Hello from 2050. I have good news and bad news. The good news is that OpenDemocracy still exists and has expanded into education, film and art. The bad news is that an advanced form of democracy does not exist. Corruption is now rampant in most countries and governments are ill-equipped to control disease outbreaks, terrorism and violence. In the 2030s, the oceans reclaimed about one tenth of land on earth, and over three thousand cities ceased to exist. Hundreds of millions of people were moved into newly built, crowded housing estates further inland. The "West" lost most of its wealth during this time and whatever was left is now being spent on building new cities, managing the mass movement of populations, and resource wars. The global economy has been in recession for 20 years. Many nations that existed in 2011 no longer live as one. The people who used to live in Chile, Guyana, Suriname, the United Kingdom, Ireland, the Netherlands, Greece, the Maldives, Uruguay, Sierra Leone, Liberia and many other coastal nations are now living in other parts of the world as refugees. Most countries are run by political extremists or religious ideologists. The United Nations still exists and is working with a 4th set of development goals. They have all failed. But the human spirit has not died. Social movements have become a true organizing force in most societies. Music, film, books and art are keeping us alive. Happy birthday OpenDemocracy!

It's 2050. It's pretty good here. Definitely better than where you are, from what I recall. People around the world have set aside all those outmoded tyrannies, and now things like dictatorships are incredibly rare. Not like your times, when they're ten-a-penny. These days nations seem to behave a bit more reasonably, since their old hostilities have given way to a more trusting atmosphere.

If I had to give a reason for this fraternity we've enjoyed for the last few years, I'd probably have to point to the Oil Crisis. The crisis being that there was none left. I remember how shocked everyone was! They'd been saying the oil would run out in 20 years since the '50s, so it was a bit like the boy who cried wolf.

Either way, the oil running out really made a mess of things for a few decades, but the worst of it's well behind us now. Like I said, the main thing about the Oil Crisis is that it brought the world together. It was such an all-encompassing disaster, and during those painful first few years nations reached out to support one another. Tyrannies, on the whole, couldn't sustain the pressure and collapsed. Popular democracy spread in their wake.

I recall that there was growing agitation for Democratic reform even before the crisis, but the turmoil of the following years was definitely the spur it needed to bring about such a rapid transformation. It wasn't a comfortable process, but you can't argue with the results.

The years between 2015 and 2030 were catastrophic on a scale that made World War II look like a minor skirmish. Ecological disaster – including epidemics that spread because of global warming, resource wars, famine, desertification, and rising ethnic and international tension, which led to nuclear war – ultimately led to the death of much of the world’s human population (not to mention the plant and animal species that were wiped out). The global economy imploded and vast areas of the earth contaminated by radioactivity. By the year 2030 fewer than a billion human survivors were left, scattered over a poisoned and depleted earth, living at close to subsistence level.

Since then the situation has begun to improve. The only thing that has put humanity back on the path toward revival is the preservation of knowledge. Although the severity of the crisis was traumatic to an unprecedented degree, the lesson was learned: this disaster happened because human beings continued doing what they had always done, even when the dire consequences of carrying on business as usual, which had initially been virtually unimaginable, became everyday reality. Today, with a much smaller human population on the globe, forced to use renewable sources of energy, because there is no other kind available, we are trying to build a just and sustainable world society. We have seen where our folly led us. At last we are trying to live together with wisdom.

With the Communist Party’s invitation to the Four Freedoms movement to form China’s next government and hold elections, the biggest democratic transformation in history is under way.  The Communist Party is abdicating, just as its Polish counterpart did 61 years ago.  That started a democratic landslide, though one that involved far fewer people than the current epochal event.

China’s path to democratization has been unique, though with parallels to previous events.  Early this century China embarked on the development path that led much smaller societies such as (former South) Korea and Taiwan, first to wealth and then to democracy, with the people demanding that authoritarian leaders stop treating them like retarded children.  The steady refinement of communications technology made an important contribution.  Where once technological dinosaurs like Google and Cisco (remember them?) could enable a government to control what its people saw and heard, today’s technology allows every individual to connect directly to every other through the Orbital Web, 36,000 kilometers up, making censorship a thing of the past. 

What doomed China’s Communist Party was China’s demographic transition.  By 2035 it was clear that China’s meteoric economic growth was over, as the pension and health costs of an aging population ate up investment resources.  As with Eastern Europe in the 1980s and Southern Europe in the 2020s, economic crisis fostered systemic political crisis.  The Four Freedoms movement offers aging Chinese a significant, though reduced proportion of the national product in return for eliminating the hukou system and equalizing economic opportunity for those still able to work.

