Building Left Counter-Power: How to Defeat Neoliberalism and Avoid Organizational Collapse
Paul Mepschen's Lessons from the Dutch Socialist Party
The most urgent challenge facing any burgeoning socialist alternative, whether in Britain, the United States, or elsewhere, is not merely confronting capital, but avoiding organizational collapse through ideological co-option or parliamentary drift. The decades-long triumph of neoliberalism has created a global crisis where traditional social-democratic parties surrender their principles, absorbing market ideology like a sponge. The resulting vacuum of representation demands a new revolutionary approach. The experience of the Dutch Socialist Party (SP), analyzed by revolutionary organizers like Paul Mepschen in the early 2000s, offers crucial lessons for contemporary movements worldwide. Mepschen, who died in November 2025, offered an analysis that is a powerful guide to those building class struggle movements today.
Paul Mepschen’s Queer Politics: Beyond Tolerance to Liberation
To understand Paul Mepschen’s strategic vision for the Dutch Socialist Party, we must begin with his most uncompromising ideological commitment: the refusal to accept mere tolerance as emancipation. This position was grounded not in academic queer theory, but in his lived experience as a Dutch gay man navigating Dutch society. Despite his Marxist analysis, Mepschen understood himself as embedded within his country’s generation and culture; and he refused to allow that embeddedness to become an excuse for settling for second-class citizenship.
The distinction is critical: Mepschen rejected the liberal concept of acceptance and “tolerance,” arguing instead for genuine sexual liberation:
“Tolerance is ideology; the struggle for sexual liberation is not about being tolerated!”
This position was not abstract moralizing. In Dutch society of the 2000s, tolerating gay people meant accepting their existence within strict, managed boundaries; visible, domesticated, but fundamentally subordinate. Mepschen rejected this framework entirely. The struggle was for actual freedom to live and love without subordination to heteronormative state structures or bourgeois “respectability.” This meant fighting structural heteronormativity, not merely securing legal rights or social acceptance.
Against Culturalizing Poverty and Marginalization
Paul Mepschen’s intellectual trajectory illuminates why the struggle against the “culturalization” of social problems is inseparable from revolutionary strategy. His doctoral research, “Everyday Autochthony: Difference, Discontent and the Politics of Home in Amsterdam” (2016), reveals the material foundation of his thinking. Through ethnographic research on working-class communities in Amsterdam’s New West neighborhood, Mepschen demonstrated his deep capacity for understanding Dutch working people, not with contempt, but with genuine comprehension of how they navigated structural change and marginalization.
This is crucial because the dominant left tendency of his era was to attribute the drift toward racism, xenophobia, and right-wing populism to the “cultural deficiencies” of white working people. Mepschen rejected this analysis entirely. He acknowledged that working-class Dutch people harbored racist attitudes; this was undeniable. But he refused to ground this racism in some essential Dutch whiteness or cultural backwardness. Instead, he traced it to material causes: neoliberal policy, precarious employment, declining social services, and deliberate political manipulation by the bourgeoisie.
The stakes of this analysis were strategic: if racism flows from cultural deficiency, then the working class is an obstacle to liberation, and intellectuals must educate them into better values. If racism flows from structural marginalization under neoliberalism, then the working class is the potential social force for revolutionary transformation, precisely because they experience these contradictions most acutely. Mepschen chose the second path.
This commitment manifested in his concrete educational work. As he reflected:
“I teach in Rotterdam, at a vocational school in Rotterdam South. It is a school with struggling children with few prospects, largely but not exclusively immigrant. Children from the underclass. This is my ninth year. My profession is educator, much more than teacher.”
This was not charity; it was class struggle. His work with young people navigating marginalization and precarity was rooted in the conviction that genuine opposition to neoliberalism must be grounded in combating its structural consequences, not in cultural nationalism or assimilationism.
Working-Class Anti-Neoliberalism as Strategic Foundation
These positions on queer liberation and against culturalization converge in Mepschen’s core strategic insight: neoliberalism, not cultural deficiency, is the central explanation for the drift to the right and toward racism in contemporary society. This analysis unified his entire revolutionary project.
The Dutch context made this clear. The path of the Dutch Labour Party (PvdA) served as a universal cautionary tale. PvdA’s conversion into a “social-neoliberal party” accelerated “the demolition of solidarity, the stripping down of social security.” This betrayal created a “deep social crisis,” providing fertile ground for both the extreme right (Fortuynism) and the anti-neoliberal SP.
