Dialectic, Cosmos, and Society

                  Issue Number 8


Introduction 

E.N. Knyazeva and S.P. Kurdymov: Synergetics in Cultural Context: Contribtutions to the REsolution of the Current Civilizational Crisis

Elena Mustakova-Pssardt: Building Critical Consciousness in the Context of an Ever Advancing Human Civilization

Boris Gubman: The Eurasian Syndrome

Anthony Mansueto:  Organizing for Family and Congregation? A Critique of the Political-Theological Vision and Strategy of the Industrial Areas Foundation

Ernesto Cardenal: El Tercer Planeta/The Third Planet

Anthony Mansueto: Psalm



                  Introduction

 With this issue of Dialectic, Cosmos, and Society we welcome to our Editorial
Board Father Francois Houtart.  Currently the Director of the Centre Tricontinental at
Louvain-la-Neuve in Belgium, Fr. Houtart played a leading role in creating the
theoretical and institutional conditions for the collaboration between Catholics and
socialists during the period after the Second Vatican Council.  A sociologist by training,
he served as Secretary to the Commission which wrote Gaudium et Spes.  He is the
author of several important studies of the role of religion in social development
including work on Vietnam, Sri Lanka, Kerala, and Latin America, as well as
important theoretical studies.  He is currently Editor of Social Compass, an important
international journal devoted to the sociology of religion, as well as of Cahiers
Alternatives Sud, a new journal exploring development alternatives for the Third World.
He served as a teacher and mentor to some of the leading Latin American liberation
theologians, as well as to Catholic leaders active in national liberation struggles around
the world.  It is with great pleasure that we welcome him to the leadership of our
organization.
 This issue of DCS continues our exploration of the philosophical implications of
recent developments in the natural and social sciences.  Sergei Kurdyumov and Helena
Knyazeva of the Russian Academy of Sciences introduce readers to the basic concepts
of the new science of complex systems and self-organization, and analyze the
philosophical implications of some of the findings of this science. 
 We also continue our exploration of the contributions of various religious traditions
to the contemporary search for meaning and value. Elena Mustakova-Possardt, a
graduate student in educational psychology at the University of Massachusetts at
Amherst argues for the necessity of what she calls "critical consciousness," the ability
to not only comprehend the complex networks of global interdependence which
characterize the present period, but also to identify with and feel connected to the
literally billions of other human beings who now form part of our immediate social
world.  She argues, furthermore, that the Baha'i tradition offers important resources
for the development of such critical consciousness. 
 This issue also contains two articles exploring questions of political-theological
analysis and strategy. As the penetration of market relations into every sphere of social
life effectively destroys Russian civilization, many Russians are yielding to the
temptation to attempt to restore social order by authoritarian means.  Boris Gubman's
article on "The Eurasian Syndrome" documents the emergence of these neofascist
trends. My own article continues our analysis of the complex and ambiguous
phenomenon of congregation based organizing, demonstrating the deep-rooted hostility
of the Industrial Areas Foundation to historic Catholic doctrine, and documenting the
IAF's systematic failure to deliver on its promises to renew parish life.
 Finally, we are pleased to bring you a new poem by Ernesto Cardenal, El Tercer
Planeta, which we publish in Spanish and in English translation, as well as a poem by
the editor.


         Synergetics in Cultural Context
Contributions to the Resolution of the Current Civilizational Crisis
        E.N. Knyazeva and S.P. Kurdyumov

 We stand at the crossroads of two millennia.  Vast regions of our planet are
undergoing a profound reconstruction, and the planet is rapidly becoming a single,
interconnected whole.  We find ourselves forced to rethink our vision of the future and
to ponder fundamental questions regarding the nature of the historical process and the
ultimate meaning and direction of social evolution.
 In approaching these questions, we have found it particularly useful to draw on the
insights of a whole cluster of fields which investigate the nature of complex systems
and the processes of self-organization and evolution: the theory of deterministic chaos
(E. Lorenz, B. Mandelbrot), synergetics (H. Haken), the theory of dissipative
structures (I. Prigogine), and the theory of autopoesis (H. Maturana, F. Varela). 
Taken together these fields have developed a whole system of concepts which points
towards the emergence of a new, synergetic worldview.
 This paper summarizes research carried out by Sergei Kurdyumov, Corresponding
Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences and Director of the Keldysh Institute of
Applied Mathematics, and Helena Knyazeva, Senior Research Associate at the Institute
of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences.  It reports on some of the
fundamental results of the various fields of science which explore the concept of self-
organization, and explores the philosophical implications of these results. The ideas are
more fully explored in the authors' recent book The Creation Fire: Synergetics and the
Orient, which was published in 1994, by Nauka Publishers in Moscow.
 

          Basic Concepts of Synergetics

 Synergetics puts into circulation its own, special language.  It is the language of such
concepts as attractors and bifurcations, fractals and deterministic chaos.  Let us
examine each of these concepts briefly in turn.
 The concept of the attractor is best understood in terms of the second law of
thermodynamics.  This law states that systems near equilibrium flow towards thermal
chaos, i.e. towards the state with the greatest entropy.  This type of evolution is called
thermodynamic branching.  
 It was H. Poincar‚ who first developed the mathematical apparatus for understanding
the process of thermodynamic branching, tracing the process through time using
ordinary differential equations.  Turing went further, using partial derivatives, which
make it possible to model both spatial and temporal changes.  
 As a rule, attractors are characterized by their pictures in phase space --their so-
called phase portraits.  Generally these phase portraits are regarded as just graphic
representations of the equations governing the system.  We, however, understand
attractors as real structures in space and time, towards which processes of self-
organization in open, nonlinear media evolve.  Both chaotic states and structures that
have a symmetrical, regular architecture have the ability to function in this way.  
 Attractors thus look like the goals of evolutionary processes.  We understand this in
a non-anthropomorphic sense as a trend in the behavior of nonlinear systems, the
presence of a "terminal state" at least with respect of a particular stage of evolution. 
An attractor is relatively stable if it attracts to itself all the multitude of system
trajectories which are defined by different initial conditions.
 The concept of an attractor can be compared with that of Plato's eidos, and with
Aristotle's forms.

 On the level of mathematical description a bifurcation is a branching in the solutions
of a nonlinear differential equation.  At the physical level a bifurcation is a kind of
crossroads in the evolutionary process, a point from which a system can evolve in more
than one direction. 
 One can visualize the idea of a bifurcation by using one of the most ancient images
known to humanity --the image of the world tree.  This image is present in the
mythology of practically every civilization, with many different variants: the tree of
life, the family tree, the world pillar, the evolutionary tree, the tree of cognition, etc. 
World trees are simply versions of a cosmic organizational model in which spatial
opposites (top-bottom, heaven-subterranean realm) are integrated. Temporal distinctions
are removed as well: the past, the present and the future are represented synchronously
in, for example the image of the family relations, or the lines of evolutionary descent. 
That is, all possible paths of development display themselves in the present.
 In rationalized form, the image of the world tree is used in  modern science.  The
process of biological evolution is often represented in the form of a tree.  Or consider,
for example, the linguistic trees which trace the descent of the Indo-European languages
from a common source.  Similar schemes are used in the social sciences to represent
the levels of state organization, hierarchical authority structures and other dimensions
of social reality.  And what about the search trees displayed by computer terminals
allowing us to orient ourselves in hypertexts and other electronic media?  Aren't they
emotionally attractive because they resonate with underlying cosmic structures?

 Fractals are objects which have the property of self-similarity, or scale invariance. 
This means that the structure of a small fragment of such an object is similar to that of
another, larger fragment, or even to the object as a whole.  Nature quite frequently
expresses itself in fractal forms.  The contours of clouds, sea coasts, and river beds,
the surfaces of powders and other porous media, the geometry of trees, leaves, and
flower petals, the arteries and the cilia covering our intestinal walls --all these things
are fractals.  Norwegian physicist J. Feder has shown that the Norwegian coast-line
indented by fjords has a fractal structure of dimension 1.52.  This means that the
pattern of the coast-line is not completely chaotic, but rather repeats itself on different
scales.  It is, strictly speaking, neither line nor surface, but something in between. 
Similarly, the fractal structure of a cloud is usually characterized as being between 2
and 3,  meaning that it is neither surface, nor volume, but rather something
intermediate between the two. Fractal geometry provides us with an elegant and
compact method of describing complex systems.
 As in the case of bifurcations, we can discover traces of this new synergetic concept
in the existing images of our culture.  Consider, for example, Leibniz' concept of the
monad.  According to Leibniz, any monad reflects like a mirror all of the properties
of the cosmic totality.  The ancient orient was aware of the same principle: "One thing
in everything and everything in one thing."  Thus the old Chinese proverbs: "When one
speck of dust rises it contains the whole Earth."  "When one flower blossoms the whole
world opens."  
 From the standpoint of modern science these are just productive metaphors. 
Synergetics rationalizes and concretizes these metaphors, indicating more precisely the
range of their applicability.  Scale similarity is a property not of the entire universe, but
only of that class of systems described by strange attractors.

 The vortex is one of the simplest types of self-organization.  We see these structures
both on earth, in our atmosphere, in the form of cyclones and anticyclones, in the
shapes of snail shells, in the patterns of the feathers of many birds and in the horns of
certain mammals.  We also see them on a cosmic scale, in the structure of spiral
galaxies such as our own Milky Way.  
 Vortices occur as a result of thermoconvection, electromagnetism, and a wide range
of different chemical reactions.  There is an engendering source at work in the vortex. 
Accident initiates structure.  Everything born through self-organization is born through
the little. However, this primary randomness is gradually restricted by the mechanisms
of resonant excitation, by the genetic apparatus, by biological and social memory, and
by the transmission of cultural invariants from one generation to the next.  
 Complex organization thus emerges from slight, random movements on a chaotic
base.  Dissipative processes, such as the flow of liquids or the conduction of heat, are
the macroscopic expressions of this chaos.  And these dissipative processes, spreading
through space, eat away everything extraneous, giving birth to structure.  
 One can, therefore, speak of the existence of vortex forms on the different levels of
being.  In one respect, the spiral structure is the vortex begotten, developed on the
chaotic basis of slight movements.  But from another point of view, this structure is
something  begetting.  With its larger environment, it in turn becomes a chaotic base,
on which emerge ever more complex levels of organization.  All this merges, unites,
integrates at different levels of being into one united, dialectical mode of universal
motion.
 Here, in the image of the begetting vortex, we find one of the most important ideas
of the synergetic worldview: the idea of a possible hierarchy of media.  The simplest
cosmic structures arise spontaneously as instabilities, as a result of the spreading out
and intensification of fluctuations.  And more complex forms arise, probably, as a
result of the further development of these fluctuations, as instabilities at higher levels
of being.  There thus appears a hierarchy of media which have different properties
(different constant values, different dissipative processes, different nonlinearities).

