 The last 13 years has witnessed a series of shocks, starting with the 2008 financial crash, the emergence of right-wing populists taking power, the rise of China, and most recently, the Covid pandemic, all of which mark the end of an era of political and economic orthodoxy. But what precisely has changed and what are the rules and opportunities of the game in 2021? Joining me to discuss that today is Paolo Giabatta, a sociologist and author of a new book out with Verso books titled The Great Recoil. Paolo, welcome to Downstream. Hi, I don't know. Hi everyone. It's great to have you down the line talking about these issues. We're talking, I think it's important to say this, before Labour Party Conference, this will be coming after Labour Party Conference. So if anything is wrong, you know why. The discussions we're having, this book in particular, I think, is really salient to so many conversations we're going to hear from mainstream politics over the next couple of years. So I'm really happy we could discuss it. You start with the book saying that neoliberalism is dead. Obviously, we've heard that multiple times before. Why in your opinion in The Great Recoil is neoliberalism incapable of carrying on as before? And what's the role of Covid-19 in that? The key thing in the book is that neoliberalism is understood not just as an ideology, but as a bipartisan consensus that defined a political era. The era starting in the 80s, obviously with Dutch and Reagan, but then progressively permeating also the center left, obviously Clinton, Blair, Schroeder, and so on and so forth. And there is a tendency in history where you have these periods of 40, 50 years where a certain consensus is dominant that then inevitably kind of fade away and open the space for a new consensus to emerge. I mean, before neoliberalism, we had social democracy, obviously, right in the post-war period, the so-called trans-glorious, the period of most intense and prosperous expansion of capitalism. And then the neoliberal era, I mean, the very talking about the neoliberal era implies that at some point the era was going to end. And indeed, we've heard about the end of neoliberalism in the aftermath of 2008, then more recently Stiglitz, and now many people in a way are joining these diseases. I mean, Adam Tooze, for example, in his last book. And I think in 2021, there's more reason to say that neoliberalism is fading because we have been through the 2010s, which have been a period of prolonged economic stagnation, where the recipes of neoliberal economists have evidently failed, and it's been a period of populist insurgencies, right, of the most different kind. I mean, protest movements, Gilles Jaune occupy, contesting neoliberalism from the streets, new left populist candidates and parties, obviously Corbyn Sanders, and then the populist right. And what unites all this phenomena was criticism of different aspects of neoliberalism. I mean, I think that many opinion polls that point to a change in attitudes among citizens highlight that the common sense of neoliberalism, namely his idea that the market is good, the state is bad, is now really going away from the center. I mean, you have seen your liberals around, but they're becoming more radicalized, precisely as befits a phase where their views, their beliefs are not common sense anymore, but become partisan once again. That's so true. The point about the role of the state in particular, and we'll return to that. And of course, COVID-19 really, really pressed home actually, just how fond many people are of the state to solve big problems. So if I'm understanding what you just said correctly, Paulo, because of course, many of our listeners, our viewers have heard this so many times, they've heard the words neoliberalism is over, whether it was 2008 with the crisis, whether it was the IMF saying something, whether it was cornstain easing going on for 10 years, this is clearly not how optimal markets function, etc. etc. What you're saying is the economic orthodoxy has been falling apart, and hey, it may carry on for a bit longer. But the political aspect of how states seek to coordinate things, the consensus among politicians in the media, that has definitively gone. So there are two separate parts of the sort of question. Is that what you're saying? That's correct. I mean, there's obviously two levels, right? I mean, there is a symbolic level or discursive level to politics, I mean, the slogans that are used, the catch words that are used, the kind of discourse politicians are using. In that regard, we can say that neoliberals were clearly against the state. I mean, rolling back the state, Reagan, Thatcher, and so on and so forth. And policy-wise, they also, I mean, while many people say no, but it's not true that neoliberalism was against the state. In fact, if you look at public spending as a percentage of GDP, clearly Margaret Thatcher reduced state spending as a percentage of GDP. Ronald Reagan, despite the Star Wars, right, and the Cold War with Russia, also reduced state spending in significant areas, I mean, in education, in health, in social welfare. And then you have another breed of neoliberalism, which is the sort of a third way breed of neoliberalism. And Tony Blair increased state spending, but mostly through private and public partnership, through ways that, you know, instead of emboldening the state, were designed to support the city, to support finance, while at the same time, demolishing many aspects of the welfare state. I mean, that is also what Clinton did. Actually, Clinton did more to destroy the U.S. welfare state than even Reagan did. Now, it's important to distinguish neoliberalism and capitalism, right? I mean, I think that now, having been immersed, being Blair children, or Blair babies, right, many of the older people like listening, right, in a sense, people who have been brought up through neoliberalism, we have come to equate neoliberalism and capitalism, as if they were the same things. But that is not the case. I mean, capitalism is multifaceted. It is polymorphous. It is extremely adaptable. It has been around for 500 years. And it has associated itself with very different regimes of accumulation, right? I mean, Genoese capitalism in the Renaissance, right? It was very different from the one existing now. We had more organized form of capitalism. We had more state is form of capitalism. In China, they are actually going back to state capitalism full on with the state owning basically 60% of the economy. So I mean, the important caveat there is that the end of neoliberalism doesn't at all mean a socialism as an automatic option, or B, the end of capitalism in any way or form. It's more a transformation of the very logical capitalism, because even capitalists themselves, in a way, are starting to salvage neoliberalism because it doesn't work for them either, right? I mean, a stagnating economy, stagnating demand, certain sections of capital at least have smelled the coffee and are now more open to a more interventionist state. So as this unfolds, how's it playing out between the right left and the center? Has the right understood that this great recoil is happening more quickly than the left? Is the center the least likely of all three sort of political blocks to adapt? And as you talk about that, can you maybe introduce some actual examples, you know, Biden, Trump, Boris Johnson, Keir Starmer, Jeremy Corbyn, perhaps? Yes, I