The Political Economy of Social Justice
Dr.R.Murali
Head, Department of Philosophy & Centre for Philosophical Research
The Madura College (Autonomous), Madurai -625011.
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can
change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”- Margaret Mead
I
Social justice refers to conceptions of justice applied to an entire society. It is based on the idea of a just society, which gives individuals and groups fair treatment and a just share of the benefits of society. Hence, Ethics has many spheres to operate. Economics is one of the major spheres of ethics. According to Aristotle, Economics is a practical expression of ethics- a basic virtue rooted in justice. This concept of justice has been variously described as distributive justice or a fair share for all. In other words, the concept of social justice was accepted as being rooted in an ethical base or simply common sense and economics cannot be divorced from this. Similarly economics and politics are inseparable. Social justice is both a philosophical problem and an important issue in political economy.
It can be argued that everyone wishes to live in a just society, but different political ideologies have different conceptions of what a ‘just society’ actually is. The term “social justice” itself tends to be used by those ideologies who believe that present day society is highly unjust – and these are usually left wing ideologies, advocating a more extensive use of democracy and income redistribution, a more egalitarian society and either a mixed economy or a non-market-based economic model. The right wing has its own conception of social justice, but generally believes that it is best achieved through embracing meritocracy, the operation of a free market , and the promotion of philoanthropy and charity. Both right and left tend to agree on the importance of rule of law human rights, and some form of a welfare safety net (though the left supports this to a greater extent than the right).
Social justice is also a concept that some use to describe the movement towards a socially just world. In this context, social justice is based on the concepts of human rights and equality. So a very broad definition of social justice is that “social justice reflects the way in which human rights are manifested in the everyday lives of people at every level of society”. It can be further defined as working towards the realization of a world where all members of a society, regardless of background, have basic human rights and an equal oppurtunity to access the benefits of their society.
Many philosophers like Aquinas, Locke, Bentham , Mill, Kant and others have discussed the problem of social justice in their works. In the latter part of the twentieth century, the concept of Social Justice has largely been associated with the political philosopher John Rawls (1921-2002) who draws on the utilitarian insights of Bentham and Mill, the social contract ideas of Locke, and the categorical imperative ideas of Kant. His first statement of principle was made in A Theory of Justice (1971) where he proposed that, “Each person possesses an inviolability founded on justice that even the welfare of society as a whole cannot override. For this reason justice denies that the loss of freedom for some is made right by a greater good shared by others”, a deontological proposition that echoes Kant in framing the moral good of justice in absolutist terms. His views are definitively restated in Political Liberalism (1993), where society is seen, “as a fair system of co-operation over time, from one generation to the next.” (at p.14).
Along with these philosophers some others hold that social justice is nothing but the redistribution of wealth, power and status for the individual, community and societal good. Some others hold that it is government’s (or those who hold significant power) responsibility to ensure a basic quality of life for all its citizens.
Hence, it’s very clear that economic policies of the society are very much connected with social justice. It is also true that all around in the world today many advocates of social justice are in some state of despair. Some of them fear that social justice is a lost cause in a global economy.
II
Liberalism: Social Justice as Economic Freedom
Liberal capitalism, the super economic, all pervasive model which is promoted and practiced all over the globe today has been subject to severe critical examination by economists, not only due to economic recession but also mainly for destabilizing value systems in countries and becomes responsible for social injustice across the globe.
Friedrich Hayek, Nobel laureate in Economics and a principal twentieth century defender of liberal capitalism, once stated that “…nothing has done so much to destroy the juridical safeguards of individual freedom as the striving after this mirage of social justice.” We do not have to spend a great deal of time on his jaundiced reading of the history of struggles for social justice. What is, however, worth noting is his unequivocal presumption that social justice and the freedoms we have under modern capitalism are not only distinct from each other, but mutually antagonistic.
