Chapter 12. Practical and Revolutionary Implications of the Constitution for the Federation of Earth

It took hundreds of centuries for man simply to people the earth and cover it with a first network: and further thousands of years to build up, as chance circumstances allowed, solid nuclei of civilizations within this fluctuating envelope. Today, these elements have multiplied and grown; they have packed themselves closer together and forced themselves against one another – to the point where an over-all unity, of no matter what nature, has become economically and psychologically inevitable. Mankind, in coming of age, has begun to be subject to the necessity and to feel the urgency of forming one single body coextensive with itself….

Either a single nation will succeed in destroying and absorbing all the others: or all nations will come together in one common soul, that they may be more human.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

The development of technology and of the implements of war has brought about something akin to the shrinking of our planet. Economic interlinking has made the destinies of nations interdependent to a degree far greater than in previous years. The available weapons of destruction are of a kind such that no place on earth is safeguarded against sudden total destruction. The only hope for protection lies in the securing of peace in a supranational way. World government must be created which is able to solve conflicts between nations by judicial decision. This government must be based on a clear-cut constitution which is approved by the governments and the nations.

Albert Einstein

Either a single nation will succeed in destroying and absorbing all the others: or all nations will come together in one common soul, that they may be more human.” These prophetic words today ring of literal truth as one nation works to militarize space in order to control the entire world from what it terms “the ultimate high ground.” Advocates of world government have understood the profound thought of Einstein, Teilhard de Chardin, and others as far back as World War One when it became clear that humans had immense potential to create weapons of mass destruction and stockpile them for use in every one of their “wars to end all wars.”

A number of groups and movements developed that worked toward democratic world government through much of the twentieth century. But as we saw in Chapter Nine, they were working to spread clarity of thought and action around the world in the face of an immense propaganda system dedicated to preserving the unquestioned assumptions of the nation-state system and monopoly capitalism. The world had to wait for the militarization of space, endless proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, uncontrollable global warming, environmental collapse, massive species extinction, food supply collapse, and accelerating global poverty and misery before the need to unite behind the principle of unity-in-diversity became absolutely clear. At the dawn of the twenty-first century more and more people are recognizing that “a clear cut constitution” is our only option.

The Struggle for Democratic World Government

In general, all of the movements for world government understand that the system of sovereign territorial nation-states is not natural, rational, or moral. However, among the several organizations working for world government, there are vast differences in orientation, strategy, and world-view. The World Federalist Movement (WFM), for example, has done much good work for the past five decades in promoting the idea of global citizenship and educating humanity about the urgent need for viable federal world government, which is in all likelihood is the only route to ending the scourge of war forever (see Harris, 1999, pp. 183-196). The limitations of this association (and the several other associations working toward world government), I believe, center around the twin poles of naivete and timidity.

It naively assumes the world will eventually listen to reason (and the reasons for democratic world government are compelling, urgent, and decisive) and eventually call a constitutional convention or reform the U.N. in the direction of democratic world government. However, in the light of our discussions in this book, it should be clear that the unimaginable power of the dominant global institutions will forever subvert these possibilities in spite of the compelling reasons given. What we need is revolutionary, transformative action directed toward a new world. Rational arguments given to members of Congress or some parliament, themselves up to their eyeballs in this twisted social and economic system, amount to little but timidity compounded by naivete.

Second, many world federalists lack a critical perspective into the institutional structures of monopoly capitalism and therefore are sanguine as to the power of reason to effect change in people’s attitudes, while they do not see the need for basic changes in the global economic system. Similarly, world federalists often do not see the ways in which the system of sovereign nations is manipulated by global capitalism in its own interests and are naive about the ability of nations (or their representatives to the U.N.) to listen to reason. The world cannot be made to evolve toward a more rational system because, we have seen, the very foundation of the institutions now controlling the world is irrational power and greed.

The only option is revolutionary change in existing institutions arising from the impoverished masses of the world and those who stand in solidarity with them. But this revolutionary change need not be limited to a country by country socialist revolution, a scenario consciously defeated and prepared for by the imperialist nations and their corporate allies. It can, however, be effected though a global mass movement for a non-military, democratic constitution for the Earth, an excellent example of which already exists and is promoted by the World Constitution and Parliament Association (WCPA) and its sister organizations, the Global Ratification and Elections Network (GREN), the Graduate School of World Problems (GSWP), and the Institute On World Problems (IOWP).

This combined effort is also known as the Earth Federation Movement (EFM). A new beginning can and must be made through the simple, basic structural change of adopting the Constitution for the Federation of Earth that limits the control of irrational power and greed and places democratic authority in all the citizens of the Earth, the only place where this authority is legitimate and rational.

The constitutions of many nations today claim that sovereignty resides with their people. They claim that people have universal human rights that are expressed in these constitutions. But the truth is that all nations are territory-based, not people-based. This notion of sovereignty residing in the people has a long history in Western thought, going all the way back to Greek and Roman times, which finally found preliminary concrete embodiment in the democratic revolutions of the eighteenth century (Hinsley, 1986). However, the ideal of the genuine sovereignty of people has never yet been fully realized, for it cannot be realized apart from the sovereignty of all the citizens of Earth.

