 | By Max Strasser International Editor, Opinion |
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For people on the socialist left in America and Europe, the past few years must have been an emotional roller coaster. |
The French presidential election in 2017 was a grim choice between a far-right candidate and a banker-turned-technocrat — then along came a wave of protests that shut down much of the new president’s privatization agenda. Jeremy Corbyn, a socialist, took control of Britain’s Labour Party in 2015, only to be quashed in a general election last December. In America, a rising star in the form of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has won hearts and minds, but Bernie Sanders’s insurgent campaign lost to the centrist Joe Biden in the Democratic presidential primary. A brutal pandemic has exacerbated nationalist tendencies, but a global protest movement against racism has challenged the status quo. |
So what’s a left-winger to feel these days? Crushing despair or boundless optimism? |
Thea Riofrancos seems to be in the second camp. In her recent Op-Ed, Thea, a political scientist and activist, writes: “Never in my life have political conditions felt so ripe for change.” Why the optimism? In part, she writes, it’s that “affluent liberal democracies are experiencing an upsurge of radical energy.” To seize the moment, though, the left — which comprises “socialists, labor organizers, activists and agitators traditionally outside the major center-left parties” — needs to take action. |
Thea has some suggestions. In short: Contest elections, oppose and organize. I’ll let you read the rest of her Op-Ed to learn more. It’s part manifesto and part strategy memo, but at a moment of ferment like this one, when people are trying to make sense of where politics are going — or could go — it’s the kind of piece I think is important for us to publish. We’ll see if Thea’s optimism bears out. |
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