If the Lessons of History are to hold true, we are headed for another civil war in the U.S. at least, and possibly throughout the West.

With the collapse of Marxism, the socialist worldview (Weltanschauung) has begun to recede. The most fundamental description of its aims was social control of the means of production. With the seeming triumph of the the capitalist worldview, the opposite social organization scheme has begun to emerge. It has often been characterized as the "New World Order", and basically consists of the means of production controlling the world's social structures. In order to control the means of production, socialist systems found it necessary to compel the means of production to conform to the fashion deemed proper for the native, social-value system. Since the means of production has its own intrinsic value system, the social impositions disrupted the efficient functioning of production, so that, in the final 'battle' with capitalism, the Marxist/socialist economy collapsed, and its empire with it.

With the current pre-eminence of capitalist systems, we are now seeing its efforts to extend its power and reach by its seizing control of the various societal (social) systems, and compelling them to conform to its inherent, technological value system. This is what we see occurring in the WTO, and CAFTA and FTAA in the Western Hemisphere. In order to accomplish this, the capitalist/corporate nexus has had to break down or overwhelm the various value systems of the societies it wishes to control economically. It has done this through propagating cultural relativism, outsourcing labor, dissolution of borders, mobilization of labor, and suppression of representative democracies through undermining their essential, prosperous middle-classes. In order to accomplish this it had to first gain control of the mass media, use selective grants to influence various university systems - often through bought junk-science, and philosophically undermine nation-states in general through its nexus of tax-exempt foundations.

However, with its earlier ascendancy in the E.U. (Sold politically as a means of counterbalancing U.S. economic power), we are beginning now to see the social reaction to the capitalist nexus imposing its value system on the various societal groups. The rejection of the E.U. Constitution came about largely in France (agriculture and welfare) and the Netherlands (immigration) because the indigenous culture refused to adapt to capitalism's intrinsic rules. In the U.S. we are also beginning to see the seeds of a similar rebellion in the public resistance to the NAFTA and CAFTA trade agreements, which were passed under the deception of being treaties without proper recognition as such, and without constitutional ratification.

So having avoided nuclear annihilation in a Cold War, is the West about to fall into a pattern of capitalist oppression and endless civil wars as the various cultures rebel against the imposition of capitalist values - including Muslim terrorism, as another form of rebellion against capitalist value system imposition? Are humans doomed to endless cycles of the wars of socialism vs. capitalism?

I submit there is a middle way between these opposites. What we have occurring here is a struggle for dominance between two entirely different realms of human endeavor. I propose that the two realms, in fact, have no common point of overlap. I believe the error lies in the failure to recognize this separation, and the consequent struggle for one part of human existence to dominate the other.

The universe of society is the universe of language, social values and a duty of obedience to the laws of the society.

The universe of capitalism is the universe of forgone consumption (capital), technology, efficiency and the laws of science.

The former is entirely based on abstractions. The latter is entirely based on natural phenomena (concretes). While it is true our grasp of the principles of these phenomena are abstractions we call the laws of science, the phenomena are what they are, irrespective of our understanding of them. "If you understand, the world is as it is; if you do not understand, the world is as it is", as the Asian proverb says. I respectfully submit that the vast majority of all of our errors, which have led humans to the seemingly endless grief of these cyclical 'wars', are due to our misapplication of the principles of the one to the other.

In other words, each unique culture/society should strike a balance of conformity of its social laws to its means of production which it can tolerate without social chaos. It should neither be compelled by outside pressures or by inside rebellion to unwillingly alter that balance. The balance itself should be maintained by the awareness that what is "right" socially, is not "wrong" phenomenologically, and vice versa. It simply just does not apply. One of the greatest wisdoms of Japan (and China) is that they have two words for "things". In Japanese, one says koto for concepts and social activities, and mono for tangible things and technological processes.

