ABSTRACT
In a bifurcation, one is certain that the system cannot survive. However, one is equally sure that it is intrinsically impossible to know which fork of the bifurcation will ultimately prevail and thereby create a new historical system. The objective of the Global Left is to move in the direction of a relatively democratic, relatively egalitarian system. The pre-1968 left analysis involved multiple biases that had pushed it toward a state-orientation. The first bias was that homogeneity was somehow better than heterogeneity, and that therefore centralization was somehow better than decentralization. This bias derived from the false assumption that equality means identity. To be sure, many thinkers had pointed out the fallacy of this equation, including Marx, who distinguished equity from equality. But for revolutionaries in a hurry, the centralizing, homogenizing path seemed easiest and fastest. It required no difficult calculation of how to balance complex sets of choices. The second bias was virtually the opposite.
