SOUNDINGSPub Date : 2024-05-01DOI: 10.3898/soun.86.03.2024
Andrea Donofrio
{"title":"Eurocommunism: The rise and fall of a hopeful project","authors":"Andrea Donofrio","doi":"10.3898/soun.86.03.2024","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3898/soun.86.03.2024","url":null,"abstract":"Eurocommunism at first seemed to offer a strategy for renewal, but by the mid-1980s its momentum had dissipated. Recent renewed interest in Eurocommunism is part of a wider reflection on the crisis of communism in all its variants since the last part of the twentieth century. Its\u0000 aim ‐ to forge a new strategy of democratic and peaceful conquest of political power, in keeping with the complexities of contemporary Western European societies ‐ at first seemed full of promise, but by the mid-1980s its momentum had dissipated. In spite of its aim of renewal,\u0000 it was followed by the crisis and decline of the main communist parties with which it was associated, the Italian Communist Party (PCI), the French Communist Party (PCF) and the Spanish Communist Party (PCE). The actions, decisions and strategies adopted by these parties can only be understood\u0000 if they are framed within the historical and geographical context of the 1970s ‐ a period of general crisis in both the capitalist and communist worlds, which ultimately consolidated a historical break between two different eras. The article discusses some of the key characteristics\u0000 of the project, and the hopes and disappointments it provoked, drawing widely on the published literature. It concludes with a brief engagement with some of the reflections and assessments that have been made on the subject. B roadly speaking, in the end Eurocommunism failed to find a way\u0000 of combining a reformist strategy with a revolutionary identity. It abandoned core aspects of its former strategy without finding a convincing replacement.","PeriodicalId":45378,"journal":{"name":"SOUNDINGS","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2024-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141039743","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
SOUNDINGSPub Date : 2024-05-01DOI: 10.3898/soun.86.05.2024
Sally Davison
{"title":"Reflections on Eurocommunism in the UK","authors":"Sally Davison","doi":"10.3898/soun.86.05.2024","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3898/soun.86.05.2024","url":null,"abstract":"Eurocommunism could not save the CPGB, but the concept of the broad democratic alliance still has importance The attraction of communism in the 1970s was its strong commitment to challenging the whole system rather than finding ways to manage capitalism. This was a decade in which\u0000 there was a real struggle to hold on to, and even develop further, the achievements of the postwar settlement. At that point we sometimes thought we were winning, and joining an anti-capitalist party was a way of expressing this optimism. By the mid-1970s, Eurocommunism was making communism\u0000 much more attractive to people of my generation. Eurocommunist parties were breaking away from their subordination to the Soviet party, and starting to base their strategies on the political realities of Western Europe; their belief in democracy had finally won out over their ingrained loyalty\u0000 to the Soviet state. In the UK discussions were beginning on a new version of The British Road to Socialism (BRS), which, after many battles, adopted the notion of a broad democratic alliance for change. There was also the beginnings of an expanded sense of what constituted politics, one of\u0000 many important ideas that had come from Gramsci. However, the embrace of Eurocommunism did not turn out to be the salvation of the CPGB, which voted to close itself down in 1991. The most important factor leading to its dissolution was the changing nature of the working class and the decline\u0000 of the organised labour movement within the UK ‐ itself a symptom of the wider, victorious, neoliberal counter-offensive. The other European communist parties, Eurocommunist or not, are now for the most part in decline. But some of the ideas that Eurocommunists in the UK were trying\u0000 to develop remain of relevance. These include its early attempts to recognise new political subjects within the public realm, and the importance of forming alliances across difference. Rock Against Racism, the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp, the GLC under Ken Livingstone’s\u0000 leadership, and the creative ways in which community support for the NUM was mobilised in 1984-5, are examples of the kinds of politics we supported.","PeriodicalId":45378,"journal":{"name":"SOUNDINGS","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2024-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141049482","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
SOUNDINGSPub Date : 2024-05-01DOI: 10.3898/soun.86.rev01.2024
Angela McRobbie
{"title":"Emergency thinking","authors":"Angela McRobbie","doi":"10.3898/soun.86.rev01.2024","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3898/soun.86.rev01.2024","url":null,"abstract":"Lyndsey Stonebridge, We Can Change the World: Hannah Arendt’s Lessons in Love and Disobedience, Jonathan Cape 2024","PeriodicalId":45378,"journal":{"name":"SOUNDINGS","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2024-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141031732","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
SOUNDINGSPub Date : 2024-05-01DOI: 10.3898/soun.86.04.2024
N. Poulantzas, Stuart Hall, Alan Hunt, Dave Featherstone, Lazaros Karaliotas
