Why the Left Has Ceased to Be an Alternative in Contemporary Politics

Original article: Por qué la izquierda dejó de ser alternativa

By David Cortés Páez and Leonardo Lavanderos

For decades, the left and center-left parties were viable alternatives to power as they managed to understand social suffering. They didn’t win solely due to their programs; they grasped—whether accurately or not—the fractured relationships between the State, the economy, and people’s daily lives.

This understanding has been lost in recent times. According to analyst Leonardo Lavanderos, the issue is not just political but also ecopoietic: the left has stopped comprehending how social life reproduces itself as a network of relationships. It began viewing society as a collection of objects to be managed—public policies, indicators, reforms—and neglected the vibrant relationships that sustain social interaction.

Politics has turned into mere management, and management has become a technical language. However, people don’t live by indicators; they live through connections. From this perspective, the left’s defeat is not just electoral; it’s relational.

When someone expresses, «I am afraid,» politics responds with a plan. When someone says, «I feel abandoned,» the answer is a program. When they voice, «I am being abused,» the response is a report. This disconnection highlights the problem.

Lavanderos clearly illustrates that when a culture neglects its fundamental relationships, it enters a state of unsustainability. This is precisely what happened with institutional leftism: it failed to uphold the link between emotion, culture, and politics.

A new phenomenon compounds this issue, discussed in ‘Power, Data, and Emotions’: the power dynamics have shifted. Today, public problems don’t primarily originate in political parties or organized social movements. They emerge as collective emotions circulating through social media, videos, comments, and digital conversations. These emotions are transformed into data, which begin to shape what issues make it onto the public agenda.

Power is no longer exercised solely from the State; it now operates from the algorithms that dictate attention.

The left has failed to grasp this transformation. It continues to speak as if the public space were the Parliament, while in reality, it has moved to digital platforms. Yet, it has also hesitated to fully engage in this new arena, as doing so requires confronting uncomfortable truths: reconnecting with real emotions instead of merely delivering correct narratives.

In contrast, others have adapted. The far-right recognized that politics today revolves around emotions, choosing to engage through fear and anger, devoid of ethics or institutional responsibility.

Traditional right-wing factions provided order but lacked an understanding of social pain. Meanwhile, the left, ensnared in its own technical jargon, became disconnected from the populace. From an ecopoietic perspective, this is crucial: it’s not enough to be normatively correct if the relational connection is lost. A political stance can appear sound on paper yet be utterly unviable in real life.

From the standpoint of algorithmic power, the problem intensifies: if you don’t translate social suffering into understandable narratives, others will oversimplify, distort, or manipulate these issues.

The left has ceased to be an alternative because it has stopped being an interpreter. It has relinquished the ability to understand the emotional landscape of people, retreating into the safety of technicality. The outcome is a soulless politics.

The solution is neither to revert to the past nor to radicalize disruption without constraints. The way forward is to build something new: a politics capable of integrating emotion and reason, digital territory and institutional frameworks, data and humanity.

What is needed today is disruption with order and a relational ecology. A politics that does not view social issues as isolated objects but as wounded relationships that require healing. A politics that recognizes data as not neutral but as emotional footprints of a society in tension. A politics that prioritizes listening before administering.

If the left wishes to reclaim its position as a viable alternative, it must stop speaking solely of itself and reconnect with the real lives of people. No political force can endure when it loses touch with how a society perceives and feels its own world.

By David Cortés Páez and Leonardo Lavanderos