Debating global justice with Carr: The crisis of laissez faire and the legitimacy problem in the twenty-first century
| Published date | 01 February 2021 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1755088219838295 |
| Date | 01 February 2021 |
| Author | Haro L Karkour |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1755088219838295
Journal of International Political Theory
2021, Vol. 17(1) 81 –98
© The Author(s) 2019
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DOI: 10.1177/1755088219838295
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Debating global justice with
Carr: The crisis of laissez faire
and the legitimacy problem in
the twenty-first century
Haro L Karkour
University of Leicester, UK
Abstract
In Carr’s ethics, there is a link between the rise of the socialised nation and the crisis
of laissez faire due to its loss of legitimacy among the lesser privileged. How far is
this link in Carr’s ethics relevant today? There are two aspects to this relevance –
theoretical and empirical. Theoretically, the article argues, Carr’s analysis is relevant
to the statist-cosmopolitan debate on global justice. It highlights the political vacuum
in which this debate operates in the absence of a framework of rights and obligations
under laissez faire. Consequently, statist and cosmopolitan arguments are implicit in
their acceptance of the violence committed by the status quo and lack the legitimacy
Carr deemed necessary for international justice in the age of the socialised nation. The
article then turns to highlight the empirical relevance of this critique. Here, it argues
that the resurgence of nationalism in world politics shows that the problem of legitimacy
is especially pressing today. The article thus calls for the debate on global justice to
engage more seriously with Carr’s analysis of the crisis of laissez faire – specifically the
legitimacy problem it raises in the twenty-first century.
Keywords
Brexit, classical realism, E. H. Carr, global justice, Trump
Introduction
‘A game of chess between a world champion and a schoolboy’ writes Carr (1984), ‘would
be so rapidly and so effortlessly won that the innocent onlooker might be pardoned for
Corresponding author:
Haro L Karkour, School of History, Politics and International Relations, University of Leicester, Leicester
LE17RH, UK.
Email: hk209@le.ac.uk
838295IPT0010.1177/1755088219838295Journal of International Political TheoryKarkour
research-article2019
Article
82 Journal of International Political Theory 17(1)
assuming that little skill was necessary to play chess’ (1984: 103). Indeed, when power’s
dominance is so great, the violence it inflicts becomes less visible. When the powerful is
challenged, not only this violence becomes visible, but the status quo also faces a moral
crisis. The Twenty Years’ Crisis was thus a political as well as a moral crisis: The chal-
lenge to British imperial power did not only make its violence visible, but also put to
question the moral framework of nineteenth century laissez faire.1 Carr traces this moral
crisis to the progress of the industrial revolution since the eighteenth century. This pro-
gress led to the socialisation of the nation: The transformation of the nation’s function
from the nineteenth century protection of the private property of the ruling classes to the
protection of the social and economic interests of the masses in the twentieth century
(Carr, 1945: 10–19). In light of this change, laissez faire became morally bankrupt – that
is to say, it lacked legitimacy among the lesser privileged in the absence of a moral
framework of rights and obligations to deliver political rights, as well as economic and
social rights in line with the age of the socialised nation.
Building on existing literature that examined the theme of morality in Carr (among
others, see Johnston, 2007; Kostagiannis, 2017; Molloy, 2009; Molloy, 2014;
Pashakhanlou, 2018; Rich, 2000; Scheuerman, 2011), this article situates Carr’s ethics in
the context of the rise of the socialised nation – what Carr also refers to as ‘social nation-
alism’ – in the twentieth century.2 It specifically focuses on the link Carr draws between
the latter development and the crisis of laissez faire due to its loss of legitimacy among
the lesser privileged.3 The article asks: how far is this link in Carr’s ethics relevant today?
There are two interrelated aspects to this relevance – theoretical and empirical – that
summarise the contribution of the article. Theoretically, the article argues, Carr’s analy-
sis is relevant to the statist-cosmopolitan debate on global justice. It highlights the politi-
cal vacuum in which this debate operates in the absence of a framework of rights and
obligations under laissez faire. The consequence of this vacuum is that statist and cosmo-
politan arguments on global justice become implicit in their acceptance of the violence
committed by the status quo and lack the legitimacy Carr deemed necessary for interna-
tional justice in the age of the socialised nation. The significance of this theoretical cri-
tique lies in its empirical relevance in world politics today to which the article turns next.
Recently in this journal, Stullerova (2017) argued that ‘the renewed interest in the works
of classical realists has not yet produced new research into contemporary international
politics which would utilise classical realist theory’ (2017: 60). With the aim to produce
such research, the article applies Carr’s analysis to the resurgence of nationalism in the
twenty-first century. Filtering through Carr’s theoretical insights presented in the former
part of the article, it argues that the resurgence of nationalism in world politics presents
a narrative that renders the violence committed by the status quo under laissez faire once
again visible. It thus shows that the problem of legitimacy is especially pressing today
and calls for the debate on global justice to engage more seriously with Carr’s analysis
of the crisis of laissez faire – specifically the legitimacy problem it raises in the twenty-
first century.
The argument develops in three stages. First, the article presents an overview of Carr’s
argument on morality and the crisis of laissez faire in the context of the rise of social
nationalism in the twentieth century. Second, the article engages Carr’s argument with
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