians and social scientists must understand is not the “society” but the “world-system.”  Taking the world-system as his unit of analysis, Wallerstein traced the historical development of the world-system from its origins in the sixteenth century to the present.  He revealed the colonial foundations of the world-system; and he recognized that the colonized have formed social movements in opposition to the world-system, although he did not systematically encounter these anti-systemic movements during the course of his career.  

     Marx, Lonergan and Wallerstein teach us a fundamental epistemological insight: knowledge of the world-system is attained through personal encounter with the movements formed by the colonized.  The knowledge that we attain through this method, which I call “cross-horizon encounter,” is not certain, because there always is a possibility that relevant questions have not been asked.  Nor is it eternal, because future economic and social development will give rise to new insights.  But it is universal, in that it does not reflect the vantage point of any particular social position, inasmuch as it takes into account relevant questions that emerge to the consciousness of persons of different social positions.  It transcends particular social position defined by one’s nations, class, ethnic group or gender.  As a universal understanding that transcends particular social position, although it is neither certain nor eternal, it represents the most advanced form of knowledge of which humanity is capable in the current stage of human economic and social development.

      With such an understanding of understanding, we can move beyond pluralism and multiculturalism.  These currents of thought rightly exposed European pretensions to universal knowledge as ethnocentrism, central to the justification of European domination of the world from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries, and of the prevailing structures of exploitation that emerged from this domination. But pluralism and multiculturalism left in doubt the possibility of affirming the true and the right as applied to all.  Our people have been ill at ease with its implicit moral relativism, especially with its most extreme form, post-modernism.  So the people fight back, seeking to regain a more secure world in which everyone understands the difference between right and wrong, even if we do not always adhere to it.  

      Like the peoples of the North, the peoples of the Third World were never comfortable with an implicit moral relativism.  As Sara Rosales, founder of a women’s organization in Honduras, said to me in 1996, “Our children do not have enough beans to eat.  This is wrong, and everybody knows that it is wrong.”

     As the Third World project evolved from 1955 to the present, it reflected a practical commitment to the proposition that there are universal truths.  The Third World project formulated principles that ought to guide humanity, based on the self-evident truth that colonial domination has no moral justification, and the equally self-evident truth that no social system can ignore human needs.  These principles that ought to guide humanity include: all nations have a right to sovereignty; all peoples have the right to self-determination; the powerful nations should not interfere in the affairs of the nations of the world; all persons have social and economic rights, including access to nutrition, shelter, security from violence, health care, education and cultural formation; and the state plays an important role in protecting the sovereignty of the nation and the rights of persons.

     For those of us who are academics and intellectuals of the United States, the important contributions of Marx, Lonergan and Wallersein form part of our intellectual legacy, and the dignified behavior of Third World charismatic leaders is part of our global reality.  Our intellectual legacy and the powerful example of the colonized provide a context that makes it possible for us to move social scientific and historical knowledge beyond Eurocentrism.  They enable us to do something like what Marx did, namely, encounter the Third World movement of national and social liberation, and on this basis, formulate a critique of the capitalist world-economy and human history from a vantage point that takes into account the insights of the colonized.

      Such intellectual work, seeking a truly universal understanding, must be tied to practice.  Our goal is to educate our people, so that leaders will emerge among them, leaders who can point to a new direction for our nation and our people, casting aside imperialism and neoliberalism, envisioning a state that acts decisively in defense of the needs of the people, and that works in cooperation with other nations in creating a just, democratic and sustainable world-system.

       Such intellectual work tied to political practice must reject, ignore or get around the rules and assumptions of the bureaucratized university, which has been shaped to serve the corporate class, imperialism, and the national security state.  It requires fidelity to truth and social justice, sustained by the hope that, regardless of what sanctions are applied, one will endure and will continue to develop the capacity for principled intellectual work in service of human need.

      In following fidelity rather than bureaucracy, intellectuals can find freedom to study the various Third World revolutions and their charismatic leaders.  Discovering relevant questions through encounter with the charismatic leaders and national and social liberation movements of the Third World, intellectuals of the North can acquire the capacity to move beyond the theories and assumptions of the societies of the North, incorporating into their understanding the experiences of the Third World revolutions, which constitutes an important part of the experience of humanity.  

     Such cross-horizon encounter can enable intellectuals of the United States to defend the nation, by debunking the false dominant narrative, and formulating and disseminating an alternative narrative that sees the strengths and limitations of the democratic quest of US popular movements, and that understands the search for democracy in the United States as one example of a universal human thirst for social justice.  

