In recent posts, I've tried to address whether and to what extent the backlash against globalization is about tribalism and xenophobia-or rather about jobs, equality, and democracy. According to Ross Douthat in today's New York Times, the new "post-liberal" politics is all about existential longings, including "yearning for community" left unsatisfied by liberalism-even if, according to Douthat, liberalism has delivered "peace and order and prosperity."
He may be correct to some extent about the right, but he's got the left wrong.
Douthat refers to left-wing writers "for whom the Marxist dream lives anew" and, as well, to political movements like Syriza in Greece and Podemos in Spain. As for the writers, whatever provocation Thomas Piketty might have intended by calling his chef d'oeuvre Capital in the Twenty-First Century it is close to absurd to present him as a Marxist dreamer. Piketty is not calling for the overthrow of liberal capitalism: his policy prescriptions are for meaningful democratic reform of tax and inheritance laws, and of political finance. Piketty's ideas may be too radical for some and insufficiently radical for others, as this article suggests, but he's certainly not fomenting proletarian revolution.
For Douthat, liberalism is in trouble because "pre-liberal forces-tribal, familial, religious-...speak more deeply than consumer capitalism to basic human needs: the craving for honor, the yearning for community, the desire for metaphysical hope." I completely disagree with Douthat about the order of basic human needs. Yet if this is what has gone wrong with liberalism, then none of the new left issues that Douthat identifies speak to it. "[S]tructural racism and sexism, climate change,economic equality" as a critique of liberalism imply that it has not gone far enough toward what the left-Hegelian philosopher (and GATT architect) Alexandre Kojeve called the "universal and homogenous state" where all citizens are free and equal, class, ethnic and religious distinctions rendered irrelevant to the rights of citizenship and opportunities for well-being. As for climate change, this is clearly a global challenge, where the newest left backs global cooperation.
Leaving aside the intellectuals, what of the newest political left, Bernie Sanders/Zephyr Teachout, Syriza, and so forth? Douthat's failure to understand such movements comes from his presumption that liberalism actually "delivered peace and order and prosperity" and "greater social equality." In fact, the new political left begins not from existential ennui with liberalism or "angry nationalism", but the thesis that neoliberalism has not delivered prosperity" and "greater social equality"-rather it has produced austerity and unemployment for many and obscene riches for a few.
In seeking greater social equality, the newest left differs from the old liberal and social democratic parties mainly in challenging their flirtations with clientism and crony capitalism-their striking of Faustian bargains with the oligarchs. This is as evident in Syriza's challenge to PASOK in Greece as in Bernie Sanders' and Zephyr Teachout's attacks on "pay- to-play" and the Wall Street nexus in the US Democratic Party.
The newest left may sound anti-trade and anti-globalization, and has sometimes overemphasized oppositionalism rather than constructive engagement with globalization, but the goal isn't a new economics of exclusionary nationalism. The issue is social equality and democratic accountability, not tribal identity. As Dani Rodrik explained recently in the Financial Times, a rebalancing of the domestic social contract may require taming aspects of hyper-globalization, but is compatible with the vision of an essentially open world economy:
Healthier polities produce — and can withstand — more globalisation. A reassertion of the nation state may be inimical to hyper-globalisation but as long as it is made in the service of social inclusion, robust economic growth and liberal democracy, it will serve the needs of an open world economy quite well.
Syriza has responded to the multiple crises facing Greece by welcoming large numbers of refugees, building cooperative relationships on energy with Cyprus and Israel, and taking the lead in attempting to construct with like-minded partners elsewhere in the EU a new Social Europe which would be a strong counterweight to German-led austerity. Hardly some kind of tribalist closing of ranks, or borders.
Finally, while questioning neoliberal economics, the newest left has generally held true to the tradition of secular liberal individualism in other areas-favoring reproductive rights, same-sex marriage, and strong secular institutions. One of the first moves of the left coalition when it came to power in Portugal was to push through laws liberalizing access to abortion and legalizing adoption by same-sex couples. Syriza, albeit in a gradualist fashion, is proposing to increase the separation of church and state in Greece in the current proposals on constitutional reform. Podemos, unlike the traditional socialists PSOE, has been much firmer and consistent in battling the conservative government's efforts to reverse reproductive rights in Spain.
In sum, the newest left (unlikely perhaps the newest right) has simply nothing to do with, in Douthat's words, "radical and religious correctives to a flattened view of human life". While seeking the democratic empowerment of voices previously excluded or marginalized, the newest left simply holds left liberalism and social democracy to their traditional promises of greater freedom and equality, political and social as well as economic-while reminding us that growth and prosperity cannot come at the price of destroying the planet.
