Oddbean new post about login | logout @43d7c4ea @64af5594 Not sure if the ^socialist framework^ gets strengthened. Lots of right wing parties getting more popular. But that was my first thought when the brexit poll result got public: The Brit‘s left us and throwing us to the southern socialists 😉 I must agree totally to you about globalization. It is destroying humanity and society in the long run. Sometimes I think feudalism is back.
@ebb6b3d7 @43d7c4ea The "lots of right wing parties getting more popular" phenomenon is international - actually more pronounced outside the EU than in (though it manifests in different ways in different electoral systems - in the UK by the Tory Party effectively incorporating UKIP, in the US by the MAMA takeover of Republican grassroots, etc...) - and this in turn is part of an even larger movement of voters and activists to political extremes - in Europe advantaging the left a few years ago - with the sudden rise of Syriza, Podemos, Pirate Parties, etc - now perhaps the right - but on other continents the left again. All are really symptoms of the collapse of the centre - faith in the status quo - and underlying this the crisis of capitalism. I'm pretty sure the movement of voters to political extremes will continue, because I'm pretty sure capitalism is collapsing - in a scenario scarily like Europe in the 1930s. I think the EU, like all current political institutions, will get severely battered in the process - but I also think it's one of the focuses for hope.
@64af5594 @ebb6b3d7 If we take your parallel with the 1930s, the developments you cite here & in the later reply, as well as indicating the 'collapse' of #capitalism, might also be taken (if the 30s *are* the model), to the death throes of one capitalist settlement & the ground clearing for the arrival of some (as yet not clear) new settlement.... I'm not saying this is clearly happening but its a possibility if we take your parallel seriously, which is not a mad thing to do.
@43d7c4ea @ebb6b3d7 Yes I agree - BUT remember it took crash, depression, war and holocaust for the Keynesian settlement (and European Social Model) to emerge. This is so clear in French history: the factors in play were not only the terrible shock across the whole political centre - centre-right included - at what had happened to Europe, but also the role the communists and other leftist groups had played in leading the resistance. The Programme du Conseil national de la Résistance set out a vision similar to the 1945 UK Labour government's - and in some ways the 'New Deal' in the US - except that because of the terrible wartime experience of France, and the respect widely felt for what the communists, etc, had done, it was not a single party manifesto, but agreed across the political spectrum (except of course the cowed fascists), and is still widely supported here today, despite the inroads made since the 1970s by neoliberalism. I therefore think the question of whether a new 'capitalist' settlement can emerge now is really a question of whether climate ecological breakdown is sufficient trauma in itself to create a wide political consensus like the Programme du Conseil national de la Résistance - or whether we have to plunge further into chaos and conflict first. Probably, different negotiations will appear at different times in different places. But anyway, successful solutions won't be anything like the growth-oriented capitalism we have now - they can't be, can they? - they will be further than Keynes towards strongly regulated free enterprise and markets.
@64af5594 @ebb6b3d7 Yes, I'd agree with that (and can I add, very eloquently put); the key is how far we have to plunge before social forces cohere to start to develop a settlement that works with #climatecrisis rather than ignores it or acts to further it.... and yes, my fear (as infer from you) is that this chaos may get a lot worse before it ever may start to get better.... grim times, indeed!