Red Star, Lodestar

The global rise of the Right has made the Left not irrelevant but indispensable

- Brinda Karat

IT is striking that Right-wing leaders across the world continue to use communist and socialist-bashing as a central feature of their politics even while repeatedly declaring Left ideology "dead and buried". If socialism is supposedly irrelevant, why is it still treated as a threat? The answer is simple: socialist ideas continue to resonate with working people everywhere, especially in times of deep crisis. This is why those in power remain preoccupied with discrediting the Left.

The vicious language used by US President Donald Trump against Zohran Mamdani-the self-declared democratic socialist who won the New York City mayoral election-is a telling example. While Mamdani was campaigning, Trump described him as a "lunatic communist," a "subversive," and condemned socialism as "the most noxious idea in human history". Yet, Mamdani won decisively in the heart of global capitalism. His victory showed that even in metropolitan America, a political programme rooted in equality, public welfare and working-class rights has widespread support.

The collapse of the Soviet Union and the socialist bloc in the early 1990s was hailed by capitalist powers as "the end of history". They celebrated the elimination of a model that had forced Western governments to adopt social security, welfare protections and labour rights. With its collapse, these concessions were treated as dispensable.

Neoliberalism-the new template of global capitalismproclaimed the privatisation of public assets, corporate tax concessions, sweeping deregulation, restrictions on labour rights and massive cuts in public expenditure as the formula for growth.