Peaceful transition is possible and it’s worth the risk.

It should not come as a surprise that a change of the dominant mode of production of human society takes place by a clash of brute forces, of worldwide war. Limiting his attention to the aspect of equality of men the anthropologist Walter Scheidel describes in fascinating historical detail how wars always preceded the setup of large scale new organization of society, see [Scheidel, 2017]. To which extent such a war again is on the agenda today - contrary to the existence of DC - clearly is a question of forecasting. The previous section of this chapter used a scenario technique to sketch some contours of a possible third World War. These scenarios are not independent, mixtures of them are to be expected, e.g. a common strategy of a player in scenario 1 is to stir up national civil war (scenario 2) in a satellite country of its opponent (e.g. Yugoslavia); or to use the rhetoric of scenario 3 to support the fight of national class struggle (scenario 2). But will WW3 happen at all?

Not necessarily, but with a frightening high probability. Some counterstrategies already have been mentioned along the discussion of the scenarios. The immediate candidate, of course, is a global peace movement. This movement already played a pivotal role in ending the Vietnam War, being an incubator for the worldwide cultural revolution of 1968. As the short life and the macroeconomic impotence30 of this rebellion showed, any movement with durable impact needs not only roots in personal perceptions and feelings, it also needs a very sophisticated and well-developed blueprint of the overall working of a global democratic society. A mode of production is a complicated political economy entity, which needs a complicated system design. Fortunately, the explosive accumulation of human knowledge, of science, should be able to provide just that – if it were not handcuffed by the singular tasks tailored by Disintegrating Capitalism. The next best counteraction thus is to organize the carriers of this knowledge, e.g. scientists, in a progressive global class. Even if WW3 happens, chances are that a restart is possible and the blueprint of a better mode of production is needed. In this case Umberto Eco’s vision of an upcoming new Middle Ages31, with monasteries (today: universities?) preserving and developing secret knowledge, might become reality.