Taking a stand against divisive politics

Berkeley

YEARS ago, in one of my first conversations with colleague Paul Rosenstein-Rodan, a pioneer development economist at MIT, he asked about the nature of my politics. I said: "left of centre". He put his hand on his chest and said "my heart too is slightly to the left of centre". Today all over the world hearts to the left of centre are pounding anxiously as signs of right-wing populism and nativism rage ominously all around - not just in Trump's America and post-Brexit Britain, but in France, Hungary, Poland, Germany, Austria, Turkey, Russia, India, the Philippines and so on. Should the moderate left of centre despair or cower?

While the right-wing is frothing in the mouth "full of passionate intensity", as suggested by WB Yeats in his 1919 poem, the traditional left and their age-worn rhetoric and recipes "lack all conviction". Here is an attempt to put together a few ideas of possible directions to take, some old, some new, some primarily for developing countries but some relevant to rich countries as well.