The social democrats of the future must dare to reach out beyond their old constituencies.

Social democracy is in crisis. And it is not just that certain parties in Europe have lost their seats in government. More importantly, we are no longer sure what social democracy is, and what it should be, given that the industrial capitalism that provided the preconditions for the flourishing of European social democracy in the twentieth century is now of ever-diminishing significance in shaping the world.

Who are today’s social democrats? Who is it that will sustain social democracy in the future?

Social democracy is often equated with belonging to the party family: organisational affiliation is regarded as central to it definition. Membership of the Party of European Socialists or the Socialist International is seen as the supreme evidence that a party is social-democratic (and hence also its individual members), regardless of whether that party is the Swedish SDP or a party from the former eastern bloc that has overnight swapped the Stalinist flags of state socialism for the banner of neoliberalism.

But is definition that simple?

Social democracy has traditionally consisted of mass parties with strong ties to industrial trade unions, not least in its North European centre. Maybe that is what social democracy is? In that case, however, social democracy is little more than a remnant of the past, a dinosaur that will become extinct as the environment that sustains it changes.

In the past social democracy was shaped by the great industrial workplaces. It was in the factory that the foundation for mass organisation and a homogenous working-class culture existed. People with similar lives, jobs and interests constituted the basis for social democracy. It was in the factory that the industrial proletariat came into being and learned how to organise. The labour movement is a direct (but unwanted) result of the necessitates of production of industrial capitalism.

But at a time when fewer and fewer Europeans work in the industrial sector, this foundation of traditional social democracy is being swept away. The advocates of the third way tried to understand what would come next. The problem was that they did not understand that the class relations of capitalism are independent of industrial society. To a larger extent we live in a post-industrial society, but we do not live in a post-capitalist society.

Our great challenge is to understand how social democracy can be organised in a society where more and more people work in small workplaces in the service sector; where a substantial part of the population is more or less permanently excluded from the labour market; and where its culture is more heterogeneous than ever before.

Parties and trade unions will continue to play an important role in society – parties because parliamentary politics are central if we want once more to implement progressive reforms; and trade unions because, despite their weaker bargaining position, they are the obvious representatives of wage-earners’ interests. But they will not organise the masses as they once did. And even those who let themselves be organised will no longer be as eager to be led by an enlightened leadership.

Then how do we organise social democracy in a post-industrial society?

To begin with, we have to dare to look beyond our traditional organisations. Social democracy has to be where the people are, and today they are seldom in institutions constructed for other circumstances. But that does not mean that we should throw out the baby with the bathwater. What works should of course be kept and renovated. The things that do not meet their purpose must be replaced with something new.

Today the working class is more female, and has a darker skin tone, than before. It has less secure working conditions than before. It earns comparatively less money than before. And it is to a lesser extent what Karl Marx called a class für sich, a class that identifies itself as a collective agent for political change.

But that does not mean that people have stopped organising to improve society, to make it more social and democratic. The problem is that we no longer recognise them when they do it, since they do not do it in our organisations. They are there to defend public services from privatisation and downsizing. They organise networks that support sans papiers. They campaign for sustainable climate policies. They sign a petition for fair working conditions that is circularised on the internet. They are active in community organisations and coach the local kids’ football team. The social democracy of the future will be carried by networks and clusters of agents that will not march to the beat of the same drum (or even vote for the same party).

If we want to be part of that future we have to learn how to interact with these other agents without trying to dictate the terms. Otherwise the institutions that carried social democracy in the twentieth century will be replaced by other institutions and agents, who better understand how to work for the goals of social democracy in the post-industrial context of the twenty-first century.