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LEFT UNITY About Policy Network Policy Network Is an International Thinktank and Research Institute LEFT UNITY About Policy Network Policy Network is an international thinktank and research institute. Its network spans national borders across Europe and the wider world with the aim of promot- ing the best progressive thinking on the major social and economic challenges of the 21st century. Our work is driven by a network of politicians, policymakers, business leaders, public service professionals, and academic researchers who work on long-term issues relating to public policy, political economy, social attitudes, governance and international affairs. This is complemented by the expertise and research excellence of Policy Network’s international team. A platform for research and ideas • Promoting expert ideas and political analysis on the key economic, social and political challenges of our age. • Disseminating research excellence and relevant knowledge to a wider public audience through interactive policy networks, including interdisciplinary and scholarly collaboration. • Engaging and informing the public debate about the future of European and global progressive politics. A network of leaders, policymakers and thinkers • Building international policy communities comprising individuals and affiliate institutions. • Providing meeting platforms where the politically active, and potential leaders of the future, can engage with each other across national borders and with the best thinkers who are sympathetic to their broad aims. • Engaging in external collaboration with partners including higher education institutions, the private sector, thinktanks, charities, community organisations, and trade unions. • Delivering an innovative events programme combining in-house seminars with large-scale public conferences designed to influence and contribute to key pub- lic debates. www.policy-network.net LEFT UNITY Manifesto for a Progressive Alliance Marius S. Ostrowski London • New York Published by Rowman & Littlefield International Ltd. 6 Tinworth Street, London, SE11 5AL www.rowmaninternational.com Rowman & Littlefield International Ltd. is an affiliate of Rowman & Littlefield 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706, USA With additional offices in Boulder, New York, Toronto (Canada), and Plymouth (UK) www.rowman.com Copyright © 2020 Policy Network The right of Marius S. Ostrowski to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: PB 978-1-78661-295-3 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data LCCN: 2019956021 ∞ ™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992. Drum links, zwei, drei! Drum links, zwei, drei! Wo dein Platz, Genosse, ist! Reih’ dich ein in die Arbeitereinheitsfront, weil du auch ein Arbeiter bist. So left, two, three! So left, two, three! Comrade, here’s the place for you! Come join the workers’ United Front, for you are a worker too! —Bertolt Brecht and Hanns Eisler, Einheitsfrontlied (1937) CONTENTS Introduction 1 Part I: The left in modern society 9 The left 11 Left agents and organisations 23 Parties and partisanship 33 Part II: Left cooperation 43 The possibility and necessity of cooperation 45 Methods of cooperation 55 Part III: Left strategy 65 Past and future 67 Personality and policy 79 Protest and construction 89 Discussion and decision 101 vii viii CONTENTS Part IV: Towards left unity 111 Unity in different forms 113 Conclusion: Ten lessons for a progressive alliance 123 Further reading 129 INTRODUCTION Before a crisis can be fully overcome, it must first be completely understood. This seemingly simple rule is easy to grasp in principle, but much harder to stick to in practice. Whenever we face any prob- lem, our instinct is to fall back on what is familiar, to retreat to the safety of accepted views and tried-and-tested approaches. But doing so harbours no guarantee of success. It can prevent us from noticing important facts about the case, from making the right connections between them, from detecting their vital causes. It can stop us from seeing the problem in a way that illuminates what it is really about, and points the way towards a lasting solution. To understand and overcome a crisis requires us, first and fore- most, to be honest with ourselves. As we confront it, we must always remain open to the possibility that we might need to revisit and revise our most fundamental views about the world. Only in that way do we stand a chance of correctly diagnosing the nature of the crisis, critically considering the existing proposals for how to address it, and formulating positive alternatives that improve on them. Diagnosis, critique, and a positive alternative: three elements that must work hand-in-hand to shape our response to every crisis. The deeper and more all-encompassing the crisis, the likelier it is that in this response, we will have to break out of our accustomed 1 2 INTRODUCTION ways, detach ourselves from our old assumptions, and strike out in search of a new way forward. Progressive politics is currently facing just such a crisis. It is a crisis that is several decades in the making, and is marked by several trends. First came the ‘crisis of social democracy’: the steady shrink- ing of social-democratic ambitions to resist the neoliberal revolu- tion in conservative politics and the capitalist economy, mirrored in social-democratic parties’ electoral decline from an average vote share of 35-40% in the 1950s-1960s to nearer 25% today.1 This was followed by the demise of the ‘end of history’: the challenging of the apparent 1990s consensus around liberal democracy and free-market capitalism in the aftermath of the late-2000s financial crisis and the insurgent return of authoritarianism after long years of subterranean dormancy.2 Both trends have helped bring about a political situation generally described using the shorthand term ‘polarisation’.3 Yet this descrip- tion is not entirely accurate. At a very simple level, we can see this by tracing the development of party vote shares in elections in the main democracies of the global North. In recent decades, vote shares for social-democratic and Chris tian- democ ratic /libe ral-c onser vativ e parties have noticeably declined. At the same time, especially in the last 10 years, they have risen dramatically for national-conservative and neo-fascist parties, moderately for greens and liberals, and slightly for socialist and post-communist groupings.4 Seen in purely left-right terms, this has led to an internal recomposition of the right towards more extreme positions, and a fragmentation of the left towards both the centre and the extremes. But what looks on the surface like a hollowing-out of electoral support for the centre-left and centre-right disguises a much deeper realignment of ideological and party competition. At heart, this realignment can be traced back to deep changes in the basic struc- tures of our societies themselves. Since the start of the 20th century, but especially in recent decades, societies have become much larger: populations have grown in size and are more densely concentrated. They have also become more complex: their populations are ever INTRODUCTION 3 more specialised and differentiated, more intricately organised, and use increasingly sophisticated technologies. And societies have become more fluid: their populations are less locally rooted, and more outwardly and inwardly interconnected and mobile.5 These trends have disrupted and dislocated people from their old and established social ties, often (but not always) followed by form- ing and embedding them in new ones. And where social ties have led, social values have followed. As ‘traditional’ communities have been eroded, pressure to conform to their norms has weakened. In turn, those who resisted and rejected them have created new groups and moral codes that sit at odds with—even invert—what went before. Many people are caught in transition, bridging older and newer identities, semi-isolated atoms searching for the reassuring safety of a community to home and validate them. And these trends have been far from uniform within or across societies. Some parts— some geographical areas, some demographic groups—have pulled ahead, while others have stayed behind. For left and right, this has meant that partisan disputes within soci- ety have become semi-detached from their old dimensions of strug- gle. Ideology is no longer simply about criticising versus defending the capitalist economic system (i.e., class politics) or nation-state institutions (i.e., nationality), although both elements still play an important role. Rather, it has broadened to include other identities alongside them. The dissolution of traditional views about sexual and family life has added ideological dimensions around sex, gen- der, and orientation. Migration flows after the decline of European colonialism have fostered new dimensions around race and ethnic- ity, and transformed the ideological role of religion. And changing understandings of people’s mental
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