The meaning of emancipation after the neoliberal era

Abstract

The global crisis of 2008 brought about a breakdown in the discourses of legitimation that had prevailed in Europe since the 1980s, at the same time as the deterioration of the standard of living of the popular classes was evident, with a loss of labor and social rights, the rupture of the expectations of social ascent and a transfer of income towards the big financial and business agents. The instruments of redistribution associated with the reduced welfare state have been weakening as a result of austerity policies, while speculative phenomena in areas as sensitive as housing have triggered a growing sense of insecurity that fuels the new xenophobic movements. The effective deterioration of the level of life is linked to a remarkable geopolitical transition that pushes towards a multipolar world, crowned by the emergence of China as the main power. The meaning of what social emancipation can be today can not be subtracted from the dynamics of this turbulent era, where history, far from being concluded, seems to run frantically in search of new directions. According to Nancy Fraser, the struggles for recognition must be articulated with the struggle for the effective redistribution of material wealth and the recovery of labor and social rights, unless the field for the new reactionary movements and the Alt Rigth is left to it. And this obliges us to penetrate the root of the dialectic between a globalism that pretends to continue with the neoliberal agenda, and an objectionable sovereignty that must be challenged to the xenophobic movements.