That social democrat/Christian democrat ‘settlement’ in Europe. An interesting assertion… August 24, 2012
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Economy, European Politics, Irish Politics, The Left.trackback
One aspect of a Pat Leahy article from a couple of Sunday’s back in the SBP is worth noting. He wrote:
At the MacGill summer school in Donegal recently Labour grandee Brendan Halligan warned that the real challenge to the post-war European social democrat/ Christian democrat settlement would come if the current set of governments in Europe failed to solved the economic crisis.
It’s a fascinating proposition, isn’t it? And yet from my perspective as a sympathetic enough observer of social democracy (at least in respect of most of its traditional aims) I would have thought a more persuasive argument would be that the economic crisis has seen off that settlement and not to the advantage of social democracy. That a social democracy already hollowed out in large part by an emphasis on engagement with capital rather than the reform of and eventual replacement of capital has led to a situation where the right has largely won. Certainly the terrain has shifted to one where economic orthodoxy, for which read right orthodoxy, has become largely – albeit not entirely – unquestioned and unquestionable.
Indeed the response to the crisis at European level, and apologies in advance if this appears to be yet another single transferable post on the topic, has largely shown up the emptiness of such talk. Rather than the institutional elements of the EU taking primary position in this it has been the inter-governmental elements that have achieved primacy, and in particular those wedded to the orthodox right. Moreover the lack of full overlap of the EU with the Eurozone has exacerbated this tendency.
Or to put it another way, when faced with a genuine crisis the institutional aspects of the EU – Commission, Parliament, etcetera, have proven themselves entirely unfit for purpose and where is the surprise? Financial integration was well ahead of political integration, albeit the latter has had a serious and arguably increasing deficit in terms of democratic participation and legitimation.
But Halligan’s line seems to me to be of a piece with a lot of social democratic thinking about the EU, mistaking the fact that it exists and has propounded a certain rhetoric for it being something that it patently is not. It is not that I take the line that the EU is the font of all evil. Anything but, even in its current diminished state it is enormously useful in certain areas. But to see it as an engine of social democratic transformation is to fundamentally misunderstand its purpose and nature. And never has this been more apparent than in the past five years.
Leahy notes that so far where electorates ‘have thrown out incumbents [they’ve] vote in traditional alternatives… but what happens if and when the alternatives fail?’.
That is a most interesting question. Arguably although there’s been no clear cut shift to the left future challenges are likely to come from left of social democracy but right of . This doesn’t mark the inevitable end of social democracy. But it might see a long process whereby either those parties push social democratic parties to more radical positions or they – in a few instances – supplant them entirely.
Interesting that the coverage except for a photo ignored Boyd_Barrett and Roger Cole, who both spoke.
And he wants a referendum to end referendums (One referendum to rule over all the others).A blank cheque. Like Brecht’s Central Committee, perhaps the EU elite might have to elect a new EU people as the existing lot cannot be trusted.
The distance between this self appointed elite and the masses is feeding in to a sense of alienation. The response is a struggle between left internationalist (in the true sense, not arrogant cosmopolitanism) and the forces of reaction.
Halligans is not far removed form the paternalist strain of the Webbs and co., who in reality despised the masses they sought to “help”.
A lot of these summer schools especially the McGill one are set up in such a way that genuine alternative voices are marginalised or pushed to one side. They also act as a softener of public opinion so that new referendums etc. can have an easy ride. Expect a new dose of TINA.
Bring down living standards so we can compete with China. If we tax the rich they will leave and the rest of us have no talent (a bit like RTE). Reinforce the military, someone is going to invade or we have to “protect” someone.
Expect damn all coverage of the SWP’s marxism. On a footnote it is a pity that this does not morph into an ULA thing.
Jim thanks a million for that. I had no idea RBB or RC spoke. Are there transcripts of their contributions?
+1 re Marxism not being an ULA thing.
Insert into this discussion a comment made by James O’Brien in his piece on ‘The WSM and Anarchism’: “The minority of go-slowers did not think there was the remotest possibility of socialist revolution in the short-term. Insofar as there could be a breakdown in capitalism and the authority of the state, the likely result would be chaos followed by right-wing nationalist reaction. Socialist ideas just did not have a grip on much of the population.”
