I suspect you’re right that the initial international strategy and Carney’s domestic approach in managing Trumpism will be to continue to double down with an updated variant on neoliberalism.
I’ll try to be generous to Carney and borrow from the Canadian political philosopher CB MacPherson’s famous critique of liberalism; that there’s much of value to retrieve from Carney’s speech and that it’s a good starting point even if the vision is incomplete. At least it was an important and timely step in saying "enough" and seeking ways to navigate the "rupture" into a might=right world.
What’s required is indeed an updated equivalent of what was pushed internationally & domestically during the last fight against global fascism. Back in the 1940s, democratic leaders accompanied the literal fight with efforts (e.g. FDR’s Four Freedoms, UK’s Beveridge Report, Canada’s own Marsh Report) to make freedom and democracy material and tangible for working people through progressive/redistributive labour laws, welfare state and public health care measures. And that idealism (and liberal - left realpolitik) also informed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and some of the thinking behind the UN.
Carney’s professional and intellectual background doesn’t equip him to make that case. But there are also huge structural constraints in the way of that kind of alternative suggested here and in your piece. For sure, Carney/Canada is constrained by the extent of our economic and foreign/defence policy integration with the US, our trade dependence, and the continentalist dispositions of the business class that underwrites our 2 governing parties.
And on the global stage, even within Europe, it’s hard to find the political support and union/societal resources to push such an alternative. Europe is politically polarized, with the far right surging in a number of states and social democrats weak and on the defensive in many others. Then there’s the legacy of neoliberalism on the European left, both in terms of its policy paralysis and inability to fully shed neoliberalism, along with the divisions that have fractured the Left.
All of that speaks to the medium/ long term nature of any alternative to global Carneyism, barring any surprises as you note in the our current rapidly evolving political-economic context.
One difficulty, at least from a Spanish and broader southern European perspective, is how weak the left’s alternative actually is when it comes to concrete international economic policy. The EU Mercosur agreement is a good example. It is clearly a liberal trade project that reinforces market integration and corporate interests, and yet it is also framed as a way of strengthening EU Latin America ties and counterbalancing US or Chinese influence. From a very weak position, the left often ends up oscillating between outright rejection and a vague hope that adding human rights or environmental language can redeem the deal.
That leaves us with a real strategic tension. How do you critically support aspirations to international cooperation, human rights and geopolitical autonomy while opposing the neoliberal content through which those aspirations are currently being realised. Without a stronger, more confident left internationalism, one that can articulate non market centred forms of solidarity and development, we risk being trapped between liberal managerialism and a purely defensive politics that cannot scale.
I think this is broadly true, and partly reflects the relative weakness of the organized left at the domestic level - at least in many countries. But it also speaks to the imperative of comprehensively reforming multinational institutions. Because fundamentally most of these are not designed or configured to facilitate cooperation or international solidarity - except for private capital.
"Will it match the prime minister’s refreshing criticism of the old geopolitical order with any meaningful departure from the discredited economic orthodoxies on which it was based?"
I see Carney's speech as being the "tentative reformer" sending out trial balloons. Yes, we must be skeptical but by today's standard's it a radically progressive speech . A true evaluation is at least a year away as how he handles issues from here in will be the test.
Every Western politician is walking on eggs now and placating Trump's insanity is just one of many issues to be navigated.
We are in the aftermath of a fallen empire and the convulsions political and economic are going to last for some time to come.
Where we are in this mess largely because of rapacious short-termism and the presence of a ruthless rogue empire. Long-termism is now forced upon us. There have been too many reckless pragmatisms, the culture lag is stupendous, and how we govern ourselves has to be radically reformed-- with a lot of house cleaning. Now we get to buckle down for the long, long haul.
I wish Carney would use all his evil finance powers to orchestrate a leveraged buyout of the US - 10 new Canadian states would shift the balance of power to the left for a generation in the US.
