Letter from Slovenia

Left Unity is not the newest left party in Europe! New left initiatives are taking place in a number of countries across Europe and we share many common principles and objectives – particularly to work together in solidarity. The latest news comes from the Initiative for Democratic Socialism in Slovenia.

Dear Left Unity Comrades,

I writing to inform you about the state of the socialist left in Slovenia, especially the party Initiative for Democratic Socialism. Being established only on 8^th of March this year, we are a very young party not only by duration but also by membership. The majority of most active members are youngsters under 30 years old. However, this is already quickly changing as more and more people are joining us and the age structure of our party is becoming ever more diversified. As of now we already have more than 400 members and are actually approaching the benchmark of 500 members! As no one among us had any previous experience of working in a political party, we must say that it is a big learning process for all of us and quite a challenge on a daily basis. But we have a collective that is strongly committed to the cause of socialism and this is the best guarantee for positive future development of our party!

Our party formed a coalition with two other leftist parties (Party of Sustainable Development and Workers Democratic Party), which goes under the name of “United Left” and is our common platform for European elections. It is worth saying that this is the only political option in Slovenia that explicitly declares itself as socialist and enjoys the official support of the Party of European Left. Whatever the upcoming election outcome, we can already be satisfied with some important media interventions. For example, the coordinator of our party, Luka Mesec, had the opportunity to challenge established political parties and their representatives in a pre-election debate on our national broadcaster. Mesec successfully articulated that both in European parliament as well as in many national parliaments, there exists a big coalition of liberals, conservatives and social democrats, who – despite their rhetorical differences – advocate the same policies. They all propose more of the same as a solution to the catastrophic situation the EU is currently facing.

When other candidates (members of the Slovenian or European parliaments) tried to dismiss our coordinator as a radical, he clearly stated that the true radicals can only be those who believe endless austerity, which causes immense social suffering, can continue. Therefore, our position is the only possible rational one. Like most of the member parties of the European left, we are not euro-sceptics, no, we entirely refuse Europe as it is nowadays and believe we should all join forces in a fight for socialist Europe.

This is the agenda we will be advocating during the European election campaign. However, despite being a young socialist party, we are all aware that our project is of a long-term nature and that socialism can only be achieve through massive popular support. Participating in each and every election is for us just one of the means of spreading our ideas. More importantly, we are focusing on building a proper cadre organization that will be able to effectively address all kinds of social problems. A party that will be present among the people, regardless of elections. After the elections, we will also try to achieve an observer membership status in the party of the European Left, as we believe we can be a productive partner of the already existing member parties. We would be grateful for any expressions of support or for any helpful advice you might have for us during this process.

In solidarity,

Anej Korsika,

Coordinator of International Affairs

Initiative for Democratic Socialism