THE REVIVAL OF EUROPE
Lens, Sidney
The Revival of Europe by SIDNEY LENS Vienna THE BIG story in Europe today has none of that electric quality that makes eight column banner headlines. For it is a story of good news and hopeful...
...For the first time in two decades they are tasting the sweet wine of prosperity...
...A lawyer in Munich, a Socialist, told me she would prefer Russian occupation to another war...
...in the language of the more pragmatic of American labor leadership, the radical movement of Europe is content with a one word program— "more...
...Its last convention caused no more than good-natured ribbing on the part of the Manchester Guardian and a few other papers—even though the British Communist Party is six to eight times the size of the American Communist Party and has some trade union influence...
...There is still an annual increment, but it grows smaller...
...You notice it immediately in the modish clothes of English and German women, in the variety of products in the stores, in the hundreds of thousands of new dwelling quarters going up everywhere...
...Religious pacifists are disturbed by the "new materialism...
...The Communist Party of England functions uninhibited and produces hardly a ripple...
...A handsome young businessman who commutes between Switzerland and Austria voiced similar sentiments over the breakfast table...
...The big debate is whether the Socialist Party ought to bind itself to a permanent coalition with the People's Party (between them they have all but ten of the votes in Parliament) or whether the time limit ought to be left open...
...they don't even want to think of yesterday's horrors, let alone plan for new ones...
...In some places it was an undeniable servant of reaction, as in Spain where American dollars—in violation of our own law—acted as the prop for a fascist regime...
...Twelve years after World War I the world was sinking into its worst depression...
...Even in Germany there is not a single vocal force that can be called "fascist" There is no mood of desperation in the old world, not even the desperate feeling that grips us in America when we think of the "Communist menace...
...In some years they even outrun productivity...
...Tens of thousands of jobs, many of them lush, are allotted to the socialists for patronage, and the Party contents itself with merely guarding the living standards of the working class without too much thought of tomorrow...
...I have reservations about the coalition, but we've now gained more through our present reformism than we ever dreamed possible a couple of decades ago...
...the workers, searching for the perennial "more" to fill the ;!y larder, looked around and could find only the Communists and a few dissidents willing to fight the twin evils of war and high prices...
...The socialist movement here was once the center of Marxist study...
...The continued prosperity in Europe, like its counterpart in the United States, has changed the horizons of the left wing...
...Leaders of the Socialist Party in Austria admit that if there were a plebiscite rearmament would lose hands down—even though the new army is limited to only 25,000 men and is more comic opera than a real fighting force...
...Today Europe is a picture of prosperity, the coffee houses are full, the people well-dressed by previous standards, and there is no sign of any Austrian painter with a Charlie Chaplin moustache...
...Few in Western Europe get as excited about the Soviet menace as do we back home...
...Trade union and socialist leaders complain that prosperity is undermining idealism, that workers are becoming apolitical and losing some of their class-consciousness...
...Schaerf's recent inauguration, three passengers openly voiced their bitterness: "Again the army is marching...
...Today in the socialist bookstore in Vienna you can hardly find a new book on socialist theory...
...Contrariwise, in France the Socialist Party will undoubtedly pay a serious price for its role in perpetrating the military fiasco in Algeria...
...The rate of growth is now grinding to a halt in Germany, Austria, and other areas...
...They think peace is possible...
...The blights of poverty—even thousands of burned out relics of War II—are still visible...
...This is true even in France and Italy, where the Communists are the biggest party on the left, as well as in Germany, Britain, and Austria, where the Communist movement hardly exists...
...Young men in their early twenties scoot around on motorcycles or scooters, on the first rung of the economic ladder to that symbol of Twentieth Century prosperity, the automobile...
...In Germany the Communist Party is illegal, mostly as a gesture of reprisal against Communist domination of East Germany...
...When asked of the goal of the Socialist Party, one of its more incisive spokesmen said, "I just don't know...
...For the most part they are bounded by the goals of the welfare state—and nothing else...
...Two-thirds of the products rolling off Austrian factory lines come from nationalized or partially nationalized industries...
...Wages in England, France, Germany, and Austria have been outpacing prices...
...forward, increasing its national product from seven to twelve per cent each year...
...Men like Otto Bauer interpreted the doctrine with wisdom and insight that gained respect all over the Western world...
...it drains off nearly a billion and a half dollars a year and occupies the energies of 500,000 troops chasing a guerrilla band of only 30,000...
...it tended to stay with the wealthy...
...The situation is perhaps best typified by Austrian Social-Democracy...
...On the contrary, the mood of Europe tends to be one of increasing relaxation...
...The situation of Austrian Social Democracy is not unique...
...and all its sights are set on day-to-day issues...
...If Europe should suddenly find itself in a serious recession, the current moods would change—just as they would in America...
...The Socialist Party is locked in a government coalition with the People's Party that has lasted for twelve years...