Indirectly, China’s democratization was promoted by reform in the United States and Northern Europe.  Early this century the electorates of the traditional democracies embarked on policies of fiscal, social, and, perforce, foreign-policy retrenchment.  They lost their dominant position in global affairs but were rewarded with decades of strong, long-term growth.  They preserved the idea of democracy, governed by a prudent and conservative electorate, as a viable and attractive social model.  Its influence on the Four Freedoms movement is clear.

After the “authoritarian scare” of the first part of this century the Chinese transition tips the global balance decisively in favor of liberty.  But perhaps one should be careful about making sweeping predictions; people were making them in the 1990s too.

Salamat....Greetings from the free Palestine!

It is 2050 and I am sending this postcard from the Palestinian post office located near the Damascus Gate in the old city of Jerusalem. Finally the conflict and occupation reached an end and the people started to breathe freedom and enjoy living in peace. It is great to see the dove of peace all over the place after years of bloodshed and struggle against the occupation.

Eventually, the world understood that ethnic cleansing, colonization and occupation cannot be compatible with freedom, democracy and human dignity. Looking back to preceding decades, many challenges were overcome. The United Nations was restructured to become more effective and legitimate, the BRICs took the lead, no more veto in the Security Council, real democracy spread having been rooted in the new Arab World, international law was enforced, the gaps between the nations vanished and poverty became part of a history that can be only seen in the museums. Universal values such as freedom, justice and dignity transformed from rhetoric into action, and the Palestinians became more united than ever before.

These transformative shifts urged global citizens to become more united for peace and ruled out of order any fellow human being having to survive under occupation and live without freedom. A Tahrir Square was created in each country around the globe in front of the parliaments and hunger strikes and peaceful Intifadas took pace, all under one slogan ‘free Palestine...Al-Hurrya Li Filistin’. After a few months of this global citizen-centric movement which aimed to prioritize human dignity, Palestinians finally began to live in freedom and peace.

How did we make it to a better world? Three things happened: to state power, corporate power and human society. They came to a head in 2020 but had been building up over the decade after the great financial crash from 2008 to 2014, the long Egyptian revolution, the implosion of the Murdoch empire, and the last US troops fleeing Afghanistan. These events ended the ‘war on terror’ and ‘neo-liberalism’. Only scholars now recall these terms. The world’s 2020 revolution brought clarity to our democracy. What it began then took 25 years to complete.

The three were: 1) In 2018 after years of preparation an insider leaked all the files and codes on the “international deep state”. This was (and for you still is) the secret alliance of intelligence, police and security services who monitor and log citizens everywhere. It began with terrorist threats and was captured by its own logic into an unaccountable network of agencies linking Beijing and Washington. Exposed we broke the power of the deep state. 2) It existed in symbiosis with corporate power and after massive riots commercial confidentiality was abolished. All financial transactions are now published ending monopolies and ensuring markets serve humankind. 3) To achieve this double revolution we had to trust ourselves rather than political parties and leaders who are bought off by the deep state and corporate monopolies.

Networked politics created the peaceful, powerful self-organisation that ended fear, released potential and proved lasting. The Spanish were first, the Chinese were the biggest and Californians made it fun. 

Once the Quebeckers finally declared their independence, it could not be long before the Maritime provinces, isolated from the rest of English-speaking Canada, sought accession to the United States.  They were followed soon enough by the remainder.  Conservatives in the Senate  were opposed, knowing that the political balance would be shifted decisively against them.  But it was hard to resist something that had been so clearly envisaged by the Founding Fathers.  The Supreme Court eventually ruled that the nine new states had been “preadmitted” all along since 1787. 

In 2025 two of the world’s richest men, Bill Gates and cyborg Warren Buffett, pronounced that Marx had been right all along about the general direction of capitalism.  They pledged to put their fortunes at the disposal of any movement that promised to address the enlarged nation’s mounting economic and social problems through a generally socialist programme. In 2030 a “coalition of the people” captured both houses of Congress, the Presidency and enough states to permit a fundamental overhaul of the 250 year old constitution.  The new settlement placed severe curbs on corporate and religious interference in politics and began to rein back on extremes of wealth and income through the tax system.  Individual states began to pursue welfarist, even collectivist, social policies.  But perhaps the coalition’s boldest and most far-reaching reform was the constitutional ban on paid-for advocacy, which finally put an end to that bane of the American way of life – the legal profession. 

