De ideologie van de PVV ~ Bibliografie
Bartels, E. & O. Storms (2008). ‘De keuze van een huwelijkspartner.’ Een studie naar partnerkeuze onder groepen Amsterdammers. Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam: Afdeling Sociale en Culturele Antropologie.
Bat Ye’or (2001). Islam and Dhimmitude: Where Civilizations Collide. Fairleigh Dickinson University Press.
Blom, Ph. (2010). Het verdorven genootschap. Amsterdam: De Bezige Bij.
Blommaert, J.M.E. (2011). De heruitvinding van de samenleving. Berchem: EPO.
Bosma, M. (2010). De schijn-élite van de valse munters. Drees, extreem rechts, de sixties, nuttige idioten, Groep Wilders en ik. Amsterdam: Bert Bakker.
Bovekerk, H. (2012). Protypical Fascism in Contemporary Dutch Politics. BA thesis Liberal Arts and Sciences. Tilburg: Tilburg University.
Doorn, J.A.A. van (2007). Duits socialisme. Het falen van de sociaaldemocratie en de triomf van het nationaal-socialisme. Amsterdam: Mets & Schilt.
Graaf, H.J. de (1977). De geschiedenis van Ambon en de Zuid- Molukken. Franeker: Uitgeverij T. Wever B.V.
Havenaar, R. (2011). Martin Bosma. Te licht bevonden. Amsterdam: Uitgeverij van Oorschot.
Hawkes, D. (2003). Ideology. Londen: Routledge.
Hilberg, R. (2008). De vernietiging van de Europese joden 1939-1945 (serie in drie delen). Laren: Uitgeverij Verbum.
Hintzen, J.D. (1918). De kruistochtplannen van Philips den Goede. Rotterdam: W.L.& J. Brusse’s Uitgevers-Maatschappij.
Horst, H. van der (2002). Nederland. De vaderlandse geschiedenis van de prehistorie tot nu. Amsterdam: Prometheus.
Knaap, G.J. (1992). Tjenkeh, kompeni, agama. Hoofdlijnen uit de geschiedenis van de Ambonse eilanden 1500-1800, in: G.J. Knaap, W. Manuhutu & H. Smeets (red.): Sedjarah Maluku. Molukse geschiedenis in Nederlandse bronnen. Amsterdam: Van Soeren & Co & De Bataafsche Leeuw, pp. 9-16.
Larrimore, M. (red.) (2001). The problem of evil. A reader. Malden/Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
Lepre, G. (1997). Himmler’s Bosnian Division. The Waffen-SS Handschar Division 1943-1945. Atglen: Schiffer Publishing.
Levi, P. (1985, 2009). Is dit een mens. Amsterdam: Athenaeum –Polak & Van Gennep.
MacDonald, D. B. (1974). Dhimma, in: H.A.R. Gibb & J.H. Kramers (red.). Shorter Encyclopaedia of Islam. Leiden: Brill, pp. 75-76.
Maesschalck, E. de (2008). De Bourgondische vorsten 1315-1530. Leuven: Davidsfonds.
Phalet, K., & D. Güngör (2004). Religieuze dimensies, etnische relaties en burgerschap: Turken en Marokkanen in Rotterdam. In: K. Phalet en J. ter Wal (red.). Moslim in Nederland, SCPwerkdocument 106a Den Haag: Sociaal en Cultureel Planbureau. Universiteit Utrecht: Ercomer-ICS.
Riemen, R. (2010). De eeuwige terugkeer van het fascisme. Amsterdam: Atlas.
Roekel, E. van (2011). Jongens van Nederland. Nederlandse vrijwilligers in de Waffen-SS. Houten: Spectrum.
Ruiter, J.J. de (2003). Welcome to the club en andere verhalen over politiek, cultuur en religie. Amsterdam: Uitgeverij El Hizjra.
Ruiter, J.J. de (2005). De statistieken der religies. Budel: Damon.
Ruiter, J.J. de (2011). De wereld volgens Breivik en Bosma, in: VolZin, 12, 16, pp. 10-12.
