As the crisis in Venezuela deepens, conservatives in the US and around the world are smugly gloating over the disaster of Chávezism and warning of the dangers of "socialism." And indeed, at the moment of the split of the Spanish Podemos and the decline in the popularity of the Greek Syriza, even impartial observers could conclude that the "pink tide" of left populism is waning.
But such assessments identify very different political phenomena. The only program that claimed to exclusively represent "the people", simultaneously declaring as illegitimate all opponents of "socialism for the XNUMXst century", was Chávezism, which really represents a clear threat to democracy. But Chávezism is a specific left-wing ideology cast in the mold typical of all populists.
Populists from the left and the right appear as exclusive representatives of a homogeneous, good and hardworking people. They write off all other competitors in the struggle for power as corrupt, and all citizens who do not support them as traitors. Their politics is not only anti-elitist, but also anti-pluralist.
On the contrary, other forms of so-called left populism should be seen as attempts to create a new version of social democracy. These efforts take place within the framework of democratic pluralism (although they sometimes oppose these frameworks: Syriza has tried to undermine the independence of the judiciary and the free media). In the cases where they managed to win power while respecting the rules of the democratic game, they offered citizens new options and in this way regained the previously lost sense of political representation.
The instinctive reaction to these parties was to label them as "anti-system" and therefore part of the problem. But this view is an expression of intellectual laziness and turns the state of affairs upside down. The same applies to the view that "the people" are eager for more polarizing and emotional politics. These parties and movements have achieved political and electoral success not because they are "populist", nor because they want to undermine democracy, but because they offer recognizably left-wing politics.
Leading contemporary thinkers of the populist left make two claims about their political strategy. The first is that populism fills the void created when the traditional left merged with the right, creating what Chantal Mouffe, an adviser to Podemos and the La France Insoumise movement, called "post-democratic" politics. As social democrats across the West adopted centrist "third way" policies - or "Thatcherism with a human face" - citizens no longer had a real choice. The difference between the mainstream parties, as Muff noted, came down to the choice between Pepsi and Coca-Cola.
According to Mouffe, the right-wing populism of Jean-Marie Le Pen in France and Jörg Haider in Austria represented a desperate "cry of the people" against this lack of choice. In his deeply moving 2009 memoir, Return to the Rimes, French sociologist Didier Eribon perfectly illustrated the dynamic Mouffe is talking about. Eribon's mother, who used to vote for communists, now votes for the far-right National Gathering (former National Front) of Marine Le Pen - in protest against today's socialists who have turned into neoliberals.
However, although we can agree with the diagnosis given by the representatives of left populism, we do not have to accept their second key thesis: that the best answer to today's crisis is to present images of politics as a conflict between citizens of all ideological convictions on the one hand, and a small group of oligarchs ("la casta") from the other. The idea implied in this picture is that the citizens - like Eribon's mother - are tired of the traditional left and are looking for a fresh approach. Or, as Podemos puts it: "If you want to do the right thing, don't do what the left would do."
During the eurozone crisis, the populist left developed a "transversal strategy" that cut across traditional ideological divisions, assuming citizens would agree to blame their woes on the financial oligarchy. The idea was to attract in this way not only leftists, but also supporters of right-leaning populist parties, taking a position that will be left-wing in practice, but not in name. The hope was that voters would stop blaming immigrants for their problems if they were shown the real culprit - financial capitalism.
However, no matter how justified the criticism of financial capitalism is, the question is whether the advocates of left populism are right when they claim that appealing to "the people" can mobilize citizens, especially workers, and that the revived language of the left cannot. Although more election cycles are needed for an empirical answer to this question, the data so far do not support a populist/nationalist approach.
For example, in the 2017 French presidential election, Jean-Luc Mélenchon of the La France Insoumise movement abandoned his typically universalist, class-based rhetoric and adopted a discourse of "the people." At his rallies, French tricolors started flying instead of red flags, and the Internationale was replaced by the Marseillaise. However, although Mélenchon did well in the elections and almost made it to the second round, French sociologist Eric Fasan states that La France Insoumise managed to win only 3% of National Front voters.
Mélenchon is not the only European leftist who has concluded that a "transversal strategy" requires a slide towards nationalism. Sara Wagenknecht from Germany's Die Linke (Left) party created a movement that was supposed to unite the various left-wing parties, while also attracting voters from the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD). However, so far the only distinguishing feature of her "Stand Up!" campaign is opposition to "open borders".
This strategy could prove to be counterproductive. If anything, it seems likely to strengthen the position of right-wing populists by accepting the premise of their immigration policy, while alienating the internationalist left. This seems to be exactly what happened in Italy, where the government is ideologically guided by the far-right League, rather than the Five Star Movement, which is formally the stronger coalition partner.
As Fassen points out, instead of targeting workers whose preference for right-wing populists may or may not be motivated by opposition to unbridled capitalism, leftists should concentrate on abstainers who might return to the polls. The latter may seek policies inspired by ideals of social solidarity rather than revived nationalism.
The left succeeded when it offered clear alternatives to issues such as housing policy and financial regulation, not when it invoked "the people" (much less "the nation"). Examples include Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of the British Labor Party, and Bernie Sanders, an independent senator who was Hillary Clinton's opponent in the last US Democratic primary and who has just announced his candidacy for the 2020 presidential election. What these candidates offer is not " socialism", but a refreshing mix of social-democratic policies that can attract all those who are sick of Pepsi, Coca-Cola and other neoliberal bullshit from the current offer.
(Project Syndicate; Peščanik.net; translation: R. DINIĆ)
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