mean, a key part of the book is really charting the political space, because of my impression, I think the impression of many people that there's been a lot of confusion in recent years. I mean, this neither left nor right kind of discourse, this sense that somehow political space has inverted with the right representing the working class and the left representing the middle class. We also people like PKT making observations to that in that sense. And what I wanted to point out was that the populist moment of the 2010s was not a moment of union of the extreme left and the extreme right. I mean, sometimes the phenomenon of populism is understood. Instead is like a pyramid, right, where there is a polarization at the base of the pyramid. Populism was more a change in society, a change in conditions, where at the time of a socioeconomic decline, it was more strategic to appeal to the lower middle class and to the impoverished working class rather than to the aspirational middle class of previous decades of the neoliberal era. So what it means is that you have a radicalization both at the right and at the left. I mean, on the right, you have a recuperation of nationalist themes and motives that for many years were not around or were in much more watered down form. And conversely, on the left, you have had during the 2010s the recuperation of overtly socialist motives. I mean, I'd say more social democratic and socialist motives. And in this context, the center is, in a way, is also an important adversary. I mean, that's another point of this chart in a sense that one thing is the nationalist right, but then you have a neoliberal center, which also extends into the right and the left and is now in a way the most conservative force in a sense is the one that is trying to push back all these attempts to moderately redirection economic policy in a more progressive direction. I mean, let's make it a case of Biden. I mean, A, I think me, you, Aaron, I don't know if you agree with that, many other people were really surprised by the kind of the swing to the left. I mean, the change of political direction of Biden, we didn't expect that. But that speaks precisely to this rearrangement of common sense in a sense that liberal elite, a part of the center, has decided to discard neoliberalism and bet for something new, a more progressive liberalism, a liberalism more focused on internal demand, domestic demand, marginally improving workers' conditions. But now Biden is facing, as we are seeing now, in Congress. I mean, I think he is on the 27th of September that they need to finally vote on their concession bill. You have people like Kristen Sinema and Joe Manchin who are stubbornly trying to block this change. I mean, because they're really defending the old neoliberal consensus and they are getting so rashed on Twitter for that. I mean, really, it's clear the public opinion is against them, yet they are defending them because they are bankrolled by the corporations who don't want this change, oil corporations, banking, and so on and so forth. The right, has the right been quicker than the left? I think it has because already in the 2010s, it was rearranged in its agenda in a post neoliberal direction. A, criticizing global trade. I mean, in a way, it has stolen anti-globalization from the left, if you think about it. So while it was the left in around the turn of the millennium that developed a critique of globalization or global trade, in the 2010s, it was the right that went full on for that. Yeah. Well, at the same time, maintaining low taxation policies, internally, a kind of Darwinist outlook on how the economy works. But one has to give to them that, I mean, Johnson is not the same tourism as Margaret Thatcher. It's quite a different one. Yeah, I think there's a few points I want to pick up there. The first is Biden. I'm sure some people watching this or listening in the States, but even in the UK too would think, what the hell are you talking about? Biden is not on the left. That's not what's being said. And I don't think this just reflects Janus and domestic policy or even rhetoric, right? I mean, there's two levels here. There's the rhetoric and clearly he's to the left of Barack Obama on rhetoric in terms of class, in terms of trade union rights, in terms of workers. But in terms of policy, we know that's also true. Like I said, even though it's not huge, it's significant. Then I think there's another sort of aspect here, which is, of course, foreign policy. And you don't need to go back that far to just 10 years ago, where the likes of David Cameron, George Osborne, Barack Obama, they have different politics. But in terms of their relationship to China, for instance, they would never dream of escalating a sort of face-off because of geopolitics, technological rivalry, and so on. And clearly that's changed. Biden is a huge jump from Obama in that respect. And I think that that has consequences both for domestic but also global politics, because like you say, the great recoil has meant the rules of the game have substantially changed. And then the thing about Boris Johnson and Margaret Thatcher, I mean, I find this indisputable. And I think that's why Brexit, when it happened, because of course, that the arguments to leave the European Union have been around since Britain joined the European Union. Labour had a manifesto in the 80s to leave the EU, it wasn't called the EU, then it was called the European Economic Community, the EEC. And there has of course been really strong Euroskeptism amongst Tories really since the Maastricht Treaty of the early 1990s. But the timing of it is just extraordinarily fortunate for British conservatism, I think. Because what it did, you're quite right, it allowed the right to take the clothing of anti-globalization away from the left. And I remember in that sort of the weeks and the months running up to the vote, you had progressives defending European central bank and also talking about the IMF and the WTO and you think, what the hell is happening here, right? And I wrote a short piece on medium at the time, tiny piece, it's still there, about Bernie Sanders is taking on NAFTA, rhetorically, of course, he was running for the Democratic nomination at that time. He's taking on NAFTA, he says the fundamental rules of global trade need to change. Because that edifice is collapsing, it's going. And I don't think the left in this country understood that, which is a tragedy. And I think they tied themselves to a consensus, which was literally never going to stabilize or stick around, which allowed within a few years, as we're now seeing, the Conservative Party to present themselves as the face of economic change. Do you think that's a fair assessment? Yes, completely. I think A, there was a tendency among many leftists to take globalization as a value unto itself, as related to culture of cosmopolitanism, openness, and not to be able to unpack what globalization is about. I mean, obviously, we are all in favor of refugees being protected and people being free to travel, but we cannot overlook the way in which many people's livelihood have been threatened by globalization, especially people in manufacturing. I mean, it's not that people in manufacturing are voting for the right because they're racist, or because, right, I mean, they're retrograde, but because all data shows that manufacturing has been very exposed to international competition, which