the left is crumbling; what is to be done?

Along the western world, the left/progressive movement appears to be in retreat. In 2020, Bernie Sanders failed yet again in securing the democratic nomination; Jeremy Corbyn failed months earlier to defeat Johnson's Conservatives and received Labour's worst electoral performance since 1935; in Germany, Die Linke is worringly close to not enjoying representation in the Bundestag, and in Spain, Unidas Podemos is polling its lowest numbers and keeps free falling. These are not good times for progressives.

The response to these dissapointments by left-wing circles have commonly been complaints for the unfair media coverage by the billionaire press. While this is a real concern- there are studies that prove Bernie Sanders received much more negative coverage - it cannot all be blamed on the establishment media. The Left needs to do some self-criticism on why it fails to inspire working people. The media does influence the electorate's ideas, however, people's immediate reality is much more powerful and the left needs to make the case on how we can improve workers' real day-to-day lives.

The Left is very much failing to inspire working people. Workers are running to right-wing populists parties such as in Italy and France, two countries that had the strongest Communist Parties in the West during the Cold War. Why is this the case?

I start my quest for answers on a pattern I noticed in Unidas Podemos' and Corbyn's last campaigns: "Defendamos la sanidad publica.", "Protect the NHS!". Both campaigns heavily emphasized and focused on the protection of public healthcare. In the case of Corbyn, a desperate attempt to shift the conversation away from Brexit- where Labour did not hold a clear position. In the case of UP, another desperate attempt to get away from the relevant topic: the pandemic. Both campaigns did not emphasize on a specific and tangible policy to get voters excited, but rather did nothing else but exclaim that social healthcare was "under threat" as a cheap trick. Oppositely, Boris Johnson was promising the end of the tiring and stressful Brexit negotiations, and Ayuso the end of lockdown. Both policies where real, specific and got voter something to look forward to. "Protect public healthcare."- is this everything progressives have to offer? How has the Left gone from being a movement that promised workers the end of imperialism, racism, patriarchy and the explotation of man by man, to offering nothing but trying to save one of the few still-functioning institutions of the crumbling neoliberal capitalist system? Progressives are supposed to promise a whole new and better world, not to save this one.

Workers (in the West at least) today are facing greater inequality, a rise of the risk of poverty, receding social safety nets, the rise of reactionism, fewer access to housing and climate collapse. The failure of the current economic system is nothing but obvious. Amid all this chaos, the Left should be promising a solution and stability. However, progressives are offering nothing but ambiguous promises of higher social spending and investment, and taxing the wealthy. None of which deals with these issues at its core, but rather tries to alleviate them. The same social democratic drivel of the 20th century, and not solutions for the globalized 21st century where the rich can easily run away to tax havens.

For the average worker- indifferent to politics and that just wants to get by- a promise to "save universal healthcare" from an abstract threat such as "fascists" or american multinationals does not seem to them an immediate material improvement of their lives, lowering their taxes is; this is where the populist right is beating us. The left needs a clear vision of the world it is aiming for, not vague references to "democratic socialism" or "greater social spending" to alleviate their poverty, rather than transforming the system that is making them poor in the first place.

What is to be done by the left in order to get out of this pit? There are two fronts we need to work on. First, organization; second, programme.

1.Leftists have become too invested in electoralism, treating election results as an end in themselves and not a means to empower workers. The Left needs to become a real movement, present in the day-to-day lives of workers and not political parties that only show up every 4 years in the hunt for votes. For example, during the Cold War, the Communist Party of Italy (arguably the most successful Communist Party in the west, enjoying 12 million votes at its peak), had clinics that offered services for free to workers that could not afford it. The left needs to build such grass-roots presence among workers: create tenants union, strengthen trade unions, food shelters, ateneos populares, neighborhood associations, maybe even set up day-care centers for the needy. The role as a political party that contests elections must be secondary, an organization that re-builds and reinforces working-class solidarity is the priority.

2.The western left needs to write a new and clear programme, a clear description of what it wants to replace neoliberal capitalism with, and place social democracy in the shelf of history and create something new. What should that new be? Socialism. Real socialism, not vague "democratic socialism" Corbyn and Sanders talk about. The left needs to promise workers a real and specific solution to today's ills.

The socialism I envision is a planned economy ran by computers which design production plans based on consumer behaviour. Paul Cockshott is a computer scientist and economist which has written extensively on the subject. Here I link a Phd student of his which created his own model for his theses - I recommend to check it out, it is fascinating. Cockshott has written about the consumer model, the monetary model, the political institutions, and the maths of such a system. The current political Left lacks such a concrete vision of the world it imagines. This is a vision that transforms the markets that create inequality, abolishes the capitalist property that spreads poverty, and includes the long-term planning necessary to tackle the climate crisis.

However, this is only the solution I am suggesting. The point of this piece is a call-to-arms for progressives to turn on their imagination and start having a conversation; to write down to the details what is the future we are aiming for and to write such a project with the interests and dreams of the working class and the have-nots in mind.

The time for the abolition of the current system is obviously here, let's build a new world from the rubble of the old!

Notes:

· Something that is worth mentioning is that the american progressives are mostly exempt from this critique. Sanders and the DSA do offer a concrete future: universal healthcare, free tuition, the nordic model in general (social democracy). Progressives are enjoying electoral feats and the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) is constantly growing. However, europeans cannot copy them since we already enjoy social democracy.

· Another point I wanted to develop in this piece is why I believe social democracy is not useful anymore. This could be its own article. In the age of globalization, taxing the ultra-rich does not work anymore, avoiding taxes is easier than ever, and countries are forced in a race-to-the-bottom for corporate taxes if they want to attract investment. The tax burden ends up falling on the working and middle-class. An example I want to mention is rent control: a proposed solution to the housing crisis in big cities. This regulation would entail to build more bureacracy to make sure it is being followed and this cost would inevitably fall on the working-class for the reasons mentioned previously. Rent control does not tackle the issue at heart but rather tries to alleviate it. Rent is growing because housing is treated as a commodity landlords can make a profit off, not a right we need in order to live. The left needs to transform the conditions which are causing these problems, not fix them with tape.

· A possible criticism I wanted to respond to was that progressives are not actually on retreat. For example, green parties appear to be surging, it's only the old left dying out. I think it deserves its own article too why green politics are a dead end, my criticism of them is also related to my critique of social democracy.