Emery Reeves understood this principle as early as 1946. In the Anatomy of Peace he writes:

We cannot have democracy in a world of interdependent, sovereign nation-states, because democracy means the sovereignty of the people. The nation-state structure strangulates and exterminates the sovereignty of the people, that sovereignty which, instead of being vested in institutions of the community is vested in [approximately 190] separate sets of sovereign nation-state institutions. (1946, p. 162)

The great proclamations of universal human sovereignty and human rights from the eighteenth century to the present affirm a universal ideal but tacitly assume sovereignty is limited and territorial, not people-based. Countries worldwide are concerned to defend their “sovereign territory,” not the primacy of human beings and their rights. And territory-based assumptions ignore the reality of imperialism, as well as veil the active complicity between global capital and the dominant world powers who use the territorial system for their advantage.

Citizens within various “sovereign” territories may be powerless to act on their duty to ensure that their respective governments protect their human rights, since their rights are ultimately being violated by foreign sovereign territories or multinational corporations over which they have little or no control. And if citizens’s rights are generally respected within a world imperialist center, as in the United States before the Patriot Act of 2001, what is the obligation of its citizens with respect to their country’s violation of other peoples’ rights? I have cited the facts of these violations several places in this book. As long as nations are territories that operate as sovereign, this system itself tends to deny the equality, rights, and sovereignty of all those outside their territorial boundaries.

The only viable hope for humanity is social and spiritual revolution involving the de-legitimizing of these institutions and the establishment of new institutions premised on the sovereignty of the people of the Earth, and the dignity, rights, and responsibilities of every person who lives on the Earth. We have seen in this volume that the present institutions cannot be reformed and extended since their very nature denies these principles. Most world federalists fail to grasp this insight despite their well-intentioned and energetic efforts to create a decent world within which future generations can live. The United Nations cannot even begin to deal with either of these problems, first, because it does not have the power of making law, second, because it is not democratic, and third, because it is premised on the very principle (of territorial sovereignty) that is at core of the most fundamental global problems.

At present no such thing as genuine “international law” exists, if one means by “law” the legitimate, enforceable legislation of principles of conduct to which citizens, groups, and nations must conform. The U.N. is premised in its Charter on the sovereign rights of territorially independent nation-states that, by definition in its charter, cannot be regulated under any superior law (see Harris, 1993, Ch. 5). All agreements by member states of the U.N. have only the status of “treaties” voluntarily followed and from which nation-states may withdraw at any time.

The International Court of Justice or “World Court” in the Hague does not have mandatory jurisdiction over alleged violations of international law or other disputes between nations. It can only decide cases if all parties to the dispute agree ahead of time to submit to the court’s jurisdiction, and even then the parties might refuse to abide if they do not like the outcome, as happened when the U.S. refused to pay the several billion dollars in damages assessed by the court in 1986 for its aggression against Nicaragua during the early 1980s. Further, it deals with disputes between nations only, while the real issue involves creating a court system to try individuals. Nations do not break laws, individuals do. We need a fully developed system of courts for the world if we are ever to have the rule of law on Earth.

The newly created International Criminal Court by the Assembly of States Parties (strongly opposed by the United States) represents a positive step toward the development of world law. Yet the Rome Statute of this Criminal Court is hamstrung by the system of sovereign nations. It does not have the authority (of a real court) to order arrests, to subpoena witnesses, demand information, or force individuals to stand trial for their crimes. It can only “request” these things from sovereign nations within which suspected criminals are living.

The General Assembly of the U.N., with one representative from every nation, big or small, is in no way representative of the peoples of the Earth. Not only are vast numbers of people grossly under-represented (for example, China or India with their huge populations), but the ambassadors represent only nation-states, not people, and many of the nation-states in the U.N. are undemocratic in the extreme, oppressors, not representatives of their people. In addition, the existence of the Security Council defeats even the slightest pretense to a democratic U.N. in that no resolutions, agreements, or treaties can be passed by the U.N., no matter how universally they are assented to by nearly all the nations of the world, if these are vetoed by any of the five permanent members of the Security Council.

This situation has happened repeatedly in the history of the U.N., where a large majority of the world’s nations have passed a resolution only to have it vetoed by the United States or one of the other permanent members of the Security Council. The General Assembly, for example, has repeatedly passed near-unanimous resolutions calling for an end to the U.S. economic blockade of Cuba, only to have the U.S. veto the resolutions in the Security Council. Finally, the budget of the U.N. is woefully inadequate to the global crises we face. Payment of dues is voluntary and dependent on the good will of participating nations. Payment can be withdrawn (as in the case of the U.S.) if sovereign territorial nations do not perceive the U.N. as acting sufficiently in their self-interest.

