Professor Tony Judt at NYU, whose writings have often appeared on this site, recently gave a lecture at NYU. As always, it is well worth reading. In fact I would argue it is mandatory reading for anyone who considers themself “leftist” or “progressive.” Judt provides the historical background for the political debates of today. He also provides a response to those (on the left) who believe the collapse of the current system is the only way to change it:
We too have lived through an era of stability, certainty, and the illusion of indefinite economic improvement. But all that is now behind us. For the foreseeable future we shall be as economically insecure as we are culturally uncertain. We are assuredly less confident of our collective purposes, our environmental well-being, or our personal safety than at any time since World War II. We have no idea what sort of world our children will inherit, but we can no longer delude ourselves into supposing that it must resemble our own in reassuring ways.
…We find it hard to conceive of a complete breakdown of liberal institutions, an utter disintegration of the democratic consensus. But it was just such a breakdown that elicited the Keynes–Hayek debate and from which the Keynesian consensus and the social democratic compromise were born: the consensus and the compromise in which we grew up and whose appeal has been obscured by its very success…The first task of radical dissenters today is to remind their audience of the achievements of the twentieth century, along with the likely consequences of our heedless rush to dismantle them.
There is a review of the event here.
Tags: Activism, Left Politics, Solutions