A Decade on the Left
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- Published on Tuesday, 21 April 2020 00:02
- Written by editor
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A Socialist Project e-bulletin ... No. 2066 ... April 21, 2020
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A Decade on the Left
The 2010s were the end of ‘the end of history.’ Beginning in the shadow of the largest financial crash since the Great Depression, it was a decade in which the injustice of austerity tore away at the social fabric and consigned third-way politics to the rearview mirror.
In Britain, the decade began with the iconic student protest movement, the rise of UK Uncut and the TUC’s "March for the Alternative." Soon, these protests against the political and economic order reached global significance with the rise of Occupy Wall Street in New York alongside the movements of the squares in Spain and Greece.
Before long, those countries would be at the forefront of attempts to elect left-wing governments in opposition to the European Union’s austerity measures, attempts which themselves prefigured the rise of Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders.
It has been a tumultuous period for the Left, one in which it suffered seismic defeats but also gained audiences far in excess of any it had seen since the early... 1990s. To assess its ramifications Tribune sat down with Leo Panitch, co-editor of the Socialist Register.