In an interview on the anniversary of the protests against the meeting of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank in Prague in 2000, Ondřej Slačálek noted that one of the fundamental problems of the then attempts to create a new left-wing alternative to neoliberalism in our country was the position of the Czech Republic in a globalizing world. It clearly belonged neither to the rich global North nor to the poor global South. It was not entirely clear what story the protesters should address to the Czech public. None of the dominant left-wing stories seem to fit the Czech reality.
We are representatives of a generation about a decade younger. But we know this feeling of not belonging well. The difficult fate of previous radical movements contributed to the fact that, during our political formation after 2010, we largely lacked (all the more credit to the exceptions) an older generation of radicals who would be able to give us a meaningful analysis of where we stand, how we got there and what makes sense to do in our specifically Czech situation. Above all, however, political organizations and institutions were lacking that would be able to involve, maintain and purposefully develop us as a new generation of activists.
The result for us was that we had to find our own way largely on our own and quite painfully: by trial and error. Theory and practice have always been closely related to each other for us. The advantage of this otherwise somewhat demanding journey was the habit of being critical not only of the experiences and conclusions of others, but also of my own. After five years of joint political practice and its theoretical reflection, in this spirit we would like to convey at least part of our conclusions to others for assessment.
Who are we?
A critical analysis of one’s own biographies is appropriate for understanding one’s own position and the opportunities and limits arising from it. We ourselves can serve as representatives of a certain socio-economic environment, generational cohort, and policies based on these conditions. Our first political experiences were in opposition to Nečas’s government, led by the ProAlt initiative, the Stop the Government coalition or the student movement For Free Universities. Thus, among other things, our political initiation drew inspiration from the context of a certain global wave of resistance against the politics of austerity and growing inequalities after the global financial crisis, which largely determined the dominant idea of what meaningful political activism is: street protest politics, organized in a horizontalist spirit Occupy Wall Street.
Racial, gender, or ecological injustice is class-based because it is inherent in the world system, based on the hierarchical division of labor, wealth, and power.
It is also typical that we were not only driven to left-wing politics by our own situation and immediate interests (such as opposition to tuition fees at universities), but also by the awareness of wider cracks in the legitimacy of the entire neoliberal system (e.g. growing inequalities and ecological devastation). After 2008, they also radicalized prominent segments of the middle classes, to which we ourselves belong, to the left. This contemporary origin of our politicization largely determined our further direction.
After the anti-government movement disintegrated, some of its leaders close to social democracy headed for official positions in the incoming Sobotka government, while some closer to the anarchist tradition returned to radical activism on the political fringes. Our steps were directed towards activities and initiatives usually classified in the “activism” box.
Movements against the housing crisis (Klinika social center and political squatting) and the climate crisis (Climate camps and coal mining blockades) were essential for us. The political repertoire of our generation and environment alternates between “advocacy” (activities of civic organizations striving for legislative reforms through public education and lobbying) and “mobilization” (actions of more radical collectives and movements that “draw attention to problems” through symbolic confrontations, thus adding a certain power to advocacy strategies but rarely involve more than a narrow group of believers).
As important as the impact of these activities on the politicization of a certain circle of people has been, over time we have come to believe that this circle is very limited. Such actions have rarely been able to gain the active support of a large number of people, and they are even less able to involve it in the process of change in their daily lives. They do not make it possible to aspire to change the balance of power where people live: in workplaces and neighborhoods, let alone in the country as a whole or in the world. By themselves, they cannot create an effective counterbalance to the power of big capital and the elites connected to it.
The contested sources of Western prosperity
The success of the following years in the form of the founding of new political parties and movements will obviously not save the Czech left in itself. Electoral projects are better at representing social power than creating it. In the absence of social power, based on everyday relationships, and in the rootedness of politics in the broad social base, they remain rather “radical clubs” that bring people together around a marginal ideological identity, but are unable to organize and mobilize them around shared interests.
In the meantime, the ambiguous position of Czech society began to divide the local left-wing politics even more strongly than two decades ago. Part of the New Left, which only ten years ago was mocking the neoliberal and anti-communist catch-up with the West, is now pulling the Western card itself. He refers to the progress of the feminist and anti-racist debate, cycle paths in Western European capitals or a stronger welfare state in (some) Western European countries. Without addressing the extent to which the supposed “advancement” of the West is the result of uneven economic development, based, among other things, on the exploitation of cheap labor from workers in the Czech Republic and other countries of southern and eastern Europe.
