Ladislav Hohos

Globalization and a Normative Framework of Freedom The author considers the question of whether or even what normative structure of social order is able to encourage the advancement of the measure of positive liberty in the process of globalization. Related to this is the issue of the insufficiency of guarantees provided by orthodox liberalism for human self-determination. The author considers possible scenarios as to the way in which an elite cosmopolitan minority, profiting from globalization and feeling no responsibility for the majority left to its own fate, would pursue its own interests. The ideas of Ralf Dahrendorf concerning the global rule of law in the name of freedom and the need for international law are referred to. Globalization is occurring just as Marx intuitively predicted: capitalism becomes the bearer of hidden immanent self-destructive mechanisms. In conclusion, the author's hypothesis is that the new era of law in the 21st century will ensure that certain civilization legal norms become natural or customary.

The paper deals with M. Henry’s interpretation of Marxian philosophy in the frame of his phenomenology of life. Its aim is to show the relevance of Henry’s interpretation for the global crisis of capitalism in our times. Henry argues that economic questions in Marx’s Capital, first of all his theory of surplus value, is closely connected with the historical issues in his German ideology. Attention is also paid to Marx’s thesis about the science becoming a direct production force. In the era of automatization, when most of common work is reliably done by the highly developed technological devices, such as artificial intelligence, Marx’s idea of a free development of every individual as a condition of a free development of all is not a utopian one any more. It becomes a normative claim concerning economic and political reality. Thus Marx’s idea of a classless society could be interpreted as a system of global justice, in which the extreme global inequality has been overcome

The economic process called globalization brings about an extreme growing of global inequality. Problems of distributive justice and the possibilities of applying law become topical in our days. In the author’s view the globalization takes place in accordance with Marx’s intuitive comprehension of capitalism, whose development puts into operation its tacit immanent self-destructive mechanisms. It is necessary to go back to Marx and his theories of globalization and justice, and to examine, if they are applicable in present situation. The attention is paid especially to Rawls’ re-solving the problem of public conception of justice, as well as to Dahrendorf’s conception of the global supremacy of law. In this connection further possible globalization scenarios are examined, such as those of E. Bondy and J. Keller