Human rights and business responsibilities in the global marketplace

Communism lost the Cold War, not to pure free market capitalism, but to a r ange of diverse economic systems based on varying degrees and forms of soci al regulation of the market. Such social regulation was possible because bo th polities and economies were primarily national. Since the end of the Col d War, there has been rapid globalization of the economy, but not of effect ive social regulation. Incipient global political institutions are too weak to regulate global corporate power, while national governments no longer h ave sufficient reach to regulate large multinationals. Corporate self-regul ation has begun, but only haltingly and mostly ineffectively. While global prosperity has risen dramatically in recent decades, not every one has progressed since the end of the Cold War. Since 1990 some 55 countr ies have had declining per capita incomes, while inequality has risen withi n and between countries. It is too soon to say whether global capitalism wi ll be saved from itself by regulation, just as American national capitalism may have been saved by the New Deal reforms it opposed. As Pope John Paul II has warned, the world must not succumb to a "radical capitalist ideology " which "blindly entrusts" social problems to market forces.