Göran Therborn: The World and the Left
To fully understand where the Left stands on a global scale today, it is instructive to compare the 20th and 21st centuries. The 20th century was shaped by two systemic dialectics: industrial capitalism and capitalist colonialism. This is because the development of each system contributed to the strengthening of its exploited components: the working class and colonized peoples. On one hand, the dialectics of social systems brought about change through contradictions and conflicts at the cost of destructive wars and genocide; on the other hand, in the 20th century, humanity achieved historic progress in terms of living standards, life expectancy, and decolonization. However, by the end of the 20th century, these dialectics had stalled. In industrial societies, the working class made gains, but finance capital emerged as the winner from the decline of industrialization. The anti-colonial dialectic concluded with the liberation of colonies, but these liberations were limited and conditional. To this, the 20th-century Left offered no direction forward. Neoliberal-capitalist globalization marked the end of the 20th-century Left, but through its overcapacity, blind overconfidence, and economic collapses, it also gave rise to the new Left of the 21st century.
The new Left of the 21st century is highly radical and innovative in form. This article aims to understand the context of the 21st-century Left and its innovative responses to the major contemporary challenges, including: the imminent climate catastrophe, a new imperial geopolitical landscape, and intensifying economic inequality. What are the prospects for the 21st-century working class and Leftist thought? Nearly a quarter-century ago, Perry Anderson answered in a characteristically acerbic editorial that the necessary starting point for a realistic Left is "a lucid registration of historical defeat." He argued that under the reign of neoliberalism, "virtually nothing... short of some economic depression on the scale of the inter-war years" could "shake the perimeters of the current consensus." Nearly 25 years later, I believe the legacy of the 20th century needs to be portrayed in a somewhat different way, so that we can better understand what has happened in recent decades and what might happen during the remainder of the 21st century. Below, I will briefly outline the main determinants that shaped the 20th-century Left and the neoliberal "turning point," before further examining the different contexts in which the 21st-century Left germinated, contrasting their forms and expressions, analyzing their impacts, and assessing their challenges.
1. The Dialectical Century
As it entered the 20th century, Europe and North America were further dominated by the social system of industrial capitalism, while Africa and Asia suffered under the weight of capitalist colonialism. The dialectics of industrial capitalism and capitalist colonialism were very similar; both created a new social stratum possessing inherent rational-antagonistic potential: factory workers and colonial intellectuals.
Initially, the emergence of industrial capitalism only benefited the bourgeoisie. However, another aspect of its dialectic was that under a system dominated by US capital, unprecedented economic growth was achieved, and as industrial capitalism developed, the working class and its movements grew. Between 1998 and 2013, the number of people living in "extreme poverty" as defined by the World Bank was nearly halved, a reduction of almost one billion people, occurring primarily in countries and regions such as China. After 1945, trade unions and collective bargaining rights were normalized throughout the developed capitalist world. The 1970s represented both the peak of industrial capitalist development and the height of working-class influence. The 20th century also brought significant progress for women. August Bebel’s Woman and Socialism [1] became a bestseller second only to Marx and Engels' The Communist Manifesto. With the opening of mass higher education in developed countries after 1945, the social status of women saw a marked elevation.
Compared to half a century of European colonial conquest, the process of national liberation and decolonization in the 20th century was rapid, yet also arduous and bloody. It was initiated by nationalist intellectuals who mobilized the masses to resist institutionalized racial discrimination. National liberation in Africa and Asia was an epochal achievement; the Left of the Global South played a central role in it, supported strongly by the Left in the North. From the Comintern's promotion of the Baku Congress and the founding of the Communist Party of China, to the anti-Vietnam War movement and the anti-apartheid movement... solidarity with anti-colonial and anti-imperialist movements constituted a core principle of the 20th-century Leftist movement.
In some respects, this was a century of remarkable achievement for the Left. Anti-capitalist revolutions in Russia and China succeeded, creating powerful new societies out of decadent dynastic regimes. Decolonization succeeded worldwide, resulting in a surge of independent nation-states. On the other hand, however, the proletarian dialectic described in Capital eventually came to rest in the capitalist welfare state. Post-colonial states also failed to become beacons of popular freedom, justice, and equality.
