Category: Spain

05 Oct

11 Comments

What’s left after the Greek debacle? (Part 3 of an obituary)

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Following on from Part 1 and Part 2 of my analysis — which were first published in abridged form as a single article at Jacobin Magazine — I bring the Greek tragedy up to date with why the Syriza breakaway Popular Unity failed its first electoral test, as well as delving deeper into the dead-end of trying […]

12 Mar

Comments Off on Tariq Ali & Luke Stobart: Podemos, crisis & movements

Tariq Ali & Luke Stobart: Podemos, crisis & movements

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Within a year of its creation, Podemos became the main opposition party in Spain. Analyses of its rapid rise have centred on its unorthodox and ambitious political approach and the different forms of participatory democracy practised (however imperfectly). Less has been said about the relation between the Podemos phenomenon and the Spanish context of major […]

02 Jan

2 Comments

Understanding Podemos (3/3): ‘Commonsense’ policy

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This is the third part of Left Flank’s series exploring the rise of Podemos. [i] The first part looked at how the new organisations drew on the inspiration and power of the 15-M (“Indignados”) movement. The second part critically examined the Podemos leadership’s deployment of radical populist strategy. In the third part Luke Stobart examines […]

08 Dec

2 Comments

‘Abolishing the present state of things’

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Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence. —Marx & Engels (1845), The German […]

14 Nov

14 Comments

Understanding Podemos (2/3): Radical populism

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The first part of Left Flank’s series exploring the rise of Podemos looked at the positive incorporation in the project of the “Indignados” (15-M) movement’s participatory democracy and radical opposition towards “politics”. Here Luke Stobart looks more critically at the “radical populism” that has shaped the approach of its dominant grouping (and now formal leadership) […]

06 Nov

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Left Flank at Historical Materialism in London

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Historical Materialism’s 11th annual conference — How Capitalism Survives — begins tomorrow at SOAS, Vernon Square, in London. Four writers and contributors to Left Flank are speaking. On Friday morning at 9.45am, Elizabeth Humphrys, Tad Tietze and Luke Stobart are speaking in a session on ‘Anti-politics, social movements & the practical critique of the state’ (Room V121) — along […]

05 Nov

14 Comments

Understanding Podemos (1/3): 15-M & counter-politics

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What Podemos’s present success reveals is the breakdown, the crisis or the collapse (choose the term you prefer) of the Spanish party system. Because in reality the Transition regime is sinking like the Titanic and Podemos is merely the iceberg that caused this. So as soon as the cock crowed on 25-M, all the captains […]

11 Jun

9 Comments

Post-Budget: Just what the hell is Abbott up to?

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In today’s Sydney Morning Herald, Economics Editor Ross Gittins portrays Tony Abbott as a political “chameleon” who went from being a soft “populist” before the election — backing Labor’s spending commitments, promising minimal cuts despite saying that the Budget deficit needed to be reversed, etc. — to “an inflexible ‘conviction politician’ who doesn’t seem much worried […]

28 May

Comments Off on Podemos, anti-politics & the Spanish Left

Podemos, anti-politics & the Spanish Left

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Before delivering the third part of his series on “Whatever happened to the Indignados?” (See parts one and two), LUKE STOBART has analysed the amazing breakthrough result for Podemos, the new political party that emerged from the 15-M movement, for the UK edition of The Guardian. Just four months after its formation it has won […]

24 Mar

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Whatever happened to the Indignados? 2: Regime crisis

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After the weekend’s million and a half strong “March for dignity” in Madrid, once again showing that the wave of radicalisation that has swept Spain since the 15-M protests of 2011 is far from over, LUKE STOBART returns to Left Flank with the second instalment of a special three-part analysis of the Indignados movement and […]