Hard to imagine a better place for leftist populism than Reddit. The fact that it's not popular in Spain is a feature here, allowed them to target the most engaged first. With the language barrier, probably also younger and better educated.
It’s still early to predict what is in store for Podemos.
I'll take a shot: it'll fizzle out, just like Occupy, just like dozens of parties across Europe who manage a decent showing in the European elections and then don't pass the threshold or only do it as a random plankton coalition. That, and direct, all-inclusive democracy generally doesn't work. But they're ditching that from the looks of it so who knows.
That's not what politics in Europe look at all at the moment. The extreme right and the extreme left are growing a lot. And the center-right and center-left are pretty much merging in many countries, they are either governing in coalition, or they will have to govern in coalition in the near future if they want to remain in power.
Syriza in Greece won the European elections and may govern in the future. FN is rising in France. UKIP in UK.
And in Spain Podemos is not fizzling out at all, the last polls put it as the 3rd party and getting very close to be the 2nd one, and even if they disappear what the polls seem very sure about is that neither center-right nor center-left could govern by themselves, and if they need to create a coalition that would mean political suicide for any future elections, at least with the current political atmosphere, maybe they are able to sell that coalition somehow. But there's probably too much corruption at the moment to sell it as anything else than as the last "let's keep stealing money" card.
What is particularly worrying is that through a mix of bad economic results and an economic policy borrowed from the right-wing, the current government is incredibly unpopular. At the same time, the right wing has lost most of its credibility due to both numerous corruption scandals (and more coming to the surface on a regular basis) and infighting. With a completely withered left, this leaves the road wide open to the extreme right wing.
You'll be hard-pressed to find anybody putting "hardline" and "Hollande" in the same sentence. The main, genuinely left-wing measure his government took was gay marriage (and, it should be said, was adopted in spite of large demonstrations from the catholic right) but the Justice minister has also attempted to reduce the ever-increasing overcrowding of French prisons, things like this. However, his reform of the finance system turned into a farce, and he is pretty much considered to cater to the will of Big Business (large tax cuts for companies which have so far shown to be completely ineffective in terms of reducing unemployment). With the net effect of costing him his electorate, while failing to endear him to the right wing.
If you are referring the infamous 75% tax, it was initially supposed to be a new tax bracket for the income tax (so any source of income above 1 million €), but it has been transformed in a tax paid by companies that are paying salaries and bonus above 1 million €, and it is capped to 5% of company revenue.
From my understanding, it means that for whatever reason you get an income above 1 million € this year for selling a company or renting apartment complex, or any other mean, the 75% tax does not apply to you.
The biggest contributors so far seem to be Football clubs, and likely some financial institutions. I don't have the exact number at hand but it is projected to only raise 200 millions. It concerned about 400 companies and 1000 people.
It was only applied for 2013-2014 and seems to be abandoned for 2015.
For the most part, the uber rich are not rich because of their salary. Bill Gates or Steve Job, had they been French, would not have payed the 75% tax.
That does not make the idea less socialist, but I think it is a bit overblown internationally given how few people are impacted.
It was whinged about incessantly in the popular press though (even on HN) as being anti-entrepreneurial, anti-business and something that would lead to an exodus of rich people from Paris (as if lower property prices were a bad thing).
I think the thought mattered more than the actual tax. You could sense that the ultra-wealthy all around the world hated it. Made them feel persecuted, perhaps, despite it being ultimately pretty toothless.
Considering that Sarkozy was increasing tax pressure by the end of his mandate and would have probably done so again, had he been re-elected, not really. As for the rich, they've been practising tax evasion for a long time. I'm not aware that hordes of rich Frenchmen fled to Switzerland since Hollande got voted in, but I'll be happy to see numbers which prove me wrong.
He's barely considered as a "left" guy by most of left-leaning voters. His economic policies are center-right but is social policies are more or less left (for example gay marriage was legalized).
The party is called "socialist party" but they have not had a socialist platform in a very long time.
I wonder what is driving this all, I don't really think it is the EU, or even immigration. Those sound more like just the issues of the day, not political paradigm movers.
