The World and the Left

To gain a comprehensive understanding of the position of the left in the current global landscape, it is useful to compare the 20th and 21st centuries. The 20th century was shaped by the systemic dialectics of two systems: industrial capitalism and capitalist colonialism. This is because the development of each system helped to strengthen its exploited parts: the working class and the colonized peoples. On the one hand, social systemic dialectics brought about change through contradictions and conflicts, at the cost of destructive wars and genocide; on the other hand, the 20th century witnessed historic progress for humanity in terms of living standards, life expectancy, and decolonization. However, by the end of the 20th century, these dialectics had stalled. In industrial societies, the working class made progress, but financial capital was the winner of industrial decline. The anti-colonial dialectic ended with the liberation of the colonies, but these liberations were limited and conditional. To this, the left of the 20th century offered no way forward. Neoliberal-capitalist globalization marked the end of the 20th-century left, but also, through its overcapacity, hubris, and economic collapse, gave birth to the new left of the 21st century.

为了全面了解左翼在当今全球范围内所处的位置，将20世纪与21世纪相比较是有益的。20世纪是由工业资本主义和资本主义殖民主义这两种系统辩证法塑造的。这是因为每个系统的发展都有助于加强其被剥削的部分：工人阶级和被殖民的人民。社会系统辩证法一方面通过矛盾和冲突带来变革，以破坏性的战争和种族灭绝为代价；另一方面，在20世纪，人类在生活水平、预期寿命和去殖民化等方面取得了历史性进步。然而，到20世纪末，这些辩证法已经停滞不前。在工业社会中，工人阶级取得了进步，但金融资本是工业化没落的赢家。反殖民主义辩证法以殖民地被解放而告终，但这些解放是有限的和有条件的。对此，20世纪的左翼并没有提供前进的方向。新自由主义—资本主义全球化标志着20世纪的左翼的终结，但也通过其产能过剩、盲目自信和经济崩溃，催生了21世纪的新左翼。

The new left of the 21st century is highly radical in form and innovative in content. This article aims to understand the context of the 21st-century left and its innovative responses to the major current challenges: imminent climate catastrophe, a new imperial geopolitical landscape, and growing economic inequality. What are the prospects for the working class and leftist thought in the 21st century? Nearly a quarter of a century ago, Perry Anderson, in a characteristically sharp editorial, answered: the necessary starting point for a realist left is “a sober recognition of historical failure.” He argued that under neoliberal rule, “short of an economic slump comparable to that between the two world wars,” “little seems likely to shake the framework of the current consensus.” Nearly 25 years later, I believe the legacy of the 20th century needs to be depicted in a somewhat different way, so that we can better understand what has happened in recent decades and what might happen in the remaining years of the 21st century. Below, I will briefly outline the main determinants that shaped the 20th-century left and the “turning point” of neoliberalism, then further examine the different contexts in which the 21st-century left is sprouting, compare their forms and expressions, analyze their impact, and assess their challenges.

21世纪的新左翼在形式上极具激进色彩和创新性。本文旨在理解21世纪左翼的背景及其对当前重大挑战的创新性回应，这些挑战包括：迫在眉睫的气候灾难、新的帝国地缘政治格局和日益加剧的经济不平等。21世纪的工人阶级和左翼思想的前景如何？近1/4世纪前，佩里·安德森在一篇富有特色的尖锐社论中回答道：现实主义左翼的必要起点是“对历史失败的清醒认识”。他认为在新自由主义的统治下，“除了类似于两次世界大战之间的经济衰退”外，“几乎没有什么能够动摇当前共识的框架”。在近25年后，我认为20世纪的遗产需要以某种不同的方式来描绘，这样我们就能更好地理解在最近几十年里发生了什么，以及在21世纪剩余的时间里可能会发生什么。下面，我将简要概述形塑20世纪左翼的主要决定因素和新自由主义的“转折点”，然后进一步研究21世纪左翼萌芽的不同背景，对比它们的形式和表现，分析其影响并评估其挑战。

I. The Dialectical Century

一、辩证的世纪

Entering the 20th century, Europe and North America were further dominated by the social system of industrial capitalism, while Africa and Asia suffered under capitalist colonialism. The dialectics of industrial capitalism and capitalist colonialism were very similar: both created a new social stratum with an inherent rational-antagonistic potential: factory workers and colonial intellectuals.

进入20世纪后，欧洲和北美进一步被工业资本主义社会体系所支配，而非洲和亚洲则饱受资本主义殖民主义的影响。工业资本主义和资本主义殖民主义的辩证法非常相似，两者都创造了一种具有内在理性—对抗潜力的新社会阶层：工厂工人和殖民地知识分子。

Initially, the emergence of industrial capitalism only benefited the bourgeoisie. However, another aspect of its dialectic was that, under a system dominated by US capital, unprecedented economic growth was achieved. With the development of industrial capitalism, the working class and its movements also developed. Between 1998 and 2013, the number of people living in “extreme poverty” as defined by the World Bank nearly halved, decreasing by almost one billion, mainly in China and other countries and regions. After 1945, trade unions and collective bargaining rights were normalized in the developed capitalist world. The 1970s were both the peak of industrial capitalism and the zenith of working-class influence. The 20th century also brought major advances for women. August Bebel’s *Women and Socialism* became a bestseller second only to Marx and Engels’ *Communist Manifesto*. With the opening of mass higher education in developed countries after 1945, women’s social status was significantly enhanced.

最初，工业资本主义的出现只是使资产阶级受益。然而，其辩证法的另一个方面是，在美国资本主导的体系下实现了空前的经济增长，随着工业资本主义的发展，工人阶级及其运动得到了发展。在1998至2013年期间，世界银行界定的“极端贫困”人口数量几乎减半，减少了近10亿人，主要发生在中国等国家和地区。1945年后，工会和集体谈判权在发达资本主义世界中实现了正常化。1970年代既是工业资本主义的发展顶峰，也是工人阶级发挥影响力的鼎盛时期。20世纪也为女性带来了重大进步。奥古斯特·倍倍尔的《妇女与社会主义》成为仅次于马克思恩格斯的《共产党宣言》的畅销书。随着1945年之后，发达国家大规模高等教育的开放，女性的社会地位获得了显著提升。

Compared to half a century of colonial conquest in Europe, the process of national liberation and decolonization in the 20th century was rapid, yet arduous and bloody. It was initiated by nationalist intellectuals, mobilizing the masses to resist institutional racial discrimination. National liberation in Africa and Asia was an epochal achievement, in which the left of the Global South played a central role, with strong support from the left in the North. From the Comintern’s promotion of the Baku Congress [1]1 The Baku Congress of the Peoples of the East (1920) was a congress convened by the Communist International to promote anti-colonial revolution in Asia and the Middle East. and the founding of the Communist Party of China, to the anti-Vietnam War movement and the anti-apartheid movement… solidarity with anti-colonial and anti-imperialist movements constituted a core principle of 20th-century leftist movements.

与欧洲半个世纪的殖民征服相比，20世纪的民族解放和去殖民化进程是迅速的，却也是艰苦且血腥的。它由民族主义知识分子发起，动员大众对制度性种族歧视进行反抗。非洲和亚洲的民族解放是一项划时代的成就，全球南方的左翼在其中发挥了核心作用，并得到了北方左翼的大力支持。从共产国际推动巴库大会召开、中国共产党成立，到反越战运动和反种族隔运动……与反殖民主义和反帝国主义运动团结一致，构成了20世纪左翼运动的核心原则。

To some extent, this was a century of great leftist achievements. Anti-capitalist revolutions in Russia and China succeeded, creating powerful new societies from decaying dynastic regimes. Decolonization succeeded worldwide, giving rise to a large number of independent nation-states. But on the other hand, the proletarian dialectic described in *Capital* ultimately settled into the capitalist welfare state. Post-colonial countries also did not become beacons of popular freedom, justice, and equality.