has resulted in loss of jobs because of the location, as a result of the stagnating salaries and so on and so forth. I mean, I think I understand for the left, especially in the US, it is very difficult to swallow, in a way, Biden's change as being progressive. Because, I mean, we all rooted for Sanders. We all rooted for Corbin. I mean, we all rooted for democratic socialism. We thought that a far more radical change in political economy and in politics in general was necessary. And instead, Santa delivered something else, delivered a sort of watered-down social democracy or progressive liberalism. That is what you're seeing in the US with Biden, but it's also what you're seeing with yesterday's revival in Germany. Partly also through those re-election was very much premised on a more progressive policy platform on salaries and so on and so forth. I mean, so we didn't get what we wanted, what we already dreamed in. But at the same time, we should only rejoice at the fact that some pragmatic centrists have realized that this is a make-or-break moment. I mean, why is Biden doing that? Biden is doing that because of the Capitol Hill riots, right? And is the expression of a section of the liberal elite that got really scared on 6th of January 2021? Can I just say, I think as well, I mean, just the Trump experience really put the frightens up and up the American establishment and they don't all vote Democrat, right? And I think that's so, so true. And I think a lot of people looked at that quite soberly and thought, you know what, I'm willing to pay a little bit more tax. I'm willing to vote for a guy who's also going to have Ilhan Omar behind them and AOC. I don't really mind. This is hugely dangerous to my bottom line. I think, so you're saying actually Trump recalibrated is a big variable and recalibrating in the common sense of just the American liberal establishment? Or do you think that also applies more globally? I think that applies definitely, first of all, to the U.S. And one really revealing reading for me recently was this Brian Deese interview. Brian Deese is the chief economic advisor of Joe Biden with Ezra Klein, who really explained very transparently a thing, I mean, the kind of thinking behind the economic by dynamics, fundamentally, and he said that is the result of three fears. So fear one is fear of Trump. They want to avoid a return of Trump. How do you avoid that by paying workers decently and by providing social support? Because guess what? It is not a cultural war. It is a social war. I mean, right wing populism feeds on social injustice, inequality and neglect of working class communities. Be it is fear of China. It is fear of China, obviously, and also the model of Chinese state capitalism. I mean, in recent days, obviously a bit obfuscated by the Evergrande's affair. But we know that all in all Chinese capitalism has been far more successful than your liberal capitalism. And in a way, my sense is that the U.S. wants to become more like China, right? He wants to have more the state in the driving wheel, controlling investment, investment that are still going to be performed, realized by by private industry, but with the state strategizing, right, using industrial policy and using deficit, deficit spending. Like 60 years ago. Yeah. And finally, it is the results of of socialist, I mean, of the press pressure of socialist in the Democratic Party. I mean, those things have a result. Perhaps it's only the third factor, but still it widened the Overton window of policymaking. Also, because I think Biden was, as a pragmatic politician, I mean, he realized that the energy is there among youth. So what's the most intelligent way for you to neutralize internal opposition, if you want to put it in a Machiavellian way, is to co-opt it, right? Is to give them posts, is to make use of them, right? Is what the SPD has done, right? Also with democratic socialists emerging in the party, like Kevin Coonert. They were on the side where to expel him in 2019, ultimately, they gave him the deputy leadership. And he's a guy for nationalization. He's basically a Corbinista, right? Which is exactly the opposite. So going back to the Labour Party conference, what Sturmer has been doing instead, right? Really staunchly avoiding any talk of redirection or rebalancing, which I think is politically stupid. I mean, besides being wrong, I mean, is not really a marker of political intelligence. Can I just draw you quickly on that before we move on? I mean, that does seem to be the big takeaway here. So you're saying that the sort of centre-left, where it's succeeding, we're going to talk about pacification a bit and how it relates to all these questions. But where it is succeeding, and it is in many places, actually, you look at recent elections in Scandinavia, you look at Joe Biden, you look at what's going on now with the SPD in Germany. Again, I think this will come out after the German elections, but they're doing far better than we thought six months ago, quite frankly. And where they are performing well is where, like you say, they recuperate the energies of the left rather than antagonize them and take them on. And actually, right now, the UK Labour Party, and not even the UK Labour Party, because the Welsh Labour Party has done something like that. It's particularly Labour Westminster in the UK are actually going to war with their left and trying to reach out to the centre-right, which is the precise opposite of what these other successful parties have done coming from the centre-left. So on your understanding, do you think that's really a hiding to nothing for Keir Starmer? Do you think that strategy is highly likely to fail, given all the evidence we're looking at right now? I mean, I think it is like, I mean, I think also the polls show it, though it has come back a little bit in recent polls, but I mean, the general picture is one where there is no sense of momentum behind this campaign. There is no vision. There is also a huge gap between rhetoric and policy. Now rhetoric and policy obviously are two different levels, but when you promise something, right, in your leadership campaign manifesto and deliver exactly the opposite, that means that obviously you're being disingenuous, you're being hypocritical, and that ultimately politicians pay that, pay for that. I mean, you can lie as Plot already advised politicians to do, but only to a certain point. I also think that, I mean, really what we are seeing in Bidenism and what we are seeing in SPD's policy is something that, again, is about saving capital, right, is about making capital more effective to make it perform better, because ultimately intelligent members of the elite have realized that there is a problem with, guess what, with stagnating demand, because salaries have been pushed down for decades now. So now, I mean, making small concession to salaries, making small concession to wages is actually in the interest of the economy and of capitalism as a whole. Why with Starmer, you basically have, it's almost as if labor is trying to reposition itself as the party of fiscal prudence. Yes, 100%. I mean, he said this yesterday in this think, this think piece in the Fabian society yesterday, written for the Fabian society. And then again, you go back to Peter Mandelson piece today, he's basically saying the tourist response to COVID means that we can be the party of the small state. I mean, it's remarkable. And