Jorge Tamames (2020) For the People: Left Populism in Spain and the US

Abstract

There are three sections to this book, each of which contains three chapters, each of which begins with three quotations. This is a systematic author. The clear structure makes the text easy to navigate and a useful index makes it easier still. The third section fulfils the promise of the title, with analyses of the rise and considerable fall of the Podemos movement in Spain and Bernie Sanders’ promising but ultimately unsuccessful 2020 campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination in America. The second section lays the ground for these two analyses, with accounts of the political economies of Spain and America, respectively, over the 35 years or so up to the recent financial crash; a major part of the argument of the book is that the current 'populist moment' can only be properly understood by locating it in its historical context, which dates back to the neoliberal turn of the late 1970s.