在某种程度上，这是左翼成就卓著的一个世纪。俄罗斯和中国的反资本主义革命取得了成功，从腐朽的王朝政权中创造出强大的新社会。去殖民化在世界范围内取得成功，涌现出一大批独立的民族国家。但另一方面，《资本论》中描述的无产阶级辩证法，最终落脚于资本主义福利国家。后殖民地国家也没有成为人民自由、正义平等的灯塔。

However, the 20th-century left firmly believed in the dialectical character of capitalism and colonial exploitation, which provided it with a long-term perspective and resilient collective confidence. Being left-wing meant viewing the realization of socialism as a realistic future prospect. The Bolshevik revolution inspired workers in Europe and the Americas, and intellectuals and leaders in Asia to fight for socialism; the Chinese revolution inspired peasant and worker revolutionary movements in South and Southeast Asia; the Cuban revolution stirred anti-imperialist waves in Latin America. The revolutions of the 20th century were a beam of hope, proving that non-capitalist societies had a place. Although a truly European revolutionary situation never materialized during this period, the scent of revolution still hung in the air. Driven by leftist radicals, France experienced the “May 1968” events [2]2 The May 1968 events in France were a nationwide protest movement of students and workers against capitalism, traditional authority, and the government of Charles de Gaulle., Italy was swept by a wave of strikes in 1969, and the 1974 revolutions overthrew the fascist regimes in Portugal and Greece. The radical wave of 1968 bore some resemblance to the “Indignados” movements of 2010: both were youth-led anti-authoritarian uprisings, occupying streets and squares, advocating participatory democracy. However, while the “Indignados” gave rise to new political movements and parties, such as Syriza, Podemos, and the campaigns of Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn, the 1968 movements were lacking in political innovation.

然而，20世纪的左翼坚信资本主义和殖民剥削的辩证特征，这为其提供了长远的眼光和坚韧的集体自信。所谓左翼，意味着将实现社会主义视为现实的未来前景。布尔什维克革命鼓舞了欧洲和美洲的工人、亚洲的知识分子和领袖为社会主义而战，中国的革命激发了南亚和东南亚的工农革命运动，古巴的革命激起了拉丁美洲的反对帝国主义浪潮。20世纪的革命是一束希望之光，证明了非资本主义社会有其一席之地。虽然这一时期从未真正出现过欧洲革命的局面，但革命的气息仍在空气中弥漫。在左翼激进分子的推动下，1968年法国爆发了“五月风暴”，1969年罢工浪潮席卷意大利，1974年革命推翻了葡萄牙和希腊的法西斯政权。1968年的激进浪潮与2010年的“愤怒者”运动有些相似：二者都是由青年领导的反威权起义，占领街头和广场，倡导参与式民主。然而，“愤怒者”催生了新的政治运动和政党，如激进左翼联盟、“我们能”党、伯尼·桑德斯和杰里米·科尔宾领导的竞选活动等，而1968年的运动在政治创新方面乏善可陈。

If industrial capitalism reached its peak in Western societies in the 1970s, then this peak did indeed give rise to some radical and specific proposals for socialist transformation within mainstream workers’ movements. The boldest schemes came from Sweden and France. Then Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme wrote: “democratic socialism” offered “an alternative to private capitalism and bureaucratic state capitalism.” The second major mainstream attempt to transcend capitalism appeared in France, under the so-called Common Program [3]3 The Common Program (Programme commun) was a 1972 electoral and governing agreement between the French Socialist Party and the French Communist Party, aiming for a transition to socialism., forming a left-wing alliance of the Socialist and Communist parties. British miners also fought. But these attempts all ended in varying degrees of failure. A similar situation occurred in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, where social development ultimately gave rise to a communist current of democratic reform. After World War II, social and economic development in the Soviet Union stagnated, and the US-Soviet arms race placed a huge burden on its development. Later, Yeltsin relied on the guidance of Western neoliberal economists to develop the Russian economy, and Western hegemonic domination of Russia in the 1990s drove the country’s economic inequality and national income back to Tsarist-era levels.

如果说工业资本主义在1970年代的西方社会中发展到顶峰，那么这一顶峰确实在主流工人运动中催生了一些激进且具体的社会主义改造建议。其中最大胆的方案来自瑞典和法国。时任瑞典首相的奥洛夫·帕尔梅写道：“民主社会主义”提供了对“私人资本主义和官僚国家资本主义的替代方案”。第二种超越资本主义的主流尝试出现在法国，在所谓的共同纲领下，成立了由社会党和共产党组成的左翼联盟。英国的矿工也进行了抗争。但这些尝试均以不同程度的失败而告终。在苏联和东欧也出现了类似的情况，其社会发展最终催生了民主改革的共产主义潮流。第二次世界大战后，苏联的社会和经济发展陷入僵局，美苏军备竞赛给苏联发展带来了巨大负担。后来，叶利钦依赖西方新自由主义经济学家的指导来发展俄罗斯经济，1990年代西方对俄罗斯的霸权统治使该国的经济不平等和国民收入退回到沙皇时代的水平。

As Anderson says, is this a failure of the left? Looking back, I think the end of the 20th century can be more accurately described as a situation of stalemate and exhaustion: at the peak of industrial capitalist development, the stalemate of the Soviet-style economy and the exhaustion of the Western workers’ movement, or combining the two, was an exhaustion of the industrial era of reform and revolution. At the close of the 20th century, neoliberalism replaced the Keynesianism of the national welfare state as the hegemonic socio-economic ideology. This radical, entirely profit-centered financial capitalism became a new paradigm. It was a resurgence of radical right-wing liberalism, which had been thoroughly abandoned for its inability to solve the mass unemployment and poverty of the Great Depression of the 1930s. Now, in the face of the new crisis of the 1980s, it was Keynesianism that seemed powerless, while neoliberalism appeared to offer a solution. The new left of the 21st century must be assessed against this backdrop; it is an attempt to keep socialism alive under the global hegemony of neoliberalism.

就像安德森说的那样，这是左翼的失败吗？回顾过去，我认为可以将20世纪末更准确地描述为一种陷入僵局和疲惫不堪的局面：在工业资本主义发展的顶峰期，苏联式经济的僵局和西方工人运动的疲惫，或者将二者结合起来，就是一种改革和革命的工业时代的衰竭。在20世纪结束时，新自由主义取代了民族福利国家的凯恩斯主义，成为霸权的社会经济意识形态。这种激进的、完全以利润为中心的金融资本主义成为一种新的范式。这是激进右翼自由主义的死灰复燃，这种自由主义曾因无法解决1930年代经济大萧条中大规模失业和贫困问题而被彻底抛弃。现在，在1980年代的新危机面前，似乎无能为力的却是凯恩斯主义，而新自由主义似乎提供了解决方案。21世纪的新左翼必须在这一背景下进行评估，它是在新自由主义占据全球霸权下保持社会主义活力的一种尝试。

II. The Transitional Period of Neoliberalism

二、新自由主义的过渡时期

Given the key role of neoliberalism in modern history, a brief overview of the background and characteristics of its resurgence and global spread is necessary. First, from the late 1960s onward, manufacturing employment in the United States experienced a long-term decline, and the profits of Northern industrial capital were squeezed between intensifying global economic competition and rising labor costs. Additionally, after the Vietnam War, the international monetary system collapsed, and regulation of financial activities weakened. At the same time, newly ascendant Arab oil-producing countries raised oil prices in protest against U.S. aid to Israel during the Fourth Middle East War in 1973. [4]4 The Fourth Middle East War, also known as the Yom Kippur War (1973), was fought between Israel and a coalition of Arab states led by Egypt and Syria. The U.S. airlift of military supplies to Israel prompted the Arab members of OPEC to impose an oil embargo, quadrupling oil prices and triggering a global energy crisis. Under these circumstances, Keynesian welfare state policies had already failed.

