For a consistently democratic and internationalist left. (original) (raw)
Times are changing, so strategies need to as well. These are some preliminary thoughts about new potential strategy for the left - includes discussion of Historical Institutionalism, Cultural Hegemony, Reform vs. Revolution, and Communicative Rationality
Left Unity: Manifesto for a Progressive Alliance
2020
Progressive politics is facing a crisis that has been several decades in the making. The ‘crisis of social democracy’ in the wake of the 1980s neoliberal revolution has been followed shortly afterwards by the demise of the liberal ‘end of history’ since the wars and financial crises of the 2000s. Rapid increases in the size, complexity, and fluidity of modern societies have disrupted old communities and identities, and brought new ones into being to challenge them. Cultural tensions have risen alongside older economic and political divisions to the forefront of ideological contests. The result has been a very specific form of polarisation: the resurgence of the far right, and a fragmentation of the left towards the centre and the extremes. To confront this crisis, the progressive left must reevaluate its approach to ideological and strategic competition. The last major precedent it has for what can happen when the left is fragmented and the right has turned towards extremism stems from one of the darkest periods of world history. The rise of fascism, the schism of the left between social democracy and communism, and the nadir of a disoriented liberalism eventually allowed bloodshed and destruction to take place on a scale never seen before. In this light, the contemporary left must work to overcome its divisions and bring about ideological unity across its various manifestations—socialist and liberal, green and anarchist, republican, regionalist, anti-racist, feminist, or pro-LGBTQ*. The left needs clear visions and proposals for how to combine its forces and face the tasks ahead with strength and determination. This book makes the case for today’s progressives to adopt a policy of ‘left unity’ across parties and all other parts of the left movement, and outlines strategies for how the contemporary left can start to build a ‘progressive alliance’. These strategies are inspired by the spirit of past efforts to achieve progressive unity, but they are motivated by the needs and possibilities of the crisis the left faces today. It is for progressives of all colours to learn from them what they can before it is too late.
REVIEW: 2016 "Socialist Register" takes aim at politics of the global right
With its 2016 edition, "The Politics of the Right," the Socialist Register has once again demonstrated why, after 52 years, it remains one of the premier international academic journals of the left. This year's issue brings together a collection of nineteen essays by scholars from around the world engaging with the pivotal challenges presented by the advance of the political right on every continent. For American readers facing record turnout numbers for Donald Trump during the primaries, the growth of billionaire-funded "grassroots" organizations, and the resurgence of racist extremism, this focus on the right danger and its connection to international trends is especially timely.
Challenging the Right, Augmenting the Left: Recasting Leftist Imagination
2020
What does the future hold for the left? How does the left adapt to, and prepare for, the crises of our time? In moments of crisis it is always important to rethink longstanding assumptions, jettison wishful thinking and dated ideas, and recover wisdom from the past. In so doing, we have the opportunity to plot a new way forward. The authors of this edited collection do just this: putting forward a diversity of approaches and issues to strategize for the work that awaits us in the 2020s, particularly in the struggle against capitalism, climate change and the far right. Working within five major thematic areas, the contributors examine how to engage working class people in anti-capitalist struggles, undermine reactionary currents of ethno-nationalism while supporting anti-colonial movements, strategically build power inside and outside the state apparatus, demand new forms of resistance to address environmental crises, and effectively promote solidarity and ecological responsibility. This book provides suggestions for working with popular disaffection, taking the rich, fragmented, conflicted history of refusals and defeats as a starting point for next steps in the struggle against capitalism and the far right, rather than as the basis for more conflict or defeatism.
Counterfutures, 2016
SSUE TWO OF Counterfutures arrives in a time of great hope and momentum -coming, as it does, on the back of the Social Movements, Resistance and Social Change III conference (SMRSCIII), which this journal hosted. The organisers of this conference expected it to be a relatively low key affair. The first of these conferences attracted around 50 attendees and participants. 1 The second conference, held at the Auckland University of Technology in 2015, had a little over 200 delegates attend. 2 1 See Ozan Nadir Alakavuklar and Andrew Dickson, Social movements, resistance and social change in Aotearoa/New Zealand, Kotuitui: New Zealand Journal of Social Sciences Online 11/2 2016, for more on this conference and its context, and the rest of Kotuitui 11/2 for conference proceedings.
The Left in Search of a Center [edited collection with Michael Crozier] 1996
The Left in Search of a Center, 1996
Did leftist political thought at the end of the twentieth century have a future? In a period when American liberalism was marginalizing itself, European socialism was exhausted, and cultural radicalism had become little more than a sideshow, the contributors to The Left in Search of a Center probed questions of how political community could be imagined and constituted in the contemporary world. The book explored the idea of a political community anchored in the pluralistic and cross-cultural nature of late twentieth-century Western societies. Contents Introduction: Searching for the Civic Center / Michael Crozier and Peter Murphy 1. The Status of Hope at the End of the Century / Ferenc Feher 2. From Rationalization to Reflexivity / Barry Smart 3. Inter putatorem et vastitatem: The Ambivalences of the Garden Metaphor in Modernity / Michael Crozier 4. Border Closures / Paul R. Harrison 5. Power and Rationality: The Western Concept of Political Community / Barry Hindess 6. Classicism, Modernism, and Pluralism / Peter Murphy 7. To Think What We Are Doing: Reconsidering Citizenship and Philosophy / Gillian Robinson 8. The Marxian Legacy and the Problem of Democracy / Dick Howard 9. Libertarian Confederalism and Green Politics: A Perspective on European Unification / John Ely.