again, given your central hypothesis in this book, I mean, that's totally at odds with the new zeitgeist we're going towards. Yes, I'd say so. I mean, it's in a way as if, I mean, the labor was always divided between the neoliberal center and the socialist left, and now is really going to siding very strongly with the neoliberal center. I think that is not the only at all, the only possible solution. I think that these obviously these so-called revival of social democracy is still very much encrusted with many neoliberal elements. Plus, it's really not sure. I mean, I'm not predicting anything because, you know, like, at the end of September will be decisive because a, we have the German elections, and we will see what will happen after the German elections. We still still could get a gross equalization, not changing much policy in Germany. Same thing with the reconciliation bill. If that is defeated, right? I mean, many of these things we would need to be re discussed and reconsidered. But if you look at the long term, if you look at changes in attitudes, if you look at Gallup, Ipsos, and all the analysis they conducted, you see a that people are far more in favor now of the state intervening in new areas that are demanding protection, that are demanding security, that they are more well disposed towards trade unions, right? So I think there is a shift, not necessarily towards the left, but towards demands for greater stating interventionism. And I think that a center left would be that is more forward looking would be very well positioned actually to attend those demands. Let's talk about the issue of sovereignty quite quickly. That was obviously a central narrative within the 2016 Brexit referendum. And it was something that the left and remainers, and I think that obviously those two broadly overlapped really showed away from discussions of sovereignty. They were scared of talking about sovereignty. When Farage talked about sovereignty, they either ignored it or they said he was being ridiculous or they said in the 21st century that no longer exists. Where does sovereignty sit in your broader analysis of what's going on right now? There's no politics without sovereignty, right? So anybody who says the sovereignty doesn't matter or is a problem in a way is fooling the audience. In a sense, it all depends on where you locate sovereignty. So the very debate about sovereignty was an easy debate about where should people have power? Ultimately, if you take the term, it means very simply supremacy. Man, supremacy of the state of political power over other powers as it is exercised typically over a territory and a population within the territory. It is a question that for a long time belonged more to academic discussions, right? Jurists or political scientists, diplomats would talk about sovereignty. The fact that now it has become a political issue that ordinary people talk about is precisely because in moments of sudden change, in moments of organic crisis, it is as if you see the moving parts of politics, I mean things that normally you don't see. So really in a way the zero degree of politics, the interiors of politics, so to speak, the entrails of politics. And why is it so important now? Because the main means of sovereignty in the paradigm before globalization was the nation state. And with globalization that has been eroding and eroding and weakened to the point where it has become very confused where power lies. But in turn, the dissatisfaction with globalization has led to a return of their oppressed. Precisely, if you read all the big books of neoliberals, sovereignty is always the punchball. I mean, they're always attacking sovereignty, they're always attacking control, the state, and so on and so forth. This is not just a myth. I mean, it's really what is written in the canonical texts. And therefore, as it happens at any moment of decline of a given ideology, of a given paradigm, when there is a paradigmatic shift, you tend to see the enemies of the previous paradigm emerging to the front. Then it all depends, it is a very polysemic term, it all depends how you understand sovereignty. You can understand sovereignty as jealous defense of borders, as anti-migrants posture, as defense of a natural cultural community, or you can understand it as people talking about food sovereignty, understand it, or energy sovereignty, or how environmentalists talk about sovereignty, namely a recuperation of control over political decisions and economic resources at the local and national level. Yeah, I think, again, that the lefts, the radical, not the left, because many left-wing people don't think on that level, I think the state is actually quite good, but you talk about there's a statophobia elsewhere in the book where this sort of newer left that emerged after the 1960s in particular had an aversion to the state, doesn't think the state can do anything well. And of course, the arguments about how that laid the foundations for thatcherism and Reaganism are well sort of litigated, you can agree or disagree. But I think it's clearly a it's clearly a current, which in the present moment, with climate change, with COVID-19, with the challenges of demographic aging, with the return of non-European superpowers, the conversation about, you know, the state and what its role is, is obviously, is obviously a massive one, both for the left and the right. A tendon with that is that is that question of sovereignty. And what I always found really peculiar, Paolo, is that you would talk to sort of greens, and I said, some of the green socialists, or left liberals, and they would say, we need to change globalization, it's terrible, it's not working. Okay, so what should we do? Should we situate power back within self-governing nation-states? Well, no, we can't do that. You think, well, where does that go? Well, you don't want the corporate globalization, you don't want nation-states to be self-governing and, and to be producing things. And you say, well, if we're going to, if we're going to reduce carbon emissions and decarbonize the global economy, clearly, we're going to have more state production at a national level. No, no, that would be socialism in one country, we can't do that. And it's just, you know, that whole one no many yeses, well, actually, it turns out many noes, no yeses, you know, that come from the sort of ultra globalization currents. And I feel like both the strengths and weaknesses of that account of the global economy coming from the left in the early 21st century are what are both, you know, helping the right and hindering the left. So the right have understood that actually these people had a really good account of transnational elites, global capital and a, and a democratic deficit. And these things are accurate. And also the time has come, politically popular. At the same time, the left's walked away from that, and then focused on the bad bits of it. Like, oh, actually, we should keep globalization. And it's just this incredible vault fast. And when I say the left again, I'm not too much Joe Biden or Jeremy Corbyn, but you know, activists more broadly from the, from below, from the radical left, and we saw this in the Brexit referendum, right? If you even said, if you even said, I'm going on a bit of a rant here, Palo, we will return to the book. If you even said after 2016, I mean, I said it, of course we should respect the referendum. Of course we should. People