 How, then, does complex organization emerge?  To create more complex structures
it is necessary to create media with different nonlinearities.  Different types of structure
correspond to different nonlinearities.  The rise in the complexity of organization, the
genesis of more complex unions of simple structures, is connected with the increase in
the degree of nonlinearity.  
 On this basis, one can assume that there exists some medium that is able to create
about 200 types of atoms. The ways in which simple structures (elementary particles)
unify to form more complex structures (atoms) are determined by the eigenfunctions
of this nonlinear medium.  The origin of life appears from this point of view as an
instability in the development of a continuous nonlinear medium which does not yet
contain organisms, but which does have the property of chemism.  
 Moreover, each new medium, with its new properties grounded in its own,
distinctive nonlinearities, exhibits a spectrum of forms of physical, chemical, biological,
and social organization.  
 Just as the hierarchy of media is linked with the spectrum of organizational forms,
the formation of more complex structures is accompanied by repetition of the whole
evolutionary process in the genesis of each particular system. Ontogeny repeats
phylogeny. Thus, the different stages in the origin and development of a chicken
correspond to the stages in the development of the living world in general. And the
human embryo, at a certain point in its growth, actually has gills.  
 Finally, as more complex forms of organization emerge, the evolutionary process
itself tends to pick up speed.  As we move up the steps of complexity from the abiotic
to the living and from the living to the social, processes are packed every more
densely, rolled up as it were, accelerating their run.
 The vortex is thus important as a symbol of the beginning of any process of motion -
-of the spontaneous and independent birth of the new, the emergence of system,
structure, and organization.  


           Philosophical Implications

 What are the philosophical implications of this new picture of the universe? Here we
can only be suggestive, outlining theses which need further elaboration and
demonstration. First, synergetics shows us that chaos may act as a creative force, a
constructive mechanism for the self-organization and self-completion of structures, by
removing all that is superfluous.  
 Second, it becomes increasingly clear that complex forms of organization, whether
in society or in the rest of the natural world, do not emerge by the imposition of order
from the outside.  Rather, we must understand their latent trends of development and
learn how to facilitate these trends.  
 Third, synergetics testifies that any complex system usually has several alternative
paths of development. It may be possible to find paths which meet the needs of
humanity without being destructive for the rest of the natural world. However, no
matter how numerous the paths of development open to us, their number is not infinite. 
History, and the evolutionary process generally, do have direction.
 Fourth, synergetics  teaches us that efficient control over complex systems depends
less on the exercise of sheer force than on arriving at the correct topological
configuration for the architecture of the driving excitation.  Very small, but correctly
organized perturbations in complex systems can be extremely effective in producing the
desired results --an idea which Lao Tzu grasped intuitively thousands of years ago when
he taught that the soft can defeat the hard, and the weak the strong.
 Fifth, synergetics has discovered the laws which govern superposition --i.e. the
process of assembling a complex evolutionary totality from simpler, but nonetheless
integral, parts.  The integration of structures is not merely a putting together.  Various
regions of the linked systems overlap with a resulting change in energy patterns. The
whole is not equal to the sum of its parts.  Indeed, in general, it is neither more nor
less than the sum of its parts, but rather qualitatively different.  The parts of the whole
acquire a common rate of development.
 Sixth, synergetics reveals the laws which govern fast, avalanche-like processes. Most
of these processes, such as population growth and economic "miracles" follow so-called
"blow-up" regimes rather than growing in accord with an exponential law.  In such
regimes the parameters grow infinitely for a finite time on at least some time intervals. 
It is important to understand how we can initiate such processes, as well as the
requirements for avoiding the probabilistic decay of complex structures near the
moment of their maximum growth.  

 In short, synergetics offers a promising approach to understanding the problems of
a complex, highly interdependent civilization, and to penetrating the mysteries of the
larger universe of which that civilization forms an integral part.


                  Bibliography

Haken, H.
 1978Synergetics.  Berlin: Springer-Verlag

 1988Information and Self-Organization.  New York: Springer-Verlag

Kurdyumov, S.P. 
 1990"Evolution and Self-Organization Laws in Complex Systems," International Journal of
 Modern Physics 1:4

Knyazeva, E.N. and Kurdyumov, S.P.
 1992"Synergetics as a New Worldview: Dialogue with Ilya Prigogine," Questions of
 Philosophy 12

 1993 "Synergetics: Principles of Nonlinear Thinking," Social Sciences and Modern Times 2

 1994"Intuition as Self-Completing," Questions of Philosophy 2

Mandelbrot, B.
 1982The Fractal Geometry of Nature. San Francisco: Freeman

Nicolis, G. and Prigogine, I.
 1977  Self-Organization in Non-Equilibrium Systems.  New York: Wiley

Prigogine, I. and Stengers, I.
 1984Order out of Chaos.  London: Heinemann

Varela, F.J.
 1979Principles of Biological Autonomy. New York: Elsevier


        Building Critical Consciousness 
In the Context of an Ever-Advancing Human Civilization
            Elena Mustakova-Possardt


                         The world is but one country,
                         and mankind - its citizens.
                                   Baha'u'llah


 People in this century are struggling to define their place and role in the ever-
expanding radius of their social world. Most individuals, especially in the developed
world, no longer define their lives in relation to a single immediate community, but
face complex, impersonal and often perplexing national and international forces. To
deal with this complexity in a confident way, and define a personal space and a
personal path in relation to a fast-changing society, becomes a much larger challenge
for the individual than ever before in history. 
 At the same time, it is becoming more and more evident that we live in times of
unprecedented global change: an irreversible transition toward a global society, in the
context of which all our attitudes and assumptions about social and economic justice and
development are being reexamined. We are challenged to revisit our most fundamental
beliefs about human institutions and human society in order to forge the kinds of
universal principles of collective living which will allow peaceful global coexistence.
 This process of shedding the vestiges of the past to clear the way for the global
transformation which is happening, requires a certain kind of consciousness which I call
critical consciousness. I define it as the ability to understand, relate personally to, and
influence larger social reality (Mustakova, 1994). 
 Critical consciousness bears directly on community, national, and global citizenship,
and hence on the quality of our social life, as well as on our capacity to understand it
and take action upon it. Critical consciousness is related to all kinds of socio-political
practice and all levels of community, national, and international involvement. Some
familiar examples of a critically conscious approach to reality, on which Bembow
(1994) focuses her study of individuals actively committed to radical social change, are:

 * the struggle against racial, ethnic, or religious oppression
 * the struggle against gender and/or sexual oppression
 * the struggle against class oppression and/or poverty, hunger, and other forms of
 economically based oppression
 * struggle against political oppression
 * the struggle against ecological and environmental destruction of the earth and its
 atmosphere
 * the struggle for unity and peace on the planet.

 The phenomenon of critical consciousness reflects a capacity and motivation for the
independent investigation of truth by the individual, both internally and in his/her social
environment, which makes an individual a moral and caring agent in his/her social
world. In studying critical consciousness, I am studying the active operation of self on
social reality.
 As Eric Fromm and the critical theorists in general (Bronner & Kellner, 1989) point
out in their critique of market-driven societies, people in the West face large
information societies, where mass media, advertizing, ideologies and politics on every
level have greatly shrunk the personal space in which the individual's standing in the
world is negotiated. Very little remains private; virtually everything is under public
scrutiny and is greatly influenced by powerful business and political interest groups.
People are not really free but disempowered, although to all appearances they have
more individual rights or can at least talk about them. Ego-strength is undermined, and
with it the ability to resist forces of massification, indoctrination and subjugation.
 At the same time, people in less developed countries are facing an uneven
competition with the West while struggling to emerge from poverty, oppressive regimes
and cultures, economic dependence, and in the face of all this, struggling to retain some
measure of dignity and self-respect.
 In spite of the tremendous flow of information worldwide, the individual often feels
crushed and voiceless. People learn to delegate responsibility for the central issues in
their life to external sources of authority - state laws, political parties, organizations,
trends, public pressure, or just fate. It seems natural, then, to isolate oneself in the
domain of private life where one can feel a measure of control, and to limit one's sense
of relatedness to immediate others. The split between public and private life becomes
greater, especially in the developed countries, as pointed out by a number of social
critics (Bellah et al, 1985; Wuthnow, 1991). The idea of work as calling becomes a
more and more outdated phenomenon, replaced increasingly by work as career (Bellah
et al, 1985). "Lifestyle enclaves" begin to replace interdependent and all-inclusive
communities (Bellah et al, p. 72). Lifelong commitments, transcending lifestyles and
the sectoral organization of life, become harder and harder to come by (Bellah et al,
1985). 
 This combination of precarious relatedness coupled with a utilitarian and morally
relativistic approach, which dominates the Western world, increasingly infiltrates the
less developed countries as a mistaken symbol of progress and advanced thinking.
Centuries-old bonds of interrelatedness are breaking down and new ones are hard to
form.
 At the same time, we are moving steadily toward internationalization of the planet,
and individuals face correspondingly greater complexities, ambiguities, and
responsibilities. People are not ready for this transition; they are searching in their own
ways. Some of those ways have been described by social critics like Wuthnow, Bellah
et al. Yet they are held back by old traditions of thought. Scary as it is, things are
moving fast. As Vaclav Havel, President of the Czech Republic, points out:

 There are good reasons for suggesting that the modern age has ended. Many things indicate
 that we are going through a transitional period, when it seems that something is on the way
 out and something else is painfully being born. It is as if something were crumbling, decaying
 and exhausting itself, while something else, still indistinct, was arising from the rubble (qtd
 in The New York Times, July 8, 1994).


 The discourse on this on-going transformation has been reflected in a number of
global initiatives. One of them was The First International Dialogue on the Transition
to a Global Society, held at the Landegg Academy in Switzerland in 1990 under the
auspices of UNESCO. The event brought together a wide range of world-renowned
social theorists, scientists, economists and philosophers to explore the roles and
responsibilities of the public and private sectors, science and technology, culture, ethics
and religion in this process of transition. Ervin Laszlo, member of The Club of Rome
and former chief science advisor to UNESCO, points out:

 The next stage in this social evolution is the organization of human society as a planetary
 civilization which will be characterized by the emergence of a world community, the
 consciousness of world citizenship, and the founding of a world civilization and culture,
 which will allow for an infinite diversity of its components (ctd. in Ruhe, 1994).

 In the words of Miriam Campanella, senior researcher at the Department of Social
Sciences at the University of Turin and Fellow at the Center for International Relations
at MIT, Cambridge, a global society requires globalization in "the way in which
problems are considered under particular conditions", as well as an understanding that
"in the process of interdependence, we have all become vulnerable" (Eds. Bushrui,
Ayman & Laszlo, p. 64). It was generally agreed that growth of global interdependence
"has occurred in the fields of economics, finance, and communication, but has not
developed to a great extent in ethical matters" (p. 54). One of the main themes of the
conference was the importance of the emergence of a global human consciousness
to confront the challenges of our times. According to Frederico Mayor, Director-
General of UNESCO, former Rector of the University of Granada and Minister for
Education and Science in Spain, this has to be done by mobilizing "the best in our
secular and religious ethics" (p. 6). As he pointed out, at the present critical juncture
in history, we are facing issues of governance, local, regional, and international,
understood as "the integration of our public and private institutions - and, in fact, the
integration of our public and private selves" (p. 3).

