The Crisis of the Left Policy

444
DOI: 10.20542/0131-2227-2018-62-9-26-35

K. Kholodkovskii, (holgrig@mail.ru), 
Primakov National Research Institute of World Economy and International Relations, Russian Academy of Sciences (IMEMO), 23, Profsoyuznaya Str., Moscow 117997, Russian Federation 

Abstract. The article is devoted to one of the main aspects of the left sector evolution in the political space of Western countries. Having arisen during the French Revolution of the 18th century, the division of political space into the left and the right spilled over to all countries of Europe and America. However, this division changed significantly hereafter under the influence of complicated social processes and turbulent political events. During the 20th century, radical left forces, primarily the Communists, have sustained a variety of defeats trying to eliminate the capitalist system. Social-Democratic parties have evolved from revolutionary positions to the increasingly moderate reformism. Consequently, in the Western Europe, the left forces have yielded the pas to center-left, social-reformist parties, the two-party (two-coalition) system has emerged where center-left and center-right replaced each other in power. In Latin America, the left forces survived, but even when they took power, they were bound to conduct a center-left policy. Yet the development of globalization in neo-liberal style, while intensifying the economic competition, greatly hampered the implementation of such policy. The time coincidence of the left and center-left parties’ crushing defeats in most of the Western countries is not occasional, it witnesses the crisis in their course. Lately, the situation has been dramatized significantly by emergence of influential populist parties and movements in Europe, which put the previous division into question. The leftist crisis has violated the regular rotation of political forces in power and created a background for essential changes in political course and maybe also for weakening of stability of political institutions. This situation could only be altered by the change of the present, mostly neo-liberal character of globalization processes, which is highly unlikely. 

Keywords: left forces, Western Europe, Latin America, communists, social-democrats, democratic socialism, reformism, left center, rotation, globalization, T. Blair 


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For citation:
Kholodkovskii K. The Crisis of the Left Policy. World Eñonomy and International Relations, 2018, vol. 62, no. 9, pp. 26-35. https://doi.org/10.20542/0131-2227-2018-62-9-26-35



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