STWR - Share The World's Resources

Dr. Zeki Ergas is the founder of Millennium Solidarity Geneva Group, Vice President of PEN International’s Swiss Romand Center and a member of PEN International’s Writers for Peace Committee.  He writes regularly for Share The World's Resources and a list of his articles is presented below.

Today, in the era of neo-liberal globalisation dominated by large multinational corporations, the governments of the rich and powerful countries are outdated. The old political economy has lost its relevance - and must be replaced by a sustainable system that can create a better world, argues Zeki Ergas.

Barack Obama may represent a hope for reviving American democracy, writes Zeki Ergas, but only if he challenges the overwhelming influence of big business, neoliberal globalization and the interests of American imperialism.

A new book by Dr Zeki Ergas is now released based on a collection of short essays originally published in Share The World’s Resources (STWR).  Framing the question ‘How to build a better and sustainable world?’, Dr Ergas explores the major threats facing humanity in the 21st century and outlines the systemic, structural and institutional changes necessary to avert a global catastrophe.

"That sooner or later humanity receives an organisation of a socialist aspect … is, so to speak, the only chance that God has left it."  "The day human beings will cease being cowards, the world will make a leap forward" - Robert Musil, The Man Without Qualities[1]

That the world is sick is beyond doubt. But how sick is it? Moderately sick, as the champions of the Neo-Liberal Globalisation (NLG) proclaim? Or incurably, terminally, sick, as some extreme critics maintain? Or very sick, but probably not beyond saving, as I believe, based on the work that I have done in the last three years or so on this subject. So, in other words, that Human ‘Civilisation’ faces the most serious crisis in its ten to twelve thousand years History (since the invention of agriculture in the Fertile Crescent of Mesopotamia) is beyond doubt.

17th September 07 - Dr. Zeki Ergas ~ STWR Contributing Writer

In the 111 years between 1890 (the brutal murder of the Dakota Indians) and 2001 (the punitive expedition to Afghanistan after 9/11), there have been throughout the world 133 interventions by the U.S. (direct military, or hatched by the C.I.A. with local  collaborators) which resulted between 12 million to 16 million people losing their lives. 70 of those interventions took place after the Second World War - Johan Galtung [1]

5th Sep 07 - Dr Zeki Ergas ~ STWR

Man is moving too fast for a world that is round. Soon he will catch up with himself in a great rear-end collision, and he will never know that what hit him from behind was man ~ James G. Thurber

21st Aug 07 - Dr Zeki Ergas ~ STWR

It is increasingly clear that the building of a better world requires a much larger participation, or a much bigger contribution, by women at all levels than it is the case presently. That means, that implies, that women need to have, will have, a lot more power – political power, economic power, cultural power, social power – than presently.

14th July 07 - Dr Zeki Ergas ~ STWR Contributing Writer

Almost a year has passed since I last wrote an essay on socialism in Venezuela and Latin America. A lot has happened during that time, and I reckoned that it was time to ‘revisit’ the subject with a  second, more in depth, essay.

The appeal of socialism as an ideology, a theory, an aspiration is as strong today as it was in the past, but its realisation, practical application continues to be difficult and problematic. Why is that so? Who is to blame? What can be done about that? Was Hobbes right who argued -- a long time ago and quite convincingly in the Leviathan -- that man is bad by nature and that social life would not be possible without his submission by superior authority, symbolised or represented by the ‘Sovereign’?

The eradication of extreme poverty in the world, alongside the proliferation of nuclear weapons, climate change due to pollution, and various forms of violence (war, genocide, ethnic cleansing, terrorism), is one of the four or five most dangerous challenges facing humanity today. 

29th May 07 - Dr Zeki Ergas ~ STWR member

The quote below (from Musil’s masterpiece, The Man Without Qualities) condenses, in one short paragraph composed of five sentences, the core of the argument in my previous essay The Political Economy of Love and the Eradication of Extreme Poverty in the World.[2]  Musil’s quote begins with the sentence: ‘The problem of civilisation cannot be resolved other than with the heart.’ (All translations that follow in this paragraph are mine).

