10 - A Politics for the End of Time

Summary

The UK languishes under a political economic orthodoxy at the height of its structural power, but built on a demonstrably mistaken blueprint that can no longer command broad social support. This chapter argues that, so long as the UK’s parliamentary parties remain committed to this materialist utopia, the country will continue to suffer the decadent politics characteristic of the late Soviet era: a fate examined with reference to the dissident literature of that period. The Soviet system was ended by revolutions for democracy, albeit fatally timed at the height of neoliberalism. Innes closes by suggesting that the UK now stands at a critical juncture with highly uncertain outcomes. She suggests that if the UK's political parties relinquished their failing paradigm they could find renewed social, moral and economic purpose in the resolution of the ecological emergency. This paradigm shift to empiricism and new social purpose is urgent. Like Soviet communism, neoliberalism is a materialist utopia: a politics for the end of time. But in the era of the intensifying ecological emergency, its perpetuation has the capacity to hasten the end of human history, for all time, for real.