VIA Num. 10 / September'09

The Pluralism of Isaiah Berlin’s Values: Refining the Theory to Improve Democratic Practice

Ferran Requejo

Isaiah Berlin’s humanist liberalism continues to be a point of reference and a tireless antidote to extremism and fanaticism in all of their forms of expression. The author of this article stresses that one of the most singular contributions of this theory, which is now a hundred years old, consists in the realization that, in plural societies, there are a multiplicity of values that cannot be reduced to a single principle or to a universal and permanent combination of values that will be applicable to all individuals and practical cases. Nevertheless, Berlin’s defense of the pluralism of values is in no way a gratuitous concession to relativism or skepticism. There is undoubtedly a place for reason in moral conflicts. But the «reasonable» discrimination between values is much more contextual, even at an individual level, than that presupposed by «rationalist» conceptions of a moral, political or religious nature.

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Prat de la Riba was Right. The Censorship of Maragall’s Article

Agustí Pons

A hundred years ago this year, Barcelona suffered its tragic week. This event has been commemorated with exhibitions, talks and the publication of history books, and even novels, based on those terrible events. In this article, the starting point of which is the classic essay Maragall i la Setmana Tràgica (‘Maragall and the Tragic Week’), Agustí Pons reflects on Josep Benet’s interpretation of these events and, at the same time, proposes a different interpretation, based on the arguments put forward by Prat de la Riba regarding the censorship of La ciutat del perdó (The city of pardon) by Joan Maragall. While Benet based his arguments on an intellectual perspective Pons turns this around to justify the attitude of Prat, insofar as his action was coherent with his political option.

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The United States and Necessary Multilateralism

Caterina García

The current economic and financial crisis, along with the change in the US president, has returned «multilateralism» to the centre of the international political stage, a position it had lost in recent years. It could be said that the crisis caused this and that the election of Barack Obama paved the way for its arrival. These two events must be included along with others related to the role of the American superpower, such as its loss of soft power, credibility and international legitimacy due to the abandonment of multilateralism as a result of the war in Iraq, along with others related to the search for solutions to global problems. The author reflects, through this complex and interdependent scenario, on the real scope of multilateralism, its advantages and its limitations (both from a theoretical and historical perspective), the specific implications of this foreign policy for the United States and the necessary reform of multilateral bodies, a legacy of the period following the Second World War, in order to ensure, in accordance with the new conditioning factors, a world order for the 21st century that is fairer and more inclusive.

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The Failure of the Economy and the Economists

Benjamin Friedman

The reputed Harvard economist Benjamin Friedman highlights the accountability of the financial sector in the current crisis to underline the consequences of speculative dynamics in our society, a fact that, as we have seen, has allowed collective losses to exceed social benefits. According to Friedman, the fundamental error lies in the fact that the economy presupposes that we are rational individuals, while the weight of irrationality is becoming increasingly evident in the reality that surrounds us, along with episodic outbreaks of euphoria, faith and trust in the economic system. The author maintains that we must comprehensively rethink the teaching of economics. The simplistic nature of our models has led us into error, fails to explain the reality that surrounds us and has prevented us from predicting situations such as the current one. According to the author, the inclusion of psychological and cognitive elements in economics will permit us to claim new models of behavioral economics.

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Capitalism beyond the Crisis

Amartya Sen

This Nobel Economics Prize winner attributes the problems that lie at the heart of the current financial crisis to our forgetting and misappropriation of the social burden and of the values found at the origins of capitalism. Amartya Sen takes a look back to the middle of the 18th century, before capitalism had been so named, to show how even the originators of the market economy applied certain brakes to excessive enthusiasm with regard to the market’s capacity to recover by itself. The author uses Adam Smith’s own words to stress that the real nature of capitalism goes beyond the free market and the maximization of profit. The implicit belief in the market economy’s capacity for self-governance, which is largely responsible for the elimination of regulations, has given a freedom to the activities of fraudsters and speculators that would have alarmed even Adam Smith. Sen also believes that it is useful to analyze the causes of the current situation, not only taking into account the postulates of John Maynard Keynes but also the economic psychology of a less venerated but equally relevant author, namely Arthur Cecil Pigou. The fact, as the author emphasizes, is that one of the problems that must be tackled, along with the causes of financial mismanagement, is that of the psychological collapse and the lack of trust that this has created.

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Friction-Free Economies

Francis Fukuyama

In this chapter, taken from his book entitled Trust, this American thinker shows off one of his most community-based and, at the same time, significant facets when analyzing the current economic situation. Fukuyama talks about the moral elements that ensure that an economy will perform well. Counter to a strictly individualistic view of the economic system, the author talks to us of the role of sociability and trust as social and economic assets of a country. These assets help to reduce the transactional costs of economic operations and serve as an intangible lubricant for the apparatus of capitalism. In his opinion, a society that fails to punish those elements that reduce trust will erode its own social bases while, on the other hand, a society that invests in its values will enable trust to be generated and will ensure that the behavior of its agents is predictable.

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Economic crisis, globalization and corruption

Manuel Villoria

Hardly anyone doubts that the current economic and financial crisis is rooted in an absence of both ethical values and principles as well as in the greed of a few individuals. But how did we manage to get this far? Professor Villoria starts out from the hypothesis that this global crisis is very much related to the capturing of policies, i.e. the fact that interest groups can control certain policy areas by means of regulation. In his opinion the confusion between public and private interests has become more evident as a result of globalization. Within the context of a global competition without rules large economic and financial powers have launched themselves, without scruples, in the race to conquer new markets. In the best of cases, states have shown themselves to have an acquiescent attitude with regard to this situation, with the self-interested interpretation that, in order to protect the local economy it is advisable not to hamper the strategies of national companies abroad. However, the impact of the crisis and the rise in global inequality and corruption has made it necessary to design rules of play that are both fairer and more committed to public ethics.

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Financial Regulation in the Era of the 'Credit Crunch'

Mark Scott

Last July, The Economist dedicated a special section to the descent of contemporary economic theory into a chasm of disrepute. In this article, Scott refers to the wave of reforms that are affecting, and will affect the finance sector, one of the sectors most badly damaged by this loss of trust in both the economy and economists. In an ordered fashion the author presents all of the trends and practical measures that will go, on both sides of the Atlantic, towards making up the new rules of play for the sector. In order to counter the proliferation of financial weapons of mass destruction and the sector’s tendency to feed speculative bubbles, the main element of reform focuses on a number of aspects, such as simplifying instruments and controlling agents, as well as an increase of the means of supervision.

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Is the Drive for a «Green» Economic Recovery in Europe Really Sustainable?

Martin Porter i Rositsa Petrova

The authors of this article stress that the current economic recession should be converted into an opportunity and stimulus for the implementation of «green» measures, suggesting that the current economic shock should be tackled with a broader perspective, applying measures that go beyond merely the solving of the most immediate problems, given that significant threats to the global economy exist that are closely related to far reaching environmental problems. They also argue, for example, that now is the time to decisively tackle the causes of climate change in order to secure a long-lasting solution to the financial crisis and to lay the foundations for a new kind of economy, far removed from the usual economic practices and so-called high-carbon growth. If we turn our backs on this basic issue, everything appears to suggest that, as soon as the world economy has recovered, rising energy prices will lead it into a series of successive slowdowns.

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