Dr Albena Azmanova has had her article “The paradox of emancipation: populism, democracy and the soul of the Left,” published in Philosophy & Social Criticism’s special issue on Populism.<\/p>\n
What is the connection between the surge of populism and the deflation of electoral support to traditional left-leaning ideological positions? How can we explain the downfall of the Left in conditions that should be propelling it to power? In its reaction both to the neo-liberal hegemony and to the rise of populism, I claim that the Left is afflicted by what Nietzsche called \u2018a democratic prejudice\u2019 \u2013 the reflex of reading history as the advent of democracy and its crisis. As a result, the Left now undertakes to recover democracy by resurrecting the growth-and-redistribution policy set that was a trademark of the \u2018golden age\u2019 of social democracy in the three post-war decades. This nostalgic gesture, however, is leading the Left into another predicament, which I call the \u2018paradox of emancipation\u2019 \u2013 while fighting for equality and inclusion as essential conditions for democratic citizenship, the Left is validating the social order within which equality and inclusion are being sought \u2013 namely, order shaped by the competitive production of profit which is the root cause of our societies\u2019 plight. The analysis concludes with a proposal for building a counter-hegemony against neo-liberal capitalism by means of enlarging the Left\u2019s focus beyond its traditional concerns with inequality and exclusion, to address also the injustice of growing social and economic insecurity \u2013 a harm whose reach surpasses the working poor. Reformulating an agenda of social justice around issues of economic insecurity that cross the \u2018class divide\u2019 would allow the Left to mobilize a broad coalition of social forces for radical and lasting change in the direction of socialist democracy.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
For the full article visit: https:\/\/journals.sagepub.com\/doi\/pdf\/10.1177\/0191453719872291<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"