A cura di @cocomeraio.

Andy Becket sul Guardian rilegge la parabola della Terza Via del New Labour che promise di porre fine allo scontro tra sinistra e destra e si chiede se l’illusione della politica senza conflitto ha creato le condizioni della nostra epoca di rabbia.
Nel 1994 il sociologo Anthony Giddens, teorico della terza via e ispiratore del New Labour nel suo saggio Brave New World: The New Context of Politics, contenuto in Reinventing the Left  sosteneva che

that most societies were becoming more cosmopolitan, less traditional, less tribal, more individualistic. This more fluid, interconnected world, with its linked capitalist economies and common environmental crises, he argued, needed a politics that was calm and not divisive, “a public arena in which controversial issues … can be resolved, or at least handled, through dialogue”. Conflict, whether between ideologies, social classes, political parties or other interest groups, ought to become a thing of the past.

Nel 2005 quando il New Labour vinceva per la terza volta le elezioni usciva un libro di una studiosa di origine belga, Chantal Mouffe intitolato On the Political in cui si sosteneva che il conflitto è inevitabile e non è un pericolo per la democrazia ma la sua essenza vitale

To be able to mobilise passions,” she wrote, “to have a real purchase on people’s desires and fantasies … democratic politics must have a partisan character.” A healthy democracy required “opposed camps with whom people can identify”: in order to be politically engaged, people needed to have a “we” and a “they”. And besides, any attempt to eradicate such tribalism by building a consensus was bound to fail – no consensus could include everyone.

E la narrazione del New Labour poteva portare a risultati paradossali.

Far from creating the conditions for a more mature and consensual form of democracy”, she wrote, it would lead to “exactly the opposite”. It would create a society where the conflicts that New Labour had tried to suppress, or whose existence it had denied altogether, would resurface, more vicious than before.

Immagine da Flickr.