Social democracy in Europe

...All these contemporary trends look irrevocable and they are creating a new and complex working class that is characterized more by their internal differences than any sense of shared collective consciousness...

...Manufacturing is no longer the dominant force in most countries in Europe and the size of the manual industrial working class has shrunk as a result...

...National borders in Europe are growing more porous and less relevant with the free movement of capital, goods and services, and now labor through mass migrations...

...In the first thirty years after the end of the Second World War this balance of economic and social forces ensured what now looks like a "golden age" that brought Western Europe stability, progress, and an advance in the living standards of working people never seen before in human history...

...If companies can hire migrant workers from low-paid central and eastern European countries to take jobs in more prosperous countries with strong trade unions and social protections at the rates of pay and working conditions of the countries they come from, social democratic achievements will be undermined...

...Bos is not the only thoughtful social democratic thinker in Europe who questions whether their parties have gone too far in incorporating markets, private initiatives, free trade, globalization, empowerment, and personal choice into social democratic thinking...

...This weakness can be found in particular in what has been happening in the workplace...

...We may be the ones to suffer at first now that our societies have grown more diverse, fragmented and globalized, but we could also be the first ones to benefit if we succeed in putting the confidence, trust and security back into our societies...

...The electoral shift to a left beyond social democracy has been even more dramatic in the Netherlands...

...Modernization, which has too often meant deregulation and privatization has become a cul de sac for the center-left...

...S0 WHAT can be done...

...In the last general election in 2006, the Left Socialists won a sixth of the vote, not far behind the Dutch Labour Party, which lost a quarter of its core support and finished with only just over 20 percent...

...The search for a progressive strategy of managed migration is now growing apparent...

...On the contrary, what should concern social democrats is the unexpected emergence of what looks like a serious threat from new forces to their left...

...Monks and others fear the court is threatening the future of the continent's famed social-market model and the role of the trade unions in its operations...

...All these changes are hitting social democrats more profoundly than any other political grouping in Europe because they reduce the perceived effectiveness of the kind of progressive policies with which they are normally identified...

...But members of the democratic center-left power elites, mainly from Europe, but with a sprinkling from Latin America and elsewhere, were in residence this spring to discuss the theme of "An Inclusive Globalisation...

...Domestic-state policymaking, even the moral values states articulate, has grown more contested and divisive...

...As a result we find more alienation, sectionalism, competition, and an instrumental rather than an ideological attitude to the primacy of work and the labor process...

...But many in the European Commission and employer organizations remain committed to a neoliberal agenda that threatens any attempts by the ETUC to overturn those hostile court judgments...

...It is no longer possible simply to denounce white European workers as racists...

...The most serious threat to their position has come from three unexpectedly adverse legal judgments made against trade unions by the European Court of Justice...

...The social democrats of the world seem still to believe they remain a political force to be reckoned with...

...Many of Europe's center-left parties are trying to reassess their views of labor migration as many of their core working-class supporters turn against the arrival of foreign workers who, they claim—rightly or wrongly—are undermining their wages and conditions...

...He now writes for the New Statesman and Tribune...

...The value of Bos's analysis—which he presented to the Hertfordshire conference—is that it goes far below the surface of what some seem to regard wrongly as transient and superficial shifts in electoral commitments and preferences...

...People are becoming more divided in their own perceived interests and not just by class and gender but by ethnicity, religion, education, family, work, and career patterns as well as in their incomes and the amount of wealth and power they enjoy...

...What is needed urgently is a social democracy in Europe that puts "confidence, trust, and security" back onto the progressive political agenda...

...Above all, he is concerned about what the threat from the left means, not just for his own party but for the political future of social democracy across Europe...

...So far social democracy lacks a credible narrative of how democratic societies can respond to the complexities of this global economic disorder that is probably the most horrendous since the 1929 Wall Street crash and the interwar Great Depression...

...It hits efforts to maintain or create any sense of social or political unity across internal divisions and it also weakens center-left appeals to internationalist solidarity around shared values...

...ow IT IS very different...

...Few of them are treating the growing left movements seriously enough...

