This should have been our year.

With the deepest and most global financial and economic crisis since the Great Depression, rising insecurity over employment, housing, and the ability to pay debts, combined with the election to the Presidency in the USA of one of the most left-leaning American Presidents since Franklin Delano Roosevelt, we all expected a sudden rise in the popularity of socialists and social-democrats across Europe. Unfortunately the last European elections proved us wrong. Moreover, many signs show us that social-democratic forces will probably lose in forthcoming elections – for example in Germany, Spain and the UK. In my own country, Bulgaria, the Socialist Party, after claiming it led the most successful government since the fall of Communism, fell out of power after losing in a landslide to a party that was not ever represented in parliament before the July General Elections.

Naturally, we cannot stuff the whole range of explanations and reasons in a single short argument, and some political forces even defy my grim theory (for example Greece’s PASOK which is poised to win next month’s parliamentary elections) but we have to agree that there is a problem with the perception of the Left in Europe.

In my view, the social democratic forces in Europe suffer from one of out of two common syndromes – they are either too left (in being too traditional) or not left at all. What we should do in order to reinvigorate our ideology and our movements is re-define it.

It is common knowledge that the traditional ‘blue-collar’ working class hardly exists anymore in the highly-developed societies of Europe (within certain regional discrepancies, of course), that the influence of trade unions and other organized forms of workers’ solidarity has been falling and in some corners of Europe is even virtually non-existent. Then why behave as if nothing has changed in the last 20 or 60 years? Why appeal to a ‘group of people’ just as a whole and not as a group of individuals, each with their own needs and interests but united in the understanding that through common action and through the institutions of the state we can achieve a fairer and more secure society.

On the other hand, we cannot throw ourselves in the other extreme by agreeing to the full set of neoliberal values and actions and endorsing them unconditionally. In Bulgaria the leadership of the socialist party never stopped claiming command of the topics of social justice while passing ‘reforms’ such as flat rate on income tax, describing them as ‘left-wing’ ‘social’ policy. Of course such behavior did not go ‘unrewarded’ by the electorate.

How can we re-define our movement?

Of course we have to start by realizing that the world around us has changed – in many ways. We need to go back to the core of our beliefs and values – those that define us and naturally those that still make our ideology relevant and pick a set of those on which we cannot compromise. In my view this set should include our core values – freedom, expressed in the firm belief that we are all responsible for and entitled to take the decisions that define our fate; justice – the understanding that what makes our societies sustainable and able to develop is the equal chance and equal treatment every individual ought to receive; and solidarity – epitomized by our resolute conviction that finding solutions to the challenges we face every day should and could not be left to each but instead met by the whole.

However, we also need to admit that these are not only inalienable rights but also undeniable obligations. The freedom to participate in the decision-making process of your society also imposes on you the duty to make reasonable and informed decisions. The effort and resources we put in the construction of an infrastructure of solidarity should be mirrored with the same effort in stopping those who want to abuse the system created by those structures. That would not make us less of socialists, on the contrary it would boost the image that we always wanted to project – as fighters and protectors of the common person, not as some detached, unrealistic and ideological naives, who promise to build ‘heaven on Earth’, but instead, the best they achieve, when in power, is fail miserably.

In the last two decades some left-leaning movements actually managed to construct this modern and practical view of Social-democracy, others failed. Some did not even try. In the UK, the (New) Labour Party has been in power for more than 12 years. Many of the opponents of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown’s new direction are probably rubbing their hands in expectation of next year’s (supposed) electoral fiasco, but after such a long period of being in power it is perfectly normal (and maybe even useful) for a party to spend some time in opposition in order to rediscover itself (so far it is taking the once ‘great Conservative party’ more than 12 years away from power to do and they still seem terribly disorganized and disoriented).

In Spain, PSOE’s 2004 electoral victory, was degraded as the result of the Madrid train bombing and the subsequent ineffective reaction of the government of Mr. Aznar, but since then Mr. Zapatero engaged in an ambitious program of change for his country concentrating equally on economic and social measures and winning elections comfortably in 2007 when the economic downturn was already claiming its first victims.

There are two paths ahead of us that we can choose between. We can either refuse to adapt to the world of the 21st century, rely on our traditional messages and our glorious history in order to regain the support of our fellow-citizens. Or we can re-consider and admit that some of our core appeals are not viable anymore. Then we can go back to where we started from – the people around us, see what they care about and try to offer them something in exchange of their support.