Radical Left Movements in Europe

Magnus Wennerhag, Christian Fröhlich, Grzegorz Piotrowski

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781472461469
• eBook ISBN: 9781317071884
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

When the Iron Curtain lifted in 1989, it was seen by some as proof of the final demise of the ideas and aspirations of the radical left. Not many years passed, however, before the critique of social inequalities and capitalism was once again a main protest theme of social movements. This book provides an account of radical left movements in today's Europe and how they are trying to accomplish social and political change.

The book's international group of leading experts provide detailed analysis on social movement organizations, activist groups, and networks that are rooted in the left-wing ideologies of anarchism, Marxism, socialism, and communism in both newly democratized post-communist and longstanding liberal-democratic polities. Through a range of case studies, the authors explore how radical left movements are influenced by their situated political and social contexts, and how contemporary radical left activism differs from both new and old social movements on one hand, and the activities of radical left parliamentary parties on the other. Ultimately, this volume investigates what it means to be 'radical left' in current day liberal-democratic and capitalist societies after the fall of European state socialism.

This is valuable reading for students and researchers interested in European politics, contemporary social movements and political sociology.

1 Radical left movements in Europe

An introduction

Magnus Wennerhag

The return of the radical left?

When the Iron Curtain lifted in 1989, followed by the rapid transformation of state socialist countries into liberal democracies, it was seen by some as proof of the final demise of the ideas and aspirations of the radical left. In most Eastern European countries, communist parties soon became marginalized despite their efforts to adapt to the new situation. The effects of this historical transformation were not only experienced in former state socialist countries; communist parties in Western European countries also found themselves transformed into social democratic centre-left parties. The vision of a society of equals beyond capitalism that had animated the early labour movement, as well as the radical left movements in the years around 1968, was deemed obsolete or inadequate for the new times by many observers. Not many years passed, however, before the critique of capitalism and social inequalities were once again the main protest themes of social movements. During the mobilizations of the global justice movement at the turn of the millennium, activists claimed a more democratic and just global order, and in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis new protests arose against the austerity policies that many countries adopted to counteract their rising public debt. From the protests against such measures, new radical left parties emerged, including Syriza in Greece and Podemos in Spain. Among scholars, these developments have led to a renewed interest in the political impact and role of radical left parties in contemporary Europe (see in particular March 2011; March and Keith 2016). The corresponding political role of the contemporary radical left’s extra-parliamentarian part has, however, not yet been systematically analysed.

This book provides an account of radical left movements in today’s Europe and how they are trying to accomplish social and political change. The book’s various chapters focus on social movement organizations, activist groups, and networks that are rooted in the left-wing ideologies of anarchism, Marxism, socialism, and communism in both newly democratized post-communist and long-standing liberal-democratic polities. The questions addressed include: How are radical left movements influenced by the political and social contexts in which they are situated? How do they interact with other political actors? How does contemporary radical left activism differ from “new” and “old” social movements on the one hand, and radical left parliamentary parties on the other? And what does it mean to be “radical left” in liberal-democratic (or semi-democratic, or even semi-authoritarian), capitalist European societies today after the fall of state socialism?

Seen from a long-term perspective, the conditions for radical left activism in Europe were for a long time fundamentally different across countries and regions (cf. Sassoon 1996; Eley 2002). To a large extent this depended on external circumstances – such as wars and geopolitical divisions – and the simultaneous existence of highly divergent configurations of institutionalized political and economic power. Furthermore, such differences were often shaped by strategic choices made by the labour movement – both its radical/revolutionary and its moderate/reformist parts – during the late 19th and the early 20th centuries. On some parts of the continent, radical left movements came to political power, most often establishing state socialist one-party systems. In other places, the radical left was marginalized in relation to the moderate strands of the labour movement that became leading forces for constructing welfare state models under capitalist and liberal-democratic conditions. In yet other parts of Europe, both the revolutionary and the reformist left were banned and persecuted by right-wing dictatorships. These very different circumstances contributed to the fact that the radical left revival of the 1960s and 1970s took hold foremost in Western Europe, expressed through the emergence of the “new left” and left-libertarian “new social movements”, and in some countries also in the guise of left-wing terrorism.

