idea that the pursuit of international justice stood as a moral impera-
tive. Motivated by an ethics that looked upon the inequitable sharing
of wealth as a barrier to human dignity, progressives considered that
the values of solidarity and democracy upheld in the developed world
had to be projected on a world scale.^75
To counter the effects of relations based on sheer power, social-
democrats demanded that global rules and institutions be trans-
formed. Just as they encouraged state intervention on the national
stage, they supported the intervention of international agencies in the
global arena. Planning, Keynesian policies, and the welfare state had
to be extended across borders in order to bring about a “welfare
world.”^76 Advocating affirmative action, the left insisted on the idea
that the obligations of states ought to vary according to their different
levels of development. Whereas the free play of market forces might
be acceptable among rich countries, it could not be applied to rela-
tions between unequal partners. As Rau ́l Prebisch, the first Secretary-
General of UNCTAD, explained, the UN was no more obligated to
stay neutral in the face of underdevelopment than the World Health
Organization (WHO) was in the face of malaria.^77 Far from being
condemned to an illusory impartiality, international institutions were
duty-bound to narrow the gap between developed and developing
countries, a task that could not be carried out without the backing of
the governments of the North. To realize the principle of equal sov-
ereignty proclaimed in the United Nations Charter, it was crucial that
the haves shoulder a larger share of responsibilities.
Despite the unavoidable disputes between reformists and radicals,
the bulk of the left rallied around a “structuralist” analysis of the
world order, according to which underdevelopment resulted not so
much from a society’s culture or from the attitudes of current political
leaders as from the structure of the global economy. That structure, it
was argued, was shaped by an asymmetrical relationship between a
(^75) Cranford Pratt, “Middle Power Internationalism and Global Poverty,” in
Cranford Pratt (ed.),Middle Power Internationalism: The North–South
Dimension, Montreal and Kingston, McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1990,
76 pp. 3–24.
Myrdal,Beyond the Welfare State, p. 16.
(^77) John Toye and Richard Toye,The UN and Global Political Economy: Trade,
Finance, and Development, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 2004,
p. 212.
132 Left and Right in Global Politics