1 Introduction:

One of the great questions of our age, as it should be of any age, is what policies will go closest to achieving "human development"? By human development policies I mean a distribution of resources and opportunities which maximizes the chances of each individual human being to realize his or her best potential. This is often discussed in technological terms, how to create better crops, medicines and so forth so that the currently existing impediments to human development, such as poverty and starvation, are removed. But human development cannot be achieved by science and technology alone. It will also require political and cultural changes to be realized. In particular a new political system; a "human political system" will need to be developed. A human political system means one which organizes goods and services in a manner consistent with the benefit of all of humanity rather than simply for the benefit of a particular nation or state as today's national political systems do. Without such a "human" political system attempts to promote human development will continue to founder upon the rock of national differences, as has happened in the past, with governments putting national priorities before human priorities.

Traditionally many thinkers and activists have assumed that a human political system is impossible, unimaginable even, and have devised their projects on the assumption that human concerns will always have to be mediated by sovereign nation states as the major political actors. Such an assumption however is not supported by the empirical evidence of human history. This paper provides critiques of two key assumptions that at face value seem to rule out even considering the building of a human political system. These two assumptions are that sovereign nation states represent an inherent and inescapable part of the human condition and that progress in the expansion of the human political community is not possible as we cannot change. Once these two assumptions have been rejected the path is open for us to start building a human political system, a necessary step to encourage human development.

To begin though I will briefly outline what I mean by a human political system and why it is essential to achieve human development.

2 Human Development:

Human development is itself a term capable of many different interpretations. For the purpose of this paper I will define it as a framework in which the best potentials of humanity are either encouraged or are at least capable of being developed. By the best potentials I mean not just the ability to survive, or even survive with some degree of comfort, but also to cultivate other abilities such as creativity, intelligence, cultural identity and sympathy with others. Two examples illustrate this concept: Firstly, a society where people did not have enough to eat would deny people the chance to develop their best potentials, with no option but to seek food or die they could not cultivate the other abilities I mentioned above. Secondly, even in a society where there was enough food shelter and other material goods available to remove survival problems, it would still be possible for a dictator, or simply an unjust government, to have policies restricting access to such goods as education or free speech. This would still make it impossible for people to develop the full range of human potentials as noted above. Consequently non-material factors need also be considered as a necessary part of the concept of human development. It must be remembered we are talking about "Human" development so we should not lose sight of the necessity to make it possible for all to fulfill their human potential. But since so many people today are denied the chance to realize their best potential by the simple fact of poverty and hunger I will for the remainder of the discussion try to focus on the meeting of basic needs as a first step in human development.

3 A human political system:

By a human political system I mean one which respects our human identity before national religious, tribal or other identities. Respecting our human identity first does not mean abandoning our other identities, it means giving our human identity priority. So, for instance, welfare payments can only be described as being distributed on a human basis if humans are equally entitled to them. If members of one or other religion or nationality are excluded, simply because of their differing religion or nationality then the resulting political system cannot be described as a human one: It is giving priority to a religious or national identity rather than a human identity.

The supporters of many national political systems like to describe themselves as supporting human political systems but in fact they are national political systems. The government of Australia, for instance, offers welfare payments to all based on their economic circumstances rather than their nationality or religion. That is, unless the applicant is not an Australian citizen or Australian permanent resident. Such applicants are denied welfare payments as they do not fit the national identity criteria requirements of the system. This makes the Australian political system a national one rather than a human one. Even though its political rhetoric constantly refers to human rights and non discrimination most political goods are reserved for Australians only. This analysis of the Australian political system could be applied to almost any country on Earth. At this point in the analysis a reader may object that it is impossible for national political systems to offer human political justice and so it is unfair to criticize them for this. That is exactly the point; they cannot offer human justice or a political system consistent with human development as they necessarily discriminate against all humans except the tiny minority represented by their fellow nationals.

