JIHAD VS. MCWORLD

Author Benjamin R. Barber demonstrates that what capitalism and fundamentalism have in common is a distaste for democracy because both, in different ways, lay siege to the nation-state itself—heretofore the only guarantor of conditions that have permitted democracy to flourish. Democracy, he suggests, may well fall victim to a twin-pronged attack: by a global capitalism run rampant whose essential driving force is nihilistic, at its root destructive of traditional values as it seeks to maximize profit-taking at virtually any moral or religious or spiritual cost; and by religious, tribal, and ethnic fanatics whose various creeds are stamped by intolerance and a rage against the "other." "Jihad" pursues a bloody politics of identity, while "McWorld" seeks a bloodless economics of profit.