EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT ELECTIONS

34 February/March 2024 February/March 2024 35

Francis Fukuyama’s overquoted work lied so

well, on how liberal democracies under their

neoliberalist umbrella were the ﬁnal destination,

that socialist and communist parties were

perceived as stuck in the political rain

and conservatives including Fine Gael) duo

governed every time.

It’s no coincidence that the hyper-dynamic

Jacques Delors, at the helm of the European

Commission in 1989, was the last President of the

Commission from the Party of European

Socialists, making way for the big brother or

father master of the seemingly eternal Stockholm

partnership: the European People’s Party, atop

the Commission.

However, it’s not just voters, but also élites,

who prefer the original.

The PES and EPP constitutes a Batman and

Robin partnership way less democratic and more

dysfunctional than Bill Finger and Bob Kane ever

drew or Altiero Spinelli and Robert Schuman ever

dreamed.

Unlike Dick Grayson, who continues to enjoy

the favour of the public to this day, things

seemingly went downhill for the unmasked

Socialists.

The performance of Social Democratic parties

has, on average, been marked by a tremendous

decline over the last thirty years across western

EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT ELECTIONS:

The case for the ‘next left’ Ecosocialism

can only be advanced through conﬂict

European democracies, from a vote share of

nearly 40% to below 20%.

Hopelessly, even if ever European mainstream

Social Democrats were to, after having turned

their back on them, turn to their core constituency,

the working class, they would only face another

ghost — the result in part of betrayal by their

leaders — realising that the working class hasn’t

lost: it got lost. Atomised. Algorithmed. Wiped

away and out.

The variety of jobs in the global market

economy having multiplied while at the same

time workers’ rights were pulverised has led to

distrust and sometimes hostility towards the

centre-left which betrayed them.

Speaking of disillusionment, the sterilised and

swept ideology of the PES/EPP is possibly the

main reason for the disintegrating European

Union, a mainly economic and barren “union”

locked in a mere bureaucratic technical

administration of the existing, evoking the sad

passions of Miguel Benasayag.

During this sustained seppuku, the socialist

integrally bypassed the horizontal and

fundamental precept of equality abdicating

unconditionally in favour of the vertical liberal

one of freedom instead. Norberto Bobbio taught

that these are conﬂicting concepts. There’s

another thing that the old left forgot: the need for

conﬂict. For equality.

While the socialists were busy sinking along

the third way, bust ‘reforming capitalism’,

something like reforming cancer, someone

understood that such bad actors of conservation

couldn’t be good actors of change.

Enter the new left.

Syriza, a broad coalition of the Greek radical

left founded in January 2004, hit the ground

when in November 2011 a coalition of New

Democracy (EPP) and PASOK (PSE) was formed

to address a perfect debt storm and hostility

from an EU run by, well, the PES and EPP.

he spectre haunting Europe is that of

the European elector.

A spectre in a strict sense since

mostly the electorate simply doesn’t

show up anymore.

Voter participation in European countries has

been on a steady decline for decades, and

considering the European Parliament elections,

since the very ﬁrst in 1974, a drop in turnout never

once failed to materialise. The only exception was

the most recent one in 2019, where turnout still

just barely passed 50%.

The (silent, indeed) majority of Europeans have

never taken part in the democratic process.

This never represented a win for the Abstention

Party of the People, though: but rather the

continuous triumph of the Élitist Status Quo

Coalition. And the perpetration of one big lie: the

end of history. Francis Fukuyama’s overquoted

work lied so well on how liberal democracies

under their neoliberalist umbrella were the ﬁnal

destination that socialist and communist parties

were perceived as stuck in the political rain.

Just as Berlin’s Wall was falling, self-haunted

and hypnotised by the warning that the market-

capitalism umbrella could grant their survival on

the electoral market, with some imaginative

ﬂexibility they unilaterally rescinded the social

contract and renounced their identity and

ideology.

From Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern, to the Partito

Comunista and Partito Democratico della Sinistra

(in Italy) to Gerhard Schroeder’s SPD in Germany

and further East to the Communist Party and the

Social Democratic Party in Romania, they all

mimicked the voguish conservative turbo-

liberalism, along an imagined Third Way. They

seemed to forget that élites and not just voters

tend to choose the original over a forged copy.

From 1958 to this day, out of the 19 European

Commissions, an alliance of the PES (Socialists

and Social Democrats including the Irish Labour

Party) and the EPP (Christian Democrats, liberals

By David Tozzo

POLITICS

34 February/March 2024 February/March 2024 35

In January 2015, Syriza won the Greek national

elections with 36.34% of the vote — mainly at the

expense of a bad Chris O’Donnell-PASOK, at an

abysmal 4.68%.

In December of the same year, Podemos,

having been formed only a year earlier,

skyrocketed in the general elections to over 20%

of the total vote and against just 1.3% for the

PSOE, led by the socialist Pedro Sánchez who,

chameleon-like, just shifted political pose from

third-way centrism to a more radical, leftist

approach.

In 2022, at the presidential election in France,

Jean-Luc Mélenchon fell only 1.2% short of a

runo, kicking the Socialist Party into a 1.75%

dust in the process.

