Toward A Just World Order

Richard Falk

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9780367214722
• eBook ISBN: 9781000009903
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: International Relations
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This text is designed to provide students with a solid theoretical and methodological base for understanding how the present international system works, how that system is likely to evolve given current world trends, and what realistically can be done to alleviate the most serious global problems. Part 1 develops a world order perspective by examin

Part One
A World Order Perspective

Section 1
Voices of the Oppressed

Introduction

A riot is the language of the unheard.

-Martin Luther King, Jr.

As the General Introduction suggests, it is something of a departure to start an investigation of world order by listening to the voices of the oppressed. We believe that in this period of fundamental ferment we can learn much by heeding the voices of those who are victimized by existing arrangements of power and authority. We can learn about motivation, about struggle, and about the visions that animate those fighting to overcome oppression. We can also gain a critical perspective of the world system that traditional scholarly pieces do not provide—a perspective that forces us to constantly consider the human consequences of how the present state system operates.

Our analysis suggests that the destructive effects of social, economic, cultural, and political trends are all-encompassing: There is no escape—even sanctuary on a space colony is a mirage. We are Earth-bound creatures for the indefinite future. Yet, most of us do not grasp the extent to which we are victimized by present geopolitical arrangements, or the extent to which this condition of oppression is itself contingent upon certain arbitrary patterns of behavior that can be challenged and changed. The structure of world order is not rigidly constrained by present patterns, at least not over long time cycles.

Nevertheless, positive forms of transformation depend upon active politics. Any transformation of this sort will result from mass social movements and hard political struggles. This prospect presupposes suitable awareness. Hence, part of our objective in this book is to encourage each reader to grasp his or her situation as conditioned and constrained by world order oppression. This appreciation needs to be more than intellectual. It must be felt in the heart as well as known by the mind.

And so, inevitably, this orientation suggests a concern with action. What can be done? Those who struggle against oppression are essentially hopeful; to them, social, political, and cultural change is possible. They believe in and act upon their own analysis, including its vision of an alternative future. In this section we begin with those who are representatives of ongoing movements of reform and revolution among the visibly oppressed, and then move to those who are trying to articulate an oppression that has not generally entered public consciousness.

The promise of a new world order, as we understand the quest, arises from a central commitment to the realization of a specific set of humane values: peace, economic well-being, social justice and ecological balance. These world order values apply to means as well as ends. Thus, not all modes of struggle are acceptable. Indeed, our approach emphasizes the importance of embodying the vision of the future to the extent possible, here and now, starting with the life choices we make as individuals. In the first instance, the most revealing world order statement each of us makes is with his or her life. Again, those who give voice to the situation of oppression are exemplary actors in the struggle for a just world order.

We begin this section with an essay by Ali Shariati, an Iranian who encouraged many Moslems to join in the struggle against the Shah. Shariati's essay is notable because he transcends racial, geographical, and national boundaries to identify with all those who have suffered oppression as a result of slavery and war. He found the inspirational grounds for struggle within his cultural experience and, in particular, in the outlook of Shi'ia Islam, the variety of Islam dominant in Iran. This meditation on oppression stood in contrast to many Iranian radical positions of the day that tried to rally opposition to the Shah by espousing Marxist thought. When the Iranian Revolution swept the Shah from power in early 1979, it did so as a massive, nonviolent movement led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini on the basis of an appeal to the liberating imperative of Islam. Shariati was one of the heroes of the revolution, although he had died on June 19, 1977, a victim of harassment by the Shah's regime. Of course, the Revolution has produced many disappointments and serious human rights abuses, but its initial victory does suggest how a powerful structure of oppression can be rapidly dismantled without resort to force of arms.

Unlike Iran, the situation in South Africa has not been transformed. In out second selection, Steve Biko asks that victims of apartheid build their struggle around a consciousness of their racial identity. Biko was imprisoned and killed by his South African prison guards. His death on September 12, 1977 was a tragedy that turned many opponents of apartheid away from the path of nonviolence. The oppressor is inclined to quiet the voice of the oppressed, that is, the person whose acts and words dramatize the circumstances of oppression for many others. The voice becomes a leader, and hence a target. To raise one's voice against oppression is to take risks, often without any means of defense. It is a courageous undertaking.

