Tuesday 1 September 2015

From tiger to doormat: An opinion piece on the (fatal?) crisis of social democracy

Surveying the landscape of social democratic parties in Europe is no task for the
fainthearted, given the extent of gloom that awaits any observer: In the UK, the election of a new Labour leader, initially a contest in Tory mimicry, has turned
into an exercise that seems to deeply divide the party, notably between its parliamentarians and grassroots; some German social democrats think about whether they actually should bother presenting a candidate for the Chancellery in 2017 since the Conservative chancellor Merkel appears to be doing such a great job and given that the social democrats stand no chance of winning a majority without an alliance with the more radical left (an alliance they are strictly opposed to); whereas the electoral hopes of the French centre-left appear to rest on the idea that the spectre of the extreme right and the particularities of the electoral system with its two rounds of voting may save their skin in the next presidential election. The situation in other countries seems hardly more encouraging, so that it is not surprising if one asks what has gone wrong since the end of the 1990s, when the centre-left, draped in the cloth of a new ‘Third Way’, dominated European politics and beyond.

The reasons for this malaise are multiple, engrained deeply in national
particularities, but I would argue that there are at least three cross-cutting problems that affect, admittedly to different degrees, all social democratic parties and the notion of social democracy itself.

First, social democracy suffers from a “loss of historical future [that represents] the main source of a political paralysis in the present” (Cunningham,2015, 31). In a period when humanity faces a range of immense challenges, from climate change and democratic disaffection to rising social inequalities and volatile economic conditions, it seems that social democratic forces restrict themselves to the stripped back promise of doing things a bit more socially just than their conservative counterparts. While for example the radical left attempts to reconcile social and environmental imperatives in the concept of eco-socialism, whereas conservative and liberal parties pursue a programme that profoundly alters the relationship between citizens and states, there is no meaningful contribution to these debates from the side of social democratic parties, which appear devoid of any overarching ideas as to what the future should look like, and which seem to believe that focus-group tested micro parcels of policies are sufficient to gather long-term and strong support. Moreover, this unwillingness to ‘think the future’ often goes hand in hand with an acceptance of the key ideological assumptions of their political opponents on the right, which contributes to the ideational hegemony of mind-sets that run counter to the ideals of a society based on the principles of liberty, equality and fraternity.

Secondly, social democracy (and the left in general) has lost the source of its power, the support from a coalition of working class and lower middle-class voters linked to an array of diverse progressive forces from all levels of society. It was this base and the strong collaboration with the trade union movement, boosted by the wide attraction of collectivist ideals, that helped to turn the three decades after the end of the Second World War into a truly social democratic moment. Since the 1980s, this support has been eroding due to two interconnected trends: On the one hand, increased levels of individualisation or even atomisation combined with profound socio-economic changes have undermined the collaborative model of post-war welfare capitalism; on the other hand social democratic parties have begun to aim more and more for the infamous ‘centre-ground’ while abandoning any serious attempts to engage with and mobilise voters from lower income strata – which contributed to ever rising levels of abstention and political disengagement from large segments of society that used to be a solid support base. To make matters worse, not many social democratic leaders seem to understand that voting is different from retail and that the involvement, mobilisation and binding of voters and supporters requires more than a friendly knock on the door or some advertisement campaigns every four or five years.

Finally, the wider institutional setting within which national policy-making occurs is no longer as amenable to social democratic principles as it was in the past. Put simply, social democracy assumes that there is a shared interest of all social classes and groups to create a stable, prosperous society, and that a form of consensus can be negotiated within the confines of a nation-state. The globalisation of the world economy and particularly its immense financialisation, combined with the dominance of competition (between states, organisations and individuals) as guiding principle of societies, have altered the parameters of political conflict. The difficulty of acknowledging this problem contributes to the intellectual vacuity of the social democratic mainstream and to the toothless approach in addressing the social conflicts of our times, at least in those instances when some form of opposition is still expressed – which is not always the case, as for example the support of most social democratic parties for the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership demonstrates.

One could now say, why should we care? I would argue one should for two reasons: First, with social democratic parties as the traditionally strongest element of the left, the crisis of the former inevitably represents a crisis of the latter, not just from an electoral point of view but also regarding the legitimacy of left-wing policies. If people see social democratic parties fail repeatedly to improve living standards, it is likely that doubts regarding all forms of progressive, solidaristic policies spread. Secondly, even though the European welfare state of the post-war era, with its universal public services, was not only built by the social democratic movement but also by conservative and liberal parties, it was undoubtedly the influence and power of social democratic principles (strengthened by a good dose of fear of the communist bloc) that drove this extension of social rights. It is to be feared that with a social democracy in tatters and alternative forces of the left yet underdeveloped, the near future will be less comfortable for most of us, regardless of one’s political persuasion.