Schechtman, J. B. (1965). The Mufti and the Fuehrer. New York/Londen: Thomas Yoseloff.
Speer, A. (1969). Erinnerungen. Berlin: Propyläen Verlag.
Strothmann, R. (1974). Ta iya, in: H.A.R. Gibb & J.H. Kramers (red.), Shorter Encyclopaedia of Islam. Leiden: Brill, pp. 561-562.
Van Venetië, E. (2003). Pim Fortuyn: het merk met lef, in P. Strijp & V. de Witte (red.). Public branding, over zin en onzin van merkenbeleid bij de overheid. Kluwer Communicatiedossier 20. Amsterdam: Kluwer, pp. 45-48.
Vermaat, E. (2010). Heinrich Himmler en de cultus van de dood. Soesterberg: Uitgeverij Aspekt
De ideologie van de PVV ~ Noten
NB Het is mogelijk dat sommige links niet meer werken. Daarom is de inhoud van de links, als het om teksten gaat, in aparte bestanden bewaard die opvraagbaar zijn.
1 http://weblogs.nrc.nl/expertdiscussies/kleinzoon-van-dreeswil-niet-dat-de-pvv-de-oud-premier-eert/.
2 www.pvv.nl.
3 Op het moment van de publicatie van dit boek, maart 2011, had PVV-leider Wilders zijn nieuwe boek Marked for Death: islam’s War Against the West and Me aangekondigd.
Zijn Engelstalige nieuwe boek gaat over de islam en zal wellicht geen vervolg zijn op de bredere beschouwingen van Bosma in diens De schijn-élite van de valse munters.
4 http://www.bruggenbouwers.com/2010/11/21/recensie-vande-schijn-elite-van-de-valse-munters.
5 http://www.nieuwwij.nl/index.php?pageID=13&themeID=564498&messageID=6482.
6 Voor bijbelteksten citeer ik uit de Willibrordvertaling van 1995, zoals ook Bosma doet, zie: http://www.biblija.net/biblija. cgi?l=nl. Bosma heeft evenwel in de tekst van Jesaja 5:20 ‘hun’ zoals in de Willibrordvertaling staat veranderd in ‘hen’.
7 De juiste transcriptie van takkiya is ta iya, maar voor het leesgemak handhaaf ik de gebruikte spelling.
8 http://www.smn.nl/agenda/147-smn/438-theatervoorstelling-verborgen-liefde.
9 Op: http://www.chezchiara.com/2010/11/remembranceday-muslim-soldiers-in.html staan foto’s van graven van geallieerde moslimsoldaten die in de Eerste en Tweede Wereldoorlog sneuvelden.
10 Publiciste Bat Ye’or zorgde voor een ruime introductie van deze term door haar publicatie Islam and Dhimmitude (zie bibliografie).
11 http://www.comedycentral.nl/.
12 http://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2011/12/14/eerste-kamer-tegenverbod-op-ritueel-slachten/.
13 http://www.gk.nl/index.php?id=9&a=bericht&bericht=7955.
14 http://headlines.nos.nl/forum.php/list_messages/20042/2.
15 http://www.volkskrant.nl/vk/nl/3184/opinie/article/detail/2961862/2011/10/11/Massa-immigratie-kwam-vanrechts.dhtml.
16 http://www.pvv.nl/index.php/visie/verkiezingsprogramma.html.
17 In de internetversie van dit boek staat een hoofdstuk waarte lezen is op welke partij NSB-leider Mussert uit zou komen, als hij de stemwijzer zou invullen. Hij zou uitkomen op de PVV. Zie: http://www.nieuwwij.nl/index.php?pageID=13&themeID=564498&messageID=6482.
18 http://www.trouw.nl/tr/nl/4500/Politiek/article/detail/1884013/2011/05/03/Waarom-PVV-politici-thuismoeten-blijven-op-4-mei.dhtml.
19 http://www.mlwerke.de/me/me06/me06_165.htm.
