Globalization of the Community of Solidarity – The Feasibility of Basic Social Security in Poor and Emerging Countries FRIEDRICH BUTTLER Basic Social Security for All Some might think that this heading needs a question mark. Is it not the case that, in the global financial and economic crisis, basic social security for everyone, throughout the world, is a utopian dream for which the resources simply do not exist? Who is supposed to pay for it? Could anything be more absurd than to stymie the urgently needed global eco­nomic upswing with such costs? In fact, the heading needs an exclamation mark! The global crisis has revealed the underside of globalization, namely the increasing inequality of incomes and opportunities within and between countries throughout the world. Social security, however, is a basic human right, besides being everywhere an effective supply-side productive force and a source of spending that bolsters demand in the national economy. What might be the causes and who the possible agents of socio-polit­ical change? History teaches us that the needs of workers and their fami­lies in the Industrial Revolution and political confrontations, such as the East–West conflict after World War Two, gave considerable impetus to the development of social security. The prosperous European Union, in contrast, has a problem with developing a common social agenda, in particular after Eastern enlargement to encompass the transition coun­tries. The world community, similarly, has discovered the issue only in the last few years. Social security is a late-born child of the Industrial Revolution and developed the forms now familiar in the industrialized countries in par­ticular after World War Two. Protection against the contingencies of life, for example, involving illness, loss of livelihood, income, housing, and old-age poverty, emerged earlier on, to some extent, on an individual basis or in smaller social organizations, chiefly the family – in other words, by way of private provision or group-oriented solidarity. It is en­tirely consistent with this if associations of sovereign states, such as the 82 Buttler, Basic Social Security worldwide ipg 4/2009