politically liberal or not, with a system of belief in private ownership,
private entrepreneurship, and markets. On the left, there was Marxism,
with rejection of private property of the means of production perceived
as the source of exploitation and inequity, and the trust it placed in
central planning as the best mechanism to allocate resources.”^3
In its most acute and dangerous form, this confrontation of “alter-
native ways of life” generated an arms race that literally put in the
balance the “fate of the earth.”^4 More generally, it gave rise to an East–
West division that incorporated most other issues of international
politics, and polarized positions on the right and on the left. Even
decolonization and the birth of new states tended to be interpreted as
battles in the war between communism and capitalism. In due course,
however, the rise of poor nations and the question of development
imposed their own logic, to define a distinctive North–South cleavage.
Albeit in a different manner, this new conflict would also oppose
progressives and conservatives.
In comparison, the domestic politics of the countries that were not
directly on the fracture line between the East and the West appeared
relatively quiescent. Various expressions were used to characterize this
state of affairs. Some authors spoke of a Keynesian consensus, others
of a stable compromise between capital and labor. Most agreed that
the new welfare state had pacified social relations, at least in advanced
democracies. John Gerard Ruggie used the notion of “embedded lib-
eralism” to connect these domestic settlements to the establishment of
an open world market ruled by the dollar, and to underline the fact
that rich countries successfully consolidated international market
rules by embedding them into a framework of state intervention and
social protection at home.^5 Using a telling image borrowed from
Joseph Schumpeter, German political scientists Elmar Rieger and
Stephan Leibfried explained that just as fast cars could be designed
once good brakes had been invented, an open trade regime became
(^3) Kemal Dervis (with Ceren O ̈zer),A Better Globalization: Legitimacy,
Governance and Reform, Washington, DC, Center for Global Development,
4 2005, pp. 12–13.
Jonathan Schell,The Fate of the Earth, New York, Knopf, 1982.
(^5) John Gerard Ruggie, “International Regimes, Transactions, and Change:
Embedded Liberalism in the Postwar Economic Order,”International
Organization, vol. 36, no. 2, Spring 1982, 379–415.
108 Left and Right in Global Politics