We have always been aware, most often vaguely but sometimes clearly, that the narrative about the progress of justice in democratic societies must be put in bold parentheses.
Not only because in spite of all their attainments, these societies are still (and increasingly) pervaded by grievous social inequalities, but also because there has arisen concomitantly a form of global apartheid in which a secure and free life in some regions of the world is accompanied by diverse threats, uncertainties and extreme hardship in others, and because one has to do with the other.
This is the great "but" of our life. This "but," this gloomy recognition inherent to western history, has started moving. It has emerged from the back of the head into full awareness, evolved from a moral headache into an insistent political issue.
From now on, the world will be different from the one to which we were accustomed with a numb or bad conscience, because it will inevitably have to deal quite practically with the fundamental global question of justice. The pushed-aside "but" can no longer be interpreted out of existence, and all policies that try to do so are doomed to failure. As are those that respond with the wrong answers.
What is strange, even tragic is that the penetration of the great global issue of justice into our national worlds imposes the most difficulties on precisely those who have taken up the cause of justice with particular fervor. This means the Left.
It hasn't recognized the signs of the times and is stuck in a state of rigid, national shock. The Left is unable to respond to the current global situation with a new discourse which – being simultaneously realistic and offensive-progressive – would finally thrust open the door to a transnational political orientation.
Only this sort of debate, however, can preserve social-democratic and socialist parties (as well as green parties, to the extent that they conceive of sustainability and justice jointly) from chasing after false nationalistic ideologies in response to globalization, and encumbering themselves with false zero-sum games played out between "them" (for example: refugees, Greeks) and "us" (who exactly?).
We are living in politically paradoxical times. Because while everyone (or almost everyone) knows that the fundamental crises which must be politically resolved are global in nature, there is a paucity of appropriate answers. Whether it is the global financial crisis of 2007/08 that became the euro and E.U. crisis, the often obscured crisis of poverty and hunger in vast expanses of the world, the ecological problematic or the so-called refugee crisis, there is always a dramatic divergence between problem analysis and political reaction.
The reflex of closing borders that is currently being offered as an answer to the problem of flight is a particularly striking and brutal example of the typical reaction: Since global relationships are viewed almost as forces of nature that are not susceptible to human activity, thoughts turn to "national solutions" for protecting one's own house. But not only is that reaction inhumane and in contradiction to the spirit and letter of the right to asylum, it is also helpless and ineffectual.
The pattern that becomes apparent here is the paradox of a political renationalization that is necessitated by transnational relationships. This was also evident in the financial crisis, where it was ultimately national budgets that had to bear the brunt of the crisis, particularly the rescuing of banks. And also where the beginnings of supranational policies regarding finances and the economy exist, as in the European Union, the main burden was passed on to those countries that suffered most from the crisis.
In some of them, this led to a strengthening of leftist parties and governments, as in Greece, which also gave thought, however, only to national solutions, because there seemed to be no room for supranational solutions. Conversely, social-democratic parties in northern countries were unable to come to a system-critical, international language of solidarity.
These developments are leading to a split in conservative politics and to a deafening muteness on the Left. Liberal-conservative protagonists embrace the nationalization of problems and the globalization of economic structures, which are accordingly not subject to questioning, because in this way national economies take care of the clean-up work necessitated by a transnational economic system that achieves and distributes its profits according to its own rules.
The other, more nationally oriented conservative political outlook went along with this as long as its own house was not endangered; but in times of the "influx" of destitute refugees from "foreign" cultures, tolerance comes to an end, and there is an insistence on closed borders in order not to excessively strain the "integrative capability" of the population and its social institutions. In the heat of battle, this is sometimes expressed in more explicit racist terms. The current state of the Christian Democratic Union and Christian Social Union in Germany offers a case study in the divergence of the two conservative directions, the liberal-global and the national-social.
Where does the Left remain in all this? Shouldn't it be impelled by this problematic situation to come forward with a comprehensive analysis of causes and connections, in order to formulate internationally oriented, structural solutions that could be worked towards by an alliance of social-democratic, socialist and green-emancipatory parties and movements? Indeed, that would have to be the case. But why can almost none of this be found in the political debate? For two reasons – because the Left has lost the language of justice, and because it is caught in the national trap.
