[We are on the brink of a precipice, which the World risks falling
into. We need a radical, left-wing exit route. Italy should contribute
in the European elections with an electoral list concentrated on the
theme that marks the dividing line: Peace.]
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THE EU IS IN BAD SHAPE, AND LEFT-WING FORCES ARE IN CRISIS  
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Roberto Musacchio
December 20, 2023
Transform! Europe
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_ We are on the brink of a precipice, which the World risks falling
into. We need a radical, left-wing exit route. Italy should contribute
in the European elections with an electoral list concentrated on the
theme that marks the dividing line: Peace. _

, Image: Dirk Hoffmann via istockphoto.com

 

The formation of Pedro Sánchez’s new government in Spain is cause
for great satisfaction — although it is sadly rather soured by
Podemos’s non-participation in the cabinet. Here, my concern is not
to identify who is responsible for this state of affairs, which casts
a shadow over a result which was achieved in very difficult
circumstances. Similarly, here I will not stand in judgement of this
or that person for the crises and divisions which are today spreading
through the forces of the alternative left around Europe. Rather, even
with this article, my concern is to understand — and, in my own
small way, to help.

I can see no other approach for someone like me, who comes from an
Italian left that has seen many such splits in recent years. This is
also why I have been trying, for some time now, to offer a way of
thinking not in terms of “blame”, but in terms of defeats which we
have suffered. Besides, I know, I respect, and I am fond of many of
the comrades who are today on separate paths. They are each
participants in that attempt to address politics at the European level
— and this is the necessary terrain today — which runs from the
European Social Forums, to the Party of the European Left (which
reaches twenty years old in 2024), to the European parliamentary group
of which I was a member.

This is not only a choice in favour of respect, but also a choice of
method.

My first observation, here, is that while the EU has “grown up” as
a new subject, with peculiarities unlike anything that went before it,
we as a workers’ movement and as left-wing forces have failed to
keep up. We are almost wholly lacking the “work” that Lenin did
with his _State and Revolution_ and Antonio Gramsci did with
his _Prison_ _Notebooks _— which is to say, the work to
understand the context in which we are operating, the “nature” of
its force and its identity.

The EU’s certainly structures power in an unprecedented way. It is
innovative both in the internal balance of these powers, i.e.
regarding its own member states, and in its external balance in
relation to the globalized financial capitalism of which the EU is
itself part. It is an “original”, functionalist, and post- or
non-democratic entity. One which has in recent decades
“reinvented” an identity for itself through the systematic use of
historical revisionism. I often use two terms to define it: Actually
Existing Europe and the modern _ancien régime_.

But let us approach things in the due order.

Of course, the crises now affecting several European radical left
forces have “particular” dynamics.

We can start from the Italian case, and the attempted amalgamation of
what remained of the New Left together with the whole experience
running from the Resistance to the dissolution of the Italian
Communist Party. The fading of this project — faced with both the
aggressively populist and bipolar character of the Italian political
system, and the blows dealt by the European “autopilot” — has
led to a diaspora of left-wingers, a lack of steady ground under our
feet, which remains unresolved.

But what is happening in Greece, in Germany, in France, and — in a
happier context of still-open possibilities — in Spain? Naturally,
in all these cases there are particular national and leadership-group
dynamics.

In Greece we cannot forget that Syriza emerged out of the convergence
of small “historical” formations including the most substantial,
Synaspismos, a child of the dynamics of Greek communism. These
formations’ confluence into Syriza did not immediately result in
expansion. There had to be something to take it from being a party of
under 10 percent support (which Rifondazione Comunista co-founder
Lucio Libertini considered the threshold to actually declare a party)
to first double and then almost quadruple its vote. This came thanks
to the combination of the crisis of the old two-party Greek political
system — overwhelmed by its scandals and its bankruptcy — and an
extraordinary mass movement against austerity. This was a very broad
movement, confirming that parties do not invent themselves but rather
ride the wave of historical events. Then, of course, it is also
necessary to know how to ride the wave. And Alexis Tsipras’s Syriza
was able to do that. But how long can one ride the waves? And is there
eventually a “safe” harbour in which to “rest””? Lenin was a
master at riding the wave of war and revolution and then seeking a
safe harbour — the creation of the USSR — for a revolution that
did not spread around the World, at least in the forms that some of
the revolutionaries had hoped. Then, its History went as it did. But
it lasted seventy years.

