Session 7: The Battle for the World Economy Part Three

Students participating in this class session will prepare their homework assignments and post their responses in Drop box 7 on the course lesson board by 5:00 p.m. on the Sunday evening immeditely following each on-campus class meeting. However, all class readings must be completed prior to class convening to insure students can participate in class discussion.  Remember you are required to know the answers to each and every one of these questions for the Comprehensive Exam.

Viewing Assignment:

The Commanding Heights Episode Three  The New Rules of the Game.

Modern socialism and communism has its roots in 18^th century utopian socialism had proffered by the philosophers Etienne-Gabriel Morelly, Sir Thomas Moore, Charles Fourier, Robert Owen and Claude Henri de Saint-Simon. These philosophers were all coping with the dramatic cultural, social and economic changes wrought by the industrial revolution. Utopians were convinced that their visions of the ideal society could be realized in the not too distant future.   

At times their philosophy sounded more like what we now call “science-fiction” or “fantasy” literature (if not lunatic) as in the case of Sir Thomas More’s assertion that England and Europe must travel back in time to realize a perfect society on what he described as the mythical island of Utopia. Similarly Charles Fournier predicted that in the future androgynous plants would copulate, six moons would orbit earth, climate on the North Pole would be milder than on the Mediterranean, oceans would no longer be salinated and would taste like lemonade, and that every female would be involved with four lovers or spouses simultaneously.”  

Ultimately, the principal reason why Saint-Simon, Fourier and Owen were considered Utopian Socialists is because their thought closely resembles that of the religious sectarian, the recent convert, the visionary and the Romantic. It might also be added that for the modern, the ideas of the Utopian Socialist also appear fanatical, due to a degree of fervor reminiscent of the zeal of the religious prophet. Not surprisingly, however, this utopian perspective was by its very nature ineffective in developing a societal approach that could successfully counter the worst characteristics of industrialization and capitalism. Their predecessors - socialism and communism - were successful (at least for a time) in shaping political, economic and societal values for many years. 

Modern socialism and communism are most typically associated with the ideas of Frederich Engels and Karl Marx and later Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin. However, as we have already discovered the ideas of the comparatively modern writers was in turn influenced by the 18th and 19the century writings of Etienne-Gabriel Morelly, François-Noël "Gracchus" Babeuf, and Louis Auguste Blanqui. The ideas of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin, influenced as they were by these early French communist writers, in turn shaped the futures of generations of citizens in the former Soviet Union, the Soviet Bloc nations, citizens of China, North Korea, North Vietnam, Laos, and a score of other Eastern nations, as well as within the nation states of Africa, South and Central America and of course in the island nation of Cuba under the rule of Fidel Castro. Indeed, from the period just before the end of World War II through the early 1990's, Communism remained a potent force politically, economically and socially. Moreover, socialism remains a strong (though not as dominant) force to this date. 

However by the early 1990s, most of the world had converted to free-market capitalism, setting the stage for the rapid growth of a new global economy. Rapidly falling trade barriers and unrestricted capital flows fueled by furious technological innovation and a new global workforce would all combine to transform the world economy.  

"The New Rules of the Game" examines the promise and perils of globalization in the 1990s, focusing on the story of President Bill Clinton's embrace of free-trade policies, the challenges the world's leaders faced in taming the virulent contagion of financial collapse in the developing world, and the violent debate over globalization that suddenly surfaced in the Seattle protests.  

In a story that moves from the 1992 presidential campaign to the September 11 attack on America, The Commanding Heights video confronts a series of issues: the impact of free trade on the developing world and on American workers; the perils of financial contagion when problems in one developing country cause investors to pull their capital out of all emerging economies; and the challenge of inclusiveness -- bringing the world's poor into the era of global growth. It cuts through the rhetoric to show what "globalization" really is, and what it will mean for our lives in the 21st century.

Etienne-Gabriel Morelly (1755) "Code of Nature," Frederic Engels (1880) "Utopian Socialism," "Dialectics" and "Historical Materialism" Karl Marx & Frederick Engels (1848) "The Communist Manifesto" p. 1-21; (Further Reading (if you so choose): Daniel Yergin and Joseph Stanislaw, The Commanding Heights. ).