Roberto Unger on Soft Globalism vs Voluntary Nation-State Cooperation

Discussion

Roberto Unger:

"The dominant tenor of writing on global governance is animated by what I call a “soft globalism.” By that, I mean that many people who write about this topic are often antagonistic to national sovereignty and prefer the attenuation of it. Yet these thinkers’ soft globalism puts them at odds with the overwhelming preferences of contemporary humanity, which massively rejects any suggestion of a move toward a world state.

Whereas the soft globalists seem to think there exist a huge range of possible alternatives for governing the world worth considering, experience suggests there’s only one option that works: voluntary cooperation among sovereign states to help solve problems that they cannot adequately solve alone.

Now, I don’t believe in national sovereignty simply because it’s the majority view. I agree with it substantively. The division of humanity into sovereign states is more than a brute fact. My position is that humanity develops its powers and its potential only by doing so in different directions, and can be unified only by being allowed to diverge. Visions of convergence — that we will all converge on the same set of best available practices and institutions — are a disaster. They subvert and impede the experiments by which humanity develops its potential.

All human beings are born nailed to two crosses. We are crucified, first, in a position within the internal social order of a nation-state. We are born into a particular class, caste or community and are required to spend our lives struggling to emancipate ourselves from the consequences of that crucifixion.

But we are crucified the second time by finding ourselves accidentally born into one of these national communities into which humanity is divided. I don’t diminish the significance of this double nightmare. But the alternatives to it are even worse. The idea of evolution toward a world state, a world empire, would be a prison from which we could not escape and in which we would have much less prospect of continuing the ascent of mankind.

Now, of course, we face problems that are global problems. How can we hope to avert the worst harms and achieve the most important common goods, when the world is divided into clashing, greedy, forceful and violent national states? The division of the world into sovereign nation-states is by far the lesser evil, compared to the union of mankind into a single state or into a collection of hegemonic states that would achieve an agreement among themselves and impose it on the rest of mankind in the name of what is allegedly necessary for all.

Our way of approaching the organization of the world should be in the service of the ability to create alternative structures, to create the possibility to resist the imposition of dogmatic blueprints by the powerful. That’s why we need pluralism.

Now, pluralism comes with dangers, including the danger of environmental destruction. Some of these national experiments will take us backwards. But the fact that the future is open means it is inherently open to danger. It cannot be open without being dangerous."

(https://www.noemamag.com/how-to-govern-the-world-without-world-government/?)

More information

• Book: Roberto Unger. Governing the World Without World Government.

URL = https://www.versobooks.com/books/4119-governing-the-world-without-world-government