Always declining, never gone

Has social democracy got a future?

Tom Bramble 16 February 2010

Social democracy worldwide is in crisis. Social democrats have given up on the project of reforming capitalism to benefit their working class base and have instead embraced the market as the best of all possible worlds. Any notion of redistributing income to the working class by progressive taxation, expansion of the welfare state, and nationalisation or state direction of the “commanding heights” of the capitalist economy has been abandoned. The main catalyst for this capitulation was the end of the post-war boom in the mid-1970s. During the boom, profit margins were fat enough and growth was fast enough to allow both reforms for the working class and increased business prosperity. Further, business wanted well-fed, literate and healthy workers, and was prepared to pay for government provision of health care, education, pensions, family allowances and so forth. On the other side of the equation, pressure from the working class also ensured that governments were prodded to carry out significant reforms. Living standards rose consistently. This was true under both conservative and social-democratic governments. This has now all gone by the wayside. Since the mid 1970s growth has slowed down markedly in the core of the world system. Profits slumped in the 1970s and early 1980s. This is part of the ageing of capitalism – the whole system has become less dynamic since the late 19th century. Something had to give, and the social democratic parties – which were loyal above all else to the project of boosting the competitiveness of the particular bits of the world economy for which they were each responsible – made sure that it was workers who had to do the giving. The capitulation was more abrupt for some parties than others. The ALP was one of the first to adapt to the new economic reality. Whitlam’s sacking of his reformist Treasurer Jim Cairns and his replacement by the economic conservative Bill Hayden, in the context of a sharp recession in 1975, signalled that social democracy was undergoing a significant change. Hayden handed down what was one of the world’s first monetarist budgets. Inflation was now the target of economic policy, and unemployment would have to rise to squeeze it out of the system. The following year, it was the British Labour Party’s turn. In 1976 the effects of the first major post-war crisis had hit hard, budget deficits soared and, as a condition for an emergency loan, the IMF ordered the Callaghan Labour government to slash Britain’s welfare state. In 1981 the experience was repeated across the Channel when French President François Mitterand underwent the same conversion soon after his election when international bankers dumped the French franc and forced the government to backtrack on its program of social reform. If the Whitlam, Callaghan and Mitterand governments were the first to give in to the pressure of big business, their example was soon followed by every social-democratic party, whether the Gonzalez and Hawke governments in Spain and Australia in the 1980s, or the Blair, Jospin, Schroeder and Prodi governments in Britain, France, Germany and Italy in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The fire sale of social-democratic reforms was underway in earnest as these governments stripped back the reforms, not just of their left-wing predecessors, but even those of conservative governments. Enter the market With the social-democratic project abandoned, the leaders of the social-democratic parties had to put something in its place. “The market” and “business competitiveness” became the new mantras. Much and all as we may regret it, they argue, “the economy" cannot afford substantial reform programs. The insatiable profit monster has to be fed, and programs to improve conditions of life for the working class have to be sacrificed. From Iceland to Portugal, from Greece to Spain, it is the social democrats who are currently carrying through austerity programs in response to bankers’ demands that governments rein in their escalating public debts. Overlain on this relatively recent development, there is the fact that the social-democratic parties have become more thoroughly integrated into the capitalist state since their formation. They started out as oppositional parties and declared their intention to reform the state in a fairly systematic way, and in the case of the German party, to lead a revolution. However, over the course of the past century, they have held the reins of government numerous times and this has left a mark on their character. They have become domesticated. The social democrats try to jazz up their tawdry capitulation as if it represents something new and exciting. Whether they call it “social liberalism, the “New Middle”, the “Third Way”, or “triangulation”, it amounts to the same thing – governing for business. The rhetoric of socialism, social justice, and standing up for the downtrodden has been replaced by liberal gobbledygook. “Egalitarianism” has been replaced by the myth of “equality of opportunity” – as if opportunity can ever be equalised in a society where ownership of wealth is monopolised by the top 1 per cent. “Consumer choice” is now the buzzword for schools and hospitals. “Entitlement” to social security has been replaced by meanly-restricted “service delivery”. Social-democratic governments have betrayed their supporters from their very inception in various ways. However, illusions in these parties have been maintained by the activities of their left wing, which urged young workers and students to join the party to “fight for socialism” within its ranks. The leadership had to be tossed out and the party could then proceed to build socialism. A feature of the rightward shift of social democracy in the past 30 years has been the capitulation of its left wing, which has been bought off by the small crumbs of ministerial office. In most cases they are as complicit in the betrayals as the right of the party and can no longer offer a program to shake things up as they once could. The collapse in strikes across the West since the 1970s has further removed any pressure on the leadership from the left outside the parties. Corruption of the parties The capitulation to capitalism has been accompanied by some radical changes to the parties themselves. The labour parties now have much shallower roots in the working class. Systematic efforts have been taken to reduce union influence. Figures such as Blair, Schroeder and Rudd have done their best to reduce the public impression that their parties have anything to do with trade unionism. In Australia Rudd and Co. have more leeway to snub the union leaders because union funding only constitutes a small minority of ALP funds today, with public funding, business donations and investments making up the lion’s share. Party members, particularly workers, have responded to the betrayal of the social-democratic parties by quitting in droves. With the hated Tories looking set for defeat, the British Labour Party increased its membership by 50 per cent between 1993 and 1997 to 400,000. Now, however, with Labour in power for 13 years, membership stands at just 150,000. In Germany, the SPD, which was in office from 1998 to 2009, saw its membership shrink from 780,000 to 540,000. In Sweden, membership fell sharply when the SAP was in power in the late 1990s. In Australia, ALP membership contracted from 51,000 to 43,000 in the first five years of the Hawke government alone. In both Britain and Australia, many of the party’s branches are now not much more than shells. The activist base drawn from blue-collar workers has now been supplanted by the university-educated on the make and the apparatchiks. Not that this matters greatly to the leadership who, with the advent of TV advertising and professional public relations, no longer depend so much on the ranks of the party (who, after all, can be bothersome). The betrayal of social-democratic parties has had devastating consequences for their voting base. This much was demonstrated at the European elections in June last year, when social democrats were trounced in virtually every country. On average, the social democrats won only 22 per cent of the vote.