L'eguaglianza al tempo della globalizzazione

The article focuses on how the recent processes of globalisation affect economic, political and cultural equality between individuals and between countries. Although some scholars assume that a new phase of deglobalisation has begun and others believe that globalisation never existed, the first paragraph argues that, despite the economic, political and health crises it has encountered, globalisation is still ongoing and means that, for the first time in history, the entire planet is tending to be subject to a single social system, based on private companies and market distribution. The second paragraph underlines how globalisation, while increasing the average equality of wealth between North America, Europe and Asia (with Latin America lagging and Africa as a scandalous reservoir of human and environmental exploitation), has decisively widened economic inequalities, both in single countries and in the various areas of the planet. Functional to this outcome —due not only to systemic and impersonal reasons, but also to precise political choices— have been the neoliberal interpretation of John Rawls’ theory of justice, the trickle-down doctrine and the meritocratic rhetoric. The third paragraph shows that globalisation has increased political inequality among citizens in two ways: by discouraging political participation and by making some sectors of the citizenry count much more than others. Again, this has not been the result of a spontaneous evolution, but to a large extent of a political will, according to which parties should count less than their leaders, parliaments less than governments, democracy less than technocracy, and States less than transnational private interest groups. The fourth paragraph states that globalisation, born under US hegemony, has produced some forms of cultural equality. The “American way of life” and its consumerist values have ended up transforming both the base and the top of the social pyramid: the post-industrial proletariat no longer tends to believe in a culture radically antagonistic to the dominant order; the new transnational capitalist class, on the other hand, seems to have broken the once inalienable link between property and social responsibility.