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Chapter 11

Ten years later, in the Netherlands

“We do not know where we are going. We only know that history has brought us to this point and why.” – Eric Hobsbawm

Out-of-date facts, up-to-date analysis

The preceding ten chapters reflect my thoughts of ten years ago. They are completely dated as far as the facts go, because the Netherlands, as much as Europe and the rest of the world, has seen in the last ten years a great number of unusually far-reaching changes. In their analysis, however, I would not hesitate to stand by what I wrote. I'd go even further than that: sometimes I have the worrying feeling that they are more correct than I would have actually wished. The rise of neoliberalism has turned out to have been even greater than ten years ago I could have guessed, its impact on society even stronger. In the chapters that follow I would like, therefore, to look into the developments of the last decade as they have affected the Netherlands and the world, and, in conclusion, to write about all of the things which I believe that we, as socialists who want to bite back, can learn from them.

The rise of Pim Fortuyn

In Enough, I described a Netherlands which in the 1990s was governed by what was for our country an unprecedented coalition of social democrats and free market liberals. That uniquely monstrous alliance, which in my opinion brought, on balance, a great deal that was bad to our country, ruled during what I consider to have been the era of missed opportunities and came to an abrupt end in the spring of 2002. In that year, in what was a true voters' revolution, the governing parties of the 'purple' coalition were punished. This revolution attracted attention outside the Netherlands, and the spectacular rise and dramatic fall of the political phenomenon that was Pim Fortuyn is certainly worth describing. This extravagant, populist politician succeeded, within a few months, in pulling the rug from under the feet of the 'purple' governing parties – so-called for the mixture of the red of the social democrats with the blue of the right-wing liberals – and mobilising a voters' protest which at the parliamentary elections of 2002 turned Dutch politics upside-down. Both social democrats and liberals found their numbers halved and the party of Pim Fortuyn, which had been established only a few months earlier, became in May 2002 in one fell swoop the second biggest in the country. And that in the face of the fact that, ten days before these same elections, the leader himself had been the victim of a cowardly murder.

I don't want to sound as if I'm showing off, but it's true that I had already written about the 'purple ruins' that this monstrous Dutch alliance of social democrats and right-wing liberals had brought about and would bring about at a time when Fortuyn, as social scientist, analyst and columnist, still believed in the purple blessings of this – for the Netherlands – unique governing combination (the first, moreover, since the introduction of universal suffrage not to include Christian Democrats). By, in 1996, writing Tegenstemmen, een rood antwoord op paars (Oppositional voices – a red answer to purple”) I had gained many supporters but also many opponents. Which was fine. People said quite justifiably after our entry into parliament in 1994: you're certainly against…but against what? And what are you in favour of? These people, whether they were now for us or against us – had a right to an answer. And I gave them one. Also later, when there were questions, I tried to answer these not only with one-liners, but also in a more worked-out form, through, for example, our performance as an opposition party under the Purple government and our commitment in the face of new wars. Politicians who write down their ideas and proposals offer voters greater choice. You would never therefore hear me say, as did the liberal leader Hans Dijkstal, referring in 2002 to Fortuyn's book, 'No, I probably won't read it, I've got work to do.' To read, to analyse what political opponents are saying, is the work of a politician.

High-handed criticism of one's views and rejection of one's approach was characteristic of the purportedly apolitical position which people such as the then leaders of the social democrats and right-wing liberals – respectively, Ad Melkert and Hans Dijkstal – took in relation to political newcomers. “Give it a little time, it'll never take root,” was what you could see them thinking. I hoped – with Fortuyn – that this pride would, on May 15th , 2002, the day of the parliamentary elections, be shown to have come just before a fall. I hoped – with Fortuyn – that the voters would have the nerve to declare the political elite incompetent and use their votes to demand to hear something new when the problems in our society were discussed. About alienation from society, about rich and poor, about 'black' and 'white' schools where almost all the children came from one or another ethnic group, about social security, about criminality and security, about our involvement in international conflicts, about culture and cultures. These are the themes over which the Dutch citizen was concerned and in relation to which he or she looked to politicians for proposals, and not for an 'old politics' of 'sweating it out', but for a 'new politics' which in a realistic fashion would lead to change. These were themes which I was always – with Fortuyn – glad to debate. Because there is after all never just one possible answer. The purple politics of social democrats and market liberals found itself bogged down, and the hype that everything would get better thanks to the monstrous alliance of liberals and social democrats was, by the end of 2001 or the beginning of 2002, no longer credible. Many people had grown sick and tired of the government which came to power in 1994. They wanted change. They demanded change.

