Rigid, antiquated ideological frameworks only stand in the way of building a good society
During an official visit to France in 1998, the UK’s prime minister at the time, Tony Blair, delivered an address to the French parliament in which he made the case that we need to unburden ourselves of dogmatic ideologies in order “to make realistic sense of the modern world”.
This post-ideological era, he said, “is a world in which love of ideals is essential, but addiction to ideology can be fatal … there are no ideological preconditions … What counts is what works.”
Almost a decade later, in 2017, this was echoed by Emmanuel Macron when he was a candidate for the French presidency. Despite having been a minister in the Socialist Party cabinet of former prime minister Manuel Valls, Macron campaigned on the basis that he was “neither Right nor Left”.
The politics of neither Right nor Left also played out during Britain’s protracted and unbearable process of leaving the EU, particularly during the premiership of Theresa May, when the Conservative Party was led by somebody who was opposed to Brexit, while Labour was led by Jeremy Corbyn, whose attitude towards it was seen as ambivalent at best.
In the US — where the Growing Climate Solutions Act was recently tabled by bipartisan sponsors in the US Senate — the policy response to the climate crisis likewise cannot be cut along the traditional post-Cold War ideological axis. Rather, it is an issue bigger than ideology — a tragedy of the commons, requiring less confrontation and more collaboration in order to avert catastrophe.
The conversation about the role of the state, ideology and its place in a modern world is not a new one, but the Covid-19 global emergency has again brought it to the fore.
Hardliners defend their ideological standing — often because fear and rivalry are all they have to offer the electorate. But a new generation of public leaders argues for a change in political thinking, putting ideology aside when formulating policy, and getting down to the business of governing.
If the fall of the Berlin Wall was a concession to the failure the policies of the Left, then the 2008 financial crisis, Brexit and the rise of nationalist populism in the West are surely artefacts of the failures of the Right.
In SA, sound legislative bills from either side of the parliamentary aisle are often rejected because political parties struggle to see the world outside of an antiquated ideological framework. Even where there is the possibility of a practical middle ground or “New Way”, this is rejected because no single party can claim all the points, or wax lyrical about changing the lives of South Africans through liberal doctrine, social conservatism, or the national democratic revolution.
The public policy response to Covid-19 is a post-ideological issue that revolves around the capabilities of the government, and obliterates the need for asinine debates about whether the “role of the state” should be either interventionist or minimal. It also ignites the possibility of a political dispensation in SA that is neither Right nor Left.
The pandemic has killed the argument, for example, that governments exist only to intervene in the economy in times of market failure, because market failure is no longer about anti-competitive behaviour or minimum labour standards; it’s about whether or not commerce can even continue in times of pandemic, war and catastrophe. It is about who is responsible for setting the economic pace, rescuing business, and salvaging jobs and livelihoods. The “who” in this equation has been and will continue to be the state.
Businesses look to the government for bailouts; parents ask the state whether schools are ready to reopen; and when faced with the question of how to deal with the health fallout of a crisis like Covid19, people do not turn to private health care and open their wallets — they ask whether the state health system is robust enough.
Before the pandemic, it was unimaginable that social development minister Lindiwe Zulu would table even a draft proposal to implement a basic income grant — whether universal or for unemployed South Africans — even as SA was reeling from the economic destruction wrought by 10 years of government under Jacob Zuma.
Indeed, it took the realisation that the workplace could offer no guarantees, for governments all over the world to start to look at implementing the beginnings of a system of universal basic income.
Businesses simply cannot pay workers when their doors have been shuttered. Job security is impossible to guarantee when a pandemic renders basic human contact life-threatening. And when lives are threatened on this scale, it is to the state that people turn for answers.
These ideas are a far cry from the post-Berlin Wall, post-1994 paradigm, in which public and private wrestled for control based on who was “most efficient” at delivering to the market. The government’s role has been revealed to be far bigger than regulation and intervention in times of market failure. The state is the underwriter of the good society, and to make good on its guarantees, it must be robust in the right places and peopled by the brightest and best the country has to offer.
The more obtuse and mischievous among my former colleagues in SA’s official opposition party will probably decry this view as “statist” or “interventionist”, even — gasp! — leftist. The truth is that these divisions are artificial. They are relics of a time when power was defined by the battle between capital and labour, public and private. Modern politics are far more complex than that.
In SA, for example, a capable state would abandon decisively its participation in the so-called “strategic” industries that formed part of Fortress South Africa under apartheid — from forestry and diamond mining to electricity generation and aviation. Instead, it would double down on capacity in those sectors and institutions from which the people rightly demand the fulfilment of their rights and the guarantee of their prosperity — such as health care, education, water and sanitation, macroeconomic policy, trade, security and social protection.
Of course, the state’s response to any crisis is only as good as its leaders and officials. This is why I have committed my years outside politics to working with the most talented people on both sides of the ideological divide, as well as those outside the system who want to transition into the public service or run for elected office, to equip them with the tools to understand the challenges and complexities of government in the 21st century.
As we forge ahead with re-imagining the state post-pandemic, we must also be willing to let go of that which has not served it; but this will be impossible if we insist on being limited by the confines of this or that ideological framework.
In the age of the triple bottom line, when global business is measured not only by profits but also by its contribution to people and planet, what must be salvaged from the rubble of our 21st century crises must also be a new way of looking at politics, government and the dream of building a good society — one that is focused on outcomes rather than constricted by ideological dogma.