As we saw in Chapter Eleven, in the 1950s, a group of world citizens realized time was running out for the planet in the facing of the ever increasing severity of the global problems of population explosion, increasing poverty and misery, environmental degradation threatening the very ecostructure of the planet, rampant militarism, and the threat of nuclear annihilation. These visionaries and pioneers, under the leadership of Philip and Margaret Isely, Dr. Terence Amerasinghe, Dr. Reinhart Ruge, Ms. Eugenia Almand, Mr. Sarwar Alam, and others, may or may not have had the critical insight into the intractability of the present global institutions. However, they had a crucial insight into the naivete of waiting for a global constitutional convention or the futility of trying to reform the U.N. that is predicated squarely on the principles of sovereign national territories and the power of the dominant world nations to control everything done by the U.N. through their veto on the Security Council.

This group of global citizens, working with many others, collectively created the Constitution for the Federation of Earth over a period of several decades and formed the above named organizations to promote the ratification and adoption of this constitution as the basis for non-military, democratic federal world government. This constitution is a brilliant document with deep insight into the nature of democracy, the principle of the sovereignty of people, not territories, and the rights of all people to a real and visible measure of equality, freedom, dignity, and justice. This movement signals that we have “come of age,” as Teilhard de Chardin asserts in the quote at the head of this chapter. Peoples all over the Earth are beginning to face the “necessity and to feel the urgency of forming one single body,” one united Earth, “that they may be more human.”

The Constitution for the Federation of Earth

The Constitution for the Federation of Earth is not socialist in the sense of government ownership of the means of production, nor does it specifically envision the practical utopia required for a fulfilled human community. In our present historical situation, however, this Earth Constitution provides the only immediately viable framework that can make a fulfilled human community even possible for future generations. It abolishes the spurious notion of territorial sovereignty and establishes the sovereignty of the people of the Earth. All actions taken by the world government are responsible to the people of the Earth. This fundamental and guiding principle effectively ends the anti-democratic notion that territorial nations can be responsible to a portion of the people of the Earth while denying or ignoring the rights and dignity of those outside their territories.

Second, it establishes the sovereignty of the people of the Earth, through their representatives in the world parliament, over the central resources of the Earth necessary to providing a decent life to all citizens of the planet and to preserving the global environment for future generations. A market economic system is accepted by the Constitution (as are some socialist principles) as part of the right of individual nations within the federation to determine their social and economic arrangements within the limits of protection for human rights and the environment.

However, the power of global monopoly capitalism to hide behind the system of sovereign territorial nations and to use its massive accumulations of private wealth and power for private gain regardless of consequences to the environment or peoples’ lives is broken by this principle of the sovereignty of all the Earth’s people. The universal human rights defined by this constitution, the power of eminent domain over key resources, ecosystems, and the oceans by the people of the Earth, and the mandatory demilitarization of all aspects of the world system, effectively break the power of sovereign nations and global corporations to destroy the Earth as they are now doing.

This process of a revolutionary change in the world-order from the limited and antiquated territorial nation-state system to global democracy itself can and must be done democratically, through popular participation, although it requires on the part of citizens a massive campaign to de-legitimize the current oppressive territorial system. The Constitution for the Federation of Earth, like all constitutions that establish a new system, has a set of clauses that are to be used only once, the clauses that provide a mechanism for democratic ratification and legitimation of the constitution. The Constitution will have three stages of implementation and ratification, granting increasing authority and democratic powers at each stage.

Each stage provides some options in the ratification process depending on whether nation-states themselves, or the independently acting citizens of the Earth, or a combination of both, satisfy the specified criteria for ratification. At present, several related organizations are working to coordinate and promote this process as we have seen. The transition to non-military democratic world government can be accomplished with a minimum of disorder. The present world condition of disorder could hardly get worse, since the current anarchic system maximizes disorder in the form of human and animal suffering and global destruction of the environment.

The first step is clearly to de-legitimize the sovereign nation-state system, transferring sovereignty to the people of the Earth where it belongs, and to retain the nation-states as political units within the democratic world government. Within this role they can protect the cultural diversity and identities of their respective peoples, promote local self-determination for their citizens, and perhaps begin to play a positive and constructive role within the world system. Once this step is accomplished, and it must be accomplished soon if the planetary ecosystem and its ability to support higher forms of life is to be salvaged, then people would be free to work toward realization of the second step: the building of institutions that make possible a free process of growth toward human ethical-spiritual maturity and the realization of a fulfilled community.

Step two would involve efforts to de-legitimize exploitative human relationships, especially those institutionalized within the capitalist system. But this step in the revolution toward a truly human world-order can be done with even less disorder than the first step of ending the rule of the parts and initiating the rule of the whole (the sovereignty of the people of Earth). For within the framework of a constitution that asserts the rights of every citizen of Earth to a life of dignity and to economic-social-political conditions that make possible a life of education, creativity, and free self-fulfillment, the stage is set for creating economic institutions that actually allow the emergence of a fulfilled human community.