...He wants to see the parties of the center-left reconnecting themselves to their core voters by recognizing and responding to their genuine fears of insecurity and difference...

...The word crisis is overdone and may still be too strong to describe the outlook for social democracy in Europe, but fundamental social and economic trends suggest it faces an uphill struggle if it hopes to make a strong and effective comeback in the years ahead...

...This has after all always been the core of our business...

...As he explained to that progressive audience in Hertfordshire, "We must modernize our societies and not just our parties...

...This is why social democrats have to focus their attention on religion and culture and not just on their traditional concerns with work and income equality in order to ensure their contemporary relevance...

...To him this means putting key political words such as identity, empathy, trust, and security at the heart of social democracy's new political language...

...Bos has gone so far as to suggest that European social democracy in its present modernizing form is facing a new and formidable political challenge that threatens its historic dominance on the continent's center-left...

...Small firms are now the biggest employers of labor, even if they may be in networks and subcontract chains...

...They intend to support the formulation of a Charter of Fundamental Social Rights that will reinforce the existing EU commitment to fundamental political rights...

...And arguing for progress that provides opportunities for everyone...

...In Germany, less than one in five workers are now organized, and the picture is no better in Britain...

...At its congress held in Seville in May 2007, the ETUC united under the slogan of "Taking the Offensive...

...Most of this was the result of social democracy's triumph...

...The turmoil in international financial markets—sparked partly but not wholly by the American subprime mortgage crisis—is now not only threatening the living standards of all those in the Western world who benefited from the long postwar era of prosperity...

...A wide-ranging public debate on the future of European social democracy has only just begun and it would be foolish to suggest that any one person or party has found a convincing answer to the problems of political decline in turbulent times...

...It is also starting to destroy the moral and institutional foundations of social democracy, which created and assumed stability, order, and a measure of control in the first place...

...What made social democrats such a dominant intellectual force in European democratic societies was that they stressed and practiced social cohesion, solidarity, and collectivism...

...As Roger Liddle from Policy Network, the New Labour think tank that organized the Hertfordshire conference, has pointed out, as recently as 2000 no fewer than eleven out of DISSENT / Summer 2008 n 5 POLITICS ABROAD the then fifteen European Union member states had social democratic or center-left prime ministers...

...It offers the prospect of prosperity for the poor and freedom to the oppressed," argues Bos...

...He is concerned with what he sees as the growth in diversity and fragmentation in European societies that are caused mainly by the impact of the dynamic and destructive forces of globalization on everyday life...

...But there is also a darkening side to globalization, which is creating millions of victims and especially among those in the manual working class who historically saw social democracy as the political organizational means available to protect and liberate them from the insecurity and exploitation of an unjust and arbitrary economic system...

...As Bos puts it, we "cannot afford to gain new supporters by losing our traditional support base in the process...

...Under the social democratic leadership of its British general secretary, John Monks, the organization has begun to mobilize to do battle for a renewal of social Europe and against what are increasingly seen as flawed neoliberal tendencies...

...This does not mean, however, that the axis of political advantage has tilted inexorably rightward in any dramatic way...

...The seductions of protectionism and economic nationalism are reactions to the hubris and incompetence that is consuming those who did so well out of speculation and reckless lending and borrowing...

...Now there must be a re-evaluation of the fundamentals...

...Perhaps it is Wouter Bos—as a result of his own party's devastating defeat a year and a half ago—who has found a way forward that can guarantee European social democracy a future...

...The ruling British Labour Party under Gordon Brown has some of the worst public opinion ratings since the days more than a quarter of a century ago when it was led by the left-winger Michael Foot...

...They continue to see the market as an overwhelming force for good...

...Modern European societies are less strong than they used to be in generating trust...

...These perceived forces, which social democrats like him once applauded, are individualism and fragmentation, and they reflect the dramatic transformation of European economies and societies that began in the early 1980s...

...Nobody can deny that the dynamics of globalization have provided genuine opportunities for consumers and enterprises...

...Women, immigrants, and gays may have won hard fights for legal rights, but their position is also growing more inse8 n DISSENT / Summer 2008 cure in Europe from those, mainly Muslim, arrivals but also embattled male manual workers, who are less tolerant about pluralism and divergent moral values and more hostile to difference...