On the waves of explosive anger – we are richer than ever, and yet this anger came, claws at the ready and shrieking, out of the hospitals and nursing homes, schools and neighbourhoods – Pim Fortuyn rode, from the end of 2001, full speed ahead. He won unprecedented support in opinion polls, and not only in opinion polls: he single-handedly engineered, at the local elections at the beginning of March 2002, a Rotterdam Revolution which saw one Rotterdammer in three vote for him.

Another shade of purple?

Fortuyn was hot, and the voters thought the world of him. Yet it wasn't clear just where he was looking to take our society. His books, which he had written over a period of several years, gave the answer. De puinhopen van acht jaar paars ("The rubble of eight purple years”), the book with which he set out his stall in March 2002 and which positively flew out of the bookshops, was a concise summary of the thinking which he had developed over the previous fifteen years. Anyone like myself who actually took the trouble to read this book and analyse its contents, would see that Fortuyn's answers to the problems brought about by the purple government were nothing but more of the same, a sort of 'angry purple', the kind of ruddy hue sometimes caused by overindulgence. His solution to problems caused by a government which was fundamentally right-wing in nature was.. .to move still further to the right. That was what all of his books and every one of his columns had to say. The former Marxist from the 1980s had gradually lost all of his faith in left-wing solutions and by 2002 was advocating radically – and often rabidly – right-wing measures.

Pim was doing the splits: he wanted to go with the people who had turned their backs on the purple government, but he could do no other than lead them to an even purpler society. All you have to do is look at his proposals on each and every substantial policy area. Problems in health care must be tackled – but Fortuyn's medicine was an enforced anorexia: not a cent more in the first two years, he said in The rubble of eight purple years. Bureaucracy must be dealt with, and the managers. Agreed. We had worked out long before this that by addressing unnecessary bureaucracy as it affected the Netherlands you could save around €200 million a year. That's a great deal of money, but nowhere near enough to solve the problems to which Fortuyn himself pointed. For that, several billion euros would be needed, not a few hundred million. The difference represents Professor Pim's enormous health care gap. Without adequate money, you won't get adequate health care. You don't need to be a professor to understand that. Fortuyn's answer? Allow private financing initiatives and entrepreneurship ('the leaven of society') into every health care sector. Where this would lead can be seen clearly in, for example, America, where this Fortuynian dream is already a reality: millions of uninsured people who cannot afford the premiums for private insurance coupled with unbridled overconsumption of health care for those with the money to wander footloose and fancy free around the health care market. Moreover, research has shown that private hospitals in the US are on average ten percent dearer in real terms than are comparable public hospitals.

The overworked teachers and lecturers in schools and colleges would also have found themselves little cheered had they read Fortuyn's remedies: carry on working, don't whinge and moan for extra money ('you'll get nothing that way, Sir!') and fines for the school if the teacher is ill or simply can't put up with things any more. Our national rules regarding insurance against non-availability for work were and remain undoubtedly a problem. Too few people are working, and no-one disputes this. Everyone recognises as well that the Purple government in the end failed to reduce the numbers registering as unavailable for work or to increase those coming off the register. But look at Fortuyn's solution: for people who are ill and unavailable for work, a flat refusal of access to what was always the showpiece of Dutch social security. Cancer, aids, a disastrous car accident: too bad, but you can't come in. Proposals for improvement of working conditions, reducing stress in the workplace (the leading cause of the upsurge in sickness-related non-availability for work); or proposals to oblige enterprises at long last to employ people with health problems and to make use of their often extensive surplus capacity instead of overworking those members of their workforces who are still healthy. On the way to registering as unavailable for work, you'd better not bump into Fortuyn. Too many people on the dole? Cut the amounts paid, and you'll see how soon they find a job. Make all these single mothers get work as cleaning ladies or gardeners. (According to Fortuyn: 'you can't find a gardener in the Netherlands!') And by the way, why have they got children if they haven't got work – hadn't they ever heard of the pill?