{"title":"Interview with Nicos Poulantzas (April 1979)","authors":"N. Poulantzas, Stuart Hall, Alan Hunt, Dave Featherstone, Lazaros Karaliotas","doi":"10.3898/soun.86.04.2024","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3898/soun.86.04.2024","url":null,"abstract":"Nicos Poulantzas talks to Stuart Hall and Alan Hunt New introduction by Dave Featherstone and Lazaros Karaliotas Nicos Poulantzas was one of the most influential figures in the renewal in European Marxism in the 1970s, and this interview shows some of the ways in which left\u0000 political discourse in Europe in the 1970s was shaped by widely shared trajectories and contexts. Poulantzas was a member of the Greek Communist Party of the Interior, which, like other parties moving towards a Eurocommunist position, had sought to articulate an alternative political strategy,\u0000 a different democratic imaginary, and a different road to power. Poulantzas makes a crucial distinction between right and left variants of Eurocommunism. The discussion of Poulantzas’s ideas on ‘authoritarian statism’ situate the interview within wider discussions and debates\u0000 during the 1970s about how to theorise and make sense of the relations between authoritarianism and the state; it is also part of a broader engagement with Poulantzas’s work that was central to Stuart Hall’s articulation of the concept of ‘authoritarian populism’, which\u0000 he used to signi ficant effect in his critical analysis of Thatcherism. In the concluding discussion Poulantzas is clearly straining against some of the limits of left organising ‐ in relation to discussions of feminism, the ‘ecological movement’ and other social movements.\u0000 But he also is clear that there will be no return to the certainties of a Leninist party model: ‘these are the problems which we must tackle; they will not go away, nor can we simply retreat to the old orthodoxy’. This effort to re-imagine the role of the centralising party while\u0000 also embracing a plurality of ‘autonomous social movements’ was an important unifying concern within some variants of Eurocommunism.","PeriodicalId":45378,"journal":{"name":"SOUNDINGS","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2024-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141040332","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
SOUNDINGSPub Date : 2024-05-01DOI: 10.3898/soun.86.07.2024
Mike Makin-Waite
{"title":"‘Something about Burnley’: Political dynamics in Labour’s ‘most winnable’ target seat","authors":"Mike Makin-Waite","doi":"10.3898/soun.86.07.2024","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3898/soun.86.07.2024","url":null,"abstract":"Do reactions to the onslaught on Gaza in a northern English town signal any wider political realignment in ‘red wall’ constituencies? George Galloway’s success in the February 2023 Rochdale by-election generated scores of op-ed articles. Ali Milani of the Labour\u0000 Muslim Network identified it as ‘evidence of a serious problem Labour has with the trust and support of the Muslim community, who Labour has enjoyed the support of for decades’. This article focuses on another northern English town where half the Labour councillors responded to\u0000 Starmer’s opposition to a ceasefire in Gaza by resigning from the party. In a granular case-study analysis of relationships and realignments in local politics, it identifies the wider patterns and problems behind the current headlines. Alongside long-term trends of de-alignment between\u0000 Labour and constituencies which have previously supported it, a managerialist and controlling culture has narrowed discussion and shallowed debate, reducing the party???s ability to engage the energies and represent the views and interests of many people who nevertheless still see themselves\u0000 as holding to ‘Labour values’.","PeriodicalId":45378,"journal":{"name":"SOUNDINGS","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2024-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141046143","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
SOUNDINGSPub Date : 2024-05-01DOI: 10.3898/soun.86.editorial.2024
Marina Prentoulis
{"title":"Eurocommunism: when the past and present of the European left meet","authors":"Marina Prentoulis","doi":"10.3898/soun.86.editorial.2024","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3898/soun.86.editorial.2024","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45378,"journal":{"name":"SOUNDINGS","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2024-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141023518","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
SOUNDINGSPub Date : 2024-05-01DOI: 10.3898/soun.86.06.2024
Rivka Saltiel, Matthias Naumann, Anke Strüver
{"title":"Urban communist politics of the everyday in Graz, Austria","authors":"Rivka Saltiel, Matthias Naumann, Anke Strüver","doi":"10.3898/soun.86.06.2024","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3898/soun.86.06.2024","url":null,"abstract":"The everyday communist politics of local politicians in Graz offers a potential way forward for the left more broadly In September 2021, the Communist Party of Austria (KPÖ) won the municipal elections in Austria’s second-largest city, Graz, and Elke Kahr became the city’s\u0000 mayor. Kahr has governed in a coalition with the Green Party and the Social Democrats, replacing the former conservative and far-right coalition that had lasted for eighteen years. A different kind of local politics has since then proved possible, even in conservative Austria. Graz local communists\u0000 practise a politics that is sensitive to class injustice and engaged in the local community. Its slogan for the last thirty years has been ‘A party for everyday life’. The party’s success is based on its focus on everyday concerns such as housing, tenants’ rights, public\u0000 health, education and mobility issues, as well as its battles against austerity and neoliberal privatisation. Its community-oriented approach, strongly committed to social infrastructure at the scale of people’s everyday experiences is explicitly critical of top-down state solutions\u0000 ‐ and thus stands in stark contrast both to the previous neoliberal and profit-oriented policies in Graz, and to the centralist ways of governing of the socialist states. KPÖ politicians voluntarily cap their salaries at the level of the average worker, with the surplus going into\u0000 a social fund for emergency help for those on low incomes. This has been criticised by some as a charity commitment rather structural change, but it can also be read as an attempt at lived solidarity. Drawing from local media coverage as well as interviews with politicians and local residents,\u0000 the article discusses the everyday politics of Graz communists through the lens of relational care ethics, and discusses the potential international movements that could be built on this approach to communist municipal politics. The focus is on alternative social norms in urban cultures of\u0000 care: solidarity among all members of society, and a recognition of people’s everyday practices and needs.","PeriodicalId":45378,"journal":{"name":"SOUNDINGS","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2024-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141037743","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