 It is precisely the evolution of this global human consciousness in the individual life-
span, through a re-integration of our public and private selves, that is the focus of my
work on critical consciousness. The question guiding my research has been: What is
at the core of some people's ability to take perspective on their social environment,
identify issues and feel personally implicated in addressing them? What, on the other
hand, accounts for the fact that so many others seem to live completely embedded in
their social environment, like fish in water, not even aware of it or of the possibility
of things being different, silently adapting and considering that their main challenge?
 My work is guided by the belief that while every individual possesses the innate
potential for critical consciousness, only some individuals develop that potential. The
secondary case studies I have used (Colby and Damon, 1992; Bembow, 1994), as well
as the interview data I am currently collecting, reveal the importance of the nature of
early familial and societal interactions in the ontogenesis of self as a socio-historical
construction. The data reveals alternative developmental pathways in the evolution of
the social self, related to the presence or absence of all or some of the necessary and
sufficient conditions for the ontogeny of critical consciousness. 
 So far my work has shown that a fully evolved critical consciousness manifests three
main components: cognitive, identity, and affective elements. The cognitive elements
account for the ability to know and understand the effects of social forces on our lives.
The identity element accounts for the tendency to define oneself as a primarily moral
being. The affective element accounts for the emotions which motivate the response to
perceived contradictions with personal involvement. 
 My approach to critical consciousness is essentially evolutionary, developmental. I
take up the Freirean (1973) concept of critical consciousness understood as
empowerment, and redefine it as a psychological phenomenon in the individual life-
span. I see critical consciousness as a dimension of the social structure of personality.
This hypothetical construct describes the way an individual operates when he/she
actively negotiates the set of social relations in which he/she finds himself/herself. It
also describes the internal conversation which has to do with situating oneself in those
social relations. The interaction between these two sides of critical consciousness
represents a moral phenomenon, grounded in overarching moral values. These moral
values seem to be initially internalized from one's immediate environment, and then
actively renegotiated and reconstructed throughout the life-span. Some of the resulting
behaviors have been described in other literatures as social responsibility and moral
commitments. Critical consciousness involves a particular kind of internal conversation:
one that asks critical questions, yet maintains connectedness with reality. This kind of
internal conversation is receptive of contradictions between reality and one's internal
standard, and it engages the creative capacity of the individual to imagine a better way.
It is a moral conversation, a moral quest, spurred by the love of truth and justice, while
the very understanding of truth and justice evolves as described by genetic
epistemology. In other words, the individual, while in the here and now, has concerns
that go beyond the immediate realm, and lead him/her to be a connected and caring
agent in his/her social world.
 What is at the core of this phenomenon of critical consciousness? My in-depth
analysis of the life of Gandhi as reflected in his autobiography The Story of My
Experiments with Truth (1927), as well as of other secondary case studies of
contemporary moral exemplars (Colby and Damon, 1992; Bembow, 1994), reveals that
critical consciousness is by no means summarized by the ability for critical analysis of
one's environment. Although it is essential to develop the cognitive capacity to identify
patterns in one's social world and to ask critical questions about those patterns, what
seems to be at the heart of critical consciousness is developing a sense of identity as a
primarily moral being, and being motivated in one's personal development by the love
of truth and justice. 
 Both Gandhi's autobiography and the contemporary moral exemplars and social
activists studied by Colby and Damon (1992) and Bembow (1994), tell very similar life
stories of intense moral conversations which began early on. All of these people
describe a process, which Colby and Damon identify as the developmental
transformation of goals, through which their early moral awareness was transformed
into a lifelong calling. Different as these people's paths are, some very common themes
unite them: great moral certainty, unfailing positivity, and a remarkable unity of self
and moral goals (Colby & Damon, 1992); the role of values in finding the path to a life
dedicated to the struggle for justice, and in staying on that path; the spiritual nature of
that path (Bembow, 1994).
 As I revisited all these life stories, it became increasingly evident that the necessary
conditions for the evolving of critical consciousness were the early formation of a moral
interest, the progressive negotiating of moral authority, and the formation of a sense
of moral responsibility. All three seem to represent both the foundation and the most
lasting motivational characteristic of critical consciousness. With the later formation of
an independent sense of self, the necessary and sufficient conditions for the emergence
of critical consciousness are fully present. Then, the development of critical
consciousness itself involves the evolving of frameworks of moral judgement, social and
personal responsibility, and self-interest, and their gradual coming together into what
Colby and Damon (1992) call "a mature individualism" (p. 297).
 My most important finding so far, however, is that this kind of consciousness is a
moral and spiritual phenomenon. It reflects not just these people's way of thinking
about the world but actually their way of being in the world. Most of these people
describe an early home environment which was either explicitly religious or implicitly
spiritual, i.e. characterized by an on-going moral examination of the family's life in its
social environment. This moral conversation, centered around issues of right and
wrong, just and unjust, became the prime organizer of experience for these young
people. The basic moral values which were internalized, formed a moral core, which
spurred both the emergence and the progressing complexity of critical consciousness. 
 This process has been well described by Colby and Damon (1992). They find in
their exemplars an unfailing certainty and simplicity of moral response, combined with
persistent truth-seeking and "open receptivity", which accounts for their being
"developmentally alive" well into late adulthood (76). Colby and Damon understand the
certainty they observed as coming from the logical necessity to vigorously assert,
defend, and act upon truth once determined, which does not deter one from remaining
open to new truths and revising old ones. These people's certainty was "about their
most central values and assumptions, their core tenets of belief, which were a matter
of faith - often, though not always, religious faith" (77). Most of them expressed a core
commitment to honesty, which, as Colby and Damon point out, paradoxically creates
fluctuation in one's other beliefs. 

 The greater the truth commitment, the more uncertain the commitments to other attitudes and
 opinions - although not to all other beliefs...A stable belief in honesty thus injects a vital
 dynamism in all other belief systems... Other core articles of the exemplar's certainty, along
 with honesty, were justice, charity, harmony, and religious faith. Often, these were
 interconnected, as for those who saw all their moral concerns as emanating from their belief
 in God; but for others, a particular concern was preeminent and grounded more in a set of
 secular assumptions than religious ones. The former, however, were by far the more common
 among our group: almost 80% of the exemplars attributed their core value commitments to
 their religious faith. This was an intriguing and unexpected finding - our nominating criteria,
 after all, reflected nothing that was directly religious in nature" (77-78).

 These findings bring back into focus the fact that all the world's religions, regardless
of the social and political institutions they tend to establish, teach the essentially moral
and spiritual nature of life, and hence have the potential to spur the critical investigation
of reality, both internal and social. For example, over a 100 years ago, the founder of
the Baha'i Faith, Baha'u'llah, taught that world unity cannot and will not come until
justice is established as the central principle around which human society is organized.
He wrote:

 O Son of Spirit! The best beloved of all things in My sight is Justice; turn not away therefrom
 if thou desirest Me, and neglect it not that I may confide in thee. By its aid thou shalt see
 with thine own eyes and not through the eyes of others, and shalt know of thine own
 knowledge and not through the knowledge of thy neighbor. Ponder this in thy heart; how it
 behoveth thee to be. Verily justice is My gift to thee and the sign of My loving-kindness. Set
 it then before thine eyes (The Hidden Words, 1985).

 Gandhi's life offers a good example of the above. His life-long moral interest, and
passion for justice appear to be his most lasting motivational characteristic. The solid
moral framework of his family life, guided by observance of Hindu religious traditions,
was complemented by the sense of spiritual transcendence which the mother's deep faith
in God brought to the family. The young boy was exposed to strong values such as
moral earnestness, love of truth, sense of responsibility, and a strong sense of
connectedness to others. These became the most outstanding characteristics of Gandhi
himself - the man who from an early age manifested a strong critical awareness of the
world around him; who developed into a man of high moral profile and a life-long
devotee to the search for truth and justice for all; who evolved a spiritually based
philosophy to addressed large social and historical problems. My thematic analysis of
his life showed clearly how Gandhi's understanding of justice evolved throughout his
life, together with his on-going reconstruction of the meaning of his other central
values, such as truthfulness. However, his preoccupation with justice was unfailing and
lifelong.
 The young boy Gandhi developed an inner voice, and an inner standard of truth and
justice against which every experience was evaluated. This intense internal life at an
early age appears to be related to the strong individuality which developed. Again and
again, in his desire for truth, Gandhi had to make independent judgements, and he often
found fault with established social ways. He began to resist external pressures early on,
and to build ego strength at least partially grounded in his passion for truth. With his
independence of spirit, his sense of creative power grew.
 These developments seem also related to some common personal continuities, which
Colby & Damon identified in their exemplars. Gandhi, for example, was a very
sensitive and emotional child, surrounded by love, emotional security and
encouragement. He developed a love of people, a secure, positive response to
challenges, a sense of personal efficacy and control. Throughout his life, he exhibited
resourcefulness, energy, desire to learn and expand his understanding, leadership skills,
honesty, integrity, open-mindedness, generosity, etc. These personal continuities helped
him stay on a path of life-long growth and expanding moral commitments.
 Hence, although critical consciousness implies a progressively more complex ability
to differentiate between appearance and reality, and to identify patterns and systems of
patterns in our world, it is first and foremost an expression of an underlying moral
imperative.  This moral imperative keeps the eyesight sharp and focused, and creates
awareness of choices made. The ability to see available choices and construct one's
understanding of truth is a cognitive ability, but an argument can perhaps be made that
when one seeks choices, one finds them; i.e. a strong moral imperative may facilitate
cognitive growth. This finding calls for revisiting the common social-cognitive
developmental view that conceptual processes ought to bear profoundly on values and
the organization of the self. It might also be possible to say that certain values would
bear directly on conceptual processes and the organization of the self.
 In modern western society, many people exhibit fairly advanced socio-cognitive
developmental complexity of thought, but are not critically conscious individuals. The
distinction is that the social, political, and historical realities, which they may be easily
able to, or taught to, identify, hold no other than an intellectual thrill for them. They
do not feel implicated in those realities and do not feel the need to commit themselves.
They may know about conflicts or patterns, but do not experience them as part of their
being in the world. A critically conscious person searches for truth out of a motivation
that may be very different from that of the scientist: a scientist may feel compelled to
find the truth because it challenges him/her intellectually; a critically conscious person
needs to understand what's right and wrong because it implicates his/her choices in the
world.
 In the above sense, a person who exhibits critical consciousness does not tend to
compartmentalize public and private concerns. The same critical examination that is
applied to the world around, is also applied to the individual's internal life. The effort
is to unite one's internal and external operating around the same essentially moral and
spiritual principles by which the world is understood and evaluated. Since critical
consciousness is not a static but a developmental phenomenon, the progressive
development of critical consciousness in an individual is characterized by a progressive
unification of the sense of self and the sense of morality (Colby and Damon, 1992). In
the course of this life-long process, all personal values, beliefs and assumptions are
continuously reexamined in an effort to bring them closer to one's expanding
understanding of truth. In this sense, these individuals exhibit what Colby and Damon
(1992) refer to as a dynamic interplay between the moral certainty of one who has little
patience with compromise and half-truth, and a persistent truth-seeking that keeps these
people developmentally alive and their belief systems dynamic, open to examination.
 Why is it particularly important now to understand the origin and developmental
course of this human faculty called critical consciousness? Freire (1973), who first
named the phenomenon, saw critical consciousness as a way of knowing which he
considers the only true way of knowing. In his definition of critical consciousness, three
components stand out: 1) it involves critical analysis of reality; 2) it involves retaining
and experiencing at all times the sense of connectedness with reality, i.e. analyzing as
a participant not as an observer; 3) it is process of collective dialogue, of co-
construction in the course of dynamic social interaction. Such an understanding of
critical consciousness reveals it to be a fundamental human faculty on which depends
one's place in the world; an essential evolutionary development. This faculty becomes
even more important in the context of a painfully emerging global society, which is
being negotiated in every person's individual life.
 The 1990 International Dialogue on the Transition to a Global Society (Eds. Bushrui,
Ayman, & Laszlo, 1993) acknowledged "the apparent chaos of the world around us"
(p. 3), and the variety of imbalances that various societies exhibit in the relations
between the three main sectors in every society: economic order, socio-political order
and spiritual order (p. 43). Western societies in the main were viewed as obsessed with
economic development, with rampant materialism overshadowing the socio-political and
spiritual orders. Eastern European societies were regarded as representing the collapse
of societies as a result of the dominance of the socio-political order over both spiritual
and economic orders; while some countries in the Muslim world "serve to demonstrate
societal dissonance... because of the marked dominance of the spiritual order" (p. 47).
"Certain African societies illustrate what happens when none of the sectors makes an
adequate contribution to the societal whole" (p. 47).
 This examination of the current international scene shows that no particular society
has a model of balanced functioning to offer to the rest of the world. Rather, the model
will have to be co-constructed globally; it will be a collective process of reexamination
and growth. The Baha'i Faith, which originated in the mid-18th century in Persia
(modern Iran), has a unique perspective on the current process of globalization. The
founder of the Baha'i Faith, Baha'u'llah, taught that humanity has so far gone through
its stages of collective infancy and childhood; and the modern age reflects the historical
process of humanity emerging from its turbulent adolescence, and slowly and
painstakingly entering its age of collective maturity. A close examination of the current
historical processes does indeed reveal the characteristics which we know from
developmental psychology as specific to each of those stages in the individual life-span.
The on-going current global dialogue itself can be viewed as an effort to define the
principles of collective maturity which will allow us to establish a global peaceful
society.
 In January 1995, The Universal House of Justice at the Baha'i World Center in
Haifa presented the world community with a detailed statement on the concept of global
prosperity in the context of the Baha'i Teachings. This statement sheds light on the
common historical context which unites "the myriad activities taking place in different
parts of the world involving a wide range of nongovernmental organizations and
networks in an urgent search for values, ideas and practical measures for the peaceful
development of all peoples" (The Prosperity of Humankind, 1995). As the document
points out, this world-wide process reflects "the gathering momentum of an emerging
unity of thought in world undertakings". The document opens up with the following
words:

 To an extent unimaginable a decade ago, the ideal of world peace is taking on form and
 substance. Obstacles that long seemed immovable have collapsed in humanity's path;
 apparently irreconcilable conflicts have begun to surrender to processes of consultation and
 resolution; a willingness to counter military aggression through unified international action
 is emerging... Throughout the world, immense intellectual and spiritual energies are seeking
 expression, energies whose gathering pressure is in direct proportion to the frustrations of
 recent decades (p. 1).

 At the same time, the document points out the tremendous effort that will be
required to overcome the remaining barriers on our path to global peace:

 History has thus far recorded principally the experience of tribes, cultures, classes, and
 nations. With the physical unification of the planet in this century and acknowledgement of
 the interdependence of all who live on it, the history of humanity as one people is now
 beginning. The long, slow civilizing of human character has been a sporadic development...
 The earth's inhabitants are now challenged to draw on their collective inheritance to take up,
 consciously and systematically, the responsibility for the design of their future... It is
 unrealistic to imagine that the vision of the next stage in the advancement of civilization can
 be formulated without a searching reexamination of the attitudes and assumptions that
 currently underlie approaches to social and economic development (p. 2). 

 This reexamination, I believe, is currently under way. The social sciences have
recently intensified their discourse on issues related to moral and social values,
community, social responsibility, moral commitment, and the nature of knowledge, in
search of an interdisciplinary paradigm from which to approach these burning
questions. I see critical consciousness as precisely the kind of interdisciplinary construct
which allows us to study these issues as manifold expressions of a single phenomenon.
It allows us to begin to define a normative understanding of citizenship, through which
the self can transcend its current lock and become reunited with more collectively
balanced forms of social existence.  It also allows us to construct an integrated
understanding of individual maturity, related to an understanding of collective maturity. 
 In developmental psychology so far we have gained understanding of how various
domains of functioning develop and mature in the life-span. We know a lot about
cognitive development, perspective taking, emotional and epistemological development,
etc. We are now facing the question how all these domains come together in a mature
individual; what cross-domain phenomena unite them. Colby and Damon (1992) talk
about "a mature individualism" which "implies fully articulated links with others and
with society as a whole" (p. 297). I see critical consciousness as one of those unitary
cross-domain phenomena which can help us understand mature individualism.
 Yet, the question that developmental psychology is facing on the level of individual
development, is essentially the same question that, on a collective level, was explored
at the 1990 International Dialogue in Switzerland: What global principles, what global
consciousness would unite the current process of transition?I believe that this
question can be most helpfully approached from the point of view of an evolutionary
understanding of history as the unfolding of an ever-advancing civilization. This historic
evolutionary approach constitutes the very essence of the Baha'i message, and warrants,
in my view, its unique contribution to our age of transition. As the statement on global
prosperity points out, it is becoming increasingly clear that as soon as "practical matters
of policy, resource utilization, planning procedures, implementation methodologies, and
organization" begin to be examined, more "fundamental issues will quickly emerge,
related to the long-term goals to be pursued, the social structures required, the
implications for development of principles of social justice, and the nature and role of
knowledge in effecting enduring change" (Prosperity of Humankind, p. 2) In fact,
"such a reexamination will be driven to seek a broad consensus of understanding about
human nature itself" (p. 2).
 I believe that such a level of questioning and moral commitment requires no less
than a new type of consciousness, which we can now observe operating in some
individuals, but which society does not currently foster. Therefore, I see my work on
critical consciousness as paralleling on a micro-level in individual developmental
psychology the large-scale multi-level collective exploration in search of a new
paradigm so needed in this age of transition. There is a lot of talk these days about the
need to transcend disciplinary boundaries of understanding in order to construct the kind
of integrated knowing which can help de-compartmentalize our world and find unified,
complex solutions to our problems. In education, we still lack a common vision
grounded in a unified understanding of what a human being is, and what kind of
education would truly foster the unfolding of human potential.
 The work of defining further the necessary and sufficient conditions for the
development of critical consciousness, and the stages in its evolution, is currently under
way. What is already clear, however, is that it points to a need for a fundamental
rethinking of our educational and social institutions in terms of how they foster the
development of this essential human evolutionary faculty. My work shows that if we
want to educate people as agents capable of comprehending, and consciously and
creatively joining global historical processes, we do have to begin by acknowledging
the fundamentally spiritual and moral essence of human nature, and building our
educational and social institutions accordingly. I believe that nothing short of such a
comprehensive change can address the needs of the emerging new world order.


                   REFERENCES

Baha'u'llah. The Hidden Words of Baha'u'llah. Trans. Shoghi Effendi. Rev.ed. Wilmette: Baha'i
Publishing Trust, 1971.

Bellah, R. et al (1985). Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life.
California: University of California Press.

Bembow, J. (1994). Coming to know: A phenomenological study of individuals actively
committed to radical social change. (dissertation).

Bronner, E. & Kellner, D.M. (1989). Critical theory and society: a reader. New York:
Routledge.

Bushrui, S., Ayman, I. & Laszlo E. (1993). Transition to a Global Society. New York: One
World Publications Ltd.

Colby, A. & Damon, W. (1992). Some do care. New York: Macmillan

Freire, P. (1973). Education for critical consciousness. New York: The Continuum Publishing
Company.

Gandhi, M. K. (1927). An autobiography or the story of my experiments with truth. Ahmedabad-
14: Navajivan Publishing House.
Mustakova, E. (1994). Critical Consciousness (unpublished manuscript).

Ruhe, D. S. (1994). The Grand Transition. (paper presented at the 1994 North American Baha'i
Conference on Social and Economic Development)

The Universal House of Justice. (1995). The Prosperity of Humankind. Haifa: Baha'i World
Center.

Wuthnow, R. (1991). Acts of Compassion. New Jersey: Princeton University Press.

              The Eurasian Syndrome
                  Boris Gubman

 It is well known that Russia is located on the territory of two continents, and in this
sense belongs to both Europe and Asia.  This marginal position has long made the
country the focus of debates concerning its destiny --debates which have become quite
intense over the course of the past two centuries.  The discussions between
Westernizers and Slavophiles, which began a century ago continue today, and not only
in academic circles.  During the upheavals of the period of perestroika the slogan "to
become Europe" expressed the desire of people of democratic orientation to change the
course of development of Russia, but this aspiration was never fulfilled, due both to
internal factors and to the unwillingness of the West to embrace its Eastern neighbor,
doubting its ability to abide by civilized standards of behavior.  During the same period
a national-patriotic movement emerged --a movement which rapidly gained strength
after the disintegration of the Soviet Union.  It found an ally in the Communist
opposition.  The ideological vacuum once filled by Communist doctrine, together with
economic disorder, mass deprivation, and political instability, brought about an
atmosphere of nostalgia and mass depression, and a desire for a universal vision of
Russian history which could show a way out of the crisis.  The new Eurasian
consciousness claims to be just such a vision.

