Year XXXVII, Number 3, November 2024

Lucio Levi
Member of UEF Federal Committee, Former President of UEF Italy

The U.S. election result raises a troubling question we should not ignore. Why have the Americans chosen Donald Trump, in spite of the fact that he is a putschist who sponsored the attack on Capitol Hill, the temple of American democracy, and tried to rig the 2020 election result?

Nationalism is the political formula that summarises Trump’s agenda. In fact, Trump promised to put his slogan “America first” at the top of his political programme. We should not forget that nationalism led the world to the tragedy of the two World Wars. The illusion of nationalism consists of the belief that the entrenchment of people within national borders will provide states with security. On the contrary, international anarchy in the 1930’s generated a climate of insecurity which fostered an authoritarian surge. The unexpected consequence was the triumph of fascism first in Italy, then in Germany and Spain. 

Supporters of nationalism suggest resorting to protectionism for dealing with economic disorder. But historical experience has shown that protectionism has increased international disorder and promoted inflation. The only exception is the case of infant industries, which lack the competitive strength to stand against well-established international competitors because they are still developing their technologies, production processes, and market presence. Governments provide support to infant industries to allow them to grow and become competitive on an international scale.

Another mistake of the nationalist agenda is to believe that raising walls and fences at states borders will stop immigration waves from underdeveloped countries, while it should be evident that development aid to backward countries is the main road leading to a solution to the problem of migration. Yet Trump threatens to start the biggest deportation plan ever imagined against irregular migration. We should ask him how those who want to close the doors to immigrants suggest finding the workers necessary to keep the economic system working.

The victory of nationalism was the consequence of the crisis of the system of European states caused by the rise of Germany which, after its political unification, became the strongest state in Europe. This dominant position encouraged Germany to pursue the adventure of hegemony in Europe, which implied an economic and military challenge to the United Kingdom. The imperialist design of Germany produced two World Wars and in the end it was defeated. Europe was divided between the leaders of the new world system (the United States and the Soviet Union) and the nation-states were reduced to the level of satellites of the great powers.   

But now the US power is in full decline. It has lost its capability to maintain world order. One figure shows this: the public debt, which has reached $35.000 billion.

*     *     *

Trump’s political success can be explained by the fact that he realized a symbiosis between the political power of the US and the powerful industrial, financial and communication corporations led by Elon Musk, the richest man in the world. This alliance portrays the neo-liberal formula that characterizes power relations in the post-bipolar world system. This kind of society generates increasing social inequalities, as it refrains from intervening in social and economic processes. Moreover, it proves insufficient to govern the environmental emergency, since the polluting emissions in the atmosphere have continued to increase.

The great problem of our time consists in the contradiction between a market and civil society that has taken on global dimensions and a system of states that has remained national. Globalization produces an even deeper contradiction between the development of forces of production that unify the world and the states, the organized powers that should govern markets and civil society and operate in such  a way that general interests can prevail over the private ones. Citizens feel that they have lost control of their destiny, because the most important decisions are taken at world level while democracy stops at states borders. Beyond those borders, relations of force dominate between states and non-state actors competing with one another to determine the lines of world politics. There ensues a crisis of consent towards political institutions and of legitimation of public powers. Consequently, the decline of the state brings about the triumph of private interests connected to the market and the decline of collective values on which political coexistence is founded.

Democracy has never shown such worrying signs of weakness as today. At world level there is a widening gap between states, whose power remains substantially confined within national borders, on the one hand, and market and civil society, which have become global, on the other. The latter have become global while politics remains national. This contradiction has a heavy impact on democracy. The decisions on which the destiny of peoples depends, such as those of security, control of the global economy, international justice or protection of the environment, tend to shift away from representative institutions. The feeling widely shared among citizens is that the most important decisions have migrated away from institutions under their control and towards international power centres free from any form of democratic supervision. Ungoverned globalization thus brings about the crisis of democracy. In fact, seen from a global viewpoint, decisions taken at national level, where democratic powers exist, are relatively minor. At international level, on the other hand, where the most important decisions are taken, there are no democratic institutions. The danger we are facing is the depletion of democracy. More precisely, we should ask ourselves how long democracy can last in a world where citizens are excluded from participating in decisions which determine their destiny. Globalization must be democratized before it destroys democracy.

*     *     *

The EU represents an attempt to pursue economic and political unification in order to allow the old and declining nation-states to acquire the necessary dimension to compete with macro-regional states. The formation of macro-regional states or unions of states is a general tendency characterising the reorganization of the world system to which China, India, Indonesia and the European Union, the Community of Latin America and Caribbean States, the African Union etc belong.

Democracies should be reformed according the federal model through a power redistribution at all levels from the local communities to the world, as occurred in Europe at the end of the WWII. International organizations should represent the regions and the peoples of the world. The European Union, being the laboratory of international democracy, is bound to become the leading country of this political experience and will be willing to extend that experiment to the world level. In other words, it has a strong interest to promote the democratization of the UN. This appears to be the most revolutionary change of our era, whose goal would be the removal of world governance from the control of the big powers and other private centres of power, like the multinational corporations, in order to put it in the hands of all the peoples of the planet.