Global Economic and Cultural Transformation

The Making of History

M. Rabie

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781137365330
• Topic: Economics
• Subtopic: Macroeconomics
• Index: Economics

Society today faces multi-dimensional challenges that are hard to define and even harder to deal with. Social and economic systems throughout the world are becoming more complex and interdependent, and globalization is moving beyond the sphere of economics to engulf other aspects of life, particularly culture and security. Our current theories, strategies, and road maps are fast becoming out-dated and no new ones have emerged to take their place.Mohamed Rabie re-examines the relevance of major ideas and systems of the recent past, including ideology and its relation to society in Global Economic and Cultural Transformation. This book is an attempt defines and explains this transitional period and provides a new conception of economic and societal world history, which us understand how we got here and where we are going.

1

A View of History

World history is the record of past events that are perceived by most people to be important and interesting. It is the story of the development of human societies and their achievements in all fields of human endeavor, as well as the story of war and peace and their consequences. Because no one can confidently prove or disprove assertions about the past, any conversation about history is necessarily controversial. Therefore, all assertions made by historians should be considered probabilities, not facts beyond doubt. And if history contains no proven facts, then no history should be viewed as sacred, and no historical record should be considered beyond challenge. Indeed, unless we accept that the only fact about history is that there are no credible facts in history, we will continue to be largely prisoners of the past, unable to free ourselves from the chains of history, and move forward to envision a shared future for all humanity.

Since acts, ideas, inventions, and events that shape human history are not isolated from one another, the historical record reflects a chain of actions and reactions and interactions that form a process of continuous change and transformation. This process is an unconscious and unregulated movement of groups, nations, states, cultures, and civilizations toward higher, more complex, often undefined goals and societal formations. It is a self-propelled process that has no particular point of departure, and no clear destination. As it moves, it causes conflict, induces change, and transforms people’s perceptions, ways of life, and life conditions in ways that do not necessarily reflect the desires or interests of most people.

For the historical process to continue, it requires motives to inspire it, forces to lead it, energy to fuel it, and a mechanism to coordinate its many activities. Traditionally, ambitious leaders, active groups, aggressive states, human needs and aspirations, and an uninterrupted stream of new ideas, technologies, and ideologies have played leading roles in motivating and energizing the historical process. Over time, relationships among these forces have variously been characterized by conflict, competition, and cooperation. Interestingly enough, however, the mechanism that has managed conflict, coordinated change, and moved the historical process in a seemingly orderly manner has been created unconsciously. Four major societal processes have gradually emerged as independent, yet complementary, vehicles to form a larger societal framework through which forces of change shape societies and their cultures and transform life conditions at any time. They are the sociocultural process, the political process, the economic process, and the infomedia process. How these processes emerged and what functions they perform and how they interact with one another is the subject of Chapter 3.

History and the Historian

History, being the record of big events throughout the ages, makes historical records the primary tool to understand what happened in the past, why and how it happened, and what lessons are there for us to learn. However, most records seem intended to glorify the victorious, idolize leaders, exaggerate achievements, dehumanize the vanquished, and often justify evil acts committed to achieve victory. Since there can be no winners without losers, and no heroes without villains, the vanquished have felt that history does not treat them fairly, and therefore they continue to criticize most historical records, call for their revision, and write their own versions of history. While these accounts are often substantially different, they are not necessarily more accurate.

Representatives of the vanquished peoples and decedents of slaves and minorities in general have engaged in rewriting history to reclaim their rightful place in it. To achieve this objective, they tend to view historical events that have changed their lives from a moral perspective, one that allows them to magnify their own suffering, belittle the victories of their conquerors, blame the victors for whatever had happened to them, and oftentimes dehumanize them as well. In fact, the glorification of the self and the demonization of the other are two faces of the same historical incident seen by two peoples facing each other across the confrontation line. History, therefore, is claims and counterclaims, overestimates and underestimates, and exaggerations and falsifications that may come close to telling the truth but never reflect it. Historical records leave the real truth hidden somewhere between many contradictory claims, but nowhere to be seen in order to be identified and evaluated.

