Clinton Stockwell*

Four Views of the world: Neo Liberalism, Neo-

Marxism, Cultural Diffusionism or Environmental
Sustainability?
Abstract: In an age of globalization, how do we explain or understand the world
and how it operates? This short paper introduces four competing visions. A
Neoliberal world is a world whereby multinational corporations are free to move
and invest with minimal regulation or accountability. Neo-Marxist views run
counter to Neo-liberalism, offering localized constituencies an opportunity to view
the world from the standpoint of a grassroots struggle for democracy and
inclusion. Diffusionist perspectives recognize the reality of cultural pluralism, and
the right of individual nation-states or culture-groups to determine their own
destinies and cultural boundaries.

Keywords: Neo-Liberalism, Neo-Marxism, Cultural Diffusionism, Environmental

Sustainability.

____
*Corresponding author: Professor Clinton E. Stockwell (MLA, D.Min., MA.;
MUPP; PhD), Adjunct Faculty - National Louis University - 122 South Michigan,
Chicago, Illinois, e-mail: clinton.stockwell@nl.edu

1. Introduction

An environmental sustainable world is a world whereby nation-states agree, or

are forced to acknowledge, that the value of environmental sustainability
transcends all other values. In either case, we are faced with a new reality, the
global interconnectedness of nations and cultures, and a shrinking planet due to
transportation, communications, and other technological innovations. Let us look
at each of these four options independently.

2. Neo-liberalism: Global Reach of Capitalism

Neo-liberalism assumes that its economic and political position is supreme in the
world. Also, it assumes that the values inherent in a capitalist and nominally
democratic political project are not just destined to impact and control the world;
but are better to produce a world society where most people benefit. According
to Naomi Klein, author of This Changes Everything: Capitalism versus the
Climate (Naomi 2014: 72), there are three pillars to the Neoliberal framework.
The first pillar is the privatization of the public sphere. In this view, the role of

1
government or the private sector is to create policies that allow multinational
businesses to operate without restriction or regulation. The second pillar of neo
liberalism is the deregulation of the public sector. If a multinational corporation
is to operate freely, it wishes to operate without restrictions that limit its
environmental responsibility. The third pillar is the lowering of wages and
corporate taxes. This allows multinationals to increase their profits and returns
for its investors.
For David Ranney, an authority on globalization, another way to speak of
Neoliberalism is the ―New World Order.‖ Ranney applies this idea in his recent
writings:

»That was a term that was coined by the first President Bush,
George H. W. Bush. And I like the term, although I didn’t care
much for the President. He really saw this in very broad terms
as a new world order, because he was talking about a new
social arrangement in which U. S. corporate interests would
dominate. And I think it is exactly that. But, you cannot
separate the economic from the political dimensions of this new
system. It has a military dimension. It has an economic
dimension. It has a social dimension. And when global
companies bring firms into developing countries, for example,
they seek to stop any kind of regulation of what they do. Those
firms then begin to dominate the culture, as well as the
economy, and it becomes a world system« (Ranney: 2003).

Although Neo-liberalism is not the exclusive domain of multinational,

individuals and nation-states adopt this perspective, such firms actively seek to
limit wages and to control markets to a limited number products offered, and
often work hand in hand with local national governments to achieve their ends.
This often results in the destruction of local diverse economies and the
presumption that monocrops such as oil, tobacco, coffee or other crops are
better. Unfortunately, economic globalization along these lines not only destroys
local cultures, but forces millions people to see new starts in expanding global
cities.
Neo-liberalism essentially represents the political economy of the
developed world, the ―core‖ of the global economy. And its actions, though
exploiting resources from the developed world, are rhetorically argued that they
will ultimately benefit those on the margins (the periphery). The result is that the
world economy is anything but ―flat‖ but is actually rather spiked, with few
winning economically speaking, and many finding themselves outside the normal
flows of the global economy. Neo-liberalism influences result in some of the
deepest forms of global inequality and the immiseration of the poor. As Anthony
Giddens and others document:

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 »The majority of the world’ wealth is concentrated in the
industrialized countries of the global north, whereas the
countries in the global south suffer from widespread poverty,
overpopulation, inadequate educational and health care
systems, and crippling foreign debt. The disparity between the
industrial north and the global south widened steadily over the
course of the twentieth century and is now the largest it has
ever been« (Anthony, 2014: 655).

