Professional Writing Servicehttp://StudyHub.vip/Asking-The--Quot--Right--Quot--Question

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Questions to the participants of the forum
Asking the „right“ questions
With „right questions“ we mean questions which are essential for
 understanding the reasons, the development, the consequences of issues,
 criticizing ideologies, explanations, theses, conceptions, theories of other forces,
 coming into (or staying in) communication and possibly into co-operation in order to
understand urgent problems and deal with them,
 developing left wing policies i.e. struggling for a specific approach to raising societal issues
while strengthening left wing forces in relation to others and in effecting a change in
societal power constellations.
Accordingly, we are trying to ask the „right questions” for getting into a process of communication
and hopefully of co-operation with you. For starting this communication, we do not expect
answers to all questions or any special sequence of answers. We shall pick up the replies as we
shall get them. It is OK to try to answer one single question or only a few...
We have formulated four different groups of questions relating to four essential aspects of political
action:
I. On the current conditions for political action (What?)
II. on the reasons of our political situations (Why?)
III. on the beginnings of a common work on political strategies (How?)
IV. on organisations, parties, and on the European Left Party (Who?)
I. What is our current situation?
1. How, why and with which political and societal consequences has the EU (as a multi-level
political system) been changing and changed on the existing different levels, since the outbreak of
the global financial crisis?
2. What part do and can left wing political forces play in the present socio-political state of the EU
and in which ways can they react to the ways it is building and deploying its own defensive
counter-strategies?
3. What do the following six issues mean in this context?
- the „case of Greece“,
- the „Ukraine problem“,
- the Brexit.
- the rebuilding of walls in Europe (and in its neighbourhood) against refugees; refugee-deals
against refugees
- dominant policies relating to Syria, and to the Near and Middle East in general
- the celebrated Paris „climate deal“.
II. On the strategic weakness of the Left
- Why did the neo-liberal ‘revolution’ triumph and structurally weaken the left, in particular during
the 1980s?
- Why, in the aftermath of the recent global financial crisis, which subsequently grew into a crisis of
the euro and of the EU, did the left wing forces generally remain in a situation of defensive?
- When have there been determinate concrete events or even „windows of opportunity“ for the
left to make use of a given situation to do something specific and to really become stronger in the

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process? What was the case then and why has it happened?
- Why is it the populist right wing which is politically gleaning the profits from the unresolved crises
of European societies?
- Which are the causes behind the lack of solidarity provided by the left in the EU with the elected
Greek government?
- Why has the left so clearly underestimated the need to clarify what lies behind the much debated
issues of “demographic pressures”, referring in reality to questions of gender relations, of inter-
generational relations and of the inclusion of migrants?
- Which kinds of „fetishisation“ have impressed and influenced our own political thinking, and
when and why did this happen – or how does ‘neo-liberalism’ impact and influence even our
thinking and the general behaviour of left wing forces?
- Why have the political forces of the left wing consistently failed to ask (and to answer) the
question of the modes of living prevailing within present society – despite the articulated critiques
of these modes elaborated by the existing anti-colonial, feminist, ecological, anti-war and
democratisation movements?
III. Key questions which have to be answered urgently to even start the debate on strategies
within the European left:
a) Which are the most immediate dangers to be overcome?
b) Which are the main underlying challenges, at this very moment, and which will remain central
for the next few years?
c) What is realistically possible to achieve by our efforts and what does this mean in terms of
further strategy building?
d) How do we have to change ourselves in order to grow stronger and to develop our own ability
for working successfully, and on which kinds of unity and of political alliances?
e) Do we see the need and the possibility to make first steps towards starting common work on
such a strategy? If YES, how can we effectively do so?
f) Which on-going activities should be initiated and supported now? What can possibly and
urgently be done at this very moment?
These questions merge into (respectively with) three further questions:
1. How could the left become able to act on European scale, while avoiding being naively
pro-EU, with its more or less neo-liberal implications, and likewise avoiding being
naively anti-EU, and far too removed from European problems and far too close to
nationalist political forces?
2. It is still possible to act in an emancipatory and solidarity-based way on the EU level,
while fully facing the developments (already realised and still on-going) of its
depoliticizing policiies, as well as the actual weakness of left-wing forces – especially
under the conditions of the already on-going build-up of a new wave of the global
financial crisis?
3. How can the left make the aim and tendency of an „ever closer union“ effectively
unreachable, while making democratic control an effectively European political issue –
without falling victim to the illusionary option of simply getting all the vital decisions
back to the national level (which the left should not embrace – not only because of the
strange bed-fellows currently dominating anti-EU politics!).

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IV. On our organisations
Why do we, in 2018, still ask elementary questions about the relations
 between left parties and trade unions
 between left parties and social movements
 between social movements and trade unions
in such an abstract (unproductive and boring) way?
And, accordingly: What have been the reasons for the decline of the European Social Forum
movement?
We therefore have to ask the question of the actual role and the potential of left parties more
specifically:
 Can an organisation exist and act as a party and as a movement at the same time? (If YES,
what does this mean for the party organisation and life?)
 How can a maximum of participation in developing and implementing policy by the party
members be combined with a unified action of the party capable to use and to combine all
forms of political activity, from road blocks and non-legitimised manifestations via legal
mass demonstrations, petitions and parliamentary activities to the participation in state
administration and government on all levels?
 How to make party factions productive, while avoiding the discrimination of those party
members who are not part of any faction, as well as destructive battles between the
factions, while, at the same time, increasing the attractiveness and political effectiveness of
the party?
 How to organise a kind of political division of labour within the party which will help to
make contradictions productive, e.g. by making use of the fact that party members are
engaged in very different fields of activities, with very different roles and with
responsibilities on very different levels?
 What can a left government really do under the current conditions – generally speaking,
and in the context of the present EU?
 Which are the criteria and conditions for its political success?
What does all that mean for a European Left Party that will be attractive for
 the members of this party as members of member parties at the same time,
 other leftist forces organised in parties, trade unions, social movements … or active outside
formal organisations,
 trade unions,
 social movements,
 other left wing parties in Europe and the world?
Contact:
Judith Dellheim, Judith.dellheim@rosalux.org, Frieder Otto Wolf fow@snafu.de