The paradox of emancipation: populism, democracy and the soul of the Left
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.11606/issn.2318-9800.v27i1p145-172Keywords:
Capitalism, Domination, Justice, Neo-liberalism, Populism, Radical democracy, Social democracy, SocialismAbstract
Portuguese translation of "The paradox of emancipation: populism, democracy and the soul of the Left", by Ivan Rodrigues
What is the connection between the surge of populism and the deflation of electoral support to traditional left-leaning ideological positions? How can we explain the downfall of the Left in conditions that should be propelling it to power? In its reaction both to the neo-liberal hegemony and to the rise of populism, I claim that the Left is afflicted by what Nietzsche called ‘a democratic prejudice’ – the reflex of reading history as the advent of democracy and its crisis. As a result, the Left now undertakes to recover democracy by resurrecting the growth-and-redistribution policy set that was a trademark of the ‘golden age’ of social democracy in the three post-war decades. This nostalgic gesture, however, is leading the Left into another predicament, which I call the ‘paradox of emancipation’ – while fighting for equality and inclusion as essential conditions for democratic citizenship, the Left is validating the social order within which equality and inclusion are being sought – namely, the social order shaped by the competitive production of profit which is the root cause of our societies’ plight. The analysis concludes with a proposal for building a counterhegemony against neo-liberal capitalism by means of enlarging the Left’s focus beyond its traditional concerns with inequality and exclusion, to address also the injustice of growing social and economic insecurity – a harm whose reach surpasses the working poor. Reformulating an agenda of social justice around issues of economic insecurity that cross the ‘class divide’ would allow the Left to mobilize a broad coalition of social forces for radical and lasting change in the direction of socialist democracy.
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