The ―Western Project‖ of European cultural hegemony and global

economic control has always assumed the superiority of Euro-American
civilization. Due to the legacies of colonialism, it seeks to control what the rest
of the world buys and sells, and how it is organized politically. The decline of
businesses in Southeast Asia among the Pacific Rim economic ―tigers‖ in 1997
has recently undergone a second ―bust‖ cycle in late 2015 among its markets. It
is too early to identify what the consequences of market failures will be. The
global interconnectedness of the economy put in place by Neo-liberalism spiraled
downward due to price speculation. These ―crises‖ provide an opportunity for
global governance structures such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and
the World Bank to insure that Western speculation and investment is not lost in
the process. These are all tactics of neoliberalism. Naomi Klein called this ―the
shock doctrine.‖ (See the works by Naomi Klein 2008)
As a result, IMF programs of Structural Adjustment Policies (SAPs) are
sure to follow. In Structural Adjustment programs, nation-states of the
developing world will be discouraged from spending money on education and
social programs. Rather, nation states in the developing world would be forced
to borrow and spend money on infrastructure projects such as ports,
transportation systems, and manufacturing. According to the World Health
Organization (WHO):

»SAPs policies reflect the neo-liberal ideology that drives

globalization. They aim to achieve long-term or accelerated
economic growth in poorer countries by restructuring the
economy and reducing government intervention. SAPs policies
include currency devaluation, managed balance of payments,
reduction of government services through public spending
cuts/budget deficit cuts, reducing tax on high earners, reducing
inflation, wage suppression, privatization, lower tariffs on
imports and tighter monetary policy, increased free trade, cuts
in social spending, and business deregulation. Governments are
also encouraged or forced to reduce their role in the economy
by privatizing state-owned industries, including the health
sector, and opening up their economies to foreign competition«
(http://www.who.int/trade/glossary/story084/en/).

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 The new liberalism assumes that free markets, the advance of global
capitalism, and the eventual conquest by Western-style industrial democracies
are good for the rest of the world. This is both an impetus and a consequential
explanation of what is occurring in fact. Neo-liberalism seeks to downplay race
and cultural particularity, and seeks to play up universal themes so as to advance
further the role of multinational businesses in the world economy. To quote
from Benjamin Barber, this is ―McWorld‖ running amuck among the forces of
―Jihad.‖ Or, as William Greider puts it, it is the advance of the ―manic logic of
capitalism‖—―one world, ready or not.‖ (See Benjamin Barber, Jihad or McWorld
1995/1997)
If nationalist reactions to purveyors of western-style economics are having
little effect, neither are other ideological options. Since the fall of the Soviet
Empire, there is not really a choice for geopolitics beyond Neo-liberalism.
Nonetheless, there are some political options that exist for us on the level of
theory. These include Neo-Marxism and cultural pluralist visions. Neither of
these views currently have much in the way of political or economic muscle, but
they might serve as a challenge and rallying point for insurgency in the future.
Jihadist groups are certainly disruptive, but thus far have not galvanized
organized nation states to adopt their alternative. A destructive force cannot
easily become a constructive force for good in a world already plagued by
violence and structural inequality.

3. World Systems Theory: The Neo-Marxist View of

Immanuel Wallerstein

One of the new views, connected fairly directly with Marxism, is ―world systems
theory.‖ This view is advanced by Immanuel Wallerstein in the present (See for
example, among many books). For Wallerstein, the world is advancing towards
a new world system. This system is less a network of nation states, and is in
reality more of a network among key global cities. Such an arrangement forces
workers and indigenous people to consider how to network among themselves as
a result. Sociologist Manuel Castells has documented that most of the organizing
that is going on globally is networked, even as social networks also tend to
gather in real urban public spaces (Manuel 2012: 218-234). This has been true
recently for the Occupy Movement in the US, the Indignados in Spain, and the
protests in Tahrir Square in Cairo as well. Castells notes that these social
protest movements are not only networked, and also seem to adopt nonviolent
tactics.
Western style efforts at global hegemony and the ascendancy of what
some call a ―new world order‖ reflect an economic system after the collapse of
the Cold War, due to the fall of the Soviet Union and the collapse of British
Imperialism. The new system represents an integration of world political and
economic relations. For Wallerstein, it is categorized by five elements. These
include economic expansion, proletarianization, commodification, mechanization

