Arthur Aughey political writer

A 100 writers and thinkers were asked: Left and right defined the 20th century. What's next? Hardly any of them think the world will get better in the coming decades; many think it will get worse

Immanuel Wallerstein defined the politics of the 20th century in terms of an irresolvable tension between the modernity of technology—the capacity of human inventiveness to increase our material wellbeing—and the modernity of liberation, the capacity of political action to enhance our secular wellbeing.

The ideological faithful on the left and the right, albeit for different reasons, believed in the harmony of technology and liberation; the ideologically sceptical on the left and the right, again for different reasons, agonised about technological enslavement masquerading as emancipation.

Arthur Aughey