The reality is that Europe has been in a state of ideological vacuum for a while. The hard right (including most dramatically fascism) really failed between 60-40 years ago as a movement. The hard left failed 25-35 years ago as a viable movement. The old left-right paradigm continued. In many places it's been centrist policies combined with left wing rhetoric. How long can that be the paradigm?
All that's left is the reality that governing bodies, parties and paradigms have been under fire for 5 years now. Political populism and dissidence sells. All that's left is to find a rhetoric that appeals to young, radical or reactionary pockets of political capital.
To me, one of the important takeaways from marxism/socialism is that forces of political stability and instability dictate history to a large degree. I'm very far from Marx on his determinism, but I agree with the broad brush idea. If the current paradigm is both unsustainable and unchangeable, pressure will mount. Technology is a force that Marx never truly reckoned with, but it contributes to the process. If people don't benefit from the system or suspect they could benefit more from some other system, they'll try to kill the old system.
UKIP make almost as much effort to recruit from the hard left as they do from the hard right.
Corruption. A lot. Spanish situation is kafkaesque right now. The former treasurer of the governing party is in jail. The prime minister sent him a SMS telling him "to be strong" when he was sent to prison. PM and rest of ministers were paid substantial extra from the construction companies briberies. No, they haven't resigned in two years. Only the scapegoat is canned.
Then similar scandals have arisen for the PSOE, former party in power until 2008, and CiU, the party that is promoting secession of Cataluña.
This week we have the phantom card show: bankers and politicians (politicians and union leaders are in the board of credit unions) using an opaque cards to spend 15.5 millions euros without paying any taxes.
Response from PP and PSOE has been very very very weak. They've lost credibility like... forever.
Basically they are cards delivered by Bankia (an important 'Caja', sort of a bank but politicians are in the board) without any limit and the expenses were charged to different expeses(e.g. a failure of a server)
> The reality is that Europe has been in a state of ideological vacuum for a while.
Correct. It appears that the established parties do not dare touch big visions any more. In itself, I expect most people would actually be happy with this, as long as it works. The problem is that in most of Europe it doesn't: the recovery from the financial crisis in the Eurozone is now actually lagging the recovery from the Great Depression.
And yet, my experience in Germany is that there is complete silence about the failure of politics. When polls show low approval for policies, even journalists tend to excuse this by saying that the policies just haven't been explained properly to the population. The possibility that the mainstream consensus regarding Eurozone policies might be wrong is not seriously considered. There is no serious intelligent debate about political choices.
This is also a failure of journalism. I had some hope when Frank Schirrmacher, one of the editors of the FAZ, a very influential serious newspaper, made steps towards raising the possibility that the mainstream consensus is wrong. Unfortunately, he died recently.
Ultimately, people feel misrepresented by the mainstream parties. The result is a mixture of apathy in the form of dropping participation in elections, and remaining voters going to the non-mainstream parties, which tend to be more extreme.
The fundamental issue with the EU is that it has rules but no flexibility. It cannot adapt to the new situation it finds itself in because to reopen any of the treaties in order to fix things that need fixing will cause a stampede of demands to alter other things in those self same treaties. Equally the "people" of europe are for the most part not willing to move more power from their national governments to the EU and we're at a point where additional powers will likely need referendums which in the current environment are unlikely to pass.
So things muddle along and will continue to do so, I don't yet see how or where it will change. It seems to me large parts of europe will have a lost decade.
I disagree about the financial crisis. Germans are not going hungry or cold due to financial hardship. There are issues to do with affordability of accommodation or transport, unemployment and rapidly changing labour economies but not food and realistically the standards that even Germany, France or Spain's poor demand today are far higher than they were generations ago.
I think it's often that realities are politically indigestible.
State institutions all over the world are big. All the political momentum (right and left) and big vision projects stem from expanding them have been done. School/University systems, health systems, welfare systems and such. These comprise 35-55% of national GDPs in most of fully developed European economies. You can't promise literacy for all to Germany. German's are literate and schools are free. A chicken in every sunday pot and fresh bread and milk for your breakfast. Those are things that Franco or Lenin promised to the common man. They don't move the needle any more.