In practice, this strategy takes the form of efforts to convince liberals, who are close to us, the left-leaning members of the middle classes, in their socio-economic origin and cultural background. Article after article and book after book thus point out the “ blind spots ” of the liberal public, appeal to its reason or conscience and implicitly hope that the correction of public conditions will come from its awakening. But this approach necessarily runs into the limits of material interests. Every true liberal has a “social feeling” and wants an “inclusive” Czech Republic. However, few liberals in a position of wealth or power are willing to not only feel socially, but also to act and promote measures such as progressive taxation or significant expansion of the public sector, which are a necessary condition for a fairer society.
Bitterness as a sad motivation
On the other hand, a part of the post-Soviet socialists decided to reject the liberal tendencies of the new left and link their political destinies with the growing nationalist movement. In their eyes, nationalism takes over the function of popular politics. The idea that populist movements, led by nationalist businessmen such as Okamura or Rajchl, can return lost well-being, dignity and power to Czech workers is at best wishful thinking. To the conservative “socialists ” who are abandoning the broken locomotive of the revolution and hoping to hail a cab of populism instead, as if it were enough to save at least one of the cornerstones of their identity: bitterness towards the liberal elites and the West they represent.
Today we already see that even this position leads to a subordinate position, this time in the project of the nationalist business elite, which overtakes the working people only as long as it is in opposition. As was evident when canceling the super-coarse wages, with which the ODS and ANO and the SPD paid for today’s cuts in the public sector, when it comes to taxes, “entrepreneurs pay themselves” in the end. The workers get a place of real influence in this show around the neck of the chomout in the national colors. And instead of socialism, the left plays the role of a puppet, which it waves at some voters.
This division is further exacerbated by the historical decline of the Czech party left. This is the abyss into which both the ČSSD and the KSČM have plunged, and over which trade unions, environmental organizations and other social movements are also balancing. The lack of own strength and self-confidence is tearing the left apart. She has no choice but to lean to one side or the other, depending on which faction of the elites is currently in power, and sacrifice the clarity of her own story and focus on the growth of her own forces. When the water level is dangerously high, the drowning man is not picky about the straws he grabs. Our own helplessness intensifies the tendency to marry out of desperation, when we hope that at least part of our topics will be taken up by one side or the other. Figuratively speaking: the People’s Party with the Pirates will save the climate and ANO with the SPD will save pensions.
The chasm is all the more difficult because it separates groups of people whose problems call for left-wing solutions, and who therefore at least latently gravitate towards germinal forms of anti-systemic consciousness and action that we could call socialist tendencies. An effective response to the “problems of the young”, be it the climate crisis or the housing crisis, is unthinkable without a massive strengthening of the role of the public sector in the economy and the regulation of markets. Even the problems of cheap labor, the decline of peripheral regions or the rising cost of living cannot be solved without a radical redistribution and strengthening of public services. The basic question of economic and power inequality between the broad working majority and the ever narrower oligarchic elite, which is getting rich at the expense of the rest of society, and the related disruption of societies and ecosystems across the planet, is common to all.
Back to class
The situation calls for an eco-socialist or social-ecological policy , which would seek to change the very foundations of our economic system: from endless economic growth at the expense of people and the planet to a good life within ecological limits . The discussion about whether such left-wing politics should be liberal or conservative is essentially meaningless and misleading from this point of view, because in reality left-wing politics must first of all be able to unite diverse groups of the population around shared interests.
These shared interests and the consciousness based on them, in our opinion, despite all the limitations of this term, it is appropriate to re-name them as class consciousness: as the consciousness inherent in classical socialism, which aspired across cultural differences to represent the broad and diverse working majority of people, to promote its interests against the minority class of owners of large capital, and thus democratize society in the political and economic spheres.
As the Czech sociologist Kateřina Nedbálková points out in her book Quiet Toil , today’s Czech society is deeply class-based, and yet there is almost no talk of class or classes in it. Contradictions and differences that have a class basis are then interpreted differently: mainly as generational, cultural or regional conflicts, between the young and the old, between the cafe and the pub, between the city and the countryside. Despite a shared fate of increasing insecurity, powerlessness and alienation, competing factions of elites can thus divide the working majority through this articulation of social contradictions.
Some topics are incomprehensible and unsolvable outside of their class dimension. The problem of inequality between genders is also a question of the distribution of unpaid reproductive work or care. The problem of the ecological and climate crisis is essentially a question of the distribution of benefits and damages of the economic process. This issue is then meaninglessly interpreted as primarily cultural or post-material.
