Cornelia Hildebrandt, Birgit Daiber (eds.): The Left in Europe. Political Parties and Party Alliances between Norway and Turkey (2009) [English/German/Spanish]

After thirty years the victorious march of neo-liberalism has ground to a halt at the beginning of the 21st century, having plunged the world into financial and economic crisis. For the first time a financial and economic crisis has coincided with social, environmental and climatic crises. The scale of the social deformations causing all this, the increases in social divisions, hunger and poverty, are already visible in all European countries. But no one knows yet how this crisis will end, and that goes for those on the Left as well.

In the past the European Left has identified and analysed many problems and proposed solutions. Many of these proposals, such as the control of financial markets, the Tobin tax, the closing down of tax havens, the banning of derivatives and hedge funds, the expropriation of shareholders of big corporations, putting together stimulus packages, and the introduction of a minimum wage, are being adopted under pressure of necessity by the ruling elites, who are even including some of them in their own programmes.

The crisis shows how right the demands of the Left were, though it also exposes its own crisis. The Left has so far proved incapable of social leadership. Its ability to rise above social, political and cultural differences and successfully act in concert is still in its infancy. Only now does the Party of the European Left have its first joint election platform.

On the other hand, there is plenty of common ground. All left-wing parties in Europe, of which we examine only a selection in this publication, stand for social justice, democracy, and a Europe in which people can live in dignity, social security and peace. All the parties presented here are arguing against the neo-liberal policies of the ruling elites and in so doing representing the interests of most Europeans. The European Left has sufficient experience and potential to wage joint struggles, such as those against the Iraq war, the neo-liberal slant of the proposed EU constitution, and the Bolkestein Directive. But all this has never been enough to rally people around a unifying alternative project that could mount a challenge to neoliberalism.

This raises several very different questions: Where are the causes of this situation to be sought? Where is existing potential for development being blocked and by what? How must the Left change in order to build up an alternative hegemonic bloc? How can it create a society in which the freedom of the individual is the condition for the freedom of all, a society which the left-wing parties of Europe can call socialist?

In order to discuss such questions with parties, trade unions and social movements on the spot the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation – supported by its offices in Brussels, Warsaw and Moscow – works closely with its partners Transform!Europe and the parliamentary group of the Left in the European Parliament. Together with the latter a long-term project on the non-socialdemocratic Left in the European countries was launched. Within this framework the country reports collected here constitute a first snapshot, a necessary basis for the elaboration of a joint research programme.

The primary intention is to give the reader an overview of the history and current situation of left-wing parties in Europe, it being remembered that the articles express solely the views of the authors.

The Left presents a very different picture in each of the individual countries, resulting from the different traditions and political structures in the country under consideration and from differences in the sense of identity of the various organizations. Among the left-wing parties selected by way of example for the present volume are some that have evolved out of former ruling communist parties, some that have a Eurocommunist background, some that come from the non-social democratic reformist Left, some that belong to the traditionally communist Left with a feminist extension, and others. (Preface)

Publisher: Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, Brussels, July 2009

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Alain Badiou: The Communist Hypothesis (2009–)

“A new program for the Left after the death of neoliberalism.

Alain Badiou’s formulation of the “communist hypothesis” has traveled around the world since it was first aired in early 2008, in his book The Meaning of Sarkozy. The hypothesis is partly a demand to reconceptualize communism after the twin deaths of the Soviet Union and neoliberalism, but also a fresh demand for universal emancipation. As “third way” reforms prove as empty in practice as in theory, Badiou’s manifesto is a galvanizing call to arms that needs to be reckoned with by anyone concerned with the future of our planet.”

First published as L’hypothèse communiste, 2009.

Translated by David Macey and Steve Corcoran
Publisher Verso, 2010
ISBN 1844676005, 9781844676002
279 pages

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Slavoj Žižek: Living in the End Times (2010)

There should no longer be any doubt: global capitalism is fast approaching its terminal crisis. Slavoj Zizek has identified the four horsemen of this coming apocalypse: the worldwide ecological crisis; imbalances within the economic system; the biogenetic revolution; and exploding social divisions and ruptures. But, he asks, if the end of capitalism seems to many like the end of the world, how is it possible for Western society to face up to the end times? In a major new analysis of our global situation, Slavok Zizek argues that our collective responses to economic Armageddon correspond to the stages of grief: ideological denial, explosions of anger and attempts at bargaining, followed by depression and withdrawal.

After passing through this zero-point, we can begin to perceive the crisis as a chance for a new beginning. Or, as Mao Zedong put it, “There is great disorder under heaven, the situation is excellent.” Slavoj Zizek shows the cultural and political forms of these stages of ideological avoidance and political protest, from New Age obscurantism to violent religious fundamentalism. Concluding with a compelling argument for the return of a Marxian critique of political economy, Zizek also divines the wellsprings of a potentially communist culture—from literary utopias like Kafka’s community of mice to the collective of freak outcasts in the TV series Heroes.

Publisher Verso, 2010
ISBN 184467598X, 9781844675982
Length 416 pages

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