What’s Left? The state of global social democracy and lessons for UK Labour (original) (raw)
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Why has the Labour Party in Britain been unable to take advantage of the historic opportunity presented by the global financial crisis to press its case for radical socio-economic reform? Why, despite more than a decade of Tory austerity and genuine signs of social crisis, does it find itself behind in the polls to a Conservative Party openly committed to shrinking the state and providing further tax cuts to the rich? In this short article, we reflect upon the history of the political left in Britain, and suggest that the liberalization of the left ‐ and the long-running marginalization of the working classes, their concerns and their real-world experiences ‐ reveals an underlying antagonism that is driving many voters supportive of interventionist economic policies but suspicious of the left’s cultural agenda into the hands of the political right.
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In today’s turbulent world, the concept of security takes on new dimensions, transcending global complexities to touch the lives of individuals everywhere. Who better to shape this narrative into political action than social democrats? Security at work is not synonymous with stagnation; it’s about revitalising support for workers in a dynamic world. Centre-left governments are reinvigorating institutions and empowering workers and businesses to find common ground. Across Europe, social democrats are forging transformative agendas, best exemplified by Britain’s ‘securonomics’ championed by Rachel Reeves. While discussions on the future of work often centre on technology, this study argues that work is fundamentally political. Political forces shape the contours of its future, particularly in a world grappling with a global pandemic and geopolitical shifts. The ‘age of unpeace’, as Mark Leonard names it, is marked by global interconnection, hostile competition, and the ever-present threat of confrontation. Social democrats in Europe and the UK must respond to this challenge. Through consultations with trade unions, experts, and social democratic representatives, a progressive politics of work is taking shape, addressing the complexities of continental war, geopolitical competition, climate crisis, deglobalisation, and increased state intervention. This study offers recommendations for the British Labour Party and social democratic movements around Europe. It guides not only how the centre-left discusses work but also how it governs work in the future.
The new left Jeremy Corbyn and the war of position a new coherence or further fragmentation.pdf
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Why the Left Must Change: Right-Wing Populism in Context
In recent years right-wing populism has risen significantly across the west. In 2017, Marine Le Pen, leader of the National Front, came very close to winning the French presidential election. She eventually lost out to Emanuel Macron, a man dedicated to maintaining the neoliberal consensus but smart enough to voice the usual progressive liberal platitudes during his election campaign. If this was a victory for liberalism over an increasingly virulent and regressive nationalism, it rang rather hallow. The huge strides made by the National Front under Le Pen, quite clearly, do not augur well for the continuation of liberal values in Europe. However, it seems quite important to ask why a representative of the dominant yet ailing politico-economic order was presented to the electorate as the alternative to the ethnocentric nationalism currently pulling France to the right. Is it feasible that Macron's unmitigated neoliberalism can assuage the anger and anxiety that underpin the new French nationalism? Does the invidious choice between Le Pen and Macron not tell us something about the parlous state of liberal democracy and the chains that have been placed upon our collective political imagination? Might the continued dominance of neoliberal capitalism – which has throughout the west concentrated wealth in the hands of an oligarchic elite and permeated economic insecurity throughout the rest of the population – have in some way influenced the development of this new right-wing populism? Could the current crisis in fact be an outcome of neoliberalism's continued political dominance? And perhaps more to the point, shouldn't we be asking searching questions about why the political right has been the principal beneficiary of post-crash economic insecurity, stagnating wages, declining lifestyles, austerity and the gradual breakup of the west's welfare states? Why has there not been a resurgence of interest in traditional left-wing politics rooted in political economy and committed to advancing the interests of the multi-ethnic working class? Why have we not seen a new generation of strident leftist politicians, keen to control the brutal excesses of market society, bursting onto the stage? There is no doubt that the new right has prospered in the vacuum created by the traditional left's decline. Focusing on 'Brexit Britain', the task we have set ourselves here is to identify why the historical relationship between the working class and left-wing politics has become fragile, strained and at risk of coming to an end altogether.
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In this reflection, we assess the theoretical faultline running through the contested current of Corbynist thought and politics at present. On one hand, we find a techno-utopian strand obsessed with automation and the end of work. On the other, a nascent politics of social reproduction with a foreshortened potential to realise the promise of a continental-style solidarity economics in the UK. Both represent the latest in a series of left attempts to confront the crisis of social democracy that rages across Europe, a crisis to which the British Labour Party has not been alone in succumbing. Deindustrialisation collapsed labour's role in everyday life, and a crisis in the society of work eventually passed over into its representative party’s electoral decline. Subsequent financial crisis and subsequent austerity has only made things worse. A poverty of ideas prevails that all sides of social democracy’s unsteady compromise seek desperately to solve. However, the recent UK General Election shows evidence that Corbynism has renewed Labour’s fortunes to some extent. Surveying the competing intellectual currents behind its rise, we suggest that the politics of social reproduction offer a better route forward for the Labour Party than the popular siren call of postcapitalism, and reflect on what the recent general election result suggests for their future development.