鉴于新自由主义在近代史中的关键作用，简要概述其复兴和全球传播的背景与特征是有必要的。首先，从1960年代后期开始，美国制造业的就业人数出现长期下降，北方工业资本的利润在全球经济竞争的不断加剧和劳动成本的不断增长之间受到了挤压。此外，越南战争后，国际货币体系崩溃，对金融活动的监管减弱。同时，为抗议美国在1973年第四次中东战争期间对以色列的援助，新崛起的阿拉伯石油国家提高了油价。在这种情况下，凯恩斯主义的福利民族国家政策已经失效。

For capital, there were three paths out of the profit squeeze in the North. The first was state repression, i.e., cracking down on trade unions. For example, the Reagan administration implemented a plan to crush the air traffic controllers’ union, and the Thatcher government greatly weakened the rights of British coal miners’ unions. The second was globalization; new digital technologies enabled developed countries to outsource manufacturing to low-wage countries. In the United States, the ratio of imported manufactured goods to domestic production rose from 14% in 1969 to 45% in 1986. The third was that digital technology also opened up new means of electronic financial speculation: in the United States, the share of GDP from the finance, insurance, and real estate sectors surpassed manufacturing around 1990 and became the country’s main source of profit a few years later.

对于资本来说，摆脱北方利润挤压的途径有三条。第一是国家镇压，即打击工会。例如，里根政府实施了粉碎航空管理员工会计划，撒切尔政府极大削弱了英国矿工工会的权利。第二是全球化，新的数字技术促使发达国家将制造业外包给低工资国家。在美国，进口制成品占国内生产的比例从1969年的14%上升到1986年的45%。第三，数字技术也开辟了电子金融投机的新手段：在美国，金融、保险、房地产行业的国内生产总值占比在1990年左右超过制造业，并在几年后成为该国的主要利润来源。

On the ideological front, neoliberalism gained support as a right-wing counterattack against the cultural changes of the 1960s. In August 1971, Lewis Powell spoke before the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, pointing out that “left-wing extremists” were not “the most worrisome source”; what needed concern was the “chorus of criticism” of the American free enterprise model, coming from “quite significant elements of society: the university campus, the media, intellectual journals, and politicians.” [5]5 Lewis Powell (1907–1998) was a U.S. Supreme Court Justice. His 1971 memorandum to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, known as the Powell Memo, is widely regarded as a foundational document for the neoliberal and corporate political mobilization of the 1970s and 1980s. Organized workers were no longer a problem. Driven by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, neoliberalism spread widely.

在意识形态方面，新自由主义作为右翼对1960年代文化变革的一种有力反击而获得了支持。1971年8月，刘易斯·鲍威尔在美国商会发表讲话，指出“左翼极端分子”并不是“最令人担忧的来源”，需要担忧的是对美国自由企业模式“异口同声的批评”，这些批评来自“社会中相当重要的因素：大学校园、媒体、期刊知识分子以及政治家”。而有组织的工人已不构成问题。在国际货币基金组织和世界银行的推动下，新自由主义得到了广泛传播。

Although neoliberalism has shown great resilience, forty years later its hegemony is ending. The first sign was the global financial crisis of 2008. Although neoliberalism has not yet ended, its legitimacy has been severely weakened; growing inequality has become an official concern at the Davos Forum; and “democratic socialism” has returned to the English-speaking world. The second key event may prove more decisive in the long run. After 2010, the U.S. political elite realized that China was winning the game of globalization. American politicians discovered that global hegemony depends not only on a few large corporations but also on the state and its people, even the resilience of the working class. Against this backdrop, as the gap between the ultra-wealthy and other classes continues to widen, distribution issues have returned to the agenda. From Trump to Biden, the U.S. government has shifted toward trade protectionist geopolitics. Third, the COVID-19 pandemic and ongoing climate disasters have shown that the free market is insufficient to address the urgent problems of the new century. “Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem,” once a mantra of neoliberal politicians, now sounds like a bizarre statement to many. At the same time, the new world of imperial geopolitics has shattered key neoliberal principles such as “globalism is superior to nationalism.” The “America First” trade and economic policies of the Trump and Biden administrations have directly undermined these norms.

新自由主义尽管显示出巨大的韧性，但在40年之后的今天，它的霸权正在结束。首先是2008年的全球金融危机。尽管新自由主义尚未结束，但它的合法性受到严重削弱；日益加剧的不平等成为达沃斯论坛官方关注的问题；“民主社会主义”又重新回到了英语世界。第二个关键事件长期来看可能更具决定性。2010年之后，美国政治精英意识到中国正在全球化的游戏中获胜。美国政客们发现，全球霸权不仅取决于少数大公司，还取决于国家及其人民，甚至是工人阶级的韧性。在此背景下，随着超富裕阶层与其他阶层的差距不断扩大，分配问题重回议程。从特朗普到拜登，美国政府开始转向贸易保护主义地缘政治。第三，新冠疫情大流行和持续的气候灾难表明自由市场不足以应对新世纪的紧迫问题。“政府不是我们问题的解决方案，政府本身就是问题”曾经被新自由主义政治家奉为圭臬，如今在许多人听来已成为奇谈怪论。与此同时，帝国地缘政治的新世界打破了诸如“全球主义优于民族主义”等新自由主义的关键原则。特朗普和拜登政府的“美国优先”贸易和经济政策直接破坏了这些规范。

With the bailouts following 2008, the state returned to the center of the capitalist economy, and its centrality was further consolidated during the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2020, total government debt in advanced economies exceeded wartime levels, surpassing 120% of GDP. The United States’ additional spending and tax reductions were the highest in the world, far exceeding 10% of GDP. Neoliberalism is a brutal form of capitalism, whose ambition is for the market to rule the entire world. Although imperial geopolitics has now triumphed over market globalization, the brutality of this new stage of capitalist accumulation is no less than that of the previous one. It is a stage of digital-technological financial capitalism, dedicated to accumulation within state-defined geopolitical boundaries.