say you're racist. Yeah. You know, what, what level of discussion are we having here? This is unbelievable. So people didn't really know what was going on on the referendum. They weren't properly informed in what election ever in the history of humanity has ever been perfectly informed of the facts, right? Well, people were people properly informed in the 2019 general election about Jeremy Corbyn as a person, as a human being. Of course they weren't doesn't mean we run the thing. So Palo, very quickly as a, as a quicker side, you know, statophobia, is this something where the left is, where the left is getting better or is it going to keep on holding it back? I mean, I'm completely on the same page with you are on, on this in a sense that, I mean, what I see is that there was a certain strand of anti-authoritarian thought emerging in, in, in the 70s, really, there was very much about the critique of the state. And it comprised different movements. It also had good reasons. I mean, it was a critique of Stalinism. It was a critique of the failures of social democracy. But then it turned into a narcissistic individualism, which is now this individualism of, I want to decide whether to be waxed or not waxed is my ultimate decision. This cult of choice, right? As if you, the most important thing is individual choice, even when it comes to things that are by their natural collective, they are biological, right? As Benjamin Bratton also explained in his book, I mean, it's not, they go beyond you as an individual, really. And also there were figures like Nouveau-Philosoph, I mean, like people who were Maoist and then turned arch liberal, and they really pushed these critique of the state on and on, which in a way generalized critique of totalitarianism to any form of state interventionism, where ultimately, which was exactly the thesis of neoliberal, ultimately the end point of some industrial policy is the gulag, right? Which is obviously ridiculous. And that goes on also with a very shallow cosmopolitanism that has become prevalent, especially on the left, on the middle class left in recent years, which is very different from internationalism, right? Which was the standard line of socialist. I mean, the international was organized around national chapters. It was called international, because it united the people of the world in fraternity. It didn't want to dissolve them yet. Yes, I mean, people like Matsini was also involved with in discussion with socialist said that at some point in history, the human family will finally, whatever, merge and we will overcome the nation. But it was a very kind of distant projection. And indeed, it may well be it's not that nations will exist forever. Yet in the short to medium term, that's the most fundamental form of political organization that there is. And still, if you do polls, that is what where people think that legitimacy resides. So all this discussion about global democracy, which obviously is completely a kind of Pollyanna dream, right? You is very difficult to understand how it would actually work is really a huge distraction from what we can do. And actually from the realistic form of international collaboration, we can construct, right? Because really, we shouldn't go for an autarkic future or isolationist future. Yet at the same time, we need to start from where we are, we cannot start from the sky, we need to start from the ground. And we need to leverage the powers that we have, right? We cannot think about imaginary kingdoms as Machiavelli, but the real kingdoms as they actually exist. Yeah. There's, you know, you often hear this thing and it kind of attends the these leftist circles where they were, you know, again, where there's this quite shallow cosmopolitanism and people say, there's nothing more dangerous than an idea. So that's just not true. There's lots of things more dangerous than an idea. You know what, you know what the elite hate more than ideas? The law. If you change the law, and it's backed up with the sovereignty and power of the state, which means they have to pay their tax and they have lower profit margins, they have to pay their workers more. That's a lot more powerful than an idea in abstraction. But again, you know, that requires a certain engagement with the reality of politics and the state and the nation state in particular. I agree with you. I think, and also going back, and I would really recommend this to people watching, listening, the discussion I had with Ben Bratton on the return of the real, I think that the 21st century and the various crises which will shape it will inevitably inflect a new consideration and self understanding of what it is to be human. And we're seeing that with the COVID pandemic, right? People now realize that borders aren't going to stop a pathogen, or they're looking at global data sets around deaths and new variants. And that quantification of the world as a set of biological processes is informing their own interiority, which 10 years ago just sounds nuts. And of course, as climate change intensifies, we're going to see more and more of that. And we will recognize the fact that we are all situated within a within not just a global community, but a set of global physical, biophysical processes, which if we don't sort out, are going to have huge problems for us and subsequent generations. So I agree with you, Paolo, I think it's very simple to look at those crises as a Marxist as a leftist as a materialist and say, of course, we're going to transcend nation states. And that's a process which plays out through history. I won't use the word dialectically, but it is because you know, because people say, what does that mean? But at the same time, in the 21st century, right now in 2021, if you want to solve the housing crisis, if you want decisive action on climate change, if you want to ensure energy security for people, you have to work at the level of the nation state, you have you obviously have to. And I think, you know, I'll finish with this before I go to the next question. You were talking about how people in moments of crisis see the kind of entrails of politics and a good example right now is the energy crisis in this country. And you saw Keir Starme yesterday saying, like I say, this isn't we're recording this towards the end of September before the party conference. He said, you know, it's one of the and this is this is accurate. It's one of the priorities of the state, one of the first priorities of the state, it's almost like, you know, the rule of law is to ensure people have access to energy. Right. It's a responsibility of the state. And you think, when he's saying that, I think, well, maybe we should nationalize it then. But but it's precisely because the market mechanism in an era of crisis can't do these things, it can't necessarily give everyone energy, that all of a sudden those considerations of the nation and the nation state and sovereignty and power and control all come back. And like you say, if the left is fearful of actually talking on that terrain, we might as well not bother, you know, we might as well go sit on the beach and enjoy life and set up a direct debit to the local donkey sanctuary and just avoid politics. I mean, partly right is, I would say, is the sense of guilt of the converted a political personnel that embrace blairism, right, therefore betrayed its youth ideals. Ultimately, once you convert to something new, starting