Nevertheless, the 20th-century Left firmly believed in the dialectical character of capitalism and colonial exploitation, which provided it with a long-term vision and resilient collective confidence. To be of the Left meant viewing the realization of socialism as a realistic future prospect. The Bolshevik Revolution inspired workers in Europe and the Americas, as well as intellectuals and leaders in Asia, to fight for socialism; the Chinese Revolution stimulated worker-peasant revolutionary movements in South and Southeast Asia; and the Cuban Revolution sparked waves of anti-imperialism in Latin America. The revolutions of the 20th century were a beam of hope, proving that non-capitalist societies had a rightful place. Although a truly European revolutionary situation never materialized during this period, the scent of revolution remained in the air. Driven by Leftist radicals, the "May Storm" [2] broke out in France in 1968, a wave of strikes swept Italy in 1969, and revolutions overthrew fascist regimes in Portugal and Greece in 1974. The radical wave of 1968 bears some similarity to the "Indignados" [3] movement of 2010: both were youth-led anti-authoritarian uprisings that occupied streets and squares and advocated for participatory democracy. However, the "Indignados" gave birth to new political movements and parties—such as Syriza, Podemos, and the campaigns led by Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn—whereas the 1968 movement was largely devoid of political innovation.
If industrial capitalism reached its peak in Western societies in the 1970s, that peak did indeed generate some radical and concrete proposals for socialist transformation within the mainstream labor movement. The boldest schemes came from Sweden and France. Olof Palme, then Prime Minister of Sweden, wrote that "democratic socialism" offered an "alternative to private capitalism and bureaucratic state capitalism." A second mainstream attempt to transcend capitalism appeared in France under the so-called Common Program [4], established by a Leftist alliance of the Socialist and Communist parties. British miners also fought back. But all these attempts ended in failure to varying degrees. A similar situation occurred in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, where social development eventually gave rise to a communist current for democratic reform. After World War II, social and economic development in the Soviet Union stalled, and the US-Soviet arms race imposed a massive burden on Soviet development. Later, Yeltsin relied on the guidance of Western neoliberal economists to develop the Russian economy; Western hegemony over Russia in the 1990s caused the country's economic inequality and national income to retreat to levels seen in the Tsarist era.
As Anderson asked, was this a failure of the Left? Looking back, I believe the end of the 20th century can be more accurately described as a state of stalemate and exhaustion: at the peak of industrial capitalist development, the impasse of the Soviet-style economy and the exhaustion of the Western labor movement—or, combining the two, an exhaustion of the industrial era of reform and revolution. At the close of the 20th century, neoliberalism replaced the Keynesianism of the national welfare state as the hegemonic socio-economic ideology. This radical, entirely profit-centered finance capitalism became a new paradigm. This was a resurgence of radical right-wing liberalism—a liberalism that had been utterly abandoned because it was unable to solve the problems of mass unemployment and poverty during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Now, in the face of the new crises of the 1980s, it was Keynesianism that appeared powerless, while neoliberalism seemed to provide the solution. The new Left of the 21st century must be evaluated in this context; it is an attempt to maintain the vitality of socialism under the global hegemony of neoliberalism.
2. The Neoliberal Transition
Given the pivotal role of neoliberalism in recent history, a brief overview of the context and characteristics of its revival and global spread is necessary. First, starting from the late 1960s, the number of employees in US manufacturing saw a long-term decline, and the profits of Northern industrial capital were squeezed between intensifying global economic competition and rising labor costs. Furthermore, after the Vietnam War, the international monetary system collapsed, and regulation of financial activities weakened. Meanwhile, to protest US aid to Israel during the 1973 Yom Kippur War, newly empowered Arab oil states raised oil prices. Under these circumstances, the policies of the Keynesian welfare nation-state became ineffective.
For capital, there were three paths to escape the profit squeeze of the North. The first was state repression, namely crushing the unions. For example, the Reagan administration implemented the plan to smash the air traffic controllers' union, and the Thatcher government greatly weakened the rights of British miners' unions. The second was globalization; new digital technologies prompted developed countries to outsource manufacturing to low-wage countries. In the US, the ratio of imported manufactured goods to domestic production rose from 14% in 1969 to 45% in 1986. Third, digital technology also opened up new means of electronic financial speculation: in the US, the share of GDP from the finance, insurance, and real estate sectors surpassed manufacturing around 1990 and became the country's primary source of profit a few years later.
