Some former communists continue to think that heaven (like power and the Winter Palace in 1917 Russia) can only be taken by storm. However, politics requires more methodical and sophisticated siege strategies that, of course, do not exclude certain doses of audacity. And if a leadership team is not capable of developing those patient alternative strategies to consolidate its space, then it condemns itself to failure. But if, in addition, that political actor engages in a self-destructive internal war when he does not meet his expectations, the decline accelerates and, sooner or later, leads to extinction or irrelevance.
Well, the history of the political space that opens up to the left of the PSOE – first the PCE, then IU, then Podemos and now Sumar – reproduces that same path of self-destruction over and over again. And it does so on the basis of identical ingredients: erroneous strategies and internal wars that end in devastating splits. Certainly, only Podemos in the 2015 and 2016 elections caressed the sky with the tips of its fingers, and was just over one point away from being ahead of the socialists. Of course, in the following three years it had already suffered several splits and had lost half of its parliamentary representation.
But the self-destructive gene of the alternative left had already manifested itself at other times in its history. For example, in the case of the PCE, strategic errors and results below 11% of the votes unleashed two insurmountable struggles starting in 1979: the generational one (between the young and the old guard), and the ideological one (between Eurocommunists). and Leninists, or between renovators and orthodox). The electoral catastrophe of '82 (with a fall from 23 to four seats) culminated the internal tear, with a subsequent split led by the former secretary general himself.
It took seven years for a new formulation of the post-communist space to recover the same electoral support of the transition. The new brand was born in the heat of the referendum on NATO in 1986, it was called Izquierda Unida and attempted to group around the PCE the large galaxy of radical groups that until then had participated separately. Santiago Carrillo baptized it as a “pot of crickets,” but under the leadership of an orthodox communist like Julio Anguita, the new formation came to dream of “sorpasso” (replacing a worn-out PSOE as the first force on the left).
In this case, the strategic error resided in the clamp that Anguita orchestrated with José María Aznar to suffocate the PSOE (rejecting local pacts that would have avoided PP governments). This policy brought together the entire anti-socialist left vote around IU, but, again, without going beyond 11% of the votes in 1996. The “sorpasso” was a mirage. And with the Popular Party already established in the Government, the useful vote went to the PSOE (as did some prominent IU cadres). The post-communist space fell below 4% of the vote as a consequence of the bipartisan polarization between conservatives and socialists.
More than a decade later, the recovery of the alternative left was now born outside the organic circuits of IU, through a generational insurrection: the 15-M movement. That youth explosion, spurred by the great recession of 2008, crystallized electorally in the 2014 European elections through Podemos. And the new brand - a breath of fresh air in the stale atmosphere of bipartisanship - broke all ceilings in the general elections of 2015 and 2016. More than 70 seats.
The problem with Podemos is that it brought together a very heterogeneous magma: activists with no party experience, militants seasoned in the communist youth and a myriad of veterans of the marginal extreme left. And all this without the organizational tradition and territorial implementation of traditional parties. It was enough to register “online”.
Now, the assault on the heavens once again remained a frustrated expectation. The coalition with IU did not lead to the desired “sorpasso”. On the contrary, it blurred the initial populist and innovative genetics of Podemos and linked its space to the limited post-communist heritage. From there, ideological quarrels arose, internal wars and, very soon, purges and splits (with Más País being the most striking). Today, a decade after the founding of the purple formation, the revived struggle between the pure ( Podemos ) and the pragmatic (the rest of Sumar) once again conceals a stark struggle for power in which the losers practice a philosophy that has been revealed historically lethal for the alternative left: “die killing.”
