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100 Prospect contributors answered our invitation to respond to the question above.
The answers are spread across four pages. Use the links below to navigate.
This is Page 4 (N-Y)
Page 1 (A-D) Page 2 (E-I) Page 3 (J-M)
Kamran Nazeer, writer
Nature vs machines. The problems of climate change will become direct and urgent and we will have to decide whether we are going to change fundamentally how we relate to the earth or whether we are simply going to improve our machines. We will begin to create foods that have less and less to do with the soil and this will create countervailing trends. Finally, and perhaps most critically, we will reach the point where we can enhance and extend our own lives through putting machines in our bodies—and we will argue over whether to take that step. Left vs right was a debate over how to design the state and society; in the next century, we will begin to decide how to redesign ourselves and the natural world.
Peter R Neumann, political scientist
21st-century politics is no longer about the tangibles of economic policy. It is about the intangibles of culture, religion and ethnicity. It is about values and identity. And it is here that the ideas are now clashing as passionately as they once did over nationalisation and the size of government.
Our politicians and the media—all of them products of 20th-century politics—have been slow to grasp the challenge. The debate about immigration, for instance, is at least as much about identity and the fear of alienation as it is about economics. Indeed, while members of the "old" political establishment throw statistics at each other, the BNP is thriving on the discourse of "them" and "us."
For many commentators, people who blow themselves up in the name of religion are "members of a death cult." In reality, they are representatives of the "new" discourse of culture and identity which will dominate politics in the 21st century. This is a challenge we need to address rather than ignore. In doing so, the first step is to accept that there are issues that go beyond the question of "who gets what?"
Pauline Neville-Jones, former diplomat
What is next is the broad centre vs fringes, and the centre vs localism. The first will unite traditional left and right, while the second, as the modern expression of the traditional difference over the size and role of the state, will continue to divide. The broad centre will mobilise against the extreme fringes, some of them violent, which are not signed up to the liberal values of the centre but which are prepared to exploit them to undermine them. Class will be less important than identity as a basis for political action. The ideological debate will pitch individualism against communitarian politics and special interests of groups—for example, demanding special rights vs equal rights of individual citizens under a single law applicable to all. The level of decision-makers and their status will remain a left/right issue: how much to be decided at the centre and by organs of the state spending taxpayers' money, and how much to be decided locally and by voluntary action of individuals acting in private capacities as citizens, parents, consumers.
Paul Ormerod, economist
There are two key issues in the first half of the 21st century.
First, the conflict between consumerism and producerism. The new generation expects things to work, and to work well. If they don't they not only complain but take their business elsewhere. Successful institutions respond to this. The dinosaurs don't. Much of the public sector is in this category, but the train companies, for example, are in there too.
It is not a battle of ideology between public and private provision. People don't care how their goods and services are provided. But they want it done efficiently and they want it to provide value for money.
Second, around 1970, there was a sharp increase throughout western Europe in the claims on national output made by the state. This was essentially to finance jobs for the newly expanded number of graduates. Since then, social democratic parties have re-invented themselves as the defenders of the public sector bourgeoisie. Their connections with the interests of the lower orders is tenuous. Indeed, the latter essentially serve as providers of taxation and as the recipients of state-enforced liberal morality.
How what we used to refer to as the working class will respond to this effective disenfranchisement is crucial. The risk, of course, is that they will be captured by the far right.
Mark Pagel, scientist
Modern humans evolved to live in small co-operative groups with extensive divisions of labour among unrelated people linked only by their common culture. Co-operation is fragile, being the contented face of trust, reciprocity and the perception of a shared fate—when they go, the mask can quickly fall. The psychology of the co-operative group, of how we can maintain it and equally how we can control its dangerous tendencies—parochialism, xenophobia, exclusion and warfare—will often be at the front door of 21st-century politics.
The reasons are clear. The politics of the 20th century were expansive and hopeful, enlivened by growing prosperity. In the 21st century, increasing multiculturalism and widespread movements of people will repeatedly challenge the trust and sense of equity that binds together co-operative groups, unleashing instincts for selfish preservation. For politicians and thinkers, a pressing task at all levels of politics is to seek ways to manage these issues that somehow draw all of the actors into the elaborate and fragile reciprocity loops of the co-operative society. It sounds impossible, it won't be easy and there are no simple recipes. But if we fail, we risk sliding into xenophobic hysteria, clashes of culture, and the frenzied and dangerous grabbing of natural resources.
Trevor Phillips, rights campaigner
There will always be a divide between those who believe that human behaviour should be regulated in the interests of the common good and those who believe the common good will emerge out of the aggregate exercise of free will. But this difference will be expressed in new ways, on new battlegrounds. So what's the point of politics now? There are two issues: how we live with our planet and how we live with each other. Let me just stick with the latter. Each year more of humanity finds itself in the same global high street, yet the fact that we see more of each other only emphasises how different we can be. This isn't just a problem of race and faith, it's also about the assertiveness of people who used to be invisible—women, the disabled, children, the elderly, sexual minorities. It's scary. And it's hard work finding solidarity with people who don't look like us, talk like us, or behave like us. The task of politics is to find a language in which to communicate across the lines of identity and difference.
