Protest Movements and Parties of the Left: Affirming Disruption

248 Pages·2017·0.86 MB·English

by  David J. Bailey

Protest Movements and
Parties of the Left

Protest Movements and
Parties of the Left
Affirming Disruption
David J. Bailey
London• NewYork
Published by Rowman & Littlefield International Ltd
Unit A, Whitacre Mews, 26–34 Stannary Street, London SE11 4AB
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With additional offices in Boulder, New York, Toronto (Canada), and Plymouth (UK)
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Copyright © 2017 by David J. Bailey
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any
electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems,
without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote
passages in a review.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: HB 978-1-7834-8675-5
PB 978-1-7834-8676-2
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Is Available
ISBN 978-1-78348-675-5 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-1-78348-676-2 (paperback : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-1-78348-677-9 (electronic)
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
American National Standard for Information Sciences – Permanence of Paper
for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48–1992.
Printed in the United States of America
Contents
Acknowledgements ix
Introduction: From radical dilemmas to affirming disruption 1
What is the left? 2
How to study the left? Between marginality and co-optation 4
Beyond marginality versus co-optation: Creativity,
mapping, disruption 7
Mapping 8
Creativity 9
Disruption 10
Plan of the book 11
PART 1: LABOUR MOVEMENT STRUGGLES 17
1 The Russian Revolution and ‘all power to the Bolsheviks’ 19
1905 20
From the 1905 Revolution to the 1917 Revolution 25
The Civil War and War Communism 37
NEP and the demise of the revolution 38
2 Anarchists and the Spanish Civil War: ‘Fighting against all
sides at once’ 41
The historical context of the Spanish Civil War 44
The Spanish Revolution 46
Conclusion 58
v
vi Contents
3 The parliamentary route to socialism: Reformism,
revisionism and the ‘third way’ 59
Pre-1945: Contested reformism 61
‘Traditional social democracy’: Channelling working-class
disruption 65
Towards a ‘new’ or ‘third way’ social democracy: Dampening
disruption? 72
PART 2: BEYOND CLASS: PLURALIZING SOCIAL
STRUGGLE? 79
4 Civil rights movement: Disrupting racism in the ‘free world’ 81
Early campaigns 84
Direct action: The sit-in movement and Freedom Rides 87
The faltering response of the liberal political elite 90
From liberal legislation to the post-1965 rise of Black Power? 9 3
Conclusion 99
5 1968: The emergence of a ‘New Left’ 101
The New Left 102
Cultural critique 103
Intellectual movements 103
Protest movements 106
1968 110
Conclusion 115
6 We’re starting our own movement: Feminist challenges
to left patriarchy 117
First wave 118
Second wave 129
Third wave 133
Conclusion 136
7 Different struggle, same dilemmas? Environmentalism, the
Fundis-Realos divide and the move towards Green expertise 139
Modern environmentalism: From new left to new experts? 1 39
A cyclical process? 148
Conclusion 150
PART 3: CONTEMPORARY STRUGGLES 153
8 Contention when ‘there is no alternative’:
Anti/alter-globalization 155
Zapatistas and the birth of the anti-globalization movement 1 56
Contents vii
The Battle of Seattle and Beyond 161
Conclusion 168
9 Contemporary protest movements: Anti-austerity and
pragmatic prefiguration 171
Global economic crisis, global political protest 172
Arab Spring 175
Indignados 176
Occupy 179
From public squares to solidarity economies? 181
Disruptive prefigurative protest as the ‘new normal’? 183
10 Contemporary left parties: The turn of a new populist left? 189
The rise of a populist left in Latin America? 189
Venezuela 191
Bolivia 193
Argentina 194
The decline and demise of social democracy, and the
rise of a populist left in Europe? 198
The death of social democracy: Fending off Pasokification? 1 98
The rise of the populist left alternative in Europe? 206
Syriza 206
Spain: Podemos, Ada Colau and the citizens’ coalitions 208
Conclusion 210
Conclusions 211
References 215
Index 233
About the Author 237

Acknowledgements
This book emerges in large part from a module that I have run for the past
eight years in the Department of Political Science and International Studies
at the University of Birmingham. I am grateful to all of the students who
have participated in the module and who have helped me throughout that
time to learn, think about and sometimes apply the lessons of the different
types of organising, and disrupting, that are discussed in this text. That has
been a real privilege and something for which I am grateful. Materials asso-
ciated with that module, and therefore also with this book, can be found at
its associated blog: www.leftpartiesprotestmovements.wordpress.com. Saori
Shibata has helped me, as always, in developing the structure, focus, ideas
and arguments that are contained within the book. Hopefully it will help stu-
dents to think about ways in which we might continue to disrupt patriarchy,
racism, exploitation and other aspects of global capitalism. Itsuki and Masaki
wanted the book to be dedicated to them; which I’ll do on the condition that
they read it (jk lol). One day my sister, Emma, had her liver abruptly fail –
that was disruptive! – but the strength she showed was beyond what anyone
could expect, showing a really quite extraordinary capacity for struggle, as
did my mother, Jean, not least in her ability to cope with the shock! So
I dedicate the book to them too. Lastly, I acknowledge and am grateful for
all of the discussions that I have had with friends and colleagues, on the
issues and questions that are covered in this book, including Stephen Bates,
André Broome, Ian Bruff, Luis Cabrera, Monica Clua-Losada, Elio Di Muc-
cio, Christopher Finlay, Adam Fishwick, Cristina Flesher Fominaya, Niko-
lai Huke, Nicholas Kiersey, Paul Lewis, Darcy Luke, Phoebe Moore, Sara
Motta, Sanaz Raji, Kelly Rogers, Magnus Ryner, Amin Samman, Marilena
Simiti, Daniela Tepe-Belfrage, David White, Russ Whitfield, Angela Wig-
ger and Owen Worth.
ix