伴随着2008年的救市行动，国家重新回到了资本主义经济的中心，而在新冠疫情期间，其中心地位进一步得到巩固。2020年，发达经济体的总的政府债务超过了二战期间的水平，超过了国内生产总值的120%。美国的额外支出和税收减少是世界上最高的，远远超过国内生产总值的10%。新自由主义是一种残酷的资本主义，其野心是由市场统治整个世界。尽管目前帝国地缘政治战胜了市场全球化，但资本主义积累新阶段的残酷性并不亚于上一个阶段。它是一种数字技术金融资本主义阶段，致力于在国家定义的地缘政治范围内进行积累。

III. The Left in the New Century

三、新世纪的左翼

This series of events does not unfold like a systemic dialectic—that is, it does not arise from an endogenous process of the developmental logic of the social system. Industrial capitalism has mutated into a digital financial capitalism that no longer produces its own adversary. For example, the protesters against neoliberalism are mostly no longer key members of the neoliberal economy, but outsiders whose lives have been invaded and disrupted by neoliberalism. The contradictions of imperial geopolitics do not constitute a dialectic that gradually strengthens the exploited. On the contrary, as we have seen, the 21st century is burdened with the catastrophic legacy of the 20th century—climate change, inequality, and war—while capitalism’s creative destruction continues. Compared with the dejection of the left at the end of the 20th century, the left of the 21st century has shown new vitality and creativity, even if its strength remains limited. The new left at the turn of the century pushed radical politics to a new height. By appealing to “the people” and radical democracy, the new left sought to overcome the difficulty of working-class socialism confronting financialized capitalism; through its foresight on environmentalism and its commitment to averting climate catastrophe, it renewed and revitalized the entire tradition of radicalism. Following the classic Marxist dialectic, theoretical research on transcending capitalism continues. The new left has stepped out of the shadow of the 20th century and entered a different historical period. We can briefly understand the characteristics of the new century’s left through the following three aspects.

这一系列事件并非像系统辩证法那样展开，也就是说，不是源自社会体系发展逻辑的内生过程。工业资本主义已经变异为一种数字金融资本主义，它不再制造自己的对手。例如，反对新自由主义的抗议者大部分不再是新自由主义经济的关键成员，而是那些被新自由主义侵入和破坏了生活的局外人。帝国地缘政治的矛盾并不能构成一种使被剥削者逐渐强大的辩证法。相反，正如我们所看到的，21世纪背负着20世纪的灾难性遗产，气候变化、不平等和战争，而资本主义的创造性破坏仍在继续。与20世纪末左翼的消沉相比，21世纪的左翼表现出了新的活力和创造力，即便其力量仍然有限。世纪之交的新左翼将激进政治推向了一个新高度。新左翼通过呼吁“人民”和激进民主来克服工人阶级社会主义对抗金融化资本主义的难题，通过对环保主义的先见之明和对避免气候灾难的承诺，他们更新并振兴了整个激进主义传统。继经典的马克思主义辩证法之后，围绕超越资本主义的理论研究仍在继续。新左翼已经走出了20世纪的阴影，进入了一个不同的历史时期。我们可以通过以下三个方面，简要地了解新世纪左翼的特征。

Another globalization. It was precisely the neoliberal globalization that accelerated from the late 1990s to 2008 that promoted the formation of a new global left. At the end of November 1999, the World Trade Organization ministerial meeting held in Seattle became the target of anti-globalization radical protests. A group of young radicals managed to disrupt the opening ceremony, engaging in violent clashes with the city’s police. In June 2001, the G8 summit in Genoa was met with protests from 200,000 angry demonstrators, who were brutally suppressed by security forces. In February 2003, one of the largest protest movements in world history took place, opposing the US-led invasion of Iraq. Although these resistances achieved little effect and capitalist globalization continued for another decade, these large-scale demonstrations showed that another globalization—namely, global solidarity and the international peace movement—different from corporate outsourcing and financial speculation, was feasible. This will be extremely important in the coming century. Proponents of another globalization also made creative interventions in left-wing politics: establishing the World Social Forum, planned as an alternative to the Davos World Economic Forum, aiming to create a pluralistic space for exchange for all non-violent left-wing groups, who “oppose neoliberalism and capital’s domination of the world, as well as any form of imperialism, and are committed to building a people-centered planet.”

另一种全球化。正是在1990年代末至2008年间不断加速的新自由主义全球化促进了新的全球左翼的形成。1999年11月底，在西雅图举行的世界贸易组织部长级会议成为反全球化激进抗议的目标。一群年轻的激进分子设法破坏开幕式，与该市的警察发生了暴力冲突。2001年6月，八国集团首脑会议在热那亚召开，遭到了20万愤怒示威者的抗议，安保部门对他们进行了残酷的镇压。2003年2月，发生了世界历史上最大规模的抗议活动之一，抗议旨在反对美国领导的对伊拉克的入侵。尽管这些反抗收效甚微，资本主义全球化又持续了10年，然而这些大规模的示威表明，与企业外包和金融投机不同的另一种全球化——即全球团结和国际和平运动——是可行的。在未来的世纪里，这极为重要。另一种全球化的主张者还对左翼政治进行了创造性的干预：设立世界社会论坛，计划作为达沃斯世界经济论坛的替代品，旨在为所有非暴力的左翼群体创造一个多元化的交流场所，他们“反对新自由主义和资本对世界的统治，以及任何形式的帝国主义，并致力于建立一个以人为中心的地球”。

Climate protests. As industrialization peaked in the 1970s, environmental issues began to attract attention. Green parties gradually emerged in Western Europe, New Zealand, and other countries and regions, with many regarding them as left-wing. However, faced with the immense challenges of the climate crisis, most “green politics” has become a political norm. In the 1980s, climate change became a topic for international scientific organizations, and in 1990 it became a clear issue for United Nations member states. In the early 21st century, this issue, once only of concern to elites, entered the public eye. Starting with the establishment of the Global Justice Alliance network in 2007, a powerful left-wing force emerged linking the climate crisis with capitalism. At the same time, concern about climate change has become mainstream, while neglect of climate change has become a label of the far right. The climate movement gave rise to the fastest-growing social movement in history, “Fridays for Future.” The mobilization of global youth by Fridays for Future has been astonishing. According to its reports, it has mobilized 17 million strikers in 8,600 locations.

气候抗议。随着工业化在1970年代达到高峰，环境问题开始引发人们的关注。绿党逐渐在西欧、新西兰等国家和地区兴起，其中许多人将其视为左翼，然而，面对气候危机带来的巨大挑战，大多数“绿色政治”已经变成了一种政治常态。在1980年代，气候变化成为国际科学组织的一个议题，在1990年成为联合国成员国的一个明确议题。在21世纪初，这个曾经只被精英关注的议题进入大众视野，从2007年全球正义联盟网络建立开始，就出现了一股强大的左翼势力，将气候危机与资本主义联系起来。与此同时，对气候变化的关注已成为主流，而对气候变化的忽视则成为极右翼的标签。气候运动催生了历史上发展最快的社会运动“未来星期五”。“未来星期五”对全球青年的动员是惊人的。根据其报告，它已经在8600个地方召集了1700万名罢工者。

Socialism in the new world. In the decade after the collapse of the Soviet Union, amid popular protests against existing capitalism, new shoots of socialism emerged in Latin America. Hugo Chávez was elected president of Venezuela in 1998, and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was elected president of Brazil in 2002. In 2005, Evo Morales won a decisive majority in Bolivia’s elections with a clear socialist platform. Shortly thereafter, Rafael Correa, a presidential candidate in Ecuador who openly advocated “21st-century socialism,” also achieved significant electoral victories. The background to these breakthroughs was that the sustained economic crisis since the 1980s had severely impacted the lives of ordinary people, while the established political parties in these countries chose to represent the interests of the International Monetary Fund rather than their own people, leading to the near collapse of their political systems. These new socialist governments achieved important successes: growing revenues from commodity exports were used to increase infrastructure spending, launch social programs, and reduce poverty. Outside Latin America, a quasi-presidential candidate, Sanders, raised the banner of “democratic socialism” in the United States and won over 13 million votes in the 2016 presidential election. That year, a Gallup poll found that a majority of Americans under 30 held favorable views of socialism, and membership in the Democratic Socialists of America suddenly surged. In 2019, young American socialist strategist Bhaskar Sunkara published *The Socialist Manifesto*, and the posthumous work of senior sociologist Erik Olin Wright, *How to Be an Anticapitalist in the Twenty-First Century*, appeared. The frontier of popular socialist theory had shifted to North America.