20 Vertaling (door Angela Pfaff): Er is geen land in Europa, dat niet in de een of andere hoek volkerenruïnes bezit, overblijfselen van vroegere bewoners, teruggedrongen en onderworpen door die natie, die later de draagster van de historische ontwikkeling werd. Deze resten van een, zoals Hegel zegt, door de loop van de geschiedenis onbarmhartig vertrapte natie, dit volkerenafval wordt iedere keer de fanatieke drager van de contra-revolutie en dat blijft zo, totdat zij helemaal uitgeroeid of gedenationaliseerd zijn.
Hun hele existentie is een protest op zich tegen een grote historische revolutie. Zo in Schotland de Gaelics, de steun van de Stuarts van 1640 tot 1745. Zo in Frankrijk de Bretonnen, de steun van de Bourbons van 1792 tot 1800. Zo in Spanje de Basken, met de steun van Don Carlos. Zo in Oostenrijk de panslavische Zuid-Slaven, die niets anders zijn dan het volkeren-afval van een zeer warrige duizend jaren durende ontwikkeling. Dat dit eveneens zeer warrige volkeren-afval zijn heil alleen in de omkering van de hele Europese beweging ziet, die voor hun niet van West naar Oost, maar van Oost naar West zou moeten gaan; en dat dus het bevrijdende wapen, de band voor de eenheid voor hen de Russische knoet is – dat is de natuurlijkste zaak van de wereld.
21 http://www.nu.nl/binnenland/2546986/algehele-vrijspraakwilders.html.
22 http://www.volkskrant.nl/vk/nl/3184/opinie/article/detail/2938440/2011/09/26/PVV-verlangt-terug-naar-de-tijddat-de-Kerk-nog-het-zwaard-hanteerde.dhtml.
23 http://www.volkskrant.nl/vk/nl/3184/opinie/article/detail/2938480/2011/09/30/Martin-Bosma-Waar-is-deuniversiteit-Tilburg-mee-bezig.dhtml.
24 http://www.horstaandemaas.nl/verkiezingen/
25 http://www.tynaarlo.nl/live/bestuurenorganisatie/artikel_content.pag?objectnumber=729773&referpagina=6790; op deze pagina staat een pdf, getiteld “Totaal uitslag provinciale staten, Gemeente Tynaarlo”.
26 http://www.volkskrant.nl/vk/nl/2824/Politiek/article/detail/2459291/2011/06/28/PVV-er-mag-stem-tegenslachten-niet-zelf-toelichten.dhtml.
27 www.wodc.nl.
28 http://www.telquel-online.com/301/couverture_301.shtml
29 http://www.volkskrant.nl/vk/nl/2664/Nieuws/archief/article/detail/655687/2005/04/18/Links-loopt-aan-leiband-moslimeer.dhtml.
30 http://www.atlasofeuropeanvalues.eu/new/home.php.
31 Voor de internetserie van “De ideologie van de PVV” maakte ik gebruik van de vorige versie van de Atlas of European Values (2005). In december 2011 kwam een nieuwe versie uit, waar ik voor deze publicatie uit geput heb.
32 ‘The net sample size (in the sense of completed interviews) is 1500 respondents per country, except Northern Cyprus and Northern Ireland (with 500 interviews each), Iceland (808), Cyprus (1000), Ireland (1013), Norway (1090), Finland (1134), Sweden (1187), Switzerland (1272) France (random sample: 1501, two additional quota samples: 1570), Germany (disproportional sample East: 1004, West: 1071). For country-specific information, see Country Reports on national datasets’ http://www.europeanvaluesstudy.eu/evs/surveys/ survey-2008/dataanddocumentation/.
33 http://www.fsw.vu.nl/nl/Images/huwelijkenamsterdam%20Spdf_tcm30-60514.pdf. Ook in bibliotheken opvraagbaar.
34 http://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2011/03/15/buruma-treedt-toetot-hoge-raad/.
