Originally published in Turkish in Ayrıntı Dergi: a Quarterly of Socialist Politics and Culture, and translated with the help of Tilbe Akan.
Since the 1970s, the world left has gradually lost its claim to represent the total liberation of humanity from capitalism and imperialism. At first, the left was drawn into the path of taming the order through “new social movements.” The blocking of this path, as well as the increasing destructiveness of market capitalism and imperialism in the 2000s, led to mass uprisings around the world. The fact that these “leaderless” uprisings often achieved the opposite of what they set out to do led some sections of the left to search for new leaders. With the ebbing of the populist wave that fed on that trend, we can say that a more organized search has begun today. This article will first describe the three thwarted strategies (new social movements, anarchist-autonomist uprisings, and populism) and conclude with the latest searches these blockages have led to.
For almost two decades, critical social science has pointed to neoliberalism as the primary source of our problems. This emphasis, however accurate, has a blind spot. Left and socialist movements and organizations, especially the class-oriented ones, have been in deep crisis since the late 1960s. The irony is that the 1960s were experienced and remembered by many not as a crisis but as a burst of creativity on the road to revolution. From those years on, however, the left parties slowly began to lose their grip on the masses. The new social movements, which could have led to the re-establishment of organized socialist and communist parties or their replacement by new mass parties, did not set such a “hegemonic” goal.
Instead, there was disorganization. Eric Hobsbawm’s warning,[1] which drew attention to this crisis at the time, was overshadowed by the revolutionary excitement of the period and received little attention. Neoliberalism rose from this socio-political foundation (or lack thereof). The anti-bureaucratic critique of capitalist and “socialist” welfare states (not because they were “wrong” as a whole, but because they were classless and disorganized) played a particular role in the founding of neoliberalism.[2]
The deceleration of the labor movement and the de-workerization of the left parties were the main components of this process. Both of these components were deliberately imposed from above (by the states and the bourgeoisie as well as by the union and party bureaucracies), and many left intellectuals and activists contributed to them by doing their “due diligence” and distancing themselves, their students, and their apprentices from these arenas. This did not render the left dysfunctional immediately. However, the process and the strategies that developed in response to it pushed the left to the margins of history over time.
From new social movements to leaderless uprisings
In the 1980s and 1990s, the left devoted most of its energies to new social movements. In the regions where it was most successful, the left used these positions to encircle the established parties. While all the mainstream parties were united in neoliberalism on the economy, these movements radicalized the center-left and what was left of “the left proper” on ethnic, sexual, and environmental issues. The emphasis on the class dimension of these problems was limited to intellectual circles and could not be translated into mass lines of organization. Most of the Western left confined itself to a strategy of radicalizing the liberal-democratic system from within, as proposed by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe in Hegemony and Socialist Strategy.[3] However, this was due as much to the ” spontaneous ideology” of the new social movements (to use Louis Althusser’s term) as to the structural processes mentioned above. Hegemony and Socialist Strategy recognized the disorganization that this trajectory could produce and, following Gramsci, proposed a strategy for the “articulation” of new social movements. However, under the influence of the extreme culturalism that prevailed at the time, it 1) rejected the class-orientation that could provide precisely this articulation; 2) understood everything in terms of “discourse” and said nothing about the organizational forms that should form the institutional backbone of articulation; and 3) turned its back on the idea that politics could only be conducted through two camps, which was a fundamental element of Gramsci’s thought and action.
Thus, contrary to the authors’ intentions, Hegemony and the Socialist Strategy went down in history not as an intervention that would reduce entropy and restore organization within the left but as a celebration of the diversity of social movements and their efforts to radicalize the existing system from within.
The eventual blocking of the strategy of radicalizing the system from within led to two types of left responses in the 2010s: “leaderless” revolutions and populist parties. The groundwork for these had been slowly laid since the late 1990s. First, the postmodern/postcolonial discourse of the Zapatista movement offered a new ray of hope. Then, the World Trade Organization protests in Seattle in 1999 brought the Zapatista spirit to the American streets. Coinciding with these anarchist-autonomist uprisings, Hugo Chávez, a military populist who initially did not emphasize socialism, came to power in Venezuela, igniting the populist wave in Latin America in the following years. While these developments seemed largely confined to the region’s borders, the 2008 global financial crisis mobilized tens of millions of people around the world with slogans against economic injustice and dictatorship.
The revolutionary-seeming uprisings of 2009-2013 had some overlapping and some diverging causes in different geographies. But a general anarchist spirit was their common denominator. At its peak around 2011, this wave received broad support from both the radical left and the liberal center. These uprisings showed that we no longer needed leaders, organizations, and ideologies. Even in their absence, humanity stood against dictatorships and unfair economic practices.
