COSMOPOLITAN SOCIAL DEMOCRACY: A MARXIST APPRECIATION AND CRITIQUE

Held argues that globalisation is undermining democracy at the level of the nation-state. Responding to this problem and the escalation of military conflict, mounting scale of environmental problems and the evident increase in global inequality due to the implementation of neoliberalism, he argues for the establishment of a cosmopolitan democracy that would enable the global implementation of social democratic policies. This paper provides an exposition and critical evaluation of Held’s cosmopolitan social democracy (CSD), underlining CSD’s important strengths and highlighting its main weaknesses. The paper concludes that the only realistic solution to the major problems faced by the majority of the world’s people is cosmopolitan democracy, but not the kind advocated by Held and his cothinkers. The classical Marxist vision of socialist democracy, in common with Held, centrally involves a conception of democratically centralised forms of governance operating on the regional and global as well as national and local levels. But, unlike Held, Marxists argue that in order for cosmopolitan democracy to operate effectively on a global scale, with entrenched civil liberties, regular elections, and the extensive involvement of the workers and peasants who constitute the overwhelming majority of the world’s population, global capitalism must be replaced by global socialism.