Fifteen years ago today, on November 9, 1989, the Berlin Wall fell. Part of me wonders if all our hopes of building a progressive movement disappeared in that moment of capitalism's triumph and the exposure of the bankruptcy and cruelty of the Soviet experiment. So much of progressive thought for the 20th century was based on a socialist model in some way or another. After 1989 no one could say that an approach that was based on the idea that resources could be taken from each according to his ability, and given to each according to his need, was going to work. In fact, anything that smacked of redistribution in any way was suspect to the champions of unfettered individualism and the market. In this campaign, John Kerry may have been tarred as a liberal, but the true fear that was being invoked was that he was going to take your money (tax) and give it away to others (spend). (continued)
The faith in the individual and the market is the new uber-narrative of the 21st century-it has replaced the story of shared responsibilities and shared resources that derived from the socialist thinkers of the 19th century and created the framework for most of the social democracies in Western Europe and the vile perversion of this narrative in the USSR. I don't know what story we tell now that being my neighbor's keeper is tantamount to heresy in this dog-eat-dog world.