Small worlds

There is something rotten in the state of the world, and Will Hutton knows what it is: conservative America. The hyper-power that rules the world by proxy and runs the global economy for its sole benefit has been hijacked by right-wing corporate philosophy. Our survival is at stake; and our future depends on standing up to this barren and extreme brand of conservatism.

By placing freedom of business before public interest, conservative America has produced one of the most unequal societies in history. The incomes of the privileged 20 per cent, who control institutions of mobility such as business and élite universities, accelerate. The bottom 20 per cent, locked in a poverty trap with low-paid jobs and no medical insurance, has little hope. These fantastic inequalities are reflected on a global scale as the international order privileges the US economy and enhances its capacity to act unilaterally.

Salvation lies in returning to the idea of Europe. Britain must stop being America's poodle and embrace the EU without reserve or hesitation. Like other European states, we believe that wealth creation is a social act and that the state must provide health, education and welfare for all.

European models, such as "Rhineland capitalism" associated with the social market economies of Germany, Austria and the Netherlands, are a beacon of success and humanity. Even in the age of globalisation, these models protect the interests of European citizens and produce a flexible job market. This is the way to peace, security, prosperity and justice.

There is little to disagree with in Hutton's diagnosis of US corporate capitalism, largely because he says little new. The problem is his understanding of America, and his truncated view of Europe.

The problem with America is much more than the fact that liberal America has been eclipsed by conservative America. The liberal America of Frasier and Sheryl Crow that Hutton loves so much is of just as much concern. This goes beyond the fact that Hollywood, pop and other US products have saturated the globe at the expense of other cultures and languages. It is the ideology of America itself, and its founding myths – to which both liberals and conservatives subscribe with equal reverence – that is the root cause of the problem.

The idea that America is the world, so the world had better be more like America, was just as important to liberal Clinton as to conservative Bush. Indeed, it is the self-evident truth of American ideology that the American way of life is the best ever devised; that America, in Lincoln's famous phrase, is "the last best hope for mankind".

Similarly, the idea that America is always good and virtuous is central to US mythology. This is a nation created as a refuge; a nation made up of immigrants. What immigrants, liberal and conservative, know is that wherever their parents or grandparents came from was nasty, brutish and tyrannical. So the rest of the world, by definition, is inherently flawed.

Much the same can be said about the US tendency towards homogenisation. The founding notion of American civil society, e pluribus unum, says it all. The one that has emerged from the many is a unity based on conformity. That's why Americans, liberal and conservative, wrap themselves in the flag. Standing up to America means much more, as Hutton asserts, than fighting on behalf of liberals. It means persuading America to re-examine its cherished values. It means teaching America the art of grasping the humanity of outsiders.

Hutton's idea of Europe is just as flawed. To begin with, his Europe only consists of Western, not Eastern, Europe. But which idea of Europe are we to embrace? Is it the Europe of the fabricated past that has severed all links with its Islamic ancestry and manufactured "Greek" roots? Is it the Europe that colonised most of the world and still continues to marginalise most of the developing countries? Is it the much-vaunted Rhineland Europe, where Turks are treated as dirt? Or the Europe of France, where almost one in five voted for the fascist policies of Le Pen? Perhaps we should turn to Berlusconi's Italy?

There is something rotten at the core of Europe. The notion of returning to an idealised idea of the continent is dangerously obsolete. Rather, we need to reformulate "Europe" to acknowledge its pluralistic history and its multicultural present.

Hutton has little time for multiculturalism. The "world" in the title consists only of America and Western Europe. So, from the viewpoint of the non-West, Hutton is guilty of the very sin he ascribes to conservative America.

Moreover, the formidable evidence he assembles demands a broader analysis. It clearly shows that a world of "one size fits all" is not the answer. Other values are not only possible but viable. This is his essential case for the European model.

So what of other places? The economies as well as the society and civilisation of the rest of the world have been deformed and manipulated to add to the riches of Europe and America. Western models of development, and the IMF's "structural readjustment", increase the wealth of corporate Europe as well as America.

Hutton's argument is thus not global but parochial. If someone as well-intentioned as him can only think of the world in terms of the two models that created this impasse, then a global perspective is Hobson's choice for three fifths of humanity. The rich will fight it out; the rest will stay where they are. To get beyond the impasse, we need people like Hutton to start looking at the world we're in through the predicament of its inhabitants beyond Europe and America.

Ziauddin Sardar's 'Why Do People Hate America?', written with Merryl Wyn Davies, will be published by Icon on 4 July