The Moral Universe

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The Demos circulation licence is adapted from the ‘attribution/no derivatives/non-commercial’ version of the Creative Commons licence. To find out more about Creative Commons licences go to www.creativecommons.org prelims.qxd 11/30/01 5:20 PM Page 5 Contents The moral universe Introduction Tom Bentley and Ian Hargreaves Part 1. One world: ethics, diversity and globalisation East and West: the reach of reason Amartya Sen New wars and morality in the global era Mary Kaldor Whatever happened to compassion? Zygmunt Bauman Foreign policy, values and globalisation Robert Cooper Liberalism and living together John Gray Part 2. Ethics and the self; beyond individualism Ethical jazz Richard Holloway Ethical know-how Francisco Varela Individualism and the concept of Gaia Mary Midgley Private life, public property? Joan Smith Part 3. Ethical institutions; Ethical consumption in the twenty first century Melanie Howard and Michael Willmott Ethics and the multinational corporation Andrew Mackenzie and David Rice Accounting for ethical business Sheena Carmichael Media policy and the crisis in political reporting John Kampfner Can humanity learn to create a better world? Nicholas Maxwell 5 This page is covered by the Demos open access licence. Some rights reserved. Full details of licence conditions are available at www.demos.co.uk/openaccess prelims.qxd 11/30/01 5:20 PM Page 7 Acknowledgements The ideas, themes and conversations from which this collection emerged began more than two years ago. They were based on a growing belief that where, as individuals, we are increasingly able to make particular ethical choices, society, as a whole, has found it difficult to erect a moral universe that carries authority. Ian Christie deserves a special thanks for his considerable input at the beginning of the project to get it off the ground. His ideas and sug- gestions were indispensable. Roger Scruton, Geoff Mulgan, Ben Jupp and Charles Leadbeater contributed valuable advice and thoughts during the early stages. Thanks are also due to Gareth Stedman Jones and Sally Alexander for their support and insights. All at Demos provided important help at various times. In particular we would like to thank Matt Bethell, Lydia Howland and James Wilsdon for their energy during the final stages. Finally, special thanks should go to Eddie Gibb who managed to bring a very long process to an efficient end. Tom Bentley and Daniel Stedman Jones Winter 2001 Demos Collection 16/2001 7 This page is covered by the Demos open access licence. Some rights reserved. Full details of licence conditions are available at www.demos.co.uk/openaccess prelims.qxd 11/30/01 5:20 PM Page 9 Introduction: the new ideology When, on September 11, 2001, suicidal terrorists aimed three hijacked passenger aircraft at the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, killing thousands of people, the first instinct of President Bush and Prime Minister Blair was to speak in moral rather than political terms. Following the rhetorical lead of their attackers, they proclaimed a battle between good and evil. In the months that have followed, both leaders have continued to insist upon the moral basis of the conflict and to spurn the left’s counter-argument that the war is in reality firmly within a long tradition of American-led imperial defence of the West’s geopolitical and energy resource interests, albeit extended this time to include a post Cold War alliance with Russia. Tony Blair’s position has its roots in the experience of the Nato military action against Yugoslavia. In a speech in Chicago in 1999, he set out the case for fighting a war of resistance to ethnic cleansing: “a just war, based not on any territorial ambitions but on values.” The political rationale for this “doctrine of international community” is that globalisation has created a more intense mutual interdependence between countries through markets, communications, finance, crime and culture. This unprece- 1 dented degree of “connexity” requires greater readiness to 1 Mulgan, G. (1997) intervene, whether militarily or through economic and devel- Connexity: responsibility, freedom, business and opment mechanisms, in situations where no national territo- power in the new century, Vintage, London rial interest is at stake. Demos Collection 16/2001 9 This page is covered by the Demos open access licence. Some rights reserved. Full details of licence conditions are available at www.demos.co.uk/openaccess prelims.qxd 11/30/01 5:20 PM Page 10 The moral universe In his speech to the Labour Party conference in Brighton in October 2001, Blair ratcheted up the emotive power of this message, declaring that the doctrine of international community must also motivate rich countries to take responsibility for the most chronic manifestations of global injustice and poverty. “The state of Africa,” Blair said, “is a scar on the conscience of the world. But if the world as a community focused on it, we could heal it. And if we don’t, it will become deeper and angrier.” This mighty ambition builds upon New Labour’s formative premise that we are living in a political era defined not by right and left, but by right and wrong. Motivation towards pro- gressive political outcomes is rooted in morality, rather than, say, class interest. Morality has become the new ideology. Facing the challenge Yet September 11 also reminded us, in the most uncompro- mising terms, that the basis of the West’s moral self-confidence is open to challenge. The terrorists proclaimed their motivation in the language of martyrdom-seeking Islam, confirming for many the accuracy of Samuel Huntingdon’s thesis that we have become engaged in a “clash of civilisations,” a contest between self- contained and fundamentally different sets of values which demands aggressive re-affirmation of the values of western liberalism: “The preservation of the United States and the West requires the renewal of western identity.”2 The assumption in Huntingdon’s position is that the West’s own values and tradition exist as a defined and aggressively evan- gelisable set of positions. To those who doubt this, the message tends to be: pull yourself together. In reality, what lies ahead will require much more than a re-assertion of what the West already thinks it knows to be true. To deny this is to fail to understand the nature of the forces which have undermined the self-confidence and sense of invulnerability of western liberalism. As attention focuses upon the construction of a sustainable 2 Huntingdon, S. (1996) The Clash of Civilisations new politics in Afghanistan, and the possibility that the and the Remaking of theatre of military conflict will broaden, the nature of this World Order, Simon and Schuster, New York moral re-armament calls for more searching examination. A Demos Collection 16/2001 10 This page is covered by the Demos open access licence. Some rights reserved. Full details of licence conditions are available at www.demos.co.uk/openaccess prelims.qxd 11/30/01 5:20 PM Page 11 Introduction new, long-lasting “war on terror” will pose significant choices for domestic populations in Western democracies. Will those who enjoy the satisfactions of affluent, open societies support a new era of imperial intervention and control, in which the West’s moral values and mores are forced upon others? Or will western publics recognise that a true doctrine of international community involves negotiation and changes in behaviour on all sides, the forging of new, shared positions? Whichever route is followed, the answers given to these questions will have a profound effect upon the world’s social, political and economic landscape by the middle of this century. The options Huntingdon’s thesis points towards the first of these two approaches, that of the militant, “hard liberal” viewpoint which states that the West must, wherever possible, insist that the rest of the world embrace democratic politics, universal human rights and liberal lifestyle choices. In this view, aid and economic assistance should be made conditional upon compli- ance with such values, and military force should be triggered even more readily than in the past decade.

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