Since the 1970s, in the name of democracy, various post-Marxist tendencies in the academic and public discourses have criticized Marxism for its reluctance to distance itself from totalitarianism, and for its negligence of the horror of colonialism, racism, oppression of women, and the human rights of the victims of the dictatorial regimes. But the post-Marxist pressure on Marxism generated, since the 1990s, two opposite forms of Marxism and left-wing politics in Europe. In the past few years, we have been witnessing that one leftist tendency demands that the other tendency remains true to the meaning of the left and Marxism. One segment of the left defends the âSyrian revolutionariesâ against the dictatorial regime of Bashar Assad. This same segment of the left is well aware that the âSyrian revolutionariesâ are financed and organized by âWestern imperialismâ and the Arab dictators. The other segment of the left supports the âSyrian people and their governmentâ against the âimperialist-terrorist intervention.â Whereas one segment of the left is preoccupied with the Chinese and Russian âundemocratic capitalism,â the other segment rejects this preoccupation as an imperialistic obsession. Whereas the former segment of the left is worried about European racism and Islamophobia, the latterâs concern is the danger that Muslims and immigrants present to the future of freedom of expression, secularism, social peace, and communal solidarities in Europe. Regarding their disagreements on their governmentsâ foreign policies and handling of the question of refugees, immigrants, and Muslims, the European left, Marxist or post-Marxist, are divided into two major sections. One section of the left opposes the Western governmentâs imperialist policies in the Muslim world because these policies produce refugee crises and the âexcessive immigrationâ of Africans and Muslims into Europe threatening social peace, prosperity, and the welfare state of European societies. While defending these same foreign policies as useful for spreading democracy and humanitarian assistance, the other section of the left takes a âhumaneâ approach toward âthe refugee crises,â immigrants, and Muslim citizens. The âanti-imperialistâ left argues that the seemingly humane handling of the question of refugees and immigration by the European governments is their way of escaping their responsibilities in creating imperialist wars and destruction as the main causes of mass immigration. According to the âanti-imperialistâ left, as a result of accepting refugees with Islamic and patriarchal cultural backgrounds, with no human capital, there emerged marginalized citizens, oppressed women and children, growing delinquency, and Islamist extremism in Europe. The pro-democracy and pro-humanitarian intervention left responds by claiming that regardless of the imperfections these people display and the danger they represent to the social fabric of European societies, Europe cannot reject these people. Firstly, European societies desperately need the practical assistance of these people to maintain the existing degree of material productivity. Secondly, the absolute majority of these people are European citizens. However, according to the pro-democracy and pro-human rights left, these peopleâs practical assistance does not mean that society should disregard their undemocratic attitudes. On the contrary, the education system, scholars, and intellectuals must educate these new citizens in Western values and democratic culture to overcome their imperfections and live a democratic life. The main result of the debates of the two sections of the left since the 1990s has been nothing but the invisibility of the contemporary European proletariat. Bearing in mind Stuart Hallâs understanding of the âethnicization of the workforceâ in Britain,1 the nature of the practical assistance of the people who are called Muslims and immigrants in contemporary Europe and the degree of their invisibility is indistinctive from the early nineteenth-century European proletariat. Nineteenth-century Europe produced thinkers and activists such as Blanqui , Proudhon , Marx , and Engels who analyzed the situation of the European proletariat, as well as political parties, which represented the interests of this proletariat. These European thinker-activists argued that whereas the bourgeois state ignored the existence of the proletariat and their rights as citizens, the nature of the capitalist mode of production denied their real freedom and equality. But it seems that twenty-first-century Europe is unable to produce thinkers who can analyze the situation of the new proletariat or political parties representing their interests. Marx as the founder of the contemporary left tried to make his contemporary proletariat visible. Contrary to Marx , the Marxists and post-Marxists left of the twenty-first century have made their contemporaneous proletariat invisible. Rancière describes how the 1990s celebrations of the bicentenary of the French Revolution in France turned into âa great funeral of two centuries of egalitarian utopias.â During the âcelebrationsâ the intellectuals âwent into a rage against the illusions and crimes of the revolutionary age.â At the same time, the socialist government and intellectuals argued that social divisions and conflicts would be solved if social groups consider each other and the state as their partners. The state-intellectual argument declared âthe triumph of consensual realism over Marxist utopia.â But instead of being the site of âpolitical wisdom and social peace,â this consensual realism generated xenophobia of the National Front.2
In The Passing of an Illusion (1995s), Francois Furet argues that liberation from the illusion of historical necessity or march of history is a precondition for an accurate understanding of our time. For Furet , without being necessary elements of the twentieth century, Fascism and Communism justified their emergence through the idea of historical necessity. Fascism and Communism, which had forgotten that democracy produced them, considered themselves as the destiny of humanity and fought each other to replace democracy. But after a while democracy buried both Fascism and Communism.3 A few years earlier, in 1989, Francis Fukuyama claimed that we are witnessing the end of history: âthat is, the end point of mankindâs ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.â4 Two years after Fukuyamaâs statement, while preparing the first war against Iraq, the American president George H.W. Bush declares the advent of a new era, a New World Order that is: âfreer from the threat of terror, stronger in the pursuit of justice, and more secure in the quest for peace. An era in which the nations of the world, East, and West, North and South, can prosper and live in harmony.â5 Two decades later, with the increa...