Ideologically, neoliberalism gained support as a powerful right-wing counter-attack against the cultural shifts of the 1960s. In August 1971, Lewis Powell addressed the US Chamber of Commerce, noting that "left-wing extremists" were not "the most significant source of concern"; rather, the concern was the "chorus of criticism" against the American free enterprise model coming from "perfectly respectable elements of society: from the college campus, the pulpit, the media, the intellectual and literary journals... and from politicians." Organized labor no longer constituted the problem. Promoted by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, neoliberalism spread widely.
Despite showing great resilience, forty years later, the hegemony of neoliberalism is ending. First was the 2008 global financial crisis. Although neoliberalism has not yet finished, its legitimacy has been severely undermined; growing inequality has become an official concern of the Davos Forum; and "democratic socialism" has returned to the English-speaking world. The second key event may be more decisive in the long run. After 2010, the US political elite realized that China was winning the game of globalization. US politicians discovered that global hegemony depends not only on a few large corporations but also on the resilience of the state and its people—even the working class. In this context, as the gap between the ultra-wealthy and other strata continues to widen, the issue of distribution is back on the agenda. From Trump to Biden, the US government has begun a turn toward protectionist geopolitics. Third, the COVID-19 pandemic and the ongoing climate disaster have demonstrated that the free market is insufficient to address the urgent problems of the new century. "Government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem," once treated as a sacred mantra by neoliberal politicians, now sounds like a bizarre fallacy to many. Meanwhile, a new world of imperial geopolitics has shattered key neoliberal principles such as "globalism is superior to nationalism." The "America First" trade and economic policies of the Trump and Biden administrations have directly undermined these norms.
Accompanied by the 2008 bailouts, the state returned to the center of the capitalist economy, a central position further consolidated during the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2020, the total government debt of advanced economies exceeded World War II levels, surpassing 120% of GDP. Extra spending and tax reductions in the United States were the highest in the world, far exceeding 10% of GDP. Neoliberalism is a cruel form of capitalism whose ambition is for the market to rule the entire world. Although imperial geopolitics currently triumphs over market globalization, the cruelty of this new stage of capitalist accumulation is no less than that of the last. It is a stage of digital-techno-financial capitalism, dedicated to accumulation within geopolitically defined boundaries set by the state.
III. The Left in the New Century
This series of events did not unfold like a systematic dialectic—that is, they did not originate from an endogenous process of the social system's developmental logic. Industrial capitalism has mutated into a form of digital financial capitalism that no longer produces its own [class] adversaries. For example, the majority of protesters against neoliberalism are no longer key members of the neoliberal economy, but rather outsiders whose lives have been invaded and destroyed by it. The contradictions of imperial geopolitics do not constitute a dialectic that gradually empowers the exploited. On the contrary, as we have seen, the 21st century carries the disastrous 20th-century legacy of climate change, inequality, and war, while the "creative destruction" of capitalism continues. Compared to the dejection of the Left at the end of the 20th century, the Left of the 21st century has displayed new vitality and creativity, even if its strength remains limited.
The New Left at the turn of the century pushed radical politics to a new height. By appealing to "the people" and radical democracy, the New Left overcame the dilemma of working-class socialism confronting financialized capitalism. Through their foresight on environmentalism and commitment to avoiding climate catastrophe, they renewed and revitalized the entire radical tradition. Following the classical Marxist dialectic, theoretical research regarding the transcendence of capitalism continues. The New Left has emerged from the shadow of the 20th century and entered a different historical period. We can briefly understand the characteristics of the Left in the new century through the following three aspects:
Alter-globalization. It was precisely the accelerating neoliberal globalization between the late 1990s and 2008 that facilitated the formation of a new global Left. In late November 1999, the World Trade Organization Ministerial Conference held in Seattle became the target of radical anti-globalization protests. A group of young radicals managed to disrupt the opening ceremony and engaged in violent clashes with the city's police. In June 2001, the G8 summit in Genoa was met with protests by 200,000 angry demonstrators, who faced brutal repression from security services. In February 2003, one of the largest protest movements in world history occurred to oppose the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. Although these resistances achieved little and capitalist globalization continued for another decade, these mass demonstrations showed that an "alter-globalization"—global solidarity and international peace movements distinct from corporate outsourcing and financial speculation—was feasible. This is of paramount importance for the coming century. Proponents of alter-globalization also made creative interventions in Left politics: establishing the World Social Forum as an alternative to the Davos World Economic Forum, aiming to create a pluralistic space for exchange among all non-violent Left groups who "oppose neoliberalism and the domination of the world by capital and any form of imperialism, and are committed to building a human-centered planet."