Morality, which is an aspect of ideology and culture, has often been the tool used by historians to glorify and demonize freely. While the victors seldom feel the need to justify their acts to achieve victory, the vanquished are constantly searching for a justification to explain their defeat and criteria by which to judge and belittle their conquerors. Throughout history, the vanquished and the oppressed nations and minorities have acted as if morality lies exclusively within their domain. Yet, judged by today’s standards of democracy, freedom, social justice, and human rights, almost all the leaders of the past, both winners and losers, would appear guilty of criminal acts; personal glory to them was almost always an end that justified all means.

Because history has always been contested, all historical “facts” remain meaningless and unimportant until they are evaluated and placed, along with their consequences, in certain historical perspectives. Every judgment of the past is usually made in light of the present moment as lived and understood by the historian who makes it. “We can view the past, and achieve our understanding of the past, only through the eyes of the present.”¹ But these eyes see a particular view that is more relevant to the present as lived by the historian than to the past he tries to imagine and describe. Therefore, as the present changes, it causes our view of the past and general understanding of its culture and life conditions to change as well.

To provide an example, President Anwar Sadat of Egypt traveled to Israel in 1977 seeking peace despite the fact that a state of war had characterized the relationship between Israel and all Arab states at the time. Since such a trip amounted to a de facto recognition of the state of Israel, Arabs in general and Palestinians in particular condemned the trip and accused Sadat of treason. Fourteen years later, almost all Arab states, including representatives of the Palestinian people, participated in the Madrid Conference for Middle East peace. As a result, most Jewish and Egyptian historians vindicated Sadat; many credited him with courage and foresight. Both evaluations of Sadat’s trip, however, were expressed in light of their own political context and time. But if we look at Sadat’s trip today from a wider, more reflective historical perspective, both images of Sadat as traitor and as visionary would appear subjective and incomplete, particularly in light of the failure of the Madrid Conference and the death of the peace process that followed.

Sadat’s trip to Israel was motivated by self-interest and a desire to regain lost Egyptian territory, and not by a desire to commit treason against other Arab states or to help Israel. But by signing a separate peace treaty with Israel in 1979, Sadat caused the Arab position vis-à-vis Israel to be vastly weakened; he practically eliminated all nonpolitical options, leaving the weakened Arabs at the mercy of a strong Israel backed by the United States. Sadat, therefore, was neither a traitor nor a visionary, a villain, or a hero, but a mere politician who sought to maximize his gain regardless of his action’s consequences for others.

Many people and numerous historians seem to think that history holds the keys to understanding human development and to identifying the major forces that shape societal life in general and influence its future course. Because of this belief, theories of history were written, and continue to be written, to explain the nature of the historical process, its course, its logic, and its perceived final destination, assuming that there is a destination where history’s long journey would eventually end.

Historians of each era can be divided into three general categories: adherents to the dominant ideology of the time, critics of it, and observers claiming neutrality. Historians in the first category tend to be apologists for, if not promoters of, the prevailing ideology and defenders of its actions and intentions. Critics and opponents of the prevailing ideology, in contrast, tend to highlight the shortcomings and excesses of it, as well as the sins and follies of its leaders. Historians who claim neutrality usually see history as a powerful force that does not differentiate between its subjects. They tend to see most leaders as less than heroes but more than demons, and view losers as neither victims nor innocent bystanders. Neutrality, however, is impossible to maintain, particularly in cases where people, and their lives and belief systems, are at issue. Every historian has his or her own worldview, values, life experience, and cultural and educational background against which he or she consciously or unconsciously judges the subjects of his investigation and their legacies. Because of these facts, historians continue to write controversial histories that deepen animosity and suspicion among peoples.

