Where Now for European Social Democracy? - Policy Network

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PATRICK DIAMOND 331950s and 1960s and what Donald Sassoon terms the ‘neo-revisionism’of today 4 . The two movements have occurred after a lengthy period ofright-wing hegemony. In both eras sociologists were predicting ‘the endof ideology’ as Kirchheimer heralded the embourgeoisement of theworking-class. There is another parallel. In both eras, a period ofpessimism about capitalism’s survival was followed by its remarkablerecovery. Since the beginning of the 1990s capitalism has provedglobally resilient despite the comparatively weak performance of theEuropean economy during those years.There are of course major contrasts with the 1950s and 1960s, notleast the Left’s recent embrace of constitutional reform – as opposedto a defence of the ‘bourgeois state’ which had first legitimised socialdemocracy in the late nineteenth century. The internal process ofrevisionism is nonetheless ceaseless.The SPD recently published a new ‘framework for the just renewalof Germany’ as part of its Agenda 2010 reforms, embracing ‘a cultureof innovation’ in public policy 5 . By calling for the establishment ofnational ‘elite universities’ for example, Chancellor Schröder hasbroken a post-war taboo of German social democracy, as he seeks toaddress the skills gap while tapping more effectively into scientificinnovation.The leading French politician Dominique Strauss-Kahn has setout the case for a ‘radical reformism’ in the Parti Socialiste as thefoundation stone for the modernisation of French society. He has calledfor greater investment in education and human capital, housing andthe health sector, drawing on experience from Britain and Scandinavia,alongside fiscal and regulatory reforms – widening access to decent andsecure jobs 6 .The British Prime Minister Tony Blair has argued recently in apamphlet published by the Fabian Society 7 : “It is time to acknowledgethe 1945 settlement was a product of its time and we must not be aprisoner of it. We must recognise that what was absolutely right for atime of real austerity no longer meets the needs and challenges in anage of growing prosperity and consumer demand”.
34WHERE NOW FOR EUROPEAN SOCIAL DEMOCRACY?Are we therefore all revisionists now?Political forces can’t survive without regular self-questioning. Thesocialist philosopher R.H. Tawney set out the challenge for socialdemocratic parties with characteristic brilliance in the early 1950s: “totreat sanctified formulae with judicious irreverence and to start bydeciding precisely what is the end in view”. 8 Our parties still have tonegotiate very different national political cultures and legacies – inaddition to different electoral and parliamentary situations.Nevertheless, social democrats in Europe face common challenges as aresult of globalization and the rise of ‘anti-politics’, antagonised bychanging class structure. This squeezes Left parties and forces us toadapt to change.But this commitment still begs fundamental questions. Is theattachment to permanent reformism really tenable in the long-term?Crosland understood that the revisionist project “is an explicitadmission that many of the old dreams are dead or realised; andthis brutal admission is resented … it destroys the old simplicity,certainty, and unquestioning conviction” 9 . Can social democraticparties therefore adopt such a vision without retreating to thecomforting myths of the past, and can revisionists renew themselves?We should be conscious of the dilemmas posed by permanentrevisionism.Revisionist dilemmas: public service reformThe British example is instructive. In re-casting Clause IV of the PartyConstitution in 1995 to fully embrace the market economy, New Labourended the historical antagonism between the Left and the privatesector in Britain, and abandoned forever the dream of wholesalenationalisation of ‘the commanding heights’. It was a triumphal actof revisionism.However, such a shift has had profound long-term consequences.The consolidation of the centralised post-1945 welfare state hasemerged even more avowedly as the principal objective of the LabourParty since the mid-1990s. To swallow the market, some on the Left
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