But it was too soon to celebrate. The uprisings, which did not give a concrete direction and method to humanity in general or to particular nations and classes, were not only defeated almost everywhere, but led to the further authoritarianization of the rulers. For example, the seeds of the AKP-MHP fascistic bloc in Turkey were sown after the defeat of the Gezi revolt.[4] In Egypt, Mubarak was replaced by the even more brutal, pro-Saudi Sisi dictatorship. Syria’s fate was even worse: Before the uprising could become a full-fledged movement, it turned into a proxy war between Russia/Iran and America/Saudi Arabia. Not only did the country collapse completely, but the dictator emerged from the crisis even more brutal. Many components of a Gezi-like uprising in Brazil started the process that led to the formation of a new right-wing front that brought the far-right Bolsonaro to power. The peculiarity of Tunisia – the only exception for a few years, until authoritarian restoration kicked in – was that the uprising developed under the influence of parties and trade unions (even if they were not the initiators of the uprising).
The populist left gets stuck
The defeat of the anarchist-autonomist uprisings of the early 2010s shifted the focus to the elections. This time, however, the left was expected to go to the polls differently, neutralizing the established institutions, parties, and politicians. First, new social movements and then uprisings had failed to change the system. Perhaps an anti-establishment revolt at the ballot box could lead to different results?
Podemos in Spain, Syriza in Greece, and La France Insoumise in France became the umbrellas of this populist mindset in Europe. As weaker representatives of the same wave, Bernie Sanders in the U.S. and Jeremy Corbyn in Britain emerged from established center-left parties in two-party political systems. Even though they had ties, respectively, to the DSA (Democratic Socialists of America) and Trotskyists, they presented themselves to the masses as individual leaders, rather than representatives of socialist institutions. This was the image, if not the organizational reality. In other countries, too, the consciously emphasized factor was the leader rather than the organizational or ideological frameworks.
The strategists of these movements, especially in Spain and Greece, now declared another Laclau book to be their guiding text.[5] As I mentioned above, Laclau and Mouffe’s 1985 book “spontaneously” coincided with the spirit of the 1980s and 1990s. It did not become bedside reading, except in limited circles. By contrast, Laclau’s 2005 book On Populist Reason[6] was more explicitly and consciously used as a “prescription” by leaders. That is, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy (for all its theoretical depth and sharpness) was limited to giving a name to the wind that was already blowing and perhaps persuading some socialists to go along with it.
One of the exciting features of this book is that it returns to the populist spirit of Laclau’s writings of the 1970s, but sifts out the more revolutionary arguments that developed during those years under the influence of the author’s involvement in Argentina. Laclau and Mouffe’s 1985 book was based on a break with Gramsci on two of the latter’s central convictions: (1) that politics should be based on two camps (2) whose leaderships are class-based. In his 2005 work, Laclau made a serious about-face without explicitly saying so. He conceded Gramsci’s point about the necessity of two camps but continued to reject the centrality of class. It was not class struggle that mobilized the people against the oligarchy, but a leader.
The neoliberal picture outlined above was the reason for the acceptance of this logic, even in Spain and Greece, where the left was relatively organized. Militant and/or class organizations had lost strength in recent years and had not emerged stronger from the anti-neoliberal uprisings. Social media tools, which had proven their effectiveness during the uprisings, created a new bubble of hope: The explosion they had created (or seemed to create) in the streets could now be reflected at the ballot box. There was no need for years of neighborhood or workplace-based organizing, no need to carry the energy generated by the street and the crisis of neoliberalism to such organizations.
In Greece, this “populist reason” led to a miraculous rise of the left. Syriza, a tiny party just a few years ago, came to power with over 35% of the vote. However, the organizational vacuum that was the yeast of its rise also meant that Syriza had no organized power to defend itself against the masters of the European Union. Greece’s leftist government came to the table with the EU giants in the absence of organized workplaces and streets. Defeated in those unequal encounters, Syriza signaled that it would not pursue an economic policy very different from the center-left (PASOK) and center-right it replaced. In the following years, it became increasingly “PASOKized” (to use the Greek term). The Spanish populist party Podemos, on the other hand, did not even come close to power because it was opposed by a much more respectable center-left party than PASOK.
