The radical Left in Western Europe
by Murray Smith
For some years now it has been clear that we are witnessing the appearance on a European, or at least West European, scale, of a series of new political formations on the left. The process is uneven from two points of view. In the first place, between countries: some countries have new political formations at various degrees of development, others have hardly moved, and there have been some false starts. But the process which began in the early 90s and accelerated around the turn of the century has further developed in the last couple of years. The unevenness is also political: some of the new parties are much more radical and explicitly anti-capitalist than others. That only underlines that we are dealing with real political movements, which do not conform to pre-arranged schemas. But it is clear that we are looking at a tendency towards the appearance of a new radical Left on a European level. Over and above the different expressions of this tendency in different countries, the fundamental causes producing new political forces are the same.
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