Sam Gindin in his article on ‘Anti-Capitalism and the Terrain of Social Justice’ severely criticizes Hayek’s position. He says that what so many others have obscured and what Hayek to his credit confronts directly, is that inequality is not an unfortunate aberration under capitalism, but an inescapable outcome and an essential condition of its successful economic functioning. Capitalism is—and this is surely as clear today as it ever was—a social system based on class and competition. Such a society guarantees not just inequality of result, but insofar as the results of inequality are passed on through the institution of the family and the spatial divisions of uneven capitalist development, the inequality is reproduced inter-generationally and inter-regionally. This leads to a decisive inequality of opportunity.
It is not surprising therefore that the most clear-minded defenders of capitalism consequently seek to displace the terrain of debate over the legitimacy of capitalism from distributive or equal-opportunity notions of social justice, to notions of individual freedom and especially market freedoms. Gindin observes that the individual is placed at the center of a world in which the concept of the community or the collective is confined to the state—liberalism’s old nemesis. Liberalism then seeks to limit the power of the state not only by the rule of law, freedom of expression and association, and elected legislatures, but also and especially by the rights of property, the inviolability of contract in market exchanges, and the protection of private-family spaces to enjoy the fruits of property and labor.
There is no denying the powerful practical appeal of this structure. Both civil and political rights and the historically unprecedented economic dynamism and possibility of rising standards of living rested on it. Yet the reality of class inequality behind this structure could not so easily be set aside. The contradictions of liberal justice rest on the fact that a market economy creates a market society, and that private property is not and never was a relationship between people and things, but a relationship between people. Historically, the creation of markets and private property were not, as liberal mythology tends to present it, a matter of getting the state to stand aside so natural human propensities could unfold. Private property in particular emerged with the support of an absolutist state controlled by landed interests who asserted unconditional rights over property which had previously been constrained by traditional obligations. Those interests, backed by the state, forcibly expropriated the commons—lands formerly accessible to the community—for their exclusively private use. The need to reproduce these kinds of private property rights and the privileges they imply necessitated a permanently strong, active, and class-biased state. Today, the drive to deepen and expand such rights takes the form of neo liberal globalization.
Capitalism’s inequalities, it is crucial to emphasize, are not simply about some getting more and others less, but rather that the economic freedom capitalism embodies involves guaranteeing different kinds of freedoms for different people. For a minority, economic freedom revolves around the power to organize production and accumulate; for the rest, freedom to sell one’s productive potential in a labor market and, on the basis of that, to exercise some personal choice in consumer markets. What the minority is accumulating as part of its freedom includes power over the labor of others and therefore over their “individuality.” The freedom/power to sell one’s productive potential and to exercise some choice in consumer markets, in contrast, is founded on a dependency on those who provide the jobs and the commodities available for consumption.
The neo liberal response set out to undo the historically-acquired social limits that had redefined liberalism in practice in the postwar era. Neo liberalism named a strategy that sought to place capitalism clearly back on the track of its still incomplete development by accelerating the drive to commodify, and therefore open every aspect of life to profits and the social discipline imposed by profits. This was not just a matter of the extension of markets spatially (“globalization”), but of deepening the domestic penetration of markets into any social, personal, or cultural space that had previously managed to escape subordination to a capitalistic calculus. Since democracy tends to recreate protections against the anti-social logic of markets, the implementation of neo liberalism also necessitated a decline, one way or the other, in effective democracy.
It is relevant to take note of certain important criticisms against neo liberalism by its own supporters. Joseph Stiglitz former economist in the World Bank and the Noble Prize winner in Economics in 2001, who is the staunch supporter of the Globalization himself, declares that “Globalization today is not working for many of the world’s poor. It is not working for much of the environment. It is not working for stability of the global economy”. He writes on the basis of this close observation: “what I saw radically changed my view of both globalization and development… I saw first hand the devastating effect that globalization can have on developing countries”. Stiglitz accuses that the West “acting through the IMF and the WTO – has seriously mismanaged the process of privatization, liberalization and stabilization, and that by following its advice Third World countries and former Communist states are actually worse off than before.