We have institutional problems of big old and sometimes very clunky organizations. If your ask the institutions, they would like those problems solved painlessly with money. Pay teachers 2014 upper middle class salaries & 1970s pensions. Decrease class sizes and increase hours. Take care of the elderly financially then physically throughout their 30 year retirement. Do this in a way that does not burden the family. 12 month paid maternity leave. Fraternity leave. Unlimited medical care. Transportation with 2014 technology, 1970s labour ideals and 1950s prices.
Those are some serious demands. In many cases impractical. A state cannot usually bear this burden financially. Even if it can, it needs to be achieved through effectiveness.
What's needed/possible is reform, improvement, good operational governance of these enormous machines. That's unsexy. It involves long timescales and painful inch-at-a-time improvements.
Revolutionary dissidence is sexy. Political entrepreneurs do sexy.
They promise to tax the rich or corporations, something they would be doing already if they could. They might promise to alleviate the problems really sucking the money out of schools and hospitals, immigrants, Muslims, Jews, the EU or somesuch. ATM, they don't even have to worry about implementation as they are not going to govern in the near future.
That's the problem with trends, they can turn. I'm sticking with it though, I've seen protest and single-issue parties make it all the way to the government before sliding back into single digits or complete irrelevance.
There's a reason mainstream parties are mainstream. Usually, they adjust to push out new contenders. Although the immigration issue (a driver for FN and UKIP) is interesting because some are far too invested to turn around now.
Actually, the polls seem to imply that neither center-right nor center-left could govern by themselves or even if they formed a coalition with each other, which is an amazing change for Spanish politics.
That's not true at the moment. It is true that some polls give the sum of the two major parties less than 50% of the votes, but the electoral law is far from being purely proportional, so they would still get more than 50% of the seats.
On the continent, less free-market and much more nationalistic. UKIP is pretty close to American right with vouchers, cutting spending... they even picked up private gun ownership lately.
UKIP are centre-left, not 'extreme right'. On economic issues, they're to the left of the big 'left' party in the UK (Labour, who are really a more centrist party) and only really go to the right on immigration rather than social issues in general. You're confusing them with the BNP.
On the economy UKIP are certainly right wing. They supported a flat tax for gods sake. More broadly their entire reason for existing is to promote deregulation of all kinds (financial, environmental, health and safety etc).
I wouldn't call them centre-left, they're a bit of grab-bag of policies e.g. some member have been a bit libertarian (which can be socially "left" but economically "right" depending on particular issues). But Xenophobia is the biggest theme, see for yourself:
They're scoring pretty well on the class right-wing themes of "more police", "putting bad people in prison for a long time prevents crime", "down with environmental policies", "make sure these brown people pay taxes but don't get benefits". I'm liberally translating the program, in the spirit of their "No to Political Correctness - it stifles free speech" bullet point.
Of course "Teach children positive messages and pride in their country" (which immediately brought to mind a law passed by the right-wing in France aiming at emphasizing "the positive role of colonization").
Is wanting to leave the EU xenophobic? The EU is currently failing. Or wanting immigrants to be have sufficient points and be able to support themselves? This is standard for many countries.
Obviously time will tell, but it doesn't look like "Podemos" will fade away anytime soon.
Spanish politics have been very polarized with only two major parties sharing the power since the end of Franco's dictatorship (late 70s). During the last few years (and amplified by the economic crisis) people have been growing weary of their actions and general perception of impunity. Podemos is a young political party born as a reaction to that.
Here [1], you can see the last official government polls (from July 14), where the declining trend for major political parties is very clear, and Podemos as a new party is the 3rd most popular option. The next polls should confirm the trend, but the general feeling in Spain is that Podemos is still growing in popularity.
Note: I'm originally from Spain, although not currently living there.
edit: This additional poll from Sept 29th [2] (in Spanish) confirms the Podemos rising trend I was referring to.
Populism as opposed to what? To the current ruling party, who has met exactly 0% of their electoral promises, who promised 4M jobs in their four-year term and has created approximately zero in three years, who promised not to cut spending on healthcare and education and has made tremendous cuts?