Jonathan Power, journalist
As long as the world is riven with inequalities the historic division between left and right will continue. Although we are now living in a relative benign time of worldwide economic growth that extends these days to many of the poorer parts, spreading democracy, increasing respect for human rights in nearly all cultures and a declining number of local wars, we still have a long, long way to go before the historic tensions between left and right will begin to wane. They will certainly last out this century.
Philip Pullman, author
The struggle will continue to be what it has always been: wisdom against stupidity. In the 20th century the odds shortened greatly in favour of stupidity, because stupidity now has the means to destroy human civilisation entirely. We need to remind ourselves more and more often that hope is not a temperament but a virtue, and act hopefully even if we don't feel hopeful.
Gideon Rachman, journalist
The next great divide will be between localists and globalists. These two political dispositions will frame the debate over the three biggest issues we will face over the next 20 years: climate change, identity and foreign intervention. Localists will argue that climate change means that we must put globalisation into reverse. They will emphasise local production and an end to cheap and easy travel. Globalists will try to show that you can reconcile growth and greenery. Localists will want to control immigration and will be suspicious of the institutions of global governance—the UN, the World Bank, the EU. Globalists will push for open borders. Localists will use the backlash after Iraq to push for a "modest" foreign policy, which will be close to isolationism. Globalists will continue to insist that rich nations will have to intervene around the world—sometimes militarily.
ChakravarthiRam-Prasad, philosopher
The argument of the left was that the poor could get less poor only if the rich got less rich; but no longer. However, a question remains. Can the poor get less poor only if the rich get richer, or do the poor only get poorer when the rich get richer? The weaker argument from the left now says that the rich cannot get richer if the poor are to get less poor. This debate will continue to inform the 21st-century world.
The most dramatic expression of the economics of the poor, however, will now come from religion. There will be those for whom human purpose is explicable only in terms of religion, and those for whom it is understood purely in terms of scientific processes. All major religions will be involved, facing secular resistance. The deep divide will be evident in debates over how to give succour to those who feel disempowered and without hope.
One mode of this debate will be over life-changing technologies, from genetic therapies to entertainment. The agonised liberal-secular challenge to the scope of these technologies will be squeezed out, as non-religious views of human nature rally around the boundless exploration of technological horizons, and clash with assertive religious opposition based partly on suspicion of challenges to faith, but also on the conviction that technological advances are skewed towards the benefit of the rich.
Lisa Randall, scientist
Debates today have descended into those between the lazy and the slightly less lazy. We are faced with urgent issues, yet the speed with which lawmakers approach them is glacial—actually slower than that: glaciers are melting faster than we are attacking the issues.
Jonathan Rauch, journalist
America today is a moderate country—centrist or, by European standards, centre-right—whose government and political classes are dominated by (relative) extremists. This is a chronic affliction that exacerbates all the acute left-right flare-ups and, at least before 2006, the condition was growing worse. The question for the next few decades will be whether the centre can systematically reassert itself, even as partisans and ideologues—their shovels flying—dig deeper entrenchments.
Jonathan Rée, philosopher
When the 20th century began, the main emotion behind most people's politics was hope of some kind: hope for science, for free trade, for social democracy, for national efficiency, or for world government. And with the emotion of hope came a willingness to investigate options, to analyse, and to engage in genuine, open-minded discussions with those whose views you did not share. 100 years later, the principal political emotion is indignation—against inequality, interference, insecurity, venality or the arrogance of office—and people are more interested in bearing witness to their personal moral righteousness than in engaging with alternative analyses or allowing their own judgements to be tested against those of others. We are now facing a crisis both of hope and of serious collective argument.
Malcolm Rifkind, politician
Left vs right was the product of European society in the late 19th and 20th centuries. It reflected the choices that had to be made as the mass of the population acquired political rights and a significant degree of material prosperity. It centred around the role of the state with regard to the economy and the distribution of resources.
These battles are now largely over in the west but new choices are replacing them. The most significant will be the choice between personal freedom and security; between civil liberties and the need to deal with crime and terrorism. Unexpected informal alliances have already been formed which may have implications for each of the political parties. Civil liberties are championed by a combination of traditional Tories, classic liberals, the soft-left media and many within the Labour party. Hardline laws on crime and an acquiescence in the erosion of traditional freedoms are advocated by New Labour, neocon intellectuals and journalists, and law and order Conservatives. Similar divisions can be seen in the US and elsewhere.