These are the most commendable examples of

the emergence of a new left. Less commendable

ones that aren’t even mentioned here, have

generally two characteristics: they ﬂirt with

conservative socialists, and they don’t include

ecologist formations in their coalitions. They are

limited, and moderate.

But the zeitgeist is switching more rapidly than

ever before, and here comes the new big

elephant, bigger than the whole room itself:

inequality.

There is a systemic paradigm shift that has

been occurring over the dozen years covering the

subprime crisis and the subsequent covid

pandemic, as such shocks left the ineridacable

scar of mass realisation.

Inequalities are ﬁnally being recognised by the

public (not only the middle class, but left and

even right of it) as fundamental and therefore

unacceptable.

Capitalism is in question globally for the ﬁrst

time.

Anticapitalism isn’t anymore seen as the

pathetic scarecrow of a residual juvenile

extremist left embarrassing itself for even

grumbling. The rules have changed.

Inequality is the true theme of the new

millennium. And it’s here to stay, except that it’s

ultimately to be erased.

It is a theme is so fundamental that it requires

a radical approach, by radical new actors, in a

radically new way. It has two dimensions: social

and environmental.

While the old adagio of Chico Mendes,

“Environmentalism without class struggle is just

gardening”, appears more compelling than ever,

we can now add that social struggle without

environmentalism risks a Rapa Nui.

After 20 years of ‘old left’ and now 15 more

years or so with the ‘‘new left’, both ﬁelds seem

insucient to revive socialism in our times.

New thinking is needed, a Freudian killing of

the father at one end while at the other a loose

alliance of the two main red and green forces.

This can’t but be addressed at a superior,

supranational, level, so the playground for the

moment must be the next European parliament

election in June.

The ecologist and new left groups, always

running separately, have never obtained a result

that allowed them to be a relevant force in Europe.

From another perspective, GUE (Left) and ALE

(Greens) have always - with the sole exception of

2004 - had a number of seats that would have

given them the role of third force.

What is required is neither rocket science nor

electoral engineering, it is ideological strategy.

Bad actors can’t continue to feature in yet

another remake of more of the same box-oce/

ballot-box bomb.

Instead, in order for the new left to become part

of the ‘next left’, it has to include a green vision,

and step up the eorts to make tactical alliances

locally.

It’s at the same time entirely old and completely

new: the ﬁrst virtuous examples date back to

1989, when the wall was still up, and the

GroenLinks was founded in the Netherlands: at

the Dutch general elections in 2023, they came

third, their best placet in 35 years. In Italy,

Alleanza Verdi e Sinistra obtained the best result

for a left of the Partito Democratico list in history,

in the 2022 Italian general elections.

The leftists and the greens should pursue

critical mass on a national and then a European

level. They have had the numbers for many years.

The next left needs a new vocabulary too: as

Ernesto Laclau observed, disposing of traditional

signiﬁers of leftist identity and adopting a more

vernacular language.

What must be kept by the next left is the root

of the struggle, which is the sense of equality, but

without old stigmas without always accepting to

be junior partners in crime in national coalitions,

kissing the frog mainstream, third-way party only

for it to ﬂoat rather than turn into a prince.

The aim must not be self-indulgent and self-

sucient: temporary tactics are possible, like the

GreenLeft did in the Netherlands dwarﬁng the

traditional left in the process, or Mélenchon with

NUPES, which included the old socialists, or

Podemos in Spain when it agreed to give birth to

a transformative government from 2019 to 2023

before being usurped.

But irrelevance is not tolerable, neither under

a capitalistic umbrella nor under a hammer and

sickle banner. And old socialists must be the next

target: competitors and adversaries, in a crucial

and radical rupture. No compromise with

capitalism. No ﬂirting or allying with capitalism.

Conﬂicting with capitalism. Only then can we

have socialism next.

The process doesn’t necessarily have to be

fast, but less than six months from the EU

elections it seems naïve to say at least that it can

be completed in time: it can start, though. It has

actually already started, as we have seen.

It won’t be a post-ideological let alone non-

ideological pose, but instead a trans-ideological

anti-class struggle.

After all, paradoxically, the class struggle did

exist, but… the élites won, the 1%, in a landslide

and a landﬁll.

The task of the next left is more radical and

more ambitious than ever: moving towards an

anti-class struggle, for not just the majority or

even the 99%, but for the 100%, since climate

change and biodiversity loss aect the 100%.

No-one was safe from Covid, generated in part

by environmental proﬂigacy.

Fortress Europe, the élitist coalition, is terriﬁed

of a new anti-capitalistic spectre haunting not

only the next EU election, but the next Europe.

A next left that has to wage a peaceful, but

ﬁerce, democratic war on them. To build justice

and peace, after a conﬂict.

David Tozzo is an Italian author, community

organiser and politician

From Blair and

Bertie Ahern,

to the Partito

Democratico

della Sinistra

(in Italy)

to Gerhard

Schroeder’s SPD in

Germany and further East

to the Social Democratic

Party in Romania they all

mimicked conservative

turbo-liberalism along an

alleged ‘Third Way’