from a certain position, it's very difficult to convert back. So I think many people, especially older people, have such a strong political and effective investment in certain ideas. And thinking that the left was wrong in the defending workers, that is almost impossible for them to come back from that. So can I ask you a question on that basis then? Sorry to cut you off, but it's a really huge question for me. I wrote this piece on gerontocracy and I said that ultimately, you know, the scientific great lines, scientific revolutions happen one funeral at a time. Is that basically your analysis then of a lot of these people that are coming out of the political center? Those ideas will only go when that generation kind of goes, sorry to be morbid. But as I say in the article I wrote for Tribune on leadership, I mean, is really a certain age cohort. I mean, actually we had socialist grandpa's, so to speak. So like people in their 70s and 80s were still very strongly devoted to socialism. And then obviously people in all age brackets, but say there was a dominance of a certain way of thinking of boomers, I mean, of 68ers and people who were politicized in the 70s, who had very much this idea of, you know, that left has to change, has to embrace liberalism, people talking about liberal socialism as a drug in Italy, right? I mean, always to basically justify siding with capital and say that's the only way we can go about things. So that there is why that there is so much staunch opposition from certain people, I mean, including including Starmer. I'll just I'll come back to that point and then we'll move on to the final couple of questions. There was a great kind of provocation a few years ago saying that there are no Gen X politicians who've actually reached the top. I mean, you could say Miliband, of course, he lost, you could say David Cameron ended in absolute catastrophe. There are no and obviously in the US, they've still not had a generation ex president. You've gone from from, well, I suppose there was you've had Obama, but there was not post Obama post crisis really, let's say, I know he comes in 2008, but he comes in literally a month afterwards. You see the failure of Pete Butch edge, you see the failure of Kamala Harris. And this is where the sort of discourse came from was that these particular politicians, that particular cohort, Andy Burnham, a vet, Cooper ed bulls in the UK, were they grew up and they were politicized in this context at the end of history near liberalism. And now actually the whole ideological toolkit, like say as a cohort is is really kaput. And it was an interesting idea for me, the idea that you basically go straight from boomers to millennials as the sort of cutting edge of political leadership. Yeah, which in a way really confirms one key point more kind of almost methodological point of the book. I mean, this idea that there are some such things as ideological eras or ideological epochs, there is a zeitgeist, there is a spirit of the times we are all permeated by we are all kind of imbued with, which means I mean, you know, like you are very, we all of us have been very shaped by the ideas that were dominant in a certain period, even when we fought against them, right, we were caught in a certain paradigm in a certain common sense in certain assumptions that were shared by by many people. So these prevailing assumptions at any point in time really inflect the entire political space, right, and shape how people view the world, regardless of where they position themselves, they need to position themselves within the space that that exists. That is why Blair's babies and some kind of touch your children on the social democratic left are very difficult to to move towards a more sensible agenda really at this point. Yeah, kind of completely odds with empiricism. Last, I'm going to say last two questions, really, the last question is more of a sort of question about action and what people do going forward. But the last sort of open question is what's the role of patriotism here, because you talk about that in the book. And of course, before people get worried, I'm not advocating patriotism. It will be without freaking out. But obviously, you're talking about the return of control, you're talking about the return of protection that can either be right or left wing that can be progressive or aggressive, cosmopolitan or bigoted. But that's going to be a big pill for people to swallow, you're saying about sort of the idea of democratic patriotism, which is a big part of the book towards the end. Can you just talk about what democratic patriotism is and why you think the left should adopt it or embrace it? Yes, I understand that it is the most difficult piece of the book. I mean, for the left audience is also in reviews is the part that looks like the one that the reviewers didn't like much. But I thought nonetheless that it was a point that was necessary to make in a way I already made it in previous works, which is that I mean, ultimately, I think something that is really now common sense on the left on the US left, especially, right? I mean, if you look at Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, if you look at Ilhan Omar, they are often reclaiming patriotism. I mean, a famous tweet by Ilhan Omar, I'm when you remember when Trump attacked the squad and said, none of you is from here, right? You're not really really Americans. And Ilhan Omar very intelligently replied to that saying, I'm patriotic, I'm a patriotic American, I'm the quintessential American, actually, because I'm a refugee who came here, built life again, and managed really to fulfill in their own way, like the American dream, right? And more generally, and say philosophically, the point is that the politics is locational. Politics as demos and topos, right? People and place are tied together. And precisely because of the fact that globalism doesn't work, I mean, because globalism is an abstraction. I mean, people are defined by the place where they live. Incidentally, society is especially, right? And there's nothing necessarily wrong with that. In fact, love for your place, love for your community, love for your, I mean, starting from the basic level, it's not just the nation, it's your neighborhood, it's your city, it's your region, it's your nation. As traditionally being seen in political philosophy by civic republican thinkers, has a fundamental condition for political action. Because if you don't care about your place, why should you act? I mean, not caring about your place, which is loving your place, ultimately, right? That's the meaning of patriotism, ultimately leads to acceptance of the inevitable, like to nihilism, and to, right? I mean, fatalism, ultimately. So I think on the left, people are very ready to accept certain forms of patriotism, more local, municipalism. What is municipalism? If not municipal patriotism, like being a Londoner, loving London, and wanting basically London to be your place, you cherish, and you want to make better. So the important thing about it, I think, I mean, politically, strategically, is that patriotism can be a unifying element to build a coalition, right? Because in order to build a coalition, you need to speak to different interests, you need to speak to the middle class, you need to speak to people in urban areas, in rural areas, you need to speak to workers in factories and office workers, but you need to unite