...With declining power and influence, workers who used to enjoy representation as social partners with organized capital in containing and regulating the ravages of uncontrolled market forces are lacking the bargaining strength they once had to hold their own...

...The old ideological struggles of the past between capital and labor are often difficult to detect as the mainstream political parties in Europe compete for votes on what looks like an increasingly narrowing and vacuous middle DISSENT / Summer 2008 n 9 POLITICS ABROAD ground...

...But Monks has warned, "Support by trade unions and workers for the single market is dependent on support for a social Europe...

...In some of those countries the parties of social democracy are neither in government nor, in some cases, such as in Poland, do they even constitute the main parliamentary opposition...

...They did so by adopting programs and values that were held together strongly by the ideology of socialism and then social democracy...

...The more cogent and influential remains the Brussels-based European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC...

...OR HAS social democracy come up with any ready answer to environmen___ tal pollution and global warning...

...For too long too many of them have underestimated the genuine tensions that exist between modernization and more traditional goals like income redistribution and employee protection...

...He is writing a history of parliamentary socialism in Britain in the twentieth century...

...Wish lists of painless demands have always been the curse of center-left parties...

...He argues that social democrats must become "less academic and more populist...

...The left has failed to come up with any credible answer to the dangerous antics of the hedge fund managers, private equity companies, the banks, and the sovereign funds that are eating their way through the global economic system...

...POLITICS ABROAD What is lacking in all of this is any sober assessment of how European social democracy can renew itself in its basic values and thought...

...At least a growing number of social democrats are coming to realize that an agenda of functionalism is not enough to guarantee their future electoral success...

...But a similar recognition that social democracy will need to confront the new inequalities of wealth and power created by globalization is less in evidence...

...Certainly social democracy at the moment seems to have found no obvious response to what is happening except an even more dogmatic commitment to the prescriptions of the free, unregulated market...

...Only Norway, in the Nordic region once dominated by social democrats, has a Labor government...

...In the 2007 general election the Left Socialists secured 13 percent of the total Danish vote...

...The old issues on the European left of distribution and equality, worker protection, and social justice need to be brought back into POLITICS ABROAD mainstream politics...

...The truth is that social democrats are now very much on the ideological defensive...

...A similar left surge at the expense of social democrats has occurred in Denmark...

...The mood of the well-heeled participants was surprisingly upbeat and complacent...

...In the second half, in the west, social democracy— with its shrewd balance between social justice and market efficiency, political freedom and the profit motive—was the overwhelming force...

...It is true that the Socialist Party's second successive victory in the March general election in Spain, as well as the substantial gains made by the French Socialists—despite their divisions—in the spring local council contests in cities such as Toulouse, Caen, and Strasbourg might suggest that the forces of European social democracy are once again on the march...

...The demise of European social democracy has come suddenly and perhaps unexpectedly...

...The parties of social democracy would like to place limits on the operation of the free market...

...This is why the ETUC is now working so closely with the other European-wide social democratic organization, the socialist group in the European Parliament...

...But many of the policy professionals and functionaries from the ranks of European social democracy were deceiving themselves if they really believed the once confident, optimistic political ideology that did so much to bring about a prolonged period of unparalleled prosperity and peace in the western part of the continent after the end of the Second World War is still triumphant...

...Organized labor in Europe has suffered from a dramatic decline in membership over the past twenty years except in the Nordic region...

...Trade unionists find their collective strength is being eroded as they negotiate takebacks, while company executives accumulate vast fortunes with a recklessness and irresponsibility not seen since the 1920s...

...SUCH SUBSTANTIAL electoral breakouts to the left are disturbing and bewildering social democrats in Europe...

...Der Linke polled around 15 percent in the spring regional elections and has become a pivotal force in cities like Berlin and Hamburg and regions such as Hesse...

...As a result there is a lack of a grand narrative or a unifying project that binds together European social democracy...

...The forces of capital have grown more aggressive and self-confident while at the same time trade union and worker strength have ebbed away except, until recently, in the Nordic region...