George Soros, another architect of Globalization observes that ‘we have global markets but we cannot build a global society without taking into account moral considerations’ He says that US is the major obstacle to international cooperation today. It is resolutely opposed to any international arrangement that would infringe on its sovereignty. The list is long including the International Criminal Court, the Landmines Treaty, the Kyoto Protocol, many of the ILO conventions and many more arcane conventions like the Law of Sea Convention and convention of Biological Diversity. Hence he says that the pursuit of hegemony comes into direct conflict with the vision of a global open society. United States wants to be an unmoved mover.
So it is not simply eliminating poverty but rather reducing inequality. The first is impossible to resolve without solving the second. The real problem, again, is not absolute resources but the social distance and different degrees of control over one’s own resources. And this holds true in every society.
In this context, Habermas’s view adds a socio-cultural dimension to the political economy. Habermas does tie economic globalization and global terrorism, but does not believe that the latter is ultimately a manifestation of a clash of cultures. Instead Habermas regards global terrorism as an economically based reaction to the gross inequities perpetrated by globalization. Accordingly, Habermas regards global terrorism as arising from a breakdown of communication and as only amounting to an external threat to modernism.
This gives the liberal sociologist Richard Munch reason to fear that we will be faced with the depletion of non-renewable resources, cultural alienation on a mass scale, and social explosions unless we succeed in politically fencing-in markets which are, as it were, running away from enfeebled and overburdened nation-states.
As Habermas wrote in 1997, globalization ‘threatens to dissolve the social glue that holds together already fragmented national societies.’ In Germany, questions of nation, national identity and culture, along with the search for a binding ‘social glue’, have arisen just as globalization challenges the possibility of the national unification process. Anti-globalization there, as elsewhere, seeks to protect local identity, economies and culture from both the European Union and the more powerful American ‘empire’.
For Amartya Sen, the central issue of contention is not globalization itself, nor is it the use of the market as an institution, but the inequity in the overall balance of institutional arrangements–which produces very unequal sharing of the benefits of globalization. He says that the question is not just whether the poor, too, gain something from globalization, but whether they get a fair share and a fair opportunity. There is an urgent need for reforming institutional arrangements–in addition to national ones–in order to overcome both the errors of omission and those of commission that tend to give the poor across the world such limited opportunities. Globalization deserves a reasoned defense, but it also needs reform.
III
Globalization : Road to injustice
Globalization has not only affected all aspects of human life but also influenced the social institutions to a great extent. It operates in an uneven and unequal manner. The neo-liberal economy, i.e., liberalization, privatization and globalization, has further compounded the unevenness and inequality in society. The small minority of world’s population holds maximum resources and majority of people are grappled in poverty.
Before the melt down, there were 1.3 billion desperately poor people in the world who survived on less than $1 per day. There were an additional 1.5 billion very poor who lived on $2 each day. This means that 2.8 billion, almost half of the global family were living on $2 a day or less (Sider, 2002). But today things would have gone even worse.
Many do not have access to safe water (1 bil.) and they do not have access to improved sanitation (2 bil.). These poor public health conditions cause approximately 34,000 children to die every day of diarrhea and other easily preventable diseases (Sider, 2002).
In answer to the question “What is globalization?” Susan George, president of the Observatory on Globalization in Paris, associate director of the Transnational Institute of Amsterdam, and author of nine books, stated that there is already a world government – which is not democratic; one set of people can change the future of others who are not involved in decision-making. Its objective is to put all human activity in the market, including education, culture, and health. Globalization is responsible for pushing wealth upward both between countries and within countries. Since 1980 every country has experienced increasing inequalities. 85% of people live in countries where inequalities are increasing and this includes China, Russia, E. Europe and West Europe and the US, and at the same time inequalities are increasing between North and South.
She gave the illustration of the upturned champagne glass, showing the top 20% of humanity capturing 82% of the wealth, while the bottom 80% of the graph must get along with 1.3% of the world’s wealth. These inequalities are becoming more extreme. There are now 485 billionaires in the world, who control the equivalent of the wealth of half the world. And only three of those billionaires control wealth equaling the national production of 48 countries.
