MAGA populism – Opportunity and Responsibility for liberalists, reformers and the ‘Left’
Posted on March 3, 2025 in Economics, Philosophy and Rights, Politics by Peter Ellis
The Challenge
Extremist, autocratic, and self-interested leadership drives MAGA populism. It is a great paradox that their unfettered, neo-liberal capitalism causes public alienation and dissatisfaction with the status quo, yet they have weaponised those failures to undermine the role of the state to protect and build a fairer society. There was a populist conversation, which built a base for their reformist agenda. Donald Trump is not the instigator, but a vehicle for global systemic change which ultra-capitalists, and authoritarians worldwide, will benefit from.
This is a fight for democratic, social and political values. Social and political liberalists have been naive to assume that democracy and ultra-capitalism are naturally aligned. They never have been. Their causes coincided when both were threatened during the cold war. We are reliving history. Nation states are remilitarising in their fight for economic supremacy and resources, just as they did during the 20th century. What has changed is that in a post-socialist world, ultra-capitalists realise that the State and democratic accountability restrict their power and ability to accumulate even greater wealth and power. This should concern democratic capitalists, as much as those of us who seek systemic reform. After all, we share our society.
Liberal and social democratic governments too readily engage in the same conversation about military power and influence which past generations have had. Reflecting a binary mindset, of capitalism and statism, of resource ownership and control. In the world as it is, these remain significant issues. But it was their role, to have articulated a meaningful path towards economic reform, delivering a fairer society, beyond that framework too. One that coheres society. And they have failed to do so.
Ultra-capitalists have enjoyed the intellectual space to craft their view of society, largely unchallenged by any paradigm debate, seeking to reshape our economy. To make it more democratically accountable. We carry a special responsibility now to initiate that discussion and craft policy which connects the self-interest of the general population to a liberalist consensus. And, must not only list the failings of the economy and the politics it engenders but also provide answers on HOW to deliver a fairer society and economy. To propose systemic solutions instead of continually diagnosing problems without a framework to solve them.
The conversation – our response, our rights
What then is the response of liberalists, reformers, democrats and those committed to a plural economy? What is the conversation WE are having with the public. One, not defined by populist terms of reference, but presenting an alternative vision for our society. Until we can promise to deliver an economy which coheres society, around achievable policy for the common good, we will swim against the tide of people’s personal experiences. Experiences, which too often alienate and disaffect. Creating the fears and vulnerabilities which populism thrives on.
There are many pathways leading to societal reform. And economic success, which is credible and compels support from wider society. The ones l draw on today, are the realities the government in the UK faces. Also, a personal reflection on Kenyan society. Political and human disempowerment often follows economic marginalisation. The same historic cause of inequality and disempowerment affected exploited workers in the West and indigenous peoples whose lands were colonised. With one foundational difference of enormous historic and contemporary significance.
In the ‘West’, essential rights of labour, successfully opposed unfettered rights of capital ownership. Both existed within the same framework, identifying people’s economic rights primarily through their economic status. This secured a level of fairness in Western society, protecting those most vulnerable. The democratic will for reform in the West, embedded these labour rights and instigated reform through social ones too. For those whose lands colonisers seized, there were no rights of labour or social rights. Those who stood to gain exploited the vacuum through force and threat of arms. This philosophical, political and economic vacuum still exists today, determining levels of inequality, fairness and outcome, across the world. It was filled in part, in Kenya, by recognising the societal rights of indigenous, ethnic populations. This has significance for the wider world today.
A choice for progressives in the UK, defend a failing status quo, or reshape the economy
In the UK, Labour relies on growth. Pushed, during the 2024 General Election, to explain, what would happen if growth did not materialise, the answer was, that it would. There was no ‘Plan B’. Growth is considered more necessary than ever, when credible borrowing limits are reached, and taxation cannot be significantly increased. The size of the portion of cake the government gets, to fund the needs of the state, depends on the size of the cake itself. However, growth cannot fill the hole left by an unbalanced economy. Between that part growing personal wealth, often beyond reason, and that part used to meet collective and social need, the part that is societally purposed.
As Director of the IPPR, Harry Quilter-Pinner, said recently, ministers “must not end up like progressives elsewhere, defending a failing status quo. Disenchanted and distrusted voters want to see them visibly and vocally standing up for their interests”.
If truth demands we recognise the status-quo is failing too many, in too many ways, too much of the time, then we have a responsibility to reshape how the economy functions. To make it work for the best-interest of the general population. How we do so, IS the conversation.
In 2019, the electorate rejected Labour’s plans for public ownership, through debt financed nationalisation. In 2024, the Labour Party embraced private sector growth, as a vehicle to fund increases in public spending. The policy is, almost inevitably, faltering. People need to benefit from economic activity, in simple ways which they can see work for them. It would mean more for people, in their daily lives, to be served by an ethically purposed energy company, supplying energy at the lowest sustainable tariffs through societisation. Rather than the impermanence and lack of purpose, too often associated with nationalisation. What connects the general population to the economy, for their best interest, IS the issue.
We can learn and adapt
Living legacy
Historical context is meaningful. European settlement in Kenya, later colonisation, depended on the construction of a railway from Mombasa to Nairobi, complected in 1901. European settlers expropriated land as Britain and Germany carved up East Africa. Gillray’s, 1805 cartoon, depicting a world, divided up by powerful, developed nation states into spheres of influence, resonated in Kenya in 1901, and does so across the globe today.