35 http://www.trouw.nl/tr/nl/4328/Opinie/article/detail/2842510/2011/08/09/Wilders-is-gewelddadig-alleenniet-fysiek.dhtml.
36 http://www.eo.nl/programma/knevelenvandenbrink/2010-2011/page/Corine_de_Ruiter/articles/article.esp?article=12614467.
37 http://www.eo.nl/programma/knevelenvandenbrink/2011-2012/page/Tofik_Dibi/articles/article.esp?article=12658060.
38 http://www.volkskrant.nl/vk/nl/2824/Politiek/article/detail/1879201/2011/04/22/Geweigerde-lezing-Von-der-Dunk-rechts-populisme-is-terug.dhtml.
39 http://binnenland.nieuws.nl/642118#.
40 http://www.artikel7.nu/?p=67277.
41 http://www.advalvas.vu.nl/nieuws/1549-ik-werd-uitgemaaktvoor-vieze-kankerlijer.html.
Why The United Arab Emirates Is A Poor Choice For A Global Climate Summit
Landsat view of Socotra
Source: en.wikipedia.org
The UAE is destroying the ecosystem of a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and yet its oil company chief will preside over COP28.
It is no joke; the man who will preside over the upcoming climate summit, COP28 (which will take place in Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE), from November 30 to December 12), is the chief oil executive of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC), the third largest oil company in the Arabian Peninsula: Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, who also is the United Arab Emirates Minister for Industry and Advanced Technology.
Organizations and lawmakers, including a group of 133 U.S. senators and European Union lawmakers concerned with environmental damage, climate change, and human rights advocates, have denounced the conflict of interest inherent in having the head of an oil company preside over the major international climate change summit that aims to reduce fossil fuel emissions. Meanwhile, in 2022, ADNOC announced plans for new drilling, which, if realized, would represent the second-largest expansion of oil and gas production globally.
The Socotra Archipelago
The Socotra archipelago in the Republic of Yemen consists of four islands (Socotra, Abd al-Kuri, Darsa, and Samha) and two rock islets. Lying 200 miles from the mainland coast of Yemen, it is situated strategically in the Arabian Sea, the northwestern part of the Indian Ocean, and east of the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea—the two bodies of water that link the Mediterranean Sea to South Asia and the Far East. Thus, it is along a crucial maritime route that makes trade between East and West economically viable. An estimated 20,000 shipping vessels pass around Socotra annually, carrying 9 percent of the world’s oil supply.
Socotra Island, the largest island, represents around 95 percent of the landmass of the Socotra archipelago. Thirty-seven percent of its 825 plants are native to the island. Socotra also hosts more than 190 bird species, and 90 percent of its reptile species are endemic to the archipelago. Ninety-five percent of its land snail species are only found on the archipelago. Its diverse marine life includes 253 reef-building corals and 730 coastal fish species. The human inhabitants of the archipelago, dwelling mainly on the Socotra and Abdul al-Kuri islands, lead a simple way of life, depending primarily on herding or fishing for their livelihoods.
All component areas of Socotra have been granted legal environmental protection by UNESCO. It is recognized as one of the world’s five most biodiverse islands with an Outstanding Universal Value due to its unique flora and fauna. In 2008, Socotra was designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Illegal Occupation and Overexploitation
In 2015, two cyclones struck Socotra, causing severe human, environmental, and infrastructural damage, and signaling the archipelago’s vulnerability to climate change. The UAE sent humanitarian aid to Socotra, repaired schools, hospitals, housing, roads, and water systems, and set up health centers. Read more
Talk Of “Border Crisis” Is Misleading. The Real Crisis Is US-Imposed Poverty
Avi Chomsky – Photo: en.wikipedia.org
U.S. policies created the poverty that drives people to migrate here, despite the lack of adequate social supports.
Immigration has been a touchstone of United States political debates for decades, and several cities claim to be at a “breaking point” as they struggle to absorb and support arrived migrants. But is there really a border crisis? And why are cities like New York unable to cope with the influx of migrants when their numbers are not unusual by historic standards? Have the Biden administration’s changes in asylum laws made a difference? Is there a “solution” to the migration “problem”? Avi Chomsky addresses these questions in an exclusive interview for Truthout.