These inequalities have drastic consequences. The recently series of financial crises was caused by the institutional investors of the world. The ‘electronic herd’ all act at the same time e.g. someone says Thailand is not doing very well or Mexico and all run for the door at the same time. Then the financial crisis occurs and the IF steps in to say what the country must do. She emphasized “the rules that the IF sets KILL ordinary people”. For example in Mexico after the 1995 financial crisis 28,000 small firms failed because they could not keep up with the interest rates imposed upon them. Half of Mexico is now living below the poverty line. In Indonesia, after the financial crisis, 20 million people who thought they were becoming middle class were pushed violently into poverty. In Russia 4% of people used to be classed as really poor, but now because there are no rules as the ‘market’ is supposed to do everything 50% are living in poverty. Everywhere health, social and educational structures have been cut because of structural adjustments. Now there is only one ideology left in the world after the collapse of communism.
Who are the managers of the global system? The power behind the throne is the large multinational corporations. They do not want to govern directly so they do so through the WB, IMF and WTO. These corporations support even the UN. Kofi Annan has signed the Global Contract with 50 multinationals, many of whom have terrible human rights and environmental damage records.
The system works well for the top 10% of the world’s population, but not for anyone else. The central political question of our time is changing. It used to be one of hierarchy, where you are on the hierarchical ladder – a king or a beggar; that was the main organizing principle of politics. For the past 100 years or so the central political question has been – Who is going to get the biggest piece of the pie? Elements of both of these – hierarchy and share of the pie – remain today. But the new question is ‘Who has a right to survive?’ and ‘Who has not?’ Now there are hundreds of millions of people in the world who do not contribute to the market as producers or consumers. Do they have the right to survive?
The first thing people have to understand is that the present system is not the only choice. God never said to Moses that globalization must dominate the world. There are many possibilities.
IV
Melt down: Lessons
The sudden set back in the economic scenario of the world shook every one. It is mind boggling that till the other day, country after whether hailing from North America or Europe or Africa or Asia was celebrating its perpetual increased economic growth rate, enhanced access to information technology and rising amongst its population suddenly getting traumatized by the possibility of getting swept away under the current of regression and depression deeper than 1930s brought out in and by the financial melt down initially in the US and Europe. “The global financial system is in deep and unprecedented crisis. Central Banks and governments the world over are facing several complex and compelling challenges. There have been serious disruptions in money markets. Stock markets across the world have been in a free fall and there has been extreme risk aversion in all financial markets. Policy makers across the globe are responding with aggressive, radical and unconventional measures to restore confidence and impart stability to the system”. (The Hindu October 27,2008 Editorial).
One major impact of this financial crisis in Krugman’s assessment is that advanced countries are likely to hit near zero growth next year with the world economy expanding only 3 percent. He fears that this down turn will be deep and prolonged as it was during 1930s.
As the financial turmoil continues to batter economies across the globe, the bailout packages from different governments globally is nearing the US dollar 3 trillion mark- about three times the size of the Indian economy. The UK administration in the first week of October came up with a mammoth 500 billion pounds bailout package primarily to shore up the fortunes of the nation’s banking sector. Russia too has approved a host measures estimated to be worth US dollars 86 billion to salvage the country’s banks hit by the credit squeeze. European Union pumped in 1.7 trillion Euros for underwriting of banks. Besides, a handful of European countries have also, already announced packages worth a similar amount in efforts to have their troubled financial institutions. In fact most of the world central banks moved to flood the system with money lest there should no occur total collapse.
Describing the situation Krugman observed: “all signs point to an economic slump that will be nasty, brutish and long”.
Japan’s Prime Minister Tar also announced as 27 trillion Yen stimulus package on October 30 for the world’s second largest economy including credits and loans to help small businesses, a reduction in highway tolls and cash pay back to households. He said that the financial outlook is severe and that he global financial crisis is almost certain to affect Japan’s real economy.
