A POSTCAPITALIST PARADIGM: THE COMMON GOOD OF ...

characterized as world-system – and the quantum – the innumerable
local worlds, national or political perimeters. I use Latin so as to appropriate
the words of a Catholic philosopher whom I read with interest and
pleasure in my youth. 174 Very diverse perimeters, some minute and others
colossal for their size and power; some poor and others opulent;
generators, in both cases, of poverty and opulence as indissoluble opponents
in the engineering of profits. The logic of power and the conquests
globalized since early times in history, when they were distant,
cut off plots of land, and the world, for the Europeans, consisted of Europe
and a bit of the East, with its frontiers in the known.
So globalizing is not recent practice: before Christ was born, Alexander
of Macedonia globalized the world known until then. But success used
to be ephemeral for those who globalized in antiquity, and the territorial
board would soon end up being dismantled by the distribution of the
empires among successors, even if they were capable of creating splendour,
as in the Ptolemy dynasty in Egypt. History shows that the Romans
were the first to create a lasting empire, which they built through the
conquests of Julius Caesar around the first century of our era, and which
they revitalized under the rule of Constantine I almost three centuries
afterwards, when he recognized Christianity; they still left what was perhaps
their last significant mark with the Compilations by Justinian I (527-
565), which were destined to become the fundamental body of Modern
Law after many years. Historical time was starting to show itself as the
sculptor of territoriality in that half of a century.
Much later Spain globalized in America with the brutality of their conquerors´
weapons which modified the planet territoriality by expanding
the world-system over that ocean, mysterious and forbidden until then, –
although their stupidity made them believe that they were doing nothing
else than stealing, murdering, fornicating and getting drunk. And that
was the reason why they were here. Time would then again collate geography,
as Galeano wishes. One of the most significant slights of His-
174 I refer here to Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, S.J.
348