新世界的社会主义。苏联解体后的10年里，在民众对现存资本主义的抗议浪潮中，拉丁美洲出现了社会主义的新芽。乌戈·查韦斯于1998年当选委内瑞拉总统，路易斯·伊纳西奥·卢拉·达席尔瓦于2002年当选巴西总统。2005年，埃沃·莫拉莱斯在玻利维亚的选举中以明确的社会主义纲领赢得了决定性的多数票。不久之后，厄瓜多尔的一位公开倡导“21世纪社会主义”的总统候选人拉斐尔·科雷亚也获得了重要的选举胜利。这些突破性进展的背景是自1980年代以来持续的经济危机沉重打击了普通民众的生活，而这些国家的建制派政党选择代表国际货币基金组织而不是本国民众的利益，其政治体系几近崩溃。而这些新的社会主义政府取得了重要成就，不断增长的商品出口收入被用于增加基础设施支出、兴建社会项目和减少贫困。在拉丁美洲之外，一位准总统候选人桑德斯在美国举起了“民主社会主义”的旗帜，并在2016年的总统选举中赢得了超过1300万张选票。那一年，盖洛普民意调查发现，大多数30岁以下的美国人对社会主义持有好感，美国民主社会主义者组织的成员突然激增。2019年，美国社会主义青年战略家巴斯卡尔·桑卡拉发表了《社会主义宣言》，资深社会学家埃里克·奥林·赖特的《如何成为21世纪的反资本主义者》在其身后问世。流行社会主义理论的前沿已经转向了北美。

IV. New-Type Politics

四、新型政治

The left in the 21st century has developed a new type of political practice. To grasp its innovativeness, we compare it with the practice of the 20th century (Table 1). Each criterion for comparison—social base, instruments, mode of operation, radical strategy, protest activities—requires some explanation and clarification. [Image]

21世纪的左翼已经发展出一种新型政治实践。为了把握其创新性，我们将其与20世纪的实践进行了对比（表1）。每一项对比的标准——社会基础、工具手段、运作模式、激进策略、抗议活动——都需要一些解释和说明。图片

Social base. 20th-century socialism was a working-class movement. The deindustrialization of the old capitalist centers, and the limited expansion of the working class in the Global South, have to some extent stripped the classical Marxist political perspective of its original meaning. Replacing it, the 21st-century left often speaks of “the 99%,” or in a more theoretical formulation, “the people.” “The people” is a classic concept in European social thought, introduced into post-Marxist theory by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. In the left-wing context, “the people” has clear but contested class connotations as well as gender differences. The gendering of the people is very important for the 21st-century left, not only as a discursive or political issue but also as constituting its social base.

社会基础。20世纪的社会主义是一场工人阶级运动。旧资本主义中心的去工业化，以及全球南方工人阶级的有限扩张，在一定程度上使经典马克思主义的政治观点失去了其原有的意义。取而代之的是21世纪的左翼经常谈到“99%”，或者是更加理论化的阐述形式——“人民”。“人民”是欧洲社会思想中的一个经典概念，由恩斯特·拉克劳和查特尔·墨菲引入到后马克思主义理论中。在左翼的语境中，“人民”具有明确但有争议的阶级含义以及性别差异。人民的性别化对于21世纪的左翼来说非常重要，这不仅是一个话语的或政治的问题，而且构成了其社会基础。

Instruments. “Organize!” was the slogan of working-class activists. In English, “organized labor” has a unique socio-political significance. Collective organization, solidarity, and discipline were the only ways workers could mobilize to resist capital, the media, and the police. Traditionally, the political power of the working class was thought to require a strong working-class party to guarantee it. In the post-industrial era, collective organization has become more difficult, but in the digital age, the preconditions have changed. The slogan “Unite!” alone is enough to call out large crowds. The representative of the Spanish left, communist and Minister of Labor Yolanda Díaz, is currently trying to unite and revitalize the left by launching a movement called “Sumar” (Unite). The brief successes of the left within the British Labour Party and the US Democratic Party in supporting Corbyn and Sanders, respectively, are also manifestations of this new movement-like character in left-wing party politics.

工具手段。“组织起来！”是工人阶级积极分子的口号。在英语中，“有组织的劳工”具有独特的社会政治意义。集体组织、团结和纪律是工人能够动员起来反抗资本、媒体和警察的唯一途径。传统上，工人阶级的政治力量被认为需要一个强大的工人阶级政党来保障。在后工业时代，集体组织变得更加困难，但在数字时代，前提条件却发生了变化。“联合起来！”这一口号就足以号召大批人群。西班牙左翼的代表人物、共产主义者、劳工部长约兰达·迪亚斯目前正试图通过发起一场名为“统一”（Sumar）的运动来团结和振兴左翼。左翼在英国工党和美国民主党分别支持科尔宾和桑德斯的短暂成功也是左翼党派政治中这种新的运动性的表现。

Mode of operation. Democracy was a major short-term goal of early working-class movements. Struggles often focused on universal suffrage, for which the Belgian workers’ movement launched four general strikes and the Swedish Social Democrats launched one, all ending in failure but laying the foundation for future victories. Criticism of existing “bourgeois democracy” was an important part of Marxist political theory. In recent years, the legitimacy of this critique has been confirmed again in meticulous empirical studies by political scientists, and the democratic deficits under neoliberalism have become the target of broader left-wing criticism. The 21st-century left starts from a position of more unconditional support for democracy. New movements advocate a participatory democracy based on deliberation, reject representation and leadership structures, and often frustrate official attempts to negotiate and co-opt. At the level of political theory, Laclau and Mouffe proposed replacing socialism with “radical plural democracy.” Radical democracy emphasizes majority rule rather than minority rights, and mass participation rather than pluralistic opinions.

运作模式。民主是早期工人阶级运动的主要短期目标。斗争通常集中于普选权，为此，比利时工人运动曾发起四次大罢工，瑞典社会民主党发起一次大罢工，虽然均以失败告终，但为未来的胜利奠定了基础。对现存“资产阶级民主”的批评是马克思主义政治理论的重要内容，近年来，在政治科学家的细致实证研究中，这种批判的合法性再次得到证实，新自由主义下的民主缺陷成为更广泛的左翼批评的目标。21世纪的左翼从更加无条件地拥护民主的立场出发，新运动主张一种基于协商的参与式民主，拒绝代表和领导结构，并经常挫败官方尝试谈判和吸纳的企图。在政治理论层面，拉克劳和墨菲提议用“激进多元民主”取代社会主义。激进民主更注重多数人的统治而不是少数人的权利，群众参与而不是多元意见。

Radical strategy. The left of the 20th century was programmatic and strategic. It had a clear goal, namely the establishment of a socialist or communist society, and it set out a clear strategy for achieving this goal in its party program, “the road to socialism.” The left of the 21st century is more conservative in its attitude. Pablo Iglesias stated bluntly in 2014: “Socialist strategy … has a huge problem in the practical political sense … We are not opposed to a strategy of transition to socialism, but we are more eclectic, adopting a neo-Keynesian approach.” This is clearly an acknowledgment of the failures and exhaustion of the 20th century, but it does not signify a capitulation to the capitalist order. The 21st-century left bases its radicalism on a thoroughgoing opposition to the existing situation, rather than on long-term goals or a future roadmap. It refuses to accept the traditions of the ruling class and shows no sign of yielding before the juggernaut of the neoliberal economy.

