Le rôle et le positionnement de la Gauche dans le mouvement « Un sur cinq millions » en Serbie

Jelena Pešić,Jelisaveta Petrović

doi:10.4000/balkanologie.2576

Abstract

The political and economic crisis that followed the Great Recession (2008) created an impetus for mass mobilisation across Europe, protesting austerity measures or demanding more democracy. In Serbia, the protests organised under the slogan “One of Five Million,” which broke out in late 2018, were not framed as “economic” but solely as “political.” This paper explores the socio-historically embedded opportunities and barriers for the political articulation, mobilisation and institutionalisation of left-wing movements and organisations in Serbia by focusing on their role in the “One of Five Million” protests. We demonstrate that despite greater prospects for the rise of the Left, stemming from the global economic crisis and the adverse socio-economic outcomes of the post-socialist transformation in Serbia, an unfavourable discursive opportunity structure still presents a significant impediment for the development of left-wing political parties and movements.

Highlights

Le rôle et le positionnement de la Gauche dans le mouvement « Un sur cinq millions » en Serbie
10 many lines of division could be drawn between left-wing groups, here we propose one which could be useful in analysing cleavages in the Serbian left-wing political scene: a) the Radical Left – nucleuses of cadre organisations stemming from “revolutionary” communist or Trotskyist traditions; b) the Reformist Left – organisations aiming to establish a broader coalition of ideologically diverse left-wing groups; and c) the New Left – a number of single-issue, anti-neoliberal movements, groups and organisations that do not have a clear anti-capitalist agenda (e.g. Don’t Let Belgrade D(r)own [DLBD], The Associated Movement of Free Tenants [AMFT] and Local Front [LF])
56 Based on the case study of the “One of Five Million” protests, this paper tried to demonstrate that left-wing movements in Serbia face significant challenges in penetrating the public arena and rupturing the solidified discursive structures characterised by the deeply held and taken-for-granted belief that capitalism has no alternative – a belief that has been developing gradually since regime change in 2000

Summary

Jelena Pešić and Jelisaveta Petrović

14 Some leftist groups have elaborated their visions of the society they want to see (e.g. a planned economy and democratic workers’ control over the state[37] or the humanisation of capitalism38) or a general strategy for their political activities (e.g. principal revolutionary orientation and commitment to the creation of workers states and world communism).[39] Other groups, mostly rely on vague ideas of partial reforms of capitalism (e.g. reforms of the electoral system and state and local governance,[40] social security system reforms[41]) In spite of these differences, the common ideological denominator for all groups belonging to the Left in Serbia rests in values of solidarity, equality and social justice. The most recognisable organisations of the New Left (such as DLBD) are embedded within the corpus of mainstream political opposition and primarily oriented towards denouncing the authoritarian tendencies of the ruling party

Conceptual framework

Data and methods

Setting the scene

Findings

Conclusions