Its 2050. We’re in a better, safer place than we were. It’s happened because all the positive trends that had been consistently fostered became integrated into a popular, global, wholesome whole: - A new culture. For example, and most importantly, recruits to the armed forces started joining up to rescue and protect, to learn civilian trades, to see the world, to test their growth, mental and physical - none of them any longer needed to learn how to destroy for lack of a personal alternative - they refused to destroy unless they chose to do so. Their bosses began to talk more of ‘gaining hearts and minds’. Co-operation not colonization has now become the rule – in politics and businesses alike. Large pieces of armoury stand rusting to be shivered at.

The new culture became because people began to think and act for themselves, to question and challenge inexorably, and to take responsibility for what they did and what they didn’t do. And by now they count costs in the round - and this liberation costs.

Its purchased by trillions of face-to-face communities sprinkled liberally over the earth, each of two hundred or so house-holds, being places dedicated to perpetual experimentation, to listening and watching – to being the social nurseries of each new generation; to being so small and so local that they can each address all aspects of society – political, educational, medical, agricultural, industrial … and can each study every person’s role in due turn as producer, customer, citizen, carer… giver and taker … to being places in which everybody is enabled to join in and flourish; to being familiar, useful, supportive places, links between the household and the greater world outside.

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The single most welcome transformation that, after many decades of dedicated hard work, means that open democracy prevails worldwide is the emancipation of women, who are finally able to fully enjoy their rights and fulfil their human potential.  In 2050, women are equally valued members of societies and, as poverty is no longer feminised and women are fairly compensated for their work, our societies are both more prosperous and more stable. 

Securing girls in the global south and worldwide full access to their right to education was perhaps the key victory, but the shifts in attitudes and wholesale reform of social and political structures was equally vital: rape is now fully recognised as violent crime for which perpetrators are punished, female agency is recognised, and the demise of exclusivist identities mean women’s bodies and lives are no longer the punching-bag of historical change.  Increasingly meaningless borders don’t hinder the flow of resources and information, and women have full autonomy over their bodies, and are empowered to exercise their human rights.  Homophobia, the virgin/whore dichotomy, social practices which marginalise humans on the basis of their sex, gender or sexual identity now seem universally absurd, and it’s no longer a novelty to see women in key positions of global political and cultural life.  As women are now significantly more able to fulfil their full human potential, tackling the other enormous problems of our era – the climate change crisis, and massive global inequalities – has become significantly easier.  In 2050, identifying or being identified as female no longer curtails your capability as a human being.

Gradually citizens of many places on Earth became aware that an energy revolution was within reach. Energy needs could be satisfied by innovative technologies using abundant and infinite sources of fuel. Free energy allowed people to get rid of their energy ties. As a result even the poorest accessed a decent life. The political, social and economical organisation of the world at all levels changed drastically thanks to people's independence.

There is relative peace and stability in the world today, thanks to the people or global citizens as I must say. When the political establishments failed, when the bickering over environment change, nuclear deterrence, resource sharing became just too much - then the global citizens sprung into action. Why is that we were still referring to another human being as being from this nationality or that one? He/She was a fellow human being after all. He/She had an equal right over the natural resources as much as we had. The global citizens then helped the world in inculcating respect towards each others traditions, customs, beliefs and society. It was through harmonious understanding of each other's society that peace was accomplished. It was through cooperative understanding that wars were stopped. It was through mutual respect that agreements were arrived at and nature was saved.

In 2050, the World Social Forum entered its 10th anniversary since it became a globalised event, concurrently held every year in Beijing, Berlin, Johannesburg, New Dehli, New York and São Paulo. It was the year the number of participants broke the one million mark. Here participants enthusiastically debated about the creation of a more democratic, egalitarian and sustainable world system.

It is hard to pin down the exact beginning of this global movement. But the background is essentially this: over the past few decades, the world has become increasingly inegalitarian, both within and across countries, as the result of a blind faith in neo-liberalism; political systems are not really democratic; in democracies and autocracies alike, there exists a privileged class with seemingly unlimited greed at the expense of the rest.

