Just as was the case with the Second Disruption in early nineteenth-century Europe, populism is the only way to manage the kind of transformation we are set to confront. Then, making sense of a changing world was enacted through new forms of togetherness: nationalism both liberal and authoritarian, imperialism, racism and socialism. The present juncture demands something similar, asking us to create a collective politics that goes beyond scarcity, work and the narrow forms of selfhood and identity ofered by neoliberalism. The notion that a ruling class can manage such transition – for better or worse – within such civilisational rift isn’t just wrong, it’s absurd. What is more if new, appropriate forms of togetherness are not created, those authoritarianisms concocted by previous generations will return.
The Red and the Green
This ‘luxury’ populism must be both red and green. Red because it places the energies of the Third Disruption at the service of humanity – in the process enhancing personal freedom like never before. Green because it knows climate change is inevitable and that going beyond fossil fuels is a matter of critical urgency. What is more, rather than reducing our quality of life, it grasps how the transition to renewable energy ofers a bridge to energy abundance – permitting more prosperous societies than previously possible under the petty limits of fossil fuels.
A green politics of ecology without a red politics of shared wealth will fail to command popular support. Conversely, the promise of red plenty based on fossil fuels and resource scarcity will fall victim to climate breakdown, leaving the world’s poor exposed to devastation like never before. Which is why the only politics fit to fight climate change is the demand for FALC – driven by the impulse to lead fuller, expanded lives, not diminished ones.
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