• John Quiggin

29 October 2010We need to mobilise a positive alternative to the fear, anger and tribalism on offer from the right, argues John Quiggin on johnquiggin.com

ANGELA MERKEL’s recent denunciation of German multiculturalism marks another step in the tightening of ties between the market-liberal right and ethnic-national tribalism, evident in other European countries and in the US (most obviously with the rise of the Tea Party). In part at least, this is a result of weakness. The positive appeal of market liberalism has declined a fair bit since the triumphalist decades of the 1980s and 1990s, and the global financial crisis exposed the failure of its theoretical basis. But there are obvious problems for social democrats in responding to this development. I’ve been thinking about this for a while, and have come to the view that it’s better to put up some half-thought ideas for discussion (and maybe debunking) than to wait for a perfect formulation…

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John Quiggin is an Australian Research Council Federation Fellow in Economics and Political Science at the University of Queensland

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