激进策略。20世纪的左翼具有纲领性和战略性。它有一个明确的目标，即建立社会主义或共产主义社会，并在其“通向社会主义之路”的党纲中提出实现这一目标的清晰战略。21世纪左翼的态度更加保守。巴勃罗·伊格莱西亚斯在2014年直言：“社会主义战略……在实际政治意义上存在巨大问题……我们并不反对向社会主义过渡的战略，但我们更加折中，采取了新凯恩斯主义的方法。”这显然是对20世纪的失败和疲惫的一种承认，但并不意味着对资本主义秩序的投降。21世纪的左翼将激进主义建立在对现有局面的彻底反对之上，而不是长期目标或未来路线图。它拒绝接受统治阶级的传统，并在新自由主义经济的巨轮面前毫不屈服。

Protest movements. The protest activities of left-wing politics have expanded beyond the traditional forms of electoral politics and mass demonstrations. The Arab Spring of 2011 inspired widespread movements demanding the occupation of public urban spaces and the establishment of urban encampments. The tactic of setting up roadblocks, adopted by the Andean indigenous movements, was also employed by the Argentine *piqueteros* [9]9 *Piqueteros*: Argentine unemployed workers’ movements that used roadblocks (*piquetes*) as a protest tactic, emerging during the 1990s neoliberal reforms and the 2001 economic crisis., the French “Yellow Vests” movement, and the Punjabi farmers in India. The mobilization of secondary school students is another new phenomenon, emerging in Chile in the early 21st century, initially aimed at opposing the capitalization of education, and subsequently developing into a broader university student movement. Urban insurrections that challenge governments or even overthrow them are also part of 21st-century left-wing politics. It began in Buenos Aires in 2001, where they forced a liberal president to flee by helicopter. Tunis and Cairo expelled dictators in 2011, and in 2022, protesters in Colombo drove out the Rajapaksa family. These insurrections differ from revolutions in that they lack a strategy and organizational plan for seizing state power. These protest movements aim to get rid of current policies and politicians, but they offer no alternative for government. The demonstrators in Buenos Aires could demand “Let them all get out!”, but they did not answer the question “And then what?” In every instance, the great deficiency of the left is the lack of a vision for transforming power or a strategy for winning power—this is perhaps the most important difference from the left of the 20th century.

抗议活动。左翼政治的抗议活动已经扩展到选举政治和大规模示威的传统之外。2011年的阿拉伯之春激发了广泛的运动，要求占领公共城市空间，建立城市营地。安第斯土著运动所采取的设置路障的方式，也被阿根廷皮克特罗斯、法国“黄背心”运动和印度旁遮普农民所采用。动员中学生是另一个新现象，21世纪初出现在智利，旨在反对教育资本化，随后发展成为更广泛的大学生运动。挑战政府甚至推翻政府的城市暴动也是21世纪左翼政治的一部分。它始于2001年的布宜诺斯艾利斯，他们迫使自由派总统乘直升机撤离。突尼斯和开罗在2011年赶走了独裁者，2022年科伦坡的抗议者则驱逐了拉贾帕克萨家族。这些暴动与革命不同，因为它们没有夺取政权的战略和组织计划。这些抗议运动旨在摆脱现行政策和政客，但却没有为政府提供替代方案。布宜诺斯艾利斯的示威者可以要求“让他们全部下台！”，但并没有回答“然后呢？”这个问题。在每一个事例中，左翼的巨大缺陷都是缺乏变革权力的愿景或赢得变革权力的战略，这也许是与20世纪左翼最重要的区别。

V. Successes, Failures, and Future Challenges

五、成败得失和未来挑战

We are now at the end of the first quarter of the 21st century. What are the successes and failures of the new left? We have witnessed its response to the wave of capitalist globalization that began in 1980, a wave that is now nearing its end. The new left has renewed the legacy of the 20th century in innovative forms and broken new ground. It has brought the issue of inequality and the possibility of popular resistance into mainstream economics and political science; it has reduced inequality across Latin America; it has translated demands for climate action into commitments from global politicians. The left of the early 21st century has also opened up space for the emergence of a new generation of radicals. It has broadened the ideological spectrum in many countries, laying the groundwork for political progress and initiating discussions on the meaning of socialism and the prospects for overcoming capitalism.

我们现在正处于21世纪第一个25年的末尾。新左翼的成败得失如何？我们见证了它对始于1980年的资本主义全球化浪潮的回应，这个浪潮现在已经接近尾声。新左翼以创新的形式更新了20世纪的遗产并开辟了新的天地。它将不平等问题和民众反抗的可能性带入到主流经济学和政治学，它减少了整个拉丁美洲的不平等现象，它把对气候行动的要求转化为全球政治家的承诺。21世纪初的左翼也为新一代激进分子的出现开辟了空间。它在许多国家拓宽了意识形态的范围，为政治进步奠定了基础，开启了关于社会主义的意义和战胜资本主义的前景的讨论。

However, for the left in Asia and Africa, the start of the 21st century has not been smooth. The collapse of the brutal Suharto regime in Indonesia in 1998 created few political opportunities for the left, and the economy continued to develop in an unequal direction. Attempts to form labor parties in Nigeria, South Africa, and South Korea have all failed so far. The “old left” in India and Japan has been further weakened, and little in the way of a new left has emerged, even in a very broad sense. In the 20th century, the left helped establish at least three enduring states: China, Vietnam, and Cuba. But so far, the 21st-century left has achieved few viable institutional accomplishments elsewhere, although much of this century remains.

然而，对于亚非左翼来说，21世纪的开局并不顺利。1998年印度尼西亚残暴的苏哈托政权垮台，但几乎没有为左翼创造政治机会，经济继续朝着不平等的方向发展。尼日利亚、南非和韩国试图组建工党的尝试迄今均告失败。印度和日本的“老左翼”被进一步削弱，即使在非常广泛的意义上，也没有多少新左翼出现。在20世纪，左翼至少帮助建立了三个持久的国家：中国、越南和古巴。但到目前为止，21世纪的左翼在其他方面几乎没有取得可行的制度成就，尽管这个世纪还剩下很长时间。

Looking ahead, for the remainder of this century, humanity will face three major challenges: first, the issue of the Earth’s habitability; second, the risk of world war brought about by new imperial geopolitics; and third, the tragic legacy left by neoliberal globalization, whose profound inequalities continue to deprive the majority of humanity of technological and medical advances. How the new left will respond to these challenges is currently unpredictable, but the outlook is not optimistic.

展望未来，在本世纪的剩余时间里，人类将面临三大挑战：一是地球的宜居性问题；二是新的帝国地缘政治带来的世界大战的风险；三是新自由主义全球化留下的悲惨的遗产，其深刻的不平等仍在剥夺大多数人类的技术和医学进步。新左翼将如何应对这些挑战，目前无法预测，但前景并不乐观。

The climate crisis. Within the broad climate movement, there is a widespread recognition that averting planetary catastrophe requires profound social transformation, a shift from a world based on private accumulation to a politics of care, solidarity, and equality. The form of this transformation is one of the hotly debated topics among the 21st-century left, particularly between reformists, who focus on the concept of a “Green New Deal,” and eco-socialists, who aim to transcend capitalism. Heatwaves, droughts, floods, and landslides are becoming the norm, and the geopolitical climate is also intensifying its own storms of ethnic hatred. The left climate movement needs to broaden its perspective, moving beyond a focus solely on utopia and apocalypse to engage with the geopolitical context and the possibilities for capitalist transformation, as well as life on Earth before the apocalypse.