What if this is the situation? (And I’ve been thinking along similar lines.) Christian democracy has broken down as well as social democracy, which was the point being made by Brendan Halligan. (For it was joint author of the welfare state/corporatist compromise along with social democracy.) The EU in its present form is certainly not an engine of transformation in a progressive direction. But opposition to further integration may only exacerbate the dictatorship of the big states in the interests of uncontrollable capitalism and strengthen fissiparous nationalism, and what cause does that help?
There’s a real balance to be struck there, and that’s why for myself I’m not entirely against the EU. Interesting you should say about CD also suffering a rupture. Not so much I’d think because it already had present currents of thought that we see manifested right of centre in it, but yes to some degree. Paul Mason (I think) of the BBC suggests there’s a variant emerging from neo-liberalism which is even more right tilting.
I have never held the view that the “European Union” (by which I suppose we mean the partially built institutions of EU governance) is, in some metaphysical sense, inherently
oriented to some kind of social democratic development. To the extent that the EU political consensus over the years has been to the left of raw-in-tooth-and -claw neo-liberalism, it is true that the EU has delivered a range of social, environmental and other progressive reforms.But this, in turn, has no more than reflected the wider EU balance of class forces. The past decade has seen a weakening in the influence of the labour and other social and civil society movements. That could potentialy further undermine the progressive “acquis communitaire” on a range of social and economic policies.
The point is that the profound crisis of finance capital which has been unleashed cannot (repeat cannot) be resolved at a purely national level. Pursuit of the chimera of a “national” road to a post capitalist society only leads to xenophobia, hostility to immigrants and impoverishment through devaluation and like policies. We either find the intellectual and political energies and resources to challenge the status quo at European level (and eventually global level), or we will be pushed ever further backwards in terms of living standards, civil liberties and democratic rights.
I find myself agreeing about this. The nation state is incapable of resolving this crisis or any other major one.It is international in scope and the solution is also international.Even the right in Britain actually counterpose an USA alliance to the EU, they don’t seriously think they can go it alone.
At the moment the peripheral countries Greece, Portugal and us, and the poor in the major countries are being picked upon because of their weakness.
Todays Irish Times had an article on German perceptions of Ireland. Some scary stuff. Amongst it an almost call for Irish dole to be brought down to German levels. Never calls for raising up but always down.
We never hear of pan EU Trade Union actions or calls for action. ULA, Syrizia, Fronte de Gauche, Green-Left alliance etc. should be trying to form an EU wide front.
Another Europe is possible but it needs action to bring it about.
John Palmer reminds me of that scene in Apocalypse Now where they stop the fishing boat and shoot it up but the woman they’ve wounded is still alive and so the soldiers scramble to try to get her to a doctor. Martin Sheen just shoots her and says that he told them not to stop the boat.
The great Euro project from the start was about consolidating European capitalism against outside attacks from the US, the USSR and, after 1990, China. It has NOTHING to do with the citizens who are just tax fodder.
You and your ilk never saw this, never understood it, and just kept on harking on about the great social democracy that Europe would become.
Well, all that has happened in the past five years has been done by social democrats.
Not by fascists, not by dictators, but by social democrats.
Now that it has all gone haywire you want to bring it to a doctor.
And even though the great European project – from the start – was about strengthening capitalism and that everything that has happened within the last five years has played out precisely to that logic, you still possess the necessary ignorance to see the threat as that from democratically-elected governments.
“Well, all that has happened in the past five years has been done by social democrats.”
How so? Look at the key players in power over the period.
In the European Council
- Angela Merkel is not a Social Democrat.
- Nicolas Sarkozy is not a Social Democrat.
- Silvio Berlusconi is not a Social Democrat, and neither is Mario Monti.
- Donald Tusk is not a Social Democrat.
- Fredrik Reinfeldt is not a Social Democrat
- Matti Vanhanen, Mari Kiviniemi, and Jyrki Katainen are not Social Democrats
- the various Belgian prime ministers from 1999 to last December were not Social Democrats
- neither Jan Peter Balkenende nor Mark Rutte (Netherlands) are Social Democrats
- Janez Janša of Slovenia, in power at the start and again at the end of the period, is not a Social Democrat.
