None of these. The characteristics mentioned by you do not encompass all the complexity of the concept of the contemporary left. For a long time we have had two approaches to building the left, each of which is unfortunately wrong. Still the influential idea is the idea to create the left by making it similar to the right, of course, adding the promise that we will do the same what the right is doing, but simply better and more efficiently. Let’s have regard to the fact that the most drastic moves to disassemble the social state were taken under social democratic ruling. Although the prophet and the missionary of the neo-liberal religion was Margaret Thatcher, it was Tony Blair, a member of the Labour Party, who made that religion a state religion.

The second method of constructing the left was based upon the concept of so-called “rainbow coalition”. This concept assumes that if all the dissatisfied can get together under one umbrella, no matter what troubles them, a strong political power will emerge. But, among the disappointed and the frustrated there are violent conflicts of interest and postulates. To imagine the left as, for example, consisting on one hand of the discriminated promoters of single-sex marriages and on the other hand, of the persecuted Pakistani minority, is a solution for disintegration and powerlessness and not for integration and power for effective acting. The concept of ‘rainbow coalition” must result in dilution of the left identity, dilution of its programme and the disabling of the postulated “political power” as early as at the moment of its birth.

What can the left base its programme on? Jacques Julliard who in his latest book Les gauches françaises 1762-2012,) critically analysed the heritage of the French left, claims that the left can refer only to the idea of fairness. It cannot even talk about progress since it gives a worried look at technology which the progress is identified with, but exhibits friendly attitude towards ecology, which ex difinitione aims at conserving and not at changing.

Certainly, the collapse of communism had a considerable impact on the left potential. For decades “the day order” for the rest of the world was prescribed by the simple fact of the existence of communism propagating the social alternative programme. That rest regardless whether being enthusiastic or not, led by self-preservation instinct, embarked on initiatives described in that programme, such as combating misery, humiliation and human disability, appropriate compensation for the role of working class in the process of accumulating wealth, fighting off inequalities and fighting for social justice, education and health care accessible by all, secure old age, or the security against life misfortune experienced by an individual. Hence, for the social democracy paradoxically having a powerful ally as its fierce enemy, was easier to force a social programme. It shall also be admitted that “the rest of the world” fulfilled the tasks enforced by the communist threat much more successfully than the communism itself! Today there is no communist “scare crow”, so the programmes for improving the quality of human life are in retreat…

Gerhard Schroeder put it straight to the point though laconically, saying: “There isn’t anything like capitalist economy, or socialist economy. There exists either good, or bad economy”. In this sense the rulings of the central right and the central left compete for dignity of the most faithful congregation in GDP Church. Both sides of the political fan when being at the helm are compatible on the status of economic growth as a remedy for all social ailings as well as on the growth of the consumption as a determinant of good ruling. The rest is an election propaganda. In other words, the left practically speaking, does not have a programme in addition to bidding against the right to determine who will speed up the process of withdrawing from life improvement programmes and who will win the coming elections. It is not mentioned at all about the creation of an alternative to the social instruments which are sick and unfriendly to people.

So, we lay the left in the grave?

No way. The left has not lost its capability of preserving and strengthening its identity. Let’s quote just two rules, inseparable with the “left” approach related to human cohabitation. The first is the responsibility of the community for all its members and specifically, securing each member against life misfortune, refusal of dignity and humiliation. The social model which complied with that rule was, at least in its intentions and original form, a model of “welfare state”, which stipulated not that much of income
bringing, but more basing on solid pillars and documenting the co-dependence of the community members, the commonality of the law for social recognition, decent life and resulting from that social solidarity. So, it will be more reasonable to call it a “social state”. The second rule is the valuation of the quality of the society not by the average income, but by the well-being of the weakest of its branches (similarly to the chain loops, of which the resistance is not measured by the average resistance of the loops, but by the resistance of the weakest loop).

Who will be able to implement such programme? The left-wing parties which in previous years referred to the working class interests, practically speaking disappeared from the political scene. On the other hand the new left-wing party attaches bigger importance to culture and custom rather than to economy and redistribution. As for now, an attempt to link a sort of moral liberalism with the economy regulation has not been successful. The old working class seems to be too conservative and backward orientated for the aristocratic left and the left orientated to individual rights is afraid of the collectivism of working classes, nationalism, reluctance to anything what is different and shares other similar worries. How can the Left find its way out from this clinch?