Returning to class consciousness does not mean abandoning, let alone rejecting, the themes of ecology, global justice, anti-racism, gender equality, or the rights of queer people. It means trying to understand them on the basis of an analysis that sees that the problems of recognition and redistribution are never separate, and thus cannot do without the category of class. If we stop ignoring the reality of class and are ashamed to name it, we will see that even racial, gender or ecological injustice is class conditioned, because it is inherent in the world system, based on the hierarchical division of work, wealth and power.
This is also why we are talking about a new class politics. We want to emphasize the dimension of the distribution of ecological resources and damage, as well as unpaid reproductive work and care, for a meaningful class analysis, as well as a practice based on it, developed instead of different identities rather around shared interests. Paraphrasing the statement of Uruguayan President José Mujica, we can say that while the right, or elites, are united by interests, the left, or the working majority, is divided by culture. To strive for left-wing politics is to strive for the opposite.
Where do we live? From the politics of backwardness to semi-peripheral self-confidence
If we want to understand our position in Czech society and the political possibilities arising from it, it is therefore necessary to understand its class structure, resulting, among other things, from its integration into the world capitalist economy. The analyzes of the Hungarian sociologist and political organizer Agnes Gagyi , who analyzes the situation of our region in the tradition of “world systems research”, can help us in this.
From the point of view of this tradition, we should understand today’s capitalism as a single world system, characterized by hierarchical class relations, organized around the imperative to maximize financial profit and the resulting power. This system developed complexly from the 16th century at the latest in a dynamic characterized by uneven development or social-ecologically unequal exchange. This means that capital accumulates in the so-called centers or cores, while most of the world as a “periphery” is affected by the exploitation of cheap labor and resources, as well as the increasing export of ecological damage.
The common notion that rich parts of the world represent self-developed “developed” areas, and poor parts are “developing” and have yet to catch up with the rich, obscures the fact that inequality, like class inequality, is largely a function of interrelationship: the core is also rich because of the periphery, the periphery poor because of the core, as the statistics of the net flows of natural resources, labor and money attest at the global level. It follows from these that in the last decades alone, approximately thirty times the amount of official “development aid” has flowed from the global South to the North: the South develops the North, not the other way around.
This geographical dimension of social inequality is also manifested within the countries themselves, as evidenced by growing regional inequalities in a number of countries, including the Czech Republic, where residents of Prague and the Ústí Region often seem to live in other countries. Cores and peripheries thus denote economic positions and geographical stratification of class relations rather than specific territories.
The Czech Republic, like other Central and Eastern European countries, is characterized by a position described from a global point of view as semi-peripheral. In other words, it doesn’t quite belong there or there, it’s somewhere in between. It is not an economy dependent on the export of primary raw materials, but it is also not a center for the production of the most profitable final products. On the contrary, it is largely characterized by intermediate positions in production chains, where Czech industry, subsidized by cheap labor and cheap energy from dirty coal-fired power plants, produces semi-finished products for Western corporations. They colonized the Czech economy after the collapse of state socialism and subsequent privatization, topped off with a policy of generous incentives for foreign investment. The result is an economy characterized by a significant degree of foreign ownership and the associated outflow of profits abroad. At the same time, the Czech Republic has developed a unique strong domestic capitalist oligarchy , personified by billionaires, of whom we have the most of the former Eastern Bloc countries except Ukraine and Russia.
One era, many perspectives
The economic position of the Czech Republic and the related internal class composition of Czech society influence its internal politics in the long term . According to Gagya and other authors, the “politics of backwardness” is typical for semi-peripheral countries, when they are portrayed as lagging behind the core countries. The result is repeated attempts to catch up, which, however, in the dynamics of global capitalist growth and competition, almost never end in success. With the exception of the success of some countries (in our time Southeast Asia) that manage to develop industries at the top of value chains and thus move forward in the global order, the hierarchical position of different geographies in the system remains basically the same: everyone is running to stay put . The failures of modernization projects in the semi-peripheries typically lead to political upheavals and regroupings or changes of political regimes, which, however, usually only restore the dependence on the core in a new form and continue to catch up anew.
