nationalism and national Keynesianism as well as the meandering course of SPD leader Sigmar Gabriel and his attempt to resolve all leftist contradictions within himself are manifestations of a Left that no longer dares to explicitly name the actual problems and to search for political solutions. The task simply seems too huge, because it would imply actually conceiving of national and global justice together and not playing one off against the other.This brings to light a grievous structural problem of contemporary social-democratic parties. Within the national state, they were faced with two alternatives. The first involved transforming the structures of the capitalist system of production and allocation at central points in such a way that workers in particular, but increasingly other groups as well, derive greater benefit from the prosperity that has been attained and are also granted a voice in deciding how it is to be achieved. The second alternative was more restricted in scope, because it concentrated less on changing structures than on compensating for the most egregious negative impacts of the system, in particular the risks of unemployment, illness and old-age poverty.Finally, with the "third way" of Tony Blair and Gerhard Schroder, the conviction became dominant that effective social policy is above all labor-market policy, making excluded persons "fit" for this market, with corresponding policies of "support and stipulation." The policies that were implemented during Mr. Schroder's chancellorship precluded for the foreseeable future the possibility that the Social Democrats could again become Germany's strongest party. And an indecisive mishmash of all three alternatives has paralyzed the Socialist Party in France. Not even in the euro crisis were these two parties able to formulate an alternative concept for Europe that thinks through the first of the aforementioned paths in transnational terms.Apparently the Left in Europe doesn't dare to recognize the most cursed souls on this earth as coequal and then, when they flee in desperation, to receive them in Europe or to support them in their home countries in hereto unheard-of dimensions and to fetch the money for this undertaking from where it is to be had, namely from those who profit from the globalized market. For that reason, the Left flees into the illusions of the nation-state.The intellectual debate of the Left is characterized in many places by this enervated futility. It indulges far too often in clever and entertaining deconstructions of its own standard position until nothing remains other than an aesthetic trace of unflinching uncertainty. These are helpless reflexes triggered by the supposed lack of a political option for transnational action. But the many movements which, in defiance of national and cultural borders, are unwilling to resign themselves to the existing state of affairs should provide the impetus for conceiving new political forms that are simultaneously realistic and utopian and vacillate in neither their standards nor their problem analysis.Because it cannot be that the current world-historical situation, which calls for a comprehensive analysis of structural injustice and a corresponding transnational perspective, is met by the Left only with escapism, nationalism and exhaustion while the two sides of