How to get rid of autocrats. By Claus Leggewie
Progressive parties
must bundle ecology, anti-authoritarianism and multiculturalism into a
political project ‘beyond right and left’, argues Claus Leggewie. Resistance
now means social and ecological campaigning against the dominant powers and
ideas of industrial modernity. The right is called upon to take part in this
new politics of concordance.
Contrary to the
exultant predictions of the early 1990s, the form of rule of our times is not
democracy. Of the 195 states in the world, the majority are still democracies.
But today, the tone is being set by plainly authoritarian regimes and
autocracies. For years, the broadly defined ‘Centre Left’ has watched
helplessly as its influence and opportunities have depleted, to be replaced by
scorn, hate and persecution. The forces of democracy, often caught in
irreconcilable competition between liberals and leftwingers, need to go on the
offensive and foreground their unity against the New Right.
Although autocrats
and authoritarian movements enjoy considerable support in the population, they
don’t possess a real or stable majority. Their power often results from the
defects of previous political systems, and in particular from the failure of
the different branches of the opposition to combine their strengths. The ‘ideal autocrat’
might exist, but the ‘ideal opposition’ does not. This is because the
confrontation is not just between autocracy and democracy. Everywhere,
including now in the USA, the ‘democratic camp’ itself is torn between offering
a radical-progressive counter-programme and creating a refuge in the centre for
conservatives worried that the slide into authoritarianism has gone too far.
The dilemma is that while conformism reaps no rewards, there is generally no
broad support for a radical break. Because majorities are easier to obtain with
appeals to ‘bread-and-butter’ concerns in the hinterlands than by cultivating
ideological-cultural differences and preferences in urban centres, opposition
seems like trying to square the circle.
Activists tend to be found in milieus
that demagogues and ‘tribunes of the plebs’ can polemicise against most easily. Authoritarian mass
mobilisation thrives on the dissemination of such hostility through television,
the tabloid press and social media... read more:
A message and an appeal
Agenda for Social Democracy