What is new today is that globalized financial capitalism also lives
among the waves, surfing from crisis to crisis through a kind of
“stable instability”. In reality, capitalism has always been “in
movement” but today this movement is hyper-accelerated. Seeking
refuge in the safe haven of a government seems as difficult as it has
ever been. The port of the Greek government was hit by waves blown in
by the EU, and the shelters that were prepared proved fragile. Syriza
grew enormously, with multiple new elements but also many others
coming in from the wreckage of the old political system. But the size
of a ship does not ensure that it will weather the storm. Having lost
the port of government, reoccupied by a right-wing party which rebuilt
its (never lost) harmonies with the EU, the big ship was not enough to
make its way back to safety. Now, as in Conrad’s novels, this ship
no longer has the wind in its sails — and it has not got a compass,
either, other than an attempted return to the port of government. This
does not sit well with many sailors who are used to being caught in
storms and trying to get through them. Firstly meaning, the war.
Syriza’s new leadership, the result of a “US style”
decision-making process (similar to that of Italy’s own Partito
Democratico) is now also trying to adjust the political substance to
the form. Today we are seeing the resignation from Syriza of many
historic — but not elderly — leaders. We will see what the old
Syriza ship and any new vessels will lead to.

In Germany, Sahra Wagenknecht has parted ways with Die Linke. She left
after Oskar Lafontaine had done so already, and took so many MPs with
her that Die Linke is no longer big enough to form a parliamentary
group. Already in the general election, Die Linke’s 4.9 percent
score left it below the threshold to re-enter the Bundestag. But
because it managed to directly elect three members in the East (i.e.
MPs who came first place in single-member constituencies), Die
Linke’s numbers in the German parliament were boosted back up to its
proportional share. But that was only allowed thanks to an electoral
law that has since then been irresponsibly junked by the “traffic
light” government of Social Democrats, Greens and free-marketeer
liberals.

Die Linke’s electoral decline has been more or less continuous in
both East and West. Lafontaine’s departure was a major blow, and
internal tensions became a permanent reality. There were particular
tensions with Wagenknecht, originally part of an “orthodox”
current of what was then the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS). A
longtime parliamentarian (we were colleagues in Brussels) she gained
increasing public prominence. She has been reformulating her political
thinking around the issues of globalization, its crises, and the role
of Germany. This includes a special focus on the relationship between
migration and the labour market and now particularly on the war
between Russia and Ukraine. And the idea that relations with the
people need to be rebuilt.  The split renders even more difficult a
job of reflection which I think had to take place in any case. I will
say something more on this, because Germany has such a major role in,
indeed such influence on, Europe that the “German question”
affects all of us.

I am very attached to Die Linke. Lothar Bisky, who is no longer with
us, was decisive in building the Party of the European Left. I remain
attached to their attempt — or this is how I see it — to construct
another kind of German reunification, a neither revisionist nor
liberal one, which stands opposed to a simple annexation of the East
by the West. This scorched-earth approach to Eastern history and
politics was pursued especially ardently by the Social Democrats
(SPD), with harmful consequences for that party but also more
generally. This was rather less the case of the Christian Democrats
(CDU), which went so far as to hand over Helmut Kohl’s baton to
Eastern-born Angela Merkel. The SPD was totally unable to draw on its
own history, and the opportunity offered by Willy Brandt and
Ostpolitik. For a long time the vacuum was filled by Die Linke, which,
thanks to the unification of PDS and the WASG, became a national
party, which grew in social and generational terms. But the weakness
of Merkel and the SPD in thinking of a role for a unified Germany
other than as Europe’s leader in imposing ordoliberalism, Maastricht
and then austerity, prevented any “propulsive thrust” that would
have provided a role for Die Linke and forestalled the explosion of a
new right in the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). With the war
between Russia and Ukraine, the entire revisionist degeneration of
Germany has accelerated. Germany has become the most belligerent
country, with the Greens and the SPD in the lead. Decades of
Ostpolitik have been blown sky-high, rather like Nord Stream. The
Germany of SPD Chancellor Olaf Scholz and European Commission
President Ursula Von Der Leyen chooses Orwellian war and massive
rearmament — no matter the cost, and regardless of the first
recession after thirty years of export surpluses paid for by other
European countries.