...This means moving forward without leaving anyone behind...

...In Italy the left suffered a humiliating defeat in the April general election, with the dramatic return to power in Rome of that disreputable right-wing demagogue Silvio Berlusconi...

...It would be an exaggeration to suggest that in response to this trend, racism and xenophobia are gathering pace across much of Europe, but the dangers of a return to the horrors of the past can no longer be lightly dismissed...

...ROBERT TAYLOR is the former labor editor of the Financial Times and the Observer...

...Bos argues that all of these workplace trends are producing what he calls "a new kind of inequality" in democratic Europe between the winners and losers of globalization...

...This is particularly dangerous for the future health of social democracy...

...Historically, the democratic parties of the center-left in Europe won political power in the interwar years, but especially after 1945, through their popular electoral appeal as broad-based "people's parties" that were also rooted on the once important core of the organized manual working class...

...What 10 n DISSENT / Summer 2008 the judgments have declared is that the EU's commitment to the creation of a single market in goods, services, people, and finance supersedes any domestic state-level collective bargaining arrangements...

...The greater fragmentation of society and the emer—., Bence of divergent and often conflicting interests and values have made it much harder to develop a new form of social democratic politics that is beneficial for the many and not just for an alliance of segmented groups...

...Frightening events this year in the global economy are undermining such complacency...

...Its fulltime officials continue to play an important part in the labyrinthine Brussels decision-making process The ETUC may enjoy less clout than before when compared with the European employers, but the trade union presence means organized labor can continue to make a real impact on detailed legislation and macroeconomic strategies...

...It is true that participants like Kevin Rudd, the recently elected Australian Labour prime minister, joined by his counterparts Helen Clark from New Zealand and the Chilean president, Michelle Bachelet, could point to the recent electoral success of their respective parties...

...The fear and experience of crime and terrorism is also more likely to hit the least advantaged than the better off...

...Women and immigrants have grown dramatically in number and proportion as crucial components of what now makes up the European work force...

...Electoral setbacks for social democrats in Europe cannot be dismissed as the temporary result of fickle and volatile voters who will return to the fold in due course...

...Wouter Bos is the leader of the Dutch Labour Party and currently finance minister in the coalition government that was formed after the last Dutch general election...

...In France, where trade unionism was always weak, private-sector membership is down to 3 percent...

...Most of those European social democrats who like to call themselves progressive modernizers seem unlikely to respond well to such an unpalatable message...

...Many of their leaders still seem to be in denial about their significance or continue to denounce or ridicule the new left as irresponsible populists with a simplistic view of democratic politics...

...Diverse cultural norms and habits have led to DISSENT / Summer 2008 n 7 POLITICS ABROAD a noticeable crumbling of social capital and the sense of community that once bound workers together as a self-conscious movement...

...Mass unemployment remains stubbornly high in many parts of the continent...

...But it reflects the new realities for the left in Europe...

...A young man who two years ago was an unrepentant modernizer in the Tony Blair/ Gordon Brown mold, he has been thinking long and hard about the social democratic predicament...

...The two most powerful political leaders in Europe are both firmly on the democratic right—Chancellor Angela Merkel in Germany and the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy...

...They created voluntary and autonomous institutions, such as trade unions, cooperatives, and mutual aid societies, that constituted a recognized social force that in negotiated partnership with an enlightened state and responsible employers ran what was in effect a democratic corporatist system...

...A chilling report, published by the European Commission in March 2008, painted a nightmarish picture of a continent overwhelmed by millions of desperate people from the Middle East and Africa fleeing into Europe to escape from the effects of climate change, as well as religious fundamentalism and the spread of international terrorism, in search of a better and more secure life in what promises to become an embattled, inward-looking Europe...

...It is now much more difficult than it used to be to promote solidarity or any sense of common purpose between workers because the ability of social democratic parties and their trade union allies to identify themselves with the backgrounds, needs and concerns of fellow citizens has become more compromised...

...This document should provide a clear sign of what the social democratic left in Europe still believes in...

