The World Left After 2011
Immanuel Wallerstein
By any definition, 2011 was a good year for the world left – however
narrowly or broadly one defines the world left. The basic reason was the
negative economic conditions from which most of the world was
suffering. Unemployment was high and becoming higher. Most governments
were faced with high debt levels and reduced income. Their response was
to try to impose austerity measures on their populations while at the
same time they were trying to protect their banks.
The result was a worldwide revolt of what the Occupy Wall Street
(OWS) movements called “the 99%.” The revolt was against the excessive
polarization of wealth, the corrupt governments, and the essentially
undemocratic nature of these governments whether or not they had
multiparty systems.
It is not that the OWS, the Arab Spring, or the indignados achieved
everything they hoped for. It is that they managed to change world
discourse, moving it away from the ideological mantras of neo-liberalism
to themes like inequality, injustice, and decolonization. For the first
time in a long time, ordinary people were discussing the very nature of
the system in which they lived; they were no longer taking it for
granted.
The question now for the world left is how it can move forward and
translate this initial discursive success into political transformation.
The problem can be posed quite simply. Even if, in economic terms,
there exists a clear and growing cleavage between a very small group
(the 1%) and a very large one (the 99%), it does not follow that this is
the political division. Worldwide, right-of-center forces still command
something like half of the world’s populations, or at least of those
who are politically active in any way.
To transform the world therefore, the world left will need a degree
of political unity it does not yet have. Indeed, there are profound
disagreements about both long-range objectives and short-range tactics.
It is not that these issues are not being debated. To the contrary, they
are being debated heatedly, and little progress is occurring to
overcome the divisions.
These divisions are not new. That doesn’t make them the easier to
resolve. There are two major ones. The first has to do with elections.
There are not two, but three, positions concerning elections. There is
one group that is deeply suspicious of elections, arguing that
participating in them is not only politically ineffectual but reinforces
the legitimacy of the existing world-system.
The others think it’s crucial to take part in the electoral process.
But this group is divided in two. On the one hand, there are those who
claim to be pragmatic. They want to work from within – within the major
left-of-center party when there is a functioning multi-party system, or
within the de facto single party when parliamentary alternance is not
permitted.
And of course there are those who decry this policy of choosing the
so-called lesser evil. They insist that there is no significant
difference between the principal alternative parties and support voting
for some party that is “genuinely” on the left.
We are all familiar with this debate and we have all heard the
arguments over and over. However, it is clear, at least to me, that if
there isn’t some coming together of the three groups concerning
electoral tactics, the world left does not have much of a chance of
prevailing either in the short or the longer run.
I believe there is a mode of reconciliation. It is to make a
distinction between short-term tactics and longer-term strategy. I very
much agree with those who argue that obtaining state power is irrelevant
to, and possibly endangers the possibility of, the longer-term
transformation of the world-system. As a strategy of transformation, it
has been tried many times and it has failed.
It does not follow from this that short-run electoral participation
is a waste of time. The fact is that a very large part of the 99% are
suffering acutely in the short-run. And it is this short-run suffering
that is their principal concern. They are trying to survive, and to aid
their families and friends to survive. If we think of governments not as
potential agents of social transformation but as structures that can
affect short-term suffering by their immediate policy decisions, then
the world left is obligated to do what it can to get decisions from them
that will minimize the pain.
Working to minimize the pain requires electoral participation. And
what of the debate between the proponents of the lesser evil and the
proponents of supporting genuinely left parties? This becomes a decision
of local tactics, which vary enormously according to many factors: size
of country, formal political structure, demographics of country,
geopolitical location, political history. There is no standard answer,
nor can there be. Nor is the answer of 2012 necessarily going to hold
for 2014 or 2016. It is not, for me at least, a debate of principle but
rather of an evolving tactical situation in each country.
The second basic debate that consumes the world left is that between
what I call “developmentalism” and what may be called the priority of
civilizational change. We can observe this debate in many parts of the
world. One sees it in Latin America in the ongoing and quite angry
debates between left governments and movements of indigenous peoples –
for example, in Bolivia, in Ecuador, in Venezuela. One sees it in North
America and in Europe in debates between environmentalists/Greens and
the trade-unions which give priority to retaining and expanding
available employment.
On the one side the “developmentalist” option, whether put forward by
left governments or by trade-unions is that without such economic
growth, there is no way to rectify the economic imbalances of the
present-day world, whether we are talking about the polarization within
countries or the polarization between countries. This group accuses
their opponents of supporting, at least objectively and possibly
subjectively, the interests of right-wing forces.
The proponents of the anti-developmentalist option say that the
concentration on the priority of economic growth is wrong on two
grounds. It is a policy that simply continues the worst features of the
capitalist system. And it is a policy that causes irreparable damage –
ecological and social damage.
This division is even more passionate, if that is possible, than the
one about electoral participation. The only way to resolve it is by
compromises, on a case-by-case basis. To make this possible, both groups
need to accept the good faith left credentials of the other. It will
not be easy.
Can these divisions on the left be overcome in the next five to ten
years? I am not sure. But if they are not, I do not believe the world
left can win the battle of the next twenty to forty years over what kind
of successor system we shall have as the capitalist system collapses
definitively.
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