While our very survival depends on the first step, the possibility of a fully human world-order depends on the second. The democratic world government promoted by the World Constitution and Parliament Association under the Constitution for the Federation of Earth is something that should be advocated and actively supported by democratic socialists as well as by all people of compassion and good will. It is essential to viable revolutionary praxis in our historical moment at the dawn of the twenty-first century, and is essential to the very survival of the planetary ecostructure and its ability to sustain higher forms of life. There are many good reasons to support such a democratic world government, some of them independent of socialist values.

These reasons for supporting democratic world government can be divided into four broad categories. First, the multifaceted global crisis we are facing in the early twenty-first century is utterly beyond the capability of any individual nation, socialist or not, to handle. Such vast problems such as destruction of the oceans and fisheries, ozone depletion, global warming, world deforestation, widespread destruction of agricultural lands, diminishing fresh water supplies, rapidly growing desertification, population explosion, world militarism, world repression of freedom and human rights, lack of clean water and sanitation for the majority, and world-wide poverty and starvation can only be dealt with on a global level with democratic planetary forms of enforceable legislation.

Second, the notions of the sovereignty and human rights at the heart of democratic theory (whether bourgeois or socialist) point, as we have seen, beyond the idea of limited national sovereignties to the sovereignty of the people of the Earth and universal principles applicable to all. Third, I am arguing that the proposed democratic constitution would promote a transition to world democratic socialism (the only option for a truly just and compassionate world) far more effectively than revolutionary changes within individual nation-states could do. Finally, only democratic world government can make possible the ascent to planetary maturity.

The words of the greatest scientific genius of the twentieth century apply directly to our situation at the dawn of the twenty-first century and to the Earth Constitution. In Chapter Two we saw Einstein expressing the cosmic consciousness of planetary maturity. No other option exists today. The so-called “political right wing” offers us no option beyond more of the same nightmare. The so-called “political left” offers no clear vision of the future, only endless resistance to everything the right stands for. In the epigram at the head of this chapter, Einstein writes, “world government must be created which is able to solve conflicts between nations by judicial decision. This government must be based on a clear-cut constitution which is approved by the governments and the nations.” We know the solution (the rule of law and judicial decision) and we have this clear cut constitution. It is time for all those who embody some degree of compassion, critical theory, or nonviolence to act for a decent world order.

Socialist Values and the Earth Constitution

Socialists within most sovereign nation-states today, especially those of the first world, most often find themselves working not for a revolutionary transformation of the economic-social-political system (since this is not even remotely a viable immediate option) but for organizing, educating, and implementing progressive resistance in defense of the oppressed, whether this be human beings or the environment. They work for labor rights, progressive taxation, defense of civil liberties, war resistance, campaign reform, universal health care rights, environmental legislation, defense of the poor and homeless, prison reform, abolition of nuclear weapons, and so on.

The battle is Quixotic because such legislation, reform, or protest will in no way endanger the global system that produces these very injustices and oppressions. Socialists struggle defensively within the framework of unjust class society without much immediate hope of creating a class-free society. The more success progressives have in reforming this system to protect labor, the poor, or the environment, the more the system is legitimized in the eyes of the population as being “not so bad.” We have a catch-twenty-two situation. The capitalist system has overwhelming power in its hands, including the power of the state that it largely controls. As Jürgen Habermas points out, entitlement legislation, such as welfare for the poor, social services, or environmental legislation, serves the greatest need of the system at this juncture in history, which is “legitimation” in the eyes of the population (Habermas, 1975, Ch. 6).

In the face of this apparently hopeless situation, it can only be of benefit to socialists to examine the possibility of an alternative route to labor rights, protection of liberty, the ending of war, universal health care, protection of the environment, and the ending of poverty. A much more viable option for creating a class-free society would be to first legitimate a federal world government that is constitutionally mandated not only to protect labor rights, liberty, and the environment but to create universal health care, education, and social security.

From this set of constitutional mandates, socialists could for the first time begin to effectively work for genuine worldwide democratic socialism. If their progressive energy were transferred at least in part from defensive local struggles, which are not likely in the long run to overturn the system itself, to the creation of a progressive democratic world government, they might well enlist as their allies the disenfranchised peoples of the world who are tangential to the capitalist system and facing starvation and/or oppression in their local situations.

With the collapse of so-called “actually existing socialism” as a real alternative to the nightmare of monopoly capitalism, the left has floundered without a vision and without being able to articulate a genuine alternative. They have ignored the one real option available to the world that is more easily created than endless “resistance” that in the end changes little as it is repressed, disappeared, bombed, or jailed by the ever-expanding world “security” apparatus. Nearly all the values the left claims to cherish are embodied in the Earth Constitution. Without challenging fundamental assumptions, resistance within the Neanderthal framework of the present world-order of monopoly capitalism and territorial nation-states is utterly self-defeating. The institutions themselves prevent progressive change, no matter how many noble minded individuals die in Colombian torture chambers or languish in United States federal prisons or perish in the Pentagon’s Iraqi concentration camps.