It was not until the fall of the Southern European right-wing dictatorships in the 1970s and the fall of state socialism from 1989 onwards that the conditions for radical left movements began to converge across the continent. Since then, the developments of Europeanization and transnationalization have continued to create more similar political and economic conditions in an increasing number of European countries. In most European countries – both post-communist and Western – the fall of state socialism contributed to a general shift in the composition of the radical left. While traditional communist groups and parties have often been marginalized, or forced to reform and move towards the political centre, radical left-libertarian groups – such as anarchists and autonomists – have tended to grow in importance. But different national and regional experiences of what “left” and “radical left” mean continue to shape radical left movements’ possibilities to mobilize, seek political allies, and accomplish political and social change. A further aim of this book is, therefore, to show how different historical experiences have affected radical left movements’ possibilities to mobilize and to show how activists, groups, and organizations in different parts of Europe cope with the varying contemporary circumstances that these historical experiences have produced.

This book casts light on activists and organizations of different ideological affiliations that constitute the radical left, such as anarchists, autonomists, communists, and socialists. The different chapters of the book focus on radical left activism at the local, national, and transnational levels and investigate more institutionalized actors as well as informal groups and groups that primarily use non-violent means as well as those that use violent repertoires of action. Most of the chapters discuss how radical left movements interact with the political contexts in which they are situated. This regards interaction with possible allies such as new social movements, trade unions, and radical left parties (or other political parties) during specific mobilizations or in general, but also interaction with the political system as such. It is shown how radical left movements deploy different strategies and repertories of action in order to accomplish social and political change and how these choices relate to different opportunity structures and historical circumstances in different countries. Some chapters discuss whether the past – and the memory of the past – is an obstacle or an opportunity for radical left movements. It is in particular discussed whether the state socialist past of post-communist countries affects radical left movements’ abilities to mobilize and seek allies.

Previous research on social movements and the radical left

Social movement research has often centred on the issues or grievances that specific movements mobilize around. This has especially been the case in research about the “new social movements” that have been central in bringing new political and social conflicts to the fore in European democracies since the 1960s. These movements’ mobilizations on issues regarding the environment, military conflicts, women’s and LGBT persons’ rights, racism, international solidarity, etc., have furthermore often been regarded as examples of new conflicts going beyond the traditional left–right division of modern politics (see e.g. Melucci 1996). While the “old” social movement – i.e., the labour movement – continued to focus on “traditional” conflicts regarding capitalism, social class, labour rights, social welfare, and economic redistribution, the “new” movements were seen as contributing to the emergence of new divisions both within the electorate and institutionalized politics at large (see, for example, Kitschelt and Hellemans 1990; Rohrschneider 1993).

Much in this dominant picture is undoubtedly accurate, but it is also true that many of the “new” movements have had a firm base in more ideologically driven left-wing groups and have tended to predominantly mobilize left-wing-oriented activists. Sometimes, activist groups of the radical left have served as the “radical flanks” (Haines 1988; 2013) of the “new” movements, often trying to connect issue-oriented claims with a more fundamental critique of capitalism – and sometimes also of other power structures such as the state or patriarchy. This suggests that the division between “new” and “old” movements was actually never as fundamental as it often has been claimed or implied.

This has become even more evident in two of the major protest cycles of later decades in Europe – the protests around economic and political globalization at the turn of the century, and the anti-austerity protests after the 2008 financial crisis. These mobilizations often brought together both “old” and “new” social movements, the protests were framed in ways that simultaneously gave attention to “new” and “old” issues, and issues concerning economic globalization, labour rights, social welfare, and redistribution often had a prominent role in these framings. Within these mobilizations, activists and groups from the radical left often played an important role. This recent cross-fertilization of “old” and “new” movements and issues, and the left’s importance for these mobilizations, is also something that has been acknowledged in some of the literature on the global justice movement and austerity protests in Europe (see e.g. della Porta 2007; Andretta and Reiter 2009; Sörbom and Wennerhag 2013; Peterson, Wahlström and Wennerhag 2015).

