Humanitarian Motives for Sustainable Developments in a Global Economy: An Essay

As a philosopher, I feel the need to begin with definitions. And it is clear to me that, as with the term “sustainability,” the related term “globalization” has many meanings – almost as many as there are authors and organizations using it. For me, the term has political connotations, and thus covers the whole range of political philosophies, from the most extreme left to the most extreme right end of the political spectrum. Some people seem to assume that globalization stands primarily for an economics-based politics: the market is the most important factor, economies of scale are crucial, and the global market – without trade limitations of any kind – is what is more important than anything in today´s technologized world.

But no sooner than we have put the matter in those terms, it is clear that there is another pole. Ever since Lenin, Marxists have maintained that globalization in that sense means no more than an extension of capitalism, the exploitation of less developed parts of the world for the advantage of imperialist capitalist managers in the most developed parts of the world. That, it seems to me, is the root of the rhetoric of many outspoken leftist critics of globalization in the past decade or so.

That said, it seems to be clear in principle that there is a whole range of political interpretations of globalization that lie between these extremes.