Possible socialisms and the challenges of the globalizing learning economy in the anthropocene age

Abstract

Contemporary socialism should be discussed in relation to two major challenges, the Globalizing learning economy and the Anthropocene age. First, globalization has undermined the autonomy of national systems of innovation at the same time as knowledge and learning have become the most important sources of local and global wealth. Second, in the age of the Anthropocene, the total biosphere is deeply affected by human society, and almost the entire physical world that we encounter is man-made. This leads to a number of new environmental problems. Combining the two challenges leads to the conclusion that socialist societies can thrive only within new regimes of global governance and that they need to be able to accelerate learning along new trajectories combining knowledge from disparate fields. Major problems like inequality, migration, and global warming cannot be tackled without international collaboration and new forms of governance.