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 Contents
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
