Graffiti protesting homelessness in the Republic of Ireland The Current issue of Radical Options for Scotland Europe (ROSE) dealing with the crisis of the left is now available at https://rose-scotland.org/ The following article is taken from that issue of ROSE and considers divisions on the European Left.
One of the many peculiarities of the current period is the persistence of some on the British left and significantly more in the centre of British politics to look to the EU as a solution to the profound crisis we are living through. The SNP, for example, is arguing that achieving independence is inseparable from membership of the EU because membership of the EU is necessary for economic stability and growth. This is a position echoed time and again by Britain’s liberal left for example Rafael Behr arguing in the Guardian in October that ‘… leaving the EU has been a disaster. But refusing to admit it has cost Labour precious time and credibility.’
One of the many peculiarities of the current period is the persistence of some on the British left and significantly more in the centre of British politics to look to the EU as a solution to the profound crisis we are living through. The SNP, for example, is arguing that achieving independence is inseparable from membership of the EU because membership of the EU is necessary for economic stability and growth. This is a position echoed time and again by Britain’s liberal left for example Rafael Behr arguing in the Guardian in October that ‘… leaving the EU has been a disaster. But refusing to admit it has cost Labour precious time and credibility.’
This yearning for membership persists despite the confusion, retreat and fragmentation of the European left in the face an almost universal rise in right wing populism that is a direct consequence of the economic failure of the EU, torn as it is, between the need to satisfy the demands of the ruling classes of individual nation states while providing an institutional framework that allows increasing deregulation and common rules on debt and deficit, designed to control public expenditure. I am not only referring to the social democratic tradition, whose European decline has been steep, but what we might call the radical Left.
As ‘The Future of European Competitiveness’ of September 2024, by former European Central Bank President Mario Draghi points out, Europe's economy has been in decline for decades, with stagnant productivity, falling investment and loss of market share. Add to that the shock of NATO’s proxy war with Russia over Ukraine and the impact that has had on cheap Russian energy supplies, especially to Germany, and you begin to understand why in Ray Dalio’s Great Power index of 2024, looking at estimated GDP growth over the next 10 years, European countries perform so badly: Poland 2.9%, Sweden 2.3%, Ireland 1.9%,Hungary 1.9%, Czech Republic, 1.9%, UK 1.3% Netherlands 1.2%, Portugal 1.1%, Belgium 0.9%, France 0.9%, Norway 0.8%, Spain 0.3%, Switzerland 0.2%, Greece 0.0%, Germany -0.5% (yes minus) and Italy -0.5%.
The ‘centre’ right in Europe wants to address this economic sclerosis with even more neoliberal policies, more deregulation, and greater EU convergence. Draghi did also want 800 billion euros spent annually for the following 10 years to support private and public investments, but the German ruling class, which believes it is being asked to underwrite the economic weakness of others member states, did not see this in its national interest. The crisis is so profound that President Macron speaking at the Berlin Global Dialogue last October said: ‘The EU could die, we are on a verge of a very important moment… Our former model is over – we are over-regulating and under-investing. In the two to three years to come, if we follow our classical agenda we will be out of the market.’
As we know, the far right has exploited this failure. Across the EU, parties like Alternative für Deutschland (Alternative for Germany) in Germany, Vox in Spain and Rassemblement National (National Rally) in France, have all gained ground. In Italy, Meloni’s Fratelli d'Italia (Brothers of Italy) a party with neo-fascist roots, is even in government. By contrast the left, and in particular the radical left, has had a much more difficult time and last year, to make matters worse, the European Left Party (EL) founded in 2004 which acts as a bloc for radical left parties in the EU parliament split, with the creation of the European Left Alliance (ELA).
The ELA comprises La France Insoumise, (France Unbowed) Podemos (We Can), the Portuguese Left Bloc, the Finnish Left Alliance, the Swedish Left Party, and the Danish Green-Left Alliance. The formation of this new European party, unsurprisingly, drew fire from members of Germany’s Left Party (Die Linke), firmly embedded in EL: ‘The splitting of the European Left into two competing parties (plus numerous configurations in between) massively weakens it.’ The EL remains the much larger grouping with forty affiliates including Die Linke, the Spanish United Left and a range of communist parties.
The split is a consequence of the block on working class advance inherent in the EU project and how the left should deal with it. As national populations in the EU reacted to the consequences of the 2008 crisis, in particular austerity and loss of national autonomy, they demanded ‘less Europe’ and many wanted a more critical, even ‘disobedient’ political response to the demands of the EU. The ELA was in its origins part of an attempt to offer that more intense resistance to EU diktats. However, according to a report referring to the performance of ELA from Transform! (a foundation that supports EL):
‘Even the ‘disobedient Euroscepticism’ of its (ELA’s) earlier incarnations appears to have been sidelined…in favour of pretty much the same kind of constructive criticism of the EU also practiced by the EL… the creation of the ELA only adds to a wider chronic problem on the radical Left: a level of organizational fragmentation that is not really justified by the level of political differences between various groups and initiatives.’ For Transform!, then, the emergence of ELA is close to inexplicable.
The ‘earlier incarnations’ refer, principally, to the group ‘Now, the People!’ which contained several of the parties that later formed ELA. ‘Now, the People!’ was formed in 2018 in response to the austerity measures being implemented by the radical left wing party SYRIZA in government in Greece, after SYRIZA capitulated to the Troika as a consequence of the Greek government debt crisis of 2015. ‘Now, the People!’ wanted to pursue a more combative stance.