[1] Dismal votes in the European elections were compounded in national elections. In Germany, the SPD, which had been in a coalition government with the right since 2005 and prior to that had governed with the Greens since 1998, was booted out at the September federal election with only 23 per cent of the vote, down from 34 per cent in 2005. In Portugal on the same weekend the ruling social democrats suffered an 8.4 per cent swing against them and were forced into minority government. And nor is the pain over. In Britain, where an election is likely in May, the Brown government may finally be put out of its misery, not so much by enthusiasm for the Tories but a because of a general sick-heartedness amongst the millions who put Blair into office in 1997. In terminal decline? None of this means, however, that social democracy is finished. If they have shrunk, the social-democratic parties still represent one of the two alternative governments in many Western societies. Most class-conscious workers will never vote for the tories. Faced with a conservative government in power or a surge in working class combativity, labour parties may opportunistically shift to the left and garner fresh support. In Britain and Australia, millions of workers are affiliated to labour parties through their trade unions. And while they may have declined, the Swedish SAP still has 125,000 members and the German SPD more than 500,000. Likewise, the trade union bureaucracy has an interest in propping up the social democratic parties, no matter how many snubs they suffer, because they have few alternative channels for political influence. Social democratic parties are kept alive not just by their members and supporters but also by the ruling classes that want to retain a “Plan B” government for use when their favoured conservative parties can’t do the job. These parties’ links with the unions can, paradoxically, equip them better to do the job of selling sacrifice. It is also the case that during a big working-class upsurge, the ruling class, anxious to buy time to allow them to regroup, may permit the state to grant reforms and the social democrats to claim credit for them. This is what happened in 1919 in Germany, in 1936 in France and in 1974 in Britain. Just because the traditional social-democratic organisations are in decay, this does not spell the same fate for social-democratic consciousness within the working class. Reformism within the working class does not depend on the fulfilment of reforms by social-democratic parties. It arises out of the basic existence of the working class which fosters a dual and contradictory consciousness – of class antagonism on the one hand, and powerlessness on the other. Social democracy appeals to this dual consciousness: let us take care of things, they say, just give us your vote, and we’ll fix things through parliament. The capitalists encourage this by promoting illusions in parliament in every way they can. And so, last year, just five months after social democrats were king-hit in the European elections, they won office in Greece in November with a respectable 44 per cent vote and a 6 per cent swing towards them. In Iceland, they polled 30 per cent in April, dismal enough but sufficient to beat the conservatives whose vote collapsed in a wave of anger about the economic meltdown. And it is likely that the Rudd government here in Australia will be re-elected later this year. Given the political volatility that accompanies any deep-seated and prolonged economic crisis, there is no saying that social democrats will not roar back into contention in Europe in coming years. Social democracy can take different organisational forms. If the traditional parties continue their slide, there is nothing stopping the formation of new social democratic parties, through splits in the existing parties and fusions with other forces, as in Die Linke (The Left) in Germany and Communist Refoundation in Italy. These have both achieved electoral support of around 10 per cent in the past few years. However, their trajectory demonstrates that even if social democracy is not finished, the prospect that social-democratic parties might pursue any serious left alternative project is small. Refoundation joined with the Prodi government in Italy in 2006 and backed keeping troops in Afghanistan, the dispatch of additional soldiers to Lebanon, and the expansion of an American military base, in the face of huge public opposition. They were subsequently smashed at the 2008 election. Die Linke has formed coalition governments with the SPD in Berlin and the state of Brandenburg where they have carried out budget cuts and privatisation. But social democracy is not about to collapse of its own accord, and nor will the social-democratic parties. If the dead-end of reformism is to be done away with, two things are essential. First, a sustained upsurge in working class struggle that will embolden workers to act on their hostility to the capitalist order through strikes and insurgencies. The political and structural decline of the traditional social-democratic parties will make it much harder for them to head off and contain mass revolt by workers as they have in the past. Ironically, their long term approach of craven capitulation to capital has made them less able to play the role that was historically assigned to them – the last line of defence for capitalist class rule. But this does not mean that social democracy will just collapse in the face of a future working class upsurge. Old parties could adapt, or new reformist parties could take their place. A mass socialist party, a revolutionary organisation that clearly rejects any idea that capitalism can be reformed or compromised with, is the second essential precondition if the noxious influence of the social democrats is to be finally broken. [1] In Germany, the SPD won only 21 per cent of the vote at the 2009 European elections. In Austria, their comrades won only 23 per cent. In Italy, the social democrats got 26 per cent. In Britain, Labour trailed in third with only 15.8 per cent of the ballot. In Sweden, where the social democrats held power in Stockholm for decades, they polled only 24 per cent at the European elections. In France, the Socialist Party scored only 16.5 per cent. In neighbouring Spain, the vote for the Socialists was 38.5 per cent, well above its neighbours but embarrassingly low nonetheless.