Climate Protests. As industrialization reached its peak in the 1970s, environmental issues began to trigger public concern. Green parties gradually emerged in Western Europe, New Zealand, and other countries and regions, with many viewing them as part of the Left. However, faced with the enormous challenges brought by the climate crisis, most "green politics" has transformed into a political normality. In the 1980s, climate change became an agenda item for international scientific organizations, and by 1990, it became an explicit issue for UN member states. At the start of the 21st century, this issue, once the concern of only the elite, entered the public consciousness. Starting with the establishment of the Global Justice Ecology Project network in 2007, a powerful Left force appeared that linked the climate crisis to capitalism. Meanwhile, concern for climate change has become mainstream, while denial of climate change has become a label of the far right. The climate movement gave birth to "Fridays for Future," the fastest-growing social movement in history. The mobilization of global youth by "Fridays for Future" is staggering. According to its reports, it has convened 17 million strikers across 8,600 locations.
Socialism in the New World. In the decade following the collapse of the Soviet Union, amidst a wave of popular protest against existing capitalism, new sprouts of socialism appeared in Latin America. Hugo Chávez was elected President of Venezuela in 1998, and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was elected President of Brazil in 2002. In 2005, Evo Morales won a decisive majority in the Bolivian elections on an explicit socialist platform. Shortly thereafter, Rafael Correa, a presidential candidate in Ecuador who openly advocated for "21st-century socialism," also secured an important electoral victory. The background to these breakthroughs was the continuous economic crisis since the 1980s, which heavily impacted the lives of ordinary people. The establishment parties in these countries chose to represent the interests of the IMF (International Monetary Fund) rather than their own citizens, leading to the near-collapse of their political systems. These new socialist governments achieved significant results; growing revenue from commodity exports was used to increase infrastructure spending, initiate social programs, and reduce poverty. Outside of Latin America, Bernie Sanders, a quasi-presidential candidate, raised the banner of "democratic socialism" in the United States and won over 13 million votes in the 2016 presidential primaries. That year, a Gallup poll found that a majority of Americans under 30 held a favorable view of socialism, and membership in the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) surged. In 2019, the American socialist youth strategist Bhaskar Sunkara published The Socialist Manifesto, and the senior sociologist Erik Olin Wright’s How to Be an Anticapitalist in the 21st Century was published posthumously. The frontier of popular socialist theory has shifted to North America.
IV. New Types of Politics
The 21st-century Left has developed a new type of political practice. To grasp its innovativeness, we contrast it with 20th-century practices (Table 1). Each criterion for comparison—social base, instruments, operational mode, radical strategy, and protest activity—requires some explanation and illustration. [Image]
Social Base. 20th-century socialism was a working-class movement. Deindustrialization in the old capitalist centers, along with the limited expansion of the working class in the Global South, has to some extent caused the classical Marxist political perspective to lose its original significance. In its place, the 21st-century Left frequently speaks of "the 99%" or employs a more theoretically elaborated form—"the people." "The people" is a classical concept in European social thought, introduced into post-Marxist theory by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. In a Leftist context, "the people" possesses clear but contested class meanings as well as gender differences. The gendering of the people is very important for the 21st-century Left; this is not merely a discursive or political issue, but constitutes its very social base.
