Socialists in No-Man's-Land
The economic turmoil wounded a movement which is losing power
Cecilia Ballesteros, in EL PAIS, 31st October 2014. Translated by Stefano Pollard.
Original article: http://internacional.elpais.com/internacional/2014/10/31/actualidad/1414790129_459349.html
In his social-democratic elegy titled Something's Going Wrong, Tony Judt wrote: "Social-democracy does not represent an ideal future, nor does it represent the ideal past. However among the options available nowadays, it is better than anything else we have at hand". Only 15 years ago, 13 out of the 15 countries which formed the European Union were governed by socialist parties. Now, in a 28-member Europe, only a dozen are left (some in a coalition), and some are getting closer to an electoral catastrophe never seen in their history. The French socialist Prime Minister, Manuel Valls, rang the alarm bells pointing at a very serious matter: "We need to end the "old-fashioned left-wing". Furthermore, isn't it time to stop calling ourselves socialists?" What went wrong? How could the Welfare-State model created after WWII, the basis of the 30 glorious years which made of the old continent a just society, go to pieces?Globalisation, with its unstoppable process of finance deregulation, job outsourcing, European integration, technological change, including an ageing population and a change in the nature of power, are elements which appear to have conspired against the social-democratic vision. "In the 80s they almost died of success", said Ignacio Urquizu, sociologist, member of Fundación Alternativas and of the Foundation for European Progressive Studies. "It lasted while the good times lasted. But when in the 90s welfare policies were reduces, the Anglo-Saxon branch (Bill Clinton and Tony Blair with their Third Way) decided to deregulate the system and the consumption. It was the beginning of the end, of which the "left" is jointly responsible".
In the age of its maximum glory, in 1981, the French PS with François Mitterrand won 34% of the vote, a similar share of that obtained in 2012. However, very soon, in 2013, it could become the third party, because of the work of François Hollande, the most unpopular president of the 5th Republic (according to opinion polls). In Germany, far away are the times of Willy Brandt, and the SPD has spent a long time not overcoming the 25% mark and two parliaments as a coalition partner with Angela Merkel’s conservatives. In the United Kingdom, a country which in the 70s Harold Wilson hailed as the natural habitat of the Labour Movement, the party obtained in 2010 the worst result since 1918: only 29% of the vote. “We haven’t got any excuse. While the economy was growing, we were asking ourselves: how? Is it sustainable? The wages of the working and middle classes were being held back, but this shortfall was overcome with easy and cheap credit. Home debt reached two billion euros (1.6 billion pounds), or 100% of GDP”, says David Mathieson, analyst and former adviser to the Labour Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook. In Sweden, only now do the social-democrats manage to take back power after eight years of wandering in the wilderness, and in Italy, where the centre-left baptized itself as the Democratic Party following the American example, its leader and Prime Minister, Matteo Renzi, struggles to make his reforms work their way through Parliament.
Consensus is among the analysts that the 2008 global crisis and the harsh policies implemented by left-wing government such as in Greece and Spain made them pay at the ballot box. “The challenges are very big. An ageing population and the universalization of benefits require higher taxes. But if you raise them, then the rich and the businesses will flee. You then decided to go into debt, which leaves you at the mercy of the markets. And if you have a straitjacket, such as a common currency and a strict fiscal policy, you find yourself in no-man’s-land. In other words, the blanket is short: if you cover your feet, you leave your chest uncovered since the rich and the markets will abandon you, and if you leave your feet uncovered, you lose left-wing votes or they move to populist movements”, assures José Ignacio Torreblanca, political scientist and columnist for EL PAIS.
The European Left seems paralysed and the Right carries on dismantling the State, while populist parties, riding the wave of xenophobia gone out of control because of immigration, make themselves at ease, attracting votes from the social sectors which normally backed the social-democratic project. But not only this: part of the young (and not so young) generations don’t feel represented by the conventional left-wing and look for alternative movements. “People want more involvement. In this sense, the social-democratic parties, and all the others, belong to the 20th century. Furthermore, they did not propose an economic alternative to austerity. It seems you can change politicians, but not politics”, affirms analyst Andrés Ortega.
What to do then? To reform or to transform oneself? Would a name change be enough? The crisis, seen at its dawn by some as an opportunity for socialist parties, obtained the opposite effect, by placing them at the edge of an electoral bankruptcy. Inequality, the concept which the Left stopped fighting against and which paradoxically a socialist, the French economist Thomas Piketty, brought into fashion this year, could be its grave. “We need to take a step back and build a type of society which is in line with a left-wing vision”, says Urquizu.