       Such is the basic method of intellectuals in privileged social positions in the nations of the core.  For the colonized peoples, it is a question of being organically tied to the movements of one’s own people, ignoring the rules of the bureaucratized university, imposed by colonizer.  Such organic connection of intellectuals of the colonized world includes people of color in the United States.  

     A powerful example of intellectual work tied to the needs of the African-American community is the life and work of Jacob Carruthers, who was my academic adviser in the early 1970s at the Center for Inner City Studies in Chicago, today known as the Carruthers Center for Inner City Studies.  Before being called to the Center to teach political theory and serve as assistant director, Jake spent ten years working in the US Postal Service, a punishment for his previous violation of the rules of the university.  I have never forgotten Jake’s way of calling us to fidelity to our mission as intellectuals in service of humanity: “You always have to be ready to go back to the post office.” 

References
 
McKelvey, Charles.  1991.  Beyond Ethnocentrism:  A Reconstruction of Marx’s Concept of Science.  New York:  Greenwood Press. 

Posted August 6, 2015

    In response to my critique of Harry Targ’s blog post (see “Role of US intellectuals", Part I), Cliff DuRand wrote:

I am in agreement that, as persons committed to a fully democratic and just society, we US intellectuals of the Left should criticize Obama and all twentieth century presidents for the continuous application of imperialist policies, which have been integral to the development and maintenance of the neocolonial world-system.  I have written several blog posts on US imperialism and neocolonialism, including a post on April 22 on “The imperialist discourse of Obama.”  (See View from the South: Imperialism and View from the South: Neocolonialism).

     But in addition to critiques of the dominating structures of the world-system, we intellectuals of the Left should critically reflect on our perspectives.  I believe that the discourse of the Left is an important factor in our limited influence, and that we need to reconstruct our discourse on the basis of the assumptions and values of the revolutionary movements of the Third World.  

     I was critical of a paragraph that Harry wrote, because it seemed to reflect a tendency in the US Left to assume that we know what should be done around the world.  But we in the US Left really do not have the credentials that would qualify us to know what courses of action Third World revolutionary governments should take.   Although progressive popular movements in the United States have registered impressive gains in making the nation more democratic, they have accomplished far less than popular movements in Cuba, Latin America and Southeast Asia.  The Cuban movement, for example, managed to overcome internal divisions and to take control of the government, and to maintain control of the political, economic and cultural structures of the nation for more than fifty years, in spite of the hostility of its powerful neighbor to the north.  We progressives in the United States have not accomplished anything close to this.  In this situation, there are fundamental questions that we should ask: How did the Cuban popular movement do it?  What are lessons that we can learn from their achievements?  How can we apply these lessons to our reality?  I think that we should do a lot less suggesting concerning what they should do, and much more listening and learning.

     How do we arrive at an understanding of what should be done or what the characteristics of a just society are?  The most insightful ideas emerge from popular movements forged from below, fueled by a collective experiential understanding of the structures of domination and exploitation, and by a tremendous thirst for social justice.  The yearnings and spontaneous action of the people establish fertile ground for the nurturing of leaders and intellectuals, and charismatic leaders who are both leaders and intellectuals.  This process of popular movement from below in response to domination is the source of advances in human understanding with respect to the dynamics of domination and the characteristics of a just society.

     We relatively privileged intellectuals of the middle class of core nations can advance our understanding by encounter with the popular movements from below, listening to the teachings of their charismatic leaders, and carefully observing their dynamics and strategies.  Our understanding emerges from this continuous observation of and listening to the movement unfolding from below.  In arriving at an understanding of imperialism and neocolonialism, for example, my thinking has been shaped by years of encounter with organic intellectuals of the Third World, specifically the African-American community, Africa, Central America, and Cuba.  I believe that listening to the voices of the Third World, seeking thereby to deepen our insight, is central to advances in understanding in the political culture of the North.

     Accordingly, I believe that we should not be oriented to suggesting to the movements of the South what they ought to be doing.  In more than forty years of encounter with organic intellectuals of the Third World, I have arrived at the conclusion that they have a more advanced understanding than we do.  In these years of encounter seeking understanding, I have not forgotten the criticism of white liberal paternalism by African-Americans during the period 1966-72, and I have sought to listen and learn, rather than to instruct.

