The Deep Challenge Of Global Social Democracy – responses

This is a response to Professor Shaw's designation of "European social democracy" as a potential "global thought system", and his initial examination of how that expansion of European perceptions is to be achieved. I broadly share Professor Shaw's value-judgements on this subject - I think the "European" perception of the individual, of a "liberal" and "democratic" society, is broadly sound, and that we should seek ways of globalising it.

But that will not be done, I suggest, if we start at the collective or systemic level. There are simply too many diverse social and political "systems" in the world for it to be possible to integrate them at any systemic level. We should identify the key underlying INDIVIDUAL VALUES, and assert them strongly, allowing them to generate their own, and different, systemic consequences thousands of different societies. We should not seek to globalise "European social democracy" as such, but rather to develop the propositions of individual philosophy which animate it. This gives us a much more flexible theoretical model with which to work, and one which will generate less "systemic" opposition from (say) "Eastern" societies.

And in that context, I would argue that the key assertions ought to be, not about "democracy" as Professor Shaw suggests, but about "Equality". Democracy is a poor guide, partly because it is itself a systemic concept (not individual) and partly because there are so many different versions of it that conflict is almost built-in to its promotion. It would be much easier to develop the concept of equality, in a thousand different societal contexts. Indeed, that is what is already being done, through womens movements, anti-racism movements, even the ILO.

Closely related to Equality, as a key globalising context, is Fraternity - literally, the individual sense of being brother/sister to all other human beings - that is being cultivated through international labour movements, the FairTrade movement, and many of the global environmental quality movements.

Finally, we should pick up the lead of the Human Rights movements, and assert LIBERTY, as a logical and philosophic consequences of Equality. I am suggesting that we re-trace our philosophical steps to these component "building bricks" of European civilisation, and seek to re-state them in a global context. It is my understanding that these are the principal values which animated the original American Constitution (though I have never studied that, I am ashamed to say!) If we can build a global philosophy out of these bare concepts, I believe it would give all the societies of the world room to differ and flourish, while being bound at the value level.

Would Professor Shaw acknowledge this alternative paradigm, within which to take the process forward?

Roger Warren Evans

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