The world suffers at the hands of a
dictatorship of no alternatives
Its power is manifest in many ways.
There is now a very limited
range of institutional options for the
organization of different areas
of social life.
This restrictive institutional repertory
has become the fate of the
contemporary societies
There are two types of leftists
or of progressives
There is a resign, surrender left
it accepts the market economy in its
present form
and globalization on its present course
and tries to humanize them
especially through compensatory
redistribution by tax and transfer
the key note of its politics
is the humanization of the inevitable
its program, is the program of its
conservative adversaries
with a humanizing discount
Then there is a recalcitrant,
nostalgic left
It too lacks an alternative
to the present form of a market
or the present direction of globalization
It wants simply, to slow their course
the better to defend the prerogatives
of its historical constituency
the organized labour force headquartered
in the capital intensive
sectors of industry
In every country in the world
that base is a shrinking part of a
population increasingly seen
as just one more interest group
rather than as the bearer
of the universal interests
of society
In the rich north atlantic world
the horizon of programmatic debate
has become increasingly narrowed
down to the attempt
to reconcile American-style economic
flexibility and European-style social
protection within the limits of the inherited
institutional framework
that frame work was designed
in the social democratic settlement
of the mid twentieth century
under the terms of that settlement
the forces that challenged
the existing organization
of power and of production
abandoned the challenge
the state was allowed to acquire the power
to redistribute by tax and transfer
to regulate the economy
more thoroughly
and to conduct a counter cyclical
economic policy
now however none of the fundamental
problems of contemporary societies
can be solved
or even addressed
unless we reopen the terms
of that social democratic settlement
and innovate in the institutional
arrangements that organize democracies
market economies and free civil societies
the consequences of the dictatorship
of no alternatives are far reaching
the result of the restrictive
institutional repertory
is to hold hostage
all of our recognized
ideals and interests
our interests and ideals
always remain nailed to the cross
of the institutions and practices
that represent them in fact
the dictatorship of no alternatives
undermines the force
and hollows out the content
of the most powerful message
in the world today
the message shared
by the revolutionary projects
of democracy, liberalism, and socialism
and by the world wide popular
romantic culture
the essential creed of democracy
is faith
in the constructive genius of ordinary
men and women
and the message of the popular
revolutionary romantic culture
is that all men and women
are god-like
and can raise themselves up
to a greater life
here I outline
a path for the progressives
I advance in four steps
the incitements, the direction
the change
and the obstacles
the incitements
a first incitement is the opportunity
presented by a momentous
shift in the style of production
a new form of production
is emerging in the world
in the major developing countries
as well as in the richest economies
it is characterized not simply
by the accumulation
of capital technology and
knowledge but also
by a set of practices
of productive experimentalism
these practices
soften the contrast between
conception and execution
they relativize the distinctions
amongst specialized work roles
they mix cooperation and competition
in the same domains
above all
they transform productive activity
into a collective practice
of permanent discovery
and innovation
the problem
is that this productive vanguardism
remains isolated in advance sectors
only weakly linked
to the other sectors
of the national economies in which
they exist
the vast majority of humanity
is excluded from them
in richer countries
as well as in poorer ones
the two traditional devices
for the attenuation of inequality
compensatory redistribution
and promotion of small business
prove inadequate to the task
of mastering the vast
forces of inequality
and of exclusion
that result
from this new form
of the hierarchical segmentation of
the economy
the emerging style of production
is not a horse that we can ride to freedom
It is simply an occassion
to be mastered and redirected
a second incitement
is the desire of nations to be different
the role of nations and nation-states in a
world of democracies
is to represent a moral specialization
within mankind
humanity develops its powers
only by developing them in different
directions and expressing them
in divergent forms of life
to be strong and independent
nations must give up a part of
themselves
emptying out the tangible
and customary content
of their collective identities
two neighbouring peoples
come to hate each other
not because they are different
but because they are becoming alike
and want to be different
the poisonous character of contemporary
nationalism lies in this
the desire to differ
is inflamed
by an impotent
will to difference
in the presence of the weighting of
actual difference
but the solution
is not to retreat
into an empty cosmopolitanism
it is to equip
the desire for collective difference
with institutional instruments
the differences to be created in the
future matter more than the
differences inherited from the past
