Economic globalism and political democratic universalism: conflicting issues?

Abstract

Samir Amin develops the thesis that the market-democracy and globalism-universalism binomes are contradictory rather than complementary. Those who mantain that market rationale can function as a linking principle for everything in the social sphere set aside the fact that market forces are no less expressions of social relations and that societies produce themselves. Similarly, those who invoke democracy as a piety of modern parlance often disdain the historical significance, contradictions and alternative options that determine their future. Amin provides an overview of evolving ideas and historical realities associated with democracy, universalism, the market and globalization, takin it to what characterizes the present moment "low intesity democracy" coexisting with "the unilateral world distinguished by highly polarizing globalization".