气候危机。在广泛的气候运动中，人们普遍认为，要避免地球灾难，就必须进行深刻的社会变革，从以私人积累为基础的世界转向关爱、团结和平等的政治。这种转变的形式是21世纪左翼热烈讨论的话题之一，尤其是在改革派和生态社会主义者之间，前者聚焦“绿色新政”概念，后者旨在超越资本主义。热浪、干旱、洪水和山体滑坡正在成为一种常态，地缘政治气候也正在加剧其自身的种族仇恨风暴。左翼气候运动需要拓宽视野，从只关注乌托邦和世界末日，转而关注地缘政治背景和资本主义变革的可能性，以及世界末日前的地球生活。

Geopolitics. Neoliberal globalization has been replaced by imperialist geopolitics. When the U.S. political establishment began to realize that China was winning the globalization game, it changed the rules. This trend began under Trump and was consolidated under the Biden administration. Free trade and the free flow of capital have now been supplanted by national interests, which are protected through economic warfare measures such as tariffs and so-called “sanctions.” This “America First” doctrine is currently being emulated by “Fortress Europe” plans. The U.S. insistence on NATO’s eastward expansion, and the Western sanctions imposed on Russia following the outbreak of the Ukraine crisis, have accelerated the trend of inter-imperialist conflict in the 21st century. As “weapons against civilians,” blockades and punitive sanctions caused nearly one million deaths from hunger and disease during the First World War. After the Cold War, U.S. and European policymakers again became addicted to these measures. The number of sanctions doubled between 1990 and 2009, and doubled again in the 2010s. These actions do nothing to improve the outlook; they serve only to obtain the satisfaction of punishment—a sadistic behavior. Sadistic liberalism is now a major trend in Western foreign policy. The era of imperial geopolitical competition is difficult for the left to navigate. The European left in 2022 found itself in a situation akin to the isolation and despair faced by Rosa Luxemburg in 1914 [10]10 Rosa Luxemburg in 1914: Refers to the German Marxist revolutionary’s isolation within the Social Democratic Party after her anti-war stance was defeated by the party’s support for World War I, leading to her founding the Spartacist League.. Furthermore, the risk of nuclear war cannot be ignored.

地缘政治。新自由主义全球化已被帝国主义地缘政治所取代。当美国政界开始意识到中国正在赢得全球化游戏时，它改变了游戏规则。这种趋势始于特朗普时期，并在拜登政府中得到巩固。自由贸易和资本自由流动现在被国家利益所取代，国家利益通过关税和所谓“制裁”等经济战争形式来获得保护。这种“美国优先主义”，目前正在被“欧洲堡垒计划”所效仿。美国坚持北约东扩，在乌克兰危机爆发后，西方对俄罗斯实施制裁，加速了21世纪帝国间的冲突趋势。作为“反平民武器”，封锁和惩罚性制裁在第一次世界大战期间造成了近100万人死于饥饿和疾病。冷战后，美国和欧洲的政策制定者再次沉迷于上述手段。制裁的数量在1990年至2009年间翻了一番，在2010年代再次翻倍。这些行为丝毫无益于改变前景，而只是为了获得惩罚的满足感，是一种虐待狂的行为。虐待狂自由主义现在是西方外交政策的一个主要趋势。帝国地缘政治竞争的时代对左翼来说很难应对。2022年的欧洲左翼所处的境地，类似于罗莎·卢森堡在1914年面临的孤立和绝望。此外，现在还存在不可忽视的核战争风险。

The rise of Asia. In the absence of war, a structural shift in power is still possible. If the worldview of the left in the 20th century was “the forward march of the workers,” then in the 21st century it is “the forward march of Asia.” The iron grip of U.S. global hegemony is loosening, with China, through its astonishing technological and economic rise, emerging as the most direct challenger. However, in the long run, the growing influence of Asia as a continent seems a more reliable bet. India is bound to strive for great-power status, and the ASEAN bloc, including rapidly developing countries like Indonesia and Vietnam, is also moving forward. This trend may imply a restructuring of the global financial system, ending the stranglehold of the U.S. and Europe over it. It also means a weakening of the ability of “Western values” to be imposed on the world. The ideological and political perspective of the left must become truly global. For the left in the Global North, such a perspective should include acknowledging the key differences between the United States, China, and India. The United States remains the ultimate bastion of capitalism, a Christian missionary empire that desires to remake the rest of the world in its own image, whereas China and India have no such ambition. A pluralistic world without a single superpower hegemony should be the goal of the left.

亚洲的崛起。在没有战争的情况下，仍有可能出现权力的结构性转移。如果左翼的世界观在20世纪是“工人的前进征程”，那么在21世纪则是“亚洲的前进征程”。美国世界霸权的铁腕正在松动，中国凭借其惊人的技术经济崛起成为最直接的挑战者，不过从长远来看，亚洲作为一个大陆的影响力日益增长，这似乎是更可靠的筹码。印度势必会争取大国地位，而包括印度尼西亚和越南等快速发展国家在内的东盟集团也在向前迈进。这种趋势可能意味着世界金融体系的重组，结束美欧对它的束缚。这也意味着“西方价值观”强加给世界的能力正在减弱。左翼的思想政治视角必须真正成为全球性的。对于全球北方的左翼来说，这样的观点应该包括承认美国与中国和印度之间的关键差异。美国仍然是资本主义的终极堡垒，作为一个基督教传教帝国，它渴望让世界其他地区变得像自己一样，而中国和印度没有这样的野心。一个没有超级霸权的多元化世界应该成为左翼的目标。

Class struggle. The 21st century is not only about climate adaptation and geopolitics, but also about global class struggle. In 2020, the average income of the richest 1% of the world’s population was 144 times that of the poorer half of the global population. The coexistence of immense abundance and miserable poverty is a long-term trend in human history. If the left is to achieve any significance, it must take seriously the commitment to pursuing human equality, not limited to material resources but also including equal access to longevity and health. Faced with the challenge of inequality, large-scale mobilization of mass politics and innovative state policies and institutions are the responses. Although no promising strategy has yet emerged, social struggles have revived after the COVID-19 pandemic. In some countries of the Global South, broad alliances of different strata have appeared, including workers, peasants, students, indigenous organizations, the proletariat, and unemployed youth. These alliances match their respective social and cultural structures and therefore may have the potential to drive social change.

阶级斗争。21世纪不仅关乎气候适应和地缘政治，还关乎全球阶级斗争。2020年，世界上最富有的1%人口的平均收入是全球较贫穷的一半人口平均收入的144倍。巨大的丰裕和悲惨的贫困并存，这是人类历史中的长期趋势，如果左翼要争取任何意义，它就必须重视追求人类平等的承诺，这不仅限于物质资源，还包括获得长寿和健康的机会平等。面对不平等问题的挑战，群众政治的大规模动员和创新的国家政策和制度是应对之策。虽然目前还没有出现有希望的战略，但是在新冠疫情之后，社会斗争已经重新兴起。在全球南方的一些国家，出现了工人、农民、学生、土著组织、无产阶级和失业青年等不同阶层的大联盟，这些联盟与各自的社会文化结构相匹配，因此可能有推动社会变革的潜力。

VI. Socialism: A Postscript

六、社会主义：后记

In the 2010s, the trend of rising life expectancy in the United States and the United Kingdom was broken; in 2020 and 2021, the United Nations Human Development Index fell below the 2017 level. The climate crisis has already led to unprecedented heatwaves, droughts, and floods, displacing millions of people. Under the cloud of impending catastrophe, this is a century of uncertainty and unpredictability. But another world is still possible, although the road to it now appears darker and more dangerous than at the beginning of this century. Yet we have voices advocating an alternative globalization, the World Social Forum, creative anti-austerity protesters, democratic indignados, and so on. [11]11 The World Social Forum is a global gathering of social movements, NGOs, and leftist activists, first held in 2001 as a counter-event to the World Economic Forum. “Indignados” refers to the anti-austerity protest movement that emerged in Spain in 2011. The fissures in the world system are opening up space for the creativity of a new generation of the left, and human anger at global inequality has become a force for change.

