World’s problems didn’t fall with the Berlin Wall | Green Bay Press-Gazette.

An op-ed published today in Wisconsin, on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, caught my attention for this sentence:

We hoped we would see the rational use of material resources, the end of poverty and inequality, and the restoration of harmony with nature.

Which reminded me that in November, 1990, 30 American economists sent Mr. Gorbachev an open letter suggesting a way in which the Soviet Union could become more prosperous and just.

All those things could have been accomplished had he heeded the advice in that open letter.

Here are Gorbachev’s final paragraphs:

Today’s global economic crisis has revealed the organic defects of the present model of Western development that was imposed on the rest of the world as the only one possible. It has showed that not only bureaucratic socialism but also capitalism is in need of profound democratic reform — in effect, its own kind of perestroika.

One other truth has emerged since the fall of the Berlin Wall: global interdependence. In effect, humankind has started to transform itself into a single civilization.

This opens up possibilities. While we sit among the ruins of the old order, we can think of ourselves as active participants in the process of creating a safer, fairer and more democratic world.!