The roots of the phenomenon, as you describe, reach even deeper. These are not the mutual relations between “the left” and “the working class” that have changed, but the subjects of those relations. The number has changed, the social importance and the “morphology” of the basic electorate for the left that was the working class. At the Marx’s times the most brilliant individuals expected that the world is heading for the split into workers and their superiors and for the third category there will be no place in that world. But, the industrial working class is undergoing the same process now as the farm workers in the 19^th century came through, who at the beginning of the century constituted 90 per cent of the population and at the end of the century only 9 per cent. At present it is visible that the class of industrial workers is more of a past. If it still exists anywhere, then it is far from Europe, in so-called developing countries and even there it is for the time being because at the moment when the preliminary accumulation of capital comes to an end and the cheap labour force stops being discouraging for investments into machinery, the working class would shrink quickly. It is said today half humorously, but perhaps more half seriously that in the future industrial plant a man and a dog will be employed. A man will be employed for feeding a dog and the dog will guard the man not to touch anything.

In Jacques Julliard’s opinion one of the first steps on the way out from that situation is the change of the way of thinking about the shape of the societies, advancing from their perception as a number of groups which have their interests to perceiving them as consisting of a few individuals who have not only economic, but also religious and cultural needs. In other words, the left would be supposed to make a bridge between the community requirements and the aspirations of the individuals.

At present such society seems to be purely a dream… The morphological basis for collective, hence, solidarity acting disappeared in the course of individualisation process. Once the workplaces no matter what they were producing, were also a solidarity plants as Ford plant, or Gdańsk Shipyard. Conversely, at present, they are the factories of competitiveness and mutual distrust. Some observers transferred too jumpily the hopes for solidarity political actions to public squares in line with the rule “one for all, all for one”, once located in big industrial plants, but today being homeless. Those gatherings on public squares, or in public parks taking place often recently, putting up tents there for several days, or weeks to stay in them as long as the goal had been reached, demonstrated attempts to find, or to conjure the alternative ways for effective acting in the situation when the trust to state is withering and the doubts arise about whether it can do a good job. Hope vanishes that the salvation will flow from the top, the salvation may come if we ourselves without any intermediaries would contribute to its fulfilment? Those, however, were the expressions of solidarity, so as to say “explosive”, or “channel” aiming at the burst-out of the accumulated resentment and protest against unbearable course of matters, only for the purpose of sinking into the everyday life which remained unchanged and was as unbearable as before.

But, do such initiatives serve the purpose of building the intrageneration solidarity? Will they not be a prelude to further and better organised movements?

I would warn against drawing as optimistic as too hasty and too premature conclusions from such experiments. As for now the alternative movements only proved that they may lead to (but not always!) removing any one object which all the participants regardless the interests and views which divide them, consider consensually as unacceptable, or unbearable. If they succeed, they will at most clear the site for other construction… But what other construction? No movement has made itself famous of putting up a building on the site that they managed to empty. In fact, very few of them managed to clear the site itself. The New York Stock Exchange occupied only in the minds of the occupants, was the first stock exchange which reached profit exceeding the pre-crisis quotations, not changing the policy condemned by the protesters at all. Probably, it was the only one as opposed the journalists thirsty of sensations and sociologists hungry of historic discoveries, which did not notice that it was under occupation.

So, there is not any group, or institution today which could initiate some serious changes. Additionally, we face a deep crisis of the idea of representation since large number of people do not take part in politics at all.

You see yourself that you describe society and politics which is an absolute opposite of what was before. These days the society gets closer to atomisation, internal discord and dispute rather than to solidarity. Something disintegrates for what our grand and great-grandparents fought for a long time. They were struggling for decades to complete the tasks of stretching the social integration and human solidarity and hence, the co-operation from the local community, parish, commune, or ancestral wealth to considerable bigger fields of “the imaginable whole” state/nation. To do so the conflicts were unavoidable which were not less horrible or painful for the generations exposed to them than the challenges that we face. It took the entire 19 ^th century for the modern state growing in power and ambitions to curb the uncontrollable freedom of business which got out of the family, or local community guardianship and settle down on politically and also ethically undeveloped territory.

Today we live in the epoch of “deregulation”. This neutral word by appearance, of which more expressive (and fairer) equivalent would be “disorganisation”, hide dispersion of responsibility and the replacement of relatively foreseeable and hence structuralized situations by unforeseeable situations, filled with uncertainty, fear of the unknown tomorrow and others alike. “Deregulation” is conducted under the label of making each individual, or coalition of individuals masters of their own fate, but in practice, it made only a few chosen individuals masters of their own fate (and in the same time masters of others’ fate), leaving the rest to the caprices of fortune which none knows how to overcome. Leaving the individuals to themselves makes them be competitors, instead of promoting solidarity, their position gives rise to mutual distrust and competition. In such a situation “closing ranks”, standing shoulder to shoulder ceases to make sense. It is not clear how a bigger chance might emerge for the fulfilment of interests if the individual interests have been merged.