At the beginning of the 1990s, there was also a broad consensus in our country that we should catch up with the West with its economic prosperity, civil society and democratic institutions. This is currently a matter of dispute. What happened is what happened in other semi-peripheral countries of Central and Eastern Europe: the welfare that was promised to their inhabitants in exchange for a temporary accession to the deregulation of the economy and the loss of social security trickled down to only a relatively narrow layer of people. The result is a significantly fragmented society, the various parts of which do not even share the basic outlines of their life experience - as described, among other things, in the study of the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung and the Masaryk Democratic Academy One Society, Different Worlds . Put simply, while one part of society understands the post-recession era primarily as a time of growth and unprecedented opportunities, the other, on the contrary, as a time of loss of certainties and stagnation or gradual decline.
According to Gagya, it is precisely this pronounced internal inequality and the resulting polarization that are characteristic features of semi-peripheries. The contradictions of global capitalism are typically more pronounced in them within society itself. As the examples from Hungary and Romania show, in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe this development splits society into hostile liberal-democratic and national-conservative camps. Since politics based directly on class interests is absent in the post-communist context, these camps are defined against each other primarily in terms of their relationship to the hegemon – the West.
Against the modernization project of “catch-up”, driven by the new capitalist elites, linked to international capital, as well as the metropolitan part of the middle classes, benefiting from new economic and cultural opportunities, resistance, articulated mainly in nationalist terms, grew. Within its framework, the entrepreneurial counter-elite succeeds in mobilizing and representing also part of the working people’s layers, which are frustrated by the multi-track development and are critical of it. The societies of Central and Eastern Europe are thus splitting into two mutually hostile, but mutually reinforcing ideological positions in political practice, which Gagyi names “democratic anti-populism” and “anti-democratic populism”.
The first mobilizes to defend European values and benefits from their perceived threat. But he offers at best a condescending understanding to critical parts of society, rarely any material improvement in their situation. The latter offers her at least symbolic recognition and self-affirmation as a balm for her pain through nationalist mobilization against Western culture, expressed in Orbán’s winged statement about how “thirty years ago, Hungarians thought that Europe was their future, while today they are convinced that they they are the future of Europe”.
Neither party offers a real alternative and a change in the structures and dynamics that produce this situation. The populists in both Hungary and Poland mobilized large sections of the working and middle classes against the “rule of Brussels” through a nationalist discourse, and in the case of Poland they even introduced some elements of a relatively progressive redistributive policy, although linked to “supporting families” and restricting women’s reproductive rights within a strictly Catholic ideology. In principle, however, in both cases they created a compromise with international capital, in which they share part of the profits and power with national capital, and then jointly benefit from cheap labor prices or lower ecological standards.
This dispute over the relationship with the West subsequently, as we have seen, split the left again. Some of its former representatives linked their destinies with the nationalist business class, although their goal was clearly not liberation, but participation in exploitation. Still others appeal to liberals to “catch up with the West” in redistribution, leaving aside that the West redistributes because it also redistributes from ours.
The result is a deadlocked policy in which both opposing blocs actually conserve the basic parameters of the situation. The way out of this situation, which would have to consist in the renewal of the international alliance of key segments of the middle and lower working classes against global and domestic oligarchy with the aim of democratizing the European Union and the wider world order, remains closed.
what to do From discursive politics to building structural power
So where to look for a way out of this trap? We suggest that, in contrast to ideological discussions, we begin to put more emphasis on experimentation with forms of practice that could bridge the aforementioned contradictions and construct a broad and inclusive shared class identity of working people. That is, of all people dependent on paid and unpaid work for their existence - as opposed to passive income from the ownership of capital, that is, from the work of other people. We see this practice in the gradual renewal and building of institutions of collective power, capable of defending their common interests.
The left’s privilege of belonging to the educated middle class can often prove to be obstacles in this endeavour. Confidence in our own education, access to knowledge and ability to formulate an argument often lead us into the trap of what we call discursive politics. This can manifest itself in different ways: the illusion that we are on the right side of history because we have better and factually based arguments; by trying to address social inequalities by bringing the stories of the poor before the eyes of the power elites with the hope that our evocative stories will awaken their delicacy; by searching for the desired PR key to “shift the discourse”.
Another form of the same is a radical critique of the hypocrisy of right-wing liberalism. Behind the fervent beating of political opponents is hidden the rest of the hope that perhaps the polemic can turn them to our side. Or also the sad truth that passionate polemics with the right-wingers of our class and our education are easier for us than contact with people for whom our knowledge of the dark sides of capitalism is a self-evident lived experience.