Social security must be tidied up, said Fortuyn. I completely agree. Those who can work must work, a proposition to which a socialist can have no ethical objection. But under what conditions? Once again we can see the violent clash of colours between red and angry purple. I say: invest in your staff, get them involved, pay them properly, look after them, give them safe and pleasant working conditions, don't squeeze them dry, don't use them up, but use their working time to your mutual advantage. Fortuyn said: abolish welfare benefits, abolish the system of non-availability for work, don't pay sickness benefits for the first week, do away with unemployment benefits. Then they'll have to go to work. And while you're about it get rid of the minimum wage, the general declaration which obliges employers to respect collective work agreements – if possible the whole collective bargaining system and the trade unions along with it. Abolish work contracts of unspecified duration – after five years you're out, unless you've given your boss sufficient satisfaction to have yourself rehired. And get shot of the last remnants of any restrictions on working time.

Whoever reads Fortuyn's books will have to agree with me that what he wrote was at best an alarmingly light-headed song of praise to ultraliberalism. If Fortuyn had come to power he would have abolished, as I pointed out in the runup to the elections of 2002, society itself. It was not for nothing that he admired people like the 18th century Dutch nobleman Joan Derk van der Capellen, who also saw the country as a “union of individuals”. This sounds fine, but in simple language it translates as nothing more or less than the slogan of greed “every man for himself”.

The fall of Fortuynism

In the year 2002 the Purple government had a problem; in 2002 the Purple government was the problem. On that point Fortuyn and I had no difference of opinion. The solution, however, was another matter. Where he wanted Purple at top speed, a furious Purple moving even further rightwards, bringing social as well as financial shortfalls, I was in favour rather of turning first left, towards other, in my opinion better and affordable alternatives for a society seeking change.

The awaited confrontation never happened, because Pim Fortuyn was callously murdered. The perpetrator of this crime left a stain on Dutch democracy and put an end to the life and thereby to the political career of someone who was anything but boring and predictable, in contrast to the Purple politicians whom he so mercilessly knocked off their pedestals. Even in death, at the head of his party's electoral list he smashed the governing parties' support. On 15th May 2002 the voters settled affairs with the political arrogance which increasingly set the Purple government's tone. The elections brought the List Pim Fortuyn (LPF) into the 150-member Parliament with a total of twenty-six seats. They made the opposition Christian Democrats (CDA) into the country's biggest party, while the SP, for the first time, saw its number of seats double.

It was logical that the Christian Democrats and the stunned Fortuynists, who together had made the biggest gains in the election, should together form a government. Ideologically the market liberals of the VVD were closest to these election winners and it was therefore no surprise that they should join the other two in the new cabinet. In other words, there was no alternative to such a cabinet, as everyone agreed; yet at the same time the feeling quickly came over me that a sort of Greek tragedy was about to unfold. After all, the party of Fortuynists was an organisation the deviser and ideological founder of which had, shortly before the election, been murdered. As a consequence of this there was no unifying thought underlying the party, a party without a history and therefore with no available developed organisation to offer a leadership cadre and a balanced list of candidates.

The sum total of all these characteristics was immediately apparent: chaos, if only because of what attracted people to such an adventurers' club. Every new party has to deal with this problem: adventurers, fortune-hunters, people whose only concerns are their own personal interests, or bringing their own personal ideas into the political debate. This is the fast road to division in any group of people, as we have so often seen. We saw precisely the same scenario unfold in the case of the 'seniors' parties' which, between 1994 and 1998, whipped up a short-lived furore in the Netherlands; there too politics became personal and the public function of member of parliament acquired a purely personal interpretation. Nobody exerted any effort on behalf of the party or its parliamentary group, but instead attached importance only to his or her own ideas. In the case of the Fortuynists, participation in a new government further compounded these difficulties in the aftermath of the 2002 elections. We are entitled to expect ministers to give priority to the national interest, to strive for unity within a government which might then speak with one voice.

The biggest complaint against the LPF is, all things considered, not therefore the endless series of rows, accusations and intrigues, but their irresponsible behaviour in relation to the national interest. While the new government talked loudly of standards and values, the actual behaviour of numerous ministers bore witness to their individualism and egoism. As one row piled on top of another, government almost ceased to function. Instead of the 'New Politics' promised by Fortuyn, we entered a period of 'No Policies'. As the 1.6 million voters who, on 15th May 2002 had, with their electoral support for his party, demonstrated their sympathy for its fallen leader Pim Fortuyn, became thoroughly sick of this series of spectacles, the Fortuynists' electoral support melted away like snow in the spring sunshine. The speedy end of the first Balkenende cabinet, with its Opportunist ministers, seemed just as inevitable as had its arrival. Pim Fortuyn's political legacy was frittered away, but the warning of what can happen if the dominant political power allows it to remains.