The overwhelming majority of human beings, the disenfranchised of the world, have nothing to lose and everything to gain from democratic world government where their rights are constitutionally recognized. Such a constitutional federal system would level the playing field tremendously and provide them with constitutional grounds to pursue their rights to a life of dignity, freedom, and opportunity. A federal world government under the World Constitution would not provide a panacea or magical solution to the problem of exploitative institutional relationships, but it would make success possible (whereas success in the present situation hardly appears possible) through the ability to use the World Courts, the World Ombudsmus, the World Parliament, the World Executive branch, and the World District Attorneys in the struggle for the protection and progressive implementation of a just, socialist world order.

Article I of the Constitution for the Federation of Earth lists the six most basic primary functions of the Federation. Let us examine them in turn. (1) “To prevent war, secure disarmament, and resolve territorial and other disputes which endanger peace and human rights.” No longer could the “cycle of violence” exist where rebellions because of the structural violence of extreme poverty meet with repression from third-world governments financed and supported by first-world governments or with “interventions” by first world military to prevent progressive social change from occurring. Nation-states, like the federal government, would be disarmed by law, and the process of changing the structural violence of poverty would be open to non-violent methods of conflict resolution such as the courts, demonstrations, social organizing, creative economic policies, and so on.

(2) The second primary function of the federation will be “To protect universal human rights, including life, liberty, security, democracy, and equal opportunities in life.” Again, the very foundations of the world federal government would allow the progressive transformation of institutionalized violence and exploitation, protecting the “security” of those who militate for change, and allowing them to legally base their claim for just economic and social institutions on the right to “equal opportunities in life” (an idea that is a bold-faced lie under the capitalist system).

(3) “To obtain for all people on Earth the conditions required for equitable economic and social development and for diminishing social differences.” The constitution specifies its affirmation of cultural diversity and local autonomy in other places (for example, Article XIII-16), but here we see concern to diminish the “social differences” of the present system of wealth and power versus the poor and exploited. The mandate of the world government, stated repeatedly in the Constitution, is “equal opportunity for useful employment for everyone, with wages or remuneration sufficient to assure human dignity” (Article XIII-1), in other words, to end the extremes of poverty and wealth worldwide as we know them.

The remaining three “broad functions” of the Federation would again work in favor of the socialist struggle for a fully realized human community: (4) “To regulate world trade,” (5) “To protect the environment and the ecological fabric of life from all damage,” (6) “To devise and implement solutions to all problems which are beyond the capability of national governments, or which are now or may become of global or international concern or consequence.” World trade would no longer easily interfere with the rights of every person to a life of dignity with a home, security, health care, and opportunity (Article XIII, numbers 4-7 and 11-13). The exploitation of the poor by multinational corporations would be brought to a rapid end with the regulation of world trade, and the destruction of the global environment though multinational exploitation of resources would be quickly ended (and can only be quickly ended) through the power of the Earth Federation.

For the first time, a consistent set of worldwide laws regarding the environment, enforced by the world police armed only with weapons sufficient to apprehend individuals, could be enacted. (”World Police shall be armed only with weapons appropriate for the apprehension of individuals responsible for the violation of world law” (Article 10-C-5).) No longer would the poor nations have to sacrifice their environmental standards to attract rapacious corporations to their resources. International debt will be assumed by the Federation and rapidly paid off (see Chapter Thirteen), and a government concerned with global prosperity within the framework of environmental sustainability would be initiated for the first time in history.

These articles also give the world government the means to raise capital to be used for the global common good through taxes, fees, and other ways of generating federal income. The present system of capitalism unregulated by enforceable world laws cannot create investment capital capable of promoting the common good, whether within nations or globally, with any effectiveness. For competition (which is directed to private advantage) will always force private investment capital in the direction of a high enough rate of return to (1) stay in business and (2) make a profit for the private benefit of the wealthy investors. The pressure of the market also mandates (3) continual growth, for as technology and competitors evolve and the rate of return drops, without a continual eye to growth businesses will tend to fail.

Sustainable development is not likely under this system, for the incentive is to neglect, for example, the impact of production on the environment or communities in order to maximize growth and protect the rate of profit (Daly, 1996). World government, on the other hand, will be free of this irrational and destructive pressure now compromising corporations and territorial nation-states. It will be able to invest directly in the common good (the good that makes possible the survival and flourishing of all the parts of the whole) (Martin, 2003).

On the planetary level, the “common good” has taken on a deeper meaning than within nation-states where it rarely has the seriousness of survival itself. Many global problems, including global wealth and poverty, global militarism and lawlessness, and global environmental preservation, are “beyond the capacity of national governments” to address. The World Constitution provides the only viable hope for humanity to move in the direction of non-military democratic world of justice and peace.

