On the morning of May 4, 2026, as the assembly election results came in from the state of Kerala, India, the Congress-led United Democratic Front had secured a landslide, ending a decade of Left Democratic Front (LDF) rule, headed by the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI(M)). The LDF, which had held 99 seats after the 2021 election, was reduced to just 35. A large share of the cabinet, including several senior ministers, lost their seats. With the fall of Kerala, India is left without a communist-led state government for the first time since 1977, after five decades.

Some commentators called it an anti-incumbency wave. The party had been in power too long. Voters were tired. The former LDP Chief Minister and member of the CPI(M) Politburo, Pinarayi Vijayan, had grown arrogant. All of that is true. But it is not enough. What happened in Kerala on May 4 is part of a pattern that much of the global left names only partially, even as some currents theorise it explicitly as left and social-democratic parties that govern well but do not transform the underlying structure of power – that manage capitalism rather than challenge it – eventually lose, and lose badly. Recent debates about non-reformist reforms and democratic socialism have tried to codify this dilemma as a strategy problem: how to win reforms that build power for deeper rupture instead of stabilising the status quo. Kerala is the latest entry in this long list, and it will not be the last.