The populist road to socialism: time for theoretical and normative assessments

It has been increasingly acknowledged that populism, as a kind of rhetoric defending the interests of a universal 'people' against those of an antagonistic 'other' and using the notion of 'crisis' to prompt urgent and radical transformation of society, has been a recurrent temptation for left-wing political actors. In the aftermath of the global financial crisis of 2008, the success of radical left leaders and parties across various Western polities offered new evidence to such claims. Now that these actors are either fully institutionalised within their party systems, such as SYRIZA in Greece and Podemos in Spain, or seem to have lost momentum, like Jean-Luc Mélénchon in France, Jeremy Corbyn in the UK and Bernie Sanders in the US, the time is ripe to re-assess the relationship between left radicalism and populism. This volume, edited by Giorgos Charalambous and Gregoris loannou, provides a key contribution in this respect as it enriches significantly the debate and challenges several widespread views on the topic.

The added value of the book lies in its diachronic perspective and the variety of political actors that it considers. 'Part One' includes descriptive and historical analyses of Russian Narodism (chapter 2), different European social-democratic parties in the interwar period (chapter 3) and the case of French and Italian Eurocommunism (chapter 4). In all three instances, the contributors conclude that there never was a full blending of populist discourse and socialist ideology: the populist Narodniks remained distinct from Russian Marxists, while for social-democratic and communist parties the populist rhetoric never became a central component of their discourse and politics. The second part of the volume shows how contemporary instances of left radicalism effectively embraced populism as part of their electoral strategy, but ultimately failed to provide a convincing counter-hegemonic alternative to neoliberalism, as in the case of Corbyn and Sanders (chapter 5) and Mélénchon (chapter 6), or experienced moderation, internal verticalization and cartelization when they became institutionalized, as in the case of SYRIZA and Podemos (chapter 7). In chapter 8, the analysis of Jobbik in Hungary and EKRE in Estonia illustrates that the adoption of an anti-capitalist stance by right-wing populist parties is only functional to their ethnonationalist, exclusionary platforms By enlarging the debate beyond party politics to the realm of social movements (chapter 9) and trade unions (chapter 10), and advancing a normative and practical assessment of populist rhetoric as part of a progressive strategy (chapter 11), Part Three includes the most original contributions of the book. In assessing the populist dimension of trade unionism, the editors introduce crucial questions that could be extended to left radicalism in general and deserve further elaboration in future studies of left populism. For example, how has the labour/ capital dichotomy been linked to the notion of 'the people' (p. 205)? How has the radical left built its political strategy in a context of welfare capitalism first, and neoliberalism second?

Through this collection of thorough and detailed analyses, the book traces the historical tension between populist rhetoric and socialist traditions. While providing new theoretical and empirical elements to deepen our understanding of this complex relation, the book inevitably entails a number of crucial intellectual and normative implications In his extensive chapter, Seraphim Seferiades eventually discards populism as part of effective left-wing political projects, because the discrepancy between the rhetorical invocation of the 'collective will' and the actual pragmatic choices taken by populist actors (in the direction of neoliberalism or reformism) only unveils the inherently deceptive and inauthentic nature of populism (p 245-6) In the editors' view, these historical patterns would demonstrate the ultimate ideological and practical incompatibility of populism and Marxism (p 263) However, a reconciliation between the two might still be possible if we consider populist discourse and socialist vision as two distinct dimensions of a strategy to achieve progressive social and political transformation. Evidence shows that in the pre-electoral phase. populist discourse can significantly enhance the radical lefts mobilization potential. The common fate of different socialist projects that ended up surrendering to class collaborationism and cartelisation should not be dismissed as a matter of context (p. 264), but the institutional, economic, cultural factors behind such capitulations still need to be investigated in detail.

By combining historical and comparative assessments. the book has the merit of having raised new important theoretical and normative questions. laying a solid ground for new academic and political reflections on the future of populism and the left.