The vacuum is not intellectual, it is moral: The modern left is mostly concerned with giving more access to consumer goods to the supposedly "have-nots". Considering the standard of living in Europe, I speculate that most of the Euro middle classes have more consuming goods than the fair share that can be possible distributed with resources of Earth divided by 7 Billion.

There is an intellectual and moral problem that makes the left loose elections: the acceptance of sacrificing some as unemployed to the angry god of markets and the lack of an economic narrative confronting this practise. As long as the left refuses to use the state as employer of last resort, the existence of a large unemployed group will be used as an argument against the position of the employed as well as a starting point for various campaigns against the lazy poor.

I agree that the living-standard of Europe is unsustainable, and I think that radical change is needed. But I do not think this is why the left is losing elections. The idea of down-sizing is not that popular.

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