Paul Mepschen, as a Fourth Internationalist and organizer then engaged within the SP, confirmed that the party grew precisely because it stood “as the voice of the opposition to neo-liberalism.” The SP’s strategic breakthrough came through its 2005 campaign for the mass “NO” vote against the proposed European Constitution, a referendum the party was instrumental in organizing.
That campaign proved transformative. The results were decisive: a “massive ‘no’ against the constitution” expressed the profound gap between political elites and ordinary people. The SP was, significantly, “the only left party which campaigned for the NO” against the proposed neoliberal treaty. The party’s subsequent 2006 electoral breakthrough would mirror the composition of that 2005 “No” vote; proof that the party had successfully connected global ideological resistance to the daily needs and democratic anger of ordinary people.
This electoral growth, however, generated new dangers. And here Mepschen’s integrated analysis becomes essential: the struggle against neoliberalism must simultaneously be a struggle against all forms of oppression: racism, heteronormativity, patriarchy. Without this integration, the anti-neoliberal movement fragments, and the far-right monopolizes opposition to liberal cosmopolitanism. Without this integration, queer and immigrant communities see themselves as having no stake in the anti-neoliberal project. The revolutionary alternative to neoliberalism must be a genuinely unifying project. Yet despite Mepschen and other left-wing activists’ attempts to reverse this trajectory through the 2007 Congress debates, the SP ultimately failed these organizational tests. Yet despite Mepschen and other left-wing SP activists’ attempts to institutionalize these reforms through the 2007 Congress debates, the SP would ultimately fail these tests.
The SP’s Actual Trajectory: Why These Warnings Were Not Heeded
Despite the prescient warnings articulated at the 2007 Congress and the concrete structural proposals put forward by SP left-wingers, the party continued its trajectory toward parliamentary moderation and ideological compromise. The vulnerabilities Mepschen identified did not remain theoretical; they metastasized into permanent institutional features of the SP’s functioning.
By 2024-2025, the situation had become untenable. The great majority of SP left-wingers, unable to reverse the party’s rightward drift and unable to build the organizational counter-power Mepschen had advocated for, left the party. Paul Mepschen was among them. His final political statement, reflected in his last Facebook profile before his death in November 2025, called for a vote for BIJ1—an explicitly anti-racist, anti-capitalist, and internationalist political formation that represented a genuine break from the SP’s compromises.
The tragedy is instructive: when revolutionary activists within a radical party fail to institutionalize the structural counterweights Mepschen advocated for before parliamentary power becomes entrenched, the party will inevitably succumb to the vulnerabilities he diagnosed. The SP’s experience across two decades—from the promising radicalism of its 2005 European Constitution campaign to its recent decline—demonstrates that good intentions and revolutionary vision are necessary but insufficient without deliberate organizational architecture designed to resist the gravitational pull of parliamentarism.
Three Vulnerabilities Every Radical Party Faces
Yet even as the SP grew electorally, serious questions emerged about whether this success would destroy the very revolutionary character that made it attractive. For any new left party, the obstacles faced by the SP are not unique Dutch problems, but inherent vulnerabilities threatening every radical movement attempting to acquire power without sacrificing its revolutionary character.
Vulnerability 1: The Disconnect Between Mass Support and Organizational Power
Electoral success can mask underlying strategic weakness. Mepschen stressed that the foundation of a socialist alternative remains vulnerable when:
“The enormous problem the SP and the whole of the militant Left face is that the amount of electoral support for the party stands in no proportion to the power of the social movements and the political activity of the people.”
A party can win millions of votes while lacking the organized capacity to transform society. Votes alone do not build power; organized movements do. This disconnect is the first warning sign that a radical party is becoming isolated from the struggles it claims to represent.
Vulnerability 2: Parliamentary Co-option and the Drift to Moderation
The gravitational pull toward becoming a “normal” social-democratic party is a permanent internal threat. This phenomenon is characterized by the political weight of elected officials overpowering the activist base. As noted by SP activists and organizers:
“The problem is that in the SP the weight of the parliamentary group and the groups in city councils have become much greater in comparison with the weight of militants outside of such institutions.”
This institutional drift, what Dutch organizers called “faction-centrism,” risks abandoning the fight against “the neoliberal demolition” for the pursuit of consensus and parliamentary acceptability. It is not a flaw of individual leaders, but a structural dynamic inherent to parliamentarism itself.
Vulnerability 3: Ideological Drift and Failure on Anti-Oppression Struggles
Radical movements often fail if they do not aggressively integrate all forms of liberation struggle, allowing opponents to successfully weaponize cultural and identity issues against them. Mepschen specifically critiqued the SP for needing “a clearer anti-racist profile” and failing to profile strongly enough on “feminist and LGBT themes.” His opposition to tolerance ideology directly informed this organizational critique.
