|
Social democrats should resist giving ground to the populist right
and start some serious thinking about intercultural dialogue.
The paper by Andrea and Jon paints an excellent canvas for the project of
the twenty-first century European left, which, as they indicate, has been
severely lacking since the collapse of neoliberalism and the prior ‘third
way’/‘neue Mitte’ accommodations to it.
One way of encapsulating the challenge facing social democrats is to say
that we have to find answers to three questions likely to define this century:
can we live together as equals? (the welfare question) can we live together?
(the diversity question) and can we live at all? (the sustainability question).
The Good Society has much to say about the first of these, and not surprisingly
so: the Nordic societies have demonstrated for decades that it is possible
to combine egalitarianism and entrepreneurialism – something that
the right persistently denies. If welfare is treated as a factor of production
rather than as faux frais that must always be minimised, the historic Scandinavian
success becomes easy to understand. We can decommodify labour without the
economy collapsing – which in fact is caused by the operation of unregulated
financial markets, as Keynes analysed.
As long as the goal is universal welfare funded by progressive taxation,
a consensus can be created and sustained which includes professional strata
as well as the more narrowly defined working class, since the project is
not so much about redistribution (though it is) as about guaranteeing that
everyone can enjoy public welfare in a way that would otherwise be prohibitive
for all but the most wealthy. This gets out of the vicious circles faced
in Britain – the stigmatisation of welfare clients, and their gaming
of the means-tested system; and in Germany – the ‘productivity
whip’ and ‘inactivity trap’ associated with a system funded
by payroll taxes.
The way forward here is to enhance user engagement and ‘co-production’
in public services, and delivery via social enterprises, so that they do
not have an insensitive, statist character. Critical is investment in early
years; and more generally the left can present itself as the advocate, in
‘world risk society’, of a range of social springboards through
life, which can assist individuals who would otherwise fall behind, and
maximise their potential for autonomy and flourishing.
The document is also strong on the third and most terrifying challenge.
Here, again, the left has a clear story to tell. It is essentially an update
of Marx’s analysis of the nineteenth century Factory Acts, which in
the early decades of the industrial revolution in Britain came to constrain
capital, from any exploitation of child labour at all, and in the labour
time it could require of adults. Marx highlighted the ways in which these
reforms were actually in the long-term interest of capital as a whole, though
they were resisted by individual capitalists and engendered by the labour
movement; without such legislation capital threatened to destroy its own
labour force, and this is why the struggle for the legislation was won.
Climate change is the global, twenty-first-century version of the kind of
‘externality’ (to any individual firm) that was formerly represented
by crippled children.
The ‘tragedy of the commons’ makes securing the requisite action
on climate change, including at Copenhagen, hugely challenging. But once
again the long-term interests of capital are becoming evident in the growth
of markets for green goods and services, and the increasing potential for
firms to compete on grounds of eco-efficiency, on top of price and quality,
which means that environmental campaigners are not tilting against a unified
capitalist windmill. The left can offer a vision which takes Europe beyond
aping the US ‘business model’, as did the Lisbon agenda. It
can instead link economic recovery to an ecologically-driven transformation
of the European industrial structure, providing a model that transcends
the dichotomy of development or sustainability that is so often articulated
in the developing world. This is a point much better understood in Germany
than in Britain.
These two answers are linked via the idea of the ‘green new deal’,
which has been advanced to meet the threats of the ‘credit crunch’,
peak oil and global warming. The ‘deal’ can have a strong social
dimension, in employing a ‘carbon army’ of workers to reduce
net greenhouse-gas emissions from households and other buildings, through
insulation, microgeneration, etc. This is the alternative to fiscal stimuli
focused on bailing out bankers, and provides the means to mop up the involuntary
unemployment which Keynes diagnosed as a product of capitalist disequilibria
– reflected not in price adjustments (wages) but in adjustments of
quantities (jobs). This approach requires the left to abandon the pre-Keynesian
‘supply-side’ nonsense about unemployment that led to the unpopular
labour-market reforms under Schroeder, which so damaged the SPD; and which
has been apparent in the increasingly pathological representations by ‘New’
Labour of workless households, in language reminiscent of Victorian evocations
of the ‘undeserving poor’.
Where the Good Society could benefit from further elaboration is on the
second question, which is only touched on in a brief reference to ‘multiculturalism’.
Yet this is a huge challenge for the left, particularly given the impact
of migration and globalisation in exponentially enhancing the ‘actually
existing cosmopolitanisation’ of every life. Jon has done great work
in fighting off the British National Party in east London, but clearly the
populist radical right has been resurgent across Europe. And the left needs
to have answers on the issues of immigration and asylum, which have been
the ‘hot buttons’ for those parties to press, in terms of tapping
into popular anxieties.
Since the Austro-Marxists, the left has wrestled with the question of how
to marry solidarity and diversity, tending to fall back on international
slogans of class, or to go along with national governing models –
of assimilation (France) or ‘multiculturalism’ (Britain). But
the former represents arid abstractions, while the conventional national
models have exhausted themselves: witness the riots in northern England
in 2001 and the banlieues in 2005.
What is interesting, however, is that a new model is emerging, which allows
this gap in left-wing thinking to be filled. It builds on the Austro-Marxists,
and on Gramsci’s understanding of ‘the individualist conception
of society’, in rejecting the subsumption of individual diversity
into homogenising categories – of proletariat or ‘community’.
Following the searingly dehumanising experiences of twentieth-century Europe,
it stresses that only acceptance of the universal norms of democracy, human
rights and the rule of law can protect society from falling victim to the
siren calls of aggressive nationalism, racism and other forms of intolerance.
And it goes further, to understand that, in today’s cosmopolitanising
world, if we want to ensure that diversity becomes an enriching rather than
a threatening feature of society, we need a political architecture that
guarantees equality of citizenship, reciprocal recognition by diverse individuals
of this shared moral realm, and impartiality on the part of public authorities
in dealing with competing claims.
This model, which has been encapsulated in the phrase ‘intercultural
dialogue’, also provides a global alternative to the polarising language
of a ‘clash of civilisations’. It has much experience on which
to draw, such as the ‘national integration plans’ pioneered
in recent years by Spain, the ‘integration councils/committees’
developed by scores of German and Danish local authorities, and the excellent
work of NGOs in promoting dialogue (such as in my native Northern Ireland).
The 2008 White Paper on Intercultural Dialogue published by the Council
of Europe fleshes out the philosophical, policy and practical implications
of this evolving approach.
And, again, there is no reason for defeatism: Football Against Racism in
Europe, for example, has won major victories in the battle for the ethical
soul of mainly working-class and overwhelmingly male football supporters
across the continent, and has done much to win over the governing bodies
of the sport. ‘Unity in diversity’ is a much more compelling
message than division and enmity, and social democrats should stop feeling
obliged to pose as ‘tough’ on access by ‘foreigners’
to ‘their’ states, and instead go on to the front foot as advocates
of a more humane and hospitable Europe.
Robin Wilson founded the Belfast-based think-tank Democratic
Dialogue. He now works as an independent researcher.
To read more articles,
and make a comment, go to
http://www.goodsociety.social-europe.eu
|
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