Avi Chomsky is professor of history and coordinator of the Latin American studies program at Salem State University. She is the author of many books, including Is Science Enough? Forty Critical Questions About Climate Justice (2022); Central America’s Forgotten History: Revolution, Violence, and the Roots of Migration (2021); “They Take Our Jobs!”: And 20 Other Myths about Immigration (2007); and Undocumented: How Immigration Became Illegal (2014).
C.J. Polychroniou: The influx of migrants at the southern border has sparked renewed attention lately, and the immigration debate is raging once again. In fact, anti-immigrant rhetoric has escalated after Donald Trump said in a recent interview that undocumented people were “poisoning the blood of our country,” while a MAGA radio host even called for the shooting of charity workers helping migrants. First, is there an actual migration crisis at the U.S. southern border? Most people seem to think that the U.S. does have a border crisis, though there doesn’t seem to be a political consensus on how to deal with the rising flow of migrants. What’s your own take on this matter, and why is it that the number of international migrants keeps increasing over the years?
Avi Chomsky: I don’t actually agree that there is a “border crisis.” There are multiple crises, both inside the U.S. and outside, and sometimes they become most visible to the media and the U.S. public on the border — but the border is only one node of the crises.
The real crisis is what’s happening in countries like Haiti, Guatemala, Venezuela, and other places where long histories of colonial exploitation, inequality, and violence are exacerbated by neoliberal economic policies, militarization, new forms of extractivism and displacement, debt and climate change, and pushing people from their homes and into migration. Most people who leave their homes to undertake a dangerous journey in hopes of reaching the U.S. are not exactly voluntary migrants — they are forced out of their homes by desperation.
The U.S. has played an outsized role in all of these crises through its military, political and economic role in the countries people are fleeing. In terms of the crisis on the border itself, of course the U.S. is 100 percent responsible, both in terms of its immigration policies designed to turn Global South workers into legally excluded, exploitable labor, and in terms of its border policies designed to criminalize and punish migrants, using military means to force them into dangerous and often deadly paths to enter the country.
Certain cities, such as New York, Chicago, El Paso and San Diego, claim to be experiencing a migrant crisis. Let’s focus on New York, where more than 100,000 migrants have arrived over the last several months. This influx of migrants is not unusual by historical standards, so why is the city failing to cope with these numbers? Indeed, the operational effort is going so badly that Mayor Eric Adams said a couple of months ago that “this issue will destroy New York City.”
A number of different factors or crises are intersecting right now in places like New York or my own hometown of Boston. Every city you mention has its own housing crisis, which existed well before the recent migrant arrivals. Public policy, the real estate industry and the development industry, and banks and lending agencies have collaborated in a gentrification process that replaces affordable housing with luxury housing and offices. Study after study has shown how poor and even middle-income people simply cannot afford to buy or even to rent in these cities. The concept of supply and demand just doesn’t work when it comes to basic human needs. All people need housing, but it’s more profitable to meet the “demand” of people with a lot of money, so investment flows into luxury housing. So, the ongoing housing crisis is one part of the puzzle.
A second piece is shifts in migrants’ origins. Mexican and Central American migration has a long history in the U.S., and most migrants who succeed in crossing the border move directly to places where they have family and jobs waiting for them. Housing may be crowded and inadequate, but they have a place to go. This year, for the first time, migrants from Mexico and Central America comprise less than half of those crossing the border. Venezuelans are the largest group right now — and they are much less likely to have established communities and families to take them in. Read more
Are Political Labels A Farce? The Case Of The (Non-) Radical Left
C.J. Polychroniou
Radical social change does not take place on its own, and surely not without viable solutions to the very problems confronting contemporary capitalist societies.
