http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/29/world/europe/29socialism.html?_r=1&em
Europe’s Socialists Suffering Even in Downturn
Steven Erlanger, New York Times
Sept 28, 2009
PARIS — A specter is haunting Europe — the specter of Socialism’s
slow collapse.
Even in the midst of one of the greatest challenges to capitalism in 75
years, involving a breakdown of the financial system due to “irrational
exuberance,” greed and the weakness of regulatory systems, European
Socialist parties and their left-wing cousins have not found a compelling
response, let alone taken advantage of the right’s failures.
German voters clobbered the Social Democratic Party on Sunday, giving
it only 23 percent of the vote, its worst performance since World War II.
Voters also punished left-leaning candidates in the summer’s European
Parliament elections and trounced French Socialists in 2007. Where the
left holds power, as in Spain and Britain, it is under attack. Where it
is out, as in France, Italy and now Germany, it is divided and listless.
Some American conservatives demonize President Obama’s fiscal stimulus
and health care overhaul as a dangerous turn toward European-style
Socialism — but it is Europe’s right, not left, that is setting its
political agenda.
Europe’s center-right parties have embraced many ideas of the left:
generous welfare benefits, nationalized health care, sharp restrictions
on carbon emissions, the ceding of some sovereignty to the European
Union. But they have won votes by promising to deliver more efficiently
than the left, while working to lower taxes, improve financial regulation,
and grapple with aging populations.
Europe’s conservatives, says Michel Winock, a historian at the
Paris Institut d’Études Politiques, “have adapted themselves to
modernity.” When Nicolas Sarkozy of France and Germany’s Angela Merkel
condemn the excesses of the “Anglo-Saxon model” of capitalism while
praising the protective power of the state, they are using Socialist
ideas that have become mainstream, he said.
It is not that the left is irrelevant — it often represents the only
viable opposition to established governments, and so benefits, as in
the United States, from the normal cycle of electoral politics.
In Portugal, the governing Socialists won re-election on Sunday, but lost
an absolute parliamentary majority. In Spain, the Socialists still get
credit for opposing both Franco and the Iraq war. In Germany, the broad
left, including the Greens, has a structural majority in Parliament, but
the Social Democrats, in postelection crisis, must contemplate allying
with the hard left, Die Linke, which has roots in the old East German
Communist Party.
Part of the problem is the “wall in the head” between East and West
Germans. While the Christian Democrats moved smoothly eastward, the
Social Democrats of the West never joined with the Communists. “The two
Germanys, one Socialist, one Communist — two souls — never really
merged,” said Giovanni Sartori, a professor emeritus at Columbia
University. “It explains why the S.P.D., which was always the major
Socialist party in Europe, cannot really coalesce.”
The situation in France is even worse for the left. Asked this summer
if the party was dying, Bernard-Henri Lévy, an emblematic Socialist,
answered: “No — it is already dead. No one, or nearly no one,
dares to say it. But everyone, or nearly everyone, knows it.” While
he was accused of exaggerating, given that the party is the largest in
opposition and remains popular in local government, his words struck home.
The Socialist Party, with a long revolutionary tradition and weakening
ties to a diminishing working class, is riven by personal rivalries. The
party last won the presidency in 1988, and in 2007, Ségolène Royal
lost the presidency to Mr. Sarkozy by 6.1 percent, a large margin.
With a reputation for flakiness, Ms. Royal narrowly lost the party
leadership election last year to a more doctrinaire Socialist, Martine
Aubry, by 102 votes out of 135,000. The ensuing allegations of fraud
further chilled their relations.
While Ms. Royal would like to move the Socialists to the center and
explore a more formal coalition with the Greens and the Democratic
Movement of François Bayrou, Ms. Aubry fears diluting the party. She
is both famous and infamous for achieving the 35-hour workweek in the
last Socialist government.
The French Socialist Party “is trapped in a hopeless contradiction,”
said Tony Judt, director of the Remarque Institute at New York
University. It espouses a radical platform it cannot deliver; the result
leaves space for parties to its left that can take as much as 15 percent
of the vote.
