Beyond Left and Right: The Future of Radical Politics

285 Pages·2007·20.644 MB·English

by  Anthony Giddens

Beyond Left and Right

Beyond Left and Right
The Future of Radical Politics
Anthony Giddens
Polity Press
Copyright © Anthony Giddens 1994
The right of Anthony Giddens to be identified as author of this work has been
asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in 1994 by Polity Press
in association with Blackwell Publishers Ltd.
Reprinted 1995, 1996, 1998(twice), 2006, 2007
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Contents
Preface viii
Introduction 1
Globalization, tradition, uncertainty 4
Socialism, conservatism and neoliberalism 8
A framework for radical politics 11
Coda: the question of agency 20
1 Conservatism: Radicalism Embraced 22
Old Conservatism 24
Conservatism, conservatisms 27
Conservatism and neoliberalism 37
Conservatism and social change 41
Conservatism and the concept of tradition 45
2 Socialism: the Retreat from Radicalism 51
Socialism and the question of history 52
Socialism and democracy 59
Revolutionary socialism 62
Limits of the cybernetic model 66
Socialism and the welfare state 69
vi Contents
3 The Social Revolutions of our Time 78
Simple and reflexive modernization 80
Structural consequences 87
The advent of life politics 90
Social change and the role of active trust 92
Manufactured uncertainty and global risk environments 97
4 Two Theories of Democratization 104
The popularity of democracy 104
An alternative view 110
Participation, representation, dialogue 112
What is democracy? 113
Dialogic democracies 117
Democracy and the problem of solidarity 124
Democracy, inequality and power 132
5 Contradictions of the Welfare State 134
Structural sources of the welfare state 134
Problems of welfare: work and class 139
The question of the underclass 144
The future of welfare: a preliminary orientation 149
6 Generative Politics and Positive Welfare 151
Welfare systems and manufactured uncertainty 151
Arguments from global poverty 157
An alternative development 163
The structural diamond 168
7 Positive Welfare, Poverty and Life Values 174
Work, productivism, productivity 175
From the welfare state to positive welfare 180
Welfare in a post-scarcity society 182
Class divisions and social conflicts 188
The affluent against the poor? A generative model of equality 190
Contents vii
8 Modernity under a Negative Sign: Ecological
Issues and Life Politics 198
Thinking about nature 202
Nature: living in and with it 208
Questions of reproduction 212
The order of high-consequence risks 219
Environment, personhood 223
Conclusion 227
9 Political Theory and the Problem of Violence 229
The state and pacification 231
Masculinity and war 235
Violence, ethnic and cultural difference 242
10 Questions of Agency and Values 246
Notes 254
Index 263
Preface
This book began life some fifteen years ago, as the planned third
volume of what I then termed a ‘contemporary critique of
historical materialism’. That third volume was never written, as
my interests moved away in somewhat different directions. The
present work is based on the ideas I sketched for the third
volume, but also draws extensively on concepts I developed in
subsequent published writings.
I should like to thank those colleagues and friends who have
read and commented on initial drafts of the book, or have
otherwise assisted in its preparation. Thanks, therefore, to Ulrich
Beck, Ann Bone, Montserrat Guibernau, Rebecca Harkin,
David Held, David Miliband, Veronique Mottier, Debbie Sey
mour, Avril Symonds and Dennis Wrong.
Introduction
What can it mean to be politically radical today? For the spectre
which disturbed the slumbers of bourgeois Europe, and which
for more than seventy years took on solid flesh, has been returned
to its nether world. The hopes of radicals for a society in which,
as Marx said, human beings could be ‘truly free’ seem to have
turned out to be empty reveries.
The idea of political radicalism has long been bound up
primarily with socialist thought. To be a ‘radical’ was to have a
certain view of the possibilities inherent in history – radicalism
meant breaking away from the hold of the past. Some radicals
were revolutionaries: according to them revolution, and perhaps
only revolution, could produce that sharp separation which they
sought from what went before. Yet the notion of revolution was
never the defining feature of political radicalism; this feature
consisted in its progressivism. History was there to be seized hold
of, to be moulded to human purposes, such that the advantages
which in previous eras seemed given by God, and the prerogative
of the few, could be developed and organized for the benefit of
all.
Radicalism, taking things by the roots, meant not just bringing
about change but controlling such change so as to drive history
onwards. And it is that project which now seems to have lapsed.
How should one react to such a situation? Some say that the
possibilities of radical change have been foreclosed. History, as
it were, has come to an end and socialism was a bridge too far.