IN LAST WEEK’S ARTICLE I sought to highlight the fact that the election of self-declared social democrat Jeremy Corbyn as leader of the British Labour Party was debunking the widely held assumption that there was no alternative to the dominant neo-liberal world view. I also argued that “the historical moment in which we now live is one in which the political forces previously marginalised by rampant neo-liberalism are now organising themselves in collective resistance”.
Whilst there is still a very long way to go before a fully matured organisational and collective response that eclipses the hegemony of the currently dominant world view is able to assert itself, it should not escape notice that a few well placed global leaders are all simultaneously emerging with the consistent message that a democratic socialist alternative is an imperative response to the excesses of the unchecked and unapologetic version of capitalism which has been rampant since the mid-1980s.
Pope Francis, Independent Senator and US Democratic Party presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders, Greece’s President Alexis Tsipras, along with other key figures in his Syriza party, all indicate that the UK’s Jeremy Corbyn is not an isolated “freak accident”, but that the space is now opening up for authoritative calls for a different path, and that neo-liberalism is not the last word on mankind’s economic and political possibilities.
It was heartening to see Pope Francis walk into the halls of the American Congress and insist that we should not make a political virtue of individual greed. In contrast to the false but widely celebrated claim by deceased neo-liberal ideologue Milton Friedman that “greed is good”, Pope Francis presented his morally and politically superior alternative in the belly of the beast that a philosophy of individual human greed was not only an inadequate foundation on which the future of mankind could be built but, if persisted with, would hasten the destruction of mankind.
Equally heartening is the meteoric rise in the political profile of US presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders. As is the case with the UK’s Corbyn, the significance of his campaign is in the surprising traction of Sanders itself. Sanders’ campaign provides an indication that the historically closed and limited range of political possibilities in the US is beginning to yield to include more robust expressions of social democracy. Sanders himself has openly advocated for European-style social democratic practice in the US, a country which despite its material progress, is burdened with the contradiction of widespread levels of poverty and marginalisation among large sections of its population.
Similarly, the re-election of Tsipras nine months after his first election has rebuffed claims that the Greek people had erred in first electing Syriza to office.
Whilst the social-democratic future remains uncertain, the emergence of progressive global leadership is a source of optimism, and may present new possibilities.
Tennyson Joseph is a political scientist at the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus, specialising in regional affairs. Email [email protected].