Evolution of a Millennium

...Meanwhile, the bourgeoisie pursued its own answer to the pressing issue of glut: imperialism...

...He was using "political" in the Greek sense, derived from the word polis, meaning "community...

...For the serfs, the three necessities of life—food clothing and shelter— were always at hand, barring natural disasters or war...

...Some historians see the process that marked the beginning of Europe's ascendancy as having begun in the year 1000, when the underpopulated, underdeveloped, uncultured, unorganized backwater was just starting to emerge from the Dark Ages...

...Thus when they heard about the precious metals to be found in the storehouses of the Incas and the Aztecs, their eyes lit up...

...They put to test the question of whether globally the social instinct could withstand the divisive tug of the tribal instinct when the "tribe" was now a modern nation...

...That, in turn, would create a class of urban workers who would provide a domestic market for the farm produce...

...For instance, the private sector has to pay minimum wages, recognize properly elected unions, pay higher wages for overtime, pay a corporate tax, grant equal pay for equal work, abide by health and safety standards, observe environmental regulations, etc...

...The core of feudal society was the feudal estate...

...This would happen when the economy was socialized, when —in effect—there was no longer a capitalist class as distinguished from a working class...

...Not to do so would be suicidal in our competitive world...

...Some called this "overproduction," others called it "underconsumption...

...No less a critic of capitalism than Marx wrote in The Communist Manifesto: "The bourgeoisie during its rule of scarcely 100 years has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations put together...

...The premise of the policies that for many decades saved the market economy from recurrent depressions was that the government could lay down broad rules about what the private sector might or might not do...

...Until not very long ago, it was considered impossible for, say, a British woolens firm to do its manufacturing in Spain...

...A severe "depression," a word popularized in the 20th century to describe the repetitive plague, hit the United States...

...The manufacturer would be most imprudent to risk his capital in a country where he did not know the language, or the laws and customs, and could not keep his eye on the operations...

...In the emerging market economy, wealth was measured by money—gold and silver and the coins made out of precious and other metals...

...On the cusp of the third millennium, it therefore seems particularly useful to trace the evolution of a central human trait, the "social instinct," from its feudal past to its global present...

...Was there a way out...

...More and more nations found themselves competing for a bigger piece of the earth...

...Actually, the trait's power has been noted by philosophers in all ages...

...There was a glut of goods (industrial and agricultural) that could not be sold, of capital that could not find a profitable outlet, and of people who could not find employment...

...The class that was rising to power in this market economy was given the name of bourgeoisie...

...In fact, they were too good, and fell into producing more than could be consumed...

...One of the most revealing features of this virtually worldwide turn of events is that in countries governed by the Right those in power were ready to give up their insistence on leaving everything to the market (laissez faire), and in countries governed by the Left those in power gave up their insistence on leaving everything to the government (socialism...

...Since he sailed under the British flag, his patrons felt free to claim the land he touched and to change his name to John Cabot...

...The result was the Great War, the first "world war" in human history...

...Hamilton's solution: The government —by introducing protective tariffs, constructing highways and canals, and subsidizing scientific research—should encourage manufacture...

...But the spiritually unifying influence of the Catholic Church at a time when Europe was politically and economically fragmented illuminated the ancient duel within the human heart and head between the tribal and the universal, between the compulsion to stick with kith and kin and the longing to be akin with all humankind...

...Early English economists described it with a dirty little four letter word— "glut...

...The idea worked for a while...

...Nor does it refer to the use of raw materials obtained from distant lands, although that is also part of it...

...Each duke with his duchy and each count with his county levied a fee to cross his turf...

...In their Columbia History of the World, Peter Gay and John Garraty record "the increasingly successful efforts of kings and princes to subject the personnel and property of the church in their dominion to their control...

...Those involved in trade, commerce and manufacture found it impossible to function...

...Columbus was not an accident...

...A change in the nature of the economy brought on a change in the nature of the polity, resulting in the emergence of nations with strong central authorities...

...globalizing operations is a "must...

...It was what impelled one member of a community to come to the aid of another, and what moved members to sacrifice their own lives, if necessary, to save the community...