I. The Old and the New Eurasian Temptation

 The Eurasian movement is a remarkable part of the Russian intellectual history of
the first half of our century.  Students of Eurasian philosophy regard it as the only
ideological and political doctrine of the emigration that was able to create a synthesis
of the old messianic-nationalist Russian idea and the experience of bolshevism.
 Born in 1921, the Eurasian movement brought together a group of prominent
Russian intellectuals, including P. Alekseev, P. Bicilli, N. Trubetskoy, P. Savitsky, L.
Karsavin, and others.  In their thought, Russia was portrayed as a country fusing
European and Asian cultural traditions --something they thought was apparent both
under tsarist rule and during the Soviet period.  P. Savitsky wrote that Russia created
a very productive synthesis of the European and Asian cultural legacies, that far from
being divided between the two continents, Russia represented a third and independent
cultural sphere.  This synthesis had its origins in the legacy of Byzantium and the
tradition stemming from the Tartars, which both had a profound influence on the
development of the early Muscovite state, the development of the Russian empire, and
the later history of the country under Communism.
 The Eurasianists claimed that they were continuing a powerful national tradition in
the philosophy of history which began with the Slavophiles and which was further
developed by N. Gogol, F. Dostoevsky, N. Danilevsky, and K. Leontyev.  In their
philosophical understanding of history one can easily find the impact of O. Spengler's
thought, although some of the Eurasians attempt to distance themselves from this
German author and his theory of local cultures.  Spengler's opposition to the idea of
progress and the spirit of the Enlightenment, as well as his political ideas are very
much in accord with the Eurasian understanding of history.  At the same time, the
Eurasians believed their notion of the uniqueness of each culture was entirely
compatible with the Christian vision of history as governed by the providence of God.
 The Eurasians looked upon Russia as an original culture having specific traits which
are quite different from those of Western civilization.  Whereas the West cherishes the
value of the individual, Russia has its cultural foundation in the idea of the symphonic
personality --the collective subject (family, estate, class, or nation) which absorbs any
and all particularity.  L. Karsavin believed that the "symphonic subject is no less a
reality than the individual, but even something more important."  
 From the methodological point of view such an interpretation seems to be justified,
and may even be viewed as opening up new horizons for more advanced approaches
to collective history, but one must not overlook its ideological coloring, its way of
opposing Western individualism and Russian collective unity in God (sobornost).
Culture, according to the Eurasians, is a unity, a hierarchical body having the Church
at its center.  Thus the Russian Orthodox Church brings the necessary harmony to the
culture of the nation.  
 Eurasian thought, furthermore, has definite political implications.  In opposition to
Western democratic and multi-party ideas, they proclaimed the urgent necessity of
building a typically Russian ideocratic state and of abolishing all partisan political forces
for the sake of national unity.  This kind of organicist political ideal not infrequently
serves as a cover for authoritarian political movements.
 The internal contradictions within the Eurasian movement resulted in a split by the
end of the 1920s.  This split emerged out of a series of debates concerning the
publications of L. Karsavin, D. Svyatopolk-Mirsky, P. Savitsky, and others in the
weekly Eurasia.   These authors considered the Soviet state as a prerequisite for
establishment of the national ideocratic rule, and thus saw the Bolsheviks as a positive
political force.  P. Bicilli and G. Florovsky, the founders of the Eurasian movement
completely disagreed with such conclusions.  G. Florovsky rightly pointed out that the
Eurasians "want to be the followers of contemporary Bolshevism," with whom they
share a common psychological type and a common pathos and inner structure.  His
critical assessment of the "Eurasian temptation" was in accord with the opinions of such
Christian-liberal analysts as N. Berdyaev and G. Fedotov.
 The ideological debates of the past have significance in the light of the resurrection
of the Eurasian consciousness today.  Increasingly the Eurasian vision of history is
drawing support from such different forces as centrists exhibiting their reverence before
the traditionally strong Russian state, communists, and national patriots.  It is viewed
as a positive alternative to liberalism in the philosophical and political essays of A.
Dugin, S. Kurginyan, A. Prohanov, E. Limonov, V. Stepa, and is discussed by such
politicians as S. Baburin, "the last colonel of the empire," V. Alksnis, and V.
Zhironovsky, in whose dreams Russian soldiers should wash their boots in the Indian
Ocean --as if there was a shortage of water in the lakes and rivers of their motherland. 
Eurasian ideas are expressed in newspapers like The Day, Tomorrow, in journals such
as Our Contemporary and Elements and one can easily find them as well in the
respectable Free Thought and other periodicals.
 Some of the theoreticians of the new Eurasian consciousness do not mention their
predecessors, while others vaguely suggest that they are devoted to the traditional
Russian idea.  At the same time, there is a growing tendency within this movement to
seek allies in Russian and Western thought, who are able to help in developing and
justifying the new Eurasian vision of history.  A. Dugin is perhaps the most clear cut
representative of this trend.  Examining his ideas will help us to understand the roots
of the contemporary Eurasian worldview.
 Like many supporters of the new Eurasian consciousness, Dugin considers it to be
an ideology of the "third way" which is an alternative to both capitalist and communist
patterns in the structure of society.  In his article "The Conservative Revolution: A
Short History of the Ideology of the Third Way," published in Elements, the editor in
chief of this journal declares his opposition to the ideas of the Enlightenment and the
French Revolution, and his solidarity with J. de Maistre, L. Bonald, D. Cortez, and
other European conservative thinkers.  These names are followed by those of Russian
Slavophiles and soil-worshipers.  But even more the author is interested in the practical
attempts of conservative revolutionaries to realize their ideas.  His preferences are
evident: 

 In our century the Third Way ... is becoming an important factor determining the political
 panorama of our civilization.  Some elements of the Third Way can be found during the
 Russian Revolution, when populists and late right socialist-revolutionaries attempted to
 implement an extreme variant of this doctrine.  It sounds like a paradox, but in Russian
 Bolshevism itself one could easily uncover a lot of ideas which are not at all left wing, but
 which have a direct relationship with the conservative revolution (in particular everything
 that is accepted as Russian "national bolshevism" from the Change of Milestones
 movement to the new stalinists. ) Italian fascism during its early period and also under the
 Italian social republic in the North of Italy (the Republic of Salo) was almost totally based
 on the principles of the conservative revolution.  But the most complete and total (if not
 the most orthodox) representative of the Third Way was German national socialism.

Dugin puts the Russian Eurasians side by side with the German and Italian fascists,
Spanish falangists, and Romanian guardists, looking at all these phenomena as linked
with the struggle for social and cultural renewal, the traditionalist third way.  The
history of fascism is interpreted as the struggle of romanticist traditionalists aiming to
establish true values.  The bloody Nazi hangmen and enemies of mankind become
heroes giving us precious experience.  The head of the SS, H. Himmler, for example,
is characterized as a leader who cultivated intellectual freedom and pluralism in his
organization.  No other comments are needed. 
 Contemporary Eurasians, according to Dugin, should seek the support of the
powerful European "new right" movement headed by A. de Benoist.  They should pay
attention to the classics of geopolitics and to the legacy of famous traditionalist thinkers
like J. Envola, A. Ghennon, C. Mutti, and others.  Indeed, this alliance is already
becoming a reality, as indicated in a picture recently published in Elements which
shows A. de Benoist and the editorial board of the Day together, apparently in a state
of idyllic unity.
 One might rightly object that Dugin's team is not the whole of the Eurasian trend,
but the fact is that other Eurasians are expressing similar ideas without being so open
about their predecessors.  


II.  Conspiracy Theories

 The panorama of world history, according to the Eurasians, looks like a Manichean
struggle between the forces of Good and the forces of Evil.  Within this mythology, the
forces of Evil are represented by the United States and its Atlanticist allies, who seek
to extend their rule over the entire planet.  "I understand mondialism" writes S.
Baburin, "as an attempt to unify humanity in spite of the national and state traditions
of the people.  In this sense it is the enemy of all existing peoples and states." A.
Dugin, L. Ohotin, A. Prokhanov, and other new Eurasians draw a picture of a sinister
Atlanticist conspiracy against the peoples of the world undertaken by freemasonry. The
reformed Anti-Russia (V. Stepa) which has emerged in the past few years is the direct
result of the realization of the strategy of the Atlanticists, aimed at ruining our national
traditions.  The Eurasians, clearly, regard a unified global order on the road to
modernization and sharing universal human values and civilizational standards as the
main danger to Russia and the world.
 The Atlantic and Eurasian projects are two irreconcilable strategies for understanding
the world and making history.  Describing their eternal confrontation, the Eurasians say
that they are devoted to empire, authoritarian, hierarchical, communal, and anti-
individualistic, traditional forms of organization, labeling them "solar" and "Eastern." 
Atlanticism, by contrast, is based on reverence before democracy, egalitarian leveling
of people, individualism and liberalism,  and is "lunar" and Western.  

 The Eurasian project was implemented in Ancient Rome, the Atlantic in Carthage.  The
 first inspired Germany, Russia, and Japan during the last century, the second England and
 the U.S.

The eternal polarity of the Eurasian movement and Atlanticism, according to Dugin's
mythology is deeper than party, national, religious, and state preferences, but represents
a profound metaphysical choice.
 It appears that during the Soviet period, the Atlanticists occupied the KGB, while the
Eurasians played the leading role in the Main Intelligence Department.  The founders
of the USSR, according to Dugin, were Eurasian-communists, whereas Krushchev and
Brezhnev were Atlanticists in their spirit.  The coup of 1991 was a conspiracy of the
Atlanticist Kruchkov against the Eurasian Lukyanov, who was preparing his "authentic
coup."  The collapse of the USSR was a victory for the Atlanticists, but "the revenge
of the Eurasians will come soon." 
 This pattern of thought is not too sophisticated, but it appeals to mass consciousness,
to communists and national patriots, and to all people dissatisfied with the standards of
life in contemporary Russia --standards which are far from inspiring enjoyment.  It
penetrates easily into the minds of people used to thinking in terms of "us" and "them,"
and to searching for an enemy.  And Dugin gives the reader a lot of intriguing detail
regarding the classification of leaders and institutions.
 The details of Dugin's mythology are not shared by all Eurasians, but his bipolar
vision is reproduced even by thinkers who want to present their analysis as free from
any illusory metaphysics.  A. Panarin, for example, is very far from Dugin's extreme
conservatism, being closer to moderate patriotism and centrism.  At the same time he
too sees history as a confrontation between the Atlantic and Eurasian projects.  While
not as harsh as Dugin in his assessment of Atlanticism, his sympathy is clearly with the
Eurasians as against the liberal reformers.  "Totalitarianism is the other side of the
liberal utopia and its tolerance of chaos."  Opposition to Gaidar's proposal for
reforming Russia creates the basis for the alliance between centrists and red-brown
theoreticians.  Their resentment of the liberals explains their acceptance of the Eurasian
mythology.
 What about the international arena?  Who do the Eurasians see as allies there? We
find the answer in the publications of the Center for Special Metastrategic Studies
headed by Dugin himself.  First of all, the Eurasians think it necessary to obtain some
kind of support from "Middle Europe," represented by Germany.  Ignoring the current
trend towards integration, the Eurasians hope for a split within Europe and for the
victory of extreme national forces in Germany.  "Germany was always the opponent
of the Anglo-Saxon colonial conquests and was always trying to create a continental,
authoritarian civilization based on traditional hierarchical and soil values."  A
renewed traditionalist Germany, according to the Center, must establish its control over
Middle Europe in cooperation with Eurasia-Russia and in opposition to Atlanticism.  
 Russia-Eurasia must also strengthen its influence in the Slavic world, starting with
support for its traditional ally --Serbia.  Serbia, according to Dugin, represents
Orthodox Russia in the Balkans, while Croatia and Slovenia are linked with Middle
Europe (Germany, Austria, Prussia, etc.).  Albania and Bosnia are symbols of the
presence of Turkey and the Muslim world on European territory.  Macedonia as a
fusion of Serbian and Bulgarian ethnic elements is the symbol of the Great Yugoslavia
which was never able to fully consolidate itself.  "Due to religious and ethnic factors,
Serbia is linked directly with Russia as its immediate continuation in the South of
Europe." This means that Serbia is involved in the stream of common Eurasian
interests and is destined to follow the Russian path.  The conclusions of the Center for
Special Metastrategic Studies resemble the well known platform of the national patriots,
who claim that the Yugoslavian conflict reveals the scenario for a possible bigger war
in Russia.  Russians on the territory of different republics of the former USSR feel in
many ways like Serbs treated as hostages in some parts of the former Yugoslavia. 
Besides, this religious war might ignite a confessional confrontation with the Muslim
world in Russia.  The conservative Eurasians are looking at the war as the first in a
chain of events which might pave their way to power. 
 Anti-Atlantic forces, according to the Eurasians, are also gaining strength in Asia,
which is suffering from American expansion. While Turkey and Saudi Arabia act in
accord with the West, China, India, and Iran are the main allies of the Eurasians on the
global stage.  Iran "is a typically continental state having strategically, economically,
and ideologically every opportunity to become the nucleus of the huge Eurasian
bloc."  Muslim fundamentalism of the Iranian type is more desirable for new
Eurasians as a source of influence on the Asian republics of the CIS than the Turkish
road to modernization.  At the same time, they do not rule out an alternative Russian-
Eurasian alliance with Japan.
 If the strategic plans of the new Eurasians are even partly realized this will be a
terrible blow for the whole world.  Their hopes for an Anti-Atlantic transformation of
Middle Europe under the leadership of Germany are, to be sure, unlikely to be
realized.  But should Russia take the Eurasian platform  as its official program for
action in the Balkans, the outcome of the Yugoslavian conflict might be unpredictable,
and the fire of new wars might spread out over the whole of Asia, preparing an
apocalyptic finale. This too is unlikely, but not out of the question if the Eurasians, who
already have considerable influence in the Russian Parliament, were to gain power. 
 Like the old generation of Eurasians, the new one shares the belief that only a
cultural elite can lead Russia to recovery after the collapse of the USSR.  Yet,
paradoxically, the group the Eurasians hate most is the Russian intelligentsia, which it
sees as the bearer of an anti-totalitarian, anti-imperial ideology. "We hate this
`intelligentsia' most of all, more than the passive masses, more than opposing
ideological elites."  Dugin and other conservative Eurasians see themselves as the
messianic saviors of Russian and mean to finish once and for all with intelligentsia
serving the cause of the mondialist conspiracy.  The restoration of Empire appears as
a goal in and of itself, the triumph of Good over Evil.  In reality, however, this project
means the defeat of attempts to rebuild the Russian state on the platform of human
rights, law, and democracy.  A renewed arms race instead of decent living standards
would be the only possible fruit offered the citizens of the Eurasian empire.  Eurasian
ideology, authoritarian rule, and the alliance of the Orthodox Church with Islam are the
necessary tools for re-establishing the power of an elitist nomenklatura willing to kill
any creative impulse and selfishly drain all of the resources of the country under the
banner of national prestige and dignity.
 Long ago the famous Russian thinker G. Fedotov, who predicted the fall of the
Soviet Empire, cautioned that this process would be accompanied by extremist attempts
to restore authoritarian rule and by a revival of nationalist ideology.  "Bolshevism will
die as hard as national socialism.  But nobody knows what forms of Russian fascism
or nationalism will be generated"  in the process.  The rise of the new Eurasianism
confirms that Fedotov was right.  
 How should we respond to this situation? Only a few preliminary reflections are
possible in this context. On the way to joining the community of civilized countries,
Russia needs to develop a better understanding of its national identity and self-interest
as a  state unifying many different peoples across two continents.  These interests must
be accepted as legitimate by the West, which must aid Russia during this transitional
period.  A flexible reaction to the Eurasian temptation is needed immediately if we are
to prevent this disease from spreading, something which might have a fatal outcome.