A prolonged economic and ecological crisis three decades into the 21st century is all that is needed to ignite social movements which swiped across the globe. In 2034, the last World Economic Forum in Davos was held. The subsequent decade saw the downfall, one by one, of the old regimes. Replacing them were political parties with huge followings of grassroots, the have-nots, and young people holding the banner of ‘equality, dignity and morality’.

Conference participants are still grappled with the remnant challenges brought about by the vices of neo-liberal globalisation and capitalism. But we are beginning to see a move away from the polarising and inegalitarian nature of our obsolete system.

Overwhelming environmental catastrophes began with the Japanese tsunami of 2011, through the North Atlantic Conveyor slowdown, the weather chaos on the tornado and hurricane belts and the failure of equatorial crops: the subsequent flights from the equator, flooded plains and drowning cities brought the horrific slaughter of the global Water Wars. Humanity recoiled in 2035 from the bloody wreckage with an outbreak of cooperation, healing and rebuilding of civilisation on secularist and democratic lines.

The uprisings for political democracy in the Arab world, the aftershocks of the early-21st-century global financial crisis and the decline of the US as global hegemon in the 2010s led to widespread questioning of the concept of centralised power. The powerful institutions of state and corporation came under attack, alternative political and economic models flourished, and strong civil societies were formed or re-formed across wide parts of the globe. Co-operative, participatory norms replaced competition and exclusivity.

The refusniks, those who benefited most from centralised and largely unaccountable political and economic power, found a ready home in the People's Republic of China, an economic and military superpower. The predicted Chinese hegemony did not come about, however, as the Chinese model was of little appeal to a world moving towards pluralism, decentralisation and federalism.

Years of resentment towards high levels of economic inequality, stagnating standards of living and corrupt, remote governance made the failure of the Chinese system all-but inevitable; that it was replaced by a version of the new global model is a testament to the enduring appeal of economic and political empowerment and the success of people and planet-centred economics. The political and economic order of the last two hundred and fifty years is dead, and the world can now look to the challenges of the next fifty years confident that it has the ability, resources and willpower to meet them head-on.

I'm almost 90 years of age! But, my god, don't I look well!? The wonders of modern medicine! How marvellous there's no more heart disease, cancer, and HIV. And how beautiful, happy everyone is... If you'd have said this to someone living in Russia forty years ago — how Russians would be full of serenity and love — you'd have written them off as crazy. Looking forward to my next forty years!

In 2020, a leadership of the Chinese Communist Party was elected which owed little or nothing to the Maoist period, and had for many years seen it as a time of horror and repression. Like Mikhail Gorbachev in the late eighties, they grasped that the system they ran was dysfunctional: unlike Gorbachev, they had a strong economy and a growing and increasingly active middle class. Their decision to superintend a phased but determined shift to democratic elections unleashed many tensions: but they were able to contain these, and to see develop parties pledged to pluralism, peaceful competition and (once elected) responsible government. The success of the move removed the last great example of authoritarian rule, and put further and heavy pressure on the remaining autocracies - all of which, in the next three decades, moved towards greater democracy and began to vie with each other, and the longer established democratic states, in going beyond electoral democracy to deeper forms, with greater equality and greater openness at the heart of these projects.

A shift from 'political essentialism' to 'cultural essentialism' has been the most transformative factor in creating plural democracies. Rather than solely seeking major political changes, societies reformed their rituals, beliefs and behaviors to include dynamic characteristics of pluralist democratic societies. Therefore, tolerance, equity and active contribution have become common values to replace bigotry, apartheid and apathy; leading to sustainable political changes. Yet, there will always be threats to open and plural democracies. It shall be the responsibility of all citizens to use collective wisdom, dialogue and cooperation to protect the status quo. In this path, openDemocracy as an insightful and transparent forum will continue to have an indispensible role by providing constructive and creative analysis for all citizens.             

If the world’s surface is also a measure of the world’s peoples, then the People’s Republic of China is the most significant “vast swathe” to have achieved democracy by 2050. How did this come about? In the dark years of 2008 to 2012, when progress towards openness and pluralism in China seemed to have stalled, it seemed highly unlikely.  But the economic crisis, the resource crunch, food price inflation and the bursting of the real estate bubble that had underpinned much of the Chinese economy created an opening for progressive voices in the Party to argue for a Hungarian style transition. It was a high risk venture: they were opposed by an extremely powerful security sector and by die hard elements of the Party. They were supported, however, by an enthusiastic people who recognized that increasing repression was a sign of weakness at the top, not strength. The Party split that followed allowed the successor parties peacefully to compete in the elections of 2015 and the adoption of a new, federal constitution.

