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Social democrats need a new understanding of the historic compromises
that are necessary for the practice of power.
The German election
defeat followed on from losses for social democratic parties in the European
Parliament elections. To be sure, socialists kept power in Portugal and
Norway, but without a majority of votes. And PASOK’s win in Greece
was based on a new politics, of criticising state bureaucracy and pledging
support for small businesses, in place of old-style statist clientilism.
At a regional or city level the left can win power. But this is less and
less the case at state government level. The democratic left is challenged
by other parties that claim to represent its values or its electorate. The
national-populists in the anti-European parties of the xenophobic right
attract many of their voters from the white working class. The anti-capitalist
parties of the populist left attract some of the proletariat, and workers
protected in public service unions. The anti-industry parties of the greens
also steal many progressive votes.
So why is social democracy currently in crisis? Firstly, it has always been
an error to assume that economic crisis is good for the left. When citizens
are scared for their jobs and salaries, or the future of their children,
they vote defensively and stay with conservatives. So the left must have
a more sophisticated analysis of the new economy. Denunciation of neoliberalism
or the rich or capitalism sounds good on a platform but does not offer a
way forward. Without a deep understanding of the new materiality which people
experience in many different ways, the left simply repeats the slogans of
the last century, which are not relevant today.
Secondly, social democracy talks global but behaves nationally. While capital
and culture and communications are now transnational, the organisation of
left politics is unable to escape the prison of the nation. The democratic
left must have a theory of the nation and its relation to geo-economic,
geo-ecological and geo-political upheavals. The European Union, for example,
must be the servant of the national citizens of Europe, not the replacement
or grave-digger of the nation.
Third, social democracy must decide if it likes protest and propositions
or if it desires power. Twentieth-century social democracy has many achievements.
But too many of its ideas were put into practice by the right. The statisation
of the economy, and the creation of the welfare state during the three decades
of mixed economy and social state that were shaped after the war, arose
from ideas of the left but were implemented by the right – de Gaulle
in France, Adenauer in Germany, the Christian Democrats in Italy, the Conservatives
in Britain. Today the left is full of ideas and conferences but seems uninterested
in the supreme task of politics – the conquest of power. That requires
historic compromises – with market economics, with the nation, and
with voters. Instead, the democratic left in Europe preaches protest, while
the democratic right has a practice of power.
The democratic left needs policies that connect to people not to metropolitan
elites organising endless conferences. As parties of workers they must find
an answer to the trade union question. European unions are no longer major
players in the capitalist labour market. They operate in the public sector.
For the wage of the public sector worker to go up more taxes must be paid.
This means the income of the citizen goes down. There are more small businesses
in Britain and France than unionised workers in private companies. Reform,
indeed the rebirth, of trade unions should be a priority.
One cannot divorce politics and personality. The left lacks convincing leaders,
but leaders must be convinced and confident themselves. This is not the
case in many countries. There may be some hope in Nordic nations, where
a new generation of younger women leaders are shaping a twenty-first century
social democracy – in place of twentieth-century statist socialists
who are not really convinced by the historic compromises of social democracy
in the style of Willy Brandt or Felipe Gonzalez. Good leaders arise from
a party ready to change. Labour, for example, has to move beyond the Third
Way pieties of the early 1990s. Until the parties of social democracy are
ready for change the leaders will not appear. Europe’s social democratic
parties, including Labour, need to change for the twenty-first century.
But repeating the incantations of the past is so much easier.
Denis MacShane is a Labour MP and is working on a book
about the future of the democratic left in Europe.
To read more articles,
and make a comment, go to
http://www.goodsociety.social-europe.eu
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