...Each country, he reasoned in his "theory of comparative advantage," is ideally fit to perform certain tasks...

...The reason was the usual one, an irrational and self-destructive distribution of income that left the great mass of people, whether rural or urban, without the ability to buy what was being produced...

...Patriotism, including chauvinism, became a great social cement—holding together now enlarged "tribes...

...Under different rubrics—the New Deal in the United States, the Social Market in Germany, the Middle Way in Sweden, and others elsewhere—a policy evolved to cope with the "plague of plenty...

...The parties engaged in a push-and-pull process to find an uncertain and ever changing "balance...

...RELATIVELY RECENTLY, though, a fundamental change in the world economy has shaken the foundations of the policy that for many decades tamed the ogre of overproduction...

...There followed a long battle for supremacy between church and state...

...The Pope reached out for an updated Caesar who would restore the equivalent of the old Roman Empire...

...a faraway land, in essence, became a nearby neighbor—thanks in no small measure to the revolutions that have occurred in communications, transportation, materials handling, and data processing...

...In the more than half century since World War II, no major industrial democracy has experienced what once were regularly recurrent economic crises...

...During the many years of this economic-political revolution there was a profound change taking place in technology, especially in the art of seamanship...

...Indeed, Marx did exactly that in his Manifesto when he referred to "the commercial crises that by then periodical return put the existence of the entire bourgeois society on trial, each time more threateningly...

...it was, rallier, instilled "by nature...

...The workman is not more dependent upon his wages for the support of his family than they are upon the demand for the various articles they fabricate or vend...

...For them the feudal structure was a source of much frustration...

...That transfiguration of society would be brought about by the working class responding to Marx' call, "Workers of the world unite...

...If not, then sooner or later we may expect global glut of the sort that the great industrial democracies prevented for a half century by promoting a more equitable and efficient distribution of income...

...Nationalism—the modern tribal instinct—proved itself much stronger than the internationalist sentiments expressed at Basle...

...Is a United States of the World— the post-World War II dream of the United World Federalists—possible...

...Not to worry, Ricardo added...

...It said: "With respect to the relation existing between employers and the employed, we are prepared, we think, to demonstrate that it is only through an extremely limited view of their real interests that the former can be induced to attempt to depreciate the value of human labor...

...No, globalization refers essentially to production done in country A by or for a corporation headquartered in country B. (Of late, globalization has been extended beyond manufacturing to the service sector, notably "backroom work" for insurance companies, banks, etc...

...And it hasn't only become prudent to pursue that course, it is downright necessary...

...It is possible now for that British manufacturer to get wool from distant lands where it is cheap, convert it into fabric in another country where labor is cheap, manufacture clothing in China where not only is labor very cheap but taxes are practically nonexistent, and then sell the finished product in the United States at goodly prices...

...But by 1819 the country faced a glut of both agricultural and manufactured products...

...He chose Charlemagne, hoping his mighty military power could impose a secular counterpart to the church...

...According to Aristotle, attachment to a community was not the result of some keen calculation by each individual that he or she would be able to cope with life more effectively aspartof a group...

...The system was called "feudalism...

...Overseas sales were not possible because of "restrictive regulations in foreign markets...

...The change is called globalization, and does not refer to the trade among nations going on for several centuries, although that is a vital part of the overall notion...

...Perhaps the most important and least noted consequence of the globalization revolution is that it has altered the relationship between the private and public sectors and weakened their effort to jointly preside over a balanced economy...

...When Aristotle said "man is by nature a political animal," he was not referring to seeking office or voting...

...The effort failed...

...They needed bullion, too...

...In that case, he concluded, this manufacturer would wreck the British industry...

...Made up of bankers, factory owners, storekeepers and the like, the members of the bourgeoisie would become the political as well as the economic masters of a social order that Karl Marx called "capitalism...

...In 1929, a mere 11 years after the War ended, the world was hit with the Great Depression...

...Corporations are in a position to thumb their noses at them...

...In The Wealth of Nations Adam Smith applies the same principle to trade: "Every wholesale merchant naturally prefers the home trade to the foreign trade of consumption...

...In the underdeveloped countries too many peoples are still in the grip of a social instinct that is a form of primitive tribalism, and in the more advanced countries it is limited by a narrow nationalism...

