International Socialism Project

The war has not only destroyed Ukraine; it has seriously weakened the European economy, as the costs of production have rocketed with the loss of cheap energy imports from Russia.

On Saturday, September 13, well over 100,000 “Unite the Kingdom” anti-migrant protesters marched in London—vastly outnumbering (and surrounding) the counter-protest, which drew just 15,000. Here we reprint two articles from Counterfire, based in London, analyzing the urgent need for the left to mobilize and organize against the far-right.

Antonis Davanellos, a leading member of the Workers’ Left (DEA) in Greece, analyzes Tsipras’s betrayal and the consequences for the far left.

It is of outmost importance that these social processes from below can generate politics. These social processes should engage people who seek for a political expression and revitalize the political scene by shifting it to a radical left direction. We have past experience of such a process in Greece.

The far right has been pushed back by popular mobilization—now we must implement the program of the New Popular Front!

Starmer’s huge majority in parliament may give the illusion that he is running an all-powerful government, at least for a period. However, the election results reveal that the social basis for such a government is weak.

Strengthen the united and militant left, prevent the far right from coming to power!

The electoral success behind a banner that aspires to rescue a democracy kidnapped by the elites cannot be understood without assessing the democratic deficit of the societies in which it arises.

The far right is making serious gains across Europe. This is a threat that should not be taken lightly.

That the right-wing won the recent Dutch elections was no surprise. What was surprising was how decisive the share of the far-right was in the overall right-wing victory. For Geert Wilders, the leader of the far-right Freedom Party (PVV), years of patience paid off while the incumbent right-wing party gambled and lost.

In the party elections for the succession of Alexis Tsipras as party leader, Stefanos Kaselakis prevailed, winning 56 percent. He is a new “star” who hasn’t even been a party member and who neither has nor claims any connection to the organized political Left whatsoever, either with its history or with its prospects.

The June 25 elections in Greece confirmed, but also reinforced, the harsh negative features of the results of the “first round” of the May 21 election. In the new parliament, the sum of the right and the far-right parties reached 200 seats (out of a total of 300), thus creating a correlation of parliamentary forces that is unprecedented in the years following the overthrow of the military dictatorship in 1974.

The actual class balance of forces, the political balance of forces and the electoral balance of forces are different quantities and qualities to measure. They are interrelated and they influence each other, but they are not identical.

The social pillar that supported this political achievement of the Right was the mobilization of the ruling class and the affluent upper-middle classes, with their potential to pull along with them a certain broader audience.