The Impasse of the European Left

Marcello Musto

The political and economic crisis traversing Europe has not only led to the advance of populist, xenophobic and far-Right forces. At the same time, it has prompted major struggles and protest demonstrations against the austerity measures imposed by the European Commission and implemented by national governments.

Especially in southern Europe, this has encouraged a renaissance of the radical Left, as well as notable electoral breakthroughs. Starting from 2010, Greece, Spain, and Portugal, along with, in a lesser key, other countries, have been at the scene of imposing mass mobilisations against neoliberal policies.

At a political level, the anti-capitalist Left stuck to its course of rebuilding and regrouping its forces in the field. New formations inspired by pluralism took shape and came to constitute a wide arc of political subjects, at the same time securing greater democracy through the principle of ‘one person, one vote’.

In 1999 the Left Bloc (BE) was founded in Portugal and in 2004 Synaspismos and a range of other leftist forces in Greece came together to form Syriza, the Coalition of the Radical Left. A few years later, the most radical components of the German SPD and the French Socialist Party (PS)3131 Oskar Lafontaine's cartel Labour and Social Justice–The Electoral Alternative (WASG) came into being in 2005, and the foundation of the Parti de Gauche (PG) in France under the leadership of Jean-Luc Mélenchon was announced in November 2008. This encouraged the launch of The Left (Die Linke–DL) in Germany in 2007 and of the Left Front (FdG) in France in 2008, which was followed by La France Insoumise in 2016. The year 2014 saw the emergence of Podemos in Spain.

The plural model, so different from the monolithic, ‘democratic centralist’ party of the twentieth-century Communist movement, quickly spread to most forces of the European radical Left. The most successful experiments have been not so much those that simply unify small pre-existing groups and organisations as genuine recompositions driven by the need to involve the vast, scattered network of social subjects and to weave together different forms of struggle. This approach has been victorious in so far as it has attracted new forces, drawing in young people, bringing back disillusioned militants, and assisting the electoral advance of the newly created parties.

But the reality in Europe was very heterogeneous. In the Iberian Peninsula and the Mediterranean Basin–with the exception of Italy–the radical Left has expanded significantly in recent years. In Central Europe, the radical Left has managed to retain a decent electoral strength only in some nations. In the Nordic countries, it has defended the positions it secured after 1989 (around 10% at the polls), but it has proved incapable of attracting the diffuse popular discontent, which has been captured by the extreme Right instead. The main problem for the radical Left remains further east, however, where it is virtually non-existent and incapable of moving beyond the spectre of ‘actually existing socialism’. In these circumstances, the eastward expansion of the EU has decisively shifted the political centre of gravity to the right, as one can see from the rigidly extreme positions taken by East European governments in relation to economy and migration.

The conversion of radical Left parties into broader, more plural organisations has been useful in reducing their fragmentation, but it has certainly not solved their political problems.

The outcome of the negotiations between Tsipras and the Eurogroup in Greece made it abundantly clear that, as soon as a left-wing party wins elections and seeks to implement alternative economic policies, the Brussels institutions are ready to intervene and put a stop to them. In the 1990s, unconditional acceptance of the neoliberal credo aligned the forces of European social democracy with the parties of the centre-right. Today, by contrast, when a party of the radical Left comes to power, the Troika itself steps in to prevent the new government from tampering with its economic directives. To win elections is not enough; the European Union has become a cornerstone of neoliberal capitalism.

The government option for the forces of the radical left should be considered only if the conditions are present to implement an economic programme that clearly breaks with the austerity policies of the last decade and today with an unambiguous position against war and militarism. Any other decision would mean not having learned the lessons of recent years when the policies pursued by Socialist-led governments compromised the credibility of the radical Left among the working classes, social movements and the weakest sections of society.

Faced with unemployment that in some countries has reached levels not seen since the war, it has become a priority to launch an ambitious plan for labour, supported by public investment, with sustainable development as its guiding principle. This should go together with a clear change of direction regarding the job insecurity that has marked all the latest labour-market ‘reforms’; legislation should also be introduced to set a minimum threshold below which wages cannot be allowed to fall. Such measures would make it possible once again for young people to plan their future. There should also be a cut in working hours and a lowering of the retirement age, thereby restoring some elements of social justice to counter the unequal division of wealth that has continually grown under the neoliberal regime.

To confront the dramatic rise in unemployment, the parties of the radical Left should promote measures that tend to establish a citizenship income and basic forms of support for the less well-off–from a right to housing through transport concessions to free education–in such a way as to combat poverty and the ever more widespread social exclusion. At the same time, it is essential to reverse the privatisation processes that have marked the counter-revolution of the last few decades. All the common goods transformed from community services into means of generating profits for the few should be restored to public ownership and control.

As regards the funding of such reforms, this could come from a tax on capital and on the non-productive activity of large corporations, as well as on financial transactions and income. At a continental level, a real alternative is conceivable only if a broad spectrum of political and social forces is capable of fighting for and achieving a European conference on the restructuring of public debt.

An alternative politics does not allow shortcuts. It is necessary to build new organisations–the Left needs these as much as it did in the twentieth century: organisations that have an extensive presence in workplaces; organisations that strive to unify the struggles of the workers and subaltern classes, at a time when these have never been more fragmented; organisations whose local structures are capable of giving immediate answers (even before legislation for general improvements) to the dramatic problems resulting from poverty and social exclusion. It will also help this to happen if the Left draws again on forms of social resistance and solidarity practiced by the workers' movement in other historical epochs.

New priorities also need to be defined, especially a real gender equality and thorough political training of younger members. The lodestar for such work, in an age when democracy is hostage to technocratic organisms, is the encouragement of rank-and-file participation and the development of social struggles.

The only initiatives of the radical Left that can really aspire to change the course of events have a single road before them: to build a new social bloc capable of stimulating mass opposition to the policies initiated by the Maastricht Treaty, and therefore to change at the roots the dominant economic approaches in today's Europe. Following the end of World War II, the path has never been more uphill.

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Frontier
Vol 57, No. 2, Jul 7 - 13, 2024