The burdens and impact of this so called financial tsunami is not only cutting across the globe but more significantly it is cutting across every aspect of life and in particular of poor and depressed sections of society in all most every part of the world that includes even richer nations like US and Europe. According to Director General of International Labour Organisation(ILO),Juan Somavia in an article he wrote for Times of India (October 25,2008)” the impact of the crisis on the lives, working conditions and hopes of millions of people will be strong and systemic. Arresting the crisis would require reaching beyond the financial system. This is not simply a crisis on Wall Street; it is a crisis on all streets”.
While talking of burdens, let us note the findings of a recent estimate of the impact made by the ILO. In its estimate the world unemployment could increase by 20 million marks of global unemployed for the first time. People working in such sectors as construction, automotive, tourism, finance, services and real estate will be hit hardest first. What is more disturbing that according to this ILO estimate as quoted by Juan Somavia, the number of working poor living on less than a dollar a day could rise by some 40 million and those living on tow dollars could rise by more than 100 million. It may be of crucial importance to note that job cuts are happening not only in towns, industry or elite services alone rather shocks from Wall Street are traveling even to rural India and even to small scale cottage and handloom industries and other small occupations. According to reports (Times of India Oct 24, 2008) thousands of skilled workers in two small towns, 100000 in Moradabad( UP) and 25000 in Panipat (Haryana) have been laid off after orders from their global markets mostly from the US and Europe dried up this month. In Moradabad, artisan adept at centuries- old art of crafting brassware of European and American show rooms are pulling cycle rickshaws and selling fruits. Panipat, from where rugs, bed sheets and other textiles wind up in US stores like Wal-Mart has weavers migrating or working at jobs that now pay 1/18th what they did. According to K. Subrahmanyam in The times of India 0ctober 28, 2008 a large number of workers in toys factories in China have not only been thrown out of the jobs but have been denied payment of arrears because of economic slow down in the West. Again according to various estimates including byu the US government’s own agency the job cuts and increase in unemployment level has aroused great sense of insecurity amongst common Americans. Thus the voice is loud and clear that the crisis is not simply financial or one country centric, it is global as well as one that has the potential to devastate life and livelihood of even an average member of humankind in many parts of globe.
Today a global food crisis coexists with unprecedented financial collapse and a recession which may well turn into a depression. Utsa Patnaik says,” The domination of finance over industry and the pursuit of economic policies favouring finance capital, at the expense of growth of the real economy particularly the out put of basic necessities required by the masses. The domination of finance in the modern world and its ideology known as neo liberalism and has been evident since 1970s. We might as well call it neo- deflationism, for the ideology of finance capital always involves policies deflating the level of mass demand”.(People’s Democracy-03 November 2008)
· Whether it is development or the economic recession, common people of the world are being terribly affected by globalization.
· When Capitalisms in crisis, it immediately seek for Social Intervention by the state. eg. Bail out packages that are in vogue now in US, UK, Germany and other places. Whereas when it is on the monstrous growth based on social injustice, it insists the state to keep away from its control and interference. Crisis-control measures are taken to suit the seekers of the supernormal profits in this high capitalist set up.
From the foregoing it becomes clear that the process of globalization that was initiated by the US and its likes since the beginning of 1990 or may be little earlier is a misnomer. The process has failed to make globe as one. It remains divided between developed, rich , powerful and haves on one side and have-nots on the other with US and its allies representing the unipolarity and monopoly of economic power, trade, commerce and market. THE idea that process of globalization would ensure global prosperity, progress, peace and security leading to a global family or what we during our ancient period termed as ‘vasudeva kutumbakam’ is missing. The process of globalization has no doubt yielded into global oneness but only oneness of the kind and one kind only namely ‘a global economy’- a economy whose centre of gravity of fulcrum- its controlling mechanism and draining out its fruits resides only at one place. It is this kind of global economy with its global interconnectivity largely founded on fundamental capitalist ideas and absolute free market that resulted into financial meltdown in one place and that is place of monopoly over global market, namely the US which ultimately and due to its interconnectivity encircled almost every nation. This no doubt affected the richer nations but it brought with it tremendous potential to pierce even the livelihoods of poor nations and also of poor even in richer societies.