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and political organization (Immanuel 102). This world system is the creation of a
global economic and political network to allow for the instantaneous mobility of
global capital. This network is controlled primarily by U.S.-based transnational
corporations, and by the political influence of the United States. But this
influence is conjoined by the impacts of other nations of the so-called developed
world.
Practically, the controllers of the new system have been able to define and
capitalize on a new understanding of the world. This is a post-cold war view of
the world that understands European and U.S. civilization as the cultural core,
and those from the third world as the periphery. There are several descriptions
of this new view of the world. Some call it ―metaphysical Neo-Marxism,‖
―historical-structuralism‖ or ―structural holism.‖ Others might name it as
essentially, neocolonialism or neoliberalism. Wallerstein is concerned with the
consequences of this new reality for what he terms a new ―geo-political order.‖
For Wallerstein, the old liberalism is a failed political regime. The liberal
assumptions of unlimited growth are no longer tenable. Neoliberalism has
emerged as a radical decentralized and democratized entity to replace the old
liberalism. The old liberalism legitimated the nation-state, and the relationships
between the nation-state and the less-developed world. Whether the adulation
of the market (conservatism), or of government intervention (liberalism), the old
liberal edifice assumed the political preeminence of the nation-state. The new
world system is post-liberal or post nationalist. The economic hegemony of the
world is now assumed, not by the nation-state, but by her ―children,‖
transnational corporations. The tactics of neoliberalism are to lessen controls by
states on global corporations, and to allow for their increasing autonomy in the
world. The result is a world system dominated by transnational economic
interests and the demise of national political organizations. The new world
system is comprised not so much by individual nations, but by large economic
interests that transcend national boundaries. Race and ethnicity are determined
more by class position and are relatively inconsequential as categories for either
neoliberals or neoMarxists such as Wallerstein (See Immanuel 1995).
For Balibar and Wallerstein, the common assumption among neoliberals is
that there is a dominant universal ideology (libar and Wallerstein 1991). For
neoliberalism to succeed there needs to be universal common rules of how to
act, and a common ideological world which is shared by exploiters and exploited
alike. Neoliberalism will seek to counter ―uneven resistances‖ in the world such
as nationalism on the one hand and ethnic or cultural particularism on the other
hand. Both would serve to restrict the movement and expansion of global
capitalism. For Wallerstein, the world economic system is a single social unit, and
is in dialectical tension with local relations of force.
For these authors, both nation and people are fictive constructs,
inventions for political or economic purposes. The real problem on a global scale
is class conflict between the owners of production and a globally divided labor
force. Racism and sexism are more instrumental than absolute. Racism does

5
not exist sui generis (in and of itself). In this view, racism and sexism are in
reality justifications and rationalizations for a split-labor force, and are really part
of a system of economic and political hierarchy that excludes and justifies capital
accumulation by the few. Racism is the attitude of those in control of the core
culture to those on the periphery. Sexism is the rationalization and
institutionalization of non-compensated work. Race and gender are ways to
justify exploitation of people on the periphery, within and without a society, and
are problems of cultural hegemony internally. For neoMarxism, both ethnic
particularism and political-religious universalism are fictive categories. The only
meaningful categories for Wallerstein are the relative positions with respect to
class-based liberation.

4. Cultural Pluralism in the Thought of James M. Blaut

An alternative to Neo-Marxism and Neo-liberalism is cultural pluralism.

