The left too, or what has become of it, has no idea how the ungovernable capitalism of the present can make the transition to a better ordered, less endangered and less dangerous future—see Hollande, Renzi, Clinton, Gabriel. But if it has any wish again to play a part in this, it must learn the lessons of the failure of ‘global governance’ and the ersatz politics of identity. Among these lessons are: that the outcasts of the self-appointed ‘knowledge society’ must not be abandoned for aesthetic reasons to their fate and, hence, to the right; that cosmopolitanism at the expense of ‘the little people’ cannot be enforced in the long run even with neoliberal means of coercion; and that the national state can be opened up only with its citizens and not against them. Applying this to Europe, this means that whoever wants too much integration will reap only conflict and end up with less integration. The cosmopolitan identitarianism of the leaders of the neoliberal age, originating as it did in part from left-wing universalism, calls forth by way of reaction a national identitarianism, while anti-national re-education from above produces an anti-elitist nationalism from below. Whoever puts a society under economic or moral pressure to the point of dissolution reaps resistance from its traditionalists. Today this is because all those who see themselves as exposed to the uncertainties of international markets, control of which has been promised but never delivered, will prefer a bird in their hand to two in the bush: they will choose the reality of national democracy, imperfect as it may be, over the fantasy of a democratic global society.
