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WORLD CITIZEN LETTER: 251
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WCL 251 June 2001
World citizenship - rationale
To explain the basis of thinking why world citizenship is so important for the Trust, it is necessary to turn to the basic aims of political action.
That, for an idealist, is probably a just society and often entails a drive to bring the means of production into common ownership in order to ensure that the profits from them are distributed to all and not simply hogged by a small minority. Many therefore will become socialist, as was old Labour in Britain during much of the 20th century.
But in the 19th and 20th century the drive for socialism was usually perverted into a purely national ideology (in Stalin's phrase - Socialism in one country). Yet that was the time society was becoming global. The extreme result in National Socialist Germany was a brutal and aggressive ideology that attempted to exert control over neighbouring societies by means of a virulent nationalism.
In those years the world war destroyed peace and justice for millions of people because justice needs peace in order to flourish. It also needs unity. A similar loss can be seen recently in Yugoslavia, where the death of Tito led, after a decade, to a break-up of the country and a loss of both peace and justice. The divisions of humans into tribes, races, religions, cults, nations and other groups often prevents this.
Peace and justice require law for their perpetuation and global peace needs world law. The biggest divisions of humanity come with nation-states, because nation-states maintain their own laws and national sovereignty means the right to be judge and jury in their own cause. Furthermore, national governments have agendas of their own and they often defend their own sovereignty in despite the people whose interests they are supposed to represent and maintain.
Nationalism is, like any other feeling of solidarity, useful for keeping order within a human group. But nation-states can only exist and survive as units of power. Consequently they rely on and foster a sense of nationalism in order to maintain that power. As a result nationalism becomes extremely dangerous. It has led to world wars that in the 20th century have begun to destroy larger and larger areas of civilization and of the world. Unless we control it, it will lead to the total destruction of all our societies.
We have to see humanity in terms of circles of loyalty: family, locality, church, town, region, nation, continent, but above all, planet. None is exclusive, for we live in all of them and we have to balance our loyalties to live in harmony with each other and ultimately also with Nature. The way this can be done is first to see each individual as a world citizen as well as a national and local citizen, having rights and duties relating to every area of community that we act in and are affected by.
In the same way, authority has to be shared. That requires the law similarly to balance the powers that we allocate to each level of government. This is the task of federalism, which is both a philosophy of government and a practical way of handling the tensions between different levels. But democracy also requires that the ultimate decisions must be taken by the individual world citizens and therefore they have to choose their governments at all levels.
"Citizens of the world, unite; you have nothing to lose but your prejudices!"
John Roberts
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