We have apparently come to a phase where an answer must be found to the question regarding global justice between what used to be called the "first" and "third" worlds and are today referred to (with equal unsuitability) as the "West" and the "global South."
What is needed first of all is an, if you will, differentiated "calculation" of the extant relationships of preponderant advantaging and excessive dependency between these countries or groups of countries that is expressed in clear language. The reasons why such a bill has become due are manifold.
From a European point of view, the current explanation is that many people in Arab countries are no longer willing to participate in the miserable plight, the bigotry and the misgovernance of their states, which for a long time were part of a global distribution of labor supplying resources in return for an acceptance of autocrats' preservation of power (and the means to this end).
This "Enough is enough!" is expressed in insurrections and flight as well as in terrorism, a pathological and brutal form of protest and of the struggle for omnipotence. These developments have many different causes which, however, mean that European politics can no longer treat these people as objects but must justify itself in relation to them.
Then there are those who leave countries where they see no prospects for the future and who are generally classified with the generic term "economic refugees," as if they were carrying suitcases of dirty money and traveling to Switzerland (or from Panama).
It is overlooked here how much their poverty is a part of global relationships that in other places lead to an increase in the wealth of those who wall themselves off against agricultural products from these countries, have their products manufactured cheaply there or seize the resources of these countries, even water and essential foodstuffs.
The European Union and European countries are now confronted with the existential question as to how they intend to handle this new, insistent proximity, this obligatory humanity; in any case, what was previously the status quo is gone forever.
No real help is given by referring to improved living conditions in such countries as India, China or Brazil, because these gains cannot be transferred to the poorest countries, which lack a corresponding bargaining power on international markets. Moreover, progress in living standards, as important as this is, doesn't mean that structural injustices have been overcome.
But one senses that not only in Europe, but also elsewhere, for example in the USA – which contributed greatly to the new mobility and instability of the Middle East without being directly affected by the consequences – the bill for global justice will become due. And here the second aforementioned conservative reaction comes to aggressive expression. There is no other explanation for the surprising and shocking success of the racist policies currently on offer.
Donald Trump promises his followers that he will adroitly thwart the plans of those down below – meaning Mexicans, Muslims and many others as well. This is of course possible only at the price of extreme brutality and humanitarian self-alienation, but it provides negative evidence of the pressing nature of this issue in the USA as well.
The coming due of the bill between the first and third worlds simultaneously exacerbates the questions concerning justice within the West, but so many false connections are made there that they can only be untangled by a perspective that is genuinely oriented toward justice. In the USA, this is primarily a matter of the poor and the rich; furthermore in Europe, of poor and rich countries.
At the moment in the USA, there is not only a racist appeal on offer, but also a socialist one in an extremely classic form. It may be that Bernie Sanders is successful because of and not in spite of his age; there is something non-contemporary about him which is refreshing on the one hand, but on the other hand doesn't reveal any transnational perspective regarding courses of action. The tax on financial transactions that he is calling for is supposed to help pay for college tuition.
In Europe, the situation is of course much more complicated. First of all, there is an equivalent of the American in the form of the head of the British Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn. He must be credited, however, with having joined those in favor of staying in the European Union and having committed Labour to an affirmative campaign proclaiming the goal of a "social Europe."
Secondly, southern countries have seen the rise of a new, biographically younger socialism; this is true for Portugal, Spain, Italy and – already governing – in Greece. There is a fresh aspect to all this which is worthy of mention. Thirdly, we have the tired Social Democrats, who have little to set against their decline, especially the French Socialists and the Social Democratic Party (SPD) in Germany. What is the reason for this?
The impact of the "cursed souls of this earth" (Frantz Fanon) on the democratic societies of the West presents the Left with a huge challenge. There seems to be an encounter here between two worlds of justice that cannot easily be politically and intellectually combined. This constitutes the greatest task facing social democracy in this century.
Up to now, both the SPD and the French Socialist Party are at best filled with consternation at this development; their power and influence are dwindling in the face of the refugee crisis, even though this is actually a crisis of justice.
