Toward a World of Natural Communities

In: Alternatives: global, local, political, Band 6, Heft 4, S. 525-559

Abstract

The paper draws a contrast between contract and community in the organization of social life in the modern world. Liberal-corporate society, based on contract, has made human beings expendable, even to the point where academic liberals will defend the sacrifice of future generations (Beckerman), or 'undeserving' poor nations (Hardin), or many millions of lives in a nuclear war (Kahn), all for the convenience of the present First-World generation and for the preservation of the liberal-corporate world economic system. The paper discusses the new economic and political power of large multinational corporations, and the burden it imposes on Third World peoples, even to the point of genocide, as in the Amazon valley. Extended analysis is given to the issue of world hunger, in the context of artificial shortages of food. Also treated is the nuclear-power industry's recklessness with present and future human lives and health. The concluding sections discuss an alternative, communitarian vision of a world free from corporate oppression, as well as some basic strategies for getting away from our contract-based society toward a world order based on 'natural' communities.