It is too late at this hour of the day to reverse the cycle of globalization. But equally the kind of globalization and free market philosophy practiced and professed could prove dangerous not only for the poor nations but also for the super power itself. The anger and civil unrest kind of situation prevailing in US resulting from meltdown is the testimony to it. The kind of globalization followed today that for some time brought deceptive prosperity is largely the outcome of culture of consumerism, egotism, excessivism, greed, lust and total loss of ethics and values – it is not simple failure of financial policy. Fighting these menaces of currently practiced globalization and turning it to serve the cause of humanity and human welfare is a complex and multi dimensional agenda. It requires substituting voice of monopoly, isolating and subjugating other with global consensus, global co-operation and global concerns for humanity. Of course, it would demand devising new kinds of regulatory framework monitoring mechanism, institutional structures ensuring that they represent collective wisdom and collective consensus, unlike the Bretton Woods Institutions* (IMF, WB, etc.)Of today which can be manipulated of arm twisted. We are reminded of what Dr.Manmohan sigh while addressing the ASEM said, “the sad truth is that in this age of globalization we have a global economy of sorts, but it is not supported by a global polity to provide effective government”. Speaking in the same vein European Commission President Jose Barroso said,’ we are in a moment where we need global team work, we either stick together or sink together”. Thus in short, what we are pleading is a case for global co-operation for an International economic order inspired by global consensus that works on the principles of equity, fairness and distributive justice and serves the cause of bringing welfare, peace and security to every single member of the global community.
V
What to do?
The state, as an institution, supposes to guarantee social welfare and social justice to the marginalized groups. Globalization has not only threatened it but also made it weak. State has now retreated back from its welfare role. In the contemporary context, social justice agenda is taken over by non-state organizations that are critical. The older theories of social justice, which are either inadequate or inapplicable, today cannot cover the new developments that have taken place in the era of globalization and therefore they have to be reviewed. Whether or not you see globalization as a positive or negative trend, it has given rise to increased interdependence of world economic markets leading to increasing economic disparities between the rich and the poor of all nations. While the wealthy develop more wealth at an increasingly rapid pace, the desperate poor are barely surviving.
Evolving global consensus as to the nature of process of globalization desiring and effective regulatory mechanism, evolving an institutional structure which is transparent and democratic unlike the present Bretton Woods Institutions where the decision making remains opaque and controlled by few powerful nations and thus ensuring that market behave responsible to society is so simple. It is a complex affair requiring engagement not only of states alone of course which is most fundamental essential , but in addition it also demands engagement of political experiences, social and economic expectations of different societies; and evolving a sensitive and reflective opinion of public and citizenry at global as well as local level. In short evolving such consensus would demand building common understanding and a common approach to new International economy order amongst every stake holder. In fact it is this kind of engagement right from political leadership to professionals, universities and voluntary groups that ultimately resulted into institutionalization of EU which initially did not look like a reality. In fact it is through this kind of engagement that the consensuses on matters like: common currency, common passport, common market, common human rights adjudicating mechanism could be arrived at.
No doubt it would demand new base of knowledge; different kind of professional approach to dealing with issues political, social, legal and economic in nature, and evolving more vibrant and sensitive public opinion at global as well as local level.
Some proposals to safeguard social justice:
· Equal and fair commerce and not free trade
· Education, medical care, social welfare must not be in the market.
· We need to make transnational companies responsible for their actions all over the world.
· It is very much required to cancel 3rd World Debt, and reduce the power of the WB and IMF.
· Already there have been substantial victories defeating multilateral agreement on investments. The value of Monsanto’s agricultural division has been reduced to zero dollars, because people won’t accept genetically modified foods and products. National coalitions are growing.
· The economic and political spheres of society are to be subordinated human development.
· The consumption patterns and the life styles of the people must be changed towards the sane consumption. This cannot happen overnight or by decree, but will require a slow educational process, and in this the government must play an important role. The function of the state is to establish norms for healthy consumption as against pathological and indifferent consumption. There fore we need a humanistic science of Man as the basis for the applied science and Art of Social Reconstruction.