I Don't disagree with your reading, Luke. But it ignores the biggest elephant in the room. In what Anderson calls a "conflict between neoliberalism and populism," the Canadian left's melancholies resulted in a landscape of wounded attachments which became breeding grounds for competing communal narcissisms.
Yes, Carney's admission allows psychic room for millions of Canadians to consider as legitimate what they previously thought to be stupid, or disobedient. But, because of a now debilitating moral-political atmosphere, there’s no moral-political vision to better leverage the Prime Minister's admission.
A better Canada, and a better future for all of its residents depends, in the first place, on acknowledging and then doing something about what we've become.
Hey, comrade Savage, I am curious how this looks from Toronto.
When I heard the speech, my first question was not, Why now?, since the time has never been riper. My first question was, Why Carney? Your initial answer--"Only Nixon can go to China"--makes a lot of sense. This, of course, references Carney the ex-governor of the Bank of England, the ringer, the hometown squad's last hope.
But I wonder if there isn't something peculiarly Canadian going on here too. My thought was that the Greenland Crisis must have the Canadian ruling circles truly rattled. It's got to be a much more immediate emergency in Ottowa even than for NATO as a whole. How would you rate this in terms of crises of the Canadian state? From this distance (NW of the USA), I am thinking that this Greenland Crisis is a sharper threat to the Canadian state than Adolf Hitler ever was--for a bigger crisis, you would have to go back to the Northwest Rebellion, or even back before confederation, to 1812 or the Seven Years' War.
What do you think? To see if Carney meant what he said, one crucial criterion would be the government's initial plays. Carney surely hopes for something out of Europe, but he's not a fool, which means he won't expect much right away from Macron or Merz, much less Starmer. If Ottowa is serious, the first step would be a bloc with India, SE Asia, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, South Africa--and surly Iran as well. Is there any evidence that the cabinet is uniting around that orientation, or that Carney is organizing the Canadian ruling class to take such a pivot?
Carney’s speech reminded me of the honesty of the addict. It was brutal in its self-critique but the solution is still the next fix of neoliberalism.
It is a tragedy of our time that neoliberalism was so recklessly adopted with zero scrutiny. It now defines our societies as neofeudalism.
This is a brilliant metaphor
Excellent critique of Carney’s Davos speech.
I suspect you’re right that the initial international strategy and Carney’s domestic approach in managing Trumpism will be to continue to double down with an updated variant on neoliberalism.
I’ll try to be generous to Carney and borrow from the Canadian political philosopher CB MacPherson’s famous critique of liberalism; that there’s much of value to retrieve from Carney’s speech and that it’s a good starting point even if the vision is incomplete. At least it was an important and timely step in saying "enough" and seeking ways to navigate the "rupture" into a might=right world.
What’s required is indeed an updated equivalent of what was pushed internationally & domestically during the last fight against global fascism. Back in the 1940s, democratic leaders accompanied the literal fight with efforts (e.g. FDR’s Four Freedoms, UK’s Beveridge Report, Canada’s own Marsh Report) to make freedom and democracy material and tangible for working people through progressive/redistributive labour laws, welfare state and public health care measures. And that idealism (and liberal - left realpolitik) also informed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and some of the thinking behind the UN.
Carney’s professional and intellectual background doesn’t equip him to make that case. But there are also huge structural constraints in the way of that kind of alternative suggested here and in your piece. For sure, Carney/Canada is constrained by the extent of our economic and foreign/defence policy integration with the US, our trade dependence, and the continentalist dispositions of the business class that underwrites our 2 governing parties.
And on the global stage, even within Europe, it’s hard to find the political support and union/societal resources to push such an alternative. Europe is politically polarized, with the far right surging in a number of states and social democrats weak and on the defensive in many others. Then there’s the legacy of neoliberalism on the European left, both in terms of its policy paralysis and inability to fully shed neoliberalism, along with the divisions that have fractured the Left.
All of that speaks to the medium/ long term nature of any alternative to global Carneyism, barring any surprises as you note in the our current rapidly evolving political-economic context.