Representing this view is the late geographer and professor at the University of
Illinois at Chicago, James M. Blaut. For Blaut, the new world order is
characterized by the dominant cultural influence of European diffusionism.
Similar to Wallerstein, there are those on the margin and those at the core of the
dominant culture. For those at the core, European diffusion has occurred due to
the unique factors of European and Euro-American cultural hegemony. The ―rise‖
of Europe from Italian city-states, the Roman Empire, Hellenization, and Near-
Eastern empires represent an ―insider‖ look at cultural development and
supremacy. It is literally ―tunnel history‖ or ―tunnel vision‖ by which those inside
the tunnel look at those outside as peripheral or marginal. The insiders have
dominated the ideas, settlement patterns, economic and political institutions and
cultural symbols used to justify dominance. Blaut is similar to Wallerstein in that
he uses Marxist analysis to describe the emerging world system. However, Blaut
is different in that he utilizes symbols drawn from the broader culture to make
his case. Blaut tends to use arguments advanced by cultural pluralists. However,
this cultural pluralism is anything but a level playing field. It is characterized by
an extreme diversity of class, race, nationality and economic independence.
For Blaut, it is Eurocentric diffusionism that has shaped how we view the
world. Yet, this is not a natural or obvious conclusion, even though it seems so
for those inside the tunnel. Rather, Eurocentric dominance has been achieved at
the expense of other cultures, due to wealth obtained via colonialism, conquest
and exploitation. Blaut explains that this conquest occurred because of Europe’s
closer approximation to the New World, and because epidemics decimated the
indigenous population. Far Eastern maritime powers were less able to exploit
the resources and peoples in Africa or in the New World. The European miracle
is thus a myth, and was not due to supremacy of culture, but to proximity to
untapped natural resources.1
1
. For this view, see: J. M. Blaut, (1993). The Colonizer’s Model of the World: Geographic
Diffusionism and Eurocentric History. New York: Guilford Press.

6
 Blaut develops a complimentary view of ―cultural racism‖ in a separate
article that is useful for our purposes here. For Blaut, it is theory, not ideology
that is more important to analyze the world system as it is evolving. For Blaut, a
theory is a system of empirical beliefs, whereas an ideology is a system of beliefs
arranged rationally and logically, but not necessarily based on empirical data.
There are three periods in which racism may be characterized in American
history. These include the period when a biblical-religious argument was used to
define racial distinctions (1600-1850). In this first period, ―Christian‖ views of
civilization were interconnected with nationality and race. To be a Christian was
to be superior to the heathen, and made it legitimate not just to evangelize, but
to enslave and even to slaughter others viewed as heathen (usually non-whites)
who were considered to be savage and even sub-human.
The second period is the period from 1850 to 1950, when race was
defined according to biological determinism. This followed the theories of Charles
Darwin and the genetic views of Mendel. The third and current view is that of
―cultural racism.‖ This view is the current view (from 1950 onward) and has been
developed in response to the Civil Rights movement and decolonization in Africa.
For Blaut, ―cultural racism‖ has supplanted biological notions of racist supremacy
and superiority. Racism today is expressed in more subtle, but equally lethal
ways. Cultural racism is concerned about matters of faith and culture, and with
it assumptions of what is inferior or ―better‖ in a particular culture. To
distinguish; for biological racism, differences and status are innate to the person,
based primarily on genetic theory. For cultural racism, differences are acquired
or learned. To be ―white‖ has less to do with genetics, and more to do with
notions of a ―superior‖ European or ―better‖ Western culture.
Blaut goes on to argue that decolonization forced a new view of race. For
cultural racists, Africans might be equal in capacity to Europeans, but not in
cultural expression. For Europeans, the assumption was that Euro-American
culture, including its economic and political dimensions, were superior to non-
white civilizations. Concomitant with the notion of European cultural supremacy
is ―tunnel vision:‖ the idea of modernization. Blaut cites Max Weber as ―the
godfather of cultural racism.‖ Weber provided both a liberal alternative to Marx,
and a cultural alternative to biological determinism. He argued that Europeans
were superior in their education, technology, rationality, and especially in their
social institutions. Europeans, in the tunnel view, were therefore the beneficiaries
of modernity, the view of the world that stressed rationality, technology and
bureaucracy.
By appealing to history, cultural racism assumes that non-white peoples
are not religiously or genetically inferior, but are ―disadvantaged‖ or ―deprived‖
in other ways. They are not part of the cultural center, namely Europe and Euro-
America. Instead, non-white peoples find themselves on the periphery,
subordinate and marginalized from the core culture. The periphery is not only
without power and voice, but also without economic resources, and this, in the
cultural imperialist view, means that those on the periphery are without history,

