De redactie van NRC selecteert de beste artikelen uit The Economist voor een breder perspectief op internationale politiek en economie.
Populism isn’t just for right-wingers.
Dit artikel komt uit The Economist
For a movement predicated on historical inevitability, communism is taking an awfully long time to triumph in Europe. It has been nearly two centuries since Marx and Engels proclaimed the bourgeois goose cooked. Somehow the capitalists have contrived to retain control over the commanding heights of the economy, and even reclaim them in bits of central Europe that had fallen under the Soviet yoke. This dearth of revolutionary momentum is not for lack of zeal among the true believers on the populist left. Two dozen parties wed to class-struggle ideology across Europe have kept themselves busy mounting barricades, calling for strikes and organising seminars on the true nature of colonialist patriarchy. Despite their efforts the dictatorship of the proletariat remains as distant as ever. If a spectre haunts Europe these days, it is of the populists at the other end of the spectrum, those on the illiberal right, who seem to be making more tangible progress towards overturning the established order.
Yet if the downtrodden have yet to seize much beyond the occasional committee room, the political faction on the left of the left is having a moment. On September 20th comrades across Europe cheered as Elif Eralp of Die Linke, the German party of red-flag wavers, came top in state elections in Berlin. Granted, Ms Eralp, whose parents migrated to Germany from Turkey, was offering merely to clobber private landlords and turn the capital into a „city of solidarity” rather than seize the means of production, but still. In Sweden the Left Party (once known as „communist”, it dropped the moniker in 1990) did well enough in national elections this month that it will be needed for the centre-left to secure a parliamentary majority. At European Union confabs, these parties’ future ministers may bump into fellow travellers from Spain, where the populist left is also in government. It may not be Greece in the late 2010s, when Syriza ran the country (into the ground), but in many places the reds are doing all right.
De redactie van NRC selecteert de beste artikelen uit The Economist voor een breder perspectief op internationale politiek en economie.
The populist right has enough political oomph to scare centrists into wondering what might happen should more of them come to power. In contrast, their left-wing counterparts often have all the electoral menace of a revolutionary poster peeling from a student-union wall. The Left group in the European Parliament, a rough proxy of influence across the EU, counts 46 members in a chamber of 720—behind three centrist factions, ecologists and the populist right. Yet the movement’s modest electoral success belies its influence. Besides being a potential coalition ally, it can act as a spoiler. In France, for example, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the cantankerous leader of Unsubmissive France now on his fourth presidential run, has no chance of winning the election in April. But polls show he might be the runner-up in the first round. Such an outcome would be a godsend for Marine Le Pen, the right-winger who is far ahead in the polls. She faces a tight run-off against any centrist candidate, but would handily beat Mr Mélenchon. He could, indeed, change France—by bringing the populist right to power.
Even as most voters still plump for pro-capitalist outfits, parties on the populist left feel they have the revolutionary wind in their sails. In many countries they have tapped into outrage over Gaza. Confabs of hard lefties feature more Palestinian flags than hammer-and-sickles these days (the ensuing Israel-bashing sometimes carries a whiff of antisemitism). The same political fragmentation that has helped the likes of Ms Le Pen has played into the hands of the left, too: gone are the days when big-tent parties could unify broad swathes of the electorate under a single awning. The rise of the populist right—or „heirs of Nazism” as they are described by their foes on the left, themselves often the heirs of Stalinism—has given the Euro-tankies something to rally against. Concerns over the cost of living are top of mind for Europeans, and parties proposing rent controls, austerity-busting budgets and a rhetorical guillotining of billionaires resonate with voters feeling the pinch. The actual guillotining can wait.
Alas, on much else they disagree. For all their internationalist aspirations, the parties on the populist left have a tough time gelling into more of a sum than their parts. Partly this is historical: parties that seem like an indistinguishable lump of communism to outsiders are often a byzantine warren of rivalries pitting Lenino-Marxists against Maoists, Trots against post-communists. (The last French presidential election in 2022 included four such factions.) In the days of the cold war many communist parties simply copy-pasted directives from Moscow, giving their creed a certain coherence. Today, not so much. The populist-left parties across Europe „share certain core values but they interpret them differently”, says Luke March of the University of Edinburgh. Some still laud Russia—old habits linger stubbornly—while others have moved on. Is the EU a neoliberal club oppressing workers, or the only way for the lumpenproletariat to shake off dependency on imperialist America? Ask two lefties and you will get three answers.
Still, spectres die hard. What might justifiably haunt the rich is the idea that time is on the side of the populist left. Its success among the youth in Germany and France is striking. In Berlin Ms Eralp won around 45% of voters aged under 35, more than triple the score of the next political faction. In France the populist left is even further ahead, polling at nearer 50% of under-24s. Whereas the populist right is doing well in rural areas, their rivals on the left seem to have captured the urban crowd. Unsubmissive France is the default choice of many a student at prestigious universities, ie, tomorrow’s elite. In time, some of the youngsters will mellow into centrists—starting to pay tax has that effect. If they don’t, Marx may yet have, if not the last laugh, at least a chuckle.
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