What would a human political system look like? There are many possible forms. As the focus of this paper is on why a national system is not inevitable I will only offer the briefest sketch of what a human political system might look like. It could come in a range of forms. From an extreme at one range of possibility; a comprehensive world state which established common standards in a range of areas to an extreme at the other range of possibility; a scenario where all countries just happened to cooperate on all key issues without any diminution of sovereignty at all. The human political system which we will develop in the future will most likely be something in between these two extremes. For instance something built on the model of the European Union, but open to all to join, could be the model for developing a human political system. This could be called a Human Union and it would steadily grow as it acquired new members. What distinguishes a human political system from earlier forms of internationalism is that it requires some form of common political rights be respected for all humans. The United Nations, for instance, puts national sovereignty first, and so there is no guarantee of any form of basic rights for citizens of its member states. The cruelest dictatorship can sit alongside the most benign democracy as a rightful member. An institution designed this way cannot be the platform for building a human political system. The European Union, by way of contrast, does require some basic commitment to democracy and human rights as part of its membership requirements so making it possible to develop an actual political community where individuals all share some rights. While other problems facing the European Union make it seem unlikely that a Human Union could be launched simply by borrowing the EU model holus bolus and changing the first name to Human, the basic concept is analogous to what a Human union might look like.

4 But why is a human political system needed for Human Development?

This is the simplest question to answer. Without a commitment to human values we have the uneven distribution of political goods that faces the world today. A full project of human development is impossible while the national interest prevails over the human interest. At the moment economic and social policy in every country in the world is geared towards benefiting that country regardless of its impact on other countries. Countries that are already wealthier than average only strive to be even wealthier as they react to the relative poverty of fellow nationals inside their political system rather than the actual poverty of fellow humans outside it. People within the national political systems are blinded to this incongruity as the political discourse of their world conditions them to see poverty as poverty inside their country, economic growth as economic growth inside their country and so forth. We have national political systems seeking national development rather than human development.

Every time we see an outcry in wealthy countries against cheap imports from poorer countries; the very evidence of progress in those poorer countries we see how national political systems militate against human development. Every time we see people denied freedom of movement from one country to another to seek a better opportunity in life we see how national political systems work against human development. Every time we read that a wealthy country has no extra wealth available to help people in poorer countries we see how national political systems work against human development. Every time we read about the obesity crisis in wealthy countries, occurring at the same time as the starvation crisis in other countries we see how national political systems work against human development.

But this paper is not about the arguments for a human political system so much as reminding us of the empirical evidence that defeats the two assumptions mentioned earlier. The goal is not to say everything about these two assumptions but to draw the reader's attention to some of the easily available evidence which easily overwhelms these assumptions and thus frees the mind to consider the possibilities of building a human political system. The initial impetus to prepare this paper comes from the call for contributions to a scientific journal sponsored collection of articles related to human development so it is important to emphasize that what is being pointed to here is the empirical evidence which falsifies these assumptions. The next two parts remind us of how this empirical evidence is easily available in the world and knowledge around us today.

5 The inherent sovereign nation state assumption:

Political nationalism, the idea that a "nation" must have its own separate political state with absolute sovereignty over territory is a very recent development in human history. The earliest homo sapiens fossils found so far are about 150,000 years old, settled agriculture started not much more than 10-12,000 years ago, and most of today's nation states only came into existence in the last 200 years. We did not spend 150,000 years pining for freedom for our countries but only in the last few centuries have decided that this is the way to organize ourselves.

Most states come into existence accompanied by a widely believed narrative about how the "people" of the state had a common history from time immemorial. But, to give just one example of a modern nation state, history shows that most Germans felt no need to have a united German state until a few hundred years ago, focusing their energies prior to that on a range of tribal, political and religious affiliations which were always deemed more important than the abstract idea that all Germans should live in the one country. These comments could be made about the national narrative of almost every country in the world today. It is in fact so uncontroversial a claim that standard reference texts such as the encyclopedia Britannica describe nationalism as a modern movement. Its article on the topic (in part) states that:

"Throughout history people have been attached to their native soil, to the traditions of their parents, and to established territorial authorities; but it was not until the end of the 18th century that nationalism began to be a generally recognized sentiment molding public and private life and one of the great, if not the greatest, single determining factors of modern history. Because of its dynamic vitality and its all-pervading character, nationalism is often thought to be very old; sometimes it is mistakenly regarded as a permanent factor in political behaviour. Actually, the American and French revolutions may be regarded as its first powerful manifestations.