7
without ideas that could lead to an efficient or organized way of institutionalizing
human relationships. For Weber, it was fundamentally rationality that
contributed to European greatness. Progress is therefore defined as the outward
spread of ideas and institutions moving from the core to the periphery as passive
recipients of the better culture. From European ideas, came European settlers,
colonial relationships and the exploitation of goods, peoples and resources. For
Weber:

»Bureaucratic administration means fundamentally domination through

knowledge. This is the feature of it that makes it specifically rational. This
consists on the one hand in technical knowledge which, by itself, is
sufficient to insure it a position of extraordinary power. But in addition to
this, bureaucratic organizations, or the holders of power who make use of
them, have the tendency to increase their power still further by
knowledge growing out of experience« (Weber, 1978: 225).

The power of institutional boundaries governed by rationality is profound. For

Weber, there is a tendency toward leveling (globalization); to plutocracy, and to
the dominance of formalistic impersonality. These are arguably significant
characteristics of the ―new world global system‖ today.
For Blaut, the periphery includes the third world, people of color, and so-
called ―minorities‖ in Euro-dominant societies. It also includes urban ghettos,
Indian reservations, migrant labor camps and even the penal system. In the
tunnel history version, everything worthwhile emanates from European cultural
diffusionism. From the Ancient near East to Rome and Europe, everything of
value, including science, cities, industry, the arts, literature, political theory and
practice and law all came from inside the core. Cultural racism is used to justify
the condition and treatment of the poor everywhere. As Blaut summarizes:

»It must be added that this argument is also used very routinely to
explain the poverty of minority people in countries like the United States.
When, for example, lack of progress among Mexicans or Puerto Ricans in
this country is attributed to the ―traditional culture,‖ with its supposed
―fatalistic attitudes,‖ ―docility,‖ etc, etc., this is still cultural racism even
though the source of the cultural argument is not ancient but rather a
kind of undated ―traditional society. Cultural racism is rooted most
fundamentally in historical mythology about the priority of Europe….«
(Blaut, 1992: 298).

5. Ecological Harmony: A Shalom View of the World

There are yet some possibilities among global governance structures such as the
United Nations or the World Trade Organization to facilitate a more just world:
the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights (1948) and the Global Charter

8
Agenda for Human Rights to the City (2008). If one combines these documents
with the Earth Charter (launched June 2000); and the various charters on the
New Urbanism such as the Melbourne Principles for Sustainable Cities (2002);
there are clear alternatives to the current system (Peter, 2008: 4,9, 240). Rather
than an empire view, we could see ourselves as a new earth community,
interconnected and interdependent.
Steve Bouma-Prediger (See, Steven: 2010), in his For the Beauty of the
Earth builds on a quote from Wendell Berry: ―Our Destruction of nature, is not
just bad stewardship, or stupid economics, or a betrayal of family responsibility,
it is the most horrid blasphemy.‖ The more I think about this quote, the more I
agree with it. Unfortunately, and this is Bouma-Prediger’s point, most of us
relegate environmental concerns to a corner in the closet somewhere, or we
separate it philosophically from a distorted individualistic view of culture, national
survival or religious salvation. For Wendell Berry, and for Bouma-Prediger, the
reduction of nature to commodities to be purchased and owned has led to a
desacralization of the world, whereby nature is to be controlled, extracted, and
used and abused for profit and short term benefit. The commodification of
nature diminishes its role as the source of life and its resources. It legitimates
the extraction and abuse of natural resources for private profit, and with it
denigrates the dignity of people (actually all living beings) and their habitats.
―Tell me the Landscape Where you Live, and I will tell you who you are.‖
I thought this quote from Jose Ortega Gasset to be very interesting. Jim Wallis,
in his Soul of Politics (Wallis, 1999: 70) said something similar, arguing that it is
how and where we grow up that determines how we see the world:

»As I have suggested before, our view of the world is largely

shaped by what we see around us everyday—by what we can
touch, feel, taste, see and smell. We all like to believe that our
opinions o n most matters, especially social and political
questions are formed by our ideas and principles, the things we
have learned and the concepts we have studied. But in reality
our perspective is primarily shaped by our experience--- what
we see when we get out of bed in the morning. We search for
a moral perspective that might open our eyes, soften our
hearts and change our ways. That may require that we ...
change our location« (Wallis, 1999: 70).

For most of us, our worldview is predetermined by our environment, place and
social locations where we live. Rather than imperial and neo colonial practices

9
of conquest, we need to see ourselves as part of a living earth community.
Climate change effects all of us. Rising sea levels and the destruction of global
forests impacts the lives of all earth’s inhabitants.
I am appreciative of the pointed references made by Bouma-Prediger with
his narrative of the forest, the mountain and the lakes that he has become so
intimately acquainted with. These natural habitats give us both life and
definition. However, we need to see that the cities of the world are also natural
habitats. They are built upon them and are dependent upon those habitats for
daily survival. We will have a half dozen cities of 30 million people each by
2020; and the continent of Africa has some 22 cities of over a million people in
them today, and growing. While an experience of nature is compelling, we need
to combine this vision with the question, what makes for more sustainable cities,
more viable habitats for humans, and all living beings.
Each of the habitats (forest, mountain and lake) has unique
characteristics, complexity, and each this are seriously threatened. Global
sociologist, Saskia Sassen, documents how multinationals are spending their
wealth by privatizing lands and controlling the political structures that give them
access (See Saskia: 2014). The result for our cities, she argues is a dual city of
the rich and the poor who live in large barrios and shantytowns. The current
economic system exploits the abundance of the planet, by creating scarcity for
billions of people who are relegated to the edge of our cities. The resiliencies of
these habitats, and also of our cities, are seriously threatened.
So, how does the World Work? Each of these perspectives gives
something for us to ponder and each deserves more attention than what I have
given them. For Steve Bouma-Prediger, the way the world works is actually very
different from Neo-liberalism, Neo-Marxism, or even cultural pluralism. It is
characterized by interrelatedness, the multiple effects of individual actions that
contribute to a dynamic character of the universe, limited resources, and
amazing complexity. Yet, if this is how the biology of the earth works, there are
elements in the other world view perspectives that are illuminating. That is, the
world is controlled, governed and manipulated by a number of forces, some for
good and some for destruction.
The magnitude of human choices, the impacts of technology, the self-
interested behavior of institutions, and the patterns of human consumption and
greed are determining the shape of the planet, and the conditions of survival.
For Robert Goudzwaard and other authors of Hope in Troubled Times (Robert:
2007), the role of humans and their institutions is determining the plight of the
world as we see it today. This includes not only wars and the prevalence of
violence, but matters like global warming and climate change as well.
For some of us, that means not just the suffering of individuals and the
millions of displaced peoples, many displaced by war and by environmental
catastrophe. But there is also the problem of the groaning of creation! This
concept is very compelling. If his data and if his science is right, then we are in
deep trouble. Bouma-Prediger notes that there are eight or nine ecological

10
trends that depict the plight of our current situation, each of which deepens the
problem. These are:
 the population explosion;
 the question of the earth’s carrying capacity;
 the existence of world hunger;
 ecological deforestation;
 the decline of our water aquifers,
 the overuse of water to produce beef;
 land desertification;
 the preponderance of waste,
 our inability or unwillingness to pursue sustainable methods of
consumption and reuse;
 our patterns of energy use, and the prospect of peak oil on the horizon;
 the pollution of the air; and
 the impacts on the climate, what some call global warming and climate
change.
The problem, of course, is that all of these crises are happening
simultaneously and in tandem! The net effect, going back to the ecological
problem named by Wendell Berry and affirmed by Steve Bouma-Prediger; is that
it will take a total human lifestyle change, species specific changes in all that we
do to both challenge the prevailing global economic system and to improve our
chances at survival. What is at stake here is the need for a total restoration and
renewal of the biosphere, or as contemplative writers such as Matthew Fox, Dan
Sachs and Michael Lerner note, a need for the ―healing of the planet,‖ including
―humpty dumpty and us,‖ as Matthew Fox playfully names it in his A Theology of
Compassion (Matthew: 1999). The good news is that we do have leadership
from a Pope and a Dalai Lami who are pointing us in the direction of a new way
of being in the world. Can we put this all together again, or are the movies
Avatar and Interestellar more prophetic than we can imagine, that the economic
viability of the earth may be at stake? Will we be forced to search for a new
planet to replace the one that is dying before our eyes.