them around something. And that's something is the vision of this land. I mean, even in Corbinism, ultimately, there is a lot of patriotism, right? I mean, many videos, I mean, we want, this is our country, this is where we live, and we love it and want to make it better. If we concede this discourse to the right, is simply going to be nationalism and saying, I love my country because I don't want other people. But that is not at all the only way in which people can express their completely legitimate sense of belonging, right? And I mean, I love to be Italian, because I was born there, and as anybody like loves his roots. And I think that is actually a resource that is a resource for progressive politics, like speaking to people pride and people's sense of belonging. I mean, I think that writing it off, I think is silly. And I think if you look at, for instance, the Marseillais, the anthem of the French Revolution, the original Republican Revolution, well, not the original, you can maybe go back a bit further. But when we talk about sort of world historical events, and it talks about patrie, and that was the anthem until the Internationale, the Marseillais until I think maybe the early decades of the 19th century. So maybe the 1840s even the Marseillais was like the anthem of the workers movement globally. So when I say globally, across Europe. And so I think you're obviously right. And it's obviously something that needs to be discussed. But I think where people would have informed misgivings, not sort of liberal, shallow liberal cosmopolitan misgivings, which I agree, they're just pointless identity politics for people that, you know, shop at a Cardo. But I think where there is a where there is a meaningful critique is to say, look, you and I, Paula, we're doing this right now over, you know, Ethernet with high speed broadband, LED lights, microphone, cameras, computers, none of this would be possible without the fruits of imperialism. And the fact that we have subordinated billions in the global south in an economic system, which necessarily privileges the working class of the global north. And so what I'd say is, and of course, those those workers in the global north are exploited as well, of course. What I'd say is, do you not think there's a possibility where you talk about democratic patriotism? And I do, by the way, I think this is a bit of a, this is a chink in the arm for the American left, I think, actually, particularly the squad, not the American, because many good American leftists on this, but people within the Democratic Party, where they don't actually have an analysis of imperialism and imperial war. And so perhaps democratic patriotism for an Italian, although of course, it's Italy had an empire, it had some terrible moments in history. But democratic imperial, democratic patriotism for an Italian, or for a Welsh person, or particularly for an Irish person, given they were, they were colonized, they were occupied at that part of Ireland still is. What would you not say that actually, well, democratic patriotism is going to clearly mean something quite different in Britain or in England, the heartland of a colonial empire, or the United States to what it might mean, for instance, and say Spain, Ireland, even Italy? Yeah, of course, that in the US and the UK, that is something that is a burning issue. I mean, though these countries are also now forced to reckon with their past, I mean, that is in a way, their nation building is still going on as they are forced to reckon with society. Think about the US, right, retreating from Afghanistan, right, embracing more isolationist policies, it will need to learn to live without at least the most evident form of imperialism, namely invading other countries. And therefore, it will need to go to a phase of kind of national self reflection about what the United States is, what its identity mission is. And the same thing with the UK. I mean, I think the UK is still in this state of national confusion, particularly England, right, because still has not decided what it has to become after being the metropolis of the empire. But yeah, I mean, obviously, the UK, Britain and France are only some of the countries are many other countries that are there that have different conditions that are now kind of weaker in the international system. But what would you say? I mean, I understand that the reservations come also from the disingenuous use of patriotism, the Starmers as employed, right, since he was elected as leader of the Labour Party, namely, just fly the flag, whatever, and say that you love the army and something completely superficial and completely basic conservative embracing conservative views of the nation. While the examples I'm looking at, besides Ilan Omar, Alexander Kazakortes, I mean, someone like public lesbians, right, that really speaks to the pride of Spaniards in the civil war against the fascist in all their efforts, working class struggles, struggles for independence. And there, there is something really powerful about reclaiming people. I mean, like, like Britain, like one could speak about the charities, one can speak about working class movements, one can speak about the efforts people made in the best pages of a nation's history. Is it really just speaking about ultimately the certain history, certain history that willing or willing, we are all shaped by? I do totally appreciate that. And just to say, Palo, I don't necessarily disagree with with your sort of conclusions. I do think, I do think the criticism is valid. I think what you raised there about, Oh, the left may have misgivings justifiably because of people like Starmus saying, I'm a patriot. And they just pointed the St George flag and a pint of beer is I think the big difference in saying patriotism and socialism is, if you say I'm a socialist means you have a commitment to a set of values around around doing around doing stuff around changing stuff. So you're a socialist, there's a workplace which doesn't pay people a living wage. At the very least, they should be paid a living wage. So she joined a trade union. If there's a resource which everybody needs, they should be able to access it regardless of ability to pay patriotism. How is it a doing? How's it a doing thing? That's what I'm sort of unsure about. So patriotism means I watch the England football team. I like them. I like the England football team. I've got an England football shirt. But I don't quite, you know, how's that a doing thing? Or and you talk about it in the book and it's something we've not really touched on, but NHS. No, but hold on. I mean, yeah, but the necessity in politics for an enemy, which is what you talk about. And I think sometimes discourses around nationhood and patriotism try to elide that. And I think as a socialist, the enemy, or you know, that there's clearly there are contradictions in society where people have competing interests. And I think sometimes discourses around sort of democratic patriotism can can obscure those. Now I'm not an ultra leftist, which says we can never talk about the nation. And, you know, I think for me, the nation state is the primary mode of self government. So clearly we have to talk about the politics of England. Of course we do. But I think that talking about the politics of England, and then all of a sudden we get onto kind of strange discussions around sociological Englishness. I think I think that can that can