在2010年代，美国和英国的预期寿命增长趋势被打破；2020年和2021年，联合国人类发展指数低于2017年的水平。气候危机已经导致了前所未有的高温、干旱和洪水，使数百万人流离失所。在即将来临的灾难的乌云之下，这是一个充满不确定性和不可预测性的世纪。但另一种世界仍然是可能的，尽管通往它的道路现在看起来比本世纪初更加黯淡和危险，但我们有主张另一种全球化的声音、世界社会论坛、创造性的反紧缩抗议者、民主的愤怒者，等等。世界体系的裂缝正为新一代左翼的创造力开辟空间，人类对全球不平等现象的愤怒已经成为变革的力量。

Daunting challenges lie ahead. The new left may have begun to confront the complexity of the climate crisis, but it has not yet addressed the over-accumulation of finance or explored the forms of global solidarity needed in a world of intensifying imperialist competition. How to assess the problems raised by unstable new geopolitical divisions and find practical answers will be one of the most difficult and arduous tasks of the 21st century, especially for the left in the Global North. For the sake of peace and the right to human survival, it must combine a critical realist conception of international relations with an idealist one. No rational left should defend the global hegemony of the United States and half a century of Western dominance, even if they have recently been cloaked in the guise of “universal values.” For today’s left, the only consistent geopolitical stance is to strive to prevent the next world war while fighting for human emancipation.

艰巨的挑战摆在面前。新左翼或许已经开始直面气候危机的复杂性，但尚未着手研究金融的过度积累或探索在不断加剧的帝国主义竞争的世界中所需要的全球团结形式。如何评估不稳定的新地缘政治分歧所引发的问题，找到切实可行的答案，将是21世纪最困难和最艰巨的任务之一，对北方左翼而言尤其如此。为了和平和人类生存的权利，它必须将国际关系的批判现实主义观念与理想主义观念相结合。任何理性的左翼都不应该维护美国的世界霸权和西方半个世纪的统治，尽管它们最近披上了“普世价值”的外衣。对今天的左翼而言，唯一一致的地缘政治立场是努力阻止下一次世界大战，同时为人类解放而战。

In the Global North, the situation of electoral politics has become unfavorable for the left, and exclusionary right-wing populism has won the support of a portion of the people. In Latin America, although less bold than at the beginning of this century, a more progressive shift is underway. In Africa and Asia, no clear political tendency has yet emerged, but popular resistance to existing politics does exist. The left of the 21st century may not yet be fully prepared for the predictable challenges ahead, but it has already demonstrated its capacity for connection, protest, and resistance. Compared with the exhaustion and depression of the left in the early neoliberal era, the creative vitality and rebellious mass movements of the 21st-century left are two reasonable grounds for cautious optimism about its ability to meet future challenges. The left of the 20th century has no secret recipes to impart, but it has a rich legacy of experience that benefits later generations, a history that includes failures, mistakes, victories, and achievements.

在全球北方，选举政治的情况已经变得对左翼不利，排外的右翼民粹主义已经获得了一部分人民的支持。在拉丁美洲，虽然不如本世纪之初那样大胆，但一场更为进步的转变正在进行。在非洲和亚洲，尚未出现明显的政治倾向，但人民对现存政治的反抗确实存在。21世纪的左翼可能还没有充分准备好应对未来可预测的挑战，但已经展示了其联结、抗议和抵抗的能力。与新自由主义时代早期左翼的疲惫和消沉相比，21世纪左翼的创造性活力和反叛性的群众运动，是对其应对未来挑战的能力保持谨慎乐观态度的两个合理理由。20世纪的左翼没有什么可以传授的秘方，但有着一份泽被后人的丰富经验遗产，那就是包括了失败、错误、胜利和成就的历史。

Socialism was the goal of the 20th-century left. It reappeared briefly in the Latin American crescent from Venezuela to Bolivia in the form of “21st-century socialism,” and in the United States and Britain in the form of “democratic socialism.” In the post-colonial Global South and Europe, even among leftists, little remains of the socialist vision. This is a historical loss of horizon, a loss of an inspiring vision of the future. Admittedly, the anti-neoliberal wave raised by the new left and its creative practices show that this loss is not fatal. The history of the 20th century also tells us that social change rarely proceeds according to a blueprint. But a Long March needs a direction. [12]12 “Long March” (长征) refers to the strategic retreat and relocation of the Chinese Red Army in 1934–1935, a foundational event in CPC history often used metaphorically to denote a protracted, arduous struggle toward a goal.

社会主义是20世纪左翼的奋斗目标。它以“21世纪社会主义”的形式在从委内瑞拉到玻利维亚的拉美新月形地带中，以及以“民主社会主义”的形式在美国和英国中短暂地重现。在后殖民时代的全球南方和欧洲，即使在左翼分子中，社会主义的愿景也所剩无几。这是一种历史性的视野丧失，一种对鼓舞人心的未来想象的丧失。诚然，新左翼掀起的反新自由主义浪潮及其创造性的实践表明，这种丧失并不是致命的。20世纪的历史也告诉我们，社会变革很少是按照蓝图进行的。但是，万里长征需要方向。

In fact, existing capitalism will face increasing challenges in the 21st century. Although it has some resources to cope with climate catastrophe, capitalist solutions can at best be tailored for a minority elite in a few fortunate regions. The current world market economy must undergo profound transformation. Whichever path is taken, social and political struggles, along with realistic imagination, will determine the direction of change. At the same time, the rise of Asia means that the space for Western practices and values will shrink. People today are more informed and more connected than ever before, and more will raise the question of survival. Why should we accept the current socio-economic system, in which at most 30% of the population lives in affluence while others are excluded and exploited, as the best system humanity can build? The left should play a key role in the great challenges of the 21st century. It is time to prepare.

事实上，现存的资本主义在21世纪将面临越来越多的挑战。虽然它有一些应对气候灾难的资源，但资本主义解决方案最多只能为少数幸运地区的少数精英阶层量身定制。当前的世界市场经济必须进行深刻变革，无论采取哪种方式，社会、政治斗争以及符合实际的想象将决定变革的方向。同时，亚洲的崛起意味着西方实践和价值观的空间将会缩小。现在的人们比以往任何时候都更加掌握信息，更加联系紧密，将会有更多人提出生存问题。我们为什么要接受目前的社会经济体系，至多30%的人口过上了富足生活，而其他人则被排斥、剥削，这是人类能够建立的最好制度吗？左翼应该在21世纪的巨大挑战中发挥关键作用。是时候做好准备了。

(Authors: Göran Therborn, Department of Sociology, University of Cambridge; Wang Yuhan, Department of Philosophy, Peking University, and Department of Sociology, University of Cambridge)

（作者：戈兰·瑟伯恩（Göran Therbon）：英国剑桥大学社会学系；王钰涵：北京大学哲学系，英国剑桥大学社会学系）

Online editor: Tongxin

网络编辑：同心