IT IS A CONCEIT, at least, with a distinguished philosophical pedigree. As philosopher Tzvetan Todorov put it in his fine polemic In Defence of the Enlightenment, a central assumption of Enlightenment thinking was that human life would be "guided henceforth by a project for the future, not by an authority from the past." French legal scholar Frédéric Rouvillois has argued that this project for the future represented nothing less than "the invention of progress," noting its hypnotic and powerful appeal ever since to the Western imagination. Today, this secular progress narrative so thoroughly pervades global thinking that it can be difficult to remember how radical a break it represented from all major religions, which, however committed to charity, have seen poverty as an immutable given of the human condition.
In contrast, almost all contemporary heirs of the Enlightenment, be they techno-utopians, secular humanitarians, or development workers, take the diametrically opposing view. Consider the defining idea of Doctors Without Borders when it was founded in the 1970s: "Man was not made to suffer." Today, the development world has taken this new moral understanding of human possibility and has drawn from it the conclusion not just that poverty and hunger can be alleviated, but that they can be ended forever.
Few people have upheld this view more energetically and adamantly than economist Jeffrey Sachs. In both his 2005 book, The End of Poverty, and his leadership in the implementation of the U.N. Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) -- a set of benchmarks, from universal primary education to reducing child mortality, with a deadline set for 2015 -- he has insisted that ending poverty is not a dream. It is, rather, a goal that no reasonably open-minded person should doubt can be accomplished should this generation of human beings "choose," as Sachs puts it, to commit to doing so. Why is this realistic? "It is our breathtaking opportunity," he writes, "to be able to advance the Enlightenment vision of Jefferson, Smith, Kant, and Condorcet. Our generation's work can be defined in Enlightenment terms." For Sachs, the new tools of science and technology will foster political systems that promote peace, rationality, and human well-being. "The agenda is broad and bold, as it has been for two centuries," he writes, "but many of its sweetest fruits are just within our reach."
Unlike Reese, Sachs does not talk as if such a future were predetermined. But his vision of that future is only marginally less utopian. The world, he believes, stands on the cusp of eradicating poverty, war, and even political systems (other than those dedicated to promoting equality and all those other good things that humanity deserves). Like Gates, Sachs asserts that he is not being utopian or even optimistic so much as simply realistic. "We can realistically envision a world without extreme poverty by the year 2025," he writes, "because technological progress [finally] enables us to meet basic human needs on a global scale and to achieve a margin above basic needs unprecedented in history. [This] technological progress has been fueled by the ongoing revolutions of basic science and spread by the power of global markets and public investments in health, education, and infrastructure."
If this sounds familiar, it should. For what Sachs is prophesying is in effect the universalization of modern liberal capitalist democracy -- but this time it's different. It will be more equitably arranged so that everyone in the world, rather than only people in rich countries, benefits from it. This, as British philosopher John Gray once said of the predictions of American political scientist Francis Fukuyama, sounds like nothing so much as "an idealized version of American government." To be clear, Sachs is not claiming any of this is inevitable, but it is difficult to read him as saying anything other than that everything is within our grasp, if only we have the courage and the moral conviction to seize it. (In the Soviet Union, this used be referred to as svetloye budushcheye, the "radiant future.")
But what kind of morality exactly does Sachs uphold? Not the religious kind, that's for sure -- there is literally no entry for "religion" in the index to The End of Poverty. Likewise, Gates, who through his foundation arguably is doing more to rid the world of poverty and disease than any other human being alive today, once told a reporter that "just in terms of allocation of time resources, religion is not very efficient. There's a lot more I could be doing on a Sunday morning." For Gates, Sachs, and their legions, the emphasis on technology is the central explanatory key for why what has never been remotely possible for almost all of recorded history is eminently doable today. It's messianic, without the Messiah.
As an atheist myself, in purely moral terms I have no strong objection to this. But two obvious problems present themselves. First, such an approach seems a bit awkward when in much of the poor world a great religious revival seems to be taking place among Muslims, Christians, and Hindus alike. As the head of the World Faiths Development Dialogue, Katherine Marshall, has wisely pointed out, "The link between core religious teachings and attitudes towards poverty is important as a factor that explains in part the somewhat tepid support for the MDGs" by religious leaders. If anything, Marshall is being too tactful. In much of the Arab world at least, the public health MDGs (not to mention those sections concerning the emancipation of women and, heaven forbid, gender equality) have stirred up fierce opposition. Unanticipated setbacks in Afghanistan, Nigeria, and Pakistan to the global effort to eradicate polio (28 percent of whose total budget, nearly $1.5 billion overall, has since 2008 come from the Gates Foundation) have been a horrific demonstration of this, as religious extremists have undertaken a targeted campaign killing health workers who administer the polio vaccine. But even in less extreme contexts, ignoring religion -- or, possibly worse, deluding oneself into thinking that religion in the developing world will inevitably evolve into a version of secularish Western liberalism -- is hardly likely to be successful.
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