The third selection is a statement from the Czech dissident group Charter 77, which also illustrates exemplary courage in the context of oppression, this time a mixture of Soviet hegemony and Stalinist one-party rule in an East European country. Such victims of oppression are fully aware of their distress; their willingness to challenge openly such an oppressive structure is itself a call for mass resistance. These initiatives of resistance have been recurrent since the extension of Soviet influence to East European countries after World War II. The most recent instance is the remarkable movement of workers' resistance in Poland under conditions of economic hardship as well as political deprivation.

These Czech and Polish voices of the oppressed are, in part, seeking space within a general condition of oppression, rather than necessarily struggling, at this time, against the oppressive structure of the Soviet model of authoritarian rule. The structure seems impregnable, but its dynamics can be moderated by resistance within limits; exceeding these limits may lead to Soviet intervention and greater internal oppression. When and where to press and when and where to acquiesce are the essence of the tactical reality faced by opponents of these regimes in their particular struggle against oppression.

In the fourth selection, Awa Thiam presents fundamental claims on behalf of women whose voices have been raised in opposition to patriarchal forms of oppression. The voices are numerous and diverse, reflecting an array of national and cultural circumstances, but there are also important convergences, as this selection suggests. We begin with some voices from francophone Africa, chosen partly to emphasize that, contrary to some contentions (mostly by men), the struggle against the oppression of women extends far beyond the highly industrialized countries of the West. The struggle of women must also be placed in the wider context of overall resistance to oppression at a time of historic upheaval. It may be that our capacity to bring equality into the relations of men and women will necessarily improve our capacities to challenge militarism, social injustice and the excesses of nationalism. In any event, the liberation of women is becoming an important agenda item for world order studies, and it deserves serious treatment in any assessment of the prospects and strategies available for global transformation.

There is a different, yet connected, issue posed by modern warfare waged with weapons of mass destruction. The Hiroshima bomb introduced a new era in human affairs. Civilian victims with no connection to governmental decision processes have had their lives destroyed, their bodies maimed. For some, such effects have always been a part of warfare, but the magnitude of nuclear warfare overwhelms the moral imagination. Indeed, with deterrence doctrine, the idea of "a balance of terror" becomes virtually synonymous with "national security." This background of indiscriminate devastation flies in the face of the historic mission of international law to set limits on the conduct of war. This mission has always been controversial, given the tendency of political leaders to use weapons and tactics that confer a military advantage regardless of their legal and moral status. The tension between normative limits and military necessity reaches its maximum with the use of atomic weapons against modern cities, such as Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II.

The reliance on nuclear weapons for deterrence, as Robert J. Lifton has suggested, makes us all, in some fundamental sense, helpless nuclear "guinea pigs." We are dependent on the good will and restraint of leaders who make up their minds in secret about whether and how these awesome weapons shall be tested, deployed, and used. Moreover, nuclear energy facilities release invisible low-level radiation that cannot be seen, felt, or smelled; it only kills, quietly and gradually. Our landscapes are dotted with nuclear missile emplacements and reactors prone to a variety of accidents. And yet, even in democratic societies, what can we do to protect ourselves against such risks? This suggests a dramatic extension of oppressive forms of social reality that directly result from our greatly enhanced technological capabilities.

The next selection, an essay by Richard Falk, carries these themes further. Falk seeks to comprehend our status as "victims" of an oppressive world system that threatens each of us. "Invisible oppression," in its many environmental and cultural forms, is the special circumstance of those societies that seem most privileged in a material sense. Implicit here is the contention that a movement for a just world will depend on the extent to which awareness of this predicament penetrates our social consciousness in a mobilizing way. We do not yet know whether there is, latent in our world society, a powerful (though largely passive) constituency for drastic change-a social force waiting to be activated. The transnational antinuclear movement, present in all democratic industrialized societies, may be a glimmer of the potential for such a movement, as is the growing movement in Western Europe on behalf of nuclear disarmament.

The final work in this section is a brief excerpt from Paolo Freire's influential book, Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Freire, an educator who worked with Brazilian peasants, with the people of Guinea Bissau, and in other situations of struggle, presents in these pages a penetrating analysis of the psychology of oppression and liberation. His thesis is that "the great humanistic and historical task of the oppressed [is] to liberate themselves and their oppressors as well." Freire describes how the oppressed often espouse the image of the oppressors as their goal, and thus eventually become oppressors themselves. Understanding that this cripples their efforts for liberation, he articulates a praxis for a genuinely liberating education that should challenge all students, scholars and intellectuals who commit themselves to a just world order.

Questions for Discussion and Reflection

What are the various voices of oppression represented in this section?

How do the demands made by the oppressed relate to the fulfillment of world order values?

