The left that wins and the left that loses.

A special report in Le Monde Diplomatique on the European left is headed by an article titled: Why the left is losing. 

"It's a universe for the European left." This introduces an analysis of why the so-called new European left has failed: Podemos in Spain, The Link in Germany, La France Insoumise, among others. And the overall picture is that things have changed a lot, and always for the worse for the left.

In 2002, social democrats led 13 of the 15 governments in the European Union. Twenty years later, they led only 7 out of a total of 27. According to Jean-Pierre Chevenement: neoliberal globalization is questioned not by the left, which allied itself with social liberalism, but by the right. And, more specifically, by the far right.

While the European left embraced all the support for European unity and the euro, the far right used it to propose leaving the European Union and returning to nation-states. The emergence of a new European left has not changed this situation either. "Only in Latin America does the left find reasons for comfort."

Protesters from the Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Street, and the Yellow Vests refused to politically contest institutional political spaces, remaining instead in grassroots mobilizations, within what is called civil society. Not only did they fail to capitalize on these mobilizations with concrete political advances, but they also created a climate of rejection of politics, the state, and political parties on the part of the far right.

The shift in France was the most striking. From a "laboratory for political experiments," according to Engels, where all phenomena occurred in the most radical form, France became home to the far right with the greatest mass support in Europe. The French working class, which was divided between socialists and communists, has voted for the far right for decades. Its unionization rate – around 7% – is among the lowest in Europe.

In Spain, Podemos emerged as the model for the new left, projecting its influence into Latin America. It claimed to have the mission of eradicating the PSOE (Spanish Socialist Workers' Party). It arrived to "storm the heavens." The aim was to organize the people to fight against the ruling class. Four years later, Podemos entered into a subordinate alliance with the PSOE in government, abandoning any prospect of coordinating an alternative to the traditional left. Pablo Iglesias himself, who led this project with a prominent media presence, first bought – with his partner, also a Podemos leader – an impressive mansion, after having claimed to live in the same conditions as the Spanish people. Finally, he withdrew from government and politics, resigning seven years after beginning his political career. 

A failure of enormous symbolic significance, marking the end of the prospect of a new left in Spain and throughout Europe. A failure that was repeated in France, Italy, and Germany.

According to the LMD article, this is the losing side. However, the article itself mentions that only in Latin America does the left find reasons for comfort. The dossier refers to Boric's election in Chile. But this is just another victory for the Latin American left, which today has anti-neoliberal governments in Argentina, Mexico, Bolivia, Peru, and Honduras, with good prospects of extending to Brazil and Chile this year.

But why do we have a winning left in Latin America? It was here that neoliberalism expanded the most in the world, where there were the most neoliberal governments and in their most radical forms. Consequently, it was where the world's anti-neoliberal governments emerged. These governments triumphed and were re-elected, projecting the main leaders of the left in the 21st century and significantly reducing inequalities – the main problem affecting the countries of the continent.

The Latin American left is the winning left, due to its awareness of the centrality of the struggle against neoliberalism, while the European left, in one way or another, has adhered to the neoliberal model, failing to differentiate itself from the right. The awareness that the left of the 21st century is an anti-neoliberal left distinguishes the Latin American left from the European left, the winning left from the losing left.