Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

The End of Ideologies?

1991; Indiana University Press; Issue: 51 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2307/2935075

0041-1191

Carlos Fuentes,

Every time someone proclaims that the era of ideological diversity has come to an end, I wonder about the proclaimer's ideology. At the moment, there is a clear tendency toward proclaiming the death of ideological diversity in the name of a capitalist victory over socialism. Yet both ideologies capitalism, socialism-embrace and cross-reference multiple realities; indeed, the two ideologies exchange ideas and action, triumphs and defeats, at a pace too fast even for a fast-paced world where nothing and nobody can claim the last word. The fast-paced nature of our century's end is due largely to three factors: instantaneous communication, global integration of the economy, and the explosion of technology. Each of these factors produces multiple problems of its own. The technological imbalance between rich and poor countries is ever increasing. Economic integration is hampered by deepseated nationalist sentiments. Can modern politics find in the practice of federalism the hinge between global economies and local needs? And if these issues were not enough of a question mark, implies the manufacture of instant information, as well as instant criticism and instant comparison. Such an advance obliterates national barriers against global information. As a result, nation after nation comes to realize the deeply flawed nature of the flow of information, of the democratic systems, of the critical paradigms available to it. Lately, the Czechs and the Poles have had the opportunity to compare themselves with the French and the Dutch, and they have not been pleased with the outcome. The Mexicans, on election day, have compared the speed of communicating the results with that of not only the English and the German, but also of the Nicaraguan and the Brazilian elections. And we Mexicans haven't enjoyed measuring our smoke signals against their computer outputs. In every country, the communication factor crucially affects the political task of