Why is this a class strategy vulnerability, not just an identity issue?
The neoliberal right weaponizes cultural nationalism precisely because the radical left abandons these struggles to focus narrowly on economic redistribution. When radical parties fail to lead anti-racist, feminist, and LGBT liberation fights, they cede these movements to liberal co-option or allow the far-right to dominate discourse. The result: working-class communities fragment along identity lines, preventing the unified class consciousness necessary for revolutionary transformation. Mepschen’s insistence that the SP adopt a “clearer anti-racist profile” and stronger “feminist and LGBT themes” was not cultural distraction; it was essential class strategy.
The anti-neoliberal struggle must be inextricably linked to opposing assimilation and combating racism, or it will fail to unify the diverse working class against capital.
Three Strategic Directives for Organizational Survival
To prevent organizational collapse and maintain a revolutionary trajectory, a new left party, whether in Britain, emerging from DSA chapters in the United States, or developing within European radical movements, must adhere to these directives. These lessons were articulated by SP militants and organizers, most urgently in the debates preceding the party’s 15th National Congress in November 2007, as the party grappled with the consequences of its own electoral growth.
Directive I: Prioritize the Utopian Project and Offensive Alternatives
The party must deliberately shift its focus from defense to offense. The goal is not merely to mitigate neoliberal attacks, but to propose a completely different society. Mepschen demanded that the party commit to an ambitious vision, arguing that the SP must win people
“for the utopian project that the struggle for a 21st century socialism is.”
He explicitly warned against prioritizing short-term governance:
“The most important goal is not to make the SP governable for the Labour Party and Christian Democracy, but to build leftist counter-power and win as many people as possible for a real alternative to the neoliberal demolition.”
This distinction is critical. A radical party that pursues government eligibility above all else will inevitably compromise its principles to achieve office. A radical party that prioritizes building counter-power and articulating socialist alternatives will maintain its revolutionary character even when winning elections.
The strategic lesson: Develop compelling, utopian, anti-capitalist political programs before you seek office. Do not wait until electoral success forces you to moderate.
Directive II: Institutionalize Activist Power to Counter Parliamentary Dominance
To prevent the inevitable drift toward parliamentary absorption, the party must create structural mechanisms that keep activist power above elected official power. Recognizing this threat, SP militants and activists proposed a concrete structural solution: mandatory member working groups and commissions.
At the SP’s 15th National Congress in November 2007, activists including Leo de Kleijn articulated the crisis clearly: “The problem is that in the SP the weight of the parliamentary group and the groups in city councils have become much greater in comparison with the weight of militants outside of such institutions.” In response, they proposed that party members should be able to “organize on the basis of their specific knowledge, activity or both” within thematic working groups covering union organizing, international solidarity, feminist activism, and LGBT liberation.
The strategic intention was explicit: these groups would “function as alternatives to the practice in the party that most of the development of ideas and views happens in and around the parliamentary group.” They were designed to serve three critical functions:
Counterweight: To challenge the disproportionate political weight of elected officials over activist membership.
Idea Development: To ensure that socialist alternatives, policy innovation, and political programs originate from rank-and-file activists and organizers, not solely from parliamentary staff.
Deep Rooting: To strengthen the party’s embeddedness in key social struggles, unions, anti-racist organizing, feminist movements, reinforcing identity as a movement against neoliberalism rather than merely a legislative body.
Tellingly, parliamentary representatives opposed these proposals, arguing that Tweede Kamerleden (national parliamentary members) already possessed “sufficient knowledge” of relevant themes, thus making working groups redundant. This defensive response itself revealed the power dynamic the militants were attempting to overcome: the parliamentary faction viewed grassroots organizing as competition rather than complementary.
The critical strategic lesson: SP militants identified the vulnerability and proposed structural solutions. Whether these solutions were ultimately implemented effectively remains an open question; but the diagnosis itself is definitive. Every radical party faces identical structural pressures toward faction-centrism unless it deliberately constructs counterweights.
Practical question for revolutionary organizers: Does your organization have member working groups functioning as genuine counterweight to elected officials? If not, you face the identical vulnerability that SP activists sought to overcome, and you need to act before parliamentary weight becomes insurmountable.
Directive III: Fight for Radical Pluralism and Reject Assimilation
A socialist movement must be “as diverse as they come.” This means actively integrating the struggles of marginalized communities, recognizing that “Diversity is one of the core elements of modern society.” The party must take a clear stand “on the side of immigrants” and reject nationalist assimilation politics, which criminalize the vulnerable. Instead of seeking conformity, the party must fight for genuine autonomy: the right to choose and live freely on matters of sexuality and life, alongside the right to decent work and guaranteed income.