be quite a strange terrain. But I think to conclude, I think, you know, I remember Ash Sarko once making a really funny tweet and somebody said, you're not English. And she said, where else in the world would you have somebody who's Bengali and as mouthy as me and and and be and be saying the things I'm doing. And I'm saying I'm a luxury communist and be celebrated for it. And and also tap into a certain a certain, I think there is a certain national sense of humor in Britain. Maybe people think that's over essentializing tap into that and actually be be liked for it. And I think for me, I look at Ash, I think, yeah, Ash, you are English quit essentially. Yeah, she couldn't be she couldn't make people maybe going to go crazy if I says she couldn't be Irish. She couldn't be French. She couldn't be Italian. So me, she's very English in a very 21st century sense. So I do think there's some validity there. Absolutely. But I just wonder if the political downside is is a little bigger. And I don't think all the left shouldn't the left shouldn't support the England team of the euros because that's nationalism. I don't think that. But I do wonder does obscure, you know, the socialist content. I mean, I don't think so in the sense that is ultimately an appeal to community. And to the duties all citizens including the rich have to community. So public leisure speaking about fiscal patriotism or tax patriotism. So so he joked and said, I'm sure that the millionaires and billionaires in Spain will be patriotic and and pay their taxes. It's a way to say, Hey, guys, regardless of who you are, you are living here and you have some duties to the community here. So you cannot take your money abroad to tax havens and just do as if you're not part of this community because you are feeding on this community, your wealth comes from this community comes from this place. But it is also about an approach of saying in this phase of crisis of globalization, while for years we looked outward, these exo politics of looking outward. Now we're forced for a phase of time to look inward to look at where we are. We need to reground in a place. We need to reground in a place and understand what are the structures there? What is the landscape there? What is the history there that we can mobilize? So all these politics of rescuing, repaying, recovery involves an element of relocalization. And the nation now is locality in a global world, right, is the place where things can be built, can be constructed. So I mean, it's not how would you say a celebration of the nation as such or a celebration of patriotism as such, but saying certain forms, a certain breed of patriotism, namely patriotism of democratic community, respect for democratic community, calls to duty towards community is one that is necessary to reclaim if we are to push. It's more a means to an end, right? It is a means to push in a socialist agenda. There's a great and going back and we'll finish on this broader question of nation and patriotism. There's a great sort of depiction of this in Kikuro. I think it's in the republic tract he wrote. What is it? Is it res publica? Is it res publica? Okay, but where Scipio's dream can be found, I've not read it for years now, Paolo, I'm really showing myself, you know, whenever you talk to Italians about this, they've all been learning Greek and Latin at school. But in Scipio's dream, you know, he has this dream and it's basically one of the sort of foundational texts of Roman republican political thought. And basically human existence, and I think this is a beautiful way of understanding politics and obligations, is a series of concentric circles, which starts with yourself, your family, your friends, your community, your town, your nation, and then goes outwards to all of humanity. And I think for myself, as somebody in the 21st century, who's a fully automated luxury pantheist communist, I would extend those concentric circles to mammals, to other species, and to our planet. And so I do agree with that idea of obligation and responsibility emanating outwards is a really powerful one. I think the idea of the family and the nation are necessarily right wing. I agree with you on that. Where does this account of democratic patriotism disagree, say, with blue labor? On a very important account, namely for new labor, I mean, we agree, I agree with the new labor diagnosis that the working class has to be the strategic, is a strategic electorate that the left should claim back. But blue labor thinks that basically you just need to adopt a conservative discourse to abandon mentions of rights, civil rights, LGBT rights, the defense of migrants, because of the assumption that workers are conservative, they are culturally conservative, and that is why they're voting for the right, which is a complete non sequitur. Actually, workers are voting for the right because they don't feel represented by the left anymore on socio economic issues. You know, like workers, especially in regions in more peripheral areas, also in the past, tended to be more culturally conservative. Why? Because they lived in more peripheral areas. I mean, this is a long term tendency. Yet they voted for social democratic parties that perhaps were more culturally progressive than they themselves were, because the socio economic offer of those parties was so good that they, in a way, whatever, the priority for them was not cultural issues, but the priority for them was economic issues. It is obvious that when the left has nothing on offer for these people, why should these people go to the left? So that is a very important difference, between people who are proposed in a kind of conservative socialism or cultural conservativism. I mean, my proposal is a socialism that protects, a protective socialism, but that protection is first and foremost economic and environmental. It is not protection of identity or is not an invitation to adopt conservative motives as a kind of lurching to the right kind of strategy. Because we have tried the strategy, started trying the strategy, clearly the strategy doesn't work. It simply reinforces the frame that the right wants. Instead, we need to move the conversation towards our frame, which is a frame about economic demands, which is a frame about social rights, is a frame about better wages, better working conditions, and better public services. That is how we can reclaim manufacturing working class votes, right? Because the service working class is already quite solidly with the left, but we need to reclaim manufacturing working class votes. It was a great place to end it on. Thank you, Paolo. And just to say, the book has been available for what, a week now. Given that you talk about political theory, history, economics, sociology, it's very readable, I have to say. And so people shouldn't be put off by the idea, oh, this is a really, you know, weighty time. It's a really great book. Lots of, lots of nice pithy facts. Lots of suggested reading comes into it. And I think if you, if you skirt diagrams, a lot of diagrams, very useful diagrams. Often that's not the case with political sciences, but very different with yourself. Maybe it's because you're more of a sociologist. So yeah, very much recommended. Paolo, thanks for joining us. And I hope, I hope to see you again soon. Thanks for having me, Aaron. Thank you so much for joining us on Spotify on iTunes. 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