The systemic impacts of this development affect the whole of Kenyan society. Nairobi, little more than a swamp and a train depot, a century ago, has grown into a thriving, exuberant and young city of some five and half million people. Vibrant capitalism has delivered growth, and for many an improvement in their standard of living. But, at a great societal cost, affecting levels of equality and particularly, the well-being of those who remain impoverished.
It is a familiar story, in Africa, the UK and beyond. Familiar because the causes are ubiquitous, common to us all.
The excellent 2017 documentary, The Battle for Laikipia, tells the story of how, to this day, tensions resurface between those claiming traditional, societal rights, of pasture in this case opposing those of ranch owners with a European heritage. Nanyuki, lays to the North of Mount Kenya. It is one of Laikipia’s two main urban centres and remains home to the British Army Training Unit Kenya. Climate change is shown in the film, to be a driver for the protagonists respective claims over resource, as it does across the planet. But the underlying cause is a different appreciation of rights, between those claiming societal economic rights but lacking them, and those claiming their personal rights of property ownership. A politics and economic system which cannot reconcile these competing claims, is one which fails humanity.
This discordance, between general society and those with power, is exhibited across the globe. Too often populations live in fear of harm or threat from those who govern, whose policy should aim for societal best-interest, but does not. And, lives and well-being are determined by the lack of societal, economic rights. Everyone feels and lives this reality.
The African Cities research consortium report that the majority of Nairobi residents cannot afford three meals a day, while others have stopped cooking altogether. Children in informal settlements suffer a high level of stunting, wasting, underweight and micronutrient deficiencies. Whilst poverty and unacceptable inequality persists, more prosperous residents, often with a European or Western heritage, live in gated communities, protected by askaris who guard their compounds and districts. The stench of fossil fuels fills the Nairobi air, because car exhaust filtration is one expense too many. The need for economic growth in Kenya, leading to the creation of base-levels of income and wealth, outweighs the requirement for environmentally sensitive policy. But, there is a positive pathway which emerges from this legacy.
Change through Purpose – Solidarity through Society
Whilst visiting Kenya recently, l met with the founders of a commercial enterprise, Dot Glasses, supplying affordable glasses. Estimates suggest 1 billion people need glasses but do not have them, approaching one in eight of the global population. Corrected vision increases earnings and productivity, and are essential for education and and safety.
The scope of our economy skews our conception of growth. Capital intensive AI may improve growth, and wealth for those who own its sources. Yet, growth, resource neutral and therefore sustainable, can also come from affordable access to the items, more wealthy societies take for granted. This enterprise is creating stakeholder value. And is also purpose driven. The entrepreneurs driving this company have a background in social enterprise. Prevailing pathways in the market economy for purpose driven enterprise and the ecosystems supporting it exist yet remain underdeveloped. They are crucial if we are to achieve systemic change in the way the economy functions.
Dot glasses help increase productivity through distribution into into the agricultural sector and to tea farms and factories.
A societal response to a colonial legacy
The Kimunye Tea Factory is located near the foothills of Mount Kenya. The area around this mountain was a stronghold of Mau Mau resistance, when the Kenya Land and Freedom Army fought the British, seventy five years ago. They demanded access to lands taken by European colonialists and a greater political voice for ethnic Africans. 
It is against this backdrop, that Kenya had to find a way to protect their indigenous society. Including small holding, village farmers, marginalised by multi-national companies and their loss of land rights during colonisation. Populations worldwide share the root of this marginalisation, powerlessness. This powerlessness defines the market economy, which is neither sufficiently mixed or plural. Driven by personal self-interest, above collective need. With access to profits and opportunity attached to pre-existing personal, rather than our collective wealth. But, those profits, purpose and outcome can also work for the best-interest of consumers and wider stakeholder interest, of society, through societal ownership, which is neither state nor private sector owned.
Throughout the tea growing regions of Kenya, local communities’ livelihoods were secured by adhering their best interest to the market economy. The Kimunye Tea Factory is part of the Kenya Tea Development Agency, now a private company owned by about 600,000 small-holder tea farmers, spread across sixteen counties in Kenya. The Kimunye factory itself covers fifty-two buying centres, serving 8,400 farmers who pick their tea leaf daily, with 45,000 dependants. This purpose-driven enterprise improved the lives of small-scale farmers and the well-being of their communities. The market was societised.
Be part of the conversation and make change happen
The battle for democracy, is also one for greater systemic equality. Connecting the general population to the economy through pan global rights over the market economy. Self-interested purpose defines capitalism, it is as it is, and contributes to society. But, purpose for the common good can also define economic outcome. Placing societal cohesion and connection, ahead of the alienating division and extreme self-interest which lays at the heart of ultra-capitalism and its authoritarian, political counterpart.
The existing status-quo is rightly criticised. We live with an outdated, binary economic system. Those who feel alienated and disaffected, particularly younger generations, must find inspiration in the liberal, Left, and reformist movements, with the realistic expectation that policies can deliver a fairer society.
Governments have the power to societise the market economy, by encouraging and sponsoring purpose-driven enterprise, delivering greater affordability, governed by ethical practices. It is simple. Whether they choose to do so may determine our ability to hold society together, within a meaningful democratic framework. The conversation which liberalists, reformers and the ‘Left’ need to instigate, and have with the general population is not happening, yet. It must begin now.
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