prophecy over memory
a third incitement is the desire of
hundreds of millions of ordinary
men and women
to rise to a condition
of modest prosperity
and independence
and to escape
the servile circumstance
of dependent wage labour
when Abraham Lincoln remarked
that no one would accept
the life long condition of
hired labour
other than either because
of a dependent nature
or improvidence folly or singular
misfortune, he was expressing
a view widely shared
by the liberals and socialists
of the nineteenth century
but then given up
by the ideologists
of the left
in the twentieth century
by default
the desire for independence
is commonly fixed
on the narrow forms
of small holding
or isolated
family business
the task of the progressives
would be to meet this desire
on its own terms
and to provide it
with a broader range
of forms of satisfaction
through the institutional reorganization
of the market economy
the direction
the distinguishing feature
of a progressive or left position
today is to combine
devotion to the achievement of a greater
life for the ordinary man and woman
with a program for the institutional
reorganization of society
the liberals and socialists of
the nineteenth century understood
that equality is subordinate
to greatness
and entrenched an extreme inequality
is to be combated as a restraint
on the achievement
of that larger objective
and they all had an institutional proposal
for the socialists the governmental
direction of the economy
for the liberals
the establishment
of a single dogmatic version
of the market ecocomy and of democracy
their view of greatness was
too narrowly modelled on
the aristocratic experience
of self possession
and their institutional forumlas
are no longer credible to us
but we must reassert
the vital combination between
the idea of greatness
and the commitment to the
institutional transformation
of the economy
of politics
and of civil society
that is the only way
to be faithful to the most
powerful message that
the political programs of
democracy, liberalism, and socialism
share with the popular romantic
revolutionary message
of the empowerment
of ordinary humanity
whichever force, right or left
most plausibly embodies this message
of vitality
of capability
of greatness
will command the political agenda
of the future
I now outline four planks in a
progressive platform
a democratized market economy
that provides the majority
of men and women
with the instruments of
effective agency
a form of education that
allows them to see beyond
the present context
a way of organizing civil society
that ensures a practical basis
for social solidarity
stronger than money transfers
and a high energy democracy
that diminishes the dependence
of change upon crisis
such a program is not a blueprint
it is a direction
a succession of steps
not architecture, but music
its intentions are not merely local
a universal orthodoxy
such as neoliberalism
can be successfully
resisted only by
a universalizing heresy
as liberalism and socialism
were in their day
and the whole world
is now bound together
by a chain
of analogous problems
and solutions
a democratized market economy
distinguish a point of departure
and a horizon
the point of departure
is the effort
to broaden access
to the new vanguards
of production
and allow the practices
of productive experimentalism
to spread through large parts
of the society and the economy
to this end we must innovate
in the institutional arrangements
shaping the relations
between governments and firms
there are now two models
of government-firm relations
available in the world
the American model of arms-length
regulation of business by government
and the north east Asian model of
formulation of unitary trade and industrial
policy imposed top down
by the bureaucratic apparatus
of the state
we require a third model
a form of strategic coordination
between governments and firms
that is decentralized, pluralistic
participatory, and experimental
the horizon is a change
in the character of production
and of labour
with two aspects
one aspect
is the reconstruction of free labour
economically dependent wage labour
was always a compromise
retaining some of the characteristics
of slavery and serfdom
the aim is to affirm the predominance
of the two other forms of free labour
combined with each other
self employment and cooperation
in such a way that they can
address the problems of scale
the other aspect
is to change the relations
between people and machines
everything that we have learned how
to repeat we can express in a formula
and whatever we can express in a
forumla we can embody in a
physical contraption - a machine
the point of machines
is to do for us everything that we
have learned to repeat
the better to preserve the time of our
lives for the not yet repeatable
and inbetween the point of departure
and the horizon
the institutional reshaping of
the market economy
so that it ceases to be fastened to a
single institutional version of itself
the familiar idea of economic freedom
as the power to recombine factors of
production within an institutional
structure of production and exchange
that is left unchallenged
should be deepened
into a larger power to innovate
in the institutional arrangements
of production and exchange
alternative regimes of private
and social property would come
to co-exist experimentally
within the same market economy
education
the role of a school in a democracy
is to be the voice of the future
recognizing in every child
a tongue tied prophet
the school should not serve