Every year, over the past 15 years, new major product vendors have made significant commitments to sourcing – and selling – retail products that embody stringent ethical qualities, such as greater fairness in pricing to the original producers of ingredients for this Ben & Jerry’s ice cream (a Unilever company).  Ben & Jerry’s committed in 2010 to use only Fair Trade certified ingredients (anything that is FT certifiable) in all flavors of its ice cream in all markets worldwide.* 

This is just one example of the rapidly growing signs of commitment by global corporations to yield to civil society pressure to undertake major improvements in their social and environmental accountability, adopting standards assured by credible third-party independent verification of compliance.

By 2050 the world will encounter that this private governance of corporate behavior, driven by competitive markets, will force even the largest (and most monopolistic!) global firms to yield to civil society pressure, decreasing environmental damage, improving human rights practices, and reducing poverty worldwide.    

*The label is the US label for the global Fairtrade movement.  The story can be found at:

http://www.inc.com/news/articles/2010/02/ben-and-jerrys-goes-fully-fairtrade.html.

Love from Jonathan Chadwick

"The world is actually headed away from the prospect of genuine democracy. But if openDemocracy's 2050 vision is realized in Africa, it will be because its long-oppressed people were finally able to overthrow dictators and power-hungry leaders who dominate the continent. Reformers became strong enough to build genuine, people-based democracies and strong economies that fulfill their people's aspirations, and thereby could resist powerful international forces to whom too many leaders now pander."

Rootman

As in the whole world, democracy has emerged victorious in Russia.

One quarter of a century earlier than openDemocracy, on 12 May 1976, the Moscow Helsinki Group was born. It emerged from a dissident idea which reasoned that citizen groups can and should observe governments’ compliance with international human rights agreements. It was a movement that transformed the world and our understanding of politics. If there is one thing we have learnt from this history, it is that the single most powerful way to progress is greater intellectual freedom and open exchange of ideas and information. openDemocracy will play a central role in delivering that, right up to 2050.

Looking back from 2050, it seems strange to think that personal change and politics were once seen as separate worlds. Who knows exactly when the tipping point occurred, but around 2025, and spurred on by spiraling inequalities, rising corporate influence, civil society action and the imperatives of climate change, large numbers of people began to place solidarity at the heart of their decision-making instead of competition, and to see democracy as a way to use and share power in liberating ways. One hundred years after the birth of the Civil Rights movement in the USA, Martin Luther King’s “beloved community” finally started to shape itself in deep democracy’s embrace.

“In 2012, due to a massive public awareness campaign, the global public became aware that it was not only necessary, but possible, to evolve individual and collective consciousness, as Einstein had insisted would be necessary for survival. As a result, decisions affecting the planet began to be made from a new, long-term perspective that for the first time took as its premise a holistic, collective, interdependent view of the earth and its inhabitants.”

The transformational change I believe to be essential is to recognise the end of the private car. In 1903 the poet John Davidson saw the rise of individual powered transport as a break with the essentially collective - though not compulsive - spirit of the 19th century and the railway, in a remarkably perceptive poem called 'The Testament of Sir Simon Simplex concerning automobilism'. In this he set out the 'two legs good, four wheels better' philosophy which governed the twentieth century. Among its enthusiasts were of course Henry Ford and his admirer Adolf Hitler, who saw mobility per se as an absorbing alternative to thought. With one car per four people in the 1920s the USA led the way into hyperindividualised mania. Despite the fact that only 15% of world population owned 85% of the world's cars - a proportion which remained constant because of population growth - there was no increase in human knowledge or efficiency (Anthony Trollope's 'railway compartment as mobile office') given the need to power and steer the car. This lay behind the accelerating decline of the USA after the 1980s, its urban identity and the physique problems of its people. The issue was solved by the impact of Peak Oil after 2010, with a rapid rise of oil to $300 a barrel, making a 'car-friendly society' impossible and imposing a rational transport/life balance.

Or so we must hope.