What is the lesson to be learnt by the left?

In the environment unfavourable forcollective work and uninspiring with hope, the left faces a big challenge: to ascend the politics having so far only a local dimension to the level of global issues which our contemporaries are to wrestle with. So, it is not surprising that the left does not dare to say openly to its co-citizens, including its own electors, that they challenge, as the rest of the human race does, a task of remaking the big accomplishment of our ancestors from national and construction era; however, with such difference, that they will have to make it on incomparably bigger scale, a universal human scale. It does not mean that the left should be absolved due to the lack of brevity (and sense of responsibility!). It lacks in virtues of brevity, perseverance and ever-lasting hope, which its ancestors, luckily for them and for the rest of the human kind, had in abundance.

* Zygmunt Bauman, sociologist, philosopher, postmodernism theorist, retired professor of the University of Leeds and University of Warsaw. He is an author of over 40 books. He was awarded the European Amalfi Prize for his work “Modernity and the Holocaust” (1989) in the field of social sciences. In the year 1998 he was awarded the Theodor W. Adorno prize and two years later received the Prince of Asturias Award, called the “Spanish Noble Prize”.

** Adam Puchejda – historian of ideas. His interests range from the sociology of intellectuals to public sphere studies and political philosophy; most recently, he worked at Sciences Po in Paris with Daniel Dayan. Regular contributor at „Kultura Liberalna”.

*** Original text in Polish. Translated by EUROTRAD Wojciech Gilewski.

“Kultura Liberalna” no. 241 (34/2013) of August 20, 2013

The economic crisis in Greece is heading towards yet another showdown today. The Greek electorate threatens to strike a serious blow against neoliberalism and its European offshoot. At the same time, these elections promise to unravel the Greek state’s monopoly on the structures of violence and fear.

Sociologist Charles Tilly drew a compelling analogy between the state as the place of organized means of violence, and racketeering. He defined the racketeer “as someone who creates a threat and then charges for its reduction,” in order to gain control and consolidate power. In this regard, a state and its government differ little from racketeering, to the extent that the threats against which they protect their citizens are imaginary or are consequences of their own activities.

Considering the pain, the humiliation, and the social degradation that the economic and political policies of the Greek government have inflicted upon the country the past four years, Tilly’s analogy may offer us a useful tool to both describe and evaluate the current crisis and the regime of fear that the state has unleashed on the Greek public.

The Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK), which is now a democratic socialist party in name only, governed Greece for almost 30 years, moving steadily from Keynesian economic policies in the 1980s to rampant neoliberalism in the 1990s. New Democracy (ND), which had dominated the political scene until PASOK’s first electoral victory in 1981 and alternated in power with it ever since, professed its ideology to be “radical liberalism.” Today, after three decades of cronyism, unbridled corruption and economic scandals, the ideological convergence of the two parties is complete.

Despite its initial apprehension towards the European Union, membership in the organzation enabled PASOK to implement its policies and boost the Greek economy. With the help of substantial financial inflows from the European Economic Community, PASOK was able to redistribute wealth.

Despite the growing government deficits, the emphasis remained on sustaining employment and modernizing the welfare system. In the meantime, democratic socialism – enveloped in patronage and nepotism – evolved into a process for democratizing corruption. Deputy Prime Minister Theodoros Pangalos’s infamously vulgar statement in 2010 – “We [the government and citizens] fooled away the money together” – alluded to government-bred tactics which for years secured positions for its electorate in an ever-expanding bureaucratic machine.

Under the weight of economic scandals, pressure from PASOK’s “modernizing wing”, and the Maastricht Treaty’s aim to bring about monetary convergence by 1998, the Greek government launched an extensive program liberalizing the financial and banking sector, slashing government subsidies and pensions, deregulating the labor market and privatizing more than 100 companies from 1994 to 1999.

Some of the most prominent of these businesses included: AGET-Hercules, the cement company that literally built Greece after World War II, the Hellenic shipyards, Piraiki-Patraiki, a textile industry that in the 1980s was the second-largest employer after the Greek public sector, and ETVA, the Hellenic Industrial Development Bank. New Democracy, which governed briefly between 1990 and 1993, effectively championed the same policies.

