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Features » Science and Humanities

20/11/2007
A new cosmopolitanism is in the air
Sociologist Ulrich Beck presents seven theses to combat the global power of capital
The nationalist perspective - which equates society with the society of the nation state -
blinds us to the world in which we live. In order to perceive the interrelatedness of
people and of populations around the globe in the first place, we need a cosmopolitan
perspective. The common terminological denominator of our densely populated world
is "cosmopolitanisation", which means the erosion of distinct boundaries dividing
markets, states, civilizations, cultures, and not least of all the lifeworlds of different
peoples. The world has not certainly not become borderless, but the boundaries are
becoming blurred and indistinct, becoming permeable to flows of information and
capital. Less so, on the other hand, to flows of people: tourists yes, migrants no. Taking
place in national and local lifeworlds and institutions is a process of internal
globalisation. This alters the conditions for the construction of social identity, which
need no longer be impressed by the negative juxtaposition of "us" and "them".

For me, it is important that cosmopolitanisation does not occur somewhere in

abstraction or on a global scale, somewhere above people's heads, but that it takes place
in the everyday lives of individuals ("mundane cosmopolitanisation"). The same is true
for the internal operations of politics, which have become global on all levels, even that
of domestic politics, because they must take account of the global dimension of mutual
interdependencies, flows, networks, threats, and so on ("global domestic politics"). We
must ask, for example: How does our understanding of power and control become
altered from a cosmopolitan perspective? By way of an answer, I offer seven theses.

Globalisation is anonymous control

First thesis
In the relationship between the global economy and the state a meta power play is
under way, a struggle for power in the context of which the rules concerning power in
the national and international system of states are being rewritten. The economy in
particular has developed a kind of meta power, breaking out of the power relations
organized in terms of territories and the nation state to conquer new power strategies in
digital space. The term "meta power play" means that one fights, struggles for power,
and simultaneously alters the rules of world politics, with their orientation to the nation
state.

The pursuit of the question as to the source of the meta power of capital strategies
brings one up against a remarkable cirucumstance. The basic idea was expressed in the
title of an eastern European newspaper which appeared during a 1999 visit by the
German Federal Chancellor, and which read: "We forgive the Crusaders and await the
investors." It is the precise reversal of the calculations of classical theories of power and
control which facilitates the maximization of the power of transnational enterprises: the
means of coercion is not the threat of invasion, but instead the threat of the
non-invasion
of the investors, or of their departure. That is to say, there is only one thing more
terrible than being overrun by the multinationals, and that is not to be overrun by them.

This form of control is no longer associated with the carrying out of commands, but

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instead with the possibility of being able to invest more advantageously in other
countries, and with the threat potential opened up by such opportunities, namely the
threat of doing nothing, of declining to invest in a given country. The new power of the
concerns is not based on the use of violence as the ultima ratio to compel others to
conform to one's will. It is far more flexible because able to operate independently of
location, and hence globally.

Not imperialism, but non-imperialism; not invasion, but the withdrawal of investments
constitutes the core of global economic power. This de-territorialised economic power
requires neither political implementation nor political legitimacy. In establishing itself,
it even bypasses the institutions of the developed democracies, including parliaments
and courts. This meta power is neither legal nor legitimate; it is "translegal". But it
does alter the rules of the national and international system of power.

The analogy between the military logistics of state power and the logic of economic
power is striking and astonishing. The volume of investment capital corresponds to the
fire-power of military weaponry, with the decisive distinction, however, that in this
case, power is augmented by threatening not to shoot. Product development is the
equivalent of the updating of weaponry systems. The establishment of branches by
large corporations in many different countries replaces military bases and the
diplomatic corps. The old military rule that offence is the best defence, now translated,
reads: States must invest in research and development in order to fully maximize the
global offensive power of capital. Growing together with research and educational
budgets (or so it is hoped) is the volume of a given state's voice in the arena of world
politics.

The power of the threat of non-investment is already ubiquitous today. Globalisation is

not an option; it is an anonymous power. No one started it, no one can stop it, no one is
responsible for it. The word "globalisation" stands for the organized absence of
responsibility. You cast about for someone to address, with whom you can lodge a
complaint, against whom you can demonstrate. But there is no institution to turn
towards, no telephone number to call, no e-mail address to write to. Everyone sees
himself as a victim, no one as a perpetrator. Even corporate heads (those Machiavellian
"modern princes"), who want to be courted, must by definition sacrifice their thinking
and behaviour on the altar of shareholder value if they want to avoid being fired
themselves.

A new perspective for a different approach to action

Second thesis

The joke of this meta power argument lies in the following: the opportunities for action
among the co-players are constituted within the meta power game itself. They are
essentially dependent upon how actors themselves define and redefine the political, and
these definitions are preconditions for success. Only a decisive critique of nation state
orthodoxy, as well as new categories directed towards a cosmopolitan perspective, can
open up new opportunities for acquiring power. Anyone who adheres to the old,
national dogmatism (to the fetish of sovereignty, for instance, and to the unilateral
policies derived from it) will be skipped over, rolled over, and won't even be in position
to complain about it. It is precisely the costs accruing to states as a consequence of their
adherence to the old, nation state rules of power relations which necessitates the switch
to a cosmopolitan point of view. In other words: nationalism - a rigid adherence to the
position that world political meta power games are and must remain national ones - is
revealed to be extremely expensive. A fact learned by the USA, a world power, recently
in Iraq.