Bringing the political economy back into the city

Saskia Sassen 

It’s 2030. Governments are poor and in hock to big banks. The urban poor and the impoverished urban middle classes in rich countries have had to scramble to survive . Bit by bit they have inserted a self-made urban political economy into the larger national/global economy of their countries. It is partial, but it works. Since it deals with the basics and with what people on their own can actually do, across the world these urban political economies are quite similar. They all have such basics as urban farming and small credit-unions. Skill-exchanges, rather than stock-exchanges, and repairing rather than replacing with new products, are also basic features. When feasible, furniture and other essentials are fabricated or grown in the city and its region–no more unnecessary shipping that benefitted mostly the intermediaries and their lawyers and financiers. The rest of goods come through fair-trade networks, another self-made political economy connecting production sites with neighborhoods and cities. They also have had to take over some basic public services, such as garbage collection/recycling and develop home-based healthcare in the neighborhoods – they had to do something since local governments are so poor that they have had to cut all except advanced hospital care. 

People rotate just about everything—including daily cooking – at whatever level works – a cluster of homes, the block, the neighborhood. People need each other to make it all viable. Artists and musicians are everywhere -- part of the urban fabric and a bridge to the finer experiences in life. Trust, reliability, exchange and collectivity are the key.  Nobody is rich, and we are still highly imperfect beings, but it all works…. Actually....we don’t need to wait until our  governments are even poorer and more in-hock to  the big banks! We could start building these urban political economies now!

By 2050, as predicted by Karl Marx, the global ubiquity of political democracy and civil rights will have created the preconditions for victory in the next great struggle of humanity: the emancipation of labour from the tyranny of capital.

In 2050, stigmatized differences (race, gender, religion, local or national origin), especially biological and historical, are no longer a meaningful justification for war, assault, imprisonment, inequality, privilege, authority, value. Following massive geopolitical, national and local economic, political and social meltdowns leaving people as devastated as by any natural disasters, as a result ‘human fellowship’ is a shared worldview.
Leaders emerged out of creative and effective constituency groups with a shared message of why and how to renew and secure the bases of common humanity, and interpersonal/intersocial wellbeing. Local wealth and assets developed anywhere in the world are recognized as the result of joint application of multi-dimensional human effort and well stewarded natural resources.
With no-one to blame, blame grew rusty and the rickety record of high and low level intergroup conflict over resources gave way. Decade by decade, new perspective and infrastructure was developed–each step forward strengthened by the step already taken toward an ethical and collaborative platform for democratic global politics.

The idea first caught on in Somalia. Before that the international community still showed only a modest interest in seriously investing in diplomacy and mediation.  Mogadishu Parliamentarians drew their inspiration from federal legislation in the US that had been on the books since the late twentieth century. The idea was simple - before escalating a dispute first refer it to mediation. It had long ago become common practice in domestic divorce law where it is now mostly those cases that involve violence that ultimately go to court. Somalia had a lot to teach the world about how to wage war - now they were teaching the world a lesson in how to wage peace. 

Parliament passed a law that before any decision is taken to use or support the use of force (by the government or any of its member organisations), there is a constitutional requirement that nonviolent alternatives must be explored and exhausted. The guardians of these standards were women, men and youth who formed part of an elected National Peace Council.  Within a decade, similar laws were adopted across Africa and Asia and comparable bodies were created. By 2040, the African Union was the first multilateral body to adopt its own legislation. Within five years the European Union followed suit. What started as national efforts to promote alternatives to violence, resulted in local, national and international institutions being created or strengthened in the area of mediation and dialogue. Today we see the full spectrum of what was called 'soft-power' and is now known as 'Peace Diplomacy' -  properly resourced and working effectively.

In 2050 the justice gap—the divide between national sovereignty and international responsibility, between the political and the judicial—is being mastered and closed.

Carla Del Ponte’s fight against impunity between 1999 and 2007 contributed to the setting of new standards that were adopted and enhanced by the international community.

Criminal violence significantly reduced and, above all, the victims of massive crimes and genocide saw justice done. The willpower to break the circle of impunity is strongly anchored and makes the world in 2050 different, better, than it was before. 

By 2050, a global system that guarantees the equitable distribution of resources -  of water, of land, of energy, and of food. But first, all risk-aversion schemes that underpin our fears and spin off so many absurdities have been binned. No more military, no more securities markets, or insurance plans meant to keep us safe and in constant fear. With the removal of corporate and state centric interests – genuine democracy could finally have the space to prevail.

