Left, Right, Left, Right ...

Someone remarked recently, after the French regional elections, that 'populism' in Europe was marching in two directions. In France--but also in the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, prosperous northern countries with a strong social democratic or socialist tradition--a combination of economic insecurity, Islamist violence, cultural diversity, and who knows what is nurturing right-wing xenophobic parties which increasingly dominate the political landscape in those countries. Not to mention Poland, Hungary, and other poor relations where this same tendency is even more advanced.

On the other hand, this observer noted, the voters in countries along the Mediterranean rim--Portugal, Spain, and Greece in particular--have recently put left-wing 'populists' into power, or at least advanced their fortunes. Thus Syriza in Greece, the Left Bloc, which just entered Portugal's new coalition government, and Podemos in Spain, which may also find itself part of a governing coalition: all are parties from the radical or non-traditional left, all 'populist' in the sense of insurgent, not wedded to a status quo of NATO, ECB capitalism, middle-of-the-road power-sharing. And all suddenly promoted to the first rank of their countries' politics.

The implication is that voter dissatisfaction with conventional politicians is reaching historic levels all over Europe--and in the US as well with the likes of Trump, Carson, and perhaps Sanders--but is bifurcated into Left and Right versions. Of course the notion that Left and Right populists are similar in that they are not in the center is a thoroughly specious premise, and I would be hard pressed to find any commonality at all between Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. But the interesting point the observer made is that Greece, Portugal, and Spain are countries that, unlike their northern EU cousins, all experienced Fascist dictatorships within memory. The suggestion is that this experience inoculates them, perhaps, against a Marine LePen or a Gert Wilders. The putative populist insurgency therefore veers left in those countries, while its more natural direction is to the right. That at least is the hypothesis, and worth considering.

Does populist anger in America default to the right as well? Is it possible that a Sanders can gather up all that dissatisfaction and direct it where it belongs, in opposition to the 1% or the .1%? Or does our own tradition of militarization without fascism lend support to the belligerent xenophobes of the Republican party, but not to the quiet diplomacy of an Obama--or the anti-militarist leanings of Sanders? The word 'populism' has a very different force on either side of the Atlantic, and our political traditions are very different. Nonetheless it will be interesting to see if the left populisms of Greece, Portugal, and Spain can withstand the pressures of global capital--not so promising in the case of Greece--and carve out a new form of socialist dissent from the current hegemony. And more interesting still to see if Sanders can induce the US voters to follow suit.

What's Left? A Fresh Start ...

What's left? As a 63-year-old I occasionally ask this question with portentous, existential implication. Sometimes I answer hopefully: a few more decades, a few dozen growing seasons, a steady flow of good books to read, perhaps a few books to write. New friends? New causes? Grandchildren? There may be quite a lot that's left, just out of sight, around the bend.

But the title of this new blog is What's Left?--a harder question. Where is there a viable Left politics, of the sort I have long been drawn to, with respect to which I have tried to orient my life, or at least my politics? Do Left and Right mean anything any more, in this new world apparently dominated by billionaires and populist post-politicians? Is there hope for a leftward turn in the US or Europe or the other powerful capitalist democracies? Is there space for left activism here in Boston? Space anywhere for a new sort of Left, sometimes called eco-socialist, that would address the urgent environmental challenges, energy and climate most of all, within the framework of local, participatory, democratically managed economy?

What's left? In a world of more than 7 billion humans and decreasing numbers of other species, a world of unstable weather, shifting climate, declining food resources, ecological imbalance and degraded habitats, is there space for a humane culture, a vision of humans and human nature that responds to the centuries of humane vision that have preceded us? In a massively digitized world where 140 characters represent an upper bound of communication, is there much room left for culture, for reflection, for introspection?

I spent some of 2015 blogging about climate change (www.roadtoparis2015.blogspot.com), and it helped me to organize my thoughts about this huge and complex question. I don't intend to write on this blog as steadily, but I hope to record my thoughts from time to time about what's left--in all the senses I have suggested here, and then some. I hope others will visit and read what I write, and I hope they will add their own thoughts. Blogs are generally much more interesting when they are forums, not pulpits. Let's take turns.