Or maybe as opposed to the main party of the opposition, who promised zero unemployment and brought employment up to 25%, and who denied that there was a crisis at all in the 2008 election campaign in spite of knowing perfectly (as anyone educated and informed knew) that the bubble was bursting?
It's very funny how people label Podemos as "populist" as if they had brought populism to Spain. Yes, Podemos is certainly populist... but no more than the two main parties and other not-so-main ones.
I am not sure how aware are you of Spain's political and social situation. Not being a fully "Podemos" supporter I think is something is going to stay around for long.
People are tired of corrupted politicians after years of crisis and them not fixing anything, and just being perceived as stealing money... Podemos appeared in the exact moment to take that momentum and is getting support from people everywhere: students, middle-age people, elderly people... Don't think they'll win the 2015 elections but they'll play an important role for sure.
It's trailing the two major political parties by just a few points. I wouldn't be surprised if it had vanished ten years for now (I would consider that a good sign, actually; it's a party born out of a need for political transformation, it's not meant to stay) but I would also be surprised if it didn't win the next elections.
I don't know where you're living, but Occupy has a pretty strong showing every May here in Seattle... they're also Kshama Sawant's base. (First socialist on the city council since 1877.)
A lot has to happen before Occupy fizzles out around here.
I borrowed it from Polish "plankton polityczny" (political plankton) which is a not uncommon term for MPs who are not members of any significant party in the parliament but also when they lack broader support. Slightly derisive.
Podemos is undoubtedly an Internet phenomena. A modern and open party that not just uses Reddit for coordination and keeping in touch with its voters, but also makes use of tools like Agora Voting[0] for Liquid Democracy/online referendums, and mobile apps for transparent group decisions.
They say about themselves that "they're not really a Party but a tool for disrupting politics" and I think this is quite accurate... they've gone from 0 to front-runner in 5 months.
Actually, there were other parties in Spain using Agora, like Confederación Pirata [0] (the Spanish pirate party). Indeed, Agora's core developers are tightly related to the Pirate movement.
As a pirate, I'm happy to see other parties using our tools and I'm also glad to have somebody disrupting our political landscape but pirates are also "a tool for disrupting". We just disrupted it sharing our experience and favorite tools! :)
There is no political Left in Europe. Podemos is not a leftist party, since no leftist party or democratic conservative party would ever get paid by the State and be part of it (like the Nazi party). It's a contradiction in terms and something that simply cannot be.
Most of the people don't know the distinction between formal democracy and real(social) democracy and this causes great confusion.
Formal democracy is not about the content of laws (eg: laws to protect Human Rights), but about the rules that define the democratic game, rules that ensure that the People is in charge at all times (constitutional liberty). Real democracy is about the content and this explains why it is prone to have an ideological battle.
The most important requirements are:
1.- Representativeness: not possible in Spain, Italy, Germany, Greece, Portugal among others, since they use the proportional list system.
2.- Separation of powers: not happening in Spain. The most voted political party in the legislative elections forms government.
3.- Imperative mandate: Sieyes abolished it during the French Revolution and it still to be restored in all Europe.
The elected candidates in the legislative elections should remain loyal to their promises.
4.- Different elections: for executive and legislative (like in France)
Podemos doesn't care about any of these things as far as I concern.
In my modest view there is no possible reform, the problem is not the people in charge (Podemos guys seem honest), but the actual political system that doesn't fulfill any of the requirements. We haven't conquered our Liberty yet.
> Representativeness: not possible in Spain, Italy, Germany, Greece, Portugal among others, since they use the proportional list system.
I'm not quite sure what you mean here. Are you talking about undue importance given to small parties in such systems?
> Separation of powers: not happening in Spain. The most voted political party in the legislative elections forms government.
That's not how separation of power works...
> Imperative mandate: Sieyes abolished it during the French Revolution and it still to be restored in all Europe. The elected candidates in the legislative elections should remain loyal to their promises.
I'm also not sure what you mean by "imperative mandate". As for promises... well, there are promises and there is political expediency.