We see the way to overcoming this isolation in projects in which we will be able to legitimately see ourselves not as representatives of the working classes against the mainstream (either in terms of persuasion or criticism), but as defenders of our own interests together with people of other socio-economic origins with whom we are we share. This means, among other things, starting from one’s own experiences of insecurity, exploitation and oppression and looking for common ground with people where our experiences meet: in the topics of precarious and undignified working conditions, decaying public services, drying landscapes and overheated cities, increasing prices of basic needs or unaffordable housing. In other words: stop understanding your efforts as a struggle for people and start understanding them as a joint struggle for yourself.
Renaissance of trade unions and cooperatives
We don’t have to look far for examples of such matches worth investing in. Only on the purely defensive level of defending the remnants of public education and health care, we will probably have a lot of them in the coming years. It can be union organizing at workplaces, tenant movements for better housing conditions or various forms of cooperative or solidarity economy, which have the potential to give ordinary people better access to fulfilling their own basic needs. Examples of at least small successes in this respect in our geographical area are visible in the last post-crisis decade in the development of relatively traditional left-wing strategies and institutions: trade unions and cooperatives.
Trade unions are experiencing a certain renaissance and significant rejuvenation in the West as well as in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe. It is they who are, to a certain extent, able to connect the precarized, more educated middle class with the more traditional working class. In countries such as Hungary, Poland and Croatia, the reborn cooperative movement is also developing new strategies for community housing or energy or local economic self-sufficiency in post-industrial regions with the aim of ensuring people easier access to basic needs and a higher degree of economic independence in global markets controlled by large corporations and financial capital.
It is projects based on the direct involvement of people around us in the common process of changing our living conditions for the better here and now that have the potential to create relationships on which the necessary alliance of the declining middle and working classes against the ruling capitalist oligarchy can stand. Building relationships around common interests is also probably the only thing that has at least minimal potential to break through the culturally conditioned trenches of today’s dominant political polarization into conservative and liberal blocs.
Compared to them, it has a key advantage: liberals offer democracy to the people with an emphasis on its formal, institutional side, which, however, has been largely made an empty box by the influence of large transnational capital. As an antidote, the nationalist right offers another illusion of power: waving the national flag and entrusting the vote to a populist leader from the business class, who will then come to an agreement with transnational capital, as in Poland or Hungary.
Institutions like cooperatives or unions at least have the potential to build real, structural power that realistically gives people back at least some control over their daily lives. In a certain sense, such a direction means a return to a certain tradition of left-wing politics as a process of collective self-liberation that cannot be entrusted either to the vanguard of the party’s intellectual vanguard or to charismatic leaders.
How to act? For a happier relationship between idealism and pragmatism
The direction we suggest is not a guaranteed path to success. On the contrary, it can mean an uneasy parting with our idea of what success means. No, we will not catch up with the West and its wages. We lag behind the West not because we have bogged down politicians who cannot copy Western recipes well, but above all because Western prosperity is built on the trap of economic growth at the cost of exploiting (also our) cheap labor and nature. Not to mention that trying to catch up with him is basically misguided.
No, we probably won’t be determining the public discourse or the basic parameters of the organization of society in a fundamental way from left-wing positions in the foreseeable future. Regardless of how much truth we may have, our media and political landscape is shaped by power blocs linked to two different factions of economic elites. There is no simple trick or PR strategy that can simply break this basic structural inequality. Building our own block against them is a practical organizational task that cannot be bypassed by any simple shortcut.
We believe that in this context there is a need to significantly transform our own approach – and the balance between political idealism and pragmatism in our own strategies. Too often our idealism takes the form of lofty visions. But when it comes to putting them into practice, it seems as if we don’t really believe that there could be any power other than the power of the current elites and that we could get a lot of ordinary people on our side. We will then combine the idealism of the vision with the pragmatism of persuading the powerful. We look for arguments that work on those on top instead of listening and talking to those on the bottom.
Focusing your energy on small struggles to change the everyday life of ordinary people can be associated with great disillusionment. Disillusionment with the fact that our expertise and knowledge may be useful and interesting in some ways, but not enough to transform power relations. From the fact that our ability to keep our finger on the pulse of Western debates does not mean being ahead, but simply elsewhere. From the fact that things don’t change when we point them out to someone else, but that we just really have to change them ourselves. That therefore everything will go much slower than we would like, and it will mean a lot of small work. The pragmatism we need is more consistent with the power and economic interests in society and does not ignore the fact that the current situation is not the result of “misunderstanding” or “backwardness”; is the result of the distribution of forces. We need power to move it.
