Domination under Threat
I have said that the striking thing about the structuration of the left in the countries furthest advanced along the social-democratic path lies in the domination of most – often virtually all – of the left-wing political-ideological continuum by parties of a social-democratic type. Thus the strength of these parties in competition consists in: (a) their solid domination of the ‘left’ of the political scene, a natural consequence of the absence or neutralization of significant left-wing competitors; and (b) their capacity for ‘openness’ to the centre, the principal consequence of this domination.
Today, this domination is coming under challenge from the emergence of peripheral political poles representing a ‘new politics’. Among these new actors, whose most well-known and widespread (but not exclusive) version is the ‘green’ parties, parties of a ‘new left’ variety predominate. In the origin of their memberships and voters, their programmatic and ideological options, their position on the left-right spectrum, these formations constitute a real challenge to the social-democratic parties, and to the forces of the established left in general. The appearance and relative consolidation of ‘green’ formations, and ‘new politics’ or ‘semi-new politics’ formations generally, as well as the importance of the themes they develop (environment, women’s rights, minority rights of all sorts, peace, North-South relations, etc.), represent one of the most remarkable political developments of the last twenty years.
Without getting lost in statistical minutiae, we should note that the ecological/alternative parties occupy an important place in the European political landscape. They are strongly or moderately represented on various national political stages – in Germany (8.3 per cent in 1987, 4.9 per cent in 1990, 7.3 per cent in 1994, 6.7 per cent in 1998, and 6.4 per cent in the 1999 European elections); in Belgium (6.2 per cent [ECOLO + AGALEV] in 1985, 7.1 per cent [ECOLO + AGALEV] in 1987, 8.3 per cent [ECOLO + AGALEV] in 1991, 7.3 per cent [ECOLO + AGALEV] in 1995, 7.4 per cent [AGALEV] and 8.4 per cent [ECOLO] in 1999; in Austria (4.8 per cent in 1986, 4.8 per cent in 1990, 7.3 per cent in 1994, 4.8 per cent in 1995, but 9.2 per cent in the 1999 European elections); in Finland (4 per cent in 1987, 6.8 per cent in 1991, 6.5 per cent in 1995, and 13.4 per cent in the 1999 European elections); in Sweden (5.5 per cent in 1988, 3.4 per cent in 1991, 5.2 per cent in 1994, 4.5 per cent in 1998, but 17.2 per cent in the 1995 European elections and 9.4 per cent in the 1999 European elections); in the Netherlands (4.1 per cent in 1989, 3.5 per cent in 1994, 7.3 per cent in 1998, and 11.9 per cent in the 1999 European elections).
We might also note that in Denmark, a party of a semi-new left type (or, in Kitschelt’s classification, ‘left-libertarian’1) – the Socialist People’s Party (SF) – has established itself as an important political actor since the 1960s, although its influence is waning (11.5 per cent in 1984, 14.6 per cent in 1987, 13 per cent in 1988, 8.3 per cent in 1990, 7.3 per cent in 1994, 7.5 per cent in 1998, and 7.1 per cent in the 1999 European elections). Similarly, in Norway, another Scandinavian country with a powerful social democracy, the left-wing socialists – politically close to their Danish counterparts, but with a very uncertain and unstable electoral record – have formed part of the Norwegian political landscape since the second half of the 1960s. (Under the title of the Popular Socialist Party [SF] they obtained 3.5 per cent in 1969 and 11.2 per cent in 1973; under that of the Socialist Left Party, 4.2 per cent in 1977, 4.9 per cent in 1981, 5.5 per cent in 1985, 10.1 per cent in 1989, 7.9 per cent in 1993, and 6 per cent in 1997).
Obviously, the electoral ‘business’ of these parties cannot be regarded as flourishing and expanding, and the increased volatility of their electorate in some instances translates into uneven results.
Meanwhile, in Sweden and Finland, the effect of their presence is reinforced by the existence of traditional left-wing (ex-communist) formations, which have been significantly renovated and converted to ecology and the themes of the new politics. (The Party of the Left [V] in Sweden scored 6.2 per cent in 1994, 12 per cent in 1998, and 15.8 per cent in the European elections of 1999. The Left Alliance [VAS] in Finland obtained 11.2 per cent in 1995 and 9.1 per cent in the 1999 European elections.)
