The Left between crises: Antinomy of powerlessness and power
The Left between crises: Antinomy of powerlessness and power

Author(s): Alpar Lošonc, Kosta Josifidis
Subject(s): Politics, Politics and society, Sociology of Politics, Politics and Identity
Published by: Институт друштвених наука
Keywords: capitalism; crisis; Left; structural determinations; temporality of crisis
Summary/Abstract: The starting point of this paper is the notion that crisis can offer a comprehensive perspective for the antinomian situation of the portion of the Left that is attempting to transform capitalism “from within”. Using political-economical terms, we describe how the leftist proviso is determined by the constitutive tension between its capacities for transformation and the fact that it is embedded in the structural fields of capitalism. On the one hand there are trajectories of crisis that disarm its capacities, i.e. pose a threat to the Left, while, on the other, the crisis can be seen as an entry point for riots, protests and resistances that call for leftist “translation” and articulation. This work consists of three parts: In the first, conceptual part, we criticize the standard discourse of neutrality concerning political polarization, and present the crisis as a multidimensional process that inevitably involves the crisis of the Left. In the second part, select dimensions of the 2007 crisis are dealt with, and the gap between the organic and revolutionary crises is presented. The third part analyses the contemporary aspects of a crisis when viewed as a process that is merely a continuation of a previous one, changing the temporality of the horizon of the crisis, and opening up new (contradictory) possibilities for the self-reflection and self-transcending of a Left whose future remains uncertain.

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