The Left must be rooted in mass mobilisation

JVL Introduction

Published just days before the USA’s coup in Venezuela, this is perhaps even more relevant as a result of that.  In his contribution to the emergency online rally No War on Venezuela. Tariq Ali noted that the left has lost many countries in Latin America despite earlier gains. And in Europe, “By the middle of the decade [the 2010s Ed], as mass mobilisation ebbed, the electoral opportunity peaked. In 2015 alone, SYRIZA came in government in Greece, Podemos and Bloco achieved historic results, Jeremy Corbyn took over Labour, and Bernie Sanders launched a campaign that revived social democracy in the US. Before Trump and Brexit, it appeared that the radical left had seized the initiative, even keeping the far right out of parliament in Spain and Portugal.”

All of these gains were lost; so what must we learn from their failures? One thing is that we must not lose heart, for example, Mamdani’s victory is hugely important and, as argued here, the importance of building mass movements and not to fall into the trap of trying to manage capitalism.

We need to be clear what we are up against; regarding Venezuela, western commentators seem able to talk about “the will of the people” without noting the huge resources that have been deployed to dominate the narrative in favour of the right and also creating pro-Washington civic groups.

Such initiatives are in place in Europe as we have been – and are still – experiencing and support for the far right across Europe is growing and is, crucially, also part of Trump’s National-Security-Strategy the importance of which we cannot overstate and which we analysed in The most dangerous publication since Mein Kampf

LL

This article was originally published by Tribune on Tue 30 Dec 2025. Read the original here.