as the instrumentality of the family
which says 'become like me'
or of the state which says
'be useful to me'
education is to empower the mind
to see and to discover
more than the established context
can countenance
there are two priorities
the first priority is to reconcile
especially in countries that are
large, unequal and decentralized
the local management of the schools
with national standards of investment
and quality
the quality of the education
that a child receives
should not depend on the
happenstance of its birth
to reconcile local management
with national standards
three tools are necessary
the first is a national system of
evaluation of performance
the second is a mechanism to
redistribute resources and staff
from richer places to poor places
the third is a procedure
for corrective intervention
in local failing school systems
the second priority is radically to change
the way of teaching and learning
it is not enough
to subordinate information to analysis
and problem solving
or to sacrifice superficial
encyclopaedic coverage to selective
deepening in the service of analytic
capability or to prefer cooperation
to the combination of individualism
and authoritarianism
it is also necessary to establish
in the approach to receive knowledge
a dialectical attitude
every subject should be addressed from
at least two contrasting points of view
civil society
in even the most equal countries in the world
money transfers in the form of social
entitlements have become the major
basis of social solidarity
money is too weak a social cement
the only adequate basis of social solidarity
is direct responsibility to
take care of other people
the very young
the very old
or the infirm and the needy
outside the boundaries
of ones own family
every able bodied adult
should have at least two positions
in society
one in the production system
the other in the caring economy
this change in the practical basis of
social solidarity should be prepared by
an innovation in the way in which we provide
public services
an innovation of enormous value
in its own right
what we now have
is the bureaucratic provision
of standardized low quality public services
that is to say
public services of lower quality than the
analogous services that can be bought
by those who have money
and the only alternative seems to be
the privatization of public services
in favour of profit driven firms
there is however
another option
that the state act to equip
to finance
and to coordinate
independent civil society
so that it shares in the competitive
and experimental provision of
public services
that is the best way to
enhance their quality
and at the same time
to create the arrangements and
the attitudes hospitable to a higher
level of social cohesion
democracy
democratic politics is not just one more
terrain for institutional experimentation
it is the area in which we determine
the condition for the revision of
the arrangements in all the other areas
the democracies that now exist in the world
continue to make change depend upon crisis
their rule is - no crisis, no change
a high energy democracy will diminish
the dependence of change upon crisis
and turn democracy
not simply into a form of majority rule
qualified by minority rights
but also into a collective
practice of the creation of the new
a high energy democracy requires
five sets of convergent
institutional innovations
the first set of innovations is
designed to increase the temperature
of politics
the level of organized
popular engagement in public life
the premise is that a politics
with rich structural content
is necessarily a high temperature politics
innovations that establish the
public financing of campaigns
that extend free access to the means
of mass communication
to the benefit of the organized
social movements as well as the
political parties
and that change the electoral regimes
in ways that favour the presentation of
definite options for society
a second set of innovations
hastens the pace of politics
take the example of American-style
presidential government
imitated in much of Latin America
it combines a liberal principle
of fragmentation of power
with a conservative principle of the
slowing down of politics
the result
is to establish a kind of
correspondence between the
transformative ambition of a political
project and the severity of the
constitutional obstacles they must
overcome to be implemented
our interest is to reaffirm the liberal
principle but to repudiate the
conservative one
the Americans imagine
that they are naturally and
necessarily combined
they are not
they are combined by design
to inhibit the political transformation
of society
if the context is that of
a presidential form of government
we would equip the regime
with instruments for the rapid
overcoming of deadlock between
the political branches
for example
either of the political branches
would enjoy the prerogative of calling
early elections which however
would always be bilateral
for both political branches
in this way
the branch that exercised
the constitutional prerogative
would have to pay the political price
of running the electoral risk
a third set of innovations
would exploit the latent experimentalist
potential of a federal regime
different parts of the country
or even different sectors of society
would enjoy the right to opt out
of the general solutions
and to create counter models of the future
without it being the case that
the degree of deviation that is
allowed to one locality
or one sector
would have to be universalized
