A POSTCAPITALIST PARADIGM: THE COMMON GOOD OF ...

threatening the existence of a large part of humanity. Access to raw materials,
water and land is being extorted by neo-colonial methods, and
militarily secured. A new, completely unpredictable round of the global
and regional arms races has been ushered in. Many countries are being
destabilized by wars and military conflicts, with terrible consequences
for the population. The effects of climate change are causing waves of
migration, and coinciding with other causes of migration, thus contributing
to military conflicts. Some forty countries are considered “failing
states”; they are sinking into corruption and violence. Even in prosperous
countries, poverty, exclusion and growing injustice are producing violence
and crime.
The modern bourgeois-capitalist era that emerged from the first great
transformation is not capable of securing the conditions necessary for
its own reproduction on a lasting basis, of integrating society sufficiently,
of universalizing legitimate democratic rule and observance of human
rights, or of assuring peace both within and outside national borders.
Unlike in traditional societies, no relatively stable state of human development
is possible. The transition to a modern mode of development is
not yet complete. We may talk of a half-way modern era that is not built
to last. There are three possible scenarios:
First, we can try to continue the present path of development. This is
the dominant tendency, though it has many natural limitations. A whole
chain of crises is to be expected. It is scarcely imaginable that there is
sufficient problem-solving capacity to continue such a course of development,
as the weight of problems under the present institutional conditions
and power structures far exceeds the capacity to solve them. In
reaction to this dilemma, a second path of development may emerge,
for which there are already clear indications. Experts at the Tellus Institute
make the following forecast: “If the market adaptations and policy
reforms of Conventional Worlds were to prove insufficient for redirecting
development away from destabilization, the global trajectory could veer
in an unwelcome direction. Fortress World explores the possibility that
powerful world forces, faced with a dire systemic crisis, impose an au-
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