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Climate Change and Globalisation are Reinforcing Global Inequalities: High Time for a New Social Democratic Era

There are doubtless those who had hoped that the fall of the Berlin Wall would liberate the political imagination of the Left from Marxist dogma, giving it free rein. How deeply disappointed they must be. What do we hear from old Labour? That it wants its good old post-war social welfare state back. And what about the trade unions? Are they hotly debating the possibility of developing transnational strategic capacity as a response to the mobility of capital? No, the unions are calling on the state to protect people from the trials and tribulations of globalisation. And what do the intellectuals suggest? The question merely draws a blank. Don’t get me wrong, though: if there is more than enough of any political fruit to pick in the garden of ideology, then it is the rotting contradictions falling from the tree of ‘right’ knowledge. While the world faces a host of problems—from climate change, global economic interdependence and migratory movements through to issues of regional and global peace keeping— nation-based thinking has lost its political capacity to deal with any of them. Ironically enough, every issue that has helped to fuel nationalism in Europe—the transfer of jobs to other countries, refugee flows, wars, terrorism—is an international issue. There is actually every reason to herald the advent of a new social democratic era. From the massive wave of renationalisation taking place in Russia to the success of the populists in Latin America and Eastern Europe, untrammelled capitalism is generating fears and defensive reactions that are unprecedented in comparison to anything we have experienced since the fall of the Berlin Wall. It bears asking, then, where this disaffection is coming from. In danger of sliding off the neoliberalist carousel, it is the broad middle sections of society that are shouting ‘stop!’ This is true in nearly every European country and in every corner of the world. Resistance is growing as the middle sections of global society begin to realise that they have no share in the benefits generated by the current period of economic growth – indeed, that their slice of the cake may even be getting smaller. Transnational corporations have become skilled in exploiting the potential for rationalisation inherent in the new communication technologies and are combining this with cheap labour; as a result, their profits are going through the roof. In the meantime, ordinary middle-class workers—whether they live in Manchester, the American mid-West, the de-industrialised Ruhr area of Germany, Latin America or