Steven Rose, biologist
Last century's alternatives were socialism or barbarism. This century's prospects are starker: social justice or the end of human civilisation—if not our species. To achieve that justice it is imperative that we retain the utopian dream of "from each according to their abilities: to each according to their needs," but needs and abilities are constantly being refashioned by runaway sciences and technologies harnessed ever more closely to global industry and imperial power and embedded within a degraded and degrading environment. This century's "left," just as that of the last century, is constituted by those groups, old or newly constituted, struggling against these hegemonic powers.
Bridget Rosewell, economist
Choice vs instruction. The ability and willingness to take personal responsibility compared to the desire to instruct people on what they should do will increasingly define politics and society. Both left and right in the 20th century have shown a distressing tendency to order people around, ostensibly for their own good but often with unintended consequences. Those who like to think they know best will continue to believe that their motivation purifies the effects of their actions. But they will increasingly be opposed by those who take a more libertarian view and one in which individuals must bear responsibility for their own actions. This will apply as much to religious movements as to secular ones.
Donald Sassoon, historian
Left and right are vague markers which stand for different things at different times. Their vagueness allows them to survive and adapt to a changing environment. The boundaries between "left" and "right" may appear grey and unclear today, but they always were. Pro-market liberals and traditional Christian conservatives once sided with social democrats and communists against fascism. Churchill and Stalin fought on the same side. From the 1950 to 1970s, one-nation Tories and Old Labour were in favour of full employment. All the main European parties are in favour of economic growth and against racism and xenophobia. The EU was the creation of conservatives, to be defended later by Eurocommunists and social democrats of various hues.
The question assumes that "issues" exist outside a determined historical context, whereas it is the context that makes the issue "left" or "right," the way the policies are implemented, defended, presented, and so on. Climate change, for instance, can be tackled, if at all, from a variety of perspectives: a neoliberal one (include external costs in prices and price out of the market the great unwashed); or an authoritarian "fascist-racist" perspective (allocate resources on the basis of ethnicity); or a communist one (introduce strict rationing and make everyone equally miserable). Guessing the future is a harmless game. To play it properly you need to know what is going on—and for this, and that's the tricky bit, you need to ask the right questions.
George Schöpflin MEP
The 20th century was dominated by the epic contest between Marxism and liberal democracy, both legatees of the European Enlightenment that produced a particular western concept of modernity, which is centrally about democracy and citizenship. The contests of the 21st century will focus on universalism vs particularism, western and non-western forms of modernity and the fate of the (western-invented) state form outside the west. Crucially, will non-western models of modernity accept that modernity and democracy are inseparable? In the west itself, what is to be the balance between religious, ethno-national and civic identities and will newly empowered civic actors accept democratic norms, especially transparency, accountability, self-limitation and feedback between rulers and the ruled? Lastly, how is the problem of democratic control over (unelected) economic actors (massively empowered by globalisation) to be resolved?
Robert Skidelsky, political writer
For most of the 20th century, left and right meant socialists and capitalists. Socialists believed in public ownership, the capitalist parties in private ownership. This battle is over. However, within the now dominant capitalist system, there are two connected vestiges of the old divide. Socialism in the classic sense still survives in healthcare and education. In most European countries, these are mainly state-owned and state-run. Should they continue to be, or should they be privatised? The left wants to improve quality by throwing more public money at them; the right has argued that hospitals and schools should be privately owned or "charitable," with the state's role limited to providing vouchers, or cash payments, to those who cannot pay the charges.
This is connected with the second big divide: how generous should tax-financed social services be, and under what conditions should they be provided? This will determine the tax rate, since most taxes in modern economies go to pay for various kinds of social spending. The left stands for higher taxes, the right for lower ones. The core values behind each approach are equality for the left and self-reliance for the right. In international affairs, the same split is apparent in the debate about how much aid the rich countries should give to the developing countries, particularly in Africa.
The socialist impulse is far from dead, and is constantly searching for new institutional expression. And Marx was right in one sense: the division between right and left is at bottom a class division. Where he was wrong was in thinking it could ever be abolished, because the gulf between the advantaged and disadvantaged, the able and less able, the enterprising and incompetent will always be there, and each group will demand its pound of flesh.
Paul Skidmore, social policy analyst
What we eat and drink, how we get around, how much energy we use or waste, how well we parent: the logical conclusion for a society that is both more individualistic and more interdependent is a politics preoccupied with the public consequences of private behaviour. The twin questions will be: how can public authorities best influence the personal choices of millions of people, and by what criteria—ethical, procedural, utilitarian—are we to determine whether it is just and legitimate for them to do so? In one sense, this represents continuity: defining the proper role of the state has been the battleground of politics for a century. But citizens have tended only to experience that contest at one remove from their daily lives, in debates about where to place the boundaries between states and markets. The new politics brings things closer to home.
Joan Smith, writer
The 20th century was characterised as much by struggles between freedom and tyranny as it was left vs right. Millions of people spent decades suffering under various forms of dictatorship—fascist, communist, Maoist, Baathist—which denied individual rights and scorned the ideals of secular liberal democracy. That struggle continues, the difference being that the opponents of freedom are motivated by a toxic combination of religion and ideology.
