Lessons of the European Elections
Greg Godels, June 24, 2024
The recent European Parliament elections shocked the mainstream European
parties.
...
Can one imagine Le Pen or even Macron winning the votes of France’s
workers from the post-war Communist Party of Thorez, Duclos, and Rochet,
the party esteemed for its role against fascism, and the party promising
socialism?
Can one imagine Berlusconi, Lega, the Five Star Movement, Brothers of
Italy drawing the Italian working class away from the Communist Party of
Togliatti, the party that led the anti-fascist struggle, the party that
offered Italian workers a dignified struggle against capital?
Can one imagine the AfD flourishing in the GDR, that part of Germany
that today supplies the greatest number of votes to the AfD?
They do so today because the French Communist Party has abandoned its
historic role as the champion of the working class and neither listens
to workers nor puts their interests at the top of its agenda.
The Italian party dissolved itself thirty-five years ago and paved the
way for decades of political farce and faux populism in Italian politics.
And the capitalist pillage of the former socialist German Democratic
Republic planted the seeds of despair that grew into the AfD.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. The untold story of the European
parliamentary election reveals a world of possibility.
The Greek Communist Party (KKE) nearly doubled its percentage of the
vote over the previous European parliamentary election held in 2019. The
results substantially exceeded last year’s parliamentary percentages as
well. Its strength was shown especially in Attika and urban and
working-class areas. KKE shows that defeating right-wing populism is
possible by giving real, bold, and radical answers to the despair of
working people.
In Germany, the left wing of the Die Linke Party-- the working
class-oriented, anti-imperialist wing-- finally broke away and
established a new party openly opposed to the European Union agenda, its
institutionalized capitalism, and its war policies. Led by the
independent-minded Sara Wagenknecht, the new party was quickly organized
five months ago, yet drew 6.2% of the vote in the European parliamentary
elections. The persistently compromising, centrist-orienting Die Linke
was trounced, reduced to 2.7% of the vote. ARD polls show that the new
party drew 400,000 votes from Die Linke, 500,000 votes from the Social
Democrats, and 140,000 votes from the AfD. In some parts of Eastern
Germany, the new party-- yet to create a sustainable name-- drew as much
as 15% of the vote.
Perhaps better than any result, the new party delivered a shocking blow
to the idea that one must stop the populist right by rallying to the
center in defense of a moribund capitalism.
/Excerpted from/
https://zzs-blg.blogspot.com/2024/06/lessons-of-european-elections.html
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group.
View/Reply Online (#30927): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/30927
Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/106900979/21656
-=-=-
POSTING RULES & NOTES
#1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
#2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived.
#3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern.
#4 Do not exceed five posts a day.
-=-=-
Group Owner: [email protected]
Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/8674936/21656/1316126222/xyzzy
[[email protected]]
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