Enrico Reuter

9 comments:

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  2. What about the increasing colonisation by elitist ruling group of politics, the media and other key social democratic institutions? The resurgence and endorsement of 'liberal economics' by both left and right has ruptured social and political relations irreversibly.

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  3. What about the increasing colonisation by elitist ruling group of politics, the media and other key social democratic institutions? The resurgence and endorsement of 'liberal economics' by both left and right has ruptured social and political relations irreversibly.

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    1. Thanks for the comment, Iffy spigot. I am not sure what you mean by 'colonisation', but would agree that the framework of economic beliefs is quite narrow across most parts of the political spectrum, even though this does not necessarily translate into the same practical policies.

      Enrico Reuter

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  4. I was wondering what your view is on the effect of the movement of the political agenda from being dominated by domestic issues to one that has an increasingly an external bias. In 1997 the election campaign was in my view very domestic. The issues talked about on the door step were, education, health etc. That year Labour had a vision of what to do and "things could only get better" . The Conservatives had ran out of steam and Blair and Brown were the acceptable alternatives.

    Post 1997 lots of good things happened and the country did change for the better in my view. Sure start, minimum wage, central bank independence, significant capital investment in schools and hospitals, national maths and english education strategies, in work benefits etc. The centre left was achieving.

    Then a range of external shocks happened that moved the agenda and the national debate. Some of which were avoidable. The second war in Iraq, Afghanistan, 911, 7 July attacks, increased levels of migration and international financial crisis etc.

    These issues have now dominated the national debate in my view and allowed policies to be enacted that would have been unacceptable 10 years earlier. Bedroom tax, welfare reform, cuts in in-work benefits, cuts in social care provision.

    I believe the centre left still has the answers for domestic issues that can win the domestic debate. However, to what extent do voters trust the left to solve the international agenda and indeed blame it for some of the problems in the first place. I am not sure what the evidence is but i think British voters dash to the right in times of international uncertainty. The Trident debate will be interesting!

    I would be interested in your view.

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    2. That's a very good point, G F, thanks for your comment (and sorry that it took me a few days to reply).

      I would fully agree with you on the 'domestic focus' of the 1997 election and on the clear improvements that the Labour government achieved in a range of public services - an achievement that stands even more out if we compare it to the record of the Conservative governments since 2010.

      Your argument regarding the increased weight of international problems is really interesting and I agree that their influence on domestic politics should not be underestimated, but I would suggest that the key problem is not so much the domestic/global split but rather a tension between short-term/long term:

      The financial crisis, the huge number of migrants both from within the EU and from other countries, the continued depression of living standards, international instability etc have all their roots in long-term structural problems (such as the ongoing structural crisis of capitalism since the 1970s, the imbalances and errors in the European integration process, the erosion of international systems of governance).

      Thus, in my view, the big failure of the centre-left across Europe has been to not acknowledge, to not take seriously and to not address these long-term problems (or at least to try). This is added to the problem of accepting the more conservative-liberal meta-narrative regarding key cultural norms and the confines of political debate, as I wrote in my blog post.

      G F, I am not sure whether this makes sense - I hope it does and would be pleased to know what you think.

      Best wishes,

      Enrico

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  5. Thank you for your reply. I think i understand your argument but i have not entered this territory for a long time. Are you saying that the over reliance of the centre left's tax take from financial and capital markets to pursue its policies was always heading for trouble. The fact that the global economy grew for so long disguised the underlying problems of underinvestment in the real economy and the imbalance that delivered across the globe. Like modern mercantilists it embraced neo liberalism as the profits came rolling it did some good in society. Yet when the bubble burst and the party ended the left had no road map as to how to to move away from the centre right consensus it had entered and indeed espoused to the electorate.

    I can not disagree with that argument if i have got it right. Keynes once said a " when the capital development of a country becomes the by product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill done..."

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    1. Yes, I would agree on that. I would indeed see the considerable expansion of financial industries and the financialisation of the global economy with its short-term focus on maximising shareholder value as one of the key indicators of an economic system in a deep structural crisis. Add to this trade and current account imbalances between countries, volatility in capital markets, underemployment in many states as well as looming ecological problems on a huge scale, and you end up with a rather worrying mix of long-term problems that are not addressed. I guess the big question is whether and how they could be addressed...

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