                      Notes




     Organizing for Family and Congregation?
A Critique of the Political-Theological Vision and Strategy
       of the Industrial Areas Foundation
                Anthony Mansueto

 The 1994 general elections in the United States have confirmed once again the global
hegemony of the market system.  With progressive forces everywhere in disarray, the
neoliberal right has set about the task of dismantling once and for all what remains of
the centralized redistributional mechanisms of the state and the broad range of social
welfare and human development activities which the state has supported.  As market
relations penetrate ever sphere of social life, the financial and institutional base of
nonmarket, nonstate institutions erodes as well, calling into question humanity's
capacity to centralize the resources necessary to pursue its vocation in the cosmos. 
Never has the question of political strategy  been posed with such urgency for the
progressive forces. How can we best resist the current onslaught and rebuild for the
future?
 Among the range of strategic alternatives facing progressives is the organizational
form known as congregational based organizing.  Originally developed by Saul Alinksy
and his Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF) in the 1940s, congregation-based organizing
has become one of the principal forms of mass political activity in the United States,
garnering an ever larger share of the resources invested in organizing by the Catholic
hierarchy, the other religious institutions, and the major foundations, including the
John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Indeed, the Catholic Archdiocese of
Chicago recently committed $1 million for an IAF-led organizing effort in the Chicago
metropolitan area.
 Is congregation-based organizing the best way to build an organized mass
constituency for social progress in the United States? The movement has much to
commend it, at least on the surface.  It involves large numbers of people --drawn
mostly from the working classes-- in the political process.  It trains people in the art
of politics --building and exercising power-- and provides a "ladder of responsibility"
which permits those with leadership potential to play an ever larger role in shaping
tactics, strategy, and policy. The movement claims a number of important public policy
victories.  But perhaps most important, congregation based organizing taps into the
reservoir of nonmarket values and networks conserved by the religious institutions --
surely an important resource in the struggle against neoliberalism. In short, it seems to
embody, in a form specifically adapted to U.S. reality, that synthesis of working class
organizing and religious vision which has, over the course of the past 50 years, given
birth to the most effective forms of progressive political action on the planet.
 It was these (apparent) strengths which led me, while I was serving as Director of
the Justice and Peace Commission for the Catholic Diocese of Dallas between 1988 and
1991 to take a leading role in building a 50-congregation sponsoring committee for an
IAF-led organizing effort --at the time one of the largest projects in the IAF network. 
I was not, to be sure, unaware of the IAF's limitations.  The organization had no
explicit critique of the market system --indeed it claimed to have no "ideology" at all. 
And in spite of seminars for organizers and "theological reflection" sessions for clergy,
the IAF seemed to do little to develop the intellectual capacities of its leaders and
members.  But these seemed like limitations rather than fatal flaws.  The IAF was a
mass organization, training the people to struggle effectively over more or less
immediate demands, not a leadership organization charting the next steps in the human
civilizational project.  It needed to be challenged to grow, to become more than it was.
But this was no reason to withhold support from its organizing initiatives. 
 I soon found, however, that the IAF was not simply incapable of or uninterested in
the task of developing a vision and strategy for a postmarket society, but that the
organization actively opposed and in fact attempted to undermine such efforts.  It is
interesting to note just where the crucial differences emerged.  While IAF leaders did
not hesitate to engage in red-baiting in the course of their campaign against me, they
did not in fact contest the strong critique of the market system which I had been
advancing.  On the contrary, it would be difficult to fault the IAF on this front, for it
everywhere stresses, in a way appropriate to the context, the corrosive impact of
market forces on the social fabric generally and public institutions in particular.  I recall
numerous sessions of the organizers seminars devoted to this very topic.  It was on the
contrary, what might at first seem like two rather arcane points of theory and strategy
which became the real bone of contention.  
 The first had to do with the grounds on which we make ethical, and thus political
judgements.  I was already in the process of developing the foundational moral theory
which I have since set forth in a number of articles and scholarly papers: that our
knowledge of the good derives from our knowledge of the order of the universe,
something about which we can have more or less adequate, if never final and perfect,
knowledge through the use of our rational faculties.  This is the traditional Catholic
position, but one which has fallen out of favor since the advent of the market system
and the resulting crisis of the Scholastic philosophical tradition.  When people
experience themselves as only externally related atoms they begin to see the universe
as a whole in much the same way.  Systems of atoms bouncing randomly off of each
other have no visible purpose or order of their own, so form or organization must come
to matter if at all from the outside, as if by divine decree, or else emerge spontaneously
through blind variation and natural selection. This means that judgements of value must
be referred to some irrational criterion --faith, tradition, or (the dominant view in our
society) personal preference.  The resulting ethics (if it can be called that) becomes
simply a way of adjudicating competing claims over resources, without making any
judgement about the Good as such, humanity's vocation in the universe, etc.
 That it becomes difficult, on the basis of such moral theory, to contest the market
order, should be readily apparent.  The claims of would be redistributors (those of us
who would like to reallocate resources from the production of BMWs to basic research,
or to the education of inner city children) become merely personal preferences, or at
best consequences of personal faith commitments or participation of in a particular
tradition --something which carries little authority in a religiously pluralistic society. 
Indeed, it has been one of my principal criticisms of the dialectical materialist tradition
that it lacks an adequate ontological ground for moral judgements so that socialist
claims regarding justice begin to appear as simply expressions of collective self-interest. 
Thus the disintegration of dialectical materialism into various forms of postmodernist
nihilism.  
 I thus set myself the task of re-establishing an ontological ground for ethical
judgements --a project the philosophical dimension of which still consumes my best
energies. During my time in Dallas, this concern found expression in two main arenas. 
First, I devoted considerable attention to developing the philosophical and theological,
as well as the social-analytic and strategic capacities of both the base organizations and
the leadership core which was entrusted to me.  At the base level this usually meant
workshops on scripture or church documents.  I remember one especially successful
series in which lay leaders from several Latino parishes reflected on the nature and
purpose of work using the NCCB document "Economic Justice for All." Not
infrequently people who attended these workshops met with vicious attacks at the hands
of one of the many right-wing organizations operating in Dallas.  In at least one case
these attacks turned into physical assaults. But even so the people came, hungry for the
intellectual tools they needed to make sense out of their world, and hungrier still for
that vision of the Good towards which philosophy leads us. At the leadership level I
conducted seminars on such topics as "What is a Good Society?" and "What is the
Theological Significance of Political Action?"  Especially in the more advanced
seminars a wide range of different perspectives was always represented.  
 Second, I began early on to engage the IAF organizing core around this very
question, pressing the issue with ever greater intensity at the organizers seminars
convened by IAF "regional supervisor" Ernesto Cortes. I must admit that I was rather
shocked by the reception which I received.  While these organizers were more than
ready to listen when I suggested an even more radical critique of the market system
than their leader, Mr. Cortes, was advancing, my views on moral theory (also a
frequent topic of discussion at the seminars) met with contempt and derision.  
 This seemed a rather odd way for organizers in a predominantly Catholic
organization to react to a traditionally Catholic position on moral theory.  This was
especially true given the freedom with which IAF organizers quote Catholic church
documents in support of their positions and their pride in pointing out the long
friendship between IAF founder Saul Alinsky and Catholic philosopher Jacques
Maritain.  It took me a good, long while to cut through the tangle of half-truths and
misrepresentations which the IAF erects around itself and to get at the core of the issue.
 I found the key in the works of philosopher Hannah Arendt --one of the names
which appears most frequently when senior IAF organizers are pressed to cite key
intellectual influences.  At the very core of Arendt's political theory is a sharp
distinction between labor, work and action.  By labor she means the physical,
biological, and economic processes which are necessary to sustain life.  Labor leaves
nothing behind except life itself, and perhaps the freedom of another (the master) to
engage in work or action.   By work she means the process of producing objects which
possess some permanence, serve some purpose beyond themselves, and which are
executed in accord with some pre-conceived plan.  Work is an intrinsically teleological
process.  By action she means the disclosure of the subject in relationship with other
subjects ÄÄa process which unlike labor or work directly presupposes the presence
of others, which, consequently has a characteristic frailty, and the outcome of which
is always uncertain (Ardent 1958).

 Arendt criticizes the entire tradition of Western political philosophy from Plato
though Marx, which, she says, understands politics as a form of fabrication or work
rather than as the quintessential form of action.  

 Plato and Aristotle elevated lawmaking and city building to the highest rank in political
 life ... because they wished to turn against politics and against action.  To them,
 legislating and the execution of decisions by vote are the most legitimate political activities
 because in them men "act like craftsmen:" the results of their action is a tangible product,
 and its process has a clearly recognizable end.  This is no longer, or rather, not yet action
 (praxis) properly speaking, but making (poiesis) which they prefer because of its greater
 reliability.  It is as though they had said that if men only renounce their capacity for
 action, with its futility, boundlessness, and uncertainty of outcome, there could be a
 remedy for the frailty of human affairs (195).

