Totalization

   In Jean-Paul Sartre’s great work of social philosophy Critique of Dialectical Reason, scarcity produces continuous totalization. An individual either totalizes those around him to form a group that he can control or else he is himself totalized and forced to be a living element of a totalization in course. Groups form and they are themselves totalized into larger social groups struggling to perpetuate themselves among competing social groups of their size. There is no end to totalization. The largest totalizations are nations but if we open our eyes in the postmodern world, we must conclude that nations themselves are now being totalized. Few men working behind the scenes with power and influence can resist trying to totalize nations by exercising on an individual level global powers which should by right belong to all the people of the globe represented democratically in a world government.

   It is not just large business corporations that try to rule worldwide behind the scenes. Totalizations within states, like military departments and diplomatic departments, can act globally in the interests of a small group within them who use the totalization for their own global interests. Religions are active all over the globe totalizing individuals into large masses with great power that can be directed secretely. The evils of globalization produce factions within religious totalizations that have no longer religious goals and are irrational and inhuman attempts to fight globalization by terrorist violence. Globalization is itself a form of terrorism. Who is behind it, where is it going, will it take my job, who does it benefit, who can stop it, where will it lead etc. All we know definitely about globalization is that it is the ultimate worldwide totalization that happens beyond the control of any one state and that it goes on uncontrollably even though hundreds of individuals in thousands of totalizations in course worldwide are fighting to profit from it by directing it.

   It is impossible not to be aware that globalization is now the main challenge of world history and that it can itself be the cause of the end of history. Only some kind of world government can possibly control it and such a government already exists. It is located in Washington DC. It has been at work since the Second World War both creating globalization and trying to direct it. It has had great failures and great successes. It has benefitted humanity greatly and it has harmed it greatly. It is so firmly rooted with enormous power at the center of worldwide financial and economic development that its sudden absence from history would be a worldwide disaster. Can Washington be a worldwide government rather than a national government? Can it be a central democratic force at the center of the ultimate worldwide totalization in course? Yes it can. And yes no other government can because they are all fully sovereign governments of fully sovereign states. Washington is not a fully sovereign government of a fully sovereign state. It has the power right now to admit any state to its union of states that wishes to gain for itself power against the worldwide forces aiming at totalizing it.

Daniel McNeill