· The production shall be directed for the sake of sane production.
· A concerted effort to stimulate the appetite for sane consumption is likely to change the pattern of consumption.
· Production for use instead for profit must be slogan of the Government.
· Militant consumer movement that will use the threat of consumer strikes
as a weapon. 20% of consumers can do wonders. The great advantage of consumer strike is that they do not require government action. Realization of their power is essential. It could be a manifestation of genuine democracy.
· Bureaucratic control that would forcibly block consumption would only make people all the more consumption hungry.
· The value of other commodities and services can be determined by panel of psychologists, anthropologists, sociologists, philosophers, theologians, and representatives of various social and consumer groups.
· Industrial democracy implies that each member of a large industrial or other organization plays an active role and participates in decision making.
· The Government can greatly facilitate the educational process by subsidizing the production of desirable commodities and services, until these can be profitably produced. A large educational campaign in favour of same consumption would have to accompany these efforts.
· Passive spectator democracy must be changed into active participatory democracy. Political life requires maximum decentralization through out industry and politics.
· Active and responsible participation further requires that humanistic management replace bureaucratic management. The realization of the new society and new man is possible only if old motivations of profit and power are replaced by new ones. Being, sharing, understanding; if the marketing character is replaced by the productive, loving character; If cybernetic religion is replaced by anew radical humanistic spirit.
· All brain washing methods in industrial and political advertising must be prohibited.
· There is an urgent need for reforming institutional arrangements–in addition to national ones–in order to overcome both the errors of omission and those of commission that tend to give the poor across the world such limited opportunities.
VI
How to do?
Strong political movements that must be built upon the process of class struggle should take place in each country. As Hugo Chavez said, “it cannot be mere movement of protest and celebration like Woodstock.. It is an enormous struggle, an endeavor in which organization and coordination are keys”. This is the challenge to international intellects and activists.
References:
Amartya Sen, “How to Judge Globalism,” The American Prospect, Vol. 13 no. 1, January 14, 2002.
Erich Fromm, (1981) ‘To have or To be’, Bantham Books, New York.
Friedrich Hayek, Economic Freedom and Representative Government (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976).
George Soros “ On Globalization” Public Affairs, New York,2002.
Giddens, A. (1990) ‘The Consequences of Modernity’. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Habermas, (2001) ‘The Postnational Constellation: Political Essays’, translated and edited by Max Pensky. MIT Press.
Held, D., McGrew, A., Goldblatt, D. and Perraton, J. (1999) ‘Global Transformations – politics, economics and culture’, Cambridge: Polity Press.
Joseph E.Stiglitz.(2003) Globalization and its Discontents, W.W. Norton Company,New York,.
_______________. (2007) Making Globalization Work, W.W. Norton Company,New York,2007.
Klein, N. (2001) ‘No Logo’, London: Flamingo.
Kellner, D. (1997) ‘Globalization and the Postmodern Turn’, UCLA , http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/courses/ed253a/dk/GLOBPM.htm
Sam Gindin, ‘Anti-Capitalism and the Terrain of Social Justice’ Monthly Review, Feb 2002.
Smith, M. K. and Smith, M. (2002) ‘Globalization: The Encyclopedia of Informal Education’, www.infed.org/biblio/globalization.htm.
Strange, Susan. (1996) ‘The Retreat of the State: The Diffusion of Power in the World Economy’, Cambridge University Press.
· The Bretton Woods Institutions are the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). They were set up at a meeting of 43 countries in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, USA in July 1944. Their aims were to help rebuild the shattered postwar economy and to promote international economic cooperation. The original Bretton Woods agreement also included plans for an International Trade Organisation (ITO) but these lay dormant until the World Trade Organisation (WTO) was created in the early 1990s.
Dr.R.Murali
Head
Department of Philosophy and Center for Philosophical Research
The Madura College(Autonomous)
Madurai-11 TAMILNADU, INDIA
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