Article by the ISp affiliate in Romania, GAS (Socialist Action Group)
Romania had its first round of the presidential elections on November 24. Călin Georgescu, a far right candidate that did not even appear in the polls, won the first place, and will be running against the neoliberal right wing Elena Lasconi of the USR party. The second round will be held on December 8. Its the first time since the fall of the stalinist regime that a candidate of the Social Democrats is not entering the second round.
The cyclical crises of capitalism and their consequences (deteriorating living standards, intensification of inter-imperialist conflicts) have brought with them a deep crisis of the legitimacy of traditional bourgeois institutions and political parties. In times of crisis, it is more visible to the masses that capitalist politicians do not represent their interests.
However, for the masses in Romania 2024, this does not appear as a crisis of legitimacy of capitalist exploitative relations per se. The cause of systemic phenomena is mistakenly identified in the political decision of individuals or institutions, and possibly blamed on their betrayal or corruptibility. The illusion that replacing the current rulers with ‘correct’ individuals is the solution still persists. The ‘system’ is personified in various institutions and individuals, who appear as the embodiment of the ‘system’, and the revolt against the ‘system’ is transformed further into a revolt against those particular institutions and individuals.
This is what the far right is banking on in its political discourse. People such as Călin Georgescu, although part of the establishment (see his former positions in the UN, the Club of Rome etc), present themselves as an alternative to it and try to identify voting for them with the “anti-system” vote. Their discourse is aimed at the “national interest”—therefore the “interest group” of the individual they address is not the class (the individual as a worker), but the people, the nation (the individual as a Romanian). This serves to anesthetize the formation of class consciousness at critical moments. If we accept that there is a national interest, it means that we also accept class collaborationism, because the Romanian bourgeoisie would have common interests with the Romanian proletariat—which, moreover, has been put in relation with the proletariat of other nations through the intense socialization of labor in the neoliberal period.
Such discourses are successful because the working masses do not have class consciousness by default, its current state being quite low. The post-Stalinist transition and successive waves of austerity have contributed to this. Trade unions have been weakened or pushed into a defensive position, workers’ spaces have been destroyed or commodified, professional associations and clubs have been closed down or turned into phantom entities.
Instead, in the consciousness of the workers, there is an opposition between those who have ‘power’ and those who have ‘no power’—but the source of that power is not correctly identified in the capitalist relations of production.
Why Did Georgescu Win the First Round of Elections?
Certainly, Călin Georgescu and other similar figures are NOT proposing any alternative to the current system, and in reality are very unlikely to alter the form of the bourgeois state in any way, contrary to what the liberal alarmists claim. They want to stabilize certain crises of capitalism, to resolve a series of contradictions in order to ensure its perpetuation in a state of crisis. They do this by coming up with a corporatist, organicist and functionalist vision of society, in which classes do not appear as divergent and in permanent conflict, but rather complementary—being unified by the so-called national interest. This can only happen, of course, if the bourgeoisie continues to hold power and either crushes or incorporates any form of revolt by the working class and oppressed groups.
The rise to power of Călin Georgescu and the far right is based on a series of objective phenomena, one of the most important of which is the expropriation of the small and middle bourgeoisie by transnational capital. These bourgeois strata, constantly threatened with proletarianization, come to see the bourgeois national state as a barrier to the most predatory actions of transnational monopoly capital. They will politically support anyone who comes up with a series of interventionist and protectionist measures likely to delay their dispossession—which is what the far right does.
Relevant in this is also the breaking up of the world into several poles of imperialist power (the so-called multipolarity) resulting from the rise of Chinese capitalism and the decline of the hegemonic position of the US over the global capitalist system. A possible Russian interference with the Romanian elections (either directly or indirectly by pumping money into online campaigns) cannot be ruled out as a contributing factor to Georgescu’s victory. If this is real, it is part of the re-sharing of the world among imperialist forces. Georgescu is a possible leader who would navigate a future multipolar landscape more easily than other candidates with stronger organic ties to Western capital.
Romania’s bourgeois institutions and parties are strongly linked to Western capital, which is relevant in the context of their delegitimization. Support for the US, the EU and NATO was for decades a source of political legitimacy in the eyes of the masses in Romania; this is no longer the case today, in such a general sense. In other words, international capitalist structures have also lost much of their legitimacy amid the crises.
Responses to the Challenges of Modernity. What is the Left Doing?
Capitalist development involves the swallowing up of small capital by big capital, the proletarianization and dispossession of increasing numbers of people and their assembly as labor power for the same monopoly capitalist entities. It causes deep transformations of social relations in the process. The response of the far right and communists is distinct in the face of these phenomena, given the distinct class interests they represent.