The shift from pure ideology to "culture" has confused lots of people. But the struggle against totalitarianism is as urgent now as it was in the last century, and it's carried on by a few brave individuals in countries where Wahhabism is in control or hopeful of achieving power (such as Egypt), as well as inside western democracies. Of course I worry about climate change, and I wish we could concentrate on it. But I believe passionately that the 21st century presents us with two equally important tasks: preserving the planet for future generations, and defending secular liberal democracy so it's worth living on.
Irwin Stelzer, economist
My best guess is that almost all of the issues will fall into two categories: markets vs ministers; and making government work. Healthcare, global warming, other environmental issues, energy policy—all will be determined by what the public decides about the role markets should play, as opposed to regulatory solutions. My guess is that we will see convergence: in places such as Britain, in which governments have failed users of healthcare and education, there will be an edging towards markets; where markets are seen to have failed, as in the US, there will be an edging towards government solutions. Then all eyes (and pens) will turn to the problems of how to make government more responsive, which will again raise the issue of the role of markets, but more importantly, how to get the incentives under which public-sector workers operate recast so as to get them to fulfil the goals set by their political masters.
Erik Tarloff, writer
My fear is that we are facing another round in the recurrent conflict between rationality and superstition (represented at the present time by religious fundamentalism). Some version of this conflict is never entirely absent from human history, but there are periods when rationality is under especially ferocious and sustained assault, and it looks to me as if we are entering such a period now. And since deep down I suspect that rationality and civility are contrary to our natural instincts, I find it hard to be sanguine about the outcome when these antagonistic impulses are pitted against one another.
David Walker, journalist
I don't see the 21st century erasing the old line between those who put their faith in collective action through the state and small-state individualists. Parse it how you like, the state/anti-state split runs public vs private, super-ego vs id, responsibility vs right, us vs me, altruism vs selfishness, the future vs the present: it's fundamental. Patriotism (set to revive) will need a state to give it shape; only states will defeat terror. When people say no more to society's fissures, when turbo-capitalism needs rescuing from its contradictions, it has to be the state. As Lockean pluralism gives way to Hobbesian realism, as survival comes to depend on collaboration, the only agency in town is the state. State and anti-state pre-dated socialism, shaped (but wasn't exhausted) by left/right, and judging by the emerging empirical conditions of life in this century will outlast the rasping breaths of liberalism.
Martin Walker, journalist
Ideologies are unlikely to be as coherent as Marxism or Hayek-Randism, but the left/right spectrum is likely to continue in subtly different forms, shaped more around the distinction between organising society on a communal (heirs of the left) or an individual (the right) basis, with environmentalism and sustainability as the immediate battleground. Interestingly, in the sense that the Reformation was defined by the Protestant insistence on the individual relationship with God while Catholics saw the commune of the faithful relating to God through the intermediary of the church and the ordained priest, this individual-communal distinction is likely to colour the looming new religious disputes.
Francis Wheen, writer
The new struggle is between the best of the Enlightenment legacy (rationalism, scientific empiricism, separation of church and state) on the one hand and, on the other, various forms of obscurantism and value-free relativism, often disguised as "anti-imperialism" or "anti-universalism" to give profoundly reactionary attitudes an alluringly radical veneer. Some things really are (or ought to be) universal, from freedom of speech to the value of pi, but in the current climate even these can be presented as western impositions. What makes this battle so serious is the array of forces ganging up on the Enlightenment version of modernity—pre-modernists and postmodernists, new age progressives and Old Testament-style fundamentalists. They have little in common but the one big thing—their visceral hatred of reason.
David Willetts, politician
We used to think of Britain as being divided by class. Increasingly we worry about a society divided by conflicts of culture and identity. But there is another division, just as significant, which can shape the political agenda of the future. We are living in a society increasingly divided by age. We, the baby boomers, are failing to ensure the younger generation enjoy the wealth and opportunities we have enjoyed. Buying your first flat and building up some savings is a distant prospect. For many, the big events of life—such as forming a family—get delayed, although the aspiration is as strong as ever. The crucial concept of sustainability applies beyond even the environment to the fundamental challenge of ensuring fairness across the generations.
Emily Young, sculptor
Perhaps in this 21st century, the big question will be the relationship between the global north and the south in the face of the transformations mankind has wrought on the earth through industrialisation, between those who will have some control over their lives, who can survive the metamorphosis, and those who have virtually no control, and who will be its victims. For those with money and choices, life could be very good, with progress in technology and medical care leaping forward. But millions of people will live and die miserably as refugees, dependent on handouts, as their habitats degrade. Perhaps we shall come to think with one mind in the face of such distress, or perhaps not. As ever, power will rest with those who control resources: will they think globally, or be careless and forgetful? The threat of war will be high; global unity, compassion and imagination will be, are already, essential.