Study of the Constitution for the Federation of Earth shows the proposed democratic world government would specifically possess or actively work for many features we associate with socialism (or with any decent, equitable society). Article IV, number 12, and article XIII, numbers 4, 5, 6, and 11, give it the goal and authority to provide free and adequate education, health care, housing, food, water, and social security to everyone on the planet. Individual nations, no matter what their economic system, would be required to tax the rich and/or legally appropriate enough of their resources to provide, probably with the help of the global federal government, adequate education, health care, housing, food, water, and social security to all their citizens. Profits will no longer be funneled to off-shore bank accounts to avoid the taxes that contribute to the common good.

By law, no longer could nations exist (as in most of today’s world) where five or ten percent of the population controls ninety percent of the land, wealth, and power. In all likelihood, the educational systems of most nations would encourage study of the World Constitution and the assimilation of its values of universal equality and dignity. People would study the supreme law of the world as they now study the constitutions of their respective territorial nation-states, and this could in turn contribute to the successful implementation of a more just and equitable world order, one more and more beginning to take on democratic socialist features.

Article IV, number 14, of the Constitution gives the world federal government the power to regulate all transnational corporations, finances, and industry. Just as territorial nation-states now have the legal power to regulate corporations, finances, and industry, so would the world government. But currently transnational corporations hold their governments hostage with the threat to move their resources and productive facilities to other nations if they are not given favorable tax breaks or environmental liberties. In addition, given the inadequate forms of democracy in territorial nations, large corporations at present buy, control, and manipulate politicians and other people with the authority to regulate them.

Under democratic world government, their ability to use these tactics would be seriously limited. The Earth Constitution is designed with multifaceted checks, balances, and institutional mechanisms to deter the corruption of those in power and ensure the realization of the common good. Even private corporations, finance, and industry would be required to be more responsible to the public domain and less secret and totalitarian in their operations and methods. Individuals would regain their right to privacy (today destroyed in the so-called war on terrorism). Corporations would have to assume public accountability.

Article IV, numbers 23, 27, 28, and 30, effectively mundialize the Earth’s oceans and sea beds, all transnational power systems, all essential natural resources, and all fossil fuel production in the world. These actions are necessary if the constitutional goal of a decent life for all planetary citizens is ever to be realized, along with the constitutional goal of preserving the planetary environment. The ecological and human harm done by the big oil corporations during the twentieth century defies imagination, including the extensive destruction of rain forests, ecosystems, and the lives of people living in these regions, including substantial complicity with murderers and torturers in places such as Brazil, Indonesia, or Nigeria.

In addition, the burning of fossil fuel promoted by these corporations has been a major cause of global warming and the on-going collapse of the planetary ecosystem. It is absolutely essential to take these domains out of secretive private hands and place them in hands democratically responsible for the people of the Earth and future generations. These measures are therefore significant and necessary features of democracy and good world government. But they also point in the direction of socialism insofar as this is understood as a system in which essential resources and production are placed under democratic control for the common good.

Bureaucracy and the Common Good

Would these functions of world government require the development of a large federal bureaucracy that would entangle petitioners in an interminable bureaucratic labyrinth? Bureaucracy, yes, interminable labyrinth, not likely. Go to the web site of any state government within the United States and examine the number of agencies necessary to the functioning of complex society even at this level. In this regard the proposed constitution deserves careful study, for it outlines in detail much of the structure of the world federal bureaucracy.

The bureaucracy is not hinted at or covered up, but is there for us to see. There would necessarily be a federal bureaucracy. The world is a large and very complex place. However, there would be significant differences from, for example, the U.S. federal bureaucracy that has proved to be a nightmare for the poor and powerless (while the rich negotiate it fairly easily through their corporate lawyers and other connections). When government actually represents the people, bureaucracy will function to their benefit.

First, if there are going to be fair global elections using fair campaign practices and proportionate representation, there must be a federal system to allow democracy to function at the global level. Second, no doubt exists any longer that our world is one ecosystem and its maintenance necessarily requires many qualified people in an executive branch who can monitor atmosphere, oceans, fisheries, forests, rain cycles, natural resources, arable land, erosion patterns, pollution trends, quality of water, air, sanitation, spread of disease, population trends, transportation, trade, human rights protection, and so on. For our planet must be coordinated to maintain sustainability, ecological balance, and social justice.

If the population of the Earth returns to three or four billion, the limit currently sustainable, this number of people necessarily has a tremendous impact on the environment beyond what can be monitored and assessed locally (Cohen, 1996). And if there is to be international trade, more equitable distribution of key world resources, sufficient non-destructive power systems of sun, wind, water, and magnetic fields, or the monitoring of Earth’s population with well-constructed incentives for its control, an executive bureaucracy will be necessary. There is no reason why it cannot be efficient and economical.

Third, there will continue to be disputes between cultures, individuals, groups, or corporations at the international level. Human beings are far from perfect and will have many conflicts among themselves. A federal judiciary and their support persons will be necessary. The Constitution mandates eight benches of the Supreme Court for human rights, criminal cases, civil cases, constitutional cases, international conflicts, and so on. Fourth, if there are going to be violations of world human rights, environmental or other world laws, there will need to be world attorneys general, police, and their support persons.

