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Chapter 2

The death of social democracy

"In the midst of this sad drama social democracy feels more strongly than ever before its sacred vocation to turn your eyes from the dark present towards a better time, a time which must and will come; towards socialism, which will bloom from the soil of suffering and struggle." – Dutch social-democrat, Pieter Jelles Troelstra, 1903

"We don't speak any more about the 'Vision' or 'The Alternative' of the Labour Party... There is no alternative to the existing social system and so it doesn't make any sense to strive for one." – Dutch social-democratic prime minister, Wim Kok, 1989

The transformation of social democratic parties like the Dutch Labour Party (PvdA) from parties of change into conservative, conformist organisations began in the early 1980s. In the Netherlands it has, for the time being, reached its conclusion in the formation of the so-called Purple Coalition of Labour and Liberals. Numerous political commentators and supporters of the `modern left' have greeted this metamorphosis with applause, seeing it as the only possible development of the left now that the collapse of the Eastern Bloc has become an irrevocable fact. It is as if, since the greatest political experiment of all time has foundered on the rocks, any desire to change society must have gone down with it and liberal democracy has turned out to be the only practical system.
Social democracy thus decided to cut itself from its socialist roots, to end any association with the political current, which had, for a century or more, dedicated itself to the struggle for a better society. Its new perspective was that the society that we have now was the only one feasible. There would no longer be conflict between what is and what ought to be, no more unrest, no more impatience, no more searching for truth and justice, an end in fact to what socialism had always been: a quest for an alternative to capitalist society.
Socialism was born in the latter half of the nineteenth century as a movement opposing the particular form capitalism had taken. At first resistance was idealistic in character and based on little more than anger over the injustices that were such a common feature of the system. However, by the 1880s it was much more commonly characterised by a more realistic and worldly ideology of which Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were pioneers. From complementary elements of German philosophy (Hegel, Feuerbach), French socialism (Saint-Simon, Fourier) and British economics (Ricardo, Smith), Marx and Engels formulated the new philosophy of `scientific socialism'. Their analysis developed from an intensive study of a number of interrelated questions: from where exactly did profit come? how were the value and price of a good determined? What was the relationship between the development of the means of production (tools and machines) and the development of productive relations (those between the possessing and non-possessing classes)? And how did the struggle for existence affect or determine people's ideas and opinions?
Marx and Engels immersed themselves in a study of history that led them to the conclusion that the development of the means of production is the determining factor in human development. Their philosophy came to be known as dialectical materialism and its application to history, historical materialism. Many aspects of the historical pattern their studies revealed have been borne out by later scholarship, and large sections of their analysis of capitalism retain their worth. Nevertheless, there is much to criticise in their predictions for the future, especially where they concern the supposedly inevitable unfolding of a particular scenario.
That Marxist analysis came to the conclusions that it did in the latter half of the nineteenth century had a great deal to do with the fertile ground in which the ideas of its two founders planted themselves. Expanding capitalism was the cause of widespread poverty, misery and insecurity. People lived and worked in the most appalling conditions and the relative protection of the old feudal system's values and class relations was exchanged for the unrestrained greed for profits of the new bourgeoisie. Farmers became labourers, freed it is true from their feudal chains, but `freed' also from the ownership of their land. The whole of their labour power was now required by the new economic power, the industrialists, who made full use of it. Extremely long working hours, no rest days, child labour and life-threatening working conditions were the norm.
Gradually Marxism won more and more influence over the burgeoning labour movement, gaining strength as the movement grew. Yet by the end of the century a major ideological split was already evident amongst those who called themselves socialists. Two main currents emerged, one standing for `pure', radical socialism, while the other argued for a more moderate variant which came to be known as social democracy.
The first tendency asserted that capitalism was doomed to destruction and that it would inevitably be replaced by a new socialist order in which capital would no longer belong to the exploiting class, but instead to the whole community. This `dictatorship of the proletariat' would be the gateway to a society in which the rule would be `from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs', to communism. Social democracy, whilst rejecting this scenario, preserved for a long time its fundamental opposition to the capitalist system. In practice, however, social democrats tended to accept capitalist property relations as unchangeable, striving not to overturn the system but rather to soften its consequences for the working class.
During our own century, in most European countries, a broad spectrum of parties has been established each of which lies somewhere on the continuum between these two original currents. Generally known under a variety of titles such as Socialist, Social-Democratic, Labour, Left, Workers' and Communist Parties, they vary enormously in size and influence. In the Netherlands, the most important have been the Communist Party and the Social-Democratic Workers' Party, which later became the Labour Party, the PvdA. The Dutch Communist Party dissolved itself during the '80s, becoming part of GroenLinks (the Green Left). The PvdA of course still exists, now as part of the purple experiment, having completed its journey to its destination, a place in one room of the great liberal house.
Similar developments have taken place in other countries: in Britain, Spain, Denmark and Portugal the Social Democrats have in practice severed themselves from their historical and ideological roots to embrace the creed of neoliberalism. The same is true elsewhere, although in some countries, notably Sweden and Germany, significant progressive tendencies can still be found within social democratic parties. In Italy, the social democrats collapsed under the weight of corruption, a development, which now seems possible in Belgium. As for the Communist Parties, most remain in a state of flux following the disarray caused by the collapse of the Soviet Union and her allies, and generalisations are difficult. It is certainly the case, however, that where serious socialist resistance to neoliberalism continues, it tends to come from parties within the Communist tradition or from those like our own or the Danish Red-Green Alliance, whose immediate origins lie outside of these two central traditions.
Its neoliberal opposite has thus replaced the social democratic consensus, which prevailed throughout Western Europe in the years between 1950 and 1980. With Paul Kalma, leading ideologue of the PvdA, most prominent European social democrats have clearly concluded that their parties had "more to lose than to gain, in the long term, from radical social change."