In key instituions
- Herman Van Rompuy is not a Social Democrat.
- Mario Draghi and Jean-Claude Trichet are not a Social Democrats.
- The S&D group, in its various guises, has not been the largest grouping in the European Parliament since 1999.
On the other hand, there were some around.
In the European Council
- Spain was led by a Social Democrat at the start of the period,
- the UK was also led by a Social Democrat five years ago,
- the Portugese leader five years ago was José Sócrates, who is a Socialist.
In key instituions
- José Manuel Barroso is a Social Democrat
- Borut Pahor in Slovenian was in power from 2008 to 2012 and is a Social
- Robert Fico is Slovakia was in power at the start of the period and is a Social Democrat.
There is a lot to criticise the Social Democrats for, but they were not in the driving seat over the last five years.
Fair points. Just re Barroso, his crew in Portugal are called Social Democrats but are actually a conservative party aligned with the EPP. One more for the CD/Conservative side of the house.
My read is that the Chris. Den. Tradition had as regards economic policy had in the main moved towards a more liberal economics but had retained a veneer of socially progressive politics. A case of we can live with you introducing flexible labour regs but we’ll fight you on Palestine, and arts funding .
What should be an alternative isn’t that different not at least on finance – at least when compared to the parties ruling over the last decade in most European state.
If Christian Democrats exist in Ireland, what christian input would they have into analyzing the causes and ramifications of the international financial meltdown? How would they differ from social democratic analysis? It seems to me that soc-dems and chris-dems only differ emotionally on what former Senator Brendan Ryan called ‘pelvic issues’. Sex, marriage, rape, divorce, contraception are topics guaranteed to excite heated public debate, not only in Ireland, but I become more cynical when I see these areas of ideological contention obfuscating the essential sameness of economic outlook of contending parliamentary parties.
Part of the problem in Irish politics is that Christian Democrats never existed in Ireland. The closest we came was the foundation of the Catholic Workers’ College to inoculate the trade unions against socialism: presumably regarded as a better strategy than the foundation of separate Catholic trade unions as occurred on the Continent.
It is because of the breakdown in the social democrat/Christian democrat settlement to which Brendan Halligan referred that the ‘pelvic issues’ achieve greater prominence.
Quite right WBS. Barroso was, however, a major leader in the Maoist movement during the Portuguese revolution but – as you say – he has been a leader of the conservative SD in Portugal for many years. The Portuguese social democrats – who call themselves the Portuguese Socialist Party – are in opposition. Nodebate is quite wrong to have placed the EU social democrats as primarily responsible for the crisis. The real question is do the Social Democrats have a programme remotely sufficient to confront the crisis? I fear not. But – in fairness- it has to be said that the German Social Democrats and the German Greens have gone further and faster than most fellow parties to recognise the need to dump the austerity obsessed strategy of the right.
The actual role and thrust of the EU at this time is well illustrated by the front page headline in today’s ‘Irish Times’:
“EU warns Government over need to reform welfare system”.
The EU Commission report to which this refers says, inter alia:
“More needs to be done to alleviate or eliminate work disincentives and unemployment traps caused by some features of Ireland’s benefits system (eg the broadly flat and open-ended unemployment benefits that do not diminish with the duration of the unemployment spell), and the recent move to decouple housing support from unemployment status should be further advanced.”
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/frontpage/2012/0829/1224323185230.html?via=mr
John Palmer asks whether the Social Democrats “have a programme remotely sufficient to confront the crisis?”. Well, most of them supported that joint austerity programme with European Tories known as the Fiscal Stability Treaty, as did John if I remember correctly.
NO D_D I have never supported the austerity programme pushed by the rightwing majority in the EU. Indeed I have campaigned against it with socialists and others across the European Union – as anyone who has read my writing would know. I do support a much closer European financial, banking and fiscal union. But this needs to be reinforced by a concerted programme for socially and environmental sustainable growth. Like Syriza in Greece I believe any strategy based on leaving the Euro would be disastrous. It would make the task of building a pan European movement for social and economic strategy for jobs and social justice far MORE difficult.
John Palmer