Beyond Right and Left - New Politics and the Culture Wars - PART TWO

Beyond Right and Left - New Politics and the Culture Wars - PART TWO

Rather than envisaging an alliance between the traditional Left and other already existing intellectual and social movements, including social liberals, environmentalists and 'compassionate conservatives', McKnight's call is for a new movement that blends selected principles of all the aforementioned parties. That said, McKnight's policy prescriptions borrow heavily from the traditional Left he is eager to disavow. The author's call for reduced and/or more flexible working hours in support of families could easily have come from a socialist program (the 35-hour week in France was won by a Socialist government), and his call for 'good standards of health care for all, regardless of income' as well as 'high quality child care and home care', reflect the traditional aspirations of the social democratic welfare state, extending these aspirations to provide additional support for families in balancing paid work, domestic labour and social and family life.

The possibility of building what Italian Marxist thinker Antonio Gramsci would have called a 'counter-hegemonic historic bloc' through an alliance of the Left and elements of the 'Old Right', is certainly a prospect worth exploring. Such an alliance could well be practical rather than theoretical, and need not be bound by the kind of shared philosophical foundations that McKnight seems to feel are essential in the building of a new movement. Of such a movement, McKnight writes:

A movement on this basis could be very powerful because it would unite unusual bedfellows -- not just welfare and women's groups and trade unions, but religious and pro-family groups.

The same might be said of an alliance characterised by an ongoing exchange and dialogue rather than a single set of unifying philosophical foundations. McKnight is correct to take conservatism seriously -- and he is correct to see 'compassionate conservatives' and the tradition of social liberalism as having a potential affinity with the Left in attempts to foster social cohesion through labour market regulation, the welfare state and social wage provision. There is no need, however -- despite the limitations of a linear Left/Right political spectrum, and a possible overlap between ideologies and programs of the 'old Right' and the Left -- to liquidate Left traditions or socialist politics into a new philosophy. Today the Left should again place itself in the vanguard of progressive social change. Though, as McKnight would probably recognise, there are many instances in this struggle where the Left need not and should not act alone.

PART ONE OF THIS REVIEW CAN BE FOUND HERE:

http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/2210849-beyond-left-and-right-new-poltics-and-the-culture-wars

Tristan Ewins is a freelance writer, qualified teacher and member of the Australian Fabian Society. David McKnight's book is Beyond Right and Left - New Politics and the Culture Wars, Allen and Unwin, Crows Nest, NSW, 2005.