There is nothing left to the Left of the Left

Sugary excerpt from an editorial from the Guardian on Oskar Lafontaine, the German Left, and its lessons from the European left:

But there is no disguising the continuing weakness and gradual decline of the German centre-left as a potential party of federal government. Failure to adapt to globalisation has produced weakness. Weakness has caused splits and the splits are reflected in further weakness.These current travails of the German centre-left are part of a wider European pattern of division and defeat. Something of this sort has happened in many EU nations. But they are also a cautionary tale for the Labour party. Those who believe that the only problem with the Labour governments is that they have not been left-wing enough, or that everything will be solved by a proportional representation system that would allow the left to "be itself again", need a reality check.

Hum, I have the strong suspicion that the argument made here is more circular than anything else. The problem for the Left in most industrialized countries is that it has lost It in the sense that it does not believe in Leftism for it really believes in Fukuyamamism and in the theory that we are living the end of history for there are no alternative to the market, capitalism, free trade and other goodies. I remember during the Ohio primary how stupid both Clinton and Obama were sounding when they were trying to convince the people that they were never really for NAFTA. What I wanted to ask them was "what's your plan B?" This isn't a cynical, but a realistic question for it seems to me that the Left solely believes in the heart, that it is better than the right because it is more compassionate (that's why Bush created compassionate conservatism. At the time I wondered what was the point of being compassionate if you are not helping fixing the ill that creates your self-serving compassion). The problem when the heart is at the heart of politics is that any policy becomes justifiable when the argument that the heart of the policymakers is in the right place becomes plausible for the media and the masses. Is there really nothing left Left to the Left? I don't think that's the real question for liberalism in the American sense of the word has stopped to be a political ideology, to be just a societal one where the compassionate are separated from the mean zealots like Sarah Palin and the greedy. Leftism has no backbone. It is too busy admiring its grandeur and nobility in the mirror.

Comments

[Craig]

It is true.. why did all those Eurocommunists and Democratic Socialists that were still popular in the 1980s - who always insisted the Soviet Union was not their model - have to wither away after the fall of the Berlin Wall? The Left has slowly but surely lost its Promethean ambition, and now there is nothing left at all. But who says a society's economy must be dominated by the celebrated irrationality and organized fetishism of the stock market? Has Fukuyamaism (as you put it) so strangled us so much that our imaginations are so atrophied? That we cannot even conceive a better form of human organization?

[Christelle]

I'm starting to believe that the Left, especially in America. needed communism to survive to succeed. I think that it is always harder to imagine something new rather to disavow something that works for some of the people all the time while giving the rest of them the hope (here is that Obamamastic word again) that they will one day get there). The reason why Chavez is popular in some parts of the world is precisely because he gives the illusion of taking another road when he is doing nothing new and he isn't a revolution, but an autocrat playing the role of populist (autocrats always do this when everything else has failed, see Khadafi). I think that the problem is guts, efforts, and the willingness to see that the heart and compassion aren't the greatest thing in possible. If the so called Left starts every political battle with the idea that its ideals are great, but unrealistic, then it should either create something else or just admit that equality, fraternity are for suckers.