The following extract is taken from tonight's ESRC lecture, Social Change in Britain. The extract will also appear in tomorrow's New Statesman . The issue of inequality is one of the most important questions dividing the contemporary left. The Critics see the third way as abandoning the core concerns of the left. Tony Blair and other left of centre modernisers, it is argued, accept globalisation as a given.
Globalisation creates increasing inequalities, a widening chasm between the winners and losers.
The debate is being played out in many different countries. In the UK it pits the various luminaries of Marxism Today against New Labour. On a broader European stage, it is at the root of the disaffection that Oskar Lafontaine, and many other members of the SPD, feel towards Gerhard Schr der. Inequality can only be held at bay if we shore up existing systems of welfare and the role of the state in limiting the polarising effects of markets. In this lecture, I would like to turn this argument on its head.