Fascist politics poses a major challenge in the years ahead. “How do we maintain a sense of common humanity,” asks Jason Stanley in his brilliant How Fascism Works , “when fear and insecurity will lead us to flee into the comforting arms of mythic superiority in vain pursuit of a sense of dignity?” We may know the danger exists, but at what point do we take it seriously? Continue reading
A vision is a story about our common future that touches our hearts as well as our minds. To be effective, the story must, in simple words, portray a future that people would want to inhabit and identify some practicable steps for getting there. The left globally has not been effective lately in presenting such an attractive story-line. But there is an exception: Bernie Sanders, who emerged from obscurity as an independent Senator from Vermont to nearly capture the Democratic Party’s nomination for president. Continue reading
The working class is in revolt against neoliberalism. But there is a problem. The revolt is led, not by the left, but by far-right populists. How did this happen? And how should the left respond? Continue reading
When I showed When the People Awake to an undergraduate class in the mid-70s, the militant documentary received a strongly favourable response. It had been made in 1972 by left-wing Chilean film-makers who supported the democratic-socialist administration of Salvador Allende’s Unidad Popular. When I screened the same stirring documentary in the same course 25 years later, the students responded negatively. In fact, they voted with their feet, most of them withdrawing from the classroom under the cover of dark. What had changed in the interim? Continue reading
Neoliberalglobalization since the late 1970s has restricted the policy autonomy of national states through a variety of pressures that “discipline” governments implementing measures deemed hostile to free markets. Yet the world is changing fast and the rise of China in particular is shifting the global power balance. Strangely, however, remarkably little has changed in the global order beyond some reshuffling of the dominant players and somewhat greater national independence in decision making. This argument is made at length in Civilizing Globalization, which I recently co-edited with Ali Burak Guven. Continue reading
Can the #Left in the Global South mitigate climate change any better than the neoliberals? A lot rides on the answer because the trends in this neoliberal era are particularly dire in the tropics. In many countries, populations have doubled in less than 30 years. Meanwhile, rising incomes have vastly expanded the level of consumption of national populations. When global warming is added to this equation, various unfortunate consequences follow. Continue reading
Socialism in the twentieth century generally collapsed or devolved into an authoritarian bureaucratic collectivism. Have any recent movements in the Global South found a way of avoiding these dead-ends? One possibility is the radical social-democratic strategy of socialist transition; but comparative analysis suggests it is a risky, turbulent venture whose success depends upon unusual conditions. Continue reading