Abstract:
To mash up St Karl and St Oscar, history repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce, then in Australia. That has its advantages, not least in politics – not least in politics that may eventually turn lively, if not lethal. Across the Western world, Left and Right are repolarising, but with a greater asymmetry than ever. What was for a century or more a division along a single dimension – the private or public ownership of the means of production, within a set of shared cultural assumptions – has now become two diagonally opposed camps, each of which offers a contrary ensemble of cultural and economic policies. The mainstream Left, after a period in which open and globalist values were combined with relatively matching pro-market policies, is increasingly ditching the latter, and combining social democracy and even state socialism with a retained cosmopolitanism.
Details / PDF:
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