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RESETTING the LEFT in EUROPE CHALLENGES , ATTEMPTS and OBSTACLES • Resetting the Left in Europe Challenges, Attempts and Obstacles

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RESETTING the LEFT in EUROPE CHALLENGES , ATTEMPTS and OBSTACLES • Resetting the Left in Europe Challenges, Attempts and Obstacles • Andrija Krešić This volume provides a timely contribution to the urgent problem Thirty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Europe is U svom i našem vremenu of how to resolve the dead-end of the present European and global struggling with itself. Inequalities are growing, nationalism • Ка бољој демографској multi-dimensional crisis. It demonstrates the intellectual strength and is increasing, and populism is exploding. New emerging будућности Србије theoretical breadth of left-oriented social sciences at present. Contrary political movements, if these exist at all, are predominantly to the now conventional pessimistic bent, the volume offers a solid base arising from the (populist) right, despite the fact that the edited volumes • Multiculturalism for a brighter view towards future endeavours and political projects on majority of people in need belong to traditionally left in Public Policies the left, for future research, and constitutes an excellent instrument for constituencies. But instead of embracing these people, • Кa evropskom društvu - ograničenja scholarly and educational purposes. Students of all levels will be able the Left is struggling too: with the wrong paths of the edition i perspektive to use it to inform and orient themselves. I hope the volume will find a Third way it opted to take during the 1990s, with the edited volumes edited broad reading public, and will stir new discussions upon the horizons that consequences of globalization, and – most of all – with • Филозофија кризе и отпора - мисао it opens with competence and perspicacity. detaching itself from the dominating capitalistic economic и дело Љубомира Тадића RESETTING order and offering a sustainable economic, political • Xenophobia, Identity and Prof. Dr. Rastko Močnik and social alternative. This volume sheds light on the New Forms of Nationalism THE LEFT theoretical and political challenges that the Left has faced This volume comes at the right moment, when the world is emerging over the past three decades, looks at attempts at and • Contemporary issues and from a global crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. And it is very hopes for new beginnings, and outlines the challenges and perspectives on gender research much needed in an atmosphere of, as two authors point out, an “an or- IN EUROPE prospects encountered on the road to a recovery. And, • Traditional and Non-Traditional ganic, permanent crisis, which is failing to create a revolutionary poten- among the many conclusions we can draw, one certainly Religiosity tial”, and in which all classical, liberal solutions have already been tested, CHALLENGES cannot be dismissed: the overlapping of the crises that with horrifying results. The diversity of theoretical perspectives and case CHALLENGES , ATTEMPTS AND OBSTACLES both Europe and the Left are facing is not a coincidence, • Different Forms of Religiosity studies contained in this book converge into an overarching analysis, but moreover a sign that the decline of Europe is and the Modern World ATTEMPTS AND which, I believe, will trigger further discussions about this topic. closely linked to the decline of the Left. Consequently, • Strategic Streams 2019: European neither Europe nor the Left will be able to reconsolidate Elections and The Future of Europe Prof. Dr. Vladimir Ilić OBSTACLES themselves without one another. • Србија: род, политике, становништво A great deal of academic writing about the Left is being written without EDITED BY data and sufficient knowledge about the contemporary Left. This vol- Irena Ristić • Promišljanja aktuelnih društvenih ume countervails this absence by providing an insight into the historical izazova: regionalni i globalni kontekst and current conditions of the Left. • Izazovi održivog razvoja u Srbiji i Evropskoj uniji Dr. Goran Bašić RESETTING THE LEFT IN EUROPE • Resetting the Left in Europe Challenges, attempts and obstacles www.idn.org.rs RESETTING THE LEFT IN EUROPE CHALLENGES, ATTEMPTS AND OBSTACLES PUBLISHED BY Institute of Social Sciences Belgrade 2021 PUBLISHER Goran Bašić, Ph.D. REVIEWERS Goran Bašić, PhD Prof. Robert M. Hayden Prof. Vladimir Ilić Prof. Rastko Močnik SERIES Edited Volumes SERIES EDITOR Mirjana Dokmanović, Ph.D. ISBN 978-86-7093-245-6 RESETTING THE LEFT IN EUROPE CHALLENGES, ATTEMPTS AND OBSTACLES EDITED BY Irena Ristić edited volumes edited Institute of Social Sciences | Belgrade 2021. Contents 7 Foreword 164 José Castro Caldas Economic and monetary integration: I Theory, practice and INTRODUCTION experience in the EU periphery 14 Irena Ristić The changes and 184 Katerina Labrinou, challenges of the Left in Ioannis Balampanidis contemporary Europe Social Democracy and the – An introduction Radical Left in the European South: Strategic and governmental II experimentation in the WHERE ARE WE, AND cauldron of the crisis HOW DID WE GET HERE? 206 Jasmin Hasanović 26 Alpar Lošonc, Post-Dayton (im) Kosta Josifidis possibilities for the Left The Left between crises: in Bosnia and Herzegovina Antinomy of 5 powerlessness and power 238 Jovo Bakić What’s left of the Left in 54 Heikki Patomäki Serbia following the volumes edited On the future of the Left: restoration of capitalism? A global perspective 86 Vassilis K. Fouskas, Shampa Roy-Mukherjee IV The rise and fall of the IS THERE A WAY BACK, ordoliberal Left in Europe AND WHAT ARE THE CHALLENGES? 