In addition, in a southern Europe marked by a strong communist tradition, despite the general erosion in their influence, we observe a certain resilience of communist forces which to some extent is astonishing. In France, the PCF obtained 9.9 per cent in 1997 (but 6.8 per cent in the 1999 European elections as against 9.7 per cent for the Greens). In Spain, the United Left (IU) obtained 10.6 per cent in 1996 (and 5.8 per cent at the last European elections). In Italy, Rifondazione comunista obtained 8.6 per cent in 1996 (but only 4.3 per cent at the 1999 European elections). In Portugal, the communists and their allies secured 8.6 per cent in 1995 (and 10.3 per cent in the 1999 European elections). In Greece, the communist party (KKE) scored 5.6 per cent in 1996 (and 8.7 per cent in the 1999 European elections).2 It is important to note that the left oppositions (communists, post-communists, left socialists, Greens) exceed 15 per cent of the votes cast in three EU countries, two of which (Sweden, Finland) are located in the northern part of the continent.3 In the other three (Germany, Spain, France), the influence of the formations in question exceeded 10 per cent of the votes cast at the last legislative elections.
Of course, arithmetic must not take precedence over politics: these formations are part of a large, very heteroclite mass, lacking a common tradition and with a dispersed ideological framework. Their electoral support is unstable and their organizational structures are invariably weak. They possess neither the deep roots nor the stability of the old communist parties. The logic of the statistics, however, is illuminating: it indicates the reasonable electoral health of the left oppositions (new and old) and the ‘neither left nor right’ oppositions. They may not be flourishing electorally, but what is implicitly and explicitly at stake in the power of these poles (new and old) is the destabilization – even obstruction – of the strategy of the great social-democratic parties.
Indeed, the presence of such rivals on the left (or of the ‘neither left nor right’ variety), and the constant pressure that they exert on social-democratic-type parties, weaken these parties politically, sociologically and ideologically. The ‘left’ segment of the political scene is no longer – as it so often was in the past – a space with minimal political competition, a terrain on which social democracy’s writ essentially runs. It is now subject to the dialectic of confrontation, proper to every bi- or multipolar space. The competitive security of social democracy is affected. We have seen tangible signs of this in the recent past, and we also see them today, in Norway, Denmark, Germany, Sweden, Belgium, and, to a lesser degree, in Austria, Greece and elsewhere.
Doing Battle on Two – or Three? – Fronts
The emergence and consolidation of these challengers have prompted the social-democratic parties, often through the prior activation of fratricidal internal struggles, to make a turn to the themes and options of the new politics, a switch often perceived and accepted as a left turn. In particular, the Scandinavian, Dutch and German social-democratic parties – and, to a lesser extent, the Austrian – embarked during the 1980s, as did the Italian PDS during the 1990s, on a very important attempt at programmatic renewal, integrating the themes of the ‘new politics’ (especially ecological themes).4 In Norway, for example, the emergence of social movements has made ‘post-materialist’ questions (particularly the environment and feminism) a central axis of Norwegian public debate.5 Gro Harlem Brundtland, former leader of the Norwegian Labour Party, has even become ‘the emblematic figure of a social democracy in the vanguard of ecological consciousness and the demands of a new feminist left’.6 In Germany, where ‘two SPDs’ (one ‘traditional’, the other ‘new politics’) confront each other within the SPD, the ‘ecological modernization of the economy’ was a centrepiece of the party’s programmatic renewal.7 The SAP, traditionally distinguished by a long ‘legacy of continuous reform and innovations’, ‘elevated a good environment to one of the four major goals for the decade’ in its action programme for the 1990s.8 The SPÖ’s ‘Social Democracy 2000’ programme, adopted in 1989, contained a long chapter on ‘ecological renewal in an industrialized society’.9
This conversion to the values and themes of the new politics (the ‘greening of socialist parties’) was in some instances a means of preventing the crystallization of an organizational schism between the ‘traditional’ left and the ‘new’ left. It was also a way of simultaneously neutralizing and conciliating the new parties and new social movements, precisely in order (in the words of German social-democratic leader Erhard Eppler) to render ‘the Greens useless’. Thus, seeking to protect themselves from this novel threat and contest the ‘new politics’ parties on their own ground to prevent their consolidation, social democrats found themselves challenged and partially transformed.