The Left in Europe is reacting to this shock in various ways. First there is the nationalistic seduction or aberration, the endeavor – if possible, without resorting to racism – to reject the new imposition, not least with a view to those nationally oriented voters who fear competition from low wages. Sometimes mixed-in here are autocratic tendencies as well as an affinity with Russia nourished by many sources.
This reaction leads the Left directly into collaboration with social demagogues and toward self-destruction. What is more, it avoids both a detailed analysis of the challenges and a humane, just response to the crisis, as if it were possible to seal off one's own home against the homeless. Does there still actually exist an impulse of international solidarity that arises out of obligations to justice?
More interest, relevance and ambivalence are offered by the Keynesian welfare-state as a nationally circumscribed response, including the idea that enough money is available if it is simply printed. This seeks to avoid the question of raising taxes (and levying them fairly). This approach leads to an intentional or unintentional collusion with Wall Street and the City that fuels the grand game of debt, finance and currencies.
At the same time, this sort of politics includes a tendency to partitioning, borders and nationalism, because global management, the political configuration of economic processes for the benefit of the disadvantaged, is in practice conceived as nothing other than national management.
Leftist nationalism and national Keynesianism – as well as the meandering course of SPD leader Sigmar Gabriel and his attempt to resolve all leftist contradictions within himself – are manifestations of a Left that no longer dares to explicitly name the actual problems and to search for political solutions. The task simply seems too huge, because it would imply actually conceiving of national and global justice together and not playing one off against the other.
This brings to light a grievous structural problem of contemporary social-democratic parties. Within the national state, they were faced with two alternatives. The first involved transforming the structures of the capitalist system of production and allocation at central points in such a way that workers in particular, but increasingly other groups as well, derive greater benefit from the prosperity that has been attained and are also granted a voice in deciding how it is to be achieved. The second alternative was more restricted in scope, because it concentrated less on changing structures than on compensating for the most egregious negative impacts of the system, in particular the risks of unemployment, illness and old-age poverty.
Finally, with the "third way" of Tony Blair and Gerhard Schröder, the conviction became dominant that effective social policy is above all labor-market policy, making excluded persons "fit" for this market, with corresponding policies of "support and stipulation." The policies that were implemented during Mr. Schröder's chancellorship precluded for the foreseeable future the possibility that the Social Democrats could again become Germany's strongest party. And an indecisive mishmash of all three alternatives has paralyzed the Socialist Party in France. Not even in the euro crisis were these two parties able to formulate an alternative concept for Europe that thinks through the first of the aforementioned paths in transnational terms.
Apparently the Left in Europe doesn't dare to recognize the most cursed souls on this earth as coequal and then, when they flee in desperation, to receive them in Europe or to support them in their home countries in hereto unheard-of dimensions – and to fetch the money for this undertaking from where it is to be had, namely from those who profit from the globalized market. For that reason, the Left flees into the illusions of the nation-state.
The intellectual debate of the Left is characterized in many places by this enervated futility. It indulges far too often in clever and entertaining deconstructions of its own standard position until nothing remains other than an aesthetic trace of unflinching uncertainty. These are helpless reflexes triggered by the supposed lack of a political option for transnational action. But the many movements which, in defiance of national and cultural borders, are unwilling to resign themselves to the existing state of affairs should provide the impetus for conceiving new political forms that are simultaneously realistic and utopian and vacillate in neither their standards nor their problem analysis.
Because it cannot be that the current world-historical situation, which calls for a comprehensive analysis of structural injustice and a corresponding transnational perspective, is met by the Left only with escapism, nationalism and exhaustion while the two sides of conservatism toss the dice, as it were, to determine the future of Europe as is currently happening in France, Germany, Great Britain and other countries. Sometimes the liberal-global-conservative market side has the upper hand, sometimes the national-conservative side predominates with its xenophobic outgrowths. Parties on the Left are pulled this way and that but see no way to cut through the national Gordian knot to a transnational perspective. Everyone focuses only on his national economy, his voters – and loses sight of the big picture. But perhaps the view is also being narrowed by an understandable recalcitrance with regard to the good old class struggle. The question is whether there can be international solutions without a confrontation with "the ones up there," with the international beneficiaries of a globalization that is now literally bringing the poorest to the doorstep of the second-richest.
