Local left strategy now

Leftwing local initiatives often develop out of a capitalist crisis such as that which has developed globally since 2007 – Germany in the 1920s, Italy in the 1970s, Britain in the 1980s, the US in the 1990s, Latin America in the current decade. When living standards fall, when the proportion of those in unemployed or in poverty rises, when nation states either choose not to or are powerless to intervene, then a radical local politics may emerge. This politics may go beyond quantitative amelioration of economic conditions to develop qualitatively new social relations and genuinely liberatory politics. Crises do not always, however, lead to such local politics: the strategies adopted by the left can be crucial, and these are the subject of this chapter. We put forward our own views on left strategy, but include others' through critique. We consider more developed countries (MDCs) and urban areas in Newly Industrialised Countries (NICs), where the majority of the population depend directly or indirectly on waged labour; we shall use the Marxist term ‘the working class’ to refer to this majority; we do not consider local struggles in the rural Third World.