100 Prospect contributors answered our invitation to respond to the question above.
The answers are spread across four pages. Use the links below to navigate.
This is Page 4 (N-Y)
Page 1 (A-D) Page 2 (E-I) Page 3 (J-M)
Kamran Nazeer, writer
Nature vs machines. The problems of climate change will become direct and urgent and we will have to decide whether we are going to change fundamentally how we relate to the earth or whether we are simply going to improve our machines. We will begin to create foods that have less and less to do with the soil and this will create countervailing trends. Finally, and perhaps most critically, we will reach the point where we can enhance and extend our own lives through putting machines in our bodies—and we will argue over whether to take that step. Left vs right was a debate over how to design the state and society; in the next century, we will begin to decide how to redesign ourselves and the natural world.
Peter R Neumann, political scientist
21st-century politics is no longer about the tangibles of economic policy. It is about the intangibles of culture, religion and ethnicity. It is about values and identity. And it is here that the ideas are now clashing as passionately as they once did over nationalisation and the size of government.
Our politicians and the media—all of them products of 20th-century politics—have been slow to grasp the challenge. The debate about immigration, for instance, is at least as much about identity and the fear of alienation as it is about economics. Indeed, while members of the "old" political establishment throw statistics at each other, the BNP is thriving on the discourse of "them" and "us."
For many commentators, people who blow themselves up in the name of religion are "members of a death cult." In reality, they are representatives of the "new" discourse of culture and identity which will dominate politics in the 21st century. This is a challenge we need to address rather than ignore. In doing so, the first step is to accept that there are issues that go beyond the question of "who gets what?"
Pauline Neville-Jones, former diplomat
What is next is the broad centre vs fringes, and the centre vs localism. The first will unite traditional left and right, while the second, as the modern expression of the traditional difference over the size and role of the state, will continue to divide. The broad centre will mobilise against the extreme fringes, some of them violent, which are not signed up to the liberal values of the centre but which are prepared to exploit them to undermine them. Class will be less important than identity as a basis for political action. The ideological debate will pitch individualism against communitarian politics and special interests of groups—for example, demanding special rights vs equal rights of individual citizens under a single law applicable to all. The level of decision-makers and their status will remain a left/right issue: how much to be decided at the centre and by organs of the state spending taxpayers' money, and how much to be decided locally and by voluntary action of individuals acting in private capacities as citizens, parents, consumers.
Paul Ormerod, economist
There are two key issues in the first half of the 21st century.
First, the conflict between consumerism and producerism. The new generation expects things to work, and to work well. If they don't they not only complain but take their business elsewhere. Successful institutions respond to this. The dinosaurs don't. Much of the public sector is in this category, but the train companies, for example, are in there too.
It is not a battle of ideology between public and private provision. People don't care how their goods and services are provided. But they want it done efficiently and they want it to provide value for money.
Second, around 1970, there was a sharp increase throughout western Europe in the claims on national output made by the state. This was essentially to finance jobs for the newly expanded number of graduates. Since then, social democratic parties have re-invented themselves as the defenders of the public sector bourgeoisie. Their connections with the interests of the lower orders is tenuous. Indeed, the latter essentially serve as providers of taxation and as the recipients of state-enforced liberal morality.
How what we used to refer to as the working class will respond to this effective disenfranchisement is crucial. The risk, of course, is that they will be captured by the far right.
Mark Pagel, scientist
Modern humans evolved to live in small co-operative groups with extensive divisions of labour among unrelated people linked only by their common culture. Co-operation is fragile, being the contented face of trust, reciprocity and the perception of a shared fate—when they go, the mask can quickly fall. The psychology of the co-operative group, of how we can maintain it and equally how we can control its dangerous tendencies—parochialism, xenophobia, exclusion and warfare—will often be at the front door of 21st-century politics.
The reasons are clear. The politics of the 20th century were expansive and hopeful, enlivened by growing prosperity. In the 21st century, increasing multiculturalism and widespread movements of people will repeatedly challenge the trust and sense of equity that binds together co-operative groups, unleashing instincts for selfish preservation. For politicians and thinkers, a pressing task at all levels of politics is to seek ways to manage these issues that somehow draw all of the actors into the elaborate and fragile reciprocity loops of the co-operative society. It sounds impossible, it won't be easy and there are no simple recipes. But if we fail, we risk sliding into xenophobic hysteria, clashes of culture, and the frenzied and dangerous grabbing of natural resources.
Trevor Phillips, rights campaigner
There will always be a divide between those who believe that human behaviour should be regulated in the interests of the common good and those who believe the common good will emerge out of the aggregate exercise of free will. But this difference will be expressed in new ways, on new battlegrounds. So what's the point of politics now? There are two issues: how we live with our planet and how we live with each other. Let me just stick with the latter. Each year more of humanity finds itself in the same global high street, yet the fact that we see more of each other only emphasises how different we can be. This isn't just a problem of race and faith, it's also about the assertiveness of people who used to be invisible—women, the disabled, children, the elderly, sexual minorities. It's scary. And it's hard work finding solidarity with people who don't look like us, talk like us, or behave like us. The task of politics is to find a language in which to communicate across the lines of identity and difference.
