Topics Justice

Question The demise of the Soviet Union, and the dominance of the U.S.A, in military terms, does not seem to have produced a stable world, or a "peace dividend". If the "West" were to succeed in installing representative democracy, and a liberal capitalist economic regime, throughout the world, could we expect a better life for the world's citizens. If not, why do the world's leading powers invest such massive resources in this project?

Accepted:
July 11, 2006

Comments

There is no expertise a philosopher can provide that's pertinent to this question -- it's one that any thoughtful, well-informed person ought to be able to answer. But since you did ask a philosopher, and since I consider myself to be a thoughtful and well-informed person, I'll give you my opinion.

I don't think capitalism as we know it in, for example, the United States, is a viable form of social organization. The U.S. knows far too much poverty and violence for us to claim that our society is a success. As for extending this form of social organization throughout the world -- that would be economically impossible, even if it were advisable from a moral point of view, which it isn't. Those who are comfortable in the U.S., who are confident that we live in the best of all possible societies, depend for our comfort on an obscene rate of consumption of the world's resources. With 5% of the world's population, we consume one-quarter of the world's processed fossil fuel.

In my view, this problem is largely due to the lack of any democratic control on the power of corporations. The fact that workers in Michigan or North Carolina have no say on matters that are of vital importance to their survival is tightly connected to the fact that Amazonian Indians have no say on the use of rainforest resources and so forth. It matters very little to anyone on the planet that the U.S. has formally free elections (getting less and less legitimate all the time), since politicians in the U.S. are bought and paid for by big money interests.

The U.S. has zero interest in democracy abroad, as a cursory glance at its foreign policy reveals. From Guatemala to Iran to Chile to Vietnam to El Salvador to Nicaragua to Palestine -- whenever a people democratically elects a leader our leaders don't like, the U.S. has intervened, usually violently, to overthrow them. On the other hand, the U.S. has been happy to support -- and often has installed -- the most venal dictators, against the will and the interests of the people. The list here is long, too.

The only thing that would make world stability possible is economic justice.

Remember, you asked.