...But," Ricardo asked himself, "what would happen if a British woolens manufacturer were to take his skills and put them to use in Spain where labor was much cheaper than in Britain...

...The power of the sovereign nation to impose conditions has to be used with caution, but it has been there and it has been used successfully...

...In the newly liberated American colonies, a glut hit immediately after the Revolution...

...The War years were significant in a little noted sense...

...So they opted to support a powerful noble, or a cabal of such nobles, to establish a central government with widespread authority...

...Out of this cauldron of discontent and distress came the formulas for reform...

...To put a slight spin on an old saying: Necessity is the mother of intervention...

...The rising forces were engaged in trade, commerce, finance, and manufacture...

...He can know better the character and situation of the persons whom he trusts, and if he should be deceived, he knows better the laws of the country from whichhe must seek redress...

...As early as 1420, a pope wryly observed, 'Not the pope but the King of England governs the church in his dominion.'" The authors further note that the "aim of the German princes was the same as that of the more powerful and successful monarchs of Western Europe: to make themselves the untrammeled masters of a sovereign state...

...Sloppy as that may appear, it worked...

...England, for example, was best equipped to manufacture woolens and Spain to make wine...

...In addition to more accurate mapmaking, new devices were developed to guide vessels...

...Governments are increasingly losing that pivotal power...

...And half a dozen years later he did...

...Our personal guess is that the human head and heart will step in at some point to do what has to be done to carry us through the next millennium...

...But it didn't...

...His voyage came at a point when European civilization needednewmarkets andnew sources of goods and gold...

...The workman need not languish for want of employment, the vender for sales, nor the capitalist complain for want of profitable modes of investment...

...But when World War I broke out the labor movements of Europe rallied around the flags of their respective nations...

...People went hungry in the past because of droughts and floods, earthquakes and volcanoes, locusts and borers, fire and war —but never because of overabundance...

...The Marxian call for the "workers of the world" to unite was an appeal to the universalist aspect of the social instinct...

...As in the case of the children of Israel, though, the tribal instinct was, intriguingly, accompanied by a universalist concept: a regnant religion whose very name, "Catholic," implied it was all-inclusive...

...Nor does it refer to investment in the shares of a foreign corporation, although that too is part of it...

...But while the secular base for the social instinct grew, the spiritual base—the Catholic Church—lost ground...

...If the mass of the people were enabled by their labor to procure for themselves and their families a full and abundant supply of the comforts and conveniences of life, the consumption of articles, particularly of dwellings, furniture, and clothing, would amount to at least twice the quantity it does at present, and of course the demand, by which alone employers are enabled either to subsist or to accumulate, would likewise be increased in an equal proportion...

...The Holy Roman Emperor could not make an earthly domain out of the Holy Roman Empire...

...In these circumstances a key question for the future is whether global consumption will keep up with global production...

...From an economic point of view it appears desirable...

...Expansion of the market economy's market might have succeeded if the surface of the globe kept expanding...

...With Rome's control over Europe weakened, the centers of "belonging" moved away from religion to the nation...

...They can, and do, simply fold up their facilities in the home country and move to a host country...

...It was almost totally self-sufficient...

...Hence, under free trade, both would be the beneficiary of a free exchange of the wares they were fated to make...

...One of first assignments Washington gave his Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton, was to "find a vent [for] the increasing surplus of our agricultural produce...

...Where a sense of nationhood was attained, however, the social instinct broke out of feudalism's restrictive bonds...

...By the middle of the millennium, let's say 1492, Europe was moving toward a social order that allowed and nourished the extension of the social instinct...

...In country after country, a new kind of war was declared—a war against economic inequity and inefficiency sparked by demonstrations, riots, rebellions, and some orderly political upheavals...

...he was the legitimate child of his time...

...He was not the first European to stumble across this continent...

...It was not easy for the bourgeoisie to fashion nations out of the multiple jurisdictions existing under feudalism, and it took several centuries for this class to become the predominant political force...

...In short, Columbus' adventure was part of the ongoing transformation of the feudal economy into a market economy...

