Statement of Purpose for Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam Finland

The dream of equality between free people living dignified and secure lives may be as old as human kind itself. It is not the property of any one time, place or culture but belongs to all, as an ongoing task. The conditions for its realisation vary over time. In our times all people engaging in politics for equality and solidarity need to define their views on the powers – military, economic, political and cultural – unleashed by the modern West. This is true to an eminent degree for those of us who live in Western Europe and North America. Let that, then, be my starting-point.

Modernisation as a form of civilisation combines unlikely political, social, economic, moral and cultural aspects that have been upheld triumphantly globally for five centuries. This has, famously, been the first period of world history. At no other time in the million years that humanoid creatures have inhabited this earth have any one of their cultural expressions come anywhere near the modern West in terms of dynamic influence on the biosphere and cultural developments on all continents. The five centuries of modern expansion deserve to be called the era of extremes. They have been marked by excessive amounts of both oppression and emancipation, poverty and wealth, suffering and self-realisation, cultural decline and flowering, all of which have been extremely unequally distributed.

One of the most attractive features of modernisation is its universal intention, an aim certainly not unique to modern culture, but which nevertheless serves as its moral basis, giving its other aspirations support and credibility. Modernity, which promises so many good things in this life, including emancipation from old social bonds, individual autonomy, the satisfaction of immediate desire without moral risk and unforeseen material affluence and power comes with the claim that these promises are meant for us all.

Until recently, the promise seemed realistic. It made sense to believe that modernisation as a universal moral project was compatible with the industrial growth model of social organisation. Under these conditions, it was natural that protests against the affluent utopia were mostly seen as expressing an elitist aesthetic sensibility that did not merit serious political attention. Given the ideology of the cultural neutrality of science, technology and modern Western consumer standards, it was natural too that industrial affluence of the Western type became a goal and its furtherance a source of cultural and political legitimacy for the powerful across the planet. This was the time when cultural visions that did not integrate the search for scientific and technological might and at least some aspects of the consumer paradise became marginalised in most traditions.

At the end of the old Millennium it had, however, become evident that the dream of modernity as the universal consumer paradise has come to its end. The world has enough for everyone’s needs but not for everyone’s greed, as Gandhi already knew.

The cultural implication is obvious but not eagerly received in all quarters: modernisation can continue today only on the basis of a choice between solidarity and growth, as the overriding concern and criterion for social and cultural success.

There is little doubt about the choice that prevails today: the US and EU and elites in all countries who follow their lead, are heading towards the abyss that opens up when priority is given to industrial growth that benefits, at most, the already rich, not to universal justice and solidarity. In the search for growth, capitalism, unfettered by the socialist challenge, comes into its own, promising infinite increases in wealth and might to the already rich and mighty. And, of course, capitalism in its pure form is a political regime too, with imperialistic warfare, global juridical regulation of the economy, and increasingly totalitarian domestic politics as its condition for success.

A fundamental question of our times, especially in the modern West is how we can shift cultural track. How can we move away from the dim prospects that inevitably follow for us and others as long as we choose growth that benefits the rich rather than a solidarity as the paramount goal? How can we abandon such ‘cynical modernity’ and embark on a new ‘modernity of solidarity’ in which priority is given to the universal moral ideals of modern culture over the values of worldly success? What would it mean for us today to be guided in our politics by those very ideals of democracy, equity and freedom and dignity of all, which the dominating powers still, with unfathomable hypocrisy, claim for themselves?

It is in the search for answers to this question that I see a role for Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam. That statement implies that I think the answers given at present by the best political forces are not satisfactory. Bits and pieces of the answers we need are available in the broad spectrum of left, green and centrist-liberal forces, which can credibly claim to be guided by universal, democratic aspirations. (I shall call this the centre-left.) But they need to be deepened and strengthened, bearing in mind a key lesson of the past century, the lesson that the centre-left needs to draw its strength from multiple dreams and open-ended, non-violent struggle rather than from a singular utopia that gives false justification to standardisation, violence and oppression.

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