      When we do not sufficiently encounter Third World revolutionary movements, we do not fully understand the structures of domination nor the necessary processes and strategies for their democratic transformation.  This severely limits our capacity to politically act effectively.  Our people are confused, manipulated by the ideological distortions of the elite and their puppets; but the people know enough to know that we intellectuals of the Left do not know.  We support revolutions in other lands, without seeking to develop one in our own nation.  We are content to “speak truth to power” on behalf of the people, rather than seeking to take power in the name of the people.  Of course, our support for revolutions in other lands is critical; we offer criticisms of revolutionary projects in other nations on the basis of abstract concepts that are informed by our cultural and intellectual context and that are disconnected from real social movement.

     I have not forgotten the teachings of Malcolm X, who counseled sincere whites to dedicate themselves to the political education of white society.  Our task as US intellectuals, on the basis of the understanding that we form through encounter, is to strive to create the subjective conditions that would make possible the emergence of a revolutionary popular movement in the United States that would seek to take power in the name of the people and that would cooperate with the nations and movements of the world in the creation of a more just, democratic and sustainable world-system.  This is not an easy task, but it is our duty; with the privilege to study, comes obligation.


Key words: Cuba, socialism, revolution, intellectuals

July 21, 2014

​     In response to my post of July 18 (“China and the alternative world-system”), Alan Spector has posted the following message in the Progressive and Critical Sociologist Network discussion list.

     In using the phrase “commercial partner,” I was referring to the government of a nation that signed a commercial agreement with China.  Most of the governments of Africa and Asia do not represent superexploited workers; rather, they represent the national bourgeoisie or a sector of it, such as the landed estate bourgeoisie, and they often represent the interests of international capital.  This reality, inherent in the neocolonial situation, is being challenged by the Third World popular revolution that has emerged with a renewed force since 1995.

     China does not use coercive measures, the threat of force or sanctions to induce governments to accept commercial agreements, and for this reason, Cuban scholars tend not to view China as an emerging imperialist power, even though some of these agreements, particularly with respect to Africa, are in opposition to the interests of workers and to the autonomy of the nation.  Certainly, neocolonized nations are not truly independent, and the neocolonial situation is itself coercive; but China takes no particular aggressive action, and in this respect, it departs from the conduct of the global powers, which also have historic responsibility for the establishment of the neocolonial world-system.  At the same time, China has increasingly moved toward the signing of agreements with progressive governments in Latin America that are controlled by popular sectors or a coalition of forces that include the popular sectors, agreements which have positive consequence for the people and for national development.  Such cooperation by China with progressive and Left governments contrasts sharply with the hostility of the United States and Western Europe toward these governments, and for this reason, China is held in high regard by the popular movement in Latin America.

       I take the notion of states as central actors in the modern world-system from the world-systems perspective of Immanuel Wallerstein, which was formulated in the 1970s on the basis of Wallerstein’s personal encounter with the African nationalist movements of the 1960s (see “Immanuel Wallerstein” 7/30/2013; “Wallerstein: A Critique” 7/31/0213; “Wallerstein and world-systems analysis” 3/25/2014). The idea makes a great deal of sense from the Third World perspective, inasmuch as states were the principal actors in the imposition of colonialism and neocolonialism; and to the extent that Third World movements have been able to reduce the effects of colonialism and neocolonialism, or to transform the colonial reality into a more democratic situation, it was accomplished by national liberation movements that took control of governments and implemented alternative policies.  So in the modern world-system, states have been central actors in domination and liberation.

       When we take the modern world-system as our unit of analysis and seek to understand its origin and development, we arrive at the understanding not only that nation-states are the principal actors in the world-system, but also that there is a fundamental division between colonizing and colonized nation-states (see “Overcoming the colonial denial” 7/29/2013; and “Dialectic of domination and development” 10/30/2013).  And we see that this colonial divide effects the character of exploitation.  In the colonial situation, the workers are not only exploited in Marx’s sense, receiving wages that are less than the value of the products that they produce; but they also are “superexploited,” receiving less than what is necessary for life (“Unequal exchange” 8/5/2013).  In contrast, in the core region of the world economy, where colonizing nations are located, workers were superexploited during an earlier phase, but as the capitalist world-economy developed, the capitalist class was able to utilize profits from the exploitation of the colonies to make concessions to workers’ movements in the core, thus creating a situation in which core workers, for the most part, are exploited but not superexploited (see “The modern world-economy” 8/2/2013).  The colonial divide also created a difference with respect to the characteristics of social movements.  In the core, the first movements to emerge were formed by workers, artisans, and intellectuals tied to them, leading Marx to formulate the concept of the proletarian vanguard (“Marx on the revolutionary proletariat” 1/14/14).  But in the colonies, the movements from the outset were formed by multiple classes seeking independence from colonial rule in addition to the protection of the social and economic rights of the people, as was illustrated in the Vietnamese Revolution (see ““Ho reformulates Lenin” 5/7/2014).  These national liberation movements were able to attain political independence, but the economic function of labor in providing superexploited labor was preserved in most of the newly independent nations, creating a global neocolonial situation (see “The characteristics of neocolonialism” 9/16/2013). 