Although the historian “strives constantly to transcend his own present to recapture the past, to suppress his own personality in order to give life to generations long dead,”² he is a product of his own times and environment and life conditions. Every historian is a product of the culture and the particular ideology to which he owes his personality, identity, and intellectual qualities. Since cultures, ideologies, human environments, and life conditions continue to change and be transformed, every generation of historians is expected to produce records that try to reflect the spirit of old times while being colored by the cultural biases of the historian’s times. Historians, no matter how hard they may try to transcend their present to recapture a past they never lived, are destined to produce history that is neither complete nor factual. Two historians writing about the same era or the same nation are likely to produce different histories. Thus, the history of every era and every nation is an ever-evolving, never-completed story. Every history, therefore, must be viewed as tentative, incomplete, and open to interpretations and revision.

“Any work of history is vulnerable on three counts,” says Gertrude Himmelfarb, “the fallibility and deficiency of the historical record on which it is based, the fallibility and selectivity inherent in the writing of history, and the fallibility and subjectivity of historians.”³ Consensus among historians is rather rare, coming about only in regard to histories whose ideology is long dead, and has little contemporary political or emotional impact. Since there is no historical truth, good historians are only able to convey the spirit, the culture, the technology, and the general life conditions of times past.

R.G. Collingwood mandates that “the understanding of the past in a properly historical way requires, on the part of the historian, a reenactment of past experience or re-thinking of past thought.”⁴ But neither the reenactment of past experience nor the rethinking of past thought is humanly possible. No historian can say with certainty what happened in the past without being a witness, why it happened, how it affected life conditions at the time, and how it may be of benefit to us. Collingwood in fact makes no distinction between an action and its causes. He claims that “when the historian knows what happened, he already knows why it happened.”⁵ Historical facts to Collingwood are the end rather than the beginning of inquiry. He further claims that “the full description of an action is at the same time its explanation.”⁶ But the description of an action that happened in the past can never be complete, nor can it be accurate. Once again, perhaps only a historian who can relive a particular past in his or her own memories—despite the passing of time—is able to describe that past, understand it, and draw valuable conclusions from it.

The Historical Connection

Historians in general have some type of connection to the histories they take as their major subject of inquiry. Chinese historians, for example, write more about the history of China than about the histories of France and Germany combined. Israelis are more interested in Jewish history and in the history of Arabs in general than in British or Italian history. Connections can be cultural, political, ideological, and/or circumstantial. Historians interested in world history strive to transcend their own cultural traditions, political views and ideologies to view the world as one entity and its development as a coherent historical movement. Since this book is about the making of world history and the transformations of world cultures and civilizations, I feel the need to explain my own connection to this history.

I have been fortunate to experience first-hand the development of human societies over time, and to witness the evolvement of more than one civilization and participate in some of their important events. And because civilizations go through difficult transitional periods before social, cultural, political, and economic transformations are completed and a new civilization emerges, living the life I have lived has given me a unique opportunity to see change as it evolved and feel the pains and hopes of people in such circumstances. My writings, therefore, are not a matter of only curiosity or imagination, but a commitment to convey the spirit of the times I have lived and identify the forces of change that transformed and continue to transform the world’s many societies, cultures, and economies, and the way they are organized.

I was born in an enchanting agricultural community where neither electricity nor running water nor modern sanitation was available. People and animals were used to plow the land, plant the seeds, harvest the crops, and transport them to local markets. The community where most of my childhood was spent is quite similar to a typical agricultural community in Europe during the late decades of the nineteenth century, with a few exceptions; the existence of trains, cars, and radios were the major ones. As I was growing up and becoming aware of my social and economic environments, war erupted and caused my family and my generation to become refugees. The refugee camp in which I spent about five years of my youth was outside an agricultural town at the edge of a vast, desolate desert. For about two years, my older sister and I were assigned by our father the task of spending about two days a week roaming the neighboring desert to collect dry and dying bushes and shrubs needed to make fire for cooking. During the winter and early weeks of spring, the task was expanded to include the collection of wild vegetables to feed the family. Two of these vegetables are now domesticated, and every time I smell them and taste them I remember the days and events of a childhood lived as a hunter and gatherer who hunted no animals but gathered a lot of vegetables.

