Lord Kinnock's dream of global government

By Gerald Isaaman

A new system of global government creating a “minor Utopia” in which the world could live in peace and secure from economic disasters is needed for the future.

And such a dream is not an impossibility, declared Lord Kinnock, the former Labour leader, when he set a positive vision for the decades ahead at St John’s School, Marlborough, Wiltshire, on Tuesday.

He was giving the annual Willy Brand lecture before an audience of more than 400 in what was the first major event to be staged in the new school’s theatre – and enjoyed sustained applause from the audience.

Under the heading Global Governance In A World Turned Upside Down, he analyzed in depth the breakdown of the world economy, pointing his finger mainly at President Nixon for ending the stability of the Bretton Woods system based on a fixed rate for gold in 1971.

He quoted Keynes as declaring: “Speculators may do no harm as bubbles on a steady stream of enterprise. But the position is serious when enterprise becomes the bubble on a whirlpool of speculation.”

And he praised Prime Minister Gordon Brown as the one statesman who, despite opposition from Presidents Clinton and Bush, had pressed for a new world economic order, which finally came out of the current crisis with the setting up of the G21 with the backing of President Obama.

But that was not enough. We needed a robust framework for managing global economic affairs, one based on a reformed United Nations, which remained “one of the great advances in the collective organisation of human affairs.”

Lord Kinnock dismissed sceptics who poured scorn on such dreams and went on: “We are, plainly, a long way from realising the visionary ideal of a cosmopolitan global democracy, but that is no reason to settle for the status quo.

“Instead, this generation can and should, through a continuous process of reform and evolution, strive to give global governance a properly democratic character. To move beyond the limited vision of international community and towards the realisation of a global society implies a gradual shift from national sovereignty to popular sovereignty as the dominant organising principle of world affairs.

“In other words, we should assert, as a matter of principle, that political authority derives ultimate legitimacy from the consent of people freely given and does not belong to states and their bosses simply by virtue of their historical existence.”

Even powerful countries such as China and Russia would have to accept pooling some national sovereignty to create a genuine global community, said Lord Kinnock, who then suggested that world government could be based on the model of the European Union.

“Like the belief that the global economy can be effectively managed in the common interest, the vision of a global society governed according to democratic principles could be dismissed as wishful thinking,” he admitted. 

“Grand political designs, it is argued, rarely come to fruition, and when they do, they usually bring tyranny and tragedy in their wake. But that profoundly pessimistic and conservative perspective of the past does not do justice to the breadth of the human experience or to the technologically transformed potential. 

“We would do better to follow the historian, Jay Winter, in distinguishing between ‘major’ and ‘minor’ utopias. Whereas major utopian attempts to impose blueprints for social perfection have frequently ended in disaster, minor utopias have been pursued with more modest and achievable goals in mind. 

“They have aimed, he said, at “partial transformations, steps on the way to a less violent and unjust society”. 

Lord Kinnock pointed out: “It is to such “visionary temperament” that many of the great achievements in the organisation of human affairs should be credited.  Those who experienced the fear and hardship of the Depression could not have imagined that, within a generation, a welfare state would entitle everyone to social security from cradle to grave. 

“Very few who fought in the trenches of the First World War, or resisted fascism, or endured Soviet communism, or lived in the Cold War would have anticipated the growth of a peaceful, integrating Europe with a democratic Germany at its centre.  

“Victims of the Holocaust would have hoped, but would have doubted, that genocide and other grave violations of human rights would become universal crimes for which political leaders could be held to account before an international court. 

“These and other changes have not created a perfect world, of course.  But they have led to tangible improvements in the governance, security and prosperity of our lives for which we should be profoundly grateful and, indeed, willing to express our thanks by striving actively for more.

“The proposals I have outlined are offered in the honourable tradition of the minor utopia and with the conviction of a democratic socialist who – in common with Willy Brandt – believes that whilst we do not, and never will have, Heaven on Earth we are collectively becoming more successful at preventing Hell on Earth.   

“That is why I set out a series of incremental steps on the path to a better, safer, freer condition of life for humanity – and it is also why I believe that it is not so much the end goal that matters as the restless process of striving towards it. 

“As Oscar Wilde put it:  “A map of the World that does not include Utopia is not even worth glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing.  And when Humanity lands there, it looks out, and, seeing a better country, sets sail.  Progress is the realisation of utopias.”

“Now, as never before, we have the means as well as the need to make such progress.   And because we can, we must.”