However, this pragmatism also opens the door to idealism of its own kind. This lies in the belief that the power of the elites really has an alternative. In the belief that ordinary people can defend themselves together, take their own lives into their own hands and shift the balance of power in their direction. But this does not mean that people are moved by the power of ideals alone. Building collective power is a craft that must rely on immediate experience and interests. When we begin to try it, it will probably turn out that we will have to leave many of our goals for later and fight with the people for what our strength is for now. The idea that we could ever really achieve these goals, however, takes on much more realistic contours.
However, small work does not have to mean all sweat and tears. It can also provide true joy and togetherness. We can experience for ourselves that we are not just fighting for abstract ideas, but that perhaps we can already change our everyday life for the better. Defending together against the bullying of the boss at the workplace, together with other tenants fighting for the return of the security deposit or volunteering in a cooperative that also fulfills our needs, is not yet a revolution. But it is a powerful experience that can change us and significantly improve our lives. Turning to our own interests and needs can allow us to put aside a paternalistic approach to ordinary people and experience how much more pleasant it is to share common problems with others and search for their solutions than to explain to them what to think.
But is it possible at all? The first swallows are born, showing that it is. Examples from Hungary are inspiring in our region (perhaps surprisingly for some), where despite the rough political situation, promising attempts to restore the strength of trade unions and cooperatives are being developed. Here, for example, we can find experiments with connecting agricultural cooperatives with customers in the ranks of trade union membership in care and social work. A cooperatively organized distribution service with cargo bikes participates in the distribution of vegetables. So far, the rather smaller project is interesting, among other things, in that it attempts to create a somewhat self-sufficient ecosystem that can be expanded and scaled at the same time. What is important is the fact that this is not an alternative lifestyle for the upper middle class, but a convenient way of satisfying one’s own needs available to the majority, which at the same time creates solidarity links between the trade union and cooperative movement.
In the Czech environment, we can mention the slowly growing shared houses - a network of cooperatively owned real estate. So far, it is the laboriously laid foundations of the network and the units of the houses, but it is already becoming clear how important the strategy of meeting basic needs such as housing with the building of infrastructure for the movement and local communities is. At the same time, the only year-old Tenants’ Initiative in the commercial housing sector shows that it is possible to build active member organizations, which combine collective actions to defend the interests of their members with pressure for systemic changes in legislation, even without large funds. Through common interests, the experiences and skills of young students and older tenants who are resisting eviction can blend here.
In the trade union area, we can mention not only the brand new and rapidly growing trade unions in social services ALICE , but also the growing trade unions in ICT , which show that trade unions can be founded even in the powerful sector of IT and technology companies. At the same time, these organizations go beyond the narrowly defined concept of trade unions and, through cooperation with the climate movement, go beyond the workplace. But the recent university strike, for example, is also worth paying attention to, which ultimately managed to bring solidarity between teaching and non-teaching workers to the fore, as well as between the movement and traditional unions.
These and similar projects are characterized by an effort to combine specific material interests with the courage to care about the interests of others and cultivate active solidarity, but also to combine the energy and relationships of specific people with the purposeful building and strengthening of institutions, and specific short-term goals with a bold long-term vision.
All these attempts also mean a rare learning process. They are a practical examination of the power of the current economic and political order, but above all a school of building counter-power and places where we can break out of it or effectively face it and transform it. It is this kind of knowledge, anchored in concrete reality, that our movement ultimately needs like salt, and perhaps more than further analyzes of the status quo and imaginative imaginings of other worlds. It would also allow us to move towards the search for more convincing answers to the questions of strategy and theory of change, even in discussions about a systemic alternative to capitalism, which the issue of non-growth has successfully reopened in our country.
In this conception of politics, we are rather at the beginning. Some projects may seem marginal. But it is about foundations, the laying of which is difficult to do without: a house cannot be built from the roof. It is only on them that we can - and should - think about expanding influence, scaling and combining into a self-confident political project, on which we can then realistically base a successful fight for the preservation and expansion of public services, a fairer level of taxation or redistribution, taming the power of the oligarchy, democratization of the political and economic decision-making and other transformative policies. Only thanks to social power built on such strong foundations will we be able to dispense with marriages out of desperation and convincing elites of the legitimacy of our demands or the maturity of Western policies. Left-wing discourse, let alone hegemony, will not be created by presenting examples from abroad or referring to good practice elsewhere and persuading those currently in power. It will only come about through accumulated experience in movements, struggles and institutions that allow people to experience in their own lives that “another world is possible”.
The authors are members of the Re-set Platform for Social and Ecological Transformation.
Jakub Ort
Josef Patočka
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