 The tradition which Arendt criticizes, of course, reaches is consummation, in the
work of Marx, for whom the transformation of the working class from mere makers
of physical objects, into the conscious makers of history, constitutes the highest possible
level of human development.  We should note that this is a dimension of Marxist theory
which Catholic Social Teaching qualifies but does not reject.  For Catholic doctrine,
human beings make history precisely because they participate in God's own creative
activity. For Arendt on the other hand, and for the IAF, politics is an end in itself, a
form of human activity which serves no higher purpose than the disclosure of the
human subject in community with one's peers.  Politics and thus human history have
no telos, no purpose or direction, and thus cannot be made.  
 This implies, of course, that moral theory has no ground outside of or beyond the
political process itself.  For less developed leaders --those the IAF calls "tertiary" and
"secondary," politics is a means for acting on interests grounded in other arenas --the
self-interest of particular families, neighborhoods, congregations, etc.  The values
conserved by religious traditions are thus reduced to nothing more than expressions of
institutional self-interest, without any claim to truth value. For "primary" leaders and
organizers, on the other hand, the highest value is political action, or rather power itself
--the ability to act effectively in the public arena.
 This explains, of course, the IAF's simultaneous willingness to criticize the market
system, or at least the hegemony of the market order, an its unwillingness to recognize
some objective, rationally accessible, ontological ground for judgements of value
generally, and thus of the good, the just, etc.  The IAF wants to replace, or at least
partially displace, the adjudication of competing claims by the marketplace, with
adjudication by organized political negotiation.  Organizers would (partially) displace
entrepreneurs as the leading element in society and organized people would (partially)
displace organized money.
 I have no hesitation in acknowledging that this does, in a certain sense, represent an
advance over the hegemonic neoliberal ideology, in that it gives the working classes and
the nonmarket institutions some prospect of affecting public policy.  But it does not
address the underlying crisis of our civilization: our inability to make rationally
grounded judgements about questions of value, and thus about what is important for the
further development of our society. Indeed, for all of its anticommunism and
willingness to red-bait, the IAF seems to have reproduced what is worst in the
dialectical materialist tradition --the lack of an adequate ontological ground, and thus
of appropriate moral guidance in the exercise of power-- while discarding what is best:
the scientific analysis of the internal contradictions of the market system, and the
potent, if inadequately grounded vision of a society in which all resources are invested
in such a way as to best promote the full development of human social capacities. 
Perhaps this is why, as I became more deeply involved in the IAF, I found a structure
which bore a striking resemblance to that of the Leninist parties I have known: the IAF
Cabinet is a kind of Politburo or Secretariat, the Lead Organizers play a role parallel
to that of district secretaries, "primary leaders" play the role of ultimately passive
district committees, etc. The difference of course is that reasoned argument about the
good carries even less weight within the IAF than it did in most  Leninist parties, which
depend for their legitimacy on the claim to represent if not the Mandate of Heaven,
then at least the Mandate of History.
 The IAF's position is, furthermore, hostile to the historic doctrine of the Catholic
Church, which remains its principal financial and institutional sponsor.  Catholic
doctrine teaches that the Good is God understood as the object of desire which draws
all things to itself, and which therefore orders the entire universe in such a way as to
make it ever more capable of God.  A just society is one that develops human social
capacities, and thus our capacity to participate in the life of God.  Power is, to be sure,
one dimension of this, and the IAF is to be commended for stressing that power is
indeed a value, a dimension of the Good.  But it is a value because it enables us to
participate in God's creative activity, not because all values are ultimately subject to
negotiation in the political process, and thus decided in some ultimate sense by the
exercise of power.  Even in God, the Good is prior to power, not power to the Good.
God is powerful because he is Good, not Good because he is so powerful that he is able
to define the very criteria of value.

 My second area of struggle with the IAF centered around the question of parish
development.  The IAF had "sold" the organizing project to the Dallas clergy in large
measure as a way of strengthening their parishes.  Partly, of course, this meant
improving recruitment and fundraising efforts, but it also meant helping parishes to
reflect on their mission, develop an effective strategic plan, identify, train, and develop
leaders for the parish as well as for the IAF.  
 This stress on building parishes is one of the things which led me to respect the IAF
in the early stages of my relationship with them.  The local congregation generally, and
the Catholic parish in particular, is one of the few institutions in our society which
conserves nonmarket relationships and values.  Being part of a parish community
provides a counterweight to the fragmentation engendered by the marketplace and
creates a basis in experience for understanding such ideas as system, structure, and
organization.  The religious life of a parish grows up on the basis of this experience,
and builds on it, using preaching and teaching, sacrament and ritual, spiritual direction
and action in the public arena to help people become more fully human --more fully
participants in the creative activity of God.  As moral theologian Tim O'Connell put
it, the purpose of a parish is to produce virtuous human beings.  
 But parishes, like all institutions in our society, suffer from the corrosive effects of
the market system.  As people spend more and more time working they have less and
less time for their families, their local congregations, or anything else.  The job of a
pastor gets harder and harder.  Helping parishes to come to terms with this problem,
and to comprehend and carry out their mission, is an important political task in its own
right, quite apart from any intervention by parishes into the public arena, if by politics
we understand reorganizing social institutions in order to unleash latent human
potential.
 As I became more deeply involved in the IAF, however, I found to my dismay that
parish development efforts rarely went beyond what was necessary to improve
fundraising and recruitment efforts for the IAF and that when they did it was only in
order to pay off a political debt to a powerful priest or bishop.  The two women
religious involved in the IAF's "reflection process" the diocese of Victoria, for
example, initiated at the insistence of IAF ally Bishop Charles Grahmann, spoke
contemptuously of the process, complaining that it was "all talk and no action."  And
even in areas where the IAF seemed to have done some of its best work, such as San
Antonio and the Rio Grande Valley, there was little evidence of any real thought about
how to help parishes "produce virtuous human beings." 

 All this finally came to a head at the founding convention of the Texas Interfaith
Network in October of 1990.  It was not just that the IAF seemed to be shifting its
strategic focus away from parish development and leadership training towards a focus
on mobilizing for immediate political action.  The Network was, after all, basically a
good idea, and one which I supported even when some local organizations, such as that
in Fort Worth, resisted vigorously.  It was, rather that the vast majority of the 10,000
people present, most of whom were from areas in which the IAF had been working for
such a long time, had almost no idea what was going on.  They showed no evidence
of the in-depth leadership development and theological formation which the IAF
promised.  They were there because of Ernesto Cortes, they were to see Ernesto
Cortes, in his moment of glory.  It would not have been too much to talk about an
emerging cult of personality --a sad thing for an organization which always stressed the
dangers of charisma and the importance of trained, institutionally based leaders.
 As these two principal conflicts with the IAF were building, other seemingly
unrelated, but nonetheless troubling signs emerged.  It was already apparent from my
reading of Hannah Arendt that the IAF was not in any meaningful sense a working
class organization.  It soon became apparent that it had even less regard for the
struggles of women and oppressed nationalities. When my associate, and later my wife,
Maggie Vosburg criticized the IAF for focusing its "theological reflection" efforts on
clergy, noting that in a predominantly Catholic organization this excluded women, she
was dismissed as a "single issue feminist" --a charge which anyone familiar with her
work knows to be ludicrous, as did the many Dallas clergy present at the meeting, who
began to wonder why the IAF seemed so rigid and defensive.  At another session
Ernesto Cortes told a training session that Mexican-Americans in Dallas were not
suffering from racism --they were just newcomers who had not yet been assimilated. 
This came as some surprise to the Mexican-Americans present whose families had lived
in Dallas for many generations.  
 The internal authoritarianism of the IAF also became increasingly apparent.  My first
hint of this came when Mr. Cortes asked me repeatedly if I knew a certain Episcopal
priest in East Texas.  When asked him why he was so concerned about this person,
when neither East Texas nor the Episcopal church were really central to our organizing
efforts he told me that "this guy" was "on the list of people he wanted shot after the
revolution."  I was shocked, but more at my colleague's immaturity than anything else. 
I knew plenty of communists who talked this way, usually in jest, and never actually
intending harm.  I had just assumed Mr. Cortes was beyond that.  Then, on another
occasion, when tensions between us were beginning to build, he asked me if I was
familiar with "The Measure Taken." He was referring, it turns out, to a play by Bertolt
Brecht in which a young communist organizer is "disciplined" for "left deviations"
which disrupted the popular front.  He suggested I read the play to familiarize myself
with the unpleasant fate which awaited me if I continued on my present course.  
 During the summer of 1990 Mr. Cortes began missing important meetings and
training sessions without notice. When, in the course of negotiations around renewal
of the IAF's contract, I asked that he sign a statement acknowledging the missed
sessions and agreeing to make up the lost work --the Dallas leadership was anxious to
benefit from the IAF's much vaunted leadership training which we had been promising
them for two years-- he refused saying that this reflected a "lack of trust." This fell
uncomfortably on ears trained to regard all public relationships as based not a trust but
rather on accountability.  Around the same time I was informed that if I intended to
remain part of the organization, I would have to refrain from all public criticism.
 And one of our colleagues from the Philippines made some disturbing allegations
that the IAF was involved in organizing efforts in his country --and had a reputation for
turning left-leaning leaders over to Marcos' police.  This latter allegation, which we
have not been able to fully substantiate, was particularly disturbing in the light of
evidence that the IAF has had relations with the State Department since its founding. 

 What is the IAF?  Is it some kind of bizarre mutant from the communist movement,
all organization and no ideology?  Is it some kind of domestic counterinsurgency
agency? We did not then, and do not now know how to answer these questions.  What
had, however, become apparent, was that the IAF was not what it claimed to be: an
educational institute which helps local congregations to act effectively on their values
in the public arena.  Here was an organization with a predominantly working class
constituency which devalued work in favor of some neo-Kantian understanding of
"public action," an organization with a predominantly Catholic financial and
institutional support which not only dissented, but in fact strenuously rejected the
historical Catholic approach to ethics, all the while flirting with "Christian Democratic"
themes.  The IAF's key organizer in Texas talked privately like a Stalinist while
publicly red-baiting people who were quite public about their commitment to the
struggle for a postmarket society.  And there was even some suspicion of links with
counterinsurgency activities.  Whatever it was, it was not a pretty picture.  I had to get
out.
 After I resigned from my only official position in the IAF network --Secretary of the
Strategy Committee of the Dallas Interfaith Sponsoring Committee in November of
1990, I was reluctant to engage the organization in open struggle.  I had --and still
have-- great respect and affection for Ernesto Cortes, with whom I worked side by side
for two years.  I did not, furthermore, want to destroy two years of careful organizing
work.  It was my hope that the leadership core which I had trained could struggle
inside the organization, drawing on its real strength --the Catholic parishes which are
the healthy core of every IAF organization-- to help it become an organization with a
sound, well grounded vision and system of values as well as a well trained core of
institutional leaders. I confined myself to private conversations with individual
organizers and leaders, one short "forum" in Dallas in March 1991 at which I explained
publicly my reasons for resigning and gave the other members of the Dallas leadership
a chance to share their perspectives on the struggle, and one article, published in the
first issue of Dialectic, Cosmos, and Society, attempting to analyze the social basis and
political valence of the organization. My concern has simply been to raise the level of
discussion about the congregation based organizing generally, and the IAF in particular.
 The IAF has not been so kind.  After a nasty red-baiting campaign in Dallas and
Albuquerque, the IAF leadership essentially purged everyone in the Dallas organization
who had any relationship with me, including many who did not share my criticisms of
the IAF, did not know what they thought, or simply had not been involved in the
conflict. Several contacts working in the United States Catholic Conference or other
Catholic agencies report some rather bizarre confrontations with Mr. Cortes in which,
to use their language, he seemed "obsessed" with me, in a way that did not seem
warranted by what they knew about our public differences or any possible "damage"
I might have done to the IAF. And to this day, from time to time, I will get an "IAF
alert" from an associate somewhere in the country who has just had a discussion with
an IAF organizer who wants to know if they know me, if they know where I am, what
I am doing, etc.  Is it finally time for that "measure" to be taken? Apparently the IAF
is unaware that I have been in Chicago for over two years, and that I spent 1993-1994
conducting a study of congregation based organizing in this city, a study which involved
numerous in-depth interviews with many of the IAF's closest allies here, as well as
some of their main adversaries. If they are some kind of intelligence organization,
they clearly aren't a very good one.  In any case, it does seem as though my "arcane"
criticisms of the IAF have touched a raw nerve.