Conclusions

Each of these ―worldview perspectives,‖ has something to offer. Neo-liberalism

describes view of the ascent of global capitalism, whereas Neo Marxism calls it
into question as creating great injustice and disequilibrium. Cultural pluralism,
gives a slightly more plausible critique and alternative for understanding current
movements toward a world system than either Neo-liberalism or Neo-Marxism.
Although James Blaut cultural diffusionist view assumes a rigid pattern of
domination and exploitation by ―core‖ nations who have benefited from
globalization. However, both Neo-liberalism and Neo-Marxism fail to deal with
the problem of racism and cultural particularity. Cultural pluralist notions do a

11
better job of arguing that, while race is a function of culture and social
construction, it is nonetheless real in and of itself.
Also, Marxist and Capitalist models of society are, in my view, necessarily
redundant and reductionistic. Human beings are not only beings determined by
their material consumption, but they also have need for relationships, cultural
development, aesthetic enjoyment and symbolic formation. In this respect, the
cultural pluralistic model is better at laying out the depth and complexities of
human existence. At the same time, the cultural pluralist model can be
combined analytically with that of Neo-Marxism to give an accurate critique of
the economic and political dimensions of Neo-liberalism. A dialectic between
cultural pluralists and neo Marxists might forge an alternative vision that
empowers those on the periphery to challenge the power of the ―core,‖ or to
model out something very different from within its own culture as a form of
organic solidarity.
However, none of these three perspectives provide a unifying or holistic
alternative. Neo-liberalism, Neo-Marxist, and cultural-diffusionist posItions do not
offer a viable alternative. Rather, the concept of ―earth community‖ as advanced
by David C. Korten (Cited by David: 2006) and others argue that all cultures,
great and small, global and local, share the same scarce resources of the planet.
For Korten, the choices are stark. If one accepts the premise of Neo-liberalism,
one must accept the Social Darwinist notion of the survival of the fittest, and this
is about nation-states as well as the human species. The choice of ―empire‖ is a
choice for scarcity, competition, and violent conflict. The other choice is an earth
community, a choice for the interdependent relationships we have, or must have,
with each other and the rest of the biosphere. It is a choice of the ―living world‖
over the ―money world.‖ For Korten, this choice must be built on the ideals of
cooperation recognizing our mutual interdependence and shared future. As
Ranney argues in his latest book:

»Capitalism by its very nature tends to degrade the

environment. But as degradation appears, public protests
causes government- the protector of the system – to increase
government regulation and incentives for the private sector to
develop new technologies to help protect the earth« (Ranney,
2014: 166).

Let us hope that Ranney and Castells are right, that there is enough
power coming from social movements from below to curb the power of
multinationals and the states who willingly support them for sordid short term
gains. The eco justice perspective reflects the human and global reality more
deeply and in fact more relevantly than the other choices. The environmental

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perspective articulated by Naomi Klein, David C. Korten, Steve Bouma-Prediger,
David Ranney, Saskia Sassen, Wendell Berry and others gives a better
philosophical critique and understanding of the world and our place in it. In the
environmental perspective, one can find not only a case for unity and harmony,
but a motivation and clarion-call for lifestyle changes and new policy directives
that not only renew the earth and what Berry calls ―the great economy,‖ but also
implies a renewed political, economic, social and cultural perspectives as well
(See Wendell: 2010).

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