One difficulty, at least from a Spanish and broader southern European perspective, is how weak the left’s alternative actually is when it comes to concrete international economic policy. The EU Mercosur agreement is a good example. It is clearly a liberal trade project that reinforces market integration and corporate interests, and yet it is also framed as a way of strengthening EU Latin America ties and counterbalancing US or Chinese influence. From a very weak position, the left often ends up oscillating between outright rejection and a vague hope that adding human rights or environmental language can redeem the deal.
That leaves us with a real strategic tension. How do you critically support aspirations to international cooperation, human rights and geopolitical autonomy while opposing the neoliberal content through which those aspirations are currently being realised. Without a stronger, more confident left internationalism, one that can articulate non market centred forms of solidarity and development, we risk being trapped between liberal managerialism and a purely defensive politics that cannot scale.
I think this is broadly true, and partly reflects the relative weakness of the organized left at the domestic level - at least in many countries. But it also speaks to the imperative of comprehensively reforming multinational institutions. Because fundamentally most of these are not designed or configured to facilitate cooperation or international solidarity - except for private capital.
"Will it match the prime minister’s refreshing criticism of the old geopolitical order with any meaningful departure from the discredited economic orthodoxies on which it was based?"
Seems extremely unlikely.
I see Carney's speech as being the "tentative reformer" sending out trial balloons. Yes, we must be skeptical but by today's standard's it a radically progressive speech . A true evaluation is at least a year away as how he handles issues from here in will be the test.
Every Western politician is walking on eggs now and placating Trump's insanity is just one of many issues to be navigated.
We are in the aftermath of a fallen empire and the convulsions political and economic are going to last for some time to come.
Where we are in this mess largely because of rapacious short-termism and the presence of a ruthless rogue empire. Long-termism is now forced upon us. There have been too many reckless pragmatisms, the culture lag is stupendous, and how we govern ourselves has to be radically reformed-- with a lot of house cleaning. Now we get to buckle down for the long, long haul.
I wish Carney would use all his evil finance powers to orchestrate a leveraged buyout of the US - 10 new Canadian states would shift the balance of power to the left for a generation in the US.
I Don't disagree with your reading, Luke. But it ignores the biggest elephant in the room. In what Anderson calls a "conflict between neoliberalism and populism," the Canadian left's melancholies resulted in a landscape of wounded attachments which became breeding grounds for competing communal narcissisms.
Yes, Carney's admission allows psychic room for millions of Canadians to consider as legitimate what they previously thought to be stupid, or disobedient. But, because of a now debilitating moral-political atmosphere, there’s no moral-political vision to better leverage the Prime Minister's admission.
A better Canada, and a better future for all of its residents depends, in the first place, on acknowledging and then doing something about what we've become.
Hey, comrade Savage, I am curious how this looks from Toronto.
When I heard the speech, my first question was not, Why now?, since the time has never been riper. My first question was, Why Carney? Your initial answer--"Only Nixon can go to China"--makes a lot of sense. This, of course, references Carney the ex-governor of the Bank of England, the ringer, the hometown squad's last hope.
But I wonder if there isn't something peculiarly Canadian going on here too. My thought was that the Greenland Crisis must have the Canadian ruling circles truly rattled. It's got to be a much more immediate emergency in Ottowa even than for NATO as a whole. How would you rate this in terms of crises of the Canadian state? From this distance (NW of the USA), I am thinking that this Greenland Crisis is a sharper threat to the Canadian state than Adolf Hitler ever was--for a bigger crisis, you would have to go back to the Northwest Rebellion, or even back before confederation, to 1812 or the Seven Years' War.
What do you think? To see if Carney meant what he said, one crucial criterion would be the government's initial plays. Carney surely hopes for something out of Europe, but he's not a fool, which means he won't expect much right away from Macron or Merz, much less Starmer. If Ottowa is serious, the first step would be a bloc with India, SE Asia, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, South Africa--and surly Iran as well. Is there any evidence that the cabinet is uniting around that orientation, or that Carney is organizing the Canadian ruling class to take such a pivot?