Political labels, more than any other time in the late modern history, which traditionally begins with the French Revolution of 1789, not only have lost their former relevance but have become a poor substitute for critical thinking. Think for instance of Trump and his ilk when they attack Democrats as “communists” and “radical left-wing socialists,” label Black Lives Matter as “Marxists,” and link the radical left in general with anarchism and looters, with people “who want to tear down our statues, erase our history, indoctrinate our children or trample our freedoms.”
What’s in a name? Let’s talk about the Radical Left by explaining why it is in fact not radical and why it’s failing to become relevant in today’s capitalist environment. Let’s talk specifically about Europe’s Radical Left since we actually have radical left political parties across Europe. The United States doesn’t even have a left-wing party, and what passes for radical left-wing economic agenda in the U.S. (thanks to the contributions of Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez) has been mainstream party agenda in Europe for several decades. In fact, rarely does one come across a far-right party in Europe that favors a free market economy. And many of them, such as Marine Le Pen’s National Rally party, favor essentially “socialist” economic policies. Targeting a working-class vote, Le Pen’s far-right party promotes an anti-globalization economic agenda in which the “protection’ of workers takes priority over economic “freedoms.” Setting prices, taxing the rich, giving out subsidies to collapsing sectors of the economy, and retirement at sixty are part of the “social populism” agenda of the National Rally party, which explains why it has attracted traditional left-wing voters.
The political and ideological profile of today’s European radical left parties and organizations has been largely shaped by the experience of the collapse of communism.
Those parties that did not remain committed to communism after the dissolution of the communist bloc and the integration of the former communist countries into the Western capitalist system shifted to a variety of different left-reformist political outlooks, ranging from an exclusive emphasis on “green politics” (ecological parties of the Red-Green type found mostly in Scandinavian countries) to the adoption of postmodern radicalism and the politics of multiculturalism built around a resistance project that emphasizes primarily non-class forms of oppression. In Greece, the Coalition of the Radical Left (Syriza) combined a blend of ideological perspectives, ranging from anarcho-communism and environmentalism to Maoism, Eurocommunism, and even social democracy.
Today’s radical left parties in Europe represent what we might call “left reformism.” None of them qualify as being “anti-system,” and most of them are “anti-neoliberal” rather than “anti-capitalist.”
There are two key factors that explain the shift toward “left reformism.” First, the collapse of “actually existing socialism” itself and the overall lack of ideological appeal that Soviet-style communism had on the majority of western European citizenry; and, second, the fundamental changes that have taken place inside capitalist societies since the end of World War II, not the least of which have been the growth of the middle class and the sharp decline of the industrial proletariat—even though we seem to be returning to a stage where the poor working class appears to be growing rapidly while the middle class is shrinking.
But there is a third factor, less frequently mentioned in explanations for the shift on the part of Europe’s radical left-wing parties to “left reformism,” which is none other than the realization that revolutions represent rare phenomena while the few revolutions that succeeded have taken place in the periphery of the global capital system.
Marx may have been right when he wrote in The Communist Manifestothat “the proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains,” but the Western proletariat, even before World War II, seems to have felt that it had much to lose by risking a socialist/communist revolution. Fully aware of the fact that economic deprivation and political oppression can drive people into rebellion, the capitalist classes and their political representatives sought to prevent this scenario from happening by increasing the standard of living for working-class people and by providing some type of social security for them, as well as certain types of freedoms and individual rights. Bismarck’s social welfare reforms in the 1880s were undertaken with the explicit aim of improving the position of German workers in order to keep socialism/communism and radicalism at bay. In the United States in the 1930s, the New Deal was intended by its planners to keep capitalism alive and stave off social unrest and rebellion.
The expansion of the social state in Europe after World War II was also undertaken with similar objectives in mind, although the ideological and repressive state apparatuses played an equally crucial role in the legitimization and reproduction of the capitalist social order. The U.S. intervened to suppress popular progressive forces and defend the interests of U.S. corporations not only in Latin America, Asia, and Africa, but also in western Europe, including countries like Greece, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Belgium, Holland, and France. The CIA interfered even in British politics, and it is estimated that it spent hundreds of millions of dollars (more than $65 million in Italy alone between 1945 and 1968) on various subversive operations against parties of the left, trade unions, and political activists in postwar Western Europe alone.
