“There’s No Populist Instruction Manual for How You Nationalize Amazon”
From Podemos in Spain to Bernie Sanders’s bid for the nomination, recent left-populist campaigns inspired widespread hopes only to fall short. But overwhelming the fortresses of neoliberalism demands a long-term strategy — and mass mobilizations that last beyond the excitement of an election campaign.
Leader of the Socialist Party Pedro Sanchez watches as Leader of Unidas Podemos Party Pablo Iglesias speaks during a press conference in Madrid, 2019. (Xaume Olleros / Getty Images)
Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, Spain’s Unidas Podemos has played a key role in shaping the government response, even pushing through a minimum household income to help out the hardest-hit families. Yet, despite such successes, Podemos’s role as a junior partner to the center-left PSOE (Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party) little resembles the anti-systemic insurgency of which leader Pablo Iglesias spoke following the indignados protests of 2011.
Able to win real gains for working people, Podemos is more than just a lesson in the dangers of entering institutional politics. But its trajectory also raises question marks over its original strategy, and the bid to form an electoral insurgency that could smash through the traditional politics of center-left and center-right. Such a question seems particularly important given the setbacks for other promising left-populist forces, from France to the United States.
Jorge Tamames’s new book For the People directly compares these campaigns — exploring how both Podemos and Bernie Sanders made exhilarating breakthroughs but ultimately failed to overcome the political establishment. Jacobin’s David Broder spoke to him about the reasons for the left-populist upsurge, the difficulties of creating mass parties, and the organizational legacies of the Spanish and US experiences.
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