The theme of this article is the threat—and the opportunities—posed to progressive aspirations by the phenomenon that has come to be known as globalization. A decade ago the term globalization was a novelty both in academic circles and in the popular press. Now, no discussion of economics or political debate seems complete without reference to it. And the recent attacks of Al Qaeda and the invasion of Iraq push the problems of an international legal order and the potential universality of the rights of man to the top of the agenda. Yet in its essence globalization is not a recent—or even a 20th century—phenomenon. The view that globalization is no new phenomenon has some substance. Many commentators have pointed to the level of international trade in the decades before World War.1 And some have thought of ancient Greco-Roman civilization as an instance of globalization— was it not appealed to by St Augustine in his opinion that ‘secrus judicat orbis terrarium’? This is true in the sense that the Roman Empire provided political and legal systems in which diverse nations and cultures could be to an impressive extent integrated. But it was not global: consider the contemporary but separate empires in China, India and possibly South America. Globalization in the literal sense of the word has to do with the rise of capitalism.
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What Determines the Boundary of Civil Society?
Hume, Smith and the Justification of European Exploitation of Non-Europeans
Elias L. Khalil
Civil society consists of members obligated to respect each other's rights and, hence, trade with each other as equals. What determines the boundary, rather than the nature, of civil society? For Adam Smith, the boundary consists of humanity itself because it is determined by identification: humans identify with other humans because of common humanness. While Smith's theory can explain the emotions associated with justice (jubilance) and injustice (resentment), it provides a mushy ground for the boundary question: Why not extend the common identity to nonhuman animals? Or why not restrict the boundary to one's own dialect, ethnicity or race? For David Hume, the boundary need not consist of humanity itself because it is determined by self-interest: a European need not respect the property of outsiders such as Native Americans, if the European benefits more by exploiting them than including them in the European society. While Hume's theory can provide a solid ground for the boundary question, it cannot explain the emotions associated with justice. This paper suggests a framework that combines the strengths, and avoids the shortcomings, of Smith's and Hume's theories.
Class versus Nation
A History of Richard Turner’s Eclipse and Resurgence
Ian Macqueen
conceptualisation of his life as ‘a total project’, as his friend Tony Morphet would later describe it. In Durban , Turner encountered a wide network of activists, dating back to the 1950s, including old South African Congress of Trade Union (SACTU) members
Alex Lichtenstein
Workers’ control in the enterprise is a necessary condition for freedom but it is not a sufficient condition ( Turner 2015 [1972]: 64 ). Detained, interrogated and tortured by the South African security police in early 1982, trade union activist
Introduction
Traces of Pan Africanism and African Nationalism in Africa Today
Denis Goldberg
breach of aspects of these charters (e.g. torture by the SAPS), we try to promote these ideas. Traces of Pan-Africanism in practice South Africa is a gateway for trade, ideas and capital, and works through the structures of the African Union and has
Distinguishing Injustice, Exploitation and Harm
The Impossibility Result
Elias L. Khalil
defined here, presumes that there are just rules of exchange, either legal or customary, that the trading parties recognise: an exchange between A 1 and A 2 is deemed unjust if (1) both belong to the same bounded society and, hence, both are obligated to
Teppo Eskelinen
appear as both a commodified burden traded on an open market and as a political category. In the analysis, I will be mostly referring to basic texts in financial economics to show the distinctive manner of understanding risk in what I will call the
China’s New Silk Road
Autocracy Promotion in the New Asian Order?
Octavia Bryant and Mark Chou
route during the Tang Dynasty, symbolizes the first step towards the realization of Chinese president Xi Jinping’s ambitious New Silk Road initiative. The Silk Road, which was an ancient network of trading routes that existed from around 114 BC to the
The Keys to the Economic Kingdom
State Intervention and the Overcoming of Dependency in Africa before the Crisis of the 1970s
Bill Freund
investment and the fount of technology. It was the engine that made the colonial economy go and it dominated finance and trade. The stereotype model of dependency theory based on a solar metropole and a planetary range of peripheral colonies had much to be
The Nemesis of the Suburbs
Richard Turner and South African Liberalism
Steven Friedman
were to organise trade unions or organise political campaigns – Turner’s students overwhelmingly chose the latter. There is a certain irony in this. Structural Marxism was largely the intellectual product of two exiled activists with links to the