Capitalism as an economic system of production, as well as an ideology that produced social norms and shaped behaviours, was declared bankrupt ten years ago. Only parts of China remain capitalist today. Between 2030 and 2040, all civil societies carried out peaceful revolutions against the old regime. Karl Marx had long ago predicted that the collapse of capitalism was inevitable because it had within itself the flaws that would destroy itself.  He was right although his prophecy took more time to materialise that he initially reckoned.  At stake was the reclaiming of citizens’ democracy – only formal and flawed under capitalist regimes – and the defence of life on earth imperilled by the relentless aggressions against humankind, living species and the environment.  The large majority of countries which have opted out of their capitalist chains, have rapidly established egalitarian and safe societies. International relations have largely become peaceful: there are no more imperialist wars and, therefore, terrorist attacks against the ‘West’ have ceased altogether.

More importantly, the egalitarian ethos of the new post-capitalist societies has put an end to the millenarian male domination over our societies. All workers now receive an income according to their actual merit and work. Consequently, traditionally male dominated activities (politics, business) are now largely being managed by more dynamic and more competent female workers. New strictly enforced laws about pay equality in the workplace have seen a growing number of men adopt a more relaxed attitude to work. For the first time in modern history, there are more stay at home fathers than mothers.

In the first decade of the 21st century there were fears that the post-1989 surge of democratisation had ended and could go into reverse. Now, in 2050, forms of open society and democracy hold sway across most of the Earth. Looking back, it is clear that global communications and the rise of the Internet and mobile telephony have played a big part in this change - as expected by many forecasters in 2010. But the transformation that relaunched the globalisation of democracy was completely unexpected: the democratic cultural revolution in China. By 2020 China had surpassed the USA in economic weight, and this fateful moment was accompanied with other forces for change in the new superpower: the explosive growth of the middle classes ; the adoption of English as the second language, aiding Chinese projection of soft power and also opening up society still more to external influence; the impossibility of clamping down on the Internet and mobile communications; the rising demand for sustainable environmental policies and better quality of life; the outrage at corruption. All these forces generated demand for a more open society and democratisation. Finally, there was the rise of the younger factions in the ruling Party who argued for a 'total surpassing' of the USA (increasingly mired in violent culture wars and economic failure) - including outdoing the USA as the torchbearer for democracy. The Second Cultural Revolution (2025-2035) was peaceful - a Chinese 'glasnost' based on the security of being the global economic superpower - and transformative. Cooperation with and emulation of China - including its new democracy - were seen as the keys to success by developing nations worldwide. The transformation is being hailed by some Chinese intellectuals, echoing Fukuyama in 1990, as the 'end of history' ...

And then they began to speak with tongues. And the multitude came together, and were confounded, because every man heard them speak in his own language. And they were all amazed and marvelled, saying how is it that we hear every man in our own tongue?

Technologically engendered instant translation will transform conversation, and hence our understanding of one another. A chip in the ear, and we will comprehend on the cheap, reducing transaction costs to collective decision making… a road map for open democracy within and between societies. 

And what will have been overcome? Babel? Perhaps even human nature itself?

When copyright law was harmonised with patent law, the world economy benefitted from the boost provided by the reduced price of knowledge: the C21st’s taxes on knowledge fell. Led by the UK Government abolishing Crown Copyright, which protected works for 125 years, the period in which copyright owners could extract protect works dropped to 20 years from 70 or 50 years, depending on the kind of copyright protected work, after the death of the author. Making knowledge more accessible reduced the education costs and the cost of the know-how required for best practice in industrial and agricultural production and thus stimulated intellectual property production as authors produced more and piracy incentives fell. The late C20th’s vertiginous fall in the price of communicating, made possible by fibre-optic cables, digitalisation and more efficient and cost effective electronic storage and processing, started to be matched by sharply falling prices of information in the C21st and its opening up of the world’s underused stores of intellectual property. As people across the world knew more, they worked better, fought less and communicated more: vicious circles turned virtuous.

It is 2050, OpenDemocracy’s 49th Birthday. Over half of the world’s leading Decision-makers are now women, many of them with backgrounds in human rights advocacy, environmental sciences and peace-building.  As historians tell it, the big shift to pluralist democracy came about once the International Community recognised that men on their own are no good at achieving peace after deadly conflicts.  Throughout the last years of the 20th Century into the first decade of this century most wars broke out again within 10 years. The big shift came in 2020 with an international agreement that henceforth no international treaty or peace agreement was valid unless at least half the mediators, negotiators and signatories were women, and no election results for presidents, prime ministers or parliaments would be recognised unless at least 50% of candidates were women.  This led to many imaginative forms of inclusiveness for other groups and to root-and-branch new ways of doing things. Women insisted peace-building should no longer be left to power-group elites but through meaningful participation at village and community level upwards. There have been border skirmishes but no major deadly conflict in the past decade. 