Finally, if there is going to be careful monitoring of human rights implementation and protection worldwide, including remedies addressing any violations by the police or federal bureaucracy itself, there will have to be a world ombudsmus and staff of qualified support persons. I have just described the four independent branches of the federal government provided by the Constitution plus the mechanism necessary for the World Parliament to function. The Earth has become a tiny place, a planetary spaceship, and no matter how insulated a culture may wish to be, there is no more any possibility of independence from the whole.

Yet the principles behind this federal bureaucracy would be different. First, the Constitution makes ample provision for removing corrupt or incompetent people from office, while protecting their rights. Second, the premise of the bureaucracy would be the authority delegated by the Parliament (representatives of the peoples and nations of the Earth), and the mandate would be to serve the people faithfully through the spirit and letter of the World Constitution. Unlike national bureaucracies (which are controlled by wealth and power and to which the poor or middle classes are often helpless petitioners who are often insulted and degraded by the red tape and attitude of the bureaucrats) the federal world government would be instituted on entirely different premises. Third, the executive branch of world government (like the other independent branches) would be directly responsible to Parliament and would not have nearly the power (and corresponding arrogance) that, for example, the executive branch of the United States government has presently.

Finally, one independent branch of world government would be the “World Ombudsmus,” functioning as a watchdog and advocate for the peoples of the Earth with respect to the protection or neglect of human rights and to “promote the welfare” of all peoples “by seeking to assure conditions of social justice and of minimizing disparities are achieved in the implementation and administration of world legislation and world law” (Article XI-4). This organization would have the power to initiate legal action in defense of individuals or groups and is mandated “to protect the People of Earth and all individuals against violations of this World Constitution by any official or agency of the World Government, including elected and appointed officials or public employees regardless or organ, department, office, agency, or rank” (XI-2). Of the eleven separate powers and functions listed for the World Ombudsmus, one is directly concerned with bureaucracy: “To ascertain that the administration of otherwise proper laws, ordinances and procedures of the World Government do not result in unforeseen injustices or inequities, or become stultified in bureaucracy or details of administration” (XI-6).

Bureaucracy is necessary at this stage of history since the planet is too small, too fragile, and too complex not to require a single legal system and a system of careful monitoring of environmental and social factors, as well as trained professionals in the various agencies of government whose specializations include concern for the good of the whole. The World Constitution does everything possible to see that this works to peoples’ benefit and does not become a hindrance to the freedom, peace, and justice that are among its fundamental principles.

None of these features of the world bureaucracy need become entangled in prolonged paper trails or endless levels of rote approval-seeking, or hopeless confusion concerning information and details. The information technology revolution of the last several decades has given human beings the tools to eliminate all these features of former bureaucracies, whether on the model of the oppressive U.S. welfare system or bureaucratic decision-making in the former Soviet Union.

Supercomputers that can process a trillion or more bits of information per second can be interfaced with PCs and other computers at every level of the world government and of society itself, making a truly democratic and responsive government (as well as effective socialist economic management) possible for the first time in history (see Pollack, 1997). An effective federal bureaucracy using the immense information processing capabilities of today’s computers (currently used by the rich to become more rich and by governments to create military machines to destroy yet more people) will be able to monitor very complex environmental and social factors, be responsive to human and environmental needs worldwide, and create effective, fair, and speedy electoral procedures for the global population.

The Constitution for the Federation of Earth institutionalizes neither capitalism nor socialism, although we saw that its protection for basic human economic rights requires it to go a long way in the direction of socialism. Article XIV, number 2, gives each nation the right to determine its own internal economic and social system consistent with human rights and dignity. The federal world government could not interfere with nations wishing to go even farther in the direction of socialism in their internal affairs. Here is the place for the internal struggle within nations for true democratic socialism: under conditions of democratic dialogue and debate, with guaranteed rights of assembly, protest, and petition, not in the guerilla battlefield or in a war of propaganda slogans.

Some nations could be shining examples to the others in the extent to which they had realized a truly compassionate and fulfilled human community. Once the principles of democratic participation, freedom, and human rights have been established through the World Constitution, it would remain for revolutionaries to demonstrate socialism as inseparable from true democracy. For these reasons, adoption of the Constitution for the Federation of Earth is as practical as it is revolutionary.

Habermas, like Marx, argues that the universal cannot be separated from the particular in terms of metaphysical theory or social-political application. Concrete persons, for Habermas, whose identities have been formed through specific cultural traditions and communities, have the moral right to demand an equality not negating those very traditions and differences that have participated in the formation of their identities. Equality must be equality of particular persons whose individuality is nurtured through specific influences and who engage in discourse in the political arena precisely from the perspective of this situatedness. As Habermas puts it, “we ascribe to the bearers of individual rights an identity that is conceived intersubjectively…. A correctly understood theory of rights requires a politics of recognition that protects the integrity of the individual in the life contexts in which his or her identity is formed” (1994, p. 113).