Jonathan Power, journalist
As long as the world is riven with inequalities the historic division between left and right will continue. Although we are now living in a relative benign time of worldwide economic growth that extends these days to many of the poorer parts, spreading democracy, increasing respect for human rights in nearly all cultures and a declining number of local wars, we still have a long, long way to go before the historic tensions between left and right will begin to wane. They will certainly last out this century.
Philip Pullman, author
The struggle will continue to be what it has always been: wisdom against stupidity. In the 20th century the odds shortened greatly in favour of stupidity, because stupidity now has the means to destroy human civilisation entirely. We need to remind ourselves more and more often that hope is not a temperament but a virtue, and act hopefully even if we don't feel hopeful.
Gideon Rachman, journalist
The next great divide will be between localists and globalists. These two political dispositions will frame the debate over the three biggest issues we will face over the next 20 years: climate change, identity and foreign intervention. Localists will argue that climate change means that we must put globalisation into reverse. They will emphasise local production and an end to cheap and easy travel. Globalists will try to show that you can reconcile growth and greenery. Localists will want to control immigration and will be suspicious of the institutions of global governance—the UN, the World Bank, the EU. Globalists will push for open borders. Localists will use the backlash after Iraq to push for a "modest" foreign policy, which will be close to isolationism. Globalists will continue to insist that rich nations will have to intervene around the world—sometimes militarily.
ChakravarthiRam-Prasad, philosopher
The argument of the left was that the poor could get less poor only if the rich got less rich; but no longer. However, a question remains. Can the poor get less poor only if the rich get richer, or do the poor only get poorer when the rich get richer? The weaker argument from the left now says that the rich cannot get richer if the poor are to get less poor. This debate will continue to inform the 21st-century world.
The most dramatic expression of the economics of the poor, however, will now come from religion. There will be those for whom human purpose is explicable only in terms of religion, and those for whom it is understood purely in terms of scientific processes. All major religions will be involved, facing secular resistance. The deep divide will be evident in debates over how to give succour to those who feel disempowered and without hope.
One mode of this debate will be over life-changing technologies, from genetic therapies to entertainment. The agonised liberal-secular challenge to the scope of these technologies will be squeezed out, as non-religious views of human nature rally around the boundless exploration of technological horizons, and clash with assertive religious opposition based partly on suspicion of challenges to faith, but also on the conviction that technological advances are skewed towards the benefit of the rich.
Lisa Randall, scientist
Debates today have descended into those between the lazy and the slightly less lazy. We are faced with urgent issues, yet the speed with which lawmakers approach them is glacial—actually slower than that: glaciers are melting faster than we are attacking the issues.
Jonathan Rauch, journalist
America today is a moderate country—centrist or, by European standards, centre-right—whose government and political classes are dominated by (relative) extremists. This is a chronic affliction that exacerbates all the acute left-right flare-ups and, at least before 2006, the condition was growing worse. The question for the next few decades will be whether the centre can systematically reassert itself, even as partisans and ideologues—their shovels flying—dig deeper entrenchments.
Jonathan Rée, philosopher
When the 20th century began, the main emotion behind most people's politics was hope of some kind: hope for science, for free trade, for social democracy, for national efficiency, or for world government. And with the emotion of hope came a willingness to investigate options, to analyse, and to engage in genuine, open-minded discussions with those whose views you did not share. 100 years later, the principal political emotion is indignation—against inequality, interference, insecurity, venality or the arrogance of office—and people are more interested in bearing witness to their personal moral righteousness than in engaging with alternative analyses or allowing their own judgements to be tested against those of others. We are now facing a crisis both of hope and of serious collective argument.
Malcolm Rifkind, politician
Left vs right was the product of European society in the late 19th and 20th centuries. It reflected the choices that had to be made as the mass of the population acquired political rights and a significant degree of material prosperity. It centred around the role of the state with regard to the economy and the distribution of resources.
These battles are now largely over in the west but new choices are replacing them. The most significant will be the choice between personal freedom and security; between civil liberties and the need to deal with crime and terrorism. Unexpected informal alliances have already been formed which may have implications for each of the political parties. Civil liberties are championed by a combination of traditional Tories, classic liberals, the soft-left media and many within the Labour party. Hardline laws on crime and an acquiescence in the erosion of traditional freedoms are advocated by New Labour, neocon intellectuals and journalists, and law and order Conservatives. Similar divisions can be seen in the US and elsewhere.