In addition to the challenge represented by the rise of ‘new political’ values, socialists faced the simultaneous rise of neoliberal values in a context unconducive to social-democratic economic ‘solutions’. Thus, contrary to the situation in the 1950s – when the pressure came above all from the right – and the 1960s and 1970s – when it came, rather, from the left – in the 1980s socialists had to respond to unprecedented pressure. In the face of the breakthrough and impact of neoliberal ideas, a ‘neo-liberalization of the debate’ occurred at the very heart of the social-democratic ideological universe in the course of the 1980s. The socialists’ new rhetoric and practice (promotion of the market, competitive austerity policies, reform of the welfare state) have contributed significantly to the redefinition of social-democratic identity. In effect, confronted by the dual ideological competition of neoliberalism and the ‘new politics’, socialists and social democrats have doubly ‘retreated’: they have gradually become simultaneously more ‘neoliberal’ and more ‘new left’. The defection of part of their traditional electorate, particularly the popular component, was the logical consequence of this simultaneous dual turn.
This turn has generated a deficit of self-conception, a profound doubt about social-democratic identity. The key indicators that historically made up social democracy’s partisan imaginary (e.g. its perception as a left-wing party confronting the right, as the party of labour and equality confronting the forces of capital and inequality, as the party of ideals confronting opponents bereft of an ideology, etc.) – these have been blurred. The result is a confusion about its identity. As Donald Sassoon has emphasized: ‘it is not because of electoral losses or the collapse of the industrial working class that one can talk of a “crisis” of socialism. It is because the socialist movement was forced to renew itself by going outside its own traditions and re-examining its own basic values’.10
Accordingly – particularly in countries where ‘new politics’ formations have more or less consolidated their positions – social democrats have found themselves caught between three contrary pressures that are difficult to reconcile: one radical and post-materialist, deriving from the ecological/libertarian left; another moderate and pro-capitalist, deriving from the right; and a third hostile towards liberalism (and often mistrustful of post-materialism), deriving from their ‘privileged class’ and their own social-democratic tradition (now represented by the trade unions, the left wing of the party and, in some countries, by communist and ex-communist formations). In addition, we should note that the resonance of some ‘old’ left themes (especially defence of the welfare state) has been amplified by the fact that a large part of the ‘post-materialist’ and libertarian left (whether Green or Red-Green in complexion), particularly influential in the public sector, tended to adopt an ever more firmly social and anti-neoliberal vocation. The new left, whose rhetoric has been largely ‘pirated’ by the social democrats, has thus readjusted its position on the ‘materialism/post-materialism’ axis. It has progressively adopted a more composite and rather more ‘materialist’ profile.
The Programmatic Response of the Socialists
If the socialists have retreated under the impact of the twin threat posed by neoliberals and ‘left-libertarians’, they have done so in order to defuse the dynamic of their competitors by appropriating some of their themes. They have retreated, the better to counterattack. The fact that the great majority of European countries were governed by socialists towards the end of the 1990s is eloquent testimony to the effectiveness of this counteroffensive. But on the basis of what strategic formula?
With reference to the British Labour Party, Ivor Crewe has described the new strategy of socialists and social democrats – the strategy of ‘natural party of government’ – as follows:
| i. | the abandonment of policies tailored to specific group interests and demands in favour of across-the-board appeals to the consensual values of the whole electorate |
| ii. | the substitution of electoral for ideological criteria in policy-making |
| iii. | the elevation of image management above policy detail as the centrepiece of the party’s communication strategy … with an emphasis on ‘competence’, ‘responsibility’ and ‘respectability’.11 |
To these three characteristics of the ‘natural party of government’ strategy, we might usefully add – or re-emphasize, at the expense of slight qualifications – the following features:
iv.Occupation of the semantic field of ‘modernity’ and ‘renewal’. Investment of the terms ‘modernity’ and ‘modernization’ by socialists is not a new phenomenon. Did not the SPD win the legislative elections to the Bundestag in 1969 on a promise of ‘creating a modern Germany’? Did not Harold Wilson’s Labour Party, with its project of an alliance between science, technology and planning, and the ambition of modernizing the British economy, reproach the Tories with being ‘reactionary’ in 1964? Today, occupation of the semantic field of ‘modernity’ – and the keywords associated with it (‘new’, ‘renewal’, ‘competence’, ‘responsibility’, ‘efficiency’, ‘openness’) – is the great socialist/social-democratic response to the ‘modernity deficit’, real or alleged, of 1980s and 1990s socialism. This deficit was due to changes in social stratification and contraction of the left’s ‘natural’ social base, as well as the neoliberalization of debate within advanced capitalist societies. Hence the similarity of discourses on the ‘modern’ and ‘modernization’ throughout Europe. In reality, the themes of ‘modernity’, ‘competence’ and ‘responsibility’ possess the strategic advantage of attracting part of the conservative electorate, without alienating the hard core of the social-democratic electorate. This being the case, the historically highly polysemic terms ‘modern’ and ‘modernity’, which have a long and weighty political history on the left, are at present almost inevitably charged with markedly technocratic connotation and social-liberal overtones, in line with the spirit of the age.
