The Right Politics to Come (2001)

A century of the greatest political confrontations in the history of capitalism has ended in a complete surrender of the left. But the victory has been paradoxical for the victor: triumph has been accompanied by dissipation. No clear electoral or political dividends have come for the parties of the right. This is commonly attributed to the nature of the victory itself: the acceptance of the basics of neo-liberalism in all nations by parties of the centre and social democratic left, along with their new closeness to particular sections of the capitalist classes, has simply blurred the old political lines and identities making the party system increasingly similar to the US system of two parties of capital (of which Julian Neyerere was known to have said, “The United States is also a one party state, but with typical American extravagance, they have two of them”). In this sense, almost all politics today is the politics of the right, the politics of the classes of property and older parties of the right can no longer expect any special purchase on the political situation. And all parties suffer many problems in common: disoriented policy, corruption scandals linked to increased election expenses, erosion of traditional social bases, and significant sources of dissatisfaction with aspects of globalization, not least from among the capitalist classes themselves.

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