Don't Mention Utopia!

Ulrich Beck, professor of sociology at Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich and at London School of Economics and Political Science, writes in the Shanghai Daily.com 14 September:

‘Nation States change in a cosmopolitan world’:

“In the intellectual movement of the Scottish enlightenment during the late 18 century, thinkers like David Hume and Adam Smith developed an important idea of the market as a circle of sympathy.

The exchange of goods and information between peoples is a force to combine different cultures and nations into a circle of mutual understanding and bestow on them an awareness of a common fate.

Therefore, benevolence and civilization can replace cruelty and barbarism.”
“For a long time, sociology has thought in the framework of the nation-state. Now it needs a change to embrace what I call "methodological cosmopolitism."

Ulrich Beck takes this idea to a new alignment of nation-states with ‘global capital’, in which nation-states ‘are becoming more and more dependent on global capital in making domestic and foreign policies. But, while neo-liberalists, the ideological parasites of global capital, are celebrating their version of "globalization", it is, in fact, far from the end of the story and the end of history.’

‘Nation states, if enlightened through cosmopolitism, can unite with the social movements and base their power on a sounder legitimate base.In that case, global capital can reconcile and cooperate with these anti-powers, and win for themselves greater legitimacy.’So my central outlook is a cosmopolitan world, in which states, civil societies and companies interact with one another to take control of global risks and promote humanity.”

And the way head? :‘Social movements in the fields of the environment are becoming more global, intentionally rather than instinctively. People realize that environmental catastrophes could break out at any time and in any place. Nation states, if enlightened through cosmopolitism, can unite with the social movements and base their power on a sounder legitimate base.In that case, global capital can reconcile and cooperate with these anti-powers, and win for themselves greater legitimacy.”

Comment
It was said in the 19th century that ‘God was in the detail’, which the 20th century transcribed as ‘the Devil was in the detail’. And it is here that sociology-speak earns itself its bad name.Ulrich seems to be saying that the national-states (a multitude of government forms) ‘unite’ with the ‘social movements’ (anti-globalisation protestors of various hues, i.e., anti-capitalists of the former Marxist-left, various anarcho-libertarian groups, and smaller violence cults), all in the name of ‘humanity’ (subject to a multitude of interpretations from various tyrannies associated with social-controls of what people can and cannot do), and somehow ‘share’, exactly what? Power? Monopoly of Violence?

Do governments meeting in plenary sessions or bilaterally bring with them crowds of demonstrators to join in the debates on what to do about this or that problem (the environment, species decline, how far their citizens may travel, and how often, etc.?). Exactly who do these ‘social movements’ represent, how did they acquire their ‘legitimacy’ to speak for anybody else (do noisy vegetarians speak for non-vegetarians, who were cleared off the streets in tussles?).

Ulrich Beck offers the admonition: ‘We should not be utopian, however.’(!)

Neither Adam Smith nor David Hume thought that markets required governments to manage them, never mind what in practice can only be described as ‘mobs’ of people feeling strongly about something (say, they don’t like Jews, or Papists, or Islamists, or advertising, or air travel, or life-styles, and so on). How this will go down in totalitarian China is moot.

Markets were to be governed by the laws of justice, not ‘men’, especially not mobs of them. Monopolies were to be curbed severely by competition, not regulators and teams of inspectors. I think there is much detail to sort out in Ulrich’s proposals.