The world may be breathing a sigh of relief after the forecast “red wave” of proto-fascism failed to breach the United States’ severely compromised democratic levees.
But the failure of election-denying Trump enablers does not mean the tempest has passed; around the globe, populists are harnessing divisive technologies to turn people against the very institutions that were designed to give them a voice.
As the end-of-year summit circuit kicks off, a perfect storm of wicked challenges threatens the very foundations of the global order we have known since the the world last contemplated oblivion in the ashes of Auschwitz and Hiroshima.
It starts, but in no way ends, with the world’s stuttering efforts to deal with the growing evidence that global warming is untethering weather systems to wreak havoc across the globe.
This week’s Cop27 talks in Egypt will attempt to nudge the world closer to binding commitments against the backdrop of the Ukraine war, rising energy prices and calls to compensate emerging nations being asked to forfeit fossil-fuelled development.
Despite the evidence of previous conferences, Australians are positive about the talks, grateful that at least our government is no longer running active interference for vested energy interests. Younger voters, in particular, seem to have a bit riding on the outcome.
The politics of climate transition butt up against geopolitical fissures as China and India assert the fruits of their rapid development, while Europe and the US attempt to cling on to the influence of empires past.
At the G20 leaders’ summit in Bali, democracy is no longer the faction of choice. At the conference will be the designate of a president for life, a crown prince who literally decapitates dissent and a new leader who invokes Mussolini.
Australians look at the global powers and see them all heading in the wrong direction: the Chinese surveillance statesman, the Russian warmonger, the American bin-fire and the self-destructive pantomime that has decoupled any notion of Great from Britain.
It is through this chaos that populists are emerging across what was once the democratic world, invoking the masses to hate their governments, allowing the lawless to thrive off this disillusionment.
This is a backlash against government that actively encourages global corporations to trade “freely”, wilfully removes local regulation and shrugs their shoulders when capital goes to the cheapest labour source.
The inevitable consequence is rising inequality: the unequal distribution of the benefits of economic growth; the widening gap between wages and dividends; the destruction of secure, well-paid jobs that people could build a life around.
Into this void sweet-talking hucksters with a command of media and the enthusiastic backing of the self-same vested interests they purport to challenge offer a compelling alternative to business as usual.
When establishment politicians warn that “democracy is at risk”, the call to action sounds close to a defence of a status quo that has stopped working for ordinary people.
If you want to understand the impending collapse of social democracy, look no further than the destruction of workplace democracy through the last decades of the 20th century.
From the 1980s a combination of calculated union-busting, coordinated government attacks on industry strongholds (such as the recently departed Peter Reith’s war on the waterfront) and the atomisation of labour saw union membership collapse around the world.
It is as a direct consequence of these attacks that we now find a swathe of the population stuck in insecure work with wages falling in real-terms and no real say in how their lives will unfold.
The Labor party’s promise to lift wages was a core commitment before the last election. Yes, it was an explicit commitment to support increases to minimum wages, but it was more structural than just a submission to the Fair Work Commission.
Labor’s mandate is to turn back the incessant tide of labour market deregulation that has left workers hanging on by their fingernails in this constant cycle of undercutting and work intensification at the altar of “productivity”.
In another key finding of this week’s Essential Report voters say this mandate is real and it is ongoing.
Most striking in these figures is the way support for reform crosses partisan divides: a majority of Coalition, minor party and independent voters all endorse the key objectives of Labor’s laws – including industry-wide bargaining.
While there is no red in teal, the new wave of independent representatives, for whom integrity and the status of women are key pillars, would do well to reflect on the broader implications of their IR vote.
Far from driving industry anarchy, laws that allow unions back into workplaces to coordinate activity will actively contribute to the ballast of the economy and, through it, the broader society.
That is why of all the global gatherings occurring over the coming weeks, perhaps the most consequential may well be the one being held right here in Melbourne, the International Trade Union Confederation’s (ITUC) world congress, which opens on Thursday.
It will be the final hurrah for former Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) president Sharan Burrow, who has spent the past 12 years doing what she does best, organising workers across the globe.
From successfully campaigning to end forced labour in Qatar before this year’s World Cup, to inserting just transitions into climate agreements and putting a New Social Contract on to the UN agenda, Burrow’s tenure as ITUC president has driven a renaissance in global collective action.
Unions have been under the hammer for more than four decades but the logic of a collective voice for workers has never been more compelling.
The ITUC agenda is focused on building wage justice around the globe, responding to the converging crises of climate, technology and public health and, yes, defending democracy.
Without democratic work structures, the distance between the state and the public becomes a chasm, a free for all where differences are amplified and frustrations are nurtured and weaponised.
Without unions, inequality grows, trust is broken, capital becomes untethered to reality. In the chaos the centre cannot hold.
Restoring workers’ rights is not just about sandbagging against despots; it is also about rebuilding the rotting foundations of democracy.
Peter Lewis will discuss this week’s Essential Report with Guardian political reporter Paul Karp and Australia Institute deputy director Ebony Bennett at 1pm on Tuesday – free registration here
