When the fires stop, let's extend our sense of national unity beyond the immediate crisis

One of the few silver linings of the horrendous bushfires across the country has been the sight of people setting aside their differences to help one another during this time of crisis. “Natural” disasters don’t discriminate based on class, ethnicity, religion or culture: everyone in the line of these fires is equally at risk, and directly affected by the devastating outcome.

The only real divide is between people living in dangerously exposed regional and rural areas, and those residing in the relative safety of our cities. Even so, the shocking levels of smoke haze blanketing Sydney, Canberra and Melbourne have meant that city-dwellers cannot avert their gaze from the impact of these massive fire fronts, so devastatingly charged by the impact of climate change on our arid land mass.

So is it too much to hope that when the fires are, at least temporarily, quelled and the smoke subsides, this sense of national unity might extend beyond the immediate crisis? Because to address the urgent threat of climate change and ensure the wellbeing of all Australians, we must stop dividing people along the faultlines of class and culture and rediscover the solidarity that has driven every major social change in our history.

Related: If you love Australia, climate change should scare the hell out of you | Greg Jericho

Unfortunately, recent comments from those within our political class point to a failure to grasp the nature of this challenge. Since the federal election in May, we have heard repeated calls for the ALP to abandon its “blue collar” base, forget about regional Australia, and throw in its lot with urban small-l liberals of the post-materialist, cosmopolitan class. This way, suggest too many commentators on the fringes of the Labor party, lies an election-winning coalition to return the ALP to federal power.

To what end is unclear. First, surely a Labor party that no longer represents working people is no longer worthy of the name. For the ALP to win an election by casting off its obligation to improve the material conditions of the working class and reduce inequality would be the ultimate exercise of seeking power without purpose.

More fundamentally, these analyses reveal shallow thinking about the nature of power, and a fundamental misunderstanding of both working class culture and the history of progressive political change.

Real progress, both social and economic, is impossible without the working class. Incremental social progress, on issues such as marriage equality and refugee rights, may be championed by educated people of wealth and means, but meaningful action to redistribute power and ensure a fair share of our common wealth for all citizens is never realised through the benevolent deeds of those in positions of social and economic privilege.

Throughout history, working people have been at the forefront of progressive change. From the chartists agitating for political reform in the UK in the mid-19th century, to the cotton mill workers in Lancashire refusing to touch slave-grown cotton from the US during Lincoln’s presidency; from Australian unionists fighting for the eight-hour day, to the blockades by the labour movement that were so instrumental in fighting apartheid; from the role of workers in the US civil rights movement in the 1960s to the active involvement of the Australian union movement in the campaign for marriage equality: real social and political change has been driven by the solidarity and mobilisation of working people.

Yet today, both here and internationally, the working class communities that powered so many of these achievements are abandoning leftwing political parties and throwing in their lot with rightwing populists and demagogues.

And so we hear in response that the left should accept their rejection by the people they are meant to represent, and capitulate to the divisive politics that is effectively undoing two centuries’ of social progress towards a more equal society. Working people, some seem to have decided, are too socially conservative, too selfish and too ignorant to be saved.

This is breathtakingly snobbish, woefully ignorant, alarmingly defeatist, shamefully irresponsible – and politically myopic.

The left’s pursuit of progressive social policies isn’t the cause of the alienation of working class communities from social democratic politics; rather, it is a loss of trust that the political left still has the will or the capacity to defend the interests of working people against the forces of extreme market capitalism that have fractured their communities and destroyed their livelihoods.

The ravages of trickle-down economics have left people scared and insecure. Yet even when the economic project built on deregulation, small government and the relentless pursuit of private profit hit the wall during the GFC, the left was woefully unprepared to step in with an alternative vision to rebuild our common wealth and ensure secure livelihoods for all.

A decade later, in the face of repeated defeats, it seems too many people who call themselves social democrats are still seeking short-term political fixes to win government without disrupting the power and privilege of the capital class to which so many of them now belong.

Related: We cannot indulge in the luxury of despair. We need to engage in the hard work of hope | John Falzon

The answer to building a progressive coalition to support meaningful action on climate change, address economic inequality and build a better society isn’t to talk down to people and try to outdo the far right in the culture wars by pandering to fear and division; it’s to link social progress to economic progress, and fight for a better society for all Australians.

This begins with rebuilding the solidarity of working people, through the bonds of community and social action. It requires us to think beyond the tactical measures required to win an election, and to engage in the hard work of creating a movement for change – one which focuses on solutions to decarbonising our economy that create new, secure jobs for people on the frontlines of ecological and economic change; and the promise of a social contract that allows people the security and certainty to think beyond their immediate material needs and conceive collectively of the conditions required to improve the lives of their neighbours, friends and fellow citizens.

This collective action of ordinary people in pursuit of a better society is the means by which social progress has been always been achieved, and it always will be. It’s time to stop navel-gazing and get on with the job.

• Emma Dawson is executive director of public policy thinktank Per Capita