Once all countries followed Norway’s lead that women must be at least 40% of all Boards, economic and financial policies shifted too. Under the press of feminist economics,  women-led business corporations have become more human-friendly. Empowerment of women also resulted in the much-needed drop in numbers in the world population with their slogan – ‘every baby a wanted baby’.  Following the rash of early 21st Century ‘Face-book’ revolutions, old- fashioned male-led hierarchical international organisations such as the EU, UN, World Bank etc. became obsolete, replaced by new channels and social communities for international interaction and communication.  A big block to overcome were intolerant attitudes and the fanaticism of a generation of young men who grew up in the early part of the 21st Century indoctrinated by religious leaders – the use of  physical and psychological intimidation was hard to combat. This changed once women in large numbers became leaders of the world’s religions and once religions were excluded from political power (Pope Joan has decided to live in a modest cottage in Tuscany where she manages an organic farm part-time). 

Today, democracy prevails all over the Middle East: people freely elect their leaders, a vibrant civil society is active in all aspects of life, intellectuals and artists have enshrined rights to free expression, trade unions actively participate in collective bargaining, the media are free and independent, women can wear whatever they choose, and full and equal citizenship is bestowed on women and ethnic and religious minorities. Massive oil and gas revenues provide for free education, public health and social services. The MENAU (Middle East North African Union), which includes Israel and the Palestinian state, takes full advantage of economic integration and the free movement of labour and capital. Museums display relics and garments of religious fundamentalisms, along with Slabs from the Israeli wall. 

It is unimaginable that only forty years ago, dictators of all kinds roamed the region, foreign powers were engaged in multiple wars, and Islamic fundamentalists imposed their obscurantist views. Israel was ruled by a coalition of hawks and fundamentalists, and Palestinians were engulfed in internal strife, corruption and religious fanaticism. 

A series of events changed that situation. The American superpower, along its neo-liberal ideology, weakened. Iranians toppled the Islamist regime. In Arab countries secularism flourished and Islamism, along with authoritarian rules backed by western powers rapidly waned. Palestinians and Israelis signed a peace deal and created two states within the 1967 borders.   

Nearly 40 years ago, in 2011, it would have been (political) science fiction to imagine any of this happening.

Suddenly we realized that cooperation rather than competition was a more effective strategy to survive and thrive in a world where our life-supporting ecosystems had fuzzy but ultimately non-negotiable limits. In challenges like climate change those limits were looming large into view. That meant we needed ways to govern that were inclusive and good at resolving conflicting needs and freedoms. Pluralist forms of democracy, which still didn’t avoid the need for hard choices, were simply better than anything else.

In 2050 democracy blossomed all around the world partly because, some years back, bankers in the west and elsewhere were stopped from accepting deposits from dodgy rulers. It was a big sacrifice by the banks and they resisted it fiercely, especially in Switzerland. After all these deposits made up a large chunk of bank balance sheets. Tyrants and dictators are driven by many things; power, of course and sex but amassing an ill-gotten fortune was a regular feature. 

In 2050, Europe has overcome the birth pains of multiculturalism and is accepting its diversity as a welcome given, rather than an imposed ideal or a frightening future. Open debate is finally embraced, and opponents are seen neither as criminals nor as enemies. Nothing is sacred, all is questioned, and former taboos like Islam or the royal family are discussed freely by both politicians and comedians.

2050 – World Peace. It was the economy, stupid! On 9 September 2011 the world banking system collapsed for good soon after Portugal, Italy and Spain requested a bank bailout. The fall of the Asian Tigers followed when the Western market suddenly vanished. Civil unrest, chaos and a decade of war ended only when the stock of military weapons ran out; production had ceased, and there was no longer money to make out of war. Money meant nothing anyway but killing your enemy meant you had to get close to him; violence had a human face again. That’s when people started to come together. Because the Internet had miraculously survived we reconnected and started rebuilding human-size communities with a sense of belonging. All voices were heard. That’s when we shared the world rather than exploit it. It took 30 years, but we are now at peace. One human being, one voice, one vote.

The world in 2050 is made up of democratic states only. By 2011, more than 110 UN member states had some form of elected government and the trend would continue. In 2050, China and Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Libya all have democratic governance.