The party, at its summer retreat last month at La Rochelle, a coastal
resort, still talked of “comrades” and “party militants.” Its
seminars included “Internationalism at Globalized Capitalism’s Hour
of Crisis.”
But its infighting has drawn ridicule. Mr. Sarkozy told his party
this month that he sent “a big thank-you” to Ms. Royal, “who is
helping me a lot,” and Daniel Cohn-Bendit, a prominent European Green
politician, said “everyone has cheated” in the Socialist Party and
accused Ms. Royal of acting like “an outraged young girl.”
The internecine squabbling in France and elsewhere has done little to
position Socialist parties to answer the question of the moment: how to
preserve the welfare state amid slower growth and rising deficits. The
Socialists have, in this contest, become conservatives, fighting to
preserve systems that voters think need to be improved, though not
abandoned.
“The Socialists can’t adapt to the loss of their basic electorate,
and with globalism, the welfare state can no longer exist in the same
way,” Professor Sartori said.
Enrico Letta, 43, is one of the hopes of Italy’s left, currently in
disarray in the face of Silvio Berlusconi’s nationalist populism. “We
have to understand that Socialism is an answer of the last century,”
Mr. Letta said. “We need to build a center-left that is pragmatic,
that provides an attractive alternative, and not just an opposition.”
Mr. Letta argues that Socialist policies will have to be transmuted into
a more fluid form to allow an alliance with center, liberal and green
parties that won’t be called “Socialist.”
Mr. Winock, the historian, said, “I think the left and Socialism in
Europe still have work to do; they have a raison d’être, and they
will have to rely more on environment issues.” Combined with continuing
efforts to reduce income disparity, he said, “going green” may give
the left more life.
Mr. Judt argues that European Socialists need a new message — how to
reform capitalism, “recognizing the centrality of economic interest
while displacing it from its throne as the only way of talking about
politics.”
European Socialists need “to think a lot harder about what the state
can and can’t do in the 21st century,” he said.
Not an easy syllabus. But without that kind of reform, Mr. Judt said,
“I don’t think Socialism in Europe has a future; and given that
it is a core constitutive part of the European democratic consensus,
that’s bad news.”
Europe’s Socialists Suffering Even in Downturn
Steven Erlanger, New York Times
Sept 28, 2009
PARIS — A specter is haunting Europe — the specter of Socialism’s
slow collapse.
Even in the midst of one of the greatest challenges to capitalism in 75
years, involving a breakdown of the financial system due to “irrational
exuberance,” greed and the weakness of regulatory systems, European
Socialist parties and their left-wing cousins have not found a compelling
response, let alone taken advantage of the right’s failures.
German voters clobbered the Social Democratic Party on Sunday, giving
it only 23 percent of the vote, its worst performance since World War II.
Voters also punished left-leaning candidates in the summer’s European
Parliament elections and trounced French Socialists in 2007. Where the
left holds power, as in Spain and Britain, it is under attack. Where it
is out, as in France, Italy and now Germany, it is divided and listless.
Some American conservatives demonize President Obama’s fiscal stimulus
and health care overhaul as a dangerous turn toward European-style
Socialism — but it is Europe’s right, not left, that is setting its
political agenda.
Europe’s center-right parties have embraced many ideas of the left:
generous welfare benefits, nationalized health care, sharp restrictions
on carbon emissions, the ceding of some sovereignty to the European
Union. But they have won votes by promising to deliver more efficiently
than the left, while working to lower taxes, improve financial regulation,
and grapple with aging populations.
Europe’s conservatives, says Michel Winock, a historian at the
Paris Institut d’Études Politiques, “have adapted themselves to
modernity.” When Nicolas Sarkozy of France and Germany’s Angela Merkel
condemn the excesses of the “Anglo-Saxon model” of capitalism while
praising the protective power of the state, they are using Socialist
ideas that have become mainstream, he said.
It is not that the left is irrelevant — it often represents the only
viable opposition to established governments, and so benefits, as in
the United States, from the normal cycle of electoral politics.