The implementation of neoliberal policies, increasingly executed by an emerging new breed of technocrat politicians, was often met with strong resistance by labor unions and powerful interest groups which for years had enjoyed the state’s protection. Economic scandals underscored the “restructuring” process. When AGET-Hercules was sold for a fraction of its value to a nearly bankrupt Italian industrial group, extreme violence erupted. The assassination of Michael Vranopoulos, a former chief of State Bank who had handled the sale, by the terrorist group November 17, highlighted the public’s discontent.

The largely tolerant attitudes of the Greek public towards November 17, which operated from 1975 until 2002 with an anti-American, anti-capitalist agenda – it was viewed almost as a modern Robin Hood – reflected Greeks’ increasing frustration with the political establishment. Most importantly, this predisposition reflected people’s inability to effectively react.

The Greek state has always had a tight grip on society, and Greek society has always had a love-hate relationship with the state. Strongly dependent on the state for employment in an ever-expanding public sector, which was tied up with unions that over the years had come under the control of the government, the Greek public often vented its dissatisfaction with riots, protests and strikes, largely orchestrated by the parties of the Left. But it was unable to fundamentally challenge a system that was excluding them from decision-making processes.

But Greece’s booming economy at the time – fuelled by the adoption of the euro, easy credit conditions, and substantial transfers from the EU – painted the picture of a seemingly prosperous society. In reality, a small elite was reaping vast profits from the government’s neoliberal policies, while the lower and middle classes paid the hefty price, as the massive Greek stock exchange scandal of 1999-2000 highlights.

A central role of the state is that of offering protection to its citizens. “Protection,” however, as Tilly suggests, echoes two contrasting tones: a comforting and an ominous one. It calls forth images of shelter against danger provided by a powerful friend, an insurance policy or a sturdy roof. It also evokes, however, the racket in which a local strong man, for instance, forces merchants to pay tribute in order to avoid damage – damage he himself threatens to deliver – or a neighborhood mobster who claims to be a brothel’s best guarantee of operation free of police interference.

The death spiral that the Greek economy entered in 2008 called for all the government protection that the public could use. Instead, the government signed up for the financial bailout packages imposed by the so-called “troika,” the European Committee, European Central Bank, and International Monetary Fund. The packages included a series of unprecedented austerity measures which brought the lower and middle classes to their knees, while leaving intact the privileges of the financial elites and their political aides.

As a result of the tremendous economic pressure, the government had started losing its tight grip on Greek society as far back as 2008. Massive protests triggered by the police killing of Alexandros Grigoropoulos, a 15-year-old student, expressed young people’s increasing frustration with the prospect of a bleak future.

By the spring of 2011, a whole new movement had been galvanised. The “Indignant Citizens Movement,” an offshoot of the Spanish Indignados, occupied central Athens’ Syntagma Square for four months. Organized collectively and independent from any party or trade union affiliation, the movement was another indication that the government was governing without the consent of the people. Civil disobedience and organizations dedicated to collective action sprung up to deal with the pauperization unleashed by austerity.

The backlash has been a campaign of fear, which on occasion escalates into outright terror. Instilling fear in its clientele is the primary mechanism employed by any racketeer. The violent suppression of mass protests, the detention of undocumented immigrants, and the arrest and public display on the Greek police’s website of 12 prostitutes infected with HIV have had a single goal: to terrorize the Greek public and ultimately offer “protection” against the dissidents, anarchists, protesters, and immigrants. The rise of Golden Dawn, the neo-Nazi party, which won about seven per cent of the vote in parliamentary elections in May, was the direct result of these practices.

Fear is the sovereign’s predicament, as 17th-century political philosopher Hobbes has shown – not a natural emotion, but one cultivated through a system of moral education conducted by state institutions and their affiliates, most prominently, in our days, by the media. When these institutions lose legitimacy, their tactics may ultimately backfire, as the May elections showed. The rise of Syriza, a coalition of anti-austerity leftist parties ahead of today’s elections has triggered a new round of propaganda alluding to a communist takeover, loss of private property, alienation from the markets and the international community, and most importantly, to a financial Armageddon.

In defiance of this fear, an awakening of political consciousness is taking place in Greece’s squares, streets, and online social networks, not merely condemning the policies of austerity and social degradation but collectively working towards new types of political resistance. It is becoming clear that only the people of Greece can deliver and ultimately save themselves from the racketeering, criminal practices of their “protectors”.

This article was first published by Al Jazeera English network on June 15, 2012.