Epilogue: looking forward

The Epilogue restates the main focus of the book on the possibilities of enhancing social justice though reconstructing radical social democracy at the national level in advanced capitalist societies. It points to the dialectical clash of the ontologically open nature of the future and the force of patterned, path dependent human interaction. What I am, at base, arguing is that Mill and Keynes could be on the money, if and only if the class-driven dynamic anatomised by Marx is sufficiently blunted to liberate labour from the forced ‘choice’ of having to sell their labour power or starve. A well-buttressed reconstructed social democracy is the best chance of getting somewhere near this point and progressing on the climb to greater social justice. Democracy is still far from ideal, just better than all the other forms of government that have been tried from time to time. What this calls for is not ‘de-globalisation’ as such but ‘re-globalisation’. I am arguing for empowered national social democracies, freed from the constraints imposed by the current forms of globalisation that developed during the neoliberal era, now placing them in a position to build new architectures of international collaboration on matters of peace, poverty alleviation, macroenvironmental stability and public health advancement. This must also entail finding ways of recognising, coexisting and cooperating with the rise of authoritarian capitalism on the geopolitical stage. Failing to do so is, perhaps, the ultimate threat to democracy and social justice in the twenty-first century. – along with the existential threats of climate change, pandemics and nuclear annihilation.