Hyper-capitalism and extreme identity politics are driving us to distraction. Both destroy the basis of a common life shared across ages and classes. The COVID-19 crisis could accelerate these tendencies further, or it could herald something more hopeful: a post-liberal moment.
Adrian Pabst argues that now is the time for an alternative – postliberalism – that is centred around trust, dignity, and human relationships. Instead of reverting to the destabilising inhumanity of ‘just-in-time’ free-market globalisation, we could build a politics upon the sense of localism and community spirit, the valuing of family, place and belonging, which was a real theme of lockdown. We are not obliged to put up with the restoration of a broken status quo that erodes trust, undermines institutions and trashes our precious natural environment. We could build a pluralist democracy, decentralise the state, and promote embedded, mutualist markets.
This bold book shows that only a politics which fuses economic justice with social solidarity and ecological balance can overcome our deep divisions and save us from authoritarian backlash.
Table of Content
Preface
Acknowledgements
Prologue: a new era
I POSTLIBERAL TIMES
1 Resolving the interregnum
2 Politics after the plague
3 Why opposites coincide
4 New polarities
II A PUBLIC PHILOSOPHY OF POSTLIBERALISM
5 The art of politics
6 Social virtues
7 Mutual obligations
8 Pluralism
9 Place, limits and ecology
III POLITICAL AND POLICY PROGRAMME 10 Building a relational economy
11 Renewing democratic corporatism
12 Reweaving the social fabric
13 Restoring the common home of nature
14 Promoting civic internationalism
Epilogue: a new battleground of ideas
Notes
About the author
Adrian Pabst is Professor of Politics at the University of Kent, Deputy Director of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research and a leading thinker in the ‘Blue Labour’ movement.
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