The Titanic Welfare State

Since its adherents ceased to question capitalism's right to exist, the overriding project of social democracy has always been the welfare state. It is for this reason that the gradual abandonment of the welfare state by parties like the PvdA is so significant: it marks their transformation from social democratic organisations into something quite different. For the Socialist Party, however, the welfare state has itself always been seen as an inadequate, second-best solution to the problems of the working class under capitalism. We believe that, as long as capitalism persists, the welfare state serves as the best form of protection against the system's injurious consequences, but we do not see it as a fundamental or ultimately tenable solution to the problems it purports to address.
The welfare state has two inherent defects: firstly, it fails to do justice to human dignity; secondly, it will always in the end become unaffordable. Human dignity is before anything else based on recognition that each individual is ultimately responsible for his life and happiness. The state's task, certainly, is to ensure that every individual has the best possible opportunity to achieve that happiness, but it has neither the duty nor the ability to make every person happy. In the thoroughgoing welfare ideology of the 1970s, it was falsely asserted that the state did indeed have such a responsibility. Every person had the right to happiness and the state knew best how it could be achieved.
This unrealistic and pernicious view was reflected in a number of different areas: authoritarian attitudes towards parents whose ideas on raising children were deemed old-fashioned. A utopian refusal to accept the urgent need to develop policies designed to facilitate the integration of migrant workers into Dutch society and to prevent the formation of ghetto's; the patronising, cotton-wool approach of many welfare- and community-workers, and in countless other ways.
The welfare state was forced to labour under the burden of overblown assertions and unrealistic thinking at the very time that it began to come under attack. At the beginning of the 1980s, it became obvious that its burgeoning demands on the public purse threatened to make it unaffordable. It was at this time that Holland, in common with many other developed countries, entered a deep recession. Mass redundancies were the order of the day and claims on social funds rose accordingly. The competitiveness of the Netherlands' economy was called into question, leading to a widespread conclusion that payroll taxes and social security contributions were too high. The welfare state was forced to respond. Social security began to change rapidly into social insecurity.
Here we encounter a concrete example of the second structural shortcoming of the welfare state, that within the capitalist system it will always eventually prove unaffordable, because during times of adversity it will always be foremost in the firing line of capitalism. It is capitalism that must, clearly, find the means to finance the welfare state and, in times of hardship, it will require these means for its own, more pressing purposes.
The combination of these two inherent weaknesses (a lack of respect and realism, and ultimate non-affordability) goes a long way towards explaining the Titanic-like sinking of the social democratic flagship during the 1980s. And just as on the Titanic, it was the First Class passengers who knew how to escape with their lives, to the cost of the poor wretches on the lower decks.

The irresistible rise of the Social Technocrats

The popularity of the left amongst intellectuals in the 1970s brought into social democratic parties throughout Europe a whole new layer of administrators. Culturally opposed to the type of people who dominated parties of the centre-right, and with little attachment to the traditional values of social democracy. Such people were determined to further their own careers by ensuring that the movements to which they were attached became the dominant political tendencies within their respective societies, became in each case `the natural party of government'.
The precise form the consequences of this determination took, varied according to a number of factors specific to each society and to each party: the attitude of the old guard, the strength of the left both within and outside the social democratic parties, the particular nature of the broader culture. In Spain, Belgium and Italy centre-left politics wallowed in corruption. in Holland and France grandiose projects were preferred to attempts to meet the increasingly urgent needs of growing numbers of people. In Britain, the left of the Labour Party, which had reached the highpoint of its influence in the early '80s, was witch-hunted out of the mainstream of politics and confined to an existence the margin, in which it was no longer regarded as a legitimate participant in political debate.
In each case, however, certain common features could be observed. The idea of a mass, democratic party based on working people was dumped in favour of a two-tier structure in which the élite made all the decisions and the rank and file paid their dues. (Of course, most social democratic parties had long operated to a large extent on this basis, but what was new was that they no longer made any attempt to disguise it.) Secondly, the cadre that now controlled these parties was made up of people who were less social-democrats than social technocrats. Fired by a belief that they could recreate society in their own image by purely technical means with which any reasonable person would concur and which only dinosaurs of left and right would resist. As for the electorate, professionals hired to do the job would court it. By marketing and communications experts, market-researchers, opinion pollsters and advertising specialists.