The coming-due of the bill between the West and the global South requires a new mode of thought that far exceeds the policies of inclusion that have been aimed at up to now – as an abolition of externality, so to say. Previously, the international domain was the space where the natural right of the strongest predominated or could only be partially tamed, and accordingly the space in which a profound injustice could be played out without causing a scandal. This was also possible because except for the rhetoric of peace, no language of injustice seemed to have a place on the international level; all that was to be organized within the individual state. This maintained an unstable asymmetry in which the West could import and export, i.e. globalize as it saw fit without the citizens, producers and consumers of the South being able to effectively intervene in the framework conditions of this globalization. Now they are importing back – not only by importing themselves (flight), but also by voicing dissent, for example at the level of the G20 or the World Trade Organization. But up to now, these voices are scarcely being listened to. And who should give them a hearing if not progressive parties? Who other than they can create transnational, democratic audiences that transcend the navel-gazing of national thought?
Ignoring the claims of the excessively advantaged is the test case for the universality of human rights, for humanism, for socialism or even for the widely cited Christianity of the West when it is a matter of establishing where the limits of integration lie. The system with which we thrust aside this profound global injustice must be broken apart. In the eyes of many, refugees are compelling us to defend our privileges at our very doorsteps, but this also brings to light the barbaric character of these prerogatives. The "good life" can no longer in clean conscience be pursued at the cost, or in neglect, of others.
The discursive forms that made it possible to cause global injustice to more or less disappear right before our eyes were so-called realpolitik as well as its opposite, the humanitarian concept. The former basically said that "humanitarian issues" (human rights, poverty) must be put on hold in favor of a "reasonable" policy of promoting private interests. As soon as both categories come onto the stage, it has always seemed clear that realism must carry the day. As a value, humanism doesn't provoke "realism," it evokes it.
The second discursive trap, however, is to assign the term "humanitarian" to a policy of justice. Because in this way it acquires the positive aspect of moral magnanimity, but at the same time it becomes something to which one is obligated not inherently, but only in the sense of a praiseworthy act – if time and money allow. But fulfilling the responsibilities of justice – such as offering protection to persecuted persons, promoting human rights and putting an end to oppression and exploitation – is not a big-hearted or even a charitable act, but instead a duty. Pure and simple. The fact that this can also be a smart move is another, realistic consideration.
The two discursive traps of realpolitik and humanitarianism must be avoided. Thus the implicit thesis of Germany's chancellor regarding the refugee issue, namely that realism and humanitarianism coincide, is on the one hand a fundamental provocation. The reason is clear: It says that non-humanitarian realpolitik is unreal, that the tough guys are only dreaming, even if real blood flows through their dreams. But on the other hand, we must proceed further than to this sort of humanitarian-realistic attitude: The realism that is required is not only the one that recognizes the threat to the world order. In addition, it must not only orient itself toward existing law and human rights, but also conduct a merciless inventory of the many ways in which we maintain our western lifestyle at the expense of others who live in a global economy from which we always benefit more than they do, and in which they only profit to the extent that we allow. This recognition would also be incumbent upon a realistic realism, and uttering this truth requires progressive parties that have links to socially critical movements and avoid not only smug western complacency, but also the mistaking of a structure-altering global policy with sporadic "developmental aid."
Only genuinely progressive parties would be capable and willing to think through a global policy of that sort so that it doesn't cause suffering to those in western countries who in any case do not number among the winners in globalization. There are already such proposals as a global financial transaction tax, the closing of tax loopholes or a global capital gains tax; they simply have to be taken seriously and transformed into a transnational political program, so that at least structural funds become possible for fighting poverty. But this requires a political component: In international negotiations, poorer countries must not be pushed into the role of supplicants but must be treated as partners with equal rights.
The time has come for a particular type of realism, because policies promoting justice can just maybe work as realpolitik when they are no longer an optional choice, but when the influx and protest from the South confronts the West with a blunt alternative: solidarity or barbarism.
Rainer Forst is a professor of political theory and philosophy at the Goethe University of Frankfurt.
Translated by George-Frederick Takis