      Recognizing the role of the nation-state as the principal actor of the modern world-system in no sense involves overlooking class division in the colony or the neocolonized nation.  Class divisions are central to the dynamics of colonies and neocolonies, and they are the principal factor in shaping the action of states.  The national bourgeoisie typically is composed of an estate bourgeoisie dedicated to the export of agricultural products to the core; and an emerging national industrial bourgeoisie tied to the domestic market.  Mining and banking are generally under foreign ownership, but national ownership also exists in these sectors.  The popular classes include the petit bourgeoisie, industrial workers, artisans, agricultural workers, peasants, and the lumpenproletariat.  During the independence struggle, the popular classes and the national bourgeoisie are allies; but when political independence is attained, their opposed interests become manifest. As the Cuban scholar Jesús Arboleya has noted, during the struggle for independence, the national bourgeoisie represents the interests of the emerging nation before the colonial power; but once independence is attained, the national bourgeoisie represents the interests of the former colonial power within the newly independent nation.  In most cases, the national bourgeoisie controls the “independent” government of the neocolony, and it governs in accordance with its interests and the imperialist interests of the global powers. 

     These social dynamics are generally understood by Third World intellectuals tied to popular social movements.  Knowledge of social dynamics is rooted in social position, and what Third World intellectuals are teaching us is the possibility of combining the vantage point of the worker and the vantage point of the colonized.

     Popular revolutions in the Third World reached an earlier zenith in the 1960s, and since 1995, they have experienced renewal and have reached their most advanced stage.  They seek to take control of governments and to govern in defense of the popular classes and sectors.  When popular revolutions have succeeded in taking control of the state, they typically have engaged in an ideological attack against the national bourgeoisie, accusing it of betraying the nation by virtue of its complicity with imperialism.  As Hugo Chávez would say of the Venezuelan bourgeoisie after the triumph of the popular revolution in Venezuela, “They were on their knees, there is no other way to say it, they were on their knees before the imperial power.” 

     The Third World popular revolutions are anti-imperialist revolutions, seeking to abolish neocolonialism; and they are class revolutions, seeking to dislodge the national bourgeoisie from power and to place the state under the control of delegates of the people, who are charged to govern in defense of the interests and the needs of the people.  The Third World popular revolutions are at the vanguard of the global socialist revolution; they are redefining the meaning of socialism, and they are making significant contributions to the evolution of Marxist-Leninist theory and practice. 

      Recognizing the important role of Third World popular revolutions in constructing an alternative to the neocolonial world-system does not imply support for repressive Third World governments.  Repression is normal in the neocolonial situation, for in representing the interests of the national bourgeoisie and international capital, Third World governments must repress popular movements.  The great majority of repressive Third World governments have been allies of imperialism. The Third World popular revolution seeks to displace them with governments that defend popular interests and needs, and that therefore do not have need of repression.  When in power, Third World popular revolutions have developed structures of popular democracy and/or representative democracy, and have succeeded in ending repression and establishing citizen participation.  The global Third World popular revolution does not support Third World governments that repress popular movements, even when such governments have anti-imperialist dimensions.

Key words:  Third World, revolution, colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism, democracy, national liberation, sovereignty, self-determination, socialism, Marxism, Leninism, Cuba, Latin America, world-system, world-economy, development, underdevelopment, colonial, neocolonial, blog Third World perspective, China, world-systems perspective

Posted March 31, 2014

​     Following Marx, we can understand ideology as the distortion of reality in defense of the particular interests of the wealthy and the powerful (Lorrain 1983:25-30, 1979:46-52; Althusser 1976:55-56, 154-56; Schaff 1976:137-38).  Ideology is integral to world-systems.  Inasmuch as they are formed through conquest and are sustained through the forced appropriation of goods produced by the conquered peoples, world-systems must generate ideologies that justify conquest and the unequal distribution of goods and that legitimate structures of domination.