> Different elections: for executive and legislative (like in France)
I'm stopping you right here. It makes very little difference in practice, since the elections for the lower chamber happen right after the presidential elections. I also don't see how it's a benefit in general. It suffers from the idiotic, anti-democratic first-past-the-post system. I'd rather have a token President and a PM coming from a coalition instead.
> Representativeness: not possible in Spain, Italy, Germany, Greece, Portugal among others, since they use the proportional list system.
> I'm not quite sure what you mean here. Are you talking about undue importance given to small parties in such systems?
No. The proportional list system prevents representativeness. The people whose name is on the list represent the one that put them on it. They do not represent the electors.
> Separation of powers: not happening in Spain. The most voted political party in the legislative elections forms government.
> That's not how separation of power works...
Exactly. I was explaining what happens in Spain.
> Imperative mandate: Sieyes abolished it during the French Revolution and it still to be restored in all Europe. The elected candidates in the legislative elections should remain loyal to their promises.
> I'm also not sure what you mean by "imperative mandate". As for promises... well, there are promises and there is political expediency.
The electors should have a contract with their representative and if they are not loyal to that contract they can be ceased.
> Different elections: for executive and legislative (like in France)
> I'm stopping you right here. It makes very little difference in practice, since the elections for the lower chamber happen right after the presidential elections. I also don't see how it's a benefit in general. It suffers from the idiotic, anti-democratic first-past-the-post system. I'd rather have a token President and a PM coming from a coalition instead.
It makes sense if you think about the different characteristics that you look for in a legislator in contrast to the values required to be a president. A legislator should be loyal to their representatives (a part) whereas what you are looking in a governor is intelligence to guide the Nation (all). It is nonsense to think that a good legislator could be a good PM (UK). Loyalty vs intelligence, that's why it should be different elections.
> No. The proportional list system prevents representativeness. The people whose name is on the list represent the one that put them on it. They do not represent the electors.
Then I'm not sure what you mean. That you don't like standard representational democracy, whereby voters grant power to politicians for a limited timeframe but cannot control directly what they do during this time?
> > Separation of powers: not happening in Spain. The most voted political party in the legislative elections forms government.
> > That's not how separation of power works...
> Exactly. I was explaining what happens in Spain.
That's the same thing elsewhere. What do you expect to see instead?
> The electors should have a contract with their representative and if they are not loyal to that contract they can be ceased.
That's definitely an idea, though it seems tricky to put in place.
> It makes sense if you think about the different characteristics that you look for in a legislator in contrast to the values required to be a president. A legislator should be loyal to their representatives (a part) whereas what you are looking in a governor is intelligence to guide the Nation (all). It is nonsense to think that a good legislator could be a good PM (UK). Loyalty vs intelligence, that's why it should be different elections.
I expect that legislator look to their conscience first (if they can find it...) and to their party second. I also contest the underlying idea that an election campaign is a test of intelligence.
> Then I'm not sure what you mean. That you don't like standard representational democracy, whereby voters grant power to politicians for a limited timeframe but cannot control directly what they do during this time?
I'm going to focus on this one. Most european so-called democracies lack representation of the elector, and we can thank the proportional list system for this.
This lack of representation, in combination with the imperative mandate to the party instead of to the electors in Spain causes that we have, lets say, 150 legislators from party X, 75 from party Y, and 30 from party Z. The leader of the X party is going to be PM, which means it's going to execute the law. Law that he is going to decide(his legislators that he did put on the list).
In the spanish system we can get rid of the
Parliament and the system wouldn't be affected, I'll prove it to you.
When the leader of party X votes Yes to one proposal, all of the X representatives vote always in the same direction. The same happens with the opposition. What this means is that we can get rid of all the legislators apart from the leader of X, Y and Z. The vote of X leader would value 150, vote of leader Y 75 and so on, and both us and the system wouldn't notice.
We don't need almost 500 representatives of their respectives leaders because their leaders are already present. There is no need to represent someone who is present, right?
I'm puzzled. Surely MPs in Spain are supposed to represent a particular area in the country and defend the interests of their voters? I understand how that closed list system[1], which I was not familiar prior to find the correct Wikipedia article, is not awfully democratic. This could be alleviated by switching to an open list system like in Denmark, where a "personal vote" makes it possible to vote for individual candidates within a party, if you don't want the "party vote".