In Bolivia and Venezuela, where left-wing populists (also inspired by Laclau) were able to use the instruments of power more effectively, the positive dynamics were ultimately thwarted by the limits of the neoliberal globe. These two countries’ economic and ecological structures already imposed certain limits on the construction of socialism. The larger and more influential country, Venezuela, subsists almost entirely on an oil-based economy. Instead of diversifying the economy through class dynamics and/or social movements, the leader’s redistribution of oil wealth (“populism” in the economic and narrow sense) is a method that has a more immediate impact in such a country. The subsequent U.S. embargo degenerated Chávez’s “socialism of the twenty-first century” and made his rule even more dependent on oil-based redistribution. Although a popular organization was created from above, the popular masses, with weak autonomous dynamics of their own, could not force the leader or the country to try other developmental ways. Their focus has been on protecting the leader (and his successor, Nicolas Maduro, who has even less organic ties to them) from American attempts to depose him.
Bolivia has had much stronger autonomous movements. The socialist MAS party, unlike Chávez, rose on the back of social organization, especially indigenous movements. Despite the organic links between the party and the masses, Bolivia’s small population and economy made it impossible for the MAS to restructure the country’s economy, which had traditionally been based on the export of raw materials. In the eyes of the indigenous movements, this was a betrayal: the MAS had come to power thanks to them, but treated nature with almost the same ruthlessness as the multinationals. This perception increasingly undermined the party. As in Venezuela, the Bolivian socialists knew that these obstacles could only be overcome through a broader continental mobilization. They tried and failed to spread socialist populism throughout Latin America.
Why did these two experiences remain relatively isolated? In 2011, it seemed that almost all of South America was governed by left-wing governments. Nevertheless, Venezuela and Bolivia were able to receive solid support from Cuba, but in the rest of the continent, neither the structural nor the ideological conditions were favorable for authentic variations on these two “relatively socialist” experiments. In much of Latin America, the “pink” wave was led by a more moderate left. Venezuela and Bolivia are often cited as part of this wave, but this assumption is misleading. The main advantage of the pink wave was that it was led by Brazil and Argentina, two countries with larger populations and ideological influence. Moreover, unlike Venezuela, both countries had well-established class organizations. Nevertheless, steps toward socialism were not taken in these countries.
In the mainstream media and academia, the main factor that distinguishes the pink wave from the experiences of socialism in Bolivia and Venezuela has been discussed as “authoritarianism.” However, it’s not as if the leftist pink governments didn’t resort to authoritarian practices at times. The main factor distinguishing the two waves was rather that the pink wave did not attempt to touch basic property relations. In Bolivia, for example, a significant part of the hydrocarbon industry was nationalized. Of course, these nationalizations did not mean that property and relations of production were immediately “socialized,” as the socialist leaders themselves knew. But they did show that in Bolivia there was a systematic effort in that direction. In Brazil, the most prominent example of the pink wave around the world, there was no such attempt.
In Brazil, the Workers’ Party (PT) was the product of a militant working class that fought against the military dictatorship that lasted from 1964 to 1985. Frustration with neoliberal practices, which began slowly during the late dictatorship but intensified especially in the late 1990s, culminated in the party’s historic electoral victory in 2002. In the early 2000s, Lula, a union leader who had entered politics after being hardened in struggles against the dictatorship, still said that they were going to build socialism. But these dreams encountered two serious obstacles. First, as the PT consolidated its power, former union organizers became high-level bureaucrats and advisors and began managing serious resources like pension funds. This increased their eagerness to maintain the order rather than transform it.[7] Second, as the Western economy stagnated, the BRICS countries, including Brazil, took the opportunity to capitalize further, financialize, and increase their dependence on commodity exports. Thus, the long-term goals of a sustainable economy and greater worker control were gradually replaced by the distribution of export revenues to the poor. While increasing its vote and prestige among the poorest, the PT failed to organize them, and even disorganized and demobilized its own established organized and militant workers’ base. Despite some environment-friendly steps, the continued importance of exports based on industrial agriculture also widened the gap between the PT on the one hand and the indigenous peoples and the organized and militant landless peasant movement (the MST) on the other.
Having lost the advantage of an organized base in the 2010s, the PT began to reproduce the dynamics of Chavismo with its own pink twist. The reason for its downfall was not a U.S. embargo, as in Venezuela, but the global limits of commodity price increases from the mid-2010s. Dilma Rousseff (Lula’s successor), who had no power other than to distribute the export surplus to the population, lost legitimacy as the pie shrank (i.e. as commodity prices fell). She was removed from power in a palace coup. A short-lived interim government reintroduced the neoliberal practices that had dominated the pre-PT era. The then-elected far-right Bolsonaro government deepened these practices, soon leading to severe poverty. The backlash against him brought the PT back to power in 2022, but it no longer promises socialism as it did in the 2000s. This time, coming to power without an as organized base and at a time when commodity prices are no longer supporting Brazil’s export power as they were two decades ago, the party’s cards are much weaker than before. Its main pillars are confidence in Lula and fear of the extreme right, which has united the left and the bourgeoisie. The weight of the bourgeoisie in the new PT coalition is likely to prevent any serious left initiative. In sum, both the European versions of left populism and the Latin American versions (with their revolutionary and reformist diversity) have hit a serious wall. The fact that the new social movements, leaderless uprisings, and populist outbursts have ended in either intra-systemic gains or defeat has led to new and groundbreaking searches.