      In 2004, Wallerstein gave a series of three lectures at St. John’s College of the University of British Columbia on the theme of “European universalism.”  His words to begin the lectures succinctly express the role of conquest in the the establishment of the modern world-system, the necessity of ideology to legitimate it, and the formulation of an ideology that pretends to represent universal human values.

     The Spanish conquest of the indigenous peoples of America during the sixteenth century was justified on the grounds that the indigenous peoples were “barbaric” and uneducated, and that the Spanish conquest and the Christianization of the indigenous peoples were bringing to an end their barbaric practices.  During the nineteenth century, the process of secularization established the separation of religious claims from politics and public discourse.  This made necessary different language, and thus European colonial domination of Africa and Asia was justified on the grounds that the European powers were undertaking a civilizing mission (Wallerstein 2006:2-11). 

     During the period 1945-70, anti-colonial movements attained the political independence of the European colonies in Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean, thus establishing as a principle the right of sovereignty of all nations, including the newly independent nations formed from the colonies by the colonized.  But just as the world embraced this principle, there emerged a new emphasis on human rights in world politics, in which accusations of human rights violations in particular nations came to be used as justifications for interventions in these nations, interventions that functioned to sustain the neocolonial world-system (Wallerstein 2006:16-25).  

            Thus the right, and indeed the duty, of European nations to conquer and dominate other lands and peoples were central to the ideology of the world-system during the colonial area.  It was presumed that Europeans were superior, because they were Christians or more civilized.  When anti-colonial movements formed by the colonized made necessary a transition to neocolonialism, adjustments were made in the political and cultural components of the world-system.  On the ideological plane, it was now presumed that Europeans were superior because they were more democratic. It was believed, and is believed, that Europeans have led the world in the establishment of democratic institutions, and their more advanced understanding and practices endows them with the authority to make judgments concerning the political institutions of the formerly colonized and/or peripheralized peoples.

      Wallerstein maintains that in the history of the modern world-system, it has been assumed that the values that justified conquest and intervention were universal ones.  But in actuality these supposedly universal values have been “the social creation of the dominant strata in a particular world-system;” they form “a set of doctrines and ethical views that derive from a European context,” even though they “aspire to be, or are presented as, global universal values” (2006:27).

      The partial and ethnocentric nature of the supposedly universal values proclaimed by world-system ideology is illustrated with respect to human rights.  Questions of human rights are evaluated on a standard of representative democracy developed in Western Europe and the United States, ignoring alternative forms of democracy that necessarily emerge in the context of the colonial situation, in which neocolonized nations are seeking autonomous development and are striving to establish the protection of the social and economic rights of the people in response to the legacy of underdevelopment, and they are required to move forward in a context shaped by various forms of intervention by neocolonial powers.  In the colonial situation, the unity and the political education of the people, along with protective measures against the interventionist maneuvers of the neocolonial powers, are necessary.  Thus there tend to emerge single political parties led by vanguards and charismatic leaders, popular councils, popular election of delegates, and political control of the mass media.  These alternative structures of popular democracy that emerge in an alternative social, economic, and political context are assumed to be violations of human rights, simply by virtue of their difference from the structures of representative democracy developed in Europe and the European settler societies.  Such cultural myopia is understandable, inasmuch as the purpose is not to stimulate global reflection on the meaning of democracy, but to legitimate interventions in countries that seek true independence, with the intention of maintaining neocolonial control of the nations of the world.  In short, what occurs is a manipulation of the issue of human rights in order to justify intervention.  It no doubt is more sophisticated than the simplistic claim that the colonized are uncivilized, but it has the same ideological agenda, and it is rooted in the same assumption of European superiority.

      For Wallerstein, the supposedly universal values that have justified interventions in the various stages in the development of the world-system are a “partial and distorted universalism” that is a “universalism of the powerful.”  Wallerstein calls it “‘European universalism’ because it has been put forward by pan-European leaders and intellectuals in their quest to pursue the interests of the dominant strata of the modern world-system” (2006:xii).

     Wallerstein seeks a “genuine universalism” or a “universal universalism,” which we will discuss in subsequent posts.


References

Althusser, Louis.  1976.  Essays in Self-Criticism.  London:  New Left Books. 

Lorrain, Jorge.  1979.  The Concept of Ideology.  Athens:  University of Georgia Press. 

__________.  1983.  Marxism and Ideology.  Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press.

Schaff, Adam.  1976.  History and Truth.  New York: Pergamon Press.