Habermas suggests true legitimacy in any social order can only rest on authentic democracy, on the autonomy of its citizens who feel the legislation enacted in their name is self-generated legislation (see also Coicaud, 2002). I have shown that under the present system of sovereign nations such democratic autonomy is impossible in at least two fundamental ways. First, the separation of the political sphere of citizenship from the civil sphere of accumulated private property and other massive social and political forces necessarily makes much legislation result from the influence of these non-democratic forces and not the enactment of a discursively formed collective will among equal citizen participants. As Antonio Gramsci pointed out, the cultural hegemony of the capitalist class generates a self-legitimating ideology ensuring that legislation will protect the interests of this class (Forgacs, 2000).

Second, the fact of other nation-states in a so-called “world order” existing outside of all democratic and procedural frameworks for the possibility of democratic decision making confronts citizens within each nation with pressing factors beyond any possible democratic control: international economic rivalry, massive poverty and injustice, military threats and arms-trading, the global destruction of the environment, the need for a national security state independent of citizen scrutiny, economic exploitation of the poorest nations by the rich, and so on. In neither case within the present world order can the democratic-socialist value of the fullness of life of a person within a community be realized. On both these grounds, the current system of sovereign nation-states is illegitimate.

The federal bureaucracy outlined by the Constitution for the Federation of Earth is designed to implement the equality, freedom, and prosperity for the entire planet and to end the present system of exploitation and domination of nation by nation and class by class. It is designed for accountability on the part of government officials and with carefully thought-out checks and balances among government agencies. Without such a bureaucracy the domination of larger nation-states and/or the domination of the rich cannot be prevented. Insofar as the Constitution has socialist features, it is designed to protect equality, freedom, and the common good. Without a carefully designed federal bureaucracy, such a goal would be unrealizable.

Sovereignty of the People of Earth

One might almost say that the most fundamental issue is not that of capitalism versus socialism but the question as to who is to be sovereign. Are we to have democracy that treats every person as an end-in-herself within community, or are we to have some form of illegitimate power determination for our lives, the empty form of democracy without authentic content? The government of Cuba, despite its democratic socialist ideals, attributes its restrictions on freedom of speech to self-defense against the imperialist designs of the United States. Above we saw Emery Reeves underline this dilemma. One cannot create democracy and liberty premised on the sovereignty of the people at the same time that sovereignty is based on a multiplicity of territorial nation-states.

Only the true sovereignty of the whole can affirm the particularity of each one of us instead of leaving us prey to a chaos of forces that dehumanize, manipulate, and devalue our humanity. And no territorial nation-state can truly represent the whole and take its constitutional stand on the right to live and flourish for every human being. The only legitimate sovereignty is that of the whole of humankind, and only such an affirmation of wholeness can fully affirm the freedom and individuality within community of each person. For this reason, the affirmation of wholeness in the World Constitution is the crucial factor in the transition to a world-order where the capitalist division between private self-interest and our common humanity is overcome.

The affirmation of the human community as sovereign makes possible creating a world in which every individual on the planet has sufficiency of goods, dignity, security, health-care, and education. This represents a key paradigm-shift, the internal logic of which will lead to a future worldwide democratic socialism in which the community affirms the individual and the individual, in turn, enriches and supports the community. The principle of unity-in-diversity affirms the sovereign community (the whole of humankind) and the dignity and freedom of every individual. In Chapter Seven, I quoted Mortimer Adler’s crucial insight: “‘All’ – when what is meant is all without exception – is the most radical and, perhaps, also the most revolutionary term in the lexicon of political thought” (1991, p. 90). For the first time in human history, the Earth Constitution applies the values of democracy, human rights, and freedom to all.

The fact that the proposed World Constitution explicitly affirms the principle of unity-in-diversity in relation to the sovereignty of humanity shows, I believe, that it was written with an awareness of the principles I have attempted to articulate in this chapter. It mandates “the Earth’s total resources shall be used equitably for human welfare,” thereby institutionalizing a goal for world government that must inevitably lead to a transformed world-order. “Unity-in-diversity” implies nothing less. Contemporary Japanese philosopher Masao Abe affirms similar principles with his call to recognize the sovereignty of humankind. He writes, “a human community which has overcome…the existence of the nation-state…serves mankind by transcending distinctions between races and between people” (1985, p. 256).

Yet by the very token of overcoming these distinctions among people in the awareness of the unity of humankind, Abe is able to continue with the assertion that “sovereignty which is established therein, takes self-negation as a basic principle and encompasses all races and all peoples in their respective particularity.” Sameness and difference, wholeness and particularity, coextensively arise as the roots of authentic sovereignty. The Preamble to the Constitution for the Federation of Earth, quoted above, specifies “the principle of unity-in-diversity is the basis for a new age,” and so on. In the light of this chapter, we see this “new age” is not merely a pious ideal, but a genuine possibility embodied in this Constitution. This genuine possibility is premised on a clear seeing of the human situation.

This is a chapter from the book, Millennium Dawn; The Philosophy of Planetary Crisis and Human Liberation. Visit that link for more information about the book.