This lengthy quote is provided to show just how uncontroversial it is to state that political nationalism is a new phenomenon.

Various explanations have been put forward for the rise of political nationalism: The decline of religious belief in the west from the 16th century saw people slowly transfer their loyalty to new transcendent ideals; such as the nation, which lived on after the individual died and which vouchsafed the individuals' identity, wars came to be fought for the nation as the touchstone of identity rather than religion. The rise of the printing press has also been suggested as a cause of nationalism's rise, allowing cheap texts in vernacular literature to become widely available, thus building up a common consciousness and a "national" dialogue in which intellectuals (writing in the vernacular rather than Latin) and others found they were participating more and more. The rise of industrialism has also been pointed to as its need for a trained, organized and loyal workforce provided an incentive to develop nationalist ideologies to keep workers happy and working in a prescribed area. There is also, of course, the demonstration effect: By the 19th century large political systems such as those of India and China found themselves powerless before the onslaught of the highly organized and motivated "national" armies of Western European colonialists. Intellectuals in many areas drew the conclusion that the only solution was to develop a local narrative of identity and then campaign for that identity to be recognized as a nation with its own right to be an independent state.

This article is not concerned to offer one or several precise theories that officially explain the rise of nationalism. The point only is to show that it is a new phenomenon and one based on changing ideas rather than something that is somehow built into us. So rather than looking at the above arguments in more detail I will provide a brief narrative account of the last few hundred years of international political history. This is offered to illustrate the recent and contrived nature of national identity. While most readers would already be aware of this history many people do not take it into account when the argument switches to contemporary politics and people assert the inherent nature of national identity. This summary overview is mostly based upon the historical overview I provided in the book "Humanity or Sovereignty" and also uses information from well known general histories.

I will start with the Roman Empire. This at its peak, it was a multicultural, multiracial, multireligious entity. Over the course of its development the rights of Roman citizenship were eventually extended from the people of Rome to people from anywhere within the empire, other than women and slaves. The dominating ideal was Romanitis, to be a good Roman. Roman emperors came from many different regions in the empire, not just Rome. To pick just one example, Diocletian, one of the most famous emperors, came from what is now Croatia, but he is historically known as a Roman emperor, not a Croatian politician.

The fall of the Roman Empire, when it came, was not hailed as a chance for subject nations to be free but viewed with horror as a collapse of civilization! Contemporary writers, such as Augustine, sought to explain the catastrophe in various ways, but nobody celebrated it as a chance for the nations of Europe to have their independence.

Indeed for most of the following "medieval" period people sought a return of Roman unity rather than national separateness. The ideal of Christendom replaced the Roman ideal as a universal ideal. The Papacy rose to political significance as an embodiment of this universalism. A parallel civil institution called the Holy Roman Empire also came into existence. Both these institutions sought a universal political system rather than a break up into nation states. Both presided over systems that often declined into violence and conflict, but almost never faced movements for one nation to be "free" and "independent" as such a concept did not effectively exist at that time.

The Protestant Reformation (initiated in 1517) ended the viability of the medieval system and ushered in a century of ferocious violence, climaxing with the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648). As people began to tire of religious warfare, a new form of political loyalty began to emerge. People began to argue that people from the same area should not kill each other over religious differences, as what they had in common was more important than what divided them. A first attempt to formalize this came with the treaty of Westphalia, in 1648, which redrew the map of Europe and assigned sovereign rights to each area. The ruler of each area was to be sovereign, and the rights of the Pope and Holy Roman Emperor to intervene were restricted.

This swing toward the concept of sovereignty coincided with a waning of religious faith and a rise of political nationalism. In the following centuries an increasing number of thinkers started to argue that something different-national identity-was the most important aspect of political life. Thinkers as diverse as Milton, Herder, Savigny, and Mazzini steadily convinced people that they shared a national identity and should be united in nation-states. Where a fourteenth-century Italian cultural figure such as the poet Dante could only speculate about a united Christendom in Europe, a nineteenth-century Italian cultural identity such as the composer Verdi was a passionate advocate of Italian unity.

