Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts with the label "social and economic relations"
The cosmopolitan project for unifying humanity through the agency of the dominant capitalist states—on the normative basis that we are all individual global citizens with liberal rights—will not work: it is more likely to plunge the planet into increasingly divisive turmoil.  There is another version of cosmopolitanism abroad today, which places at the centre of its conception of a new world order the notion of a democratic global polity. This comes in a number of different editions, some scarcely distinguishable from liberal cosmopolitanism save for more voluble democratic piety. But in its most generous version, exemplified by Daniele Archibugi’s essay in these pages, this is a programme with the great merit of seeking to subordinate the rich minority of states and social groups to the will of a global majority, in conditions where the bulk of the world’s population remains trapped in poverty and powerlessness. Yet even its best proposals suffer from two crippling weaknesses. They