Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t8hqh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-24T23:38:44.308Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Richard Falk's Future World: A Critique of WOMP—USA

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Extract

Richard Falk's Study of Future Worlds is the most comprehensive world order scheme to appear since the Clark-Sohn plan of the late 1950's. In fact, in terms of scope, function, plan and organization, Falk's 506-page work is probably the most comprehensive proposal in the history of world order literature.

A Study of Future Worlds is an outgrowth of the World Order Models Project (WOMP) that was created by Saul Mendlovitz in 1966. Under Mendlovitz's leadership, a series of national teams have produced several volumes, each offering a complete alternative world order model for criticism, comment and, hopefully, support as a serious political proposal. Falk's book is the American contribution to this series and is often referred to as WOMP-USA in the literature of the World Order Models Project.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1980

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Falk, Richard, A Study of Future Worlds (New York, 1975) (hereafter citations to Falk are in parentheses with pages only)Google Scholar.

2 Clark, Grenville and Sohn, Louis B., World Peace Through World Law (Cambridge, 1967)Google Scholar.

3 The most concise and comprehensive survey of past proposals to transform the Westphalian system is, of course, F. H. Hinsley's Power and the Pursuit of Peace.

4 An overview of these volumes may be found in Mendlovitz, Saul, On the Creation of a Just World Order (New York, 1975)Google Scholar. See also Falk, Study of Future Worlds; Kothari, Rajni, Footsteps into the Future (New York, 1974)Google Scholar; Lagos, Gustavo and Godoy, Horacio H., Revolution of Being (New York, 1977)Google Scholar; and Mazuri, Ali A., A World Federation of Cultures (New York, 1976)Google Scholar.

5 For a detailed discussion of this transition process, see Falk, Study of Future Worlds, chap. 5 (“The Transition Process”).

6 Mendlovitz, , Creation of a Just World Order, pp. 221–22Google Scholar.

7 Leontief, Wassily et al. , The Future of the World Economy (New York, 1977), p. 11 (italics added)Google Scholar.

8 Falk spells out these and other concrete proposals to achieve his four basic values in chap. 1.

9 See, for example, Osgood, Charles, An Alternative to War or Surrender (Urbana, Illinois, 1962)Google Scholar.

10 Hinsley, , Power and Pursuit of Peace, p. 86Google Scholar.

11 Shaw, George Bernard, Everybody's Political What's What (London, 1944), p. 5Google Scholar.