for all of them
a fourth set of innovations
establishes in the state
a distinct power or even a new
branch designed, equipped, and
legitimated to come to the rescue
of groups suffering from forms of
exclusion or disadvantage
from which they are unable to escape
by the means of collective action
that are available to them
it is a form of structural but
localized intervention
that does not fit within
the limits of the present
organization of government
a fifth set of innovations
enriches representative democracy
with elements of direct or
participatory democracy
the best terrain in which to
advance in this way
is the engagement of independent
civil society
in the experimental and competitive
provision of public services
the path marked by these changes
in the organization of the market economy
of education, of civil society,
and of democracy
has as its counterpart
a reshaping of the world political
and economic order
globalization is not there on
a take it or leave it basis
we are not confined to having
more of it or less of it
we need a different globalization
the political and economic order that
has been developed in the world
since the second world war is a
Metternichean project
in the name of political security
and economic openness
it threatens to impose on all
of humanity a formula of
compulsive convergence to the same
set of institutions and practices
when in fact our interest lies
in radical experiments in the
institutional forms of the market economy
of free civil society
and of democracy
take the example of the world
trade regime
the regime that is being established
in the world
conforms to four principles
all of which should be replaced
the first principle is to
maximize the opportunities for free trade
but free trade is not an end
it is just a means
the end should be the co-existence
of alternative experiences of
civilization and alternative
trajectories of development
within a world economic order
that becomes progressively more open
the second principle is to
impose on the trading nations
in the name of free trade
adherence not simply to an abstract
idea of a market economy
but to a particular version of the
market economy
thus for example
to outlaw under the label 'subsidies'
all the forms of strategic coordination
between governments and firms
that the countries now rich
used to become rich
or to incorporate into the rules
of free trade
the odious regime of intellectual property
developed since the late nineteenth
century that places many of the
technological innovations of greatest
value to humanity in the control of a
handful of big multinational businesses
we should replace this institutional
maximalism by an institutional minimalism
the greatest economic openness
with the least possible restraint
on national institutional experiments
including experiments in the way to
organize a market economy
a third principle
is to grant goods and capital
increasing freedom to roam the world
while imprisoning people in
the nation state
or in blocks of relatively homogenous
nation states
such as the European Union
freedom for labour to move could
never be instantaneously established
but things, money, and people
should gain freedom together
to cross national frontiers
in small, cumulative steps
there is no more powerful mechanism
by which to achieve greater
equalization in the world
the freedom of things
and of money to move
is sometimes useful
and sometimes harmful
but the freedom of people to move
is sacrosanct
because it is part of the process
by which humanity becomes
both unified and diverse
the fourth principle is that the
world trading system is being organized
on the pretence of universal free labour
no matter how oppressive
the conditions of economically
dependent wage labour in fact are
free labour must be really free
and in the future free labour must mean
the predominance of self employment
and cooperation over economically
dependent wage labour
this example of reconstruction of the
world trading system
illustrates a larger principle
the progressive program
that I have outlined
has as its ally
the construction of a world political
and economic order
more hospitable to alternatives
to divergence
to experiments
to heresies
than the order that is now established
the obstacles
consider an intellectual
and a spiritual obstacle
to a progressive program
like the one I have sketched
the prevailing ideas
in the whole field of social and
historical studies
are antagonistic to the exploration
of institutional alternatives
they have severed the link
between insight into the actual
and imagination of the possible
they have become
part of the problem
rather than part of the solution
sources of superstition
forming a chorus of fatalism
above all
we need to form
in political economy and legal analysis
the twin disciplines of
the institutional imagination
an aim of this progressive program
is to create a world in which trauma
no longer needs to be the
enabling circumstance of transformation
nevertheless, the institutions that
would diminish the dependence
of change upon crisis
themselves seem to depend for their
establishment upon crisis
only the imagination can break this
vicious circle
the task of the imagination is to do
the work of crisis without crisis
the cold calculus of interest must
be reinforced by the visionary impulse
by the prophetic voice
the goal of the progressives was
never just to humanize society
to attenuate its cruelties
and to redress its injustices
it was always also to divinize humanity
to raise us up to a greater life