The Social Democratic Challenge
Social democracy, in any meaningful sense of the word, has been in crisis for decades. Even amongst the Nordics the game for years has been accommodation to capital and not leadership of it. In the immediate post-war years social democracy set the agenda, next came a period of capital accommodating itself to our social agenda but since the late 1970s it is neo-liberalism that has taken ideological, economic and political control. Labour and social democratic governments in Britain and Germany in particular were in office for much of this period, often with commanding majorities, but never wanted to or felt able to break away from market fundamentalism.
The crisis is deep rooted and systematic. It is a crisis of political economy, agency and organisation. If social democracy is to have a future then it must fundamentally break with the tenets of old social democracy. Clearly there is no homogeneous working class and unions are weaker but class still matters. The deferential, mass and centralising society of the middle decades of the last century have gone – mostly we must say for good. Critically the centrality of growth and the politics of more are hitting up against the immovable ceiling of sustainability and climate change.
There will be three key futures of a future social democracy; it will be red in that solidarity and equality must be two core goals; it will be green and have to learn to live and therefore redistribute within much tighter growth constraints and it must be democratic. Certainly in Britain democracy for Labour was the means to the ends of power. Now democracy has to be recognised as an intrinsic and not just an instrumental part of this tripartite value set.
The trick is binding the three together onto a coherent and systematic narrative that speaks to real peoples struggles and anxieties in a world set on making us work harder for our Prada. The argument has to be that you can’t have just one of equality, sustainability or democracy. They come instead as a set. To have one you have to support and work for the other two. This is right in both theory and practice as they combine not just the right value set for our times but the ability to mobilise mass support for a new social democratic project. Through the interplay of all three we start to have a vision for the good society that mixes the desirable with the feasible as an effective but transformative p0litical project takes shape.
And it is starting to happen. In Germany at the weekend the voters rejected the Christian Democrats in two states in favour of the prospect of a left/green alliance of the SPD, the Left Party and the Greens. The SPD has broken out of the labourist ghetto by admitting that it could form an alliance with the Left Party and the Greens. How this translates at the election later this month we don’t know. But it gives the SPD hope. Here in Britain just before the summer Compass, the organisation I chair, had its most successful conference when over 1200 delegates listened to speeches from leading members of Labour, the Greens and the Liberal Democrats.
The economic crisis, climate change and people’s impatience with old politics means the objective conditions exist for a revival of social democracy, but only if we are brave and ambitious enough to renew our historic project. Following the publication of the Jon Cruddas and Andrea Nahles report The Good Society, Compass working with comrades in the SPD and others across Europe will be creating the space for a dialogue on how to shape this kind of special democracy. If you want to be kept in touch with this project then pleas email me at: neal {at} compassonline.org(.)uk. The future is still ours to make – but it must be different from the successes and failures of the past.
Good text.
I like this “Through the interplay of all three we start to have a vision for the good society that mixes the desirable with the feasible as an effective but transformative p0litical project takes shape.”
I think this is an excellent analysis and also a very interesting outline for further work towards a new social democratic ideology. The most important point is to create a new vision of a good society because at the starting point of the social democratic movement such a vision was one of its most important ideological and political weapon.
The future social democracy must be based on the three equality, sustainability and democracy, but it will not work without the fourth and classical: Freedom. In the good society you cannot afford this massive growth of control in the hands of the state and private corporations. Freedom doesn´t equal democracy, it is a condition.
Looks like the German right tries the old red scare tactics again, coining the Nahles Cruddas paper as a blueprint for a red-red-green coalition (apart from the fact that it was published months before the elections last Sunday).
For those of you who read German here some reactions:
Berliner Zeitung
http://www.bz-berlin.de/aktuell/deutschland/nahles-rot-roter-deutschland-plan-article570083.html#bzTAF
Bild Zeitung:
http://www.bild.de/BILD/politik/2009/09/02/kampeter-meyer/wirtschaftsfluegel-der-union-motzt-gegen-rot-rot.html
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung:
http://www.fazfinance.net/Aktuell/Wie-sich-die-SPD-auf-Rot-Rot-Gruen-vorbereitet-4549.faz
And a rather poor Blog disucssion on the paper on Der Freitag:
http://z1.application2.kba.d9t.de/freitag/community/blogs/ingo-stuetzle/wie-sich-die-bourgeoisie-auf-rot-rot-gruen-vorbereitet
And what Neal Lawson won’t admit is he helped defend the Third Way, including as Chair of Compass. He doesn’t talk about the ‘radical center’ NOW. Only now is he talking about social democracy. Tut, tut.
It was not hard to be in favour of New Labour at the beginning of Blair’s leadership. Have you already forgotten the Labour Party before then? When John Smith died Blair was the right choice.
Neal and Compass however noticed as I did that how this politics evolved (and it was an evolution) was not right and started opposing it when it became clear that New Labour wouldn’t pursue a whole series of social democratic priorities (inequality, economic reform, …). At this point you grow more critical and this is what many have done.
So Neal is perfectly consistent in his position.
Labour was set to win under John Smith, Dominic. The party’s own internal polling showed that. And no, Lawson is not being consistent.
to be fair Rhoderick i gave New Labour some space between 1994-1998 as I was quite keen on getting rid of the Tories. But ever since Ive been asking ever more strident questions. in 1998 i had a front page lead in the Staesman calling for a return to social democarcy. I long ago stopped calling and started organsing.
Good. Tony Blair is recognised to be a person of acute intelligence, a former lawyer, careful with his choice of words. He deserved to be taken seriously — both what he says, and what he omits.
Like when he claimed he wouldn’t reverse Thatcher’s economic and trade union policies, I took him serious that he would perpetuate the Tory years as opposed to reverse & repair them.
There are many legitimate issues one can critisise New Labour on, including from Mr. Lawson. Lawson remained silent apart from a few platitudes, because, he said, Blair was Prime Minister not him — a fact that did not silence him on many other issues he talks about now. He is not directly falsifying the New Labour project, but the carefully framed deceit is instructive.