I don't know how good the open list system is working in Denmark. In Italy a experiment showed that only 3% of the electors use their right to change the candidates, making it useless.
A majority system where you can choose directly your MP would be way better to achieve representation. Why voting a list? Why not elect one representative for an area of about 100k citizen?
That way you do know who is your representative, in the list system (even in the open list) who is your representative? All of them?
I think you have a different definition of 'left' than most Americans, so there might be some disconnect there. Here, it just means socialist progressive (or in the direction of the same), more or less.
When you're speaking on a predominantly American message board, you should either avoid using terms that mean radically different things to you than what they mean to most Americans, or you should consider what they mean to most Americans very carefully and make sure that your meaning can't be misinterpreted.
I presumed the GP was referring to the use of the term in the linked article - which is American, even if it's talking about something happening in Europe. I'm not saying that the American definition is to be preferred, I was just pointing out the potential disconnect.
> 1.- Representativeness: not possible in Spain, Italy,
> Germany, Greece, Portugal among others, since they use the
> proportional list system.
What? I feel much more represented by a list of people that share my ideas and projects for the country, than by whomever the majority of people in my city chose among some candidates from the city.
What's not democratic is first-past-the-post systems, where if in my city 30% of the people vote for candidate A, 25% for B, 25% for C and 20% for D, only 30% of the people get a representative and the rest of the votes go directly to the trash bin.
If anything the problem with the Spanish electoral law is that it's not purely proporcional, it has districts which doesn't make any sense.
Honestly, I don't care how you feel. The Constitutional Court of Bonn (Germany) states that there is no representation in proportional list system. (I'll look for the quote).
> What's not democratic is first-past-the-post systems, where if in my city 30% of the people vote for candidate A, 25% for B, 25% for C and 20% for D, only 30% of the people get a representative and the rest of the votes go directly to the trash bin.
This doesn't happen in a two-round majority system.
If you mean a two-round first-past-the-post system, it works about the same as a one-round system. This is what got Jacques Chirac elected with 82% of the votes in France in 2002 in the second round. Whatever the number of rounds, it's a broken system designed to favour the two main parties.
> 4.- Different elections: for executive and legislative (like in France)
The two most powerful countries with non-figurehead executives (France and the United States) are perpetually beset with bickering and internal fighting instead of "checks and balances". Is a system with government shutdowns like we saw last year in the US, or François Hollands troubles in France any better than a system where all the power is held by the legislature and the prime minister? I only see a president as a sort of dictator who holds for 4 or 5 years the view of the electorate at one point in time, as opposed to a legislature who are always looking at future elections.
> The two most powerful countries with non-figurehead executives (France and the United States) are perpetually beset with bickering and internal fighting instead of "checks and balances".
That's not so much a problem of a Presidential system as a problem of the a Presidential system in a country which also has a poorly-representative electoral system in general (particularly for the national legislature).
However, there aren't a lot of systems that have electoral systems that produce effective representation and Presidential systems in the same place.
France doesn't have a full separation of powers since the president's executive needs the OK from the legislative power.
The Montesquieu proposal is the best mechanism that we have to avoid institutional corruption. If the power is held only by one group (legislators) corruption is inevitable.
If you only care about the output then Plato was right and the best system would be an aristocracy that cares and chooses the best for the country.
That very much depends on which country you look at. For example, in NL we have the SP, in Germany 'Die Linke'. There are probably many like that in other countries as well.
Podemos is just a symptom to the problem of corruption in the two main parties, they even menace to make a coalition if they can lose control over the power centers, and with the crisis and unemployment is the way of escape of many of the frustrations of the people. I don't know if they'll survive or will be assimilated(probably) but if they shake the dirty and corrupted politics of Spain is welcome.
It’s still early to predict what is in store for Podemos.
I'll take a shot: it'll fizzle out, just like Occupy, just like dozens of parties across Europe who manage a decent showing in the European elections and then don't pass the threshold or only do it as a random plankton coalition. That, and direct, all-inclusive democracy generally doesn't work. But they're ditching that from the looks of it so who knows.