Comments on: Reconnecting Power and Politics

By: David Byrne

David Byrne — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 19:19:54 +0000

Bauman’s is the only piece in this set which actually tells it like it is. The reality is that across Europe ‘Social Democratic’ parties have generally been more neo-liberal in their actions than ‘right’ parties working in either an ordoliberal tradition – to regard New ‘Labour’ as to the left of say the German Christian Democrats is risible nonsense – or even in terms of conservative nationalism as with Law and Justice in Poland. Social democrats in the 1950s and 1960s made a compromise with capitalism – not necessarily a bad thing at the time – and adopted a frame of reference which differed from ordoliberalism only in terms of detail and degree. Although written wholly outside the German ordoliberal tradition, Beveridge’s ‘Full Employment in a Free Society’ of 1944 expresses the same sort of position i.e. that capitalism can be regulated and tamed in the interests of social justice. That was the argument of Crosland’s ‘The Future of Socialism’ in the 1950s. What happened in the 90s was that even that position was abandoned in favour of a full scale endorsement of the virtues of capitalism and markets which was not even the position of UK One Nation Conservatism. What seems to have gone entirely, other than in relation to the German Left Party and the necessary logic of Green Parties (especially that of England and Wales), is a notion of the social democratic project as being something more than the regulation of market capitalism – that is of the project of the democratic transformation of capitalism into something else. This was understood to be not only desirable but necessary. Time to bring back Clause Four perhaps. Given that capitalism is delivering not only economic but also ecological crisis – we really do have no alternative.

By: J Doran

J Doran — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 01:27:06 +0000

The problem with global institutions is that they represent an increase in scale, and often as a result, an increase in bureaucratic inertia.

Where we encounter the state as citizens is at a local level – it seems to me that there should be a greater degree of direct democratic participation at this level, through programmes of participatory budgeting and deliberative decision-making.

Where we most have need of democratic power is in the workplace, which means restoring the counterbalance of strong trade unions to match the power of big business. This will be done in the specific case of the UK through repealing legislation that regulates trade unions at the level of the state, so that trade unions can act as genuinely autonomous institutions.

By: Dominic

Dominic — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 14:01:52 +0000

Bauman is right in principle. But how we can reconnect power and politics on the global level when we seem incapable of doing it on the national let alone European level is beyond me. Let’s try this nationally and on the European level first. Then we can talk about the global picture.

By: Martin Jenkins

Martin Jenkins — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 12:24:17 +0000

The article is, in my view, correct. Over the last twenty years, Social Democracy has negated its ideological and philosophical justifications. The Parties of the ‘Socialist’ International were and are active agents of privatisation, hand-maidens to neo-liberalism. Such Parties should, but do not represent an alternative to the unjust society which presently exists.

The critique of policy from a Social Democratic perspective is welcome. Unfortunately, I’ve been reading similar material for nearly ten years. Leaderships of the ’social democratic’ parties don’t appear to be listening nor do they want to.

By: Zygmunt Bauman on Global Social Democratic Governance | The Global Sociology Blog

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 22:59:00 +0000

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By: SocProf

SocProf — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 22:56:30 +0000

That would involve growing the spine to reclaim one’s ideology and label as terms of pride and not insults, but this would also require major ideological work against “la pensée unique” that has almost triumphed with only the global civil society to push back as national parties may not be the right vehicle for this.

Globally connected social movements might work better but the “dinosaurs” in many European socialist and social-democratic party still control quite a bit of power when it comes to money and mobilization despite a “crisis of legitimacy.”