Page 74 - Culture Society and Economy

Robotham-04.qxd 1/31/2005 6:23 PM Page 67

GLOBALIZATION AND RISKS

and which, in the view of conservatives, is the embodiment of that very
approach which has landed bourgeois society in its contemporary crisis.
Moreover, the problem is deeper. This liberal approach, advocated by
Giddens, fails to appreciate that the problems of capitalist society at this
stage of its development are too acute to be overcome by rationalistic tra-
ditionalism of the well-established British or French type. From the point
of view of conservatism, liberalism is now a very dangerous part of the
disease, not part of the cure.
How will the ‘sacred’ remain sacred, given the powerful doses of
rationality which have already been injected into public life, they rightly
ask? How will one justify privilege, even ‘meritocratic’ privilege, in the
face of mass rationality and cynicism? One can have an effective bour-
geois monarchy, but not when the full glare of twenty-first-century
tabloid rationality is turned on it, as both the British and the Dutch cases
prove. Manipulations of patriotism combined with lofty proclamations of
universal human rights do not survive for long in the real world of the
plunder of natural resources, the greedy scramble for lucrative inter-
national contracts and the ruthless grasp for global geo-political advantage.
The zone of the ‘sacred’ must be cordoned off from public rationality if it
is to operate effectively.
It is hard to see how such a cordoning off can be accomplished today
within the framework of democracy, given the power realities of the con-
temporary global political economy. This strategy was already tried in the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries but has now exhausted itself. Indeed,
it was precisely the ritualistic and self-serving manipulations of notions
such as equality, democracy and human rights which have generated the
widespread disenchantment with democratic politics which Giddens
5
laments. Thus, from the point of view of the ruling elites, the problem
of mass rationality becomes daily more acute. Elaborate and expensive
mass media manipulations are now accepted as an integral part of the
political management of the population within democratic regimes. Yet
these exercises serve only to generate further cynicism and alienation in
the citizenry. Increasingly the only solution seems to be the curtailment
of liberal democratic rights.
Giddens is aware that ‘old forms of pomp and circumstance’ will not
6
work in the conditions of today. As an alternative, he proposes a series
of reforms to ‘deepen’ democracy such as devolution of power, constitu-
tional reform, people’s juries and civic associations. This, as is well
7
known, is more or less the approach of New Labour in Britain under the
leadership of Tony Blair. These proposals for a stronger civic democracy
reinforce the impression that Giddens, like New Labour, has embarked

67