...To eliminate the problem, Marx proposed revolutionizing the economic system so that the working people would get the full fruits of their labor...

...from a sociopolitical point of view it seems beyond reach...

...What made Columbus' find different was the successive settlements it inspired...

...Or will we self-destruct by drowning in global glut —or, in frustration, by engaging in a thermonuclear "war to end all wars" that will wipe out mankind as we know it and start the process of evolution all over again...

...an Irish priest, several Scandinavian seafarers and others preceded him...

...Had he not made the voyage to the New World a fellow sailor from Genoa, Giovanni Caboto, would have...

...But, warned Darwin, it was limited in application to individual communities—the equivalent in humankind to "tribes...

...As invariably occurs in a society lacking the instruments of law and order, whoever had the biggest fist had the biggest say...

...Columbus' "discovery" of the Western Hemisphere affords some insights into the interconnectedness of the two trends...

...In all previous societies, to quote Marx again, the phenomenon "would have seemed an absurdity...

...The means of production and exchange would instead be collectively owned by "the people," either through producer cooperatives, through government ownership in a democracy, or a mixture of the two...

...The prevalent condition, after the collapse of the once glorious Roman Empire, was chaos...

...On the other hand he believed the social instinct would expand, and pointed to the rise of a national consciousness in countries like France and Germany...

...In the home trade his capital is never so long out of his sight as it frequently is in the foreign trade of consumption...

...No two countries took precisely the same path, but all shared a common goal: To establish a delicate balance between public (governmental) and private (business) power, and a second delicate balance between the capacity to produce and the capacity to consume...

...There have been recessions, so designated when a nation shows a negative growth rate for two quarters, but there have been no depressions, with excessively high unemployment rates extending uninterruptedly over years...

...In the feudal system, wealth was measured by the amount of land held by a lord...

...The sobriquet was based on bourg, the French word for a market town...

...In the more than 200 years that followed Ricardo and Smith's writings, the globe shrunk...

...Two hundred years before the second millennium began, the Vatican tried to impose a political universality on Europe as well...

...Soon they were treading on one another's toes...

...Although the Preamble was based on the American experience, its description of the dynamic existing in a market (capitalist) economy could easily be applied globally...

...Such a time had to come, Marx felt, for life under capitalism would prove to be intolerable...

...The Mechanics' Union of Trade Associations (Philadelphia) offered an early answer in the 1827 Preamble to its statement of purpose...

...People we would today call gangsters soon established their turf and, in exchange for their "protection," those they protected became their "serfs...

...Can we expand the social instinct in the coming millennium, so that collectively it establishes global standards of income distribution for peoples of all cultures, colors and continents...

...In line with this concept the Socialist parties of the world, meeting in a convention of the Second International in Basle in 1912, resolved to oppose any and all wars of the imperialist powers...

...It reached into adjacent territories and distant continents to invest its excess capital, to sell its manufactured wares in exchange for cheap raw materials, and to export people (often as punishment for some petty crime) to places like Australia, New Zealand and the American colonies...

...Workers everywhere, regardless of their ethnic or religious or racial roots were "comrades" devoted to a common purpose...

...The nation states, based on the market economy, early on proved their capacity to produce goods and provide services at a level no other civilization ever even dreamt of achieving...

...Gus Tyler, a longtime New Leader contributor and former Assistant President of the international Ladies Garment Workers Union, is currently a syndicated columnist and radio commentator...

...Twenty-two centuries later, in The Descent of Man, Charles Darwin declared that the "social instinct," inherited by humans from their animal ancestors, had become the root of ethics and morality...

...The economy shifted away from the manor to the market, while political power shifted away from lords to kings and parliaments...

...If we think of the inhabitants of the feudal estate as a tribe, Europe was overrun with thousands of tribes...

...A forgotten document, except among the cognoscenti, the Preamble set forth in simple language an analysis that in later years was called Socialism, then Keynesianism, then the New Deal, then the New Frontier, then the Great Society, and then —when universalized—the Third Way...

...The 18th-century economist David Ricardo explained why...

...Europe was torn apart by the ascent of Protestantism and its multiple schisms, due in large measure to the appearance of strong central governments in areas of Europe...