The Philosophical Foundations of Global Governance Initiatives By: Carlos L. Garrido

How a state outlines its political projects and programs says a lot about the worldview they operate with.* Behind politics is always a series of assumptions, some explicitly recognized by political actors, others so deeply entrenched and unquestioned they function as “unknown knowns,” as the things taken for granted in making judgements about the world.
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As a professor of philosophy, I think my discipline works best when it can critically highlight these overlooked assumptions which stand as the background for the judgments made on everything from aesthetic evaluations to political commitments.

The various frameworks through which international relations is conceived of by different states also follows this logic. A worldview — rooted always in the material premises and history of the society — comes to filter how the world is understood, and hence, comes to shape how one acts in it.

What happens when we apply this operation to compare China’s Global Governance Initiative with its American counterpart, the Project for a New American Century?

The Project for a New American Century, first outlined at the tail end of the twentieth century, seeks to defend and further entrench the unipolar world order, a global arrangement of U.S. hegemonism.
It is a global arrangement of win-lose, where the U.S. ruling elite win at the expense of the world and its own population.

This political project is rooted in a western civilizational metaphysic for thinking about the individual. For the west, the individual reigns supreme. Like Robinson Crusoe, the protagonist in Daniel Defoe’s famous novel by the same name, the west holds a conception of the individual as a self-sufficient entity — a being in no need of others.

In René Descartes, who marks the transition into modern philosophy in the west, the individual subject comes to be conceived of as a res cogitans, a thinking substance independent of not only nature and the larger human community, but even one’s own body (the res extensa).

From the standpoint of the dominant metaphysic in the west, the Other is not someone whom my being depends on, and who therefore requires respect, consideration, and care. The Other, instead, is reduced to something that serves the individual. The Other is interacted with only insofar as it can be exploited, that is, have its life and capacities drained to enrich myself.

This worldview goes hand in hand with the development of capitalism, a system which elevates to its ultimate principle capital accumulation. It is the logic upon which is premised the Project for a New American Century.

To defend unipolarity and American hegemonism is to operate under the influence of a metaphysics which holds that one can benefit only at the expense of the Other, an ontology of life as a zero-sum game.

This is why American statesmen and policymakers feel threatened by China’s rise — their philosophy is one in which the possibility of winning together doesn’t exist, they can only win if it is at the expense of someone else, and if someone else is winning (China’s rise, for example), it can only be at my own expense.

The logic behind China’s Global Governance Initiative is completely contrary to this western logos of ruthless individualism. China approaches the world promoting a framework of multipolarity, rooted in true multilateralism, win-win relations between states, and a commitment to a shared future for mankind.

Operative in the background of this initiative is a philosophy which understands the interconnection and unity of everything, from the cosmos to the human moral order.

The thought of considering a person a radically separate and independent individual is ludicrous for Chinese philosophy. Implied in the personhood of an individual is the social, the community of people (from one’s family all the way up to one’s state) which have helped to make them who they are.
The individual obtains their dignity and recognition only through the community of others, the ensemble of relations which made us who we are. The other is not a piece of equipment for me to use up, exploit, and dispense with. The other‘s fate and my own are sealed.

It is this social and holistic philosophy which is at the foundation of China’s Global Governance Initiative. The Communist Party of China understands that humanity does share a common fate, and that the only way anyone could actually win, is if we all collectively win.

The zero-sum logic the U.S. ruling class operates with is not only detrimental for the losers, but also for the winners, who under such predicament could very well find themselves as losers tomorrow.
China’s Global Governance Initiative and push toward true multilateralism, multipolarity, and a shared future for mankind premised on win-win relations is the framework the world as a whole will benefit the most from.

It is a framework rooted in a correct philosophical appreciation for the collective existence of humanity, which can never be amputated to the metaphysics of the lonesome individual, as the worst of western philosophy has, to the benefit only of the mammon of capital.

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*A shorter version of this article was published in the recent issue of Beijing.

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Author

Dr. Carlos L. Garrido is a Cuban American Professor of Philosophy who received his M.A. and Ph.D. from Southern Illinois University Carbondale. He serves as the Secretary of Education for the American Communist Partyand as a Director of the Midwestern Marx Institute, the largest Marxist-Leninist think-tank in the United States. Dr. Garrido has authored a few books, including Marxism and the Dialectical Materialist Worldview (2022), The Purity Fetish and the Crisis of Western Marxism (2023), Why We Need American Marxism (2024), and the two forthcoming texts, Domenico Losurdo and the Marxist-Leninist Critique of Western Marxism (2026) and Hegel, Marxism, and Dialectics (2026-7). Dr. Garrido has published over a dozen scholarly articles and over a hundred articles in popular settings across the U.S., Mexico, Cuba, Iran, China, Brazil, Venezuela, Greece, Peru, Canada, etc. His writings have been translated into over a dozen languages. He also writes short form articles for his Substack, @philosophyincrisis, and does regular YouTube programs for the Midwestern Marx Institute channel. He is on Instagram @carlos.l.garrido

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