Specific studies of post-1968 radical left movements are, however, rarer within the field of social movement studies. A few exceptions are della Porta’s (1995) cross-country study of militant radical left movements in Italy and Germany from the 1960s to the 1990s, Katsiaficas’s (1997) study of European autonomous movements (focusing on a few Western European countries), and Haunss’ (2004) study of the German Autonomen. While much of this previous research has been focusing on Western European countries (and particularly Germany and Italy), this book has a wider geographical scope. The majority of the chapters are studies undertaken in European countries from which very little research on radical left movements has previously been presented to an English-speaking audience.

In what follows, we will introduce some of the overall topics that are relevant for understanding radical left movements in today’s Europe and in conjunction, we will present the chapters of this book. In particular, we will discuss how various transformations of cleavage structures in European societies have affected radical left movements’ opportunities for mobilization. We will furthermore discuss the dual historical roots of these movements – in the labour movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries and in the “new left” and the new social movements of the 1960s and 1970s – and how these dual roots have affected the collective identities and repertoires of action that distinguish today’s radical left movements. Before delving into these discussions, however, we need to define what we mean by “radical left movements”.

Defining radical left movements

First, by radical actors, we mean actors that are motivated by “radical” political ideas. Radical ideas by definition deviate from the political mainstream. Radical ideas are, however, not antithetical to the political mainstream. From this perspective, “radicals” are actors striving to radicalize specific ideas that are already widely embraced by broad groups in society, albeit usually in more moderate forms (cf. Mudde 2010; March 2011). Overall, one can see “radicalism” as an “ideological and practical orientation towards ‘root and branch’ systemic change of the political system occupied by the radical actor” (March and Mudde 2005, p. 24).

To achieve their political goals, “radicals” are usually prepared to go one step further than mainstream political actors. Many times, this has implications for which repertoires of actions that radical actors use to achieve their goals. They might, for instance, show a greater readiness to disobey authorities when these are seen as illegitimate, or even to use law-breaking actions when this is seen as necessary and can be justified with reference to the urgency of a political cause. However, like Jacobsson and Saxonberg (2013, p. 14), we want to stress “the fact that most social movement organizations and activists in reality employ a variety of repertories of action”, and like these authors we want to “problematize dichotomies such as … co-opted versus radical”. As with other social movements, radical actors also use conventional types of political actions and interact with institutionalized politics, as well as engage in more contentious actions (see e.g. Piotrowski and Wennerhag 2015). We therefore do not equate radicalism with the use of political violence. Throughout modern history, both radical and moderate political actors have used violence to obtain their political goals (Lucardie 2014, p. 12). One can also find many examples of radical groups that have regarded non-violent actions as both more morally justifiable and more efficient (Vinthagen 2015). Relational processes that involve movement actors, the state, and sometimes a movement’s adversaries, and that might evolve into a situation in which movement actors start using political violence have often been called “radicalization” within social movement research (see e.g. della Porta 2013; Alimi et al. 2015). When we talk about radical actors in this book, however, we do not equate this with actors that have become “radicalized” during such relational processes.

Radical can furthermore be used as the opposite of “moderate” when intra-movement divisions and dynamics are described. The “radical flank” of a movement is often distinguished from its “moderate flank” with regards to the former’s more far-reaching claims and more conflict-oriented strategies, while the latter tends to make more moderate claims and more often seek collaboration and negotiation with representatives of institutionalized politics (Haines 1988; 2013). Even though it is important to stress that radicals also interact with institutionalized politics, such a focus on intra-movement dynamics has in previous research shown how an unspoken division of labour has characterized social movements insofar as the “moderate flank” has taken on the role of interacting with politicians and civil servants while the “radical flank” has taken on the role of intensifying the level of contention around the issue at stake (ibid.). This further understanding of radical is also central for how the term is used in this book.

