Third way politics are dead. The left needs to be radical again; the incredibly costly belief that you can find a middle ground with fundamentalists, nihilists and robber barons needs to be put to bed.Democrats need to learn from Herman Melville´s Sermon to the Sharks
In Melville’s Moby Dick, Stubb, annoyed by the noise made by a group of sharks that are eating the carcass of a whale that is tied to the side of the boat, asks Fleece to preach to the sharks:
“tell ’em they are welcome to help themselves civilly, and in moderation, but they must keep quiet”
The point of the story, of course, is that it is pointless to preach to the sharks.
Third Way neoliberalism was proposed as a new way forward for the left after the resouding victories of rightwing neoliberals in Britain and the US (Thatcher and Reagan). The new left would keep the “values” of the old, but espouse free market economics. The goal would be a socially progressive society, with a decent social safety net, but also allowing for large concentrations of wealth (and therefore power) in the private sector. Third way neoliberalism can only work if the moneyed elites are somehow restrained; if , for some reason, they resist the temptation of using their wealth to control democracy (by using media to further the agenda, and funding politicians directly), in order to further increase their own power and wealth. As an example, Third Way politicians would like a booming and low-taxed private sector and also a modest social safety net; as if the power of the private sector would not be used to destroy the safety net (in order to lower taxes for, and increase the power of, the private sector). In essence, Third Way politics hinges on tolerating the sharks, and hoping they behave: “tell ’em they are welcome to help themselves civilly, and in moderation, but they must keep quiet”
In 2016, the failure of Third Way politics showed itself to be absolute, irredeemable and complete. The lesson to be learned (and it was foreshadowed by the work of T .Picketty) is that is impossible for democratic, progressive societies to coexist with elites that concentrate enormous amounts of wealth. Third Way politics is a conceptual impossibility; the only possible way forward for the left is to attack the high concentrations of wealth that are a cancer on democracy.
For many hypotheses, experiments under laboratory conditions are impossible in the social sciences. The best a historian or sociologist can hope for, then, is a so-called “natural experiment”, where conditions spontaneouslty approximate those of an experiment. For the social scientist, it is therefore rather fortunate that Barack Obama was such a great politician (eloquent, charismatic, intelligent), and Donald Trump such a transparently disgusting human being. In these near-perfect conditions, third-way neoliberalism failed spectacularly. This means that third way neoliberalism can never win again. Candidate Hillary Clinton was a victim of president Bill Clinton’s policies (much more so than his indiscretions): he aided the processes of capital mobility (globalization), the concetration of wealth, bank deregulation and the erosion of the fairness doctrine in the media. The first three caused the inequality and poor employment that fueled populist anger; the last made it possible for that populist anger to power a transparent con-man like Trump.
The only way forward for the left is true populism: nationalize fossil fuel industries and use them as a transitional energy source, tax financial speculation to the point that it becomes a marginal part of the economy; spend on job-intensive infrastructure to put money in the pockets of the working class; make the minimum wage a living wage, recognize health and education (including higher education), as human rights, de-privatize prisons and water utilities. And yes, the people who profit from all these moral affronts will fight every positive change; it is about time that the left fought back.