In social contexts such misapplications of one to the other result in persistent, inappropriate, and even delusional outcomes. For example, the notion of unisex has resulted in some feminist distress when women have been unable to compete successfully in the hard sciences and engineering. Equal outcomes are simply not possible because the human female brain develops more symmetrically, and does not develop the specialized brain half that is necessary for 3D visualization, image rotation and other spatial functions. All of the grief this error causes for women scientists is due to the misapplication of this concept of sex-based, equal outcomes in some specialized, concrete, physical performances. It is as if a chicken egg hatched in a duck's nest. The chick imprints as a duck, but cannot understand why it keeps drowning every time the ducklings go for a swim. Another such misapplication of concepts to production was the forcible Soviet collectivization of the kulak free-holder farmers to communal farms. It turned the breadbasket of Europe into an agricultural basket case, causing the death of millions of farmers in the process. A further example of misapplied abstraction is arbitrary imposition of minimum wage rates (costs) on the variable, physical productivity of any and all individual workers.

As an example of misapplied concreteness, my favorite is racialism. Even a cursory examination of social skills indicates that genetically based skin color has little or nothing to do with social performance. Yet many cultures continue to segregate persons socially by their skin color in a misapplication of a concrete characteristic as a determinant of social outcomes. As an example of misapplied concreteness for more efficient production, the current U.S. notion that cultural and social norms must adapt to the necessities of cheap, imported labor for low-cost production is mistaken. Last, and most egregious, is Bush's Monterey 2002 declaration that free trade is a moral principle. Morality is an abstract principle, and has nothing to do with the concretes of trade economics - 'free' or not. To profess the view that the mechanics of trade are a moral principle with religious zeal is a hallmark of a severely damaged mind. Mankind is more than just an 'economic animal'. As you may recall, Jesus took a whip to the moneychangers in the temple who made usury (trade) the master of the moral (religious) principle of the tithe.

It is for abstract principles and laws to determine what social outcomes are to be allowed on behalf of national productivity increases, and not the exigencies of corporate capitalism to determine legal principles. Whether that may or may not result in a comparative advantage or disadvantage is to be determined by abstract social processes such as legitimate, rather than coercive, political action. Any attempt at deception or use of physical force, internal or external, for gain of one realm over the other is an illegitimate grasping for power, and should be punished accordingly. That way, in the long run, "natural law" will determine the winners and losers.

In other words, abstract things are to determine abstracts, and concrete things are to determine concretes. That means WTO, NAFTA and CAFTA have no place in American society. If the big corporations must have them, then let them go elsewhere for their factories AND their sales. If an American company feels it MUST go abroad for its manufacturing, then let it SELL its goods abroad, and face a 100% or 200% duty on its products here. With the corporate thugs gone, there won't be anybody here to bribe our politicians to impose concrete economic rules on our abstract social systems at the cost of destruction of the middle class and our way of life. Whether or not that will leave the U.S. at a comparative disadvantage remains to be seen, but it will end the labor arbitrage that will bring us to civil war. 200 million plus Americans armed with 250 million firearms are NOT going to tolerate Chinese wages.

Former Chief Justice Rhenquist quite properly has warned against granting of political rights to corporations. What he said about corporations also applies to unions. Various political and social associations are permitted as "factions" (as described by the Founders) to use their donated funds for political lobbying - voting with their money, in essence. However, in most every case these funds are voluntary donations of their membership and are indicated at the time of donation as to purpose. This is not so with corporations and unions. These entities have been given political rights reserved only for human individuals under the Constitution. The "person" of the "corporate person" is fictitious, and a legal figment. Such statutory "persons" are allowed to use funds taken from their profits or dues without consent of their shareholders or membership to use for lobbying for political outcomes that may not be, and are often not in the interest of individual shareholders or dues-paying members. Yet the courts have always held that donating ones personal funds for political purposes has always been a protected right, and is equivalent to the person's right to cast a ballot for his or her political preference. However, since a union or a corporation is not a "person", the law notwithstanding, "he or she" cannot cast a ballot, and therefore, cannot "vote" with its operating funds either. Thus, the massive activities of K Street lobbyists in Washington DC, in so far as they represent corporations and/or unions, cannot be called anything but what they truly are: Namely, "graft", and in some circumstances, outright "bribery". The simple solution to restore a Constitutional form of Republican government is to ratify the proposed 28th Amendment, which would limit all political donations to actual living and voting persons.