The confusion between national and global politics distorts one's perspective, and at the
same time blocks all recognition and understanding of new features of power relations
and power resources. This means failing to exploit the opportunity to transform the

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win-lose and lose-lose rules of the meta power game into win-win rules from which the
state, global civil society, and capital can simultaneously profit. It is a question of
inverting Marx's basic idea: it is not that being determines consciousness, but instead
that consciousness maximizes new possibilities for action (cosmopolitan perspective)
by players who are engaged in global political power relations. There exists a royal road
to the transformation of one's own power situation. But first you must change your
world-view. A sceptical, realistic view of the world - but the same time a cosmopolitan
one!

Only capital is permitted to break the rules

Third thesis

It is an irony of history that the world-view discredited by the collapse of communism

in Europe has now been adopted by the victors of the Cold War. The neoliberals have
elevated the weaknesses in Marx's thought to their own creed, namely his stubborn
underestimation of nationalistic and religious movements, and his one-dimensional,
linear model of history. On the other hand, they have closed their eyes to the Marxist
insight according to which capitalism liberates anarchic and self-destructive forces. It
remains a mystery why the neoliberals believe things might evolve differently in the
21st century. In any event, the looming ecological catastrophes and revolutions speak a
very different language.

The neoliberal agenda represents an attempt to generalise from the short-lived historic
victories of mobile capital. The perspective of capital positions itself as absolute and
autonomous, thereby unfolding the strategic power and the space of possibility of
classical economics as a sub-political, world political lust for power. Afterwards, that
which is good for capital becomes the best option for everyone. Stated ironically, the
promise is that the maximization of the power of capital is, in the final analysis, the
preferred path to socialism.

The neoliberal agenda, in any event, insists on the following: in the new meta power
relations, capital has two pieces and gets two moves. Everyone else has access, as
before, to only one piece and a single move. The power of new liberalism rests, then,
upon a radical inequality: not just anyone is permitted to flaunt the rules. The breaking
or changing of rules remains the revolutionary prerogative of capital. The nationalist
perspective of politics cements the superior power of capital. This superiority, however,
is essentially dependent on the state not following suit, on politics confining itself to the
eternal carapace framed by the rules of national power relations. Who, then, is the
counter-power and the counter-player to globalised capital?

We, the consumers, constitute the counter-power

Fourth thesis
In the public consciousness of the West, the role of the counter-power to capital which
shatters the rules falls not to the state, but instead to global civil society and its
multiplicity of protagonists. Stated pointedly, we might say that the counter-power of
global civil society rests on the figure of the political consumer. Not unlike the power of
capital, this counterpower is a consequence of the power to say - always and
everywhere - "no", to refuse to make a purchase. This weapon of non-purchasing
cannot be delimited, whether spatially, temporally, or in terms of an object. It is,
however, contingent upon the consumer's access to money, and upon the existence of an
superfluity of available commodities and services among which consumers may choose.

Fatal for the interests of capital is the fact that there exists no strategy for counteracting
the growing counter-power of the consumer. Even all-powerful global concerns lack the
authority to fire consumers. For unlike workers, consumers do not belong to the firm.
Even the extortionist threat of producing in a different country where consumers are

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still compliant is an utterly ineffectual instrument. Effectively networked and

purposefully mobilized, the unaffiliated, free consumer can be organized
transnationally and shaped into a lethal weapon.

Sacrifice autonomy, gain sovereignty

Fifth thesis
There is no way forward that can avoid redefining state politics. No doubt, the
representatives and protagonists of global civil society are indispensable in global meta
power relations, especially for the implementation of cosmopolitan values. To derive an
abstract space of possibilities on the basis of state-based politics and to project this onto
the cosmopolitan constellation, however, leads to a vast illusion. Namely that the
contradictions, crises, and side-effects of the second "great transformation" now
underway could be civilized by new bearers of hope, by engagement in the context of
civil society, and moreover on a large scale. This figure of thought really belongs in the
ancestral portrait gallery of the unpolitical.

Essential if we are to break out of the framework of nationalism in the context of

political theory and action, then, is the distinction between sovereignty and autonomy.
Nationalism rests on the equation of sovereignty with autonomy. From this point of
view, economic dependency, cultural diversification, and military, legal, and
technological cooperation between states lead automatically to a loss of autonomy and
hence of sovereignty. If, on the other hand, sovereignty is measured by the degree to
which a state is capable of solving its own particular national problems, then today's
growing interdependency and collaboration - which is to say, a loss of autonomy -
actually results in a gain of sovereignty.