Gradually, national loyalty grew to replace religious loyalty as the prime focus of political activity. As Benedict Anderson shows, a new identity was imagined for people, a national identity, and then activists set out to turn the national imagining into a political reality. Warfare provides the most brutal illustration of this. In the 1500s, people across Europe killed each other based on whether they were Catholic or Protestant. But as they imagined and created common national identities it became unseemly to kill fellow French or fellow Germans just because of a religious difference. In this way religious tolerance, within the nation, was one of the achievements of the swing to nationalism. But, as a replacement, people started to kill each other over national differences, so Frenchmen killing Germans and vice versa replaced Catholics and Protestants killing each other over the same geographic region. Throughout the nineteenth century, nation after nation rose, each declaring that it had existed forever; places such as Germany and Italy suddenly united into passionately nationalistic, unified political entities; and groups such as the Greeks fought for their "national" independence.

By the twentieth century, nationalism had become the prime focus of political loyalty. The two world wars of that century, fought by national rather than religious armies, surpassed even the ferocity of the wars of religion. Catholic slaughtered Catholic and Protestant slaughtered Protestant across the trenches during World War I, as nationalism proved it had gained a stronger grip on people's minds than religion once held. Treason replaced heresy as the crime most threatening to the established order. The national security agency replaced the inquisition as the extra legal agency engaged in ferreting out deviant thinkers and harassing them into conformity. Nothing was more important than the national interest.

From the 19th century onwards nationalism started being exported from Europe and became a world phenomenon rather than just a European phenomenon. The European powers were able to expand outside Europe in the phenomenon known as imperialism. By the twentieth century, European empires covered most of the world and had cowed most of the unconquered areas. But imperialism carried within it the seeds of its own destruction. This was the ideology of nationalism that the European empires carried with them. Subject peoples everywhere absorbed this idea and rather than demanding political equality within multiethnic and multiracial cosmopolitan empires (which nationalism likewise compelled most of their conquerors to deny them) as had occurred in the Roman Empire they demanded the same sacred identity as their conquerors, the right to a sovereign nation state. Soon subject peoples everywhere were organizing themselves into nations and demanding their freedom, which usually meant they formed a separate independent sovereign national state.

All over Asia, Africa, and South America, writers imagined and described national identities and newly invented nations fought for their independence. Figures as diverse as Sun Yat Sen, Kemal Attaturk, Jomo Kenyatta and Jan Smutts set out to convince people that they shared a national identity which required a freedom that could be achieved in a sovereign nation state designed along modern lines. By the end of the twentieth century, imperialism was largely gone and we have today's world of sovereign states. Instead of moving from imperialism to a human political system, we have moved from imperialism to sovereignty and a national political system.

The one political movement that had seriously attempted to stem the rise of political nationalism in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was Marxism. Karl Marx had insisted that economic relations were more important than ideas or culture. The solidarity created by the workers economic status should cross national borders and the workingmen of the world would unite. Marxist socialist movements therefore organized themselves as "Internationals " and expected to lead the worldwide working class in revolution. In the lead up to World War I, the leaders of the "Second International" (the first had collapsed due to internal squabbles) expected the workers of France and Germany to work together rather than go to war against each other. The workers however, seduced by the ideology of nationalism, slaughtered each other in the hundreds of thousands and the "Second International" collapsed. Later on the Marxist movement repeatedly succumbed to nationalism as Stalin pioneered the concept of "socialism in one country" and communist states such as Russia and China put their national identities ahead of "fraternal cooperation."

Thus even a brief glance at recent history shows that rather than being an inherent part of the human condition political nationalism is a recent phenomenon. It is a new ideology not an inescapable fact of life.

It is not correct to oppose the building of a human political system on the grounds that it is unnatural or goes against human nature as is shown by our division into sovereign states. The division into sovereign states is itself an ideological decision which has only been made recently, it is not in any way a law of nature. Those who would try to treat this as an issue of science cannot claim any scientific basis for treating the system of sovereign nation states as permanent and inherent, it is contingent and created.

