The Glass Half-Empty

Despite the doom and gloom of financial crises, global terrorism, climate collapse, and the rise of the far-right, a number of leading intellectuals (Steven Pinker, Hans Rosling, Johan Norberg, and Matt Ridley, among others) have been arguing in recent years that the world is getting better and better.  But this “progress narrative” is little more than a very conservative defence of the capitalist status quo.     At a time when liberal democracy appears incapable of stemming