'First on the Left' remains the best option

What also remain are the political alternatives on the left of the political spectrum in the Netherlands, such as those developed and expressed by my own party. Our “first on the left” is still, in my opinion, the best option for Dutch society. Let there be no misunderstanding about this: our plans are neither wishy-washy nor daft. We are nobody's fools. Something will certainly happen should the SP acquire more influence. We are not an organisation inclined just to stick things out, but one which wants to tackle problems and see things through. Our course is clear: first on the left, a road which leads to the rebuilding of the scandalously neglected public sector and public property. This road leads also to a reduction of differentials not only of income but of knowledge and power, both on the national and above all the international level. And this road leads to a society in which nature and the environment are no longer treated as if they were unwanted children. In all, our 'First on the Left' has ten pillars:

First on the Left for social reconstruction. Of health care and education, of safe public transport, and of social security. Obviously needed, obviously civilised.

First on the Left is the road to democracy. We want the sell-off of democratic rights to end, and in its place an increase in the appreciation of democracy.

First on the Left for health care for all. It is really completely crazy even to discuss the possibility that the richest country in the world is unable to organise itself so that people who need health care or medical treatment have access to it, and promptly.

First on the Left for the protection of nature and the tackling of environmental problems. We do not own nature – we borrow it from our children. For this reason we say: hands off our country's last remaining nature reserves. And: make the real polluter pay and develop cleaner methods of production.

First on the Left to a practical plan to bring about a more integrated society. We want to live alongside each other, together and not apart. We do not want 'white' and 'black' neighbourhoods, 'white' and 'black' schools. Our longstanding argument against increasing apartheid and for integration is now attracting support from more and more people.

First Left also leads to a safe society. Public space belongs to us all. We must not allow ourselves to be terrorised by criminals and profiteers who care nothing for the rest of us. Criminal behaviour is anti-social behaviour. If we keep that in mind we will also understand what is going wrong: in child-rearing, at school, in the neighbourhoods, with supervision and punishment. Values and standards, long dismissed as unimportant by the prevailing political powers, are now fortunately back on the agenda.

First Left to a transport system that works as it should. We want to make the old Dutch sayings 'As right as a bus' and 'it goes like a train' meaningful again. We realise that more tarmac does not lead to fewer traffic jams. That's why we say to government and public, let's get the trains and buses going again, then we might get somewhere.

First Left to a better future which begins, as we all know, with better education. It's a scandal that our country is sliding down the league table of countries with good education systems. What was once our pride is beginning increasingly to be our disgrace. There's nothing wrong with young people in our country, they will be what we make of them and are our only chance of a better future.

First Left to a refusal to accept any social divisions... in opportunities in education or employment, but also in sport, culture or leisure activities. We have some very concrete proposals for helping sports clubs, artists, museums and art galleries, and libraries.

First Left – to close my list – to solidarity in every moment and every place. We are in favour of improving the distribution of knowledge, income and power – here, there and everywhere. Wherever there are people is also to be found our sincere, active, practical solidarity. Solidarity is an important value within our civilisation. And it's in our own interests: any of us can after all at some time find ourselves in need of the disinterested support of others. But there is no solidarity without sacrifice. We are prepared to give, and to keep giving, real content to our solidarity with the world.

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“Enough” Contents:

• Index
• Preface
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 The wondrous rebirth of liberalism
• Chapter 2 The death of social democracy
• Chapter 3 The disempowerment of the people
• Chapter 4 Poverty in the midst of plenty
• Chapter 5 The assault of the market
• Chapter 6 The unbearable lightness of commerce
• Chapter 7 A question of civilisation
• Chapter 8 The United States of Europe
• Chapter 9 The spectre of the world market
• Chapter 10 The inevitability of an alternative
• Preface to the 2006 - updated edition
• Chapter 11 Ten years later, in the Netherlands
• Chapter 12 2006: Another world is possible
• Chapter 13 New optimism