Have a look at what the Pope just said. This is probably the most eloquent and forthright exhortation of the social democratic ideal I've seen in mainstream recent society. If you can't be bothered to read the whole thing, let me excerpt you:
The dignity of each human person and the pursuit of the common good are concerns which ought to shape all economic policies
Growth in justice requires more than economic growth, while presupposing such growth: it requires decisions, programmes, mechanisms and processes specifically geared to a better distribution of income, the creation of sources of employment and an integral promotion of the poor which goes beyond a simple welfare mentality
The culture of prosperity deadens us; we are thrilled if the market offers us something new to purchase; and in the meantime all those lives stunted for lack of opportunity seem a mere spectacle; they fail to move us.
There's more like this. I won't claim that the previous Pope didn't inveigh against markets too, on occasion, but he did so almost reluctantly. This one has a dislike for the pure free market forged of fire and salt. He calls for a poor church, a church that is "bruised hurting and dirty because it has been out on the streets". There's more like this - just skim it and you will see the theme thrown out again and again. The secular amongst us must now accept the seemingly impossible - that heading the oldest religious body in the world, most famous for intractable opposition to the modern world and the dignity of the modern human, is a man bent against the powerful in the world on behalf of the weak. He is the one man with any large platform or authority calling for the end of the neoliberal age.
To be clear: I still can't really say I like Francis. When he removes the church's policy on condom use in Africa, when he embraces equal rights for the gay and transgendered in the world, when he orders full public inquisitions into the child abuse scandal, when he embraces the free moral choice of the mother in the case of abortion - maybe I will start to warm to him. The fact that he is radically different to his predecessors does not change these facts. Nevertheless, he presents an extraordinary moment for the Left, and one we should not waste because he is an imperfect ally.
That's the thing about allies. If they were perfect, they'd be either working for you or in charge of you already.
The problem with the modern left, as I wanted to say in my terrible dissertation on William Blake, is that it has lost its sense of prophecy. By which I mean, that iron certainty that all the powers of the universe are working on a slow but inexorable path to righting the wrongs of the world. While the Right calls on the authority of religion and tradition, what does the left call on? It used to have prophecy in the form of the messianic Marx, which I feel is a shame, not only because his most fervent adherents ended up destroying the Left in our time, but because he has very little poetry to him.
There are very few great poets of the Left. Blake, of course, is my favourite, because he fulfilled what Orwell called the love of something ever-changing and yet mystically the same. The Jerusalem of Blake's vision is both England of the now and the not yet here. Universal is the future, but it must be worked toward, sword unsleeping in hand. How many other poets have summoned that unquestionable, Old Testament devotion to progress? How many politicians on the Left can now talk with such certainty and poetic power?
The Pope can. The Pope can talk without any embarrassment about the "poor". He can talk about their dignity. He can talk about the supreme moral good in not just the welfare programmes supporting them but in projects to restructure entire economies to support them. He has no need to kowtow to focus groups and think tanks that seek to put an "aspirational" gloss on his words. He need not fear the New Labour trap of hollowing out one's concern for the disadvantaged by thinking he can have it both ways.
So complete is the triumph of Thatcher and Reagan that we cannot even talk about the poor anymore. They rarely enter our national conversation other than as freak shows. Where does their value derive from in a secular consumerist world? This Pope, if his language is echoed by the Left, can return concern for the poor into a noble thing. We can talk in unabashed terms about human dignity again.
Myself and my fellow secularists will have to swallow our pride now. We'll have to work with a Catholic church that we have long opposed. But an alliance of the international left and the Church has an opportunity to wrongfoot the neoliberal consensus that has long relied on the support of religion. We are running out of time to change the conversation before our long string of defeats are made permanent. By the grace of the God we do not believe in, we have been given a wonderful chance to turn things around.
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