Instruments. "Organize!" was the slogan of working-class activists. In English, "organized labor" carries a distinct socio-political meaning. Collective organization, solidarity, and discipline were the only ways workers could mobilize against capital, the media, and the police. Traditionally, it was believed that working-class political power required a strong working-class party to be guaranteed. In the post-industrial era, collective organization has become more difficult, but in the digital age, the preconditions have changed. The slogan "Unite!" is sufficient to summon vast crowds. Yolanda Díaz, a representative figure of the Spanish Left, a communist, and Minister of Labor, is currently attempting to unite and revitalize the Left by launching a movement called "Sumar" (Unite). The brief successes of the Left in the UK Labour Party and the US Democratic Party supporting Corbyn and Sanders, respectively, are also manifestations of this new movement-oriented nature within Leftist party politics.
Operational Mode. Democracy was the primary short-term goal of the early working-class movement. Struggles usually concentrated on universal suffrage; for this, the Belgian labor movement launched four general strikes, and the Swedish Social Democratic Party launched one. Though these ended in failure, they laid the foundation for future victories. The critique of existing "bourgeois democracy" is an important component of Marxist political theory. In recent years, the legitimacy of this critique has been confirmed again in meticulous empirical socialist scientific research, with the democratic deficits under neoliberalism becoming the target of broader Leftist criticism. The 21st-century Left starts from a position of more unconditional embrace of democracy; the new movements advocate for a participatory democracy based on deliberation, rejecting representation and leadership structures, and often frustrating official attempts at negotiation and co-optation. At the level of political theory, Laclau and Mouffe proposed replacing socialism with "radical plural democracy." Radical democracy focuses more on majority rule than minority rights, and mass participation rather than pluralistic opinions.
Radical Strategy. The 20th-century Left was programmatic and strategic. It had a clear goal—the establishment of a socialist or communist society—and proposed a clear strategy to achieve this goal in its party program's "Road to Socialism." The attitude of the 21st-century Left is more conservative. Pablo Iglesias stated bluntly in 2014: "The socialist strategy... has enormous problems in a practical political sense... We are not against the strategy of transition to socialism, but we are more eclectic and adopt a Neo-Keynesian approach." This is clearly an admission of the failures and exhaustion of the 20th century, but it does not mean a surrender to the capitalist order. The 21st-century Left bases its radicalism on a thorough opposition to the status quo, rather than a long-term goal or a future roadmap. It refuses to accept the traditions of the ruling class and remains unyielding before the juggernaut of the neoliberal economy.
Protest Activity. The protest activities of Left politics have expanded beyond the traditions of electoral politics and mass demonstrations. The 2011 Arab Spring inspired widespread movements demanding the occupation of public urban spaces and the establishment of urban camps. The method of setting up roadblocks, adopted by Andean Indigenous movements, was also employed by the Argentine piqueteros, the French "Yellow Vests" movement, and farmers in Punjab, India. The mobilization of secondary school students is another new phenomenon, appearing in Chile in the early 21st century to oppose the capitalization of education, which subsequently developed into a broader university student movement. Urban riots that challenge or even overthrow governments are also part of 21st-century Left politics. These began in Buenos Aires in 2001, where they forced the liberal president to evacuate by helicopter. Tunisia and Cairo ousted dictators in 2011, and in 2022, protesters in Colombo expelled the Rajapaksa family. These riots differ from revolutions because they lack a strategic and organizational plan to seize power. These protest movements aim to rid themselves of current policies and politicians but offer no alternative for government. The demonstrators in Buenos Aires could demand "Let them all go!" (¡Que se vayan todos!), but did not answer the question: "And then what?" In every instance, the great flaw of the Left is the lack of a vision for transformative power or a strategy to win it—this is perhaps the most significant difference from the 20th-century Left.
V. Successes, Failures, and Future Challenges
We are now nearing the end of the first quarter of the 21st century. What are the successes and failures of the New Left? We have witnessed its response to the wave of capitalist globalization that began in 1980, a wave that is now drawing to a close. The New Left has updated the legacy of the 20th century through innovative forms and has broken new ground. It brought the issue of inequality and the possibility of grassroots resistance into mainstream economics and political science; it reduced inequality across Latin America; and it translated the demand for climate action into commitments from global politicians. The Left at the beginning of the 21st century also opened up space for the emergence of a new generation of radicals. It broadened the ideological spectrum in many countries, laid the foundation for political progress, and initiated discussions on the meaning of socialism and the prospects for overcoming capitalism.
