In the era after the Cold War, the western world had outgrown ideology. Politics had moved beyond the clashes of abstractions between this “ism” and that “ism”. This end of ideology brought about a type of politics that sought not to transform the world through democracy. Instead it sought to manage democracy more efficiently; to allow the status quo to prosper, and thereafter to direct the material benefits into progressive social spending projects. This type of managerialism typified the approach taken by Tony Blair and Bill Clinton, the era's two most successful politicians, and the 'Third Way' approach.
Ulrich Beck, the German sociologist, noted the uncontrollability and interconnectedness of politics in the modern age, as well as the inability of politicians to make change to the world, and coined the term “runaway world” to describe this situation.
In the context of his “runaway world”, politics became almost exclusively about achieving stability. In doing so, and accepting that the structure of society could not be altered, a central tenet of democracy - the ability and desire to give a voice to the voiceless - began to be undermined.
For the last 20 years, no-one in the West has had any idea how to change the world and politicians, who had ceded power to finance, bureaucracy and, latterly, to big tech companies, had lost the desire to do so. For a time the Third Way proved successful, not least at the ballot box, where Clinton cruised to two US Presidential election victories and Blair secured an unprecedented three consecutive victories in 13 years of uninterrupted Labour rule in the UK. Yet, the legitimacy of these technocratic and expert-led Governments hinged on their ability to deliver progress, and quickly proved fragile in the face of diminished returns.
Across the last 200 years, shifts in the nature of global inequality have shaped the development of political struggles. Just as the class politics of the nineteenth century were driven by the sorts of inequality viscerally depicted in the novels of Dickens and Balzac, or the anti-colonial struggles of the 20th century reflected the collapse of the imperial mind set of Europeans, the populism we are seeing today reflects the economic dislocation experienced since 2008. The decline of the West has left the lower middle classes of the rich world teetering on the edge of a precipice, and the class-based politics of the political left no longer resonate. Post-2008, the version of reality the ‘managerial’ politicians had presented was no longer believable.Their stories ceased to make sense.
The Financial Crash in 2008 will be seen as an inflection point in world history as it was made clear that globalisation would lead to losers as well as winners, both within and between countries. Working class people, in the face of declining real incomes, the loss of economic security, the explosion of the ‘gig economy’ and the attack on the welfare state as countries turned to ‘austerity’ to tackle booming deficits, began to feel that their countries were no longer organised for their benefit.
Trump, Sanders, Brexit and Corbyn, with their opposition to free trade and globalisation and their harking back to an era of national economic controls, tell a story that speaks directly to those who feel this sense of loss acutely.
In democracy mere facts aren’t enough and, where the managerial class has failed in this regard, populism on both the ‘left’ and the ‘right’ has succeeded in making the public feel they are correct. In an age of ‘post-truth’ (an overused cliché which, nonetheless, has some utility) driven by the internet and social media bubbles, Trump, Corbyn, Sanders and the Brexit campaigns resonated with an anti-elite, anti-authority, and specifically anti-politician, mood that has been bubbling since 2008.
In contrast to those ‘managerial’ politicians who, in the UK (with the expenses scandal) and in the US (not least through Hillary’s close ties with Wall Street), have fed into the idea that they are out only to serve themselves, the populists claim to speak for the noble, ‘ordinary’ person against this self-interested elite.
This isn’t, however, just about economics; Brexit and Trump, both count amongst their constituents significant portions of the middle class; they found support in wealthy areas which, despite economic security, feel left behind and culturally alienated.
Politically and culturally huge segments of western societies have felt patronised, ignored and abandoned by the moneyed, cosmopolitan and racially diverse managerial politicians. Anger is the prevailing emotion as politics has become visceral and the personal is very much politicised. This clash is about two fundamentally different world views that are finding themselves pitted against one another; one is outward looking, socially tolerant and liberal; the other is conservative, fearful and autarkic. These are not battles about how policies of tax and spend can best manage an economy; these are fundamental divides in the way their proponents view the world. They are about ways of thinking, seeing and speaking that, increasingly, have no shared ground. The lack of empathy across this divide is the source driving much of the anger in politics today.
But both these world views are backwards-looking. One harks back to the age of technocratic- expertise managerialism, the other to a mythical age of national determination and ethnic hierarchies. Neither offers a vision for the next century.
The old ideological divides that divided society into the neatly organised ways that produced the old left/right poles have gone. Does, for example, ‘the left’ or ‘the right’ best represent a programmer in Silicon Valley or a sheep farmer in south Wales dependent on European subsidies? The political system, having toyed with the idea of ‘the end of History’ for the 20 years after the end of the Cold War, now lags dramatically behind the complicated social realities of the 21st Century. That this has led to populism is no coincidence. When the world seems too complicated to change, people naturally look for, and find, simple and simplistic solutions.
Without a vision, an idea, (perhaps even an ‘ideology’) that recognises the complex realities of the 21st century, our politics cannot move beyond the division and anger that currently threatens to absorb the whole political edifice. The managerial politicians of the 1992-2008 period were too timid in their politics and their desire to change the world. Answers to our 21st century problems cannot be found in a revival of the ‘Third Way’ which cultivated them. Nor do our answers lie in a refashioning of the politics of the 60s proposed by some on the reactionary left.
The historian C. Vann Woodward, in 1959, wrote “one must expect and even hope that there will be future upheavals to shock the seats of power and privilege, and furnish the periodic therapy that seems necessary to the health of our democracy.” The political upheavals we’ve experienced in 2016 certainly constitute an upheaval to the seats of power. Whether our generation can rise to the challenge of producing that 'periodic therapy' remains to be seen.