Other circumstances surrounding my life led me to share with nomads their food, listen to their songs and life stories, spend time in their tents, and observe their daily life. I was even able to see how men treat their wives and children, how younger men interact with older ones, and occasionally accompany shepherds as they perform their daily tasks. It was a life that represented the first stage of development of human society on its way to civilization. Having been uprooted from an affluent and secure existence and relegated to living in abject poverty and an insecure environment made me aware of the new life, evaluating every change and every tradition with a critical mind that never stopped thinking and wandering beyond the present and into the unknown.

By the time I entered high school, my family had moved to Jericho, the neighboring town, which is thought to be the oldest city in the world. Nevertheless, all nine of us lived in a one-bedroom apartment that had none of the basic modern amenities. The family, moreover, had neither the money nor the space to buy a desk, a table, a chair, or any piece of furniture that is today taken for granted in most agricultural communities. My father rented and cultivated a small piece of land on which we lived and whose produce provided most of the food the family needed for survival and a little money to support a mostly subsistence life; all children who were old enough to help in cultivating the land were required to do so. Domesticated turkey, chicken, pigeon, and rabbits provided the meat the family needed to supplement its mostly vegetarian diet.

Upon graduation from high school, I received a scholarship from the United Nations to study in Cairo, one of the largest and most vibrant cities of the Third World at the time. The trip from Jerusalem to Cairo gave me the first opportunity to fly in a plane and spend a night in a luxurious hotel in Beirut. Living and studying in Cairo gave me a chance to observe affluence and abject poverty coexisting side by side and watch modern and primitive cultures living their separate, estranged lives in one place, often in one building. Third World nationalism and socialism were thriving along with anti-imperialism in an atmosphere that inspired the young and gave hope to the deprived. It was only there that I was able to live in a house with electricity, running water, sanitation, a phone, and even a refrigerator. Life in Cairo represented what I call the transitional period between two civilizations, the agricultural and the industrial ones.

Five years later, I traveled to Germany, where I witnessed and participated in the so-called “German Economic Miracle” and lived for almost two years in a mature industrial society. In Germany, I pursued a graduate degree and worked a few months in a publishing house. Most of my free time was spent visiting as many German cities, towns, and villages as possible and immersing myself in the culture of the land. In the mid-1960s I moved to the United States, where I completed my higher education, earned a PhD degree in economics, and taught at a few American universities. While in the United States, I witnessed two of the most important social and political movements in modern US history: the civil rights movement and the anti-war movement that opposed the war in Vietnam.

In 1970, I left the United States for Kuwait to teach at its newly established university. And while at Kuwait University, I managed to change the educational system and the curriculum, introduce coeducation in Kuwait for the first time ever, publish a quarterly journal and two books and tens of papers and articles, and participate in the cultural life of the Kuwaiti society; I also got to know how the non-Kuwaiti communities lived and viewed life conditions in that part of the world. For six years, I witnessed a tribal society losing the major characteristics of its traditional culture as money was transforming it into what I call a “petroleum society.” It is a society whose roots were still deep in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and whose aspirations were touching the twenty-first century, a society that thought it could buy anything and employ anyone with its money.

In 1976, I returned to the United States to teach first at Georgetown University in Washington DC and then at other universities. And while living in Washington, I witnessed the transformational impact of the Reagan and Clinton years on the American society, economy, and culture, which gave me the opportunity to live through the transitional period that took a mature industrial society into the age of knowledge. And in addition to teaching at a few American universities, I got involved in business, research, and publishing.

Between 1998 and 2000, I spent my time shuttling between Washington DC and Germany, giving lectures at Ge...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1. A View of History
• 2. Stages of Societal Development
• 3. Processes of Societal Transformation
• 4. Social Transformation
• 5. Agents of Historical Change
• 6. Theories of World History
• 7. The Train of Time
• 8. Ideology and History
• 9. Cultural Determinism
• 10. A World in Transition
• Concluding Remarks
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index