Second, by talking of left, we mean actors belonging to the “left” side of the traditional left–right political spectrum. In terms of political ideas, this in particular means actors that strive for greater economic equality, that support the interests of labour (against capital), that are sceptical about the market’s (or capitalism’s) ability to organize the economy in a just way, and that prefer state intervention to liberalized markets (cf. March and Mudde 2005; March 2011). We thus primarily understand leftist ideas as expressing the ideological heritage of the historical labour movement. But we also want to elaborate upon the implications of later societal developments for how “left” is understood today. For instance, the “new left” and the new social movements that emerged during the late 1950s and the 1960s have often been seen as contributing to a change of leftist ideas to become more libertarian and pluralist. Some scholars have jointly called these actors “left-libertarian movements” and regarded them as a separate “social movement family”¹ (making an analogy to the concept of “party family” within political party research) that is held together by shared values and organizational practices (della Porta and Rucht 1995). As will be argued later in this introduction, we see it as important to take both “left-libertarian movements” and the traditional labour movement into account when discussing the contemporary meaning of “left”. It is furthermore important to stress that we are primarily interested in the radical groups of the broader left milieu, and not its moderate parts (such as mainstream social democratic or Green parties, unions, or other organizations).

Third, by talking about movements, we mean actors that engage in political and social conflicts by primarily using extra-parliamentary means, that are held together by a common collective identity (of more or less shared beliefs and goals), and that are interlinked through a looser network structure (della Porta and Diani 2006, pp. 20 ff.). According to this perspective, a single political party, NGO, or trade union can never in itself be seen as constituting a movement – but it can well be part of the broader networks of individual activists, groups, and organizations that make up a social movement. The focus on movements also implies that we are primarily interested in the actors that actively participate in the mobilizations and campaigns of a specific movement, i.e. the activists of a movement and the groups, organizations, and parties to which they belong.

This tentative ideal-type conceptualization of “radical left movements” is fairly easy to apply to many specific networks of activists, groups, and organizations: e.g. anarchist, autonomist, anarcho-syndicalist, anarcho-communist, libertarian socialist, Trotskyite, Stalinist, Maoist, and other types of socialist or communist groups. Other groups are harder to fit into this conceptualization. Local, national, or regional circumstances might have created specific meanings of what it means to be “left”, “radical”, or a “movement”. This is important to have in mind when one – as we do in this volume – uses the same concept for societies and polities that despite their basic common features many times still differ both when it comes to their historical paths of development and their contemporary social and political situations.

All three of these terms – radical, left, and movement – have continuously been more or less contested throughout modern history. We therefore need to more carefully elaborate on their precise meanings. We particularly want to discuss “left”. We believe that an exposition of the many and changing – but also dominant and persistent – meanings of “left” will most effectively introduce the reader to the aspects that we deem most relevant and urgent for the study of contemporary radical left movements in Europe.

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Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of illustrations
• List of contributors
• Acknowledgments
• 1. Radical left movements in Europe: An introduction
• 2. Radical left parties and movements: Allies, associates, or antagonists?
• 3. Radical left parties and left movements in Northern Europe
• 4. Radical and moderate left activism in the Czech Republic and in Slovakia (1989–2010)
• 5. Contentious labour in Italy and Greece: Movements and trade unions in times of precarity and austerity
• 6. Left without its party: Interest organizations of former GDR elites and the transformation of the PDS/Linke
• 7. “History bites us by the neck”: Contemporary communism(s) in Finland and France
• 8. Troubles with the (troubled) past: Anarchists in Poland after 1989
• 9. Rethinking transformative events to understand the making of new contentious performances: The “autonomous left” and the anti-fascist blockade in Lund 1991
• 10. The radical left movement, revolutionary groups, and Syriza: Framing militant dissidence during the Greek crisis
• 11. Diffusion of radical repertoires across Europe: The arrival of insurrectionary anarchism to Finland
• 12. The Ukrainian new left and student protests: A thorny way to hegemony
• 13. Taking every opportunity against the state: Anarchists in contemporary Russia
• 14. Radical and moderate left activism in the Czech Republic and in Slovakia (1989–2010)
• 15. A resurgence of the radical left? Some notes
• Index