Steven Rose, biologist
Last century's alternatives were socialism or barbarism. This century's prospects are starker: social justice or the end of human civilisation—if not our species. To achieve that justice it is imperative that we retain the utopian dream of "from each according to their abilities: to each according to their needs," but needs and abilities are constantly being refashioned by runaway sciences and technologies harnessed ever more closely to global industry and imperial power and embedded within a degraded and degrading environment. This century's "left," just as that of the last century, is constituted by those groups, old or newly constituted, struggling against these hegemonic powers.
Bridget Rosewell, economist
Choice vs instruction. The ability and willingness to take personal responsibility compared to the desire to instruct people on what they should do will increasingly define politics and society. Both left and right in the 20th century have shown a distressing tendency to order people around, ostensibly for their own good but often with unintended consequences. Those who like to think they know best will continue to believe that their motivation purifies the effects of their actions. But they will increasingly be opposed by those who take a more libertarian view and one in which individuals must bear responsibility for their own actions. This will apply as much to religious movements as to secular ones.
Donald Sassoon, historian
Left and right are vague markers which stand for different things at different times. Their vagueness allows them to survive and adapt to a changing environment. The boundaries between "left" and "right" may appear grey and unclear today, but they always were. Pro-market liberals and traditional Christian conservatives once sided with social democrats and communists against fascism. Churchill and Stalin fought on the same side. From the 1950 to 1970s, one-nation Tories and Old Labour were in favour of full employment. All the main European parties are in favour of economic growth and against racism and xenophobia. The EU was the creation of conservatives, to be defended later by Eurocommunists and social democrats of various hues.
The question assumes that "issues" exist outside a determined historical context, whereas it is the context that makes the issue "left" or "right," the way the policies are implemented, defended, presented, and so on. Climate change, for instance, can be tackled, if at all, from a variety of perspectives: a neoliberal one (include external costs in prices and price out of the market the great unwashed); or an authoritarian "fascist-racist" perspective (allocate resources on the basis of ethnicity); or a communist one (introduce strict rationing and make everyone equally miserable). Guessing the future is a harmless game. To play it properly you need to know what is going on—and for this, and that's the tricky bit, you need to ask the right questions.
George Schöpflin MEP
The 20th century was dominated by the epic contest between Marxism and liberal democracy, both legatees of the European Enlightenment that produced a particular western concept of modernity, which is centrally about democracy and citizenship. The contests of the 21st century will focus on universalism vs particularism, western and non-western forms of modernity and the fate of the (western-invented) state form outside the west. Crucially, will non-western models of modernity accept that modernity and democracy are inseparable? In the west itself, what is to be the balance between religious, ethno-national and civic identities and will newly empowered civic actors accept democratic norms, especially transparency, accountability, self-limitation and feedback between rulers and the ruled? Lastly, how is the problem of democratic control over (unelected) economic actors (massively empowered by globalisation) to be resolved?
Robert Skidelsky, political writer
For most of the 20th century, left and right meant socialists and capitalists. Socialists believed in public ownership, the capitalist parties in private ownership. This battle is over. However, within the now dominant capitalist system, there are two connected vestiges of the old divide. Socialism in the classic sense still survives in healthcare and education. In most European countries, these are mainly state-owned and state-run. Should they continue to be, or should they be privatised? The left wants to improve quality by throwing more public money at them; the right has argued that hospitals and schools should be privately owned or "charitable," with the state's role limited to providing vouchers, or cash payments, to those who cannot pay the charges.
This is connected with the second big divide: how generous should tax-financed social services be, and under what conditions should they be provided? This will determine the tax rate, since most taxes in modern economies go to pay for various kinds of social spending. The left stands for higher taxes, the right for lower ones. The core values behind each approach are equality for the left and self-reliance for the right. In international affairs, the same split is apparent in the debate about how much aid the rich countries should give to the developing countries, particularly in Africa.
The socialist impulse is far from dead, and is constantly searching for new institutional expression. And Marx was right in one sense: the division between right and left is at bottom a class division. Where he was wrong was in thinking it could ever be abolished, because the gulf between the advantaged and disadvantaged, the able and less able, the enterprising and incompetent will always be there, and each group will demand its pound of flesh.
Paul Skidmore, social policy analyst
What we eat and drink, how we get around, how much energy we use or waste, how well we parent: the logical conclusion for a society that is both more individualistic and more interdependent is a politics preoccupied with the public consequences of private behaviour. The twin questions will be: how can public authorities best influence the personal choices of millions of people, and by what criteria—ethical, procedural, utilitarian—are we to determine whether it is just and legitimate for them to do so? In one sense, this represents continuity: defining the proper role of the state has been the battleground of politics for a century. But citizens have tended only to experience that contest at one remove from their daily lives, in debates about where to place the boundaries between states and markets. The new politics brings things closer to home.
Joan Smith, writer
The 20th century was characterised as much by struggles between freedom and tyranny as it was left vs right. Millions of people spent decades suffering under various forms of dictatorship—fascist, communist, Maoist, Baathist—which denied individual rights and scorned the ideals of secular liberal democracy. That struggle continues, the difference being that the opponents of freedom are motivated by a toxic combination of religion and ideology.