However, for the Left in Asia and Africa, the start of the 21st century was not smooth. The fall of Indonesia’s brutal Suharto regime in 1998 created few political opportunities for the Left, and the economy continued to move in the direction of inequality. Attempts to form labor parties in Nigeria, South Africa, and South Korea have all failed to date. The "Old Left" in India and Japan has been further weakened, and even in a very broad sense, not much of a New Left has emerged. In the 20th century, the Left at least helped establish three enduring states: China, Vietnam, and Cuba. But so far, the 21st-century Left has achieved few viable institutional accomplishments elsewhere, though much of the century remains.
Looking ahead, for the remainder of this century, humanity will face three major challenges: first, the question of the planet’s habitability; second, the risk of world war brought about by new imperial geopolitics; and third, the tragic legacy of neoliberal globalization, whose profound inequalities continue to deprive most of humanity of technological and medical progress. How the New Left will respond to these challenges is currently unpredictable, but the outlook is not optimistic.
The Climate Crisis. Within the broad climate movement, there is a general consensus that avoiding planetary catastrophe requires profound social change—a shift from a world based on private accumulation to a politics of care, solidarity, and equality. The form of this transformation is one of the topics of heated debate within the 21st-century Left, particularly between reformists and eco-socialists, the former focusing on the "Green New Deal" concept and the latter aiming to transcend capitalism. Heatwaves, droughts, floods, and landslides are becoming the norm, and the geopolitical climate is intensifying its own storms of ethnic hatred. The Left’s climate movement needs to broaden its horizons, moving from a sole focus on utopia and apocalypse toward a focus on the geopolitical context, the possibilities of capitalist transformation, and life on Earth before the end of the world.
Geopolitics. Neoliberal globalization has been replaced by imperialist geopolitics. When the US political establishment began to realize that China was winning the game of globalization, it changed the rules of the game. This trend began during the Trump era and was consolidated under the Biden administration. Free trade and the free flow of capital are now replaced by national interests, protected through forms of economic warfare such as tariffs and so-called "制裁" (sanctions). This "America First-ism" is currently being emulated by the "Fortress Europe" project. The US insistence on NATO’s eastward expansion and the Western sanctions imposed on Russia after the outbreak of the Ukraine crisis have accelerated the trend of inter-imperial conflict in the 21st century. As "anti-civilian weapons," blockades and punitive sanctions caused nearly one million deaths from hunger and disease during World War I. Post-Cold War, US and European policymakers have once again become obsessed with these means. The number of sanctions doubled between 1990 and 2009 and doubled again in the 2010s. These actions do nothing to change future prospects but serve only to gain the satisfaction of punishment; it is a form of sadistic behavior. "Sadistic liberalism" is now a major trend in Western foreign policy. The era of imperial geopolitical competition is difficult for the Left to navigate. The situation of the European Left in 2022 is similar to the isolation and despair faced by Rosa Luxemburg in 1914. Furthermore, there is now a non-negligible risk of nuclear war.
The Rise of Asia. Even in the absence of war, a structural shift in power remains possible. If the Left's worldview in the 20th century was the "march of the workers," in the 21st century it is the "march of Asia." The iron grip of US global hegemony is loosening. With its staggering techno-economic rise, China has become the most direct challenger, though in the long run, the growing influence of Asia as a continent seems a more reliable bet. India is bound to strive for great power status, while the ASEAN bloc—including fast-developing countries like Indonesia and Vietnam—is also moving forward. This trend may mean a restructuring of the world financial system, ending the shackles placed upon it by the US and Europe. It also means that the ability to impose "Western values" on the world is weakening. The ideological and political perspective of the Left must become truly global. For the Left in the Global North, such a view should include recognizing the critical differences between the US and China or India. The US remains the ultimate fortress of capitalism; as a Christian missionary empire, it desires to make the rest of the world like itself, whereas China and India have no such ambitions. A pluralistic world without a single superpower should be the goal of the Left.