Even when we acknowledge the contingent nature of national identity there still remains the question of whether change is possible. What reason is there for saying we can move to a human political system? The next section addresses the second problematic assumption; that we cannot change.

6 The assumption that political progress is impossible because we cannot change:

This assumption can also be easily falsified just by pointing to the basic facts of history which are available to everyone. Human political systems have never been stagnant. Change has occurred quite regularly throughout recorded history. It has not always been change for the better but there has always been change.

For many people the kaleidoscopes of changing theories, philosophies and political systems over the centuries has no clear pattern. The transitions from tribal chieftains to Kings to priestly rulers to democrats or tyrants, pagan or Christian, Emperor or President have occurred constantly without ever bringing us to a perfect state of being. This seems to be true but one class of change can be described as linear, even if its forward movements are sometimes separated by centuries and there are also the occasional backward steps. This class of change is the change that occurs when we widen the circle of those to whom we extend equal political treatment.

Such changes as the abolition of slavery, the attack on religious discrimination, and the acknowledgement of the equal status of women have all had the character of a widening of the circle of those to whom we extend basic respect and courtesy. While these changes have not always occurred in a neat and systematic progression they have occurred.

In a well known recent book the philosopher Peter Singer describes history as being characterized by an ever-expanding "moral circle" . This moral circle was first created a long time ago when early human beings only appreciated loyalties and duties to their immediate kin. The family, on this model, was the first moral circle and moral duties were not owed to people outside the circle. But over the course of history the moral circle has steadily expanded outwards from the family to the tribe and to ever-widening groups until, according to Singer, it reaches all of humanity and animals.

Singer's model of a steady expansion overstates the ease with which the moral circle has expanded over the centuries. There have been regressive periods when the circle shrank as well as expansive periods. In strict terms there has not been a moral circle so much as a general acceptance of basic decency and entitlement to basic political rights, and the class of people this is applied to has expanded over time. But the basic idea is a good metaphor for what is being described here. Whenever people have realized that "them" are just the same as "us", they realize the "them" must be treated equally and regarded` as us. In many great reform movements such as campaigns against slavery and racism the "us" turns out to be humanity. We realize that people of other races are "human" too and must receive the same rights as our fellow humans. In this respect the concept of an expanding moral circle can be understood as an expanding political circle of basic human respect or basic human dignity.

A key lesson from the past is that anyone who in the past declared that the moral circle could not be expanded any further was, from today's perspective, wrong. From Aristotle's declaration that some are by nature born to be slaves and others to be free onwards people who have declared the moral circle of their time has expanded as far as it can ever expand have always been wrong.

We know that, barring accidents or self destruction, humanity has far more years ahead of it than it has already existed. We have only existed for about 150,000 years but we have potentially a few billion years ahead of us until the Sun becomes the wrong temperature to support human life . So why declare that the point the moral circle has reached at this point in history is the farthest limit it could ever reach when we know that every person who has ever declared this in the past has been wrong? And we know we are still at the beginning of humanity's journey. As a matter of logic it would seem the burden of proof should be on those who declare that humans will stop changing and that we have lost our capacity to go on expanding the moral circle rather than on those who argue it is possible that we will go on doing what we have always done (albeit intermittently and often after great argument), expand the moral circle.

This point is emphasized when we remember that a human political system would only be a political system. It would not require all humans to love each other, simply to accept they lived in a common political community. The US political system, for instance, functions because most citizens accept they all live in one common political community, the USA, it certainly does not require all Americans to love each other! So the threshold for the expansion of the moral circle I am talking about here is quite low.

The other key piece of empirical evidence here is that our political rhetoric has started to recognize the expansion of our current moral circle to include our fellow humans. We now talk about human rights and crimes against humanity. Many nations today have claimed to support the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. While such declarations have not been matched by practice they are straws in the wind that we are already taking the steps to move from national political communities to a human political community.

To call for a human political system is not to ask for something incredible or impossible. It is only to ask that we realize that our political moral circle be expanded to include respect for all who are effected by it, our fellow humans. We have seen that there is no need for the existing political moral circle to stop at national borders; we have seen that political nationalism is not an inherent and unchangeable part of human identity. Just as from the perspective even of nationalism we can see how absurd tribalism is, so from the perspective of our humanity we can see how absurd political nationalism is, and appreciate the need to expand our political moral circle.