Toward a 21st Century Organization
In particular, the examples of Syriza (Greece), MAS (Bolivia), and PT (Brazil) show that the main question is not whether to come to power. The main question is whether and how much mass organization, cadres committed to socialism, and the hegemonic project can be kept alive in power or in opposition. The tools of the state can be used, but as long as one lives in a neoliberal (and ultimately capitalist) global economy, coming to power will inevitably bring concessions and capitalist and/or technocratic practices. Can the left get its hands dirty in this way while keeping the organization and the class on their toes? This question has not yet been answered in the affirmative in practice. But there is no way to move forward without finding theoretical and practical resolutions of this question.
Of course, a lot has to be done before left forces begin to “come to power.” Except for a few countries such as Brazil, Bolivia, and Greece, the corrupting influence of seats of government is too far away for the left to dream about. The challenge is defining ourselves in theory and practice before we plunge into these ethical and practical fires. At this point, we know which strategies have been defeated, but it is not equally clear what we should do.
In short, we are in a state of general disarray. The fading away of leaderless revolutions, the defeat (Western Europe/USA), or the degeneration (Chavismo) of left-populist attempts are increasing the left’s demoralization. Nevertheless, it is helpful to remember that the general situation for the left today is much better than in the 1990s, when the left seemed completely condemned to choose between the ever-growing new social movements or left-neoliberalism.
The “leaderless” uprisings, the populist-left explosion, and, of course, the crisis of imperialism have put anti-capitalism back on the left’s agenda (and, more generally, on that of the public). But we also face a new problem: because of the continuing disarray of the left, the shallow and unsustainable anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist positions of the right are perceived by masses of people around the world as the way to a real alternative. If the left cannot overcome its disorganization, the new radicalized right can lead the left, humanity, and nature to total extinction.
A way out is only possible with a strategy that feeds the “anarchist” and “populist” spirits of today into serious class organization and revolutionary cadre work. The “after” in the title of this article does not mean that we have left anarchist-autonomist and populist dynamics behind. But it does underline that these are no longer the “main moment”s. We need a new understanding of organization that embraces the libertarian spirit of leaderless uprisings, the diversity of new social movements and their quest for autonomy, and the emotionally charged and pragmatic two-camp-ism of left-populism, but places them on a very solid class, organizational, and ideological basis. The ongoing ideological and organizational renewal in some circles that have learned the necessary lessons from the loss of positions in Bolivia[8] and Brazil and the new searches in the American socialist movement[9] offer some optimism for the emergence of this conception of organization.
[1] Eric Hobsbawm (1978). “The Forward March of Labor Halted?” Marxism Today 22/9, 279-287.
[2] Luc Boltansky and Eve Chiapello (1999). Le nouvel esprit du capitalism. Gallimard; Johanna Bockman (2011).
Markets in the Name of Socialism: the Left-Wing Origins of Neoliberalism. Stanford University Press
[3] Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe (1985). Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: towards a Radical Democratic Politics. Verso Press
[4] Cihan Tuğal, “Democratic Autocracy: a Populist Update to Fascism under Neoliberal Conditions.” Historical Materialism (published online ahead of print 2024), https://doi.org/10.1163/1569206x-20242360
[5] Arthur Borrielo and Anton Jager (2023). The Populist Moment: The Left after the Great Recession. Verso Books
[6] Ernesto Laclau (2005). On Populist Reason. Verso Books
[7] Ruy Braga. 2018. The Politics of the Precariat: From Populism to Lulista Hegemony. Brill.
[8] “Former Bolivian VP Álvaro García Linera on How Socialists Can Win,” https://jacobin.com/2021/04/interview-alvaro-garcia-linera-mas-bolivia-coup
[9] I will discuss these searches in a follow-up essay.
Cihan Tuğal is a Professor in the Sociology Department at UC Berkeley. He studies three interlocking dynamics: 1) capitalism’s generation and destruction of communities, livelihoods, and places; 2) the implosion of representative democracy; 3) the crisis of liberal ethics. His ongoing research focuses on global populism, the radical right, and neoliberalism. He has also initiated a team project to study the ecological crisis of capitalism, with special emphasis on the role of labor and community struggles in developing sustainable energy.