...The statements by the sixteen scientists and by Albert Schweitzer against further hydrogen bomb tests helped their cause immeasurably...
...Germany continues to push SIDNEY LENS, American labor official who specializes in foreign affairs, is currently on a new swing around the continent of Europe...
...But one gets the feeling that Europe at last is on its feet, capable of making its own way...
...In Austria, poorest of the continental nations (except for Spain and Portugal), every eleventh person has a car...
...The mood of Britain is Labor, and the mood of Labor is left —precisely because of popular opinion on foreign policy and military ventures...
...It would be folly to speak of the three great powers of Europe (leaving out Italy, because I have not yet been there) as Utopias...
...In a Vienna street-car during the military parade which accompanied Dr...
...A large segment of the population favored war in Algeria...
...It is matched elsewhere on the continent...
...All this may change, of course, if the economic spiral turns downward...
...Thus, there is a fork in the path of the Western alliance...
...In Europe it is war...
...There are some signs of a tapering off...
...Social democracy now is 99 per cent pragmatism...
...In England, too, the Labor Party is recovering its strength primarily because of its opposition to the Suez adventure and its increasing disassociation from policies rooted in militarism...
...French and Italian Communists are strong because they fight for "more" with greater vigor than do the social-democrats...
...The people here are tired of the waste of war and the labors of reconstruction...
...As it was, only the intellectual Communists broke ranks...
...it saved them ignominious splits after Hungary...
...Contrasted with conditions of four years ago—when I was here last— there is genuine prosperity...
...But this is all a far cry from the Europe of 1950—and of 1930...
...It is the story of a dozen postwar years without significant economic retreat...
...It knows quite well that its own contribution can only be secondary anyway, and its concern is primarily with widening prosperity rather than building defense...
...But everyone knows that if it were legal it would have little strength...
...Algeria helped the French Communists consolidate their hold over the working masses...
...All this indicates that Europe, like America, has entered a new epoch, with new problems for which yesterday's formulas no longer provide answers...
...Few people talk of social revolution anymore, and most of those who do hardly take it seriously...
...For it is a story of good news and hopeful developments...
...His books include "Left, Right, and Center," "The Counterfeit Revolution," and "A World in Revolution...
...Even in France, no one is particularly excited about the Communist Party despite the fact that it commands the largest vote in the nation...
...Algeria exacts a greater toll of France than we in the United States realize...
...In a certain sense Europe is becoming "Americanized...
...Yet within the working class Guy Mollet's hard policy in Algeria was not popular, particularly when it became clear that the war must mean higher taxes and higher prices...
...Almost no one, except for one or two counterparts of Aneuran Bevan, speaks of social revolution any more...
...It still needs aid when France, for example, goes off on a useless military binge in Algeria, or when Britain and France invade Suez...
...The old three-wheel motorcycles on the continent, which served as trucks, are now junked, and Europe rides the conventional four-wheelers...
...The people ached for some kind of a victory to restore national prestige after the humiliating setbacks in Indo-China, Morocco, Tunisia, and Suez...
...France, in particular, has finally emerged from the doldrums, and in the last eighteen months has shown the fastest rate of growth of any of the major European powers...
...A generation ago, the working class of Austria thought in terms of social revolution: the piddling gains in the day-to-day struggle were only "dress rehearsals" for the impending fundamental change over to socialism...
...Where socialism is a bit more dynamic—as in Germany and England—it is because a wing within it is concf ned with the problem of militarism, rear of a new war is infinitely greater in Europe than in America...
...The American aid program, with all its limitations—and they were many—is in considerable measure responsible for all this...
...Western Europe is content to let America do the military worrying about the "defense of our way of life...
...You see it too in the statistics...
...Our aid failed to seep down to the lowest roots...
...Communists in Germany and Austria are weak because the people in these two countries know Communism from direct association with the harshness of Soviet rule...
...Italy had already been conquered by fascism, and Hitler's Nazis were marshaling forces for the final push to power—and war...
...His articles have appeared in many publications, including Harper's, the Yale Review, and the Bulletin of the Harvard School of Business Administration...
...In Germany, the Socialists are gaining strength only because of their anti-militarist position...
...But despite all this, the dollars America pumped into the economic veins of Europe did start the blood circulating...
...But it is doubtful in any case whether the United States can maintain a heightened military concern among its European allies (and friends such as "neutral" Austria...
...The concern is over the internal role of the Communists, not their external activities as an agency for the Soviet Union...
...In the United States the great fear—as between war and Communism—is Communism...
...The lot of the European worker is a poor one, but it has improved considerably in the last few years, not only relatively but absolutely...
...New ideas on the left are scarce...
...It extracted from few countries meaningful prorcises of social reform...
...More and more the military alliance with the United States becomes platonic rather than vital...
Vol. 21 • August 1957 • No. 8