Trade unions or charitable trusts?

The trade union movement, traditionally the bedrock of social democracy, would, in the vision of these new social technocrats, be transformed from an instrument for the betterment of working peoples' lives into a combination of `social partner' and voluntary sector organisation. It would become an updated and glorified version of the nineteenth century 'friendly society'.
In the Netherlands we saw this very clearly. The PvdA (Labour Party) had always had strong links with the trade union movement. Even in modern times many of its most prominent leaders had first served their time at the top of trade unions. Politically, unions and PvdA were close; but just as the successes of social democracy could often be put down to the willingness of the unions to fight for them, so its weakening could be attributed to their ever-diminishing taste for struggle. When workers' social security rights were threatened in the early '80s, by proposals from a PvdA minister, the unions fought back and won; but how different things had become by 1995. Again it was a Labour reform which threatened to undermine long-established rights. This time, in fact, plans went much further, amounting to a virtual abolition of the collective Sickness Insurance Law. And what did the trade unions do? They protested verbally, but took no action, with the result that the 'reform' passed through Parliament unamended.
This passivity has been evident in other areas of policy, such as in relation to attacks on disability benefits. The result is that throughout the process of the dismantling of social security and collective provisions the unions have been able to play no more than a marginal role in the resistance to such measures. Not only in the Netherlands, but in many other countries, the depoliticisation of trade unions, has allowed neoliberal plans to be implemented with often only the faintest murmuring of dissent. Instead of adapting themselves to the neoliberal trend, the trade unions should be offering leadership to a broad counter-offensive, taking note of the lessons of their own long history. The ability to fight back, vision, unselfish dedication, unity and organisation are, just as they always were, the essential ingredients of a successful social movement.

The fall of ‘Actually Existing Socialism’

At the same time as social democracy was undergoing this transformation, the twentieth century's other great experiment with its origins in the socialist movements of the late 1800s was also drawing to a close. With the exception of the short-lived Paris Commune of 1870, the Russian Revolution of October 1917 was the first attempt to put socialist ideas into practice. What initially began as a revolution against the absolute power of the tsars and the indescribable exploitation of the poor peasants led in the end to a seizure of power by the Bolsheviks.
The 'dictatorship of the proletariat' was thus established, but for how long? Russia was completely isolated and the new state was attacked from all sides by enemies who saw the experiment as a threat, a fear which was not wholly without foundation, given the widespread sympathy on which the young workers' republic could count in the west.
As a consequence of naivety and an anger that learnt to be highly selective in its targets, this sympathy persisted even when it had become clear that the institutionalised revolution with its inflexible leadership of party and state had led to the most appalling consequences. The destruction of the Soviet model was undoubtedly in large part caused by the centralist manner in which society was organised and the excessive power and prosperity of the nomenclature. From the experience of the Soviet Union and of the other countries taken over, generally against their will, it was wrongly concluded that social ownership of the means of production must automatically imply a centrally-planned economy. That socialists must see every form of private ownership of the means of production as wrong, and that the market must by definition and in all circumstances be rejected.
Moscow created a bureaucracy that stood in the way of progress and excluded any kind of flexibility. All of the fine ideals of the early Soviet Union in the end collapsed under the weight of this dictatorial bureaucracy. In addition, the urge for order meant that insufficient space was given to people's creativity, and individual initiative, far from being rewarded, was punished. Human dignity and the sense of personal responsibility which comes from it were pushed to one side, and the products of such responsibility – energy, creative thinking, good will, those features of the individual upon which the collective interest so vitally depends – were undermined. The Soviet-state was so preoccupied with enemies from outside and later from within the system, that all criticism and every form of opposition was nipped in the bud. In place of a free exchange of ideas was the icy cold of absolute truth, a truth articulated by the party. The leading role of the Communist Party was itself embodied in the constitution, as a result of which its leaders no longer felt the need to justify their authority in either words or deeds.
That this system eventually collapsed is therefore no loss to those who strive for a socialism that respects human freedom. Neither does it mean, however, as Fukuyama has argued, the `end of history'. Anyone asserting that the world's great ideological battles are now in the past will find a ready audience of neoliberals eager to lap up such arguments. Such a proposition would undoubtedly prove rather more difficult to explain, however, to the poor in Colombia. To the homeless in New York, to child workers in Calcutta or – to come closer to home – to the mother on social security who cannot afford to allow her child to continue his or her education however much she may wish it.
Poverty and exploitation are, at the end of the twentieth century, still as prevalent as they were a hundred years ago. Socialism proposes in their stead a vision of society in which human dignity, equality and solidarity occupy a central position. How this vision, at the dawn of the twenty-first century, can be transformed into real improvement and social change is the most important question facing socialists throughout the world. Just as liberalism has developed into neo-liberalism, so must all of us who seek a coherent, contemporary answer to the problems of today and tomorrow, be prepared to learn from our mistakes and to work on a renewal of socialism – or, if you like, to create a 'neo'-socialism.

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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