SOUNDINGSPub Date : 2024-05-01DOI: 10.3898/soun.86.02.2024
Ó. G. Agustín, Gaspar Llamazares
{"title":"Eurocommunism’s contribution to the idea of ???democracy without qualifying adjectives???","authors":"Ó. G. Agustín, Gaspar Llamazares","doi":"10.3898/soun.86.02.2024","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3898/soun.86.02.2024","url":null,"abstract":"Óscar García Agustín talks to Gaspar Llamazares Gaspar Llamazares joined the Communist Party of Asturias in 1981. Between 2000 and 2008 he was the national coordinator of Izquierda Unida (United Left). In response to the rise of the 15M movement, he and others\u0000 founded Izquierda Abierta (Open Left), with the aim of building a larger progressive coalition. The party remained within Izquierda Unida, but aimed to counteract the weight of the Communist Party within the coalition. In 2017 he co-founded the political platform Act??a (Do it) to give voice\u0000 to those who did not feel represented by PSOE and Podemos. In 2019, he left Izquierda Unida. In 2023 he was elected as a member of the Oviedo council, representing the electoral coalition Convocatoria por Oviedo, and nowadays he is spokesperson for the coalition. He has written extensively\u0000 about the left and is a defender of the legacy of Eurocommunism, understood as the defence of socialism and pluralism within the political and parliamentary system established during the Spanish Transition, and as the formation of a large progressive coalition to gradually change the capitalist\u0000 system.","PeriodicalId":45378,"journal":{"name":"SOUNDINGS","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2024-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141054014","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
SOUNDINGSPub Date : 2024-05-01DOI: 10.3898/soun.86.08.2024
Kirsten Forkert, Kevin Blowe
{"title":"Law and order: what can we expect from an incoming Labour government?","authors":"Kirsten Forkert, Kevin Blowe","doi":"10.3898/soun.86.08.2024","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3898/soun.86.08.2024","url":null,"abstract":"Kirsten Forkert talks to Kevin Blowe, campaigns coordinator of Netpol A Starmer-led government is unlikely to deviate from the mainstream-constructed consensus on policing Netpol - the Network for Police Monitoring ‐ is a coalition of organisations that liaise together\u0000 on monitoring police activities. Cases it has been involved in include those of Ian Tomlinson and Jean Charles de Menezes. As DPP, Keir Starmer confirmed CPS decisions not to prosecute the police officers concerned in these deaths. Such actions, together with other positions he has adopted,\u0000 tell us that Starmer doesn’t understand the massive imbalance in power between the individual and the state: when he was in a position to adjudicate on where that balance lies, he always came down on the side of the state. He has little understanding of social movements, seeing change\u0000 as happening within committee meetings ‐ as involving discussions amongst people with real power. Labour’s criticisms of the Police, Crime, Sentencing, and Courts Act, and the Public Order Act have also been tepid. All this means that a Starmer-led government is unlikely to deviate\u0000 from the mainstream-constructed consensus on policing. It is likely to continue to give the police whatever they say they need to deal with a given situation. There may be noises made about the importance of human rights, and, possibly, there will be fewer attacks on judges when there are\u0000 legal challenges, and less resort to culture-war rhetoric; and at least Labour won’t abolish the Human Rights Act, which means that there will still be a basis for challenging actions that contravene it. But an incoming Labour government is unlikely to provide a greater degree of protection\u0000 to people who are vulnerable to overreaching state power. Dealing with policing in communities over many years has not been about asking grand questions about what happens during elections: it has been about finding processes for survival ‐ helping people to develop a sense of power,\u0000 the confidence to complain and to organise, to push back against local councillors who are not prepared to challenge the police commander in their area. This often stops people in particular areas from experiencing the same level of oppressive policing as they would without local opposition.\u0000 This is why local Copwatch groups are so important. After the election, regardless of who wins, there is still going to be an absolutely essential role for people who do this grassroots work: that???s where you are going to be able to make a difference.","PeriodicalId":45378,"journal":{"name":"SOUNDINGS","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2024-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141035940","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
SOUNDINGSPub Date : 2024-05-01DOI: 10.3898/soun.86.rev02.2024
Alena Ivanova
{"title":"How pharma co-opts the dream of scientific progress","authors":"Alena Ivanova","doi":"10.3898/soun.86.rev02.2024","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3898/soun.86.rev02.2024","url":null,"abstract":"Nick Dearden, Pharmanomics: How Big Pharma Destroys Global Health, Verso 2023","PeriodicalId":45378,"journal":{"name":"SOUNDINGS","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2024-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141057748","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}