The far right proposes a protectionist and distributist model which, as we have shown above, acts as a barrier in the face of the monopolist forces expropriating the national bourgeoisie. The same distributist model characterizes Georgescu’s programmatic content. Such a response seeks to at least slow down, if not reverse, capitalist development; it aims at affirming the old, obsolete social and property relations as an alternative to the present ones. Of course, the real potency of such measures in terms of actually achieving their purpose is visible in other European countries where the far right has won elections.
The source of inspiration for the far right forces behind Georgescu is rather the feudal and reminiscent feudal relations of the time, as well as early modern phenomena. This we observe particularly in the case of a part of the European far right, Europe having a feudal heritage—unlike the Americas, where the far right is marching in different directions.
The communist position, on the other hand, cannot be the rejection of modernity. Communists must affirm that capitalist relations are progressive in comparison to feudal relations, just as developed capitalism is progressive in comparison to less developed capitalism—in the socialization of labor and the development of the material means of production. So we cannot find any solution or inspiration in outdated, pre-modern relations; in order to formulate solutions to the current crises of capitalist modernity, we must look to the future, to a modernity freed from private property which has now become an obstacle even to the development of productive forces. The future means productive forces freed from the shackles of capitalist property relations and brought under the democratic control of those who work with them, it means a modern society without class division and wage labor, it means claiming into collective ownership what capitalist modernity has produced (and what is now owned by the capitalist class) for us all to enjoy. And this must be the path to emancipation.
A section of the left, essentially the reformist left and subservient to the bourgeoisie, has in recent decades seen its aim as to carry out a critique of the “excesses” of capitalist modernity, which of course more strongly reflect the inherent contradictions of the system than did less developed capitalist relations. Thus, this left has focused on the evils of globalization, of the advances of finance capital to the detriment of industrial capital, of the realpolitika practised by imperialist forces, of the commodification of more and more areas of life. In the absence of solid programmatic proposals and playing mainly on the defensive, this left has ended up opposing developed capitalism with models similar to those that Călin Georgescu talks about—in the form of a local and “community” economy, decentralization and redistribution; in other words, remaining within the current system with minor adjustments. This left has never significantly questioned capital because it has never had the interest to do so; it has never questioned private property, wage labor, or the political disempowerment of workers as such. The convergence of proposals with part of the far-right is not accidental; it stems from a similar class composition, as we’re speaking of a bourgeois and petty-bourgeois branch of socialism.
This part of the left has been unable, of course, to consolidate a solid base from the ranks of the workers and those disadvantaged by the capitalist system. Thus, it ended up constantly positioning itself on the side of more “progressive” bourgeois political forces (such as the Democrats in the US or the traditional liberal parties in Europe) in contexts where the far right was a threat, in the logic of the “lesser evil”. In doing so, it compromised itself along with them. It needs to be replaced by a communist, proletarian left, which is not afraid to assert its own line and positioning independently of the left wing and right wing bourgeois parties.
At the moment, the traditional bourgeois parties have been dealt a heavy blow in Romania through the election of Călin Georgescu. This reflects the contestation and contempt a significant number of people have for them. In this context, any revolutionary organization that proposes a short-term compromise with them (like the anti-fascist front with the liberals) in order to put an electoral brake on the far right is committing political suicide – being condemned to being seen as legitimizing the “system” in a period of legitimacy crisis.
The communist left must refrain from explicit prescriptions on the electoral exercise in the second round. One of the strategies it can use to combat Călin Georgescu, including electorally, is to talk to his undecided working-class base and expose him as a representative of the same (capitalist) system against which these workers might believe they are voting—in order to convince them not to vote for him. But at the same time, it is indispensable to emphasizethat the working class should not have to choose between the traditionalist far-right hailing war criminals and the neoliberal hard right threatening to cut wages.
For this, it is fundamental that revolutionary socialists understand the reality of contemporary production as well and in as much detail as possible, develop analyses based on it, and produce as much explanatory material as possible that demonstrates the functioning of the capitalist system, its contradictions, what fascism is, why it arises and how to fight it, in a digestible and comprehensible formula. It is time for the communist movement to categorically present its own worldview independent of any bourgeois political forces, and to differentiate it from right-wing distributist proposals by reaffirming modernity freed from the yoke of private property.
On such a vision, the communist movement must grow organically, grassroots, as an alternative to the far right and liberalism. We must also consider how the crisis of legitimacy of the bourgeois parties in Romania presents an opportunity in this respect. Basically, the working masses are much more likely to be more open and curious about political alternatives than they were 5 or 10 years ago. Andrevolutionary socialism does offer a real alternative to the current system, whereas the proposals of the far right or the liberal defense can be easily exposed in relation to the class interests they represent. GAS and the rest of the socialist and revolutionary zone need a strongly asserted independent political position and the start of the process to build a transitional program and a mass workers’ party.
