A New Transatlantic Left?
October 29, 2019
Joe Guinan and Sarah McKinley guest edited a special section of Red Pepper magazine on the transatlantic left. This is their introduction to the section.
Five years ago, the idea that the eyes of the left internationally would be turned hopefully on the fortunes of the British Labour Party and the left of the Democratic Party in the United States would have seemed implausible, to say the least. And yet today this is largely where we find ourselves. Around the world, a restless political energy — determined to break with a tired, crisis-ridden but still dangerously extractive neoliberalism — has been trying to find its way to the surface. The cunning of history is such that it now appears to be doing so in the two advanced industrial economies in which neoliberalism was first unleashed, and where its rot has consequently run the deepest.
In Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party in Britain and in the emboldened left politics of Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and the Justice Democrats in the United States, a promising economic agenda is taking shape. It is one in which radically transformative new — and ‘new-old’ — economic forms and policies are increasingly being advanced, from worker and public ownership to Community Wealth Building and the Green New Deal. There is a new democratic economy in the making.
Readers of this magazine will be familiar with the story of the emergence of the Corbyn project in the United Kingdom. But across the pond, in the United States — the other major economy that first gave rise to neoliberalism — similar stirrings are becoming evident. This special section is dedicated to exploring these promising developments in American politics and economy with an eye to what they might mean for an emerging transatlantic left, one that is dedicated to the systematic replacement of neoliberal capitalism with something more humane, sustainable, and democratic.
For decades, the left has often seemed stuck in an oppositional mode, marching and protesting the depredations of the current system but lacking a positive alternative vision — and still more a politics capable of bringing it about. But in the last few years, there has been a large-scale re-engagement with party politics, with an influx of new members into the UK Labour Party and (to a lesser degree) the Democratic Socialists of America. Gone is much of the traditional horizontalist opposition to formal electoral politics, as a new sense of urgency — brought on by the twin threats of climate catastrophe and the frightening march of the new populist far right — is causing social movements to begin contending seriously for state power.
It remains to be seen how successful the new left will be in taking and wielding state power on either side of the Atlantic. But anyone with a keen sense of history might be detecting echoes or foreshadowings in several previous occasions in which the United States and United Kingdom led the way in instituting major political-economic change and ushering in a new settlement that was to take hold internationally.
FDR’s New Deal and then the programme of the 1945-51 Attlee Labour government helped establish the postwar social democratic order. When that order fell into crisis, Thatcher and Reagan blazed the trail for neoliberalism and globalization — only to be followed by Clinton and Blair in instituting its Third Way bastard offspring. In the past, when the United States and the United Kingdom have moved in concert it has often been a sign for the rest of the advanced industrial world to follow. Might today’s emerging transatlantic left herald another such momentous shift in our politics?
The new stirrings on the left in American political life range from the outcomes of federal elections to new forms of community and labour organizing and efforts to build a new economy from the bottom up. New approaches such as Community Wealth Building are spreading like wildfire across America’s cities, towns, and rural areas. By reordering the institutions and relationships of the economy, they seek to bring about changes in its basic operations and functioning that in and of themselves lead to more inclusive, democratic, and equitable outcomes. At the same time, a hopeful new wind is blowing in national politics that seeks to counterpose a radical politics of change to the disaster of Trumpism.
As veteran Washington observer Bob Borosage points out in this issue, the 2018 midterm elections produced the first signs of a possible sea change in American politics, building upon Bernie Sanders’ first presidential campaign in 2015-2016. Today the Congressional Progressive Caucus is larger than it has ever been, and a new confidence marks the discussion on Capitol Hill among progressive Democrats and even a new cohort of democratic socialist lawmakers. Meanwhile, pain is driving innovation, radical reimagining, and practical experimentation in America’s communities and cities — and even in such near-moribund institutions like organised labour. Independent journalist Sarah Jaffe contextualizes the recent upsurge in strike action by labour unions — always weaker than their British and European counterparts, yet showing stirring signs of new possibilities — including the Chicago teachers’ strike and the UAW strike at General Motors.
In the realm of the economy itself, a panoply of new forms and directions are exploding into view. The Democracy Collaborative’s Marjorie Kelly adapts the argument of her new book, with Ted Howard, The Making of a Democratic Economy, to give a sense of the breadth and depth of this hopeful new activity on the ground in communities, arguing that it heralds the long-overdue arrival of the principles of political democracy into the economic realm.
These new economic approaches are already displaying a versatility and applicability to even the most challenging of U.S. contexts — including the extreme poverty and disinvestment of Native American Reservations, where the life expectancy for an adult male is a horrifying 48 years, the lowest in the Western Hemisphere outside of Haiti. Building from the historical lived realities of Native American communities themselves and her personal experience, Stephanie Gutierrez of Hope Nation Consulting speaks to how these new approaches must be rooted in indigenous culture, values, and practice and actually led by the community if they are to be truly transformative and lasting. Nothing about us without us!
Meanwhile, the parallel emergence of a radical new political economy in the United Kingdom and United States may be seen in the Inclusive Ownership Funds, an idea excavated from the history of Swedish social democracy, renovated anew as part of Corbynomics, and imported into the U.S. policy debate via the Sanders platform in the U.S. presidential primaries. Policy thinker Peter Gowan charts the course of this exciting transatlantic exchange as an early sign of what might be possible — and has already been occurring with the Green New Deal. Finally, with public ownership returning to the policy and political agenda around the world, it is finding new purchase even in the United States as activists and policy wonks explore the need and opportunity for a public option in the manufacture of pharmaceuticals, as the Next System Project’s Dana Brown highlights, and has been introduced into legislation via a bill from Senator Elizabeth Warren and Representative Jan Schakowsky.
All in all, as in the United Kingdom, it is the most exciting time politically on the left in the United States for more than a generation. Great challenges remain in the era of Trump and of Boris Johnson. The left remains beset with strategic and political weaknesses and faces a number of significant political dangers that could extinguish a good deal of the recent progress. And yet, for the first time in a good while it seems as if those seeking to bring about fundamental transformative political-economic change really have something to work with. The prospect of major historical change is once again heaving into view. The course of future development remains highly contingent and unknown, but in a comparatively short space of time the left has moved from a position of utter marginality to one of serious contention for mainstream political and social power. There is a world to win or lose, if only we are able to seize the time.
Joe Guinan is Vice President of Theory, Research, and Policy at The Democracy Collaborative. Based in Washington, D.C., he is co-author of the recent books People Get Ready! Preparing for a Corbyn Government and The Case for Community Wealth Building.
Sarah McKinley is Director of European Programs for The Democracy Collaborative and the European Representative for the Next System Project. Based in Brussels, she works to build transatlantic partnerships around new community wealth building models and learning exchanges to advance the democratic economy.
They co-edited this special issue.