Can you think of examples of "invisible oppression," other than those mentioned in the selections, that limit your life experience? Can you imagine the steps that you could take to overcome this oppression? Will you take them? If you will, how? If not, why not?

What does Freire see as the relationship between the oppressed and their oppressors? What does this relationship suggest as a strategy for struggle?

Selected Bibliography

de Beauvoir, Simone. The Second Sex. New York: Bantam, 1968.

Biko, Steve. I Write What I Like. New York: Harper, 1978.

Boulding, Elise. The Underside of History: A View of Women Through Time. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1976.

Chinweizu. The West and the Rest of Vs. London: NOK Publishers, 1978.

Deloria, Vine. Behind the Trail of Broken Treaties: An Indian Declaration of Independence. New York: Delacorte Press, 1974.

Douglass, James. Lightning East to West. Portland, OR.: Sunburst Press, 1980.

Drinnon, Richard. Facing West: The Metaphysics of Indian-Hating and Empire-Building. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1980.

Fanon, Frantz. The Wretched of the Earth. New York: Grove Press, 1968.

Friere, Paolo. Pedagogy in Process: The Letters to Guinea-Bissau. New York: Seabury Press, 1978.

—. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Herder and Herder, 1970.

Gutierrez, Gustavo. A Theology of Liberation. New York: Orbis Books, 1973.

Huston, Perdita. Third World Women Speak Out. New York: Praeger, 1970.

Kim, Chi Ha. Cry of the People and Other Poems. Brookline, MA.: Autumn Press, 1974.

Lernoux, Penny. Cry of the People: U.S. Involvement in the Rise of Fascism, Torture and Murder and the Persecution of the Catholic Church in Latin America. New York: Doubleday, 1980.

Lifton, Robert J. Death in Life: Survivors of Hiroshima. New York: Random (Vintage) 1968.

Malcolm X. Autobiography of Malcolm X. New York: Ballantine, 1976.

Marcuse, Herbert. One-Dimensional Man. Boston: Beacon Press, 1964.

Medvedev, Roy A. On Socialist Democracy. New York: Knopf, 1975.

Memmi. The Colonizer and the Colonized. New York: Orion, 1965.

Moore, Barrington, Jr. Reflections on the Causes of Human Misery. Boston: Beacon Press, 1972.

Neruda, Pablo. The Heights of Macchu Picchu. New York: Farrar, Straus &. Giroux, 1962.

Nkrumah, Kwame. Conscientism: Philosophy and Ideology for Decolonization and Development. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1970.

Panichas, George Α., ed. The Simone Weil Reader. New York: David McKay Co., 1977.

Rashke, Richard. The Killing of Karen Silkwood. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981.

Said, Edward. Orientalism. New York: Pantheon, 1979.

Sakharov, Andrei D. Progress, Co-existence and Intellectual Freedom. New York: Norton, 1968.

Shariati, Ali. On the Sociology of Islam. Berkeley, CA.: Mizan Press, 1979.

Solzhenitsyn, Alexander. Warning to the West. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1976.

Turner, Frederick. Beyond Geography: The Western Spirit Against the Wilderness. New York: Harper, 1980.

Yoder, John Howard. The Politics of Jesus. Grand Rapids, MI: Erdmans Publishing Co., 1972.

Zinn, Howard. A People's History of the United States. New York: Harper, 1980.

1
Reflections of a Concerned Muslim: On the Plight of Oppressed Peoples

Ali Shariati

If I confide in you personally, it is because I want to share a personal experience with you. It concerns me because it relates to my class, community, country and history.

I am familiar with the thoughts of educated people. My predecessors, of the remote past where they disappeared in the flow of history, were poverty-stricken people. I, personally, am related to the nobles but not to those whose nobility is the product of silver and gold.

I am deeply interested in human heritage and civilisation. My primary interest has always been to reflect on the works of people who inhabited the earth before us.

In Greece, I saw the temple of Delphi which thrilled me because of its artistic beauty and skill. In Rome, I visited the museum of arts and architecture of temples and great palaces. In the Far East, in China and Vietnam, there are mountains which were shaped by human hands and brains into temples for the gods and their representatives on earth (the religious clergymen). These human legacies are precious to me!

Last summer during my visit to Africa, I decided to see the three Pyramids in Egypt. Because of its vast surroundings, this great monument of ci...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• General Introduction
• PART ONE A WORLD ORDER PERSPECTIVE
• PART TWO ANALYSIS OF WORLD ORDER VALUES
• PART THREE TOWARD JUST WORLD