Wallerstein, Immanuel.  2006.  European Universalism: The Rhetoric of Power.  New York: The New Press.

Key words: Third World, revolution, colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism, democracy, national liberation, sovereignty, self-determination, socialism, Marxism, Leninism, Cuba, Latin America, world-system, world-economy, development, underdevelopment, colonial, neocolonial, blog Third World perspective, Wallerstein, universalism, ethnocentrism, ideology, domination

Posted April 1, 2014

​     In response to the ideological distortions that function to legitimate world-system structures of domination (see “European universalism” 3/31/2014), Wallerstein maintains that social scientists and historians must seek a genuine universalism (2006:79-84).

        There are, however, major obstacles to overcome.  Among them are the structures of the modern university, which emerged during the nineteenth century.  The modern university is “a bureaucratic institution, with fulltime paid faculty, some kind of centralized decision making about educational matters, and for the most part full-time students.  Instead of curriculum being organized around professors, it is now organized within departmental structures, which offer clear paths to obtaining degrees, which in turn serve as social credentials” (Wallerstein 2006:59-60).

        The departmental organization of the bureaucratized university is dysfunctional for understanding.  Most problematic is the division between science and philosophy, which divides the quest for the truth from the quest for the good, a division unique to the modern West.  In addition, the various disciplinary boundaries separating history, economics, political science and anthropology divide areas that are interconnected.  They emerged because they were integral to a microscopic approach in the three nomothetic social sciences and an ideographic particularism in history and anthropology.  Both microscopic positivism and particularism are functional, inasmuch as they leave unchallenged the fundamental assumptions and structures of the world-system.  Social science emerged as a response to the threat posed by the political demands of workers, artisans, peasants, and migrants.  It functioned as a tool to enable competent and meritorious representatives of the intellectual class to manage change in accordance with the middle pace of change that was the liberal road, thus forging a link between social science and the dominant liberal ideology of the world system.  Some social scientists were radicals, but they tended to accept the premise of rationality as the foundation of social science, without reflecting on the implications of Weber’s distinction between formal and substantive rationality.  In addition, rooted in a division of the world into the West, the so-called non-Western high civilizations, and the so-called primitive peoples, Western knowledge and universities continue to face the challenge of Eurocentrism (Wallerstein 2006:61-65; 1999a:168-84; 1999b:205-12; 1999c:246-47; 1999d:145-47).

      The revolution of the 1960s critiqued the epistemological assumptions of science and social science, stimulating many historians, social scientists, and philosophers to move beyond the disciplinary boundaries and to search for the true and the good through alternative epistemological assumptions.  But they have done so in a context in which the dysfunctional organization of the fields of knowledge remains institutionally strong (Wallerstein 1999b:246), thus preventing the emergence of a new epistemological consensus.

      In light of the increasingly limited resources of universities, it is possible that knowledge will be reorganized by ministries of education and university administrations, seeking to reduce costs.  Far better, Wallerstein maintains, would be the reorganization from below by social scientists.  He proposes that:

     Wallerstein further maintains that, in order to accomplish this reorganization, historical social science must become a global enterprise.  There must be a fundamental reorientation by social scientists, who are concentrated in the core nations of the North.  “It is not a matter of inviting a few more social scientists from Asia or eastern Europe or Latin America to a colloquium or to teach in a Western university. . . .  It requires that Western scholars, whether they are accomplished scientists or graduate students, enter into contact with the rest of the world, less to teach than to learn.  It requires that they feel that they have something to learn. . . .  It requires, in short, a genuine social transformation of world social science” (2004:165).

    Moreover, he suggests that the reorganization of the university requires a broader social revolution:  “At the most fundamental level, a transformation of the world of knowledge is intrinsically linked to the process of transformation of the world-system itself” (2004:165).

    We will discuss the implications of these proposals in the next post.


References

Wallerstein, Immanuel.  1999a.  “Eurocentrism and its Avatars: The Dilemmas of Social Science” in The End of the World as We Know It:  Social Science for the Twenty-First Century.  Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press.  [Keynote address at the International Sociological Association´s East Asian regional colloquium, “The Future of Sociology in East Asia,” November 22-23, 1996, Seoul, Korea].

__________.  1999b.  “Social Science and the Quest for a Just Society” in The End of the World as We Know It:  Social Science for the Twenty-First Century.  Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press. [Opening lecture, Social Science Study-Day 1996, Netherlands Universities Institute for Coordination of Research in Social Sciences, April 11, 1996].