In Portugal, the governing Socialists won re-election on Sunday, but lost
an absolute parliamentary majority. In Spain, the Socialists still get
credit for opposing both Franco and the Iraq war. In Germany, the broad
left, including the Greens, has a structural majority in Parliament, but
the Social Democrats, in postelection crisis, must contemplate allying
with the hard left, Die Linke, which has roots in the old East German
Communist Party.
Part of the problem is the “wall in the head” between East and West
Germans. While the Christian Democrats moved smoothly eastward, the
Social Democrats of the West never joined with the Communists. “The two
Germanys, one Socialist, one Communist — two souls — never really
merged,” said Giovanni Sartori, a professor emeritus at Columbia
University. “It explains why the S.P.D., which was always the major
Socialist party in Europe, cannot really coalesce.”
The situation in France is even worse for the left. Asked this summer
if the party was dying, Bernard-Henri Lévy, an emblematic Socialist,
answered: “No — it is already dead. No one, or nearly no one,
dares to say it. But everyone, or nearly everyone, knows it.” While
he was accused of exaggerating, given that the party is the largest in
opposition and remains popular in local government, his words struck home.
The Socialist Party, with a long revolutionary tradition and weakening
ties to a diminishing working class, is riven by personal rivalries. The
party last won the presidency in 1988, and in 2007, Ségolène Royal
lost the presidency to Mr. Sarkozy by 6.1 percent, a large margin.
With a reputation for flakiness, Ms. Royal narrowly lost the party
leadership election last year to a more doctrinaire Socialist, Martine
Aubry, by 102 votes out of 135,000. The ensuing allegations of fraud
further chilled their relations.
While Ms. Royal would like to move the Socialists to the center and
explore a more formal coalition with the Greens and the Democratic
Movement of François Bayrou, Ms. Aubry fears diluting the party. She
is both famous and infamous for achieving the 35-hour workweek in the
last Socialist government.
The French Socialist Party “is trapped in a hopeless contradiction,”
said Tony Judt, director of the Remarque Institute at New York
University. It espouses a radical platform it cannot deliver; the result
leaves space for parties to its left that can take as much as 15 percent
of the vote.
The party, at its summer retreat last month at La Rochelle, a coastal
resort, still talked of “comrades” and “party militants.” Its
seminars included “Internationalism at Globalized Capitalism’s Hour
of Crisis.”
But its infighting has drawn ridicule. Mr. Sarkozy told his party
this month that he sent “a big thank-you” to Ms. Royal, “who is
helping me a lot,” and Daniel Cohn-Bendit, a prominent European Green
politician, said “everyone has cheated” in the Socialist Party and
accused Ms. Royal of acting like “an outraged young girl.”
The internecine squabbling in France and elsewhere has done little to
position Socialist parties to answer the question of the moment: how to
preserve the welfare state amid slower growth and rising deficits. The
Socialists have, in this contest, become conservatives, fighting to
preserve systems that voters think need to be improved, though not
abandoned.
“The Socialists can’t adapt to the loss of their basic electorate,
and with globalism, the welfare state can no longer exist in the same
way,” Professor Sartori said.
Enrico Letta, 43, is one of the hopes of Italy’s left, currently in
disarray in the face of Silvio Berlusconi’s nationalist populism. “We
have to understand that Socialism is an answer of the last century,”
Mr. Letta said. “We need to build a center-left that is pragmatic,
that provides an attractive alternative, and not just an opposition.”
Mr. Letta argues that Socialist policies will have to be transmuted into
a more fluid form to allow an alliance with center, liberal and green
parties that won’t be called “Socialist.”
Mr. Winock, the historian, said, “I think the left and Socialism in
Europe still have work to do; they have a raison d’être, and they
will have to rely more on environment issues.” Combined with continuing
efforts to reduce income disparity, he said, “going green” may give
the left more life.
Mr. Judt argues that European Socialists need a new message — how to
reform capitalism, “recognizing the centrality of economic interest
while displacing it from its throne as the only way of talking about
politics.”
European Socialists need “to think a lot harder about what the state
can and can’t do in the 21st century,” he said.
Not an easy syllabus. But without that kind of reform, Mr. Judt said,
“I don’t think Socialism in Europe has a future; and given that
it is a core constitutive part of the European democratic consensus,
that’s bad news.”