The shift from pure ideology to "culture" has confused lots of people. But the struggle against totalitarianism is as urgent now as it was in the last century, and it's carried on by a few brave individuals in countries where Wahhabism is in control or hopeful of achieving power (such as Egypt), as well as inside western democracies. Of course I worry about climate change, and I wish we could concentrate on it. But I believe passionately that the 21st century presents us with two equally important tasks: preserving the planet for future generations, and defending secular liberal democracy so it's worth living on.
Irwin Stelzer, economist
My best guess is that almost all of the issues will fall into two categories: markets vs ministers; and making government work. Healthcare, global warming, other environmental issues, energy policy—all will be determined by what the public decides about the role markets should play, as opposed to regulatory solutions. My guess is that we will see convergence: in places such as Britain, in which governments have failed users of healthcare and education, there will be an edging towards markets; where markets are seen to have failed, as in the US, there will be an edging towards government solutions. Then all eyes (and pens) will turn to the problems of how to make government more responsive, which will again raise the issue of the role of markets, but more importantly, how to get the incentives under which public-sector workers operate recast so as to get them to fulfil the goals set by their political masters.
Erik Tarloff, writer
My fear is that we are facing another round in the recurrent conflict between rationality and superstition (represented at the present time by religious fundamentalism). Some version of this conflict is never entirely absent from human history, but there are periods when rationality is under especially ferocious and sustained assault, and it looks to me as if we are entering such a period now. And since deep down I suspect that rationality and civility are contrary to our natural instincts, I find it hard to be sanguine about the outcome when these antagonistic impulses are pitted against one another.
David Walker, journalist
I don't see the 21st century erasing the old line between those who put their faith in collective action through the state and small-state individualists. Parse it how you like, the state/anti-state split runs public vs private, super-ego vs id, responsibility vs right, us vs me, altruism vs selfishness, the future vs the present: it's fundamental. Patriotism (set to revive) will need a state to give it shape; only states will defeat terror. When people say no more to society's fissures, when turbo-capitalism needs rescuing from its contradictions, it has to be the state. As Lockean pluralism gives way to Hobbesian realism, as survival comes to depend on collaboration, the only agency in town is the state. State and anti-state pre-dated socialism, shaped (but wasn't exhausted) by left/right, and judging by the emerging empirical conditions of life in this century will outlast the rasping breaths of liberalism.
Martin Walker, journalist
Ideologies are unlikely to be as coherent as Marxism or Hayek-Randism, but the left/right spectrum is likely to continue in subtly different forms, shaped more around the distinction between organising society on a communal (heirs of the left) or an individual (the right) basis, with environmentalism and sustainability as the immediate battleground. Interestingly, in the sense that the Reformation was defined by the Protestant insistence on the individual relationship with God while Catholics saw the commune of the faithful relating to God through the intermediary of the church and the ordained priest, this individual-communal distinction is likely to colour the looming new religious disputes.
Francis Wheen, writer
The new struggle is between the best of the Enlightenment legacy (rationalism, scientific empiricism, separation of church and state) on the one hand and, on the other, various forms of obscurantism and value-free relativism, often disguised as "anti-imperialism" or "anti-universalism" to give profoundly reactionary attitudes an alluringly radical veneer. Some things really are (or ought to be) universal, from freedom of speech to the value of pi, but in the current climate even these can be presented as western impositions. What makes this battle so serious is the array of forces ganging up on the Enlightenment version of modernity—pre-modernists and postmodernists, new age progressives and Old Testament-style fundamentalists. They have little in common but the one big thing—their visceral hatred of reason.
David Willetts, politician
We used to think of Britain as being divided by class. Increasingly we worry about a society divided by conflicts of culture and identity. But there is another division, just as significant, which can shape the political agenda of the future. We are living in a society increasingly divided by age. We, the baby boomers, are failing to ensure the younger generation enjoy the wealth and opportunities we have enjoyed. Buying your first flat and building up some savings is a distant prospect. For many, the big events of life—such as forming a family—get delayed, although the aspiration is as strong as ever. The crucial concept of sustainability applies beyond even the environment to the fundamental challenge of ensuring fairness across the generations.
Emily Young, sculptor
Perhaps in this 21st century, the big question will be the relationship between the global north and the south in the face of the transformations mankind has wrought on the earth through industrialisation, between those who will have some control over their lives, who can survive the metamorphosis, and those who have virtually no control, and who will be its victims. For those with money and choices, life could be very good, with progress in technology and medical care leaping forward. But millions of people will live and die miserably as refugees, dependent on handouts, as their habitats degrade. Perhaps we shall come to think with one mind in the face of such distress, or perhaps not. As ever, power will rest with those who control resources: will they think globally, or be careless and forgetful? The threat of war will be high; global unity, compassion and imagination will be, are already, essential.