...In Sweden, the opposition Social Democrats and their left-wing Party allies are way ahead in the opinion polls against the country's non-socialist government, but the next Swedish general election is not scheduled until September 2010...

...Even most of the constitutional right such as the German Christian Democrats and the British Conservatives accepted the social democratic approach to politics and the economy and recast their programs and values accordingly...

...In Britain, but also elsewhere in Europe, social democracy has abandoned or weakened its concept of the public interest and the use of the democratic state as both a driver of change but also as a protector...

...The draft program may still only be a set of eye-catching headlines, but its scope is impressive—rights and duties for all, full employment, investing in people, universal child care provision, equal rights, sustainability in the environment, and the formation of a People's Europe...

...The once massive public sector has grown smaller as increasing parts of it have been sold off by the state or leased out to private owners and services, even in health and education...

...THE PICTURE is not entirely bleak...

...Today there are only four...

...There is one impressive exception to the conventional wisdom among European social 6 n DISSENT / Summer 2008 democrats that if you ignore or demonize the new left it will go away...

...It can still exercise a genuine influence over the direction and content of public policy as it is made through the European Commission...

...Across much of central and eastern Europe— with the exception of Hungary—the outlook is not much better...

...In Germany Die Linke, or the Left Party, as it is known in English, has become the thirdlargest political party in the country after the Christian Democrats and Social Democrats...

...During the first half of the last century Europe suffered from two terrible wars, the Great Depression, Fascism, Nazism, and Soviet Communism...

...But events since that time have put the trade unions in Europe on the defensive...

...In a draft copy that has been circulated among its members but available on its Web site, the socialist group has asserted that the European Union "is not just a market but a political and social project," concerned as much with peace and democracy as it is with material prosperity...

...Social democrats may be members of coalitions in Germany, Belgium, Holland, Bulgaria and Lithuania but they are not the dominant partners in those arrangements...

...As a result of these deep-seated social and economic trends in Europe, Bos argues, "We are seeing the traditional mechanisms that once fostered cohesion in our societies becoming less effective or less attractive and being replaced by forces that POLITICS ABROAD divide rather than unify...

...The Danish Social Democrats lost heavily in their country's general election last year and polled little more than one in five of the votes cast...

...Bos wants to resurrect the slogan "Back to the Future" and argue for a return to the morality of the early pioneers of European social democracy...

...The ETUC wants to see strong social progress clauses introduced into collective agreements to prevent this from happening...

...But our times are too perilous and uncertain for this to make much political sense...

...The broader political picture in Europe does not suggest that social democracy has rediscovered its former winning ways...

...The old and the young find it harder than before to secure and hold good quality jobs that have a future...

...Both are now reassessing their positions in the face of adverse economic and social trends...

...At present the group is preparing a manifesto for next year's elections to the European Parliament that it hopes will be signed by all the social democratic parties, although New Labour in Britain will likely remain problematic in doing so...

...It is the result of a strategic alliance between the old Communists from East Germany and breakaways from the left wing of the Social Democrats, under the charismatic leadership of Oskar Lafontaine, the former finance minister...

...Social democracy in Europe has two separate organizations that exist to unify and find common ground between disparate elements...

...Promoting Prosperity for All...

...Manual workers—skilled as well as unskilled— lose their jobs when the firms that employ them close down as they fail either to survive competition from abroad or they downsize by moving their operations offshore...

...The social dialogues and partnerships that used to exist in many European countries in the macromanagement of their political economies may no longer be as strong and effective as they used to be, but the ETUC under Monks continues to enjoy a distinctive advantage...

...Too many have sought to accommodate or embrace global capitalism with varying degrees of enthusiasm...

...The creation of publicly funded welfare states based on redistributive taxation and the establishment of social partnerships between capital and labor in the macromanaging and regulating of the market economy was the political outcome of such accommodations...

...It has too often argued that the only way forward is to abandon notions of equality and fraternity in the cause of a progressive individualism and to weaken the state to the advantage of the forces of capital...

...The process is familiar to Americans...

...Political differences between them seem often based more on technical and bureaucratic problems of competence in delivery and not on idealistic hopes and aspirations...