A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not even worth glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing. And when Humanity lands there, it looks out, and seeing a better country, sets sail. Progress is the realisation of Utopia.
Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man Under Socialism.
A peculiar fatalism about the direction of international economics and politics and the capacity of ordinary people to affect them has been one of the predominant features of the past decade. The end of the Cold War seemed to consolidate the rule of international markets, the transnational companies that gain most from them and the rules and regulations of this strong capitalism by a network of regulatory organisations such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and the World Trade Organisation (WTO).
The so-called Washington Consensus - the conviction that the best framework to optimise human welfare is a worldwide free market - became the benchmark for theories of globalisation arguing that there is no alternative to this system. In that logic, the most realistic means for states to cope with it is by maximising capacities for education, skills and adaptable responses, rather than by withdrawing into a redundant fortress-type sovereignty or by futile and unrealistic efforts to reregulate at national or supranational levels.
The same conclusions were conventionally drawn by many social democratic parties and trade union leaderships, epitomised by Third Way policies. The idea of resistance was expunged from many political vocabularies on the left flank of contemporary politics in favour of approaches emphasising participation and partnership in managing this powerful new consensus and its economic policies. That is the predominant view in Europe, best expressed by the so-called Lisbon process within the European Union, after the summit earlier this year at which it was agreed to pool monitoring and benchmarking among EU governments on best practice in achieving employment and welfare objectives.
But the past year or so has also seen an explosion of new energy flying in the face of such a consensus throughout the international system. It brings together an extraordinary and bewildering variety of groups and alliances, from Third World peasants to US trade unionists, French small farmers, indigenous peoples, human rights and environmental campaigners, together with many non-governmental organisations and a new phenomenon - global public policy networks capable of mobilising activists rapidly and effectively with the new communications technologies.
Seattle, London, Prague, Washington, The Hague and Nice became the symbols of this new movement, following theatrical and highly mediatised protests outside international meetings, using direct action and occasional violence. Observers were struck by the similarity with some of the situationist methods and tone of the 1968 rebellions, exuberantly rejecting the conventional consensus and proving by their successes that they had struck a real chord of backlash and anger against globalisation and its deleterious effects.
These effects are there for many people around the world to see. Grave disappointment with transition economics in post-Stalinist societies is one example. There were similar negative responses to structural adjustment policies imposing neo-liberal priorities on weak African and Asian economies. So were the responses to successive economic crises triggered by the phenomenal growth of finance capital, which sees more than $1 trillion sloshing speculatively around the world every day.
Environmental degradation in many regions is another. Growing inequalities between rich and poor regions of the world economy, reinforced by crippling burdens of debt and unfair terms of trade, is yet another. To these must be added the growing evidence for irreversible climate change and the inability to agree internationally on how to control it; fears about genetically modified food sponsored by insufficiently accountable multinational companies; and the BSE scare in Europe.
All of these tendencies will be reinforced in whole or in part by what has been described by the British political theorist John Gray as "wild globalisation". Gray foresees daunting difficulties in getting the highly inadequate Kyoto process on climate change going again, given the depth of disagreement between the European Union and the United States at The Hague. Even if they do agree, global warming and industrialisation of less-developed countries such as China are closely linked - despite the fact that the most underdeveloped parts of the world are likely to suffer most from environmental degradation.
It would be difficult for any US president to convince Congress that the country must radically change its consumption of climate-warming fossil fuels. The Bush presidency is likely to simply deny the necessity of doing so and so reinforce the priorities of his oil-state supporters.
That would, in turn, reinforce the main tendency in US foreign policy, which is towards unilateralism rather than isolationism. As the one remaining superpower, the US is increasingly less willing or able to agree multilateral solutions and increasingly less tolerant of a multipolar world in which it has to cede initiatives and share power. The tendency can be seen in its support for an anti-missile defence system, which could undermine the NATO nuclear deterrent. Quarrels with the EU over the Rapid Reaction Force are part of the same pattern. It is clearly apparent in the environmental field.
The ferocity with which the US defends its cultural/entertainment industry, now its second largest export sector, is another dimension of the phenomenon. It is also visible in trade and economic policy, and in US attitudes towards the United Nations.
The point is highly relevant because the existing structure of world governance - the WTO, the IMF, the World Bank, the Group of Eight, arguably even the UN - is largely a US construction. A drift towards US unilateralism would weaken and undermine these structures. Unless they are reformed or replaced we could be in for a free-for-all, marked by sharper competition, growing protectionism as a backlash response, and wars over scarce resources such as water and oil.
This period of global history is, therefore, best understood as a transitional interregnum rather than an equilibrium of power. Wild globalisation is one quite possible outcome, especially if the US economy goes through a prolonged hard landing from its remarkable decade of growth in the 1990s. Whether it is the most likely one will depend on the response of other powers to the changing US priorities and position in the world. Many of the current tensions between the US and the EU must be understood as part of this transition to a more equal relationship. They can be seen in relation to the euro, global trade, environmental and food safety issues, cultural diversity and military/security affairs. Enlargement of the EU will give a single market of 500 million people - twice that of the US.
Such rebalancing is, however, seen by most political leaders as a means of reorganising the liberal internationalist system to strengthen rather than destroy it.
Global and regional markets would remain open, capitalist structures would be reaffirmed, environmental change more effectively regulated, world inequalities tackled by better distributive policies and world security addressed by a more effective UN in this perspective.
That is very much the perspective offered by the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Brian Cowen, in an address to a seminar on liberal internationalism and globalisation in November. It expresses very well what is probably a consensus across most Irish political parties and many of their European counterparts on these issues.
Mr Cowen emphasised that this commitment to an international order based on the rule of law, human rights, development and justice across the globe had to be given "concrete, active and ongoing expression". He mentioned Ireland's strong commitment to the United Nations, and its forthcoming two-year period on the Security Council, the compatibility of UN and EU peacekeeping and the campaign for a nuclear non-proliferation treaty. He welcomed the commitment to peace and development, bolstered by the Government's ambitious decision to reach the UN development target of 0.7 per cent of GNP by the end of 2007, which would quadruple Ireland's current development aid.
Many of the activists mobilised to challenge globalisation and offer answers to its discontents would say such a reformist perspective within the framework of liberal internationalism falls far short of what is possible or desirable. And yet they too have to confront major political dilemmas in which the argument that the good is the enemy of the best will often be heard.
Governments have increasingly to take account of the new coalitions of NGOs and development and environmentalist activists. In Ireland, partnership programmes and development programmes give them quite an important role in policy-shaping. It is part of the logic of such activism that it should seek to influence the negotiations. Not all the official efforts to engage with this new agenda can be dismissed as stifling co-optation.
Such debates between reformists and revolutionaries are an old story, of course. The significance of the events and movements considered here is that they have revived them for a mass audience now much more aware of the shortcomings of the Washington Consensus.
Questions of agency and strategy inevitably surfaced sharply after the initial euphoria of Seattle, where the demonstrators helped to prevent the WTO trade round opening. Are such coalitions and alliances sufficient or do they need to be harnessed with deeper social forces, such as the working classes (old and new) on which international capitalism still centrally relies for profit and productivity? Do violent methods rebound with public opinion?
How sure can we be that new communications technologies will facilitate democratic participation in such issues rather than divide elites even further from popular involvement.
Those concerned might ponder the words of Oscar Wilde, in this his centenary year, those of the Greek philosopher who inspired him: "The utopias of yesterday are the ideals of today and the realities of tomorrow."