It remains a fundamental blind spot for some on the left in Europe that the EU and its structures and its treaties lock member states into positions that are designed to thwart democratic resistance to the requirements of European capitalist interests. As the philosopher Jürgen Habermas said, referring to the Greek voters’ rejection of the terms of the international bailout that imposed severe austerity in 2015: ‘Against the treaties there is no democracy’.
Despite that Vladimir Bortun, an Oxford University academic, can still argue that SYRIZA might have had a better chance to avoid capitulation if there had been Europe-wide campaign of mass mobilization and disobedience. The truth is that such a campaign would only have been effective if the objective for the participating national left parties, had been escaping the clutches of the EU, an institution whose sole purpose was and is the advance of the interests of the Western European capitalist class. Until that is understood and addressed, the European radical left will struggle in its attempts to generate effective left resistance and build another kind of socialist Europe.
As ‘The Future of European Competitiveness’ of September 2024, by former European Central Bank President Mario Draghi points out, Europe's economy has been in decline for decades, with stagnant productivity, falling investment and loss of market share. Add to that the shock of NATO’s proxy war with Russia over Ukraine and the impact that has had on cheap Russian energy supplies, especially to Germany, and you begin to understand why in Ray Dalio’s Great Power index of 2024, looking at estimated GDP growth over the next 10 years, European countries perform so badly: Poland 2.9%, Sweden 2.3%, Ireland 1.9%,Hungary 1.9%, Czech Republic, 1.9%, UK 1.3% Netherlands 1.2%, Portugal 1.1%, Belgium 0.9%, France 0.9%, Norway 0.8%, Spain 0.3%, Switzerland 0.2%, Greece 0.0%, Germany -0.5% (yes minus) and Italy -0.5%.
The ‘centre’ right in Europe wants to address this economic sclerosis with even more neoliberal policies, more deregulation, and greater EU convergence. Draghi did also want 800 billion euros spent annually for the following 10 years to support private and public investments, but the German ruling class, which believes it is being asked to underwrite the economic weakness of others member states, did not see this in its national interest. The crisis is so profound that President Macron speaking at the Berlin Global Dialogue last October said: ‘The EU could die, we are on a verge of a very important moment… Our former model is over – we are over-regulating and under-investing. In the two to three years to come, if we follow our classical agenda we will be out of the market.’
As we know, the far right has exploited this failure. Across the EU, parties like Alternative für Deutschland (Alternative for Germany) in Germany, Vox in Spain and Rassemblement National (National Rally) in France, have all gained ground. In Italy, Meloni’s Fratelli d'Italia (Brothers of Italy) a party with neo-fascist roots, is even in government. By contrast the left, and in particular the radical left, has had a much more difficult time and last year, to make matters worse, the European Left Party (EL) founded in 2004 which acts as a bloc for radical left parties in the EU parliament split, with the creation of the European Left Alliance (ELA).
The ELA comprises La France Insoumise, (France Unbowed) Podemos (We Can), the Portuguese Left Bloc, the Finnish Left Alliance, the Swedish Left Party, and the Danish Green-Left Alliance. The formation of this new European party, unsurprisingly, drew fire from members of Germany’s Left Party (Die Linke), firmly embedded in EL: ‘The splitting of the European Left into two competing parties (plus numerous configurations in between) massively weakens it.’ The EL remains the much larger grouping with forty affiliates including Die Linke, the Spanish United Left and a range of communist parties.
The split is a consequence of the block on working class advance inherent in the EU project and how the left should deal with it. As national populations in the EU reacted to the consequences of the 2008 crisis, in particular austerity and loss of national autonomy, they demanded ‘less Europe’ and many wanted a more critical, even ‘disobedient’ political response to the demands of the EU. The ELA was in its origins part of an attempt to offer that more intense resistance to EU diktats. However, according to a report referring to the performance of ELA from Transform! (a foundation that supports EL):
‘Even the ‘disobedient Euroscepticism’ of its (ELA’s) earlier incarnations appears to have been sidelined…in favour of pretty much the same kind of constructive criticism of the EU also practiced by the EL… the creation of the ELA only adds to a wider chronic problem on the radical Left: a level of organizational fragmentation that is not really justified by the level of political differences between various groups and initiatives.’ For Transform!, then, the emergence of ELA is close to inexplicable.
The ‘earlier incarnations’ refer, principally, to the group ‘Now, the People!’ which contained several of the parties that later formed ELA. ‘Now, the People!’ was formed in 2018 in response to the austerity measures being implemented by the radical left wing party SYRIZA in government in Greece, after SYRIZA capitulated to the Troika as a consequence of the Greek government debt crisis of 2015. ‘Now, the People!’ wanted to pursue a more combative stance.
It remains a fundamental blind spot for some on the left in Europe that the EU and its structures and its treaties lock member states into positions that are designed to thwart democratic resistance to the requirements of European capitalist interests. As the philosopher Jürgen Habermas said, referring to the Greek voters’ rejection of the terms of the international bailout that imposed severe austerity in 2015: ‘Against the treaties there is no democracy’.
Despite that Vladimir Bortun, an Oxford University academic, can still argue that SYRIZA might have had a better chance to avoid capitulation if there had been Europe-wide campaign of mass mobilization and disobedience. The truth is that such a campaign would only have been effective if the objective for the participating national left parties, had been escaping the clutches of the EU, an institution whose sole purpose was and is the advance of the interests of the Western European capitalist class. Until that is understood and addressed, the European radical left will struggle in its attempts to generate effective left resistance and build another kind of socialist Europe.
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