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Britain’s – and much of Western Europe’s - global ascent was cemented by a trend of a different kind. Whilst philosophers were still arguing in the formative days of western political philosophy, Britain was already navigating the seven seas in search of vast riches. A programme of aggressive colonisation entrenched British and European control across the four corners of the globe. The battles fought were no longer between princely states on the continent of Europe but over offshore markets between British and European trading companies. Arguably, it was the colonial war machine and competition between colonial powers that drove a large chunk of the scientific research, innovation, new ways of working, organisation and military strategy. The intellectual development of Europe occurred at best in parallel to this phenomenon; many of the liberal values now trumpeted as necessary for prosperity and progress arrived much after the west was already well on its way to achieving a global status.
Thirdly, following the collapse of the former Soviet Union, secular liberal capitalism has had an opportunity to thrive unchallenged and has thus given the world an opportunity to study the substance of its claims to prosperity. The world that a decade and a half of uncontested premiership has created is, however, bleak and slipping into social chaos. Francis Fukuyama daringly hailed the fall of communism ‘the end of history’ but within a decade wrote of a ‘great disruption’ that had taken root. He refers to a breakdown in social cohesion, the “negative social trends, which together reflect a weakening of social bonds and common values in Western societies”, and the impact of unbridled individualism, “the tendency of contemporary liberal democracies to fall prey to excessive individualism is perhaps their greatest long-term vulnerability and is particularly visible in the most individualistic of all democracies, the United States”. That situation is getting worse and its toll on families, communities, society and the environment is continuously more prevalent as individualism has driven irresponsibility. The inability to deal with escalating crime, youth delinquency, lawlessness, political apathy, familial responsibility, drug and alcohol abuse, sexual irresponsibility, the impact of rising numbers of single parent families, teenage pregnancies and decreasing birth rates all weighs heavy on society socially and economically. The west’s wealth – which, it is important to note, has failed to benefit large swathes of its own citizenry - is not enough to obscure deep failings in western society; as a path to comprehensive progress in all facets of life, moral, spiritual, familial, social, economic and political, the model remains fundamentally unconvincing.
Fourthly, the rise of alternative powers also undermines the belief that progress is exclusive to the western formula and demonstrates how much of the non-western world remains unconvinced of its value. China for example has achieved phenomenal economic growth whist remaining deeply authoritarian. Liberal political philosophy has not even featured remotely in China’s economic rise. And there seems little likelihood that such calls will take root anytime soon with China secure in the knowledge that has it has achieved great strides without this change, China's President Hu Jintao for example declaring in 2004, “We will never blindly copy the mode of other countries' political system. History indicates that indiscriminately copying western political systems is a blind alley for China.” Economically too, China has retained much of its centrally driven, interventionist - not liberal market – character with extensive levels of government interference remaining across all market sectors. Parts of Latin America too remain deeply hostile to liberal capitalism. Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez on a recent trip to London described how the “increase in world poverty” has been “as a result of the savagery of capitalism around the world”. Bolivian President Evo Morales’ recently re-nationalised Bolivia’s energy market declaring the “looting by the foreign companies has ended”, a move that enjoyed widespread popular support and a promise that featured strongly in his election victory last year. The recently formed 'People's Trade Accord' agreed between Bolivia, Venezuela and Cuba is an alliance of Latin American governments specifically united not only against US hegemony in the region but it also expounds a different approach to distribution, managing national resources and fighting poverty. The Islamic world, whilst clearly rejecting its authoritarian political set-up, too is unconvinced of the need to progress along liberal lines with large swathes of Muslim recently polled opting for a greater role of Shariah, not secularism, in their future path.
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