Atm (that’s just what I call her) wrote back with a brilliant comment unpacking what this 'leftward limp back' really looks like. From Mamdani’s radical, grassroots-level socialism in New York to Connolly’s symbolic but significant win in Ireland, Orsi’s pragmatic moderation in Uruguay, and the reawakening of Die Linke under Schwerdtner and Van Aken. The title above is lifted from her note, which also made me realise how little I actually knew about the specifics. What struck me most was how local and contextual each of these victories is. Not one ideology marching in step, but small, separate rebellions against the same rot.
Another friend (an intellectual who wouldn’t admit that he is one) wrote to say that socialism is just a Ponzi scheme, and that dividing politicians into left and right is meaningless. Both of them, and both of their points, of course, matter. Because they both underline the same truth. That there’s no clean segregation between left and right in practice.
Governance isn’t theory.
It’s messy math.
The state and the market serve different gods. A business must chase profit to stay alive. The state must chase welfare to stay humane. Roughly a third of any population will always depend on the state’s care. The sick, the old, our children, and the struggling. They’ll never show up in anyone’s profit column. That’s why certain services must exist without any ambition on the balance sheet. In that sense, sustainability depends not on erasing profit, but on letting it fund what profit alone will never provide.
I can’t comment much on the New York or European scenes. I am not aware enough. But here at home, the contrast is visible every day. It makes little economic sense for the government to run KSRTC. Absolutely true. But when the same KSRTC offers free rides to cancer patients for treatment, that, right there, is the state at its most meaningful.
So in my view, this 'surge' isn’t about replacing capitalism with socialism. It’s about balancing the order, so that both can co-exist. One to generate. The other to distribute. And the health of any society lies in how honestly we can keep that balance. In the end, the revolution, it seems, begins in the fine print of the budget.
An another thing unrelated to the content but very much about my writing, my smart friend pointed out my tendency to editorialise. "Like a coach" is how he put it. Fair. I should watch that. I hate sermons myself, and when my readers actually mean a lot to me, I really can’t afford to be a bore. Sorry, folks. Next one onwards, I promise to behave.
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