Convergence makes a certain sense, but it’s not ideal
What’s been debated for two hundred years, left vs. right, has been socialism vs. capitalism.
There was a theory that, over time, as countries experimented with various mixes of public vs. private enterprise, a best mix would be determined. The fact that the arguments on both sides have some merit (leftist critiques of capitalism have surely been valid, but the rightist critiques of socialism have also been persuasive) could imply that the world is not headed toward any pure-system resolution of the debate, but rather toward some kind of optimal convergence. A survey of systems at this point in history might seem to bear that out.
The Soviet model of radical collectivization of the means of production with full national economic planning failed. Europe was prone toward socialism during the first half of the twentieth century, but backed away to settle for social democracy instead. The United States disdained nationalization of industries but has needed to amplify its public sector and expand governmental management of its mostly-capitalist system. This year was a case in point.
Thus “the end of history” idea re: liberal democracy and a mixed economic system within the paradigm of the modern industrial state; an ultimate “not perfect, but can’t be improved upon” consensus and: TINA (“There Is No Alternative”).
And I agree that there is no alternative, unless we’re willing to shift our thinking off the left-right spectrum and away from the industrial-statist domain.
The current paradigm is hegemonic because the system does work for some, and those people (some countries, some elites) dominate the discourse. The system privileges them, and they proclaim about how it provides growth and “progress.” They “manufacture consent” . . . yet an underlying, disquieting public secret is that the system is inherently unsustainable, both socially and ecologically.
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The convergence makes some sense.
But it’s not “the best possible.”
And the alternative is hardly yet contemplated.