260 Natalija Mićunović III Challenges for the Left to THE DIFFERENT go global: CASES IN EUROPE The disparity between centre and periphery 114 Philippe Marlière 282 Catherine Samary The rise and decline of Towards a new European Left populism in France internationalist project without false dilemmas: 144 Ognjen Pribićević Against/within/outside Return to ideology: the European Union A solution to stumbling Social Democracies: The case of Corbyn 310 ABOUT THE AUTHORS Foreword This edited volume was inspired by the international conference “The Left is Dead, Long Live the Left? The Changes and Challenges of 7 the Left in Contemporary Europe” that took place on 28 and 29 No- 1 vember 2018, at the Institute of Social Sciences in Belgrade. The con- volumes edited ference was conceptualized by the Institute of Social Sciences and jointly organized with the Friedrich Ebert Foundation in Belgrade. The aim of the conference was to provide a framework for un- derstanding the institutional, socio-economic and historical causes and the patterns of the downfall of the left idea and the left agen- cy, as well as to grasp the challenges of the Left in contemporary Europe. This of course required going beyond the usual (and until recently) dominant explanatory model, according to which the cri- sis of the Left was triggered by the global financial crisis in 2007/08; an argument that overlooked the complexity of the eco- nomic and political transformation in Europe after the fall of the Berlin Wall and of the acceleration of globalization. Neither did this explanation take into account the failures of the Third Way, seem- ingly interpreting the firm decisions taken by social democratic par- ties throughout the 1990s as being merely aimed at a restructuring 1 Not all authors of this volume participated in the conference, while some conference participants chose to contribute to this book on topics differ- ent to those on which they had presented. of the social welfare state and enhancement of free trade, as op- posed to the reality of their paving the road to far-ranging deregu- lation, non-transparent privatizations, fiscal austerity and market fundamentalism throughout Europe. Therefore, in spite of all ex- ternal factors and circumstances, which have not looked kindly upon leftist policies over the last three decades, there is certainly also a responsibility of the Left for its continuous stumbling when it comes to taking clear stances on political issues that used to lie at the core of Left politics. In this sense, the discussion in this book is not reduced to looking back to the (structural) roots of the crisis, but also opens questions regarding failures of the Left and, finally, also sketches out ideas for the near future, in which the Left will sooner or later need to (re-)position itself. After an introduction to the topic, the first section of this book traces the roots of the crisis of the Left. The opening chapter, by Alpar Lošonc and Kosta Josifidis, discusses the philosophical and economic is- sues lying at the crux of the crisis as an inherent part of the Left in the framework of capitalism, but also embeds the problems of the Left in 8 the broader picture of the crisis of the contemporary societies in the Foreword Western world. Heikki Patomäki in his chapter looks at the crisis of the Left by using ethos, pathos and logos, classic rhetoric terms, and ex- plains the minimal turns the Left has to make in order to reach out to people again on the basis of these, illustrating also in an excursus the case of the Left in Finland. While referring to examples of successful social movements in individual European states, Patomäki points to the necessity and importance of a broader transnational, European, and even worldwide movement, given that many examples of local or na- tional Leftist parties have shown that in the long run, they are unable to sustain themselves without a wider front. He also warns that an au- tomatic Polanyian “double movement” – a dialectical process in which societies, in their development towards a deregulated free market, si- multaneously create counter-forces that act against these uncertain- ties and consequently undermine capitalism – is not to be taken for granted, and that instead the Left needs to counteract through politi- cal agency and collective actions. Finally, this first section of the book is concluded by Vassilis K. Fouskas and Shampa Roy-Mukherjee, who in their chapter deal with the failure of the Third Way and the long-term consequences of accepting ordoliberalism. They show how this did not just weaken the Left itself, but how it has also had a significant influ- ence over the transatlantic rise of populism since 2010.
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