Germany

"The neoliberal bourgeoisie no longer acts according to the rules of classical Marxism. The CEOs of the DAX 30 companies will not suddenly arrive like Batman to save centrist politics. The economic elite is, after all, the client of the state – always dependent on handouts, outsourcing, deregulation and implicit subsidies. Both Trump and Brexit show: the corporate elite will take what it they are given – and they usually learn to like it.

So the German left must outline a new long-term strategy.

The first question is: what does it mean to be progressive in 21st century Germany? At a micro-level this is answered every day by the altruistic actions of young people and trade unionists: to do volunteer work with migrants and refugees; to attend democratic political and cultural events; to cycle and to recycle; to uphold the rights of women, ethnic minorities and gay people. To confront unflinchingly the memory of the Holocaust. To trace, as the Marxist philosopher Georg Lukács once did, the through-line of nationalist irrationalism which emerged from Nietzsche to Spengler to Rosenberg, and to resist its re-emergence in German thought.

... to construct an alliance of petty nationalisms with the conservatives and racists ruling in Hungary, Poland and Austria – would be just as self-defeating as Brexit for the British. Given the elites of these countries are increasingly aligned towards Kremlin foreign policy, it would also be geopolitically dangerous."

— Paul Mason