Published in 2003 and revised in 2010, "Consent" has more recently come to refer to a kind of protocol governing sexual relations between adults. But this book is not about sex. Consent in the title refers instead to something more like "the consent of the governed", and in this case it has specifically to do with international relations. It is a proposal for a new arrangement of rules governing the international order, in particular trade among nations, and the potential for the people of nations to have some say not only in the doings of their own governments (rare enough in this world), but also in the broader context of international relations. It is not a "world government" proposal, but a modest attempt to find some realistic way to make the present anarchy in international relations, in particular global trade and debt, a little less anarchic.
On one level Mr. Monbiot's proposals are just another pie-in-the-sky Utopian vision. Some visions are more realistic than others in terms of accommodating the reality of realpolitik as it is now practiced on Earth. As such things go, this would be one of the more realistic proposals because it attempts to find paths to its fulfillment that accommodate the anarchy in the present world order amidst the present domination of so-called "sovereign" nation-states. There is nothing ignoble or hypocritical about Mr. Monbiot's proposals themselves. There does seem to be some naivete concerning the relation between peoples and their governments. There is a lot of over-simplification here, but to the author's credit he acknowledges this and leaves room in the specifics to accommodate necessary adjustments as need for them arises.
Even where "elections" take place, the vast majority of nations on Earth (perhaps none at all) are democratic in any full sense. In today's world, the legislative and executive institutions of even the longest lived and best established "democracies" have been more-of-less fully captured by corporate interests. Being the "people's representative" is, with few exceptions on specific issues, nothing but lip-service in today's nations. There is no nation on Earth today, rich or poor, whose elites could not and would not block even the bare beginnings of the change needed to bring this [quite obviously fairer] order about. Monbiot explicitly recognizes this. I give him credit for that too.
As hopelessly unlikely as it is that any of Monbiot's proposals will ever bear fruit, I applaud him for recognizing the difficulties and his attempt in this "manifesto for a new world-order" to thread his way through those difficulties to concrete steps designed to bring about the new system by increments, the only way it could possibly take place if it is to be brought about at all.
The proposals themselves are well delineated. Most of them are not brand new novel ideas but adaptations of brilliant economic ideas from brilliant economists of past decades. Monbiot does an excellent job of integrating these into his over-all program. In doing this he also well illustrates the inconsistencies and out-right contradictions of the present capitalist order not to mention the social, economic, and political dangers of the present international anarchy. This is the best, clearest, characterization of global-capitalist malfeasance I have yet read.
In his last chapter Monbiot exhorts us to action, but now sixteen years on, I know that he knows the unavoidable consequences of our continued failure to bring about any meaningful reform of the "international system" are rushing upon us faster than ever.
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