People’s populism? Institutionalization and organization as the blind spots of contemporary left populism

This article seeks to explain the failure of the left populist wave of the 2010s. Against prevailing explanations that emphasize contingency, historical context or leadership decisions, we argue that the failure of left populism stems, among other things, from the shortcomings of post-Marxism. More specifically, post-Marxism seeks to replace the material forms of organization – central to the Marxist tradition – with symbolic representation, thereby conceiving the ‘people’ as a discursive construct rather than as a politically organized force. This, in turn, leads to the neglect of material organization through the party form. We develop this argument through an analysis of both post-Marxism as articulated by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, and the trajectories of Syriza and Podemos parties. We conclude that the future of left populism depends not merely on its ability to name the people – but on its capacity to organize them.