 Our civilization is in serious trouble.  The penetration of market relations into every
sphere of life has made all activities into just a means of realizing individual consumer
interests. People have lost their ability to reason about the Beautiful, the True, the
Good, and the One, and thus to envision any allocation of resources besides that which
the market dictates.  The hegemonic neoliberal right is rapidly defunding all activities
which don't make money for somebody.  That includes precisely those activities which
most contribute to the development of human social capacities, from the rearing and
educating of young children,  through the construction of such vital infrastructure
projects as mass transit and ecologically sound energy systems, to cutting edge artistic,
scientific, and philosophical research.  Humanity is losing sight of its vocation in the
cosmos.
 We cannot resist the neoliberal offensive and begin to rebuild the progressive forces
so long as we accept the idea that judgements of value are simply a matter of personal
preference --or, what amounts to the same thing, individual faith commitments or
participation in a particular tradition.  We need a new moral consensus grounded in
knowledge of the very structure of the cosmos.  This does not mean unanimity or
finality --on the contrary nothing benefits the common good so much as reasoned debate
around fundamental questions of value. But it does mean a respect for the objectivity
of value, and agreement that more or less adequate knowledge of value is open to
reason.
 The religious institutions have become such a potent force for social progress
because it is the religious traditions almost alone which have conserved knowledge of
the Beautiful, the True, the Good, and the One, as well as the nonmarket networks
which provide the basis in experience for such knowledge.  The Catholic Church plays
a particularly important (though not unique) role in this regard, for two reasons.  First,
the Catholic Church is the principal heir and conservator of the philosophical tradition
of Plato, Aristotle, and Aquinas, which teaches us how to achieve rational knowledge
of the transcendentals. Second, because of their historic relationship to immigrant
working class neighborhoods, Catholic parishes conserve much richer networks of
nonmarket relations than, say, most Protestant congregations. The way in which the
Catholic church organizes, develops, and deploys these resources thus has important
consequences for the way in which the current crisis unfolds.
 The strategy represented by the IAF represents a serious error in this regard. Rather
than tapping into the Church's principal strategic assets --its ability to speak with
authority about humanity's vocation in the cosmos, in a way which does not depend on
specifically Christian faith commitments, but only on humanity's shared capacity for
philosophical wisdom, and the parish communities which are the social basis of this
capacity-- it in fact relativizes them.  Catholic Social Teaching becomes simply one
tradition among many which secondary leaders, who have not yet matured enough to
savor the joys of political action for its own sake, bring to the negotiating table. 
Parishes are, ultimately, just a power base.  We can do better than this.
 This said, we should not conclude that we were mistaken to be attracted to
congregation based organizing.  On the contrary, my initial intuition --and that of the
many pastors and lay leaders who have invested in the IAF-- was healthy.  The parish
is the place to begin rebuilding the fabric of our society, and the values conserved by
our religious traditions represent the best starting point for engaging our people in a
dialogue around fundamental questions of value. And much that the IAF teaches about
the art of building and exercising power is sane --though I reject their claim to sole
authorship of the their strategic and tactical corpus. But we need an organizing strategy
which puts a priority on rebuilding our parishes, and one which takes seriously the
objectivity of value --which understands power as a dimension of the Good, and not as
the ultimate criterion of value.
 I think that the process which we began in Dallas --integrating congregation based
organizing with serious social analysis and philosophical-theological reflection--
represented an important first step towards such a strategy.  But we were not in a
position to do the kind of comprehensive parish development work which is necessary
if the organizing and reflection process is to engage the whole people.  And the
philosophical work we have done in the past five years --work which has helped us to
move beyond the Christian Marxism of our days in Dallas to a new synthesis-- is not
without important strategic implications.  In an upcoming article we will outline our
emerging strategy in greater detail. For now, though, it is important to open a dialogue
about the role of the IAF in the political strategy of the Catholic Church.  We hope that
these reflections can help to initiate such a dialogue, and contribute to the formulation
of a vision and a strategy which does justice to both the demands of the present period
and the historic richness of the Catholic tradition. 


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                El Tercer Planeta
                Ernesto Cardenal

­Tener una descripci¢n razonable del universo!
"El hecho de que es universo y no diverso."
 Un espacio tan inmenso
 por la inmensidad de tiempo.
Espacio-tiempo que ya no pueden separarse:
hablar de espacio es tiempo y viceversa.
Nunca se ha probado en un experimento que el tiempo pasa.
Que nosotros pasamos es otra cosa.
Los movimientos de los  tomos son reversibles,
pero nosotros, hechos de  tomos,
no somos, ­ay!, reversibles.
La pel¡cula no corre para atr s.
 Eso es entrop¡a.
Anax goras crey¢ al sol del tama¤o del Peloponeso.
No hace tiempo de eso.  Ahora se han visto tantas galaxias como un gas uniforme de
galaxias.
Cien sistemas solares nacen cada segundo
en el universo explorable,
seg£n Sagan.
Y muchos tal vez con un tercer planeta
con playas y cocoteroes y mujeres
y con alg£n Sagan,
y un poeta solitario cantando a las estrellas.

A una escala en que las galaxias son part¡culas de polvo ...
El centro en todos los lugares y en ning£n lugar.
Per so las galaxias m s antiguas van m s r pdio
estamos desaceler ndonos.
 ¨Qu‚ habr  m s all  destr s?
 ¨El borde del universo?
All¡ donde se ven m s densas las galaxias
es que el universo era entonces m s pequeno.
El borde-borde finalmente: 
es el comienzo, el Big Bang.
¨La lanza Lucrecio, arrojada m s all  del espacio?
Se podr¡a lanzar una lanza 
m s all  del l¡mite del universo
pero no donde ya no hay materia, y ni una lanza siquiera.
 O el griego dijo javelina.
Es el final del cielo que es el comienzo.
M s all  no puede mirar un telescopio.
Pod¡a calcularse con exactitud dijo Einstein
la totalidad de su masa.
     Ese gas de estrellas
     y m s inmensidad a£n:
     un gas de galaxias.
          ¨Y m s
          all ?
          M s all  de galaxias 
          qu‚ ser ?
¨De d¢nde vino esto y ad¢nde va?

 Todo en el universo gira.
 ¨Y el universo gira tambi‚n?
 ¨Y gira en torno a qui‚n?
 Todo en el universo gira
 y esfera es el deseo de un ser
 de ser lo m s puque¤o posible
 y los m s simple.

El humilde planeta como el portal de Bel‚n
cuna de la vida.
 El tercer planeta.
en un Supergrupo de galaxias 90% vaci¢.

Entender biol¢gicamente el universe.
El reino de los Cielos es biol¢gico.

La luz es energ¡a y no materia.
el big-bang cre¢ la energ¡a
y la energ¡a cre¢ materia.
Tambi‚n materia invisible a tu alrededor
y dentro de ti.
 De  tomos de estrellas tu ...
Y entre t£ y el firmamento no hay l¡nea divisoria.                The Third Planet
                Ernesto Cardenal

To have a rational description of the universe!
"The fact that it is universe and not diverse."
 A space of such immensity
 for the immensity of time.
Space-time which already cannot be separated:
to speak of space is to speak of time, and vice versa.
Never has it been proven experimentally that time passes.
That we ourselves pass --that is another thing entirely.
The movements of the atoms are reversible,
but we, made of atoms,
we, alas, are not reversible.
The film cannot be made to run backwards.
 This is entropy.
Anaxagoras believed the sun was the size of the Peloponnesus.
That wasn't so long ago.  Now, we have seen
so many galaxies that they appear to form a uniform gas of galaxies.
A hundred solar systems being born each and every second
in the explorable universe,
according to Carl Sagan.
And many perhaps, with a third planet
with beaches and palm trees and women,
and with their own Carl Sagan,
and a solitary poet singing to the stars.

On a scale in which the galaxies are like grains of sand ...
The center everywhere and nowhere.
But if the oldest galaxies move most rapidly
we are slowing down.
 And what will we find beyond all that?
 The edge of the universe?
There where the galaxies become most dense
is when the universe was still small.
The ultimate border finally:
is the beginning, the Big Bang.
The lance, Lucretius, hurled beyond space?
One could throw a lance
beyond the limit of the universe
but not where there is not matter any more, nor even a lance.
 The Greek says javelin.
It is the end of the heavens which is the beginning.
Beyond that a telescope cannot see.
One can calculate with precision, said Einstein,
the totality of its mass.
     This gas of stars
     and more immense still:
     this gas of galaxies.
          And beyond that?
          Beyond the galaxies what will there be?
From whence does all this come, and where is it all going?

 Everything in the universe turns.
 Does the universe itself turn as well?
 And turn around what --or whom?
 Everything in the universe turns
 and a sphere is the desire of a being
 to be the smallest possible
 and the most simple.

This humble planet like the portal of Bethlehem
cradle of life.
 The third planet
in a Supergroup of galaxies which is 90% void.

To understand biologically the universe.
The Kingdom of Heaven is biological.

Light which is energy and not matter.
The big bang created energy
and energy created matter.
Also invisible matter, all around you
and within.
 Of atoms and stars you are born ...
And between you and the firmament, there is no division.      

                Psalm
                Anthony Mansueto

I heard him on Halsted Street.
I came upon him at Haymarket, weeping.
And his tears fell on the fruit stands and news stands,
and rolled down to form frozen puddles on the cracked and littered sidewalks.

I saw his glory at dawn.
The sun rose over the lake,
and its rays broke through the cloud banks
and shot down every avenue and boulevard
to the westernmost quarters of the city.
And all Chicago knew the glory of YHWH.

At noon, at Southworks, 
the air was thick with smoke and sulfur.
And a storm moved in over the lake
and blanketed Calumet with a foot of fresh snow.

At sunset the people went home to their houses
and ate sausages and cabbages 
and chitt'lins and greens,
y tacos de birria.
And they rested until morning.

At dusk he formed a frothy head
on every stein of beer
in every bar room
in every corner of the city.
And the cups all ran over.

YHWH loves the slums of Chicago
more than all the mansions of McCormick.
YHWH is in the heart of Chicago,
like the river which runs gently under the bridge to Goose Island at midnight,
while the wind sweeps like a wet broom through the dark corridors of the city.