Abstract
There is life in the old dog yet. Whereas in the light of an eroding communist bloc in the fall of 1989, nobody failed to hear the radial left’s death knell sounding loud and clear from Eastern to Western Europe, today – more than 25 years later – it would not occur to anybody of sound mind to deny the vigour of a serious political rival to (the left of) social democracy. One of the multifarious catalysts of this long-winded recovery process was surely the shock of the socio-economic challenges that came up in the aftermath of the 2007 banking crisis.
To highlight the interplay of the most recent, ongoing period of European austerity and the awakening of the radical left is the task this topical volume is devoted to. Edited by a student of sociology, it presents no less than 12 sketchy case studies already published in Socialism and Democracy in 2015. The amalgamation of politics and political science peculiar to this periodical, therefore, comes as no revelation. For instance, the electoral performance of major ‘extreme’ (not ‘radical’) right parties and the measures imposed on the hardest hit European countries are reported in order to underscore the need for a powerful radical left. To be sure, the radical right has – as Austria, the Netherlands, and Germany illustrate quite plainly – undergone an alarming boost in recent years, and Southern Europe has been severely struck by the social rigours of the crisis. But citing the electoral outcomes of the whole of the radical right family in Europe, or the status quo of all European states, would probably create a more nuanced impression.
As another vivid example serves the characterization of the radical left itself which is, among other things, assumed to be essentially ‘pro-democracy’ (p. 12). How can parties like the German DKP, the Greek KKE or the British Socialist Workers Party – all of them forthrightly anti-democratic, revolutionary organizations – be labelled ‘pro-democratic’? Paradoxically, this line of argument is blended with a grain of revolutionary rhetoric such as: ‘The world is plagued with a potentially fatal illness and the radical left embodies the only hope to bring about any future’ (p. 24). Or: ‘What is needed from…the entire EU radical left, goes beyond “simple activism.” It demands an alternative political strategy that will apply productive capacities, cultural capital, factory takeovers, and new forms of worker based economic collaboration’ (p. 41). A wide range of similar passages develop a more or less distorted picture of this party family as being the only effective and democratic remedy for the evil of modern society in the shape of fascism and neo-liberalism. Not only do politics and science coexist in this narrow volume, but the normative point of view also seems to cloud the analytical judgement here and there, leaving the reader with the impression of a politically skewed perspective.
Aside from this, the 12 contributions convey rather descriptive country portraits instead of being profound analytical studies. How could it be any different in a volume that lacks a leading question? Basically, most of the contributions re-narrate the development of the radical left in their home economic and political settings, beginning somewhere between the most recent elections (e.g. the contribution of Mihalis Panayiotakis on Greece) and the 1970s (such as Jean-Numa Ducange’s discussion of French parties).
With that said, it has been encouraging to see that more than one author has endeavoured to go beyond mere descriptive claims either by making suggestions how to politically exploit the era of austerity or by taking a glance at the (desired and likely) future trends of the radical left in a specific country. Unfortunately, more than one outlook has – due to the short temporal horizon – already become obsolete, such as in Antoni Domenech, Gustavo Buster and Daniel Raventós’ question: ‘Can the left win the 2015 general elections?’ (p. 59, see also p. 65). A wider perspective would have given the volume some value beyond today.
Suffering from its political ambitions, the volume presents a whole range of concise portraits of radical left parties within their respective home countries in the era of austerity. If the reader can accept this – as well as the eclectic case selection (from the East, only the Post-Yugoslav countries are represented; Germany is included, but not Austria or Switzerland) – then they will enjoy this compilation. What they will not find, though, is in-depth, theory-driven analyses of the heterogeneous relatives of the radical left family. As the volume lacks a synoptic or truly comparative chapter, it proves difficult to make sense of the numerous single-case studies. The tremendous ideological, historical and electoral heterogeneity of the radical left and the way in which this has influenced the national reaction patterns to the crisis as well as the parties’ chances for success are – still – largely concealed.