![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blogs.sps.ed.ac.uk\/jwi\/files\/2017\/05\/Glenda-Alvarez-Money.jpg\")
<\/a>Photo: Glenda Alvarez<\/p><\/div>\n
Summary of the paper<\/strong><\/p>\n The economic premises of the Western liberal democracies are unsustainable in the light of social justice and ecology.\u00a0 This indicates the \u2018necessity\u2019 of conceiving of an alternative to the existing global economic institutions.\u00a0 The global financial system, too, needs to be reorganised and reoriented.\u00a0 But how?\u00a0 Answering this question may indicate the \u2018possibility\u2019 of conceiving of alternative constitutional arrangements concerning global finance.\u00a0<\/p>\n It can be observed that a set of norms and institutions of a constitutional kind is now being formed at the global level, and that the financial system is part of it.\u00a0 But the ongoing process of constitutionalisation at the global level, Tim argues, lacks a key feature that makes it legitimate: namely, the political oversight that reflects the will of the constituent people and peoples of the world.\u00a0 Also, according to him, the global norms and institutions of finance \u2013 in particular, investors\u2019 rights conferred to private corporations as legal persons \u2013 are severely compromising social and ecological goods.\u00a0 So, Tim suggests that a real solution to the current unjust global state of affairs may entail finding a new way to organise, assign and constrain political, economic and legal powers so as to promote the global public good rather than undermining it.\u00a0 This is a matter concerning global constitutional arrangements.<\/p>\n To indicate a right direction in which he thinks such arrangements should be developed, Tim highlights two contrasting approaches that have been developed outside the literature of political theory, but that have been influential in practice.\u00a0 The first of these is the liberal-globalist model associated with George Soros.\u00a0 This embraces a borderless market-based world where the role of states largely withered away but were not replaced by a world state.\u00a0 After pointing out several problems with this model, Tim considers the second approach, which is the international-socialist model associated with Che Guevara.\u00a0 This envisages the world where the social functions of finance were fully absorbed into the sphere of public administration and planning, and where socialist societies, through international cooperation, eventually coalesced into one political entity.<\/p>\n A recent technological development that Tim suggests may be conducive to the realisation of the international-socialist world is that of the blockchain \u2013 a distributed database that serves as a public ledger people can use to record transactions.\u00a0 So, he finally considers a recent debate concerning this new technology.\u00a0 His essential point seems to be this: although the instrument in question could be employed to facilitate the realisation of the world associated with Guevara, it could be also employed to realise the world associated with Soros.\u00a0 This indicates the threats and opportunities that this instrument presents.<\/p>\n Discussion<\/strong><\/p>\n The presentation began with a brief comment from Tim, which set the paper in the book project he is currently working on.\u00a0 The ensuing discussion invited interesting questions including whether the blockchain, because it is a \u2018distributed\u2019 ledger, could serve the end of \u2018central\u2019 planning as Guevara envisaged it at all, whether Tim\u2019s presentation of Guevara\u2019s scheme is adequately balanced, whether the duty of care may have any implication for the socialist conception of work as a social duty, etc.\u00a0 The discussion was very constructive.\u00a0 And the book, when it comes out, will surely be an original contribution to the literature of global justice.<\/p>\n Written by Yukinori Iwaki<\/em><\/p>\n ****<\/p>\n Tim Hayward is Professor of Environmental Political Theory and Director of the Just World Institute.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" PTRG 10 May 2017 Summary of the paper The economic premises of the Western liberal democracies are unsustainable in the light of social justice and ecology.\u00a0 This indicates the \u2018necessity\u2019 of conceiving of an alternative to the existing global economic institutions.\u00a0 The global financial system, too, needs to be reorganised and reoriented.\u00a0 But how?\u00a0 Answering 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