“The New Left is the birthplace of the diverse historical currents of the Greek and international left. Given, and with this bequest, the Eurogroup in which we intend to participate after the upcoming European elections is reasonably that of the European Left“, says Alexis Haritsis, in his article in “AnatropiNews”.

The president of the KO of the New Left notes that “of course, this in itself can never replace the real content of progressive politics that is not connected to “labels” but to the constant concern for drawing an alternative perspective for society, the environment and their needs”.

In his said article entitled “For the transformations of international social democracy”, Mr. Haritsis looks back on the course of social democratic parties through the cases of Germany (Gerhard Schroeder, “Agenda 2010”) and Great Britain (Workers, “Third Way“) and reaches today’s picture in Germany, Spain, Great Britain and France, emphasizing that “in today’s situation, the European photography of the moment gives a complex picture”.

In retrospect, he points out that “this period of euphoria of the social democratic parties quickly ended, as these policies in different European countries exacerbated social and regional inequalities” and that “the existential crisis for this version of right-wing social democracy came with the financial crisis of 2008”. He underlines that in Greece “PASOK was identified with the management of fiscal adjustment programs and thus lost its role as a key pillar of the progressive faction, giving political science the term “Pasokification” as a concept that expresses precisely the electoral collapse of the social democratic parties under the weight of the inability to represent the economically vulnerable, the new and the old outsiders”.

Mr. Haritsis argues, among other things, that one could agree with the opinion that “the adoption of right-wing policies by the social democratic parties contributed catalytically to their political marginalization”. He adds that “however, beyond the placement on the right-left axis or the ideological heritage of the center-left parties, it is more important today whether a progressive political body has the ability to process today’s challenges by producing specific policies for the time us. One can see, for example, the attitude towards the state and its involvement in the economy as a purely ideological issue.’ He states that “today, however, given the uncharted challenges of climate change, the necessity to strengthen what we in the New Left call the “developmental state” arises from the dire need to design an economy with zero carbon dioxide emissions with the participation of all productive forces in it without exclusions”. “Relying on the invisible hand of the market, even the green one, will give too little too late given the urgency and necessity of immediate and radical solutions,” comments the president of the KO of the New Left.

Finally, Mr. Haritsis notes that “the New Left is the birthplace of the diverse historical currents of the Greek and international left” and that “given these, and with this legacy, the Eurogroup in which we intend to participate after the upcoming European elections is reasonable that of the European Left…”.