__________.  1999c.  “The Heritage of Sociology, the Promise of Social Science” in The End of the World as We Know It:  Social Science for the Twenty-First Century.  Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press. [Presidential address, Fourteenth World Congress of Sociology, Montreal, July 26, 1998].

__________.  1999d.  “Social Science and Contemporary Society: The Vanishing Guarantees of Rationality” in  The End of the World as We Know It:  Social Science for the Twenty-First Century.  Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press.  [Inaugural Address, International Colloquium of the Italian Association of Sociology, Palermo, October 26-28, 1995].

__________.  2004.  “From Sociology to Historical Social Science” in The Uncertainties of Knowledge.  Philadelphia: Temple University Press.  [Originally published in British Journal of Sociology 51, no. 1, Jan.-Mar. 2000:25-35].

__________.  2006.  European Universalism: The Rhetoric of Power.  New York: The New Press.


Key words: Third World, revolution, colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism, democracy, national liberation, sovereignty, self-determination, socialism, Marxism, Leninism, Cuba, Latin America, world-system, world-economy, development, underdevelopment, colonial, neocolonial, blog Third World perspective, Wallerstein, world-systems analysis, historical social science

Posted April 2, 2014

​   We have seen that Wallerstein calls for the reorganization of history and the social sciences into a single enterprise that he suggests calling historical social science.  I concur that we need to reunify history and the social sciences.  The divisions of the disciplines; including the separation of the past from the present, of political and economic institutions from each other and from culture, and of different nations and regions of the world; are dysfunctional for understanding the modern world-system, that is, the world in which we live.

       In addition, the development of historical social science must include reflections on philosophical questions.  First, it must include efforts to understand the good.  As Wallerstein has noted, one of the unfortunate consequences of the development of knowledge in the modern West has been its separation of the search for the true from the search for the good (2004:71; 2006:63).  Secondly, it must include epistemological reflection, a search for an understanding of understanding itself, a formulation of methodological guidelines for arriving at understanding.  Wallerstein also has expressed this need for methodological guidelines (2004:42).  As a result, I like to call the enterprise that we need to create “philosophical historical social science.”

     Moreover, the philosophical historical social science that we need to create must be universal, that is, it must be affirmed as valid by the peoples and movements of the world.  I used to call this “objectivity,” but objectivity can imply an understanding that is eternal and characterized by certainty, and the universality that I have in mind has neither.  A universal understanding is not eternal, because new developments in theory and in reality can lead to a modification or a reformulation, and because we are describing and analyzing a reality that itself is evolving.  And we cannot know with certainty that a universal understanding is correct, because there may be relevant questions that we have not thought to ask.  But a universal understanding, in being affirmed as correct by the peoples and movements of the world, has a high probability of being correct.  Thus, universal knowledge is an evolving knowledge, and it is the most advanced expression of which humans, seeking common understanding in solidarity, are capable in a particular stage in human economic and cultural development.  Universal knowledge in this evolving sense, which is neither eternal nor certain, but which provides a reasoned foundation for human action, is both possible and necessary in the present historic moment, in which we confront the terminal structural crisis of the world-system.  Therefore, inasmuch as the enterprise that we need to create seeks universal understanding of the true, the right, and the good, I like to call it “universal philosophical historical social science.”

      The formation of a universal philosophical historical social science is not an idealistic hope.  It is in fact being formed today by intellectuals, academics, and charismatic leaders of the Third World movements for a more just and democratic world-system.  I will explore this further in subsequent posts.  For the moment I focus on method.

       The development of a universal philosophical historical social science requires different methods for intellectuals and academics of the North and the South.  For intellectuals of the South, it requires ties and commitments to the popular movements, leaving aside the assumptions, beliefs, and practices of higher education in the North, in spite of the prestige and career opportunities associated with higher education in the North.  For intellectuals of the North, it requires cross-horizon encounter with the movements of the Third World, in spite of the pressures from the bureaucratized universities and the prevailing cultural premises of the North to not take seriously the understandings of the true and the good being formulated by the Third World movements, their intellectuals, and their charismatic leaders (see “What is personal encounter?” 7/25/2013; “What is cross-horizon encounter?” 7/26/2013; “Overcoming the colonial denial” 7/29/2013; “Wallerstein and world-systems analysis” 3/25/2014).

