The standard critique of the liberal international order comes from the Right these days: the nation-state is supreme, global institutions are a racket, and cosmopolitan elites have sold out ordinary people. The standard defense comes from liberals who conflate the internationalism of the postwar order with the economic system it upholds and defend them both at once.

Not satisfied with either position, political theorist Lea Ypi instead urges us to develop what she calls an alternative cosmopolitanism — a left-wing internationalism equipped to meet the challenges of escalating inequality, rising authoritarianism, and spiraling war.

Ypi is the Ralph Miliband Professor of Politics and Philosophy at the London School of Economics. She grew up in communist Albania and lived through its collapse as a child, an experience she chronicled in her memoir Free: Coming of Age at the End of History. Her most recent book, Indignity: A Life Reimagined, likewise mines her family history to illuminate the interwar rise of fascism. Ypi’s writing integrates personal content with insights from her work in political philosophy — particularly reflections on liberals’ and socialists’ shared value of freedom and its many historical betrayals.