For cosmopolitanism, this insight is central: a loss of formal autonomy and a gain of
contentual sovereignty
can be mutually reinforcing. Globalisation means both of these things: an increase of
sovereignty by actors, for instance by virtue of the fact that via cooperation,
networking, and interdependencies, they are able to acquire the capacity for action
across great distances, thereby gaining access to new options—while the flipside of
these developments is that entire countries lose their autonomy. The contentual
sovereignty of (collective and individual) actors is enhanced to the degree that formal
autonomy is reduced. In other words: proceeding now in the wake of political
globalisation is the transformation of autonomy on the basis of national exclusion to
sovereignty on the basis of transnational inclusion.

A state towards which the nation is indifferent

Sixth thesisA political response to globalisation is the "cosmopolitan state" which
opened itself up to the world. This state does not arise through the dissolution or
supersession of the national state, but instead through its inner transformation, through
"internal globalisation". The legal, political, and economic potentialities found at the
national and local levels are reconfigured and opened up. This hermaphroditic creature -
simultaneously a cosmopolitan and a national state - does not delimit itself
nationalistically against other nations. Instead, it develops a network on the basis of
mutual recognition of otherness and of equality among difference in order to solve
transnational problems. Meanwhile, sovereignty is expanded in order to solve national
problems. The concept of the cosmopolitan state is based on the principle of national
indifference towards the state. It makes possible the side-by-side existence of various
national identities by means of the principle of constitutional tolerance within and of
cosmopolitan rights without.

In the wake of the Treaty of Wesphalia in 1648, the civil war of the 16th century -
which had been shaped by religion - was concluded via the separation of the state from
religion. Quite similarly (and this is my thesis), the national world (civil) wars of the

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20th century could be concluded by the separation of state from nation. Just as it was
a non-religious state which made the simultaneous practice of various religions possible
for the first time, the network of cosmopolitan states must guarantee the side-by-side
existence of national and ethnic identities through the principle of constitutional
tolerance. Just as Christian theology had to be repressed at the start of the Modern
Period in Europe, the political sphere of action must be opened up today anew by
taming nationalist theology. Just as this possibility was totally excluded in the mid-16th
century from a theological perspective, and was even equated with the end of the world,
change is absolutely unthinkable today for the "theologians of nationalism", for it
constitutes a break with the ostensibly constitutive fundamental concept of the political
as such: the friend-foe schema.

A historical example of this is the European Union. Through the political art of
creating interdependencies, enemies have been successfully converted into neighbours.
Chained to one another with the "golden handcuffs" of national advantage, the member
states must continually re-establish mutual recognition and equality via contestation. To
characterize the European Union in this sense as a cosmopolitan federation of states
which cooperates in order to tame economic globalization while ensuring recognition of
the otherness of the Other (meaning the European co-nations, but also Europe's
neighbours worldwide): this might well be a thoroughly realistic description, albeit to
some extent a utopian one.

The theory and concept of the cosmopolitan state must be distinguished from three
positions: from the illusion of the autonomous national state; from the neoliberal notion
of a minimal, deregulated economic state; and finally, from the irreal seductions of a
unified global government, one whose concentrated power render it invincible.

Convert walls into bridges!

Seventh thesis

The following objection is in the air of late. For a long time now, we have been hearing
a lot about cultural relativism, multiculturalism, tolerance, internationalism - and ad
nauseum - globalisation and globality. Doesn't the concept of cosmopolitanism simply
mean filling new bottles with old wine? And might it not even be a question of new
bottles too, since the term has been in use ever since the Stoics of Ancient Greece, not
to mention Emmanuel Kant, Hannah Arendt, and Carl Jaspers?

To this, I would reply: my theory of the "cosmopolitan perspective" describes different

realities, and it is constructed differently. All of the above ideas are based on the
premise of difference, of alienation, of the strangeness of the Other. Multiculturalism,
for example, means that various ethnic groups live side by side within a single state.
While tolerance means acceptance, even when it goes against the grain, putting up with
difference as an unavoidable burden. Cosmopolitan tolerance, on the other hand, is
more than that. It is neither defensive nor passive, but instead active: it means opening
oneself up to the world of the Other, perceiving difference as an enrichment, regarding
and treating the Other as fundamentally equal. Expressed theoretically: either-or logic is
replaced by both-and logic.

Cosmopolitanism, then, absolutely does not mean uniformity or homogenization.

Individuals, groups, communities, political organizations, cultures, and civilizations
wish to and should remain diverse, perhaps even unique. But to put it metaphorically:
the walls between them must be replaced by bridges. Most importantly of all, such
bridges must be erected in human minds, mentalities, and imaginations (the
"cosmopolitan vision"), but also within nations and localities ("interior globalisation"),
in systems of norms (human rights), in institutions (the European Union, for instance),
as well as within "global domestic politics" which search for answers to transnational
problems (for example energy policies, sustainable development, the struggle against
global warming, the battle against terrorism).

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This article orgininally appeared in German in the November 2007 edition of

Literaturen.

Ulrich Beck teaches sociology at the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, and at
the London School of Economics and Political Science. He has authored a trilogy of
volumes on the New Cosmopolitanism: Power in the Global Age: A New Political
Economy (2002/2006); Cosmopolitan Vision (2004/2006); World Risk Society: On the
Search for Lost Security (2007).

Translation: Ian Pepper

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