This Germany is profoundly different from what Germany could have
been, if after 1989 those left-wing forces who had not yielded to
revisionism and neoliberalism had managed not only to resist to the
best of their abilities, but also to force something of a change of
course. The actual course was one in the supremacist mode chosen by
capitalism; and today we navigate an ever-tempestuous sea, for while
the “dominant” remain united in the class struggle from above,
they fight bitterly over the division of the spoils.

The Palestinian tragedy also finds dismal interpreters in Germany, who
cling onto the Israeli government as if Nazi-fascism’s terrible
crimes against the Jews could be offloaded onto the Palestinians. It
is surely difficult to find a different path than the downhill one
Germany is currently taking. The most “sensible” voices seem to be
those of former leaders Schroeder and Merkel. Die Linke is struggling
to do so, and is paying for the split it has suffered. What remains to
be seen is whether everything is about to get even more difficult.

In France, too, NUPES is sailing in choppy waters. Here, some
“national” dynamics, the French Communist Party’s (PCF’s) new
identitarian turn, and Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s will to hegemony, each
play a role. As does the issue of the representation of the popular
classes. But today’s wars, and the proper interpretation of them,
are also weighing on the Left.

I began by mentioning Spain, and here I will come back to that
country.

The continuation of a left-wing government, which also does left-wing
things, runs against the dominant tendency. And yet Podemos offers a
“warning” that we must be careful — because safe harbours do not
exist. Did its breakthrough defeat the old political system? The
Partido Popular (PP) has rebuilt itself. And in the old political
system there was also the Partido  Socialista (PSOE), which Sánchez
has been able to turn around also thanks to to those who held the line
on social policy. As we saw at the congress of the Party of European
Socialists in Malaga, the PSOE is very much within the “Western side
of the Orwellian war” today on full display.

In recent years the left-wing group in the European Parliament, today
renamed The Left, has held on. But it has done so with many divisions,
which have been repeated over the war in particular.

We shall see how we fare in the various countries in the European
elections next June. Presumably in some countries there will be
multiple lists that look to The Left, o even to a relationship with
the Greens. This, even though the greater part of the Greens’
representation, starting with the German Greens, has been markedly
pro-war. In Germany, they have even gone so far as to attack Greta
Thunberg for her support for the Palestinian cause.

The reality is that we are truly on the brink of a precipice, which
the World risks falling into. The crises are mounting up — and they
could explode. We need a radical, left-wing exit route. The campaign
for the European elections must try to bring about a recomposition. It
is important that Italy should contribute to this with an electoral
list concentrated on a major theme that marks a dividing line: Peace.

This article originally appeared in Italian on the transform!italia
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_Roberto Musacchio is an Italian politician and former Member of the
European Parliament (Partito della Rifondazione Comunista, PRC) and of
its Committee on Employment and Social Affairs and Committee on the
Environment, Public Health and Food Safety, and Vice-Chair of the
Temporary Committee on Climate Change._

_English translation by David Broder
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writer and translator, editor of the transform! yearbook
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Europe editor at JACOBIN magazine [[link removed]], and regular
contributor to publications on Italian politics._

_transform! europe is a network of 38 European organisations from 22
countries, active in the field of political education and critical
scientific analysis, and is the recognised political foundation
corresponding to the Party of the European Left (EL)._

* European Left
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* European Union
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* peace
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* Italy
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* Spain
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* Germany
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* Greece
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* France
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* Palestine
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