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Remi Nilsen
Can social democracy be a goal in itself, and not just a means to some other end?
'I have not moved to the left, it's the world that has shifted to the right', said a Norwegian conservative politician some years ago, commenting on his seemingly leftist stance after retirement. And this shift to the right has not been caused solely by the actions of 'neoliberals'. From Mitterrand, via Blair and Schröder et al, to the few social-democratic governments still in power, 'neoliberalism' has not been the exclusive hallmark of an evil enemy, but has been evident in the actions of friends, in their different attempts 'to regulate and manage the power of the market', as they have 'uncritically embraced the new globalised capitalism', as Cruddas and Nahles put it.
Over the last thirty to forty years, traditional social-democratic parties have bought wholesale into the promise that growth in profits equals employment, and have voluntarily handed over public goods to private property. This has undoubtedly created 'a new way of living together' - one based on an ever-accelerating dialectical spiral of production and consumption, which has reduced political economy to questions of consumer confidence and competitiveness.
Instead of embracing 'a new model of social democracy', based on the 'values of freedom, equality, solidarity and sustainability', actually existing social democracies over the last decade have tended towards an embarrassing rapprochement with the reactionary and/or populist forces that have been winning support among alienated traditional social-democratic constituencies. Ultimately - and particularly after the recent financial crisis - this reveals the difficult nature of the social-democratic balancing act between public and private property. It is therefore encouraging the read a vision of 'a new kind of economy […] with a variety of different economic structures and forms of ownership'; and that '[o]nly by reorganising the system of production can we create a society of freedom and equality.'
At a time when most of Western Europe has lost faith in its centre-left political parties, and when traditional social-democratic strongholds are falling, the most left-wing government in Norwegian history was re-elected earlier this autumn, at it once more secured a majority in Parliament. But this centre-left coalition, which includes the Socialist Left, has yet to show any sign of wanting to renew or rejuvenate social democracy as an idea or praxis. Even in the midst of capitalism's grand failure, the trickle-down paradigm has remained its guiding spirit.
But one thing still persists: leftist rhetoric. Even in its policy platform ('Soria Moria II') the governing coalition in Norway could not let go of its oppositional self-understanding, as it declared that it would govern 'in a spirit of social critique' (as opposed to social construction?). The declaration follows a well-known menu: regulation, public ownership, more democracy, more innovation, green economy … In their 'exploratory text' Jon Cruddas and Andrea Nahles offer the same menu: more state ownership, more regulation, more international cooperation, more democracy, all driven by the magical espousal of sustainability and job creation. And most of this is apparently going to be achieved within the framework of existing national, European and international institutions - which have shown themselves to be not only inefficient, but also prone to lobbying, and bureaucratic limitations on democracy rather than its extension. In short, like Mr Creosote in the Monty Python sketch, we are being offered every dish on the menu - from a list which everyone free of neoliberal indoctrination would assent to - all served up together in a way that begs the question: Where is the wafer mint?
It seems that Cruddas and Nahles, in common with much of the post-meltdown discourse on the left, want too much and yet too little. They still want to rely the magic of the market: 'in the short to medium term the most effective solution to fight climate change is to establish a global carbon market'; 'the knowledge economy matters', but 'the higher education system must be decoupled from the market and from commercial imperatives'. If we are to learn anything from the recent crisis and the following financial blackmail, it should be that the social-democratic idea of balancing private and public interests is doomed to fail by the very nature of capitalism. The main problem in the parliamentary left is that it still seems to be unwilling to abandon its utopia of the 1990s, of a happy and benign capitalism - that idea that social democracy is the true end of history. The question that should be asked is: Should we settle for social democracy as 'capitalism with a human face', or could it really be a means to create 'a new kind of economy' and new 'forms of ownership', and to begin 'reorganising the system of production [to] create a society of freedom and equality'.
Remi Nilsen is Editor-in-Chief of the Norwegian edition of Le Monde diplomatique.
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