While it is almost impossible to deny that, in general, the moral circle has expanded, explaining why it has expanded is a difficult question. There are many culture specific explanations, such as it is all thanks to a particular religion or social system that the moral circle has expanded . More generalized, less culturally specific, explanations tend to fall into two groups. There are those who argue that the flowering of reason will inevitably lead to a broader human political community and there are those who argue that we possess an innate moral sense or sense of empathy and that the eventual flowering of this will eventually lead to a broader human political community. The view based on the flowering of reason has been a strain of western thought since the Enlightenment, the moral sense position also has a strong heritage and has made something of a comeback in recent times . Well known contemporary scientific authors such as Steven Pinker write as though it is clearly established that we have a moral sense.

The moral sense viewpoint is probably best understood as an ability to feel empathy with others rather than a strict "sense" for morals. Our empathy when we see another suffering causes us to feel concern and develop a "moral" feeling to help them. Thus, when we expand the moral circle we are saying we now feel empathy with a broader class of people and can no longer discriminate against them. For instance, when black people were seen as less than human it was difficult to feel empathy for their suffering as slaves. But as people became aware of their shared humanity the moral circle expanded and our sense of sympathy for our fellows, our moral sense, was aroused, and slavery had to end. Of course the two positions, reason and moral sense, can overlap and even be mutually dependant. It is easy to argue that we will use reason to realize that we have something in common with a broader class of beings and our sense of empathy will then be aroused, or vice versa; we feel empathy with the suffering of another creature and our reason tells us that this means we must have something in common with it.

But there is no need to discuss here whether either of these or some other approach has better explanatory power. The point is that the "moral circle" has expanded in the past on the basis of recognizing our common humanity with others and there is no reason why it cannot do so again so that we realize we need to move from national political systems to human political systems. The assumption that we cannot change, that the moral circle will never expand again, cannot be justified on the basis of our record so far. Change and progress is not impossible, merely uncertain and unpredictable.

7 Conclusion:

This paper has provided the outline of an argument that a human political system is necessary of we are ever going to promote human development effectively. It has then, in more detail, looked at two key assumptions against the possibility of building a human political system. The first assumption; that we are inherently divided into competing nation states has been clearly shown to be unsupported by the evidence. The empirical evidence showing instead that political nationalism is a recent ideological development. The second assumption; that change from national political systems to a human political system is impossible as humans do not change, was also shown to be contradicted by the empirical evidence of history which showed an inconsistently expanding moral circle over time. This does not mean we will develop a human political system. But the empirical evidence is consistent with the fact that such a system is possible, and desirable if we want to expand our moral circle and achieve true human development.

Thus the principal argument remains that we need to develop a human political system if we hope to foster human development. Two of the key presumptions against the possibility of a human political system have been shown to be lacking in empirical support. It is now time for us to start turning towards the task of working out what a human political system would look like and starting to build one.

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Dr Lyndon Storey

Dr Lyndon Storey is an expert in International Relations is Founder of the Human Union Movement. A political Roadmap for the 21st Century". He began his career as a volunteer community lawyer, barrister and law lecturer in Australia. He spent several years, from 1993-1997, in China, where he taught courses on western civilization to Chinese University students, learned the Chinese language and studied classical Chinese philosophy. Dr. Storey has also taught philosophy and politics in Australia and delivered guest lectures in the USA. Two of the projects he has been actively involved with are the formation of the Australian World Citizens Association and the Human Union Movement. He is involved in academic research comparing the classical political thought of east and west and has just completed a book "Humanity or Sovereignty" which will be released in early 2006.

It is hoped that each person with their unique expertise can contribute towards promoting an integrative approach to peace and wellness within global society. Up to now within society and government there has been no real debate on the nature of values, consciousness or conscience. For humankind to survive in the vastly changing scenario of climate change and inequity in the world we need to seek for new solutions and a renaissance of thought and consciousness on a planetary level. This can be called the new paradigm which serves to integrate science and consciousness and humanism and economics.