Class Struggle. The 21st century is not only about climate adaptation and geopolitics; it is also about the global class struggle. In 2020, the average income of the world’s richest 1% was 144 times that of the poorest half of the global population. The coexistence of immense affluence and tragic poverty is a long-term trend in human history. If the Left is to have any meaning, it must prioritize the commitment to the pursuit of human equality, which is not limited to material resources but includes equal opportunity for longevity and health. In the face of the challenge of inequality, mass political mobilization and innovative state policies and institutions are the counter-measures. Although a promising strategy has not yet emerged, social struggles have seen a resurgence following the COVID-19 pandemic. In some countries of the Global South, large alliances of different strata—workers, peasants, students, indigenous organizations, the proletariat, and unemployed youth—have emerged. These alliances match their respective socio-cultural structures and therefore have the potential to drive social change.
VI. Socialism: A Postscript
In the 2010s, the trend of increasing life expectancy in the US and UK was broken; in 2020 and 2021, the UN Human Development Index fell below 2017 levels. The climate crisis has already led to unprecedented heat, droughts, and floods, displacing millions. Beneath the dark clouds of approaching catastrophe, this is a century full of uncertainty and unpredictability. But "another world is still possible." Although the path toward it now looks bleaker and more dangerous than at the beginning of the century, we have voices advocating for an alternative globalization, the World Social Forum, creative anti-austerity protesters, the democratic indignados, and more. Cracks in the world system are opening space for the creativity of a new generation of the Left, and human anger at global inequality has become a force for change.
Arduous challenges lie ahead. The New Left may have begun to confront the complexities of the climate crisis, but it has not yet set about researching the over-accumulation of finance or exploring the forms of global solidarity needed in a world of intensifying imperialist competition. How to assess the problems triggered by unstable new geopolitical divides and find practical answers will be one of the most difficult and daunting tasks of the 21st century, particularly for the Northern Left. For the sake of peace and the right to human survival, it must combine a critical realist conception of international relations with idealistic notions. No rational Leftist should defend US global hegemony or the half-century of Western rule, even if they have recently donned the mantle of "universal values." For today’s Left, the only consistent geopolitical position is to strive to prevent the next world war while simultaneously fighting for human liberation.
In the Global North, the situation of electoral politics has become unfavorable to the Left, as xenophobic right-wing populism has gained the support of a segment of the people. In Latin America, though not as bold as at the dawn of the century, a more progressive shift is underway. In Africa and Asia, distinct political leanings have yet to emerge, but popular resistance to existing politics does exist. The 21st-century Left may not be fully prepared for the predictable challenges ahead, but it has demonstrated its capacity for connection, protest, and resistance. Compared to the exhaustion and dejection of the Left in the early neoliberal era, the creative vitality and rebellious mass movements of the 21st-century Left are two reasonable grounds for maintaining a cautious optimism about its ability to meet future challenges. The 20th-century Left has no secret recipe to pass down, but it possesses a rich legacy of experience to bequeath to future generations—a history that includes failures, mistakes, victories, and achievements.
Socialism was the objective of the 20th-century Left’s struggle. It reappeared briefly in the form of "21st-century socialism" in the Latin American crescent from Venezuela to Bolivia, and as "democratic socialism" in the US and UK. In the post-colonial Global South and Europe, even among Leftists, little remains of the socialist vision. This is a historic loss of horizon, a loss of an inspiring imagination for the future. True, the anti-neoliberal wave stirred by the New Left and its creative practices show that this loss is not fatal. The history of the 20th century also tells us that social change rarely proceeds according to a blueprint. However, a "Long March" [8] needs a direction.
In fact, existing capitalism will face increasing challenges in the 21st century. While it possesses some resources to cope with climate disaster, capitalist solutions will at best be tailored for a small elite in a few lucky regions. The current global market economy must undergo profound transformation; whichever way it goes, social and political struggle, along with an imagination grounded in reality, will determine the direction of that change. Meanwhile, the rise of Asia means that the space for Western practices and values will shrink. Today's people are better informed and more connected than ever before; more people will raise existential questions. Why should we accept the current socio-economic system, where at most 30% of the population lives in affluence while others are excluded and exploited? Is this the best system humanity can build? The Left should play a key role in the great challenges of the 21st century. It is time to be prepared.