The objective is a “pluralistic, democratic, feminist, anti-racist and internationalist system of norms and values”; one that unites diverse working-class struggles under a common banner of structural transformation, not liberal tolerance.
The Test for Revolutionary Organizations
The question for revolutionary organizers today is not whether your organization will face these three vulnerabilities; you will. The question is whether you are structurally prepared to resist them.
The Dutch Socialist Party’s experience at its 2007 Congress provides a definitive diagnosis: Even as the party won millions of votes following its successful 2005 European Constitution campaign, its own activists recognized that parliamentary power was overwhelming grassroots organizing. They identified the mechanism (faction-centrism) and proposed solutions (member working groups organized by theme and activity). Yet the parliamentary faction itself resisted these proposals, arguing that elected officials already possessed sufficient knowledge.
This resistance proves the point: the drift toward parliamentarism is not accidental, but structurally reinforced. Elected officials naturally defend their accumulated power against grassroots counterweights. Revolutionary organizations must anticipate this resistance and implement structural solutions before the parliamentary faction becomes powerful enough to block them.
Ask yourselves:
Have you built member working groups as a counterweight to elected officials, or are you waiting until it’s too late?
Have you articulated an offensive socialist alternative, not just defensive resistance to neoliberal attacks?
Have you made anti-racism and anti-imperialist solidarity non-negotiable organizational identity, not optional commitments?
For British activists building new left formations, American DSA chapters winning city council seats, or European radical parties managing governments, the Dutch Socialist Party’s experience provides a tested diagnostic framework. The vulnerabilities are universal. The structural dynamics are predictable. The window for implementing counterweights is narrower than you think.
Whether your revolutionary movement survives electoral success depends on whether you implement these directives now, before parliamentary weight threatens your revolutionary character.
Key articles by Paul Mepschen in Grenzeloos
Paul’s articles for Grenzeloos are collected here: https://www.grenzeloos.org/users/paul-mepschen
De linkse tegenmacht versterken
Strengthening Left Opposition to Neoliberalism in the SP
14.11.2007
This Grenzeloos article directly addresses the core organizational threats (Vulnerabilities 1 & 2) by arguing that the SP’s mass support is disproportionate to the power of social movements. It explicitly proposes the structural solution advocated in Directive II: establishing thematic working groups as a “counterweight” to prevent ideas from being dominated by the parliamentary faction (”faction-centrism”).
Against Tolerance: An Ideological Critique
01.06.2009
This Grenzeloos article provides the ideological foundation for Vulnerability 3 (Ideological Drift) and Directive III (Radical Pluralism). It asserts that the concept of tolerance is an ideology that mystifies real power struggles, demanding instead a fight against structural heteronormativity and a convergence of anti-racist and queer struggles.
Emancipatie en integratie kunnen niet zonder klassenstrijd
Class Struggle, Emancipation, and Integration Cannot Do Without Class Struggle
29.11.2008
Co-authored by Leo de Kleijn and Paul Mepschen, this Grenzeloos article supports the strategic analysis that the marginalisation of migrant groups is a direct result of neoliberal policy, not cultural failure. It reinforces the claim that a “radical break with neoliberal policy is needed”, arguing that anti-oppression struggles (Directive III) must be inextricably linked to class politics.
A Progressive Alternative to Dutch Neoliberalism
24.09.2005
This Grenzeloos article reinforces the context of the “Strategic Crisis” (PvdA betrayal) by detailing how the PvdA absorbed neoliberal ideology during the Kok cabinets. It directly supports Directive I (Prioritize the Utopian Project) by calling for focusing on building social movements and proposing radical, offensive alternatives such as work time reduction and wealth redistribution.
Nee tegen dit Europa, referendum nu!
No to This Europe, Referendum Now!
26.09.2007
This Grenzeloos article documents the crucial 2005 “NO” vote against the EU Constitution, which the blueprint identifies as the turning point that confirmed the profound gap between elites and ordinary people and validated the SP’s anti-neoliberal strategy. It showcases the PvdA leadership’s commitment to the neoliberal project despite opposition from its base.
A Gay Teacher in Rotterdam South
25.01.2006
This Grenzeloos article details Mepschen’s experience as an educator working with struggling, mostly immigrant, children in Rotterdam South, underscoring the need for political opposition to be rooted in combating structural marginalization, not just parliamentary maneuvering.