     In formulating the concept of cross-horizon encounter, I have drawn upon the Catholic philosopher Bernard Lonergan.  Lonergan’s cognitional theory addressed the question of certainty, one of the epistemological issues emerging from the evolution from Newtonian physics to quantum mechanics and relativity.  Lonergan’s basic question was: How do we know what we know?  In Insight (1958), Lonergan reviews the various branches of human knowledge, including mathematics, science and common sense, in order to address this question.  He maintains that what is common to all branches of knowledge is that they address relevant questions.  In addressing relevant questions, the subject (the person with a desire to understand) can experience that the answers to the questions are reinforcing one another.  Thus the subject is aware that the formulation, which by now may have gone through various modifications or even reformulations, has a high probability of being correct.  Lonergan thus arrives at a definition of objective knowledge: knowledge is objective when the subject knows that there is a high probability that the formulation is correct.  Lonergan recognizes that there may be further relevant questions that future discoveries, events, and development could provoke.  Thus, knowledge is never certain.  But an insight can have a high probability of being correct. 

     There is the problem of ethnocentrism, in which people of a particular ethnic group or culture may experience a convergence of answers to questions, but they have not addressed relevant questions that have occurred to people in other cultures.  Although Lonergan does not use the term “ethnocentrism,” he implicitly addresses the issue in Method in Theology (1973), where he formulates the concepts of “personal encounter” and “horizon.”  He maintains that the lack of awareness of relevant questions by the subject can be overcome through personal encounter with persons of other horizons, where personal encounter involves meeting persons and taking seriously their understandings; and where horizon refers to the cultural boundaries that shape the limits of consciousness. 

     I take Lonergan’s cognitional theory to be of pivotal importance for universal philosophical historical social science.  It addresses the issue of ethnocentrism, by establishing a fundamental method for overcoming it: cross-horizon encounter.  It addresses the issue of certainty, through a epistemological understanding that provides us with a reasonable middle ground between, on the one hand, the absolute certainty that in pre-modern world-systems was established by revelation and in modernity was established by Newton’s laws; and on the other hand, a radical relativism that asserts that there is no possible basis for knowing the truth, that all is a matter of interpretation, and interpretations are relative to the person and to the social position of the person. 

     I view these notions taken from Lonergan as being of significance not only for addressing the issue of cultural differences in human understanding, but also addressing the issue of the power differentials among the various cultures of the world-system.  They imply a methodological guideline for the powerful and the privileged (the upper class) as well as the relatively privileged (the middle class of the core):  seek personal encounter with persons from the dominated, exploited and oppressed classes and nations.  More than a methodological guideline for philosophers, historians, and social scientists, it is a moral imperative for all who desire to understand, and particularly if they desire to understand issues related to inequalities in the world-system. 

     Taking into account that the point of view of the dominated is most clearly formulated in the social movements that they have formed, we arrive at the formulation that we intellectuals of the North must seek personal encounter with the social movements formed by the dominated, if we desire to understand.  This applies to any dominated class, group, or sector.  But of course of particular importance for today is encounter with the revolutionary Third World national liberation movements of the twentieth century and today, because these social movements have been constructing in theory and in practice an alternative world system.

       I view cross-horizon encounter with the social movements of the dominated as a methodological guideline for universal philosophical historical social science.  Does it seem like too much?  It only appears to be so, because we in the North are so isolated from events in the Third World, where they are constructing an alternative world-system, including its values and its epistemological consensus.  But this isolation increasingly will be undermined by the world around us, particularly by the deepening structural crisis of the world-system and by the emergence from below of alternative political-economic institutions, values, and epistemological premises.

References

Lonergan, Bernard.  1958.  Insight.  New York:  Philosophical Library.

__________.  1973.  Method in Theology, 2nd edition.  New York:  Herder and Herder.

McKelvey, Charles.  1991.  “The Cognitional Theory of Bernard Lonergan” in McKelvey, Beyond Ethnocentrism:  A Reconstruction of Marx’s Concept of Science, Pp. 127-52.  New York:  Greenwood Press. 

Wallerstein, Immanuel.  2004.  The Uncertainties of Knowledge.  Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

__________.  2006.  European Universalism: The Rhetoric of Power.  New York: The New Press.

Key words: Third World, revolution, colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism, democracy, national liberation, sovereignty, self-determination, socialism, Marxism, Leninism, Cuba, Latin America, world-system, world-economy, development, underdevelopment, colonial, neocolonial, blog Third World perspective, Wallerstein, world-systems analysis, historical social science, Lonergan, cross-horizon encounter