Can crisis lead to a better alternative?

A socially responsible, sustainable form of capitalism needs to be promoted

In the heady days of 2003, before most of the world had heard of such things as credit-default swaps and banks ‘too big to fail’, I was an undergraduate student at a prominent liberal arts university in Washington DC. In the spring semester of my junior year, I recall enrolling in a mandatory course on world politics, the main goal of which was analysing the relationships between state and non-state actors in an increasingly globalised world.
As part of the course, the whole class, about 40 students in all, was divided into four groups: ‘terrorists’, ‘law enforcement’, ‘globalisers’, and ‘anti-globalisers’. Each group was then tasked with putting together a detailed strategic plan for how it would attain its stated objectives and measure success.
For me and my fellow ‘anti-globalisers’, however, it was clear that a more difficult task lay ahead. One must recall that we were the generation that came of age after the end of the Cold War; when history had apparently ‘ended’ and the dominance of the American political and economic model was perceived as not only unchallengeable in ideological terms, but inevitable.
Our group quickly realised that any full-frontal assault on globalisation would degenerate into cliched Marxist critiques of globalised capitalism. For mainstream, well-adjusted American students born under Reagan and studying in Washington, there could be nothing worse than having to make a vaguely Leftist argument against the prevailing orthodoxy — it felt too much like the 60s of the anachronistic east-west divide and, worse, of our parents.

Social justice

So we ‘anti-globalisers’ took a different tack. We would not set out to undermine globalisation per se, but rather try to make it more equitable, just, and, above all, sustainable. We were all for shrinking the distances and barriers between people and economies, but not at the expense of social justice and common decency.
Brazil’s President Lula made headlines recently when he criticised the West for causing the present economic crisis, declaring that it “was encouraged by the irrational behaviour of white people with blue eyes, who before the crisis appeared to know everything, but are now showing that they know nothing”.
The ‘New York Times’ described the situation more diplomatically: “In the past, American officials travelled to India, Brazil, China and South Africa and lectured government officials on the need for open markets, free trade and deregulation. But now some of those very policies — particularly deregulation — are viewed as the culprits for the recent economic collapse”.
However, it is telling that we anti-globalisers failed to imagine a scenario where even at the core of the system, discontent would reach a tipping point. Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, might have been expected to call for the ‘moralisation of financial capitalism’ and the ‘refoundation of a better regulated capitalism…. which would put an end to the excesses and abuses”. But it was Barack Obama who in a recent press conference called for an end to the ‘illusion of wealth’ and ‘narrow prosperity’, and touted ‘broad economic growth’ as an integral part of the “wider set of obligations we have to each other”.
While socialism itself is probably not the answer, it’s clear that in ideological terms a more egalitarian, socially responsible, and sustainable form of capitalism needs to be promoted. If my old college course were offered today, it’s clear that the ‘anti-globalisers’ would have a much easier time of it than we did.