The ‘heart’ in this first sentence of Musil’s quote, and the ‘love’ in the title of my essay mentioned above, are synonyms and interchangeable: Musil could have written ‘The problem of civilisation cannot be resolved other than with love’, and I could have chosen a different title of ‘The Political Economy of the Heart and the Eradication of Extreme Poverty in the World’. The fourth sentence of Musil’s quote is: ‘All that reason has obtained has been to have sunk the greatness of the past into liberalism.’ This deserves some detailed commentary.

What we know with frightening certainty in this early spring of 2007 is that humanity and possibly the planet itself are in serious trouble. So much so in fact that a respected British scientist has not hesitated to predict that mankind had no more than a 50 per cent chance to make it to the 22nd century. That appears to be an excessively pessimistic prediction at this point in time but it did remind me of Albany’s prophecy in King Lear, Humanity must perforce prey on itself / Like monsters of the deep which, it is true, has a different connotation. The reality is that many things have dramatically improved since the great Bard’s time, but at a cost, and perhaps at a terrible cost. So let us not fool ourselves: it is very  possible – especially if one agrees with Hobbes (as most people do), rather than with Rousseau (who believed in the inherent goodness of men) --  that humanity will in the end prove itself to be too greedy, too selfish, and, far worse, too stupid to do what it takes to save the species it belongs to, and the planet it lives on, from destruction. However, throwing in the towel and retiring on a desert island to wait quietly for the end not being exactly a constructive option, one has to participate in the perhaps futile or quixotic struggle to save mankind and the planet from annihilation. And, to be entirely honest, there are some encouraging signs that in that respect the pendulum may have stopped swinging in the wrong direction (that of thanatos), and may even have started, very timidly, to move in the right direction (that of eros). 

Introduction:  The Neo-con Project for a New American Century and its Implications

A document bearing the signature of Donald Rumsfeld was disseminated by the Pentagon at the end of 2002. That document was part of a larger study entitled Project for a New American Century (PNAC) which is a kind of global strategic manifesto written by some of the leading neo-conservative intellectuals, such as Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, Stephen Hadley, Bill Kristol, Bob Zoellick and, of course, Dick Cheney (even though he is not strictu sensu an intellectual). 1

As its title indicates, according to the larger study, America’s ‘manifest destiny’ is to be the world’s supreme political and economic power: a kind of Roman Empire of the 21^st century which will impose upon the world a Pax Americana based on freedom and prosperity. What distinguishes the neo-cons from liberals is that they believe that the United States should not shy from using force to achieve that overarching goal. More specifically the Pentagon document identifies China as an ‘emerging economic giant’ which will be America’s main rival in the near future. So for the neo-con intellectuals, it is not fundamentalist Islam and the international terrorists of Al Qaida that are America’s most serious future enemy but China. Furthermore, the Pentagon document gives a precise date as to when China will become an unacceptable threat to the US. That date is the year of 2017. Why 2017? And: What is the precise nature of that threat?

’17,107 farmers in India committed suicide in 2003. Many of them were facing in surmountable obstacles in the 15 years after India opened its agriculture to global competition.’ [1]  

INTRODUCTION

Extreme poverty is one of the half-dozen or so major scourges afflicting humanity today. The others are (not necessarily in that order): Nuclear weapons and their proliferation; environmental deterioration of the planet owing to pollution and over-exploitation; humiliating and offending the human dignity of the poor and powerless; and the various forms of violence, and their terrible consequences: wars, civil wars, genocides, ethnic cleansing, emigration and the refugee problem; and, last but certainly not least, international terrorism.

All these scourges are, of course, to a lesser or greater extent, linked, and they should be tackled together. The same goes to efforts to deal with them.

When The Elephants Fight...

16th May 06 - Dr Zeki Ergas ~ STWR

The main argument or hypothesis of this short essay is that to eradicate extreme poverty in the world – which, with the proliferation of nuclear weapons, climate change due to pollution, and various forms of violence (war, genocide, ethnic cleansing, terrorism), is one of the four or five most dangerous challenges facing humanity today – the primacy of reason needs, in particular in the distribution of the world’s resources, to be replaced by the primacy of love. That inevitably will lead to a better, more equal and more just, sharing of the world’s resources. This is the meaning of the concept of the ‘political economy of love’ in the title of this essay, which can be seen as superseding the ‘political economy of reason’, which has been, one way or the other (in the liberal and Marxist senses) the dominant concept until now. [1]