Amsterdam political philosopher Enzo Rossi and others comment.
All about class.
One response to “The recent Dutch elections”
-
From a Dutch perspective the article has some obvious blind spots. The authors suggest that Dutch ‘left’ parties failed to offer clear, material answers on housing, work, and redistribution. Yet at least in the case of the Dutch Socialist Party, those “solid left answers” were very much on the table: ambitious social housing, higher wages and minimum income, a wealth tax, and a strong defence of public services and de-marketization in health care. The electorate did not reward that agenda, but the problem cannot simply be that nobody offered it. It is more honest to say that a credible class-based program existed, but was undermined by other dynamics – especially the structural fragmentation of the left due to identity politics and a sociological divide. The real question facing leftist politics is whether there is still a Left at all – or just a loose sum of identity niches and class fragments that no longer add up to a common project.
Leave a Reply