Succeeding to Fail

Since the end of the Second World War the industrialised world has had few doubts about the nature of economic and social progress – or indeed, about our achievement of it. Unprecedented material affluence, significant advances in health care, the widespread extension of tertiary education, extraordinary technological innovation, the consolidation of liberty and democracy, the flourishing of popular culture: with such success, few have questioned either goal or method. Indeed, the model of progress has been adopted not just in the originally industrialised North, but by almost every country in the world. The fall of the Berlin Wall seemed merely to confirm the triumph of the Western idea. With the exception of some Islamic states, and with minor variations between countries, almost the entire planet is now bound up in a single, global process of economic and social development. To many it seems that the great struggles over political purpose are now finished. ¹