But let’s return to the politics of “left reformism.” In today’s global capitalist environment, “left reformism” implies by necessity a certain degree of inevitable ideological and political ambiguity as well as plenty of confusion around economic policy. Social classes are not divided into two highly rigid groups—rich and poor, or capitalists and workers—nor do ideological proclivities or political affiliations stem naturally from one’s given social class. Support for France’s National Rally party is increasingly derived from various social classes, but with a common outlook: They stand for traditional conservative values, including deep-seated nationalism, defense of the French welfare state and of national industry, and an overtly anti-immigration policy mixed with a strong dose of anti-EU sentiments.
If the multilayered structure of social class and social stratification and the non-determined correspondence between ideology/politics and class present an inherent problem for the Radical Left, so does the ever-increasing global character of capitalism, including the entire project of the European Union.
In a truly globalized environment, and with global economic and financial elites literally dictating—either directly or indirectly via the enormous power they hold over economic resources—political processes and policies, the strategies to be pursued for the radical restructuring of the system’s operations and ultimately for the political and economic transformation from capitalism to socialism entail far greater difficulties and substantially more significant risks than ever before. Indeed, as the current eurozone regime demonstrates, even fairly “capitalist-friendly” policies that seek to provide a less extreme balance between capital and labor, such as those inspired by Keynesianism, have become extremely difficult to implement. The balance of power has shifted so overwhelmingly to capital that perhaps nothing short of massive popular rebellions might work in order to change the system. That, however, just isn’t in the cards in today’s Europe for all the reasons mentioned above.
The ambiguity on the part of the Radical Left’s project as to the task of “reforming” or “transforming” capitalism isn’t of course merely because of the greater challenges that global capitalism poses to this undertaking but also because of a rather serious gap in the political economy spectrum.
To put the matter bluntly, while Marxist and leftist theoreticians have made huge progress toward our understanding of capitalism as a socioeconomic system, contributions to the literature on the political economy of alternative economic systems (i.e., socialism or some other variant of people-centered economics) remains a rather underdeveloped area of study, with our understanding of the economics of socialism (growth, efficiency, distribution and even the relationship of socialism to the regulation of social relations by markets) being scant at best. Little wonder then why there are so few—and far in between—fully fledged alternative visions or why the Radical Left has failed to become politically relevant on the European political scene since the collapse of communism.
Notions like cooperation, equality, and participatory and radical democracy (ideas which, shockingly enough, are rarely raised or explored by the intellectuals or the parties of the Radical Left in Europe) are in urgent need of discussion and elaboration if the hope is to make inroads on the project of envisioning and working toward building a new social order with mass support.
Likewise, issues such as the fit between immigration and the domestic economy (an issue which, again, the Radical Left appears simply incapable or unwilling to address beyond vague humanistic proclamations, thereby allowing right-wing and far-right parties in Europe to gain popular support at its expense), the balance between environmental protection and growth, public employment schemes for tackling the massive problem of unemployment, and alternative forms of ownership and means of production need to be addressed and raised to the highest level of public awareness for the successful transformation of capitalism into a more humane and just social order.
Undoubtedly, this is a tall order. But radical social change does not take place on its own, and surely not without viable solutions to the very problems confronting contemporary capitalist societies. Indeed, in a way, what distinguishes the old communist left from the (non-)Radical Left of today is that “at least the Bolsheviks in Russia had a plan.”
Source: https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/political-labels-radical-left
Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.
C.J. Polychroniou is a political economist/political scientist who has taught and worked in numerous universities and research centers in Europe and the United States. His latest books are The Precipice: Neoliberalism, the Pandemic and the Urgent Need for Social Change (A collection of interviews with Noam Chomsky; Haymarket Books, 2021), and Economics and the Left: Interviews with Progressive Economists (Verso, 2021).
