The rational kernel within Samir Amin's mythological shell : the idea of a democratic and pluralist world political party

Amin's Leninist-Maoist vision is unlikely to be persuasive to twenty-first century citizens. Nonetheless, there is a rational kernel in Amin's call for a new worldwide political organization. Some structures, mechanisms and tendencies of the capitalist world economy are relatively enduring and some patterns recurrent, although the world economy is also fluid, constantly changing and evolving. Although waves of globalization have radically transformed human societies and their economic activities during the past 500 years also in many positive ways, the expansion of the international society and world economy has often been characterized by violence, imperial subjection and colonial expropriation and exclusion. There is a rational kernel also within Amin's analysis of the current world-political situation. Command over space and time by investors and megacorporations is power. Emancipation aims at freedom from domination. The decline of the World Social Forum indicates that progressive politics must move 'beyond the concept of a discussion forum'. My argument is that emancipation from unnecessary, unneeded and unwanted sources of determination requires global transformative agency and planetary visions about alternatives.Peer reviewe

Globalization and finance capitalism : beyond all-or-nothing arguments

The enormous changes in financial transactions brought about by globalization are indicative of a transformed global economic system. The implications of the peculiar global-local finance capitalism that has emerged from it and its possible adverse effects are discussed

Social imaginaries and Big History : towards a new planetary consciousness?

A sustainable global future depends on a fundamental shift from the currently dominant national imaginary to a global imaginary. Most of human reasoning is based on prototypes, framings and metaphors that are seldom explicit; although they can be forged, usually they are merely presupposed in everyday reasoning and debates. The background social imaginary offers explanations of how 'we' fit together, how things go on between us, the expectations we have of each other and outsiders, and the deeper normative notions and images that underlie those expectations. We argue that although the 17th and 18th century scientific and social revolutions generated prototypes, metaphors, framings and related conceptions of time and space that pointed towards a global imaginary, there were deep-seated structural reasons for the 'nation' to become, at least temporarily, the central category of human existence and belonging. By the early 21st century, there are already widespread metaphors that envisage the human world as a whole-from the 'global shopping mall' or 'global village' to the 'spaceship Earth'. Yet, compared to the rich poetics of national imaginaries, the proposed prototypes, metaphors and framings are often thin. Evoking innovative myths about shared human existence and destiny, Big History helps to articulate the rising global imaginary in terms that motivate transformative and progressive politics in the 21st century