The Politics of World Federation (Session 5)

Movements that stall in the capital sometimes grow in the states first. Session 5 of The Politics of World Federation read chapters 22 and 20. They cover the state campaigns of the 1940s and Henry Wallace’s 1948 run for president.

Discussion Highlights

Joseph Preston Baratta traced three state efforts. Robert Lee Humber took a resolution to 41 state legislatures. The Massachusetts model added signature drives and public debate. The California Plan used Article V of the U.S. Constitution to call for a convention on joining a federal union of nations. It passed in six states, and ten more were considering it. In Congress, the leading resolution drew 111 House co-sponsors. Wallace’s Progressive Party platform included a world federation plank. But the election turned on relations with the Soviet Union, and several federalist leaders refused to back him.

Baratta closed on a point from Mortimer Adler. Public understanding grows only when a political figure makes the issue central to a campaign. Members recalled that the national high school debate topic in 1947 was world government. They asked why Eleanor Roosevelt opposed Wallace, and how CGS might reach elected officials. Bob Flax described CGS’s three stages: public education, political action, then global transformation.

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