Globalism, Neoliberalism, And Democracy

Abstract

The Discourse on Globalism We find ourselves in an ideological climate in which postulates such as have been watered down in favor of and rights of peoples have been obscured in favor of rights of individuals. The change can also be seen with discrediting of as opposed to an older concept of justice, without adjectives, as John Rawls would have it. Wars of liberation and appear as phenomena of past, as obsolete concepts. Insertion or integration are proposed instead of liberation, and humanitarian or entrepreneurial solidarity instead of social struggle. At same time, Daniel Bell's assertion that we have come to end of ideologies has been confirmed as correct. It is even thought that the battle to save planet will replace ideological war as subject capable of organizing new world order (Brown, 1991: 3). Not all of this is erroneous. The change of categories is not purely ideological; it is also part of reality. Whoever still thinks in terms of mere national wars for sovereignty of nation-states without noticing new global straggle, of national wars against imperialism without taking ethnic wars into consideration, or of struggles for a rationalist culture excluding very important role of religions in liberation; moreover, whoever still maintains that struggle for social rights makes struggle for individual rights unnecessary or that class war against exploitation is sufficient and excludes struggles for democracy and freedom would be absolutely incapable of understanding that changes voiced in 1980s not only presupposed victory of new hegemonies, but also of new categories. The discourse of globalism is often obedient to objective and universal facts. It expresses a growing interdependence among national economies as well as emergence and dominance of a transnational banking-communications system, ascent of which coincides with a real weakening of nation-state sovereignty and nationalist, anti-imperialist, Marxist-Leninist currents. The latter, in fact, are in a state of confusion or revision in few countries or organizations that declare themselves to be following them. A reporter for New York Times discovered that communists remaining in First and Third Worlds no longer share a common complex of ideas, doubt their sclerotic language, and have lost party discipline and even their party. In revisions of what they believed yesterday, they show serious confusion in what they believe today (Kaufman, 1989a: 1; 1989b: 1). It is a truism that when a man accustomed to thinking in dogmas finds himself bereft of those dogmas, he realizes that he is not in habit of thinking at all. Facing them, dominant way of thinking, victorious dogma, is de-ideologized globalism, individual rights without social rights, laissez faire of conservative neoliberalism. During all these years, discourse of globalism and its logic for problem solving has proliferated in world's departments of foreign affairs, in United Nations assemblies, among chiefs of state and employees of media, and in world's best universities. The rights of individual, war against totalitarianism, drug trafficking or terrorism, or right of one Third World state to intervene militarily across borders of another, as Iraq against Kuwait, have justified military intervention by great powers, making universal law and its responsible application their own. In 1980s, according to many experts, discourse of sovereignty sounded like pure rhetoric, whether coming from Thatcher or last populist presidents. Non-intervention of great powers against small nations and self-determination of peoples, recognized in U.N. Charter, along with basic reasoning of Third World foreign affairs departments and Soviet bloc suffered serious discredit, among other reasons because many governments invoked them to restrain straggles for rights of individual and their citizens. …