v.The great value placed on the leader, whose ‘personal’ equation becomes the focal point of election campaigns, and whose autonomy is considerably enhanced. A famous leader with a ‘modern’ profile corresponding to the ‘spirit of the age’ becomes an irreplaceable political and electoral weapon.
vi.A political-programmatic formula developed around three themes: a more or less classically social-democratic thematic, directed towards growth (and the traditional values of the left: social equality, welfare state, employment); a ‘post-materialist’ and ‘anti-authoritarian’ thematic, sceptical of growth; and a third thematic of neoliberal inspiration (extolling market logic, monetary stability, obsession with austerity as well as a discourse of ‘sacrifice’). This triple thematic, this series of options and priorities, yields an all-encompassing programmatic discourse of the catch-all variety, the product of several coexistent matrices that are distinct and ultimately contradictory. The upshot of this composite profile is often the sense of a symbolic and programmatic vacuum – or rather, since it always comes down to the same thing, an excess. In addition, in some cases (especially New Labour, the SPD under Schröder, and the PSB), a fourth thematic, focused on moderate exploitation of the traditional conservative theme of ‘law and order’ (notably anti-crime measures, tighter control of immigration), forms part of the programmatic apparatus of the ‘natural party of government’ strategy. Obviously, the balance between these three (or four) thematics varies appreciably from country to country, and changes according to the period and competitive stimuli, or whether the party concerned is in government or in opposition. Various combinations, decisions, priorities, symbolic routes are possible. But in all cases, social democrats/socialists are at present continuously zigzagging between these three (or four) thematics, which have become their main hobbyhorses.
vii.Within this diverse and complex programmatic apparatus, which does not convey the image of a coherent and stable synthesis, the neoliberal option (competitiveness, price stability, balanced budgets, reduction of social expenditure, privatization, deregulation and ‘liberalization’ of the economy, ‘commercialization’ of an increased range of activities, stabilization or reduction of the tax ‘burden’, greater labour flexibility, pragmatic management) gradually but systematically gains ground, establishing itself as a constitutive element in the distinctive new stamp of the contemporary social-democratic enterprise. The neoliberal option ceases to be adopted as a ‘constraint’, as was the case during the 1980s. It stops being a barely welcome or badly tolerated alien intruder, disrupting the ideological/programmatic coherence of social democracy. Particularly in the second half of the 1990s, this intruder becomes a natural part of the universe of the new social democracy.
Nevertheless, notwithstanding some overhasty assertions, the ‘social’ (and associated keywords: solidarity, social cohesion, equality) remains at the heart of social-democratic programmatic options. Historically constituted as an emblem of the social-democratic parties, and serving as a rallying cry to their members and voters, the ‘social’ still remains the principal point of demarcation between right and left. The credit of these parties not only with their working-class electorate, but also with some of their middle-class voters, stems from their capacity to present themselves as a vehicle for rectifying inequalities. The work of ideological and theoretical innovation hitherto carried out by what is called the ‘new’ social democracy, however iconoclastic, does not really challenge the priority of the theme of solidarity. Thus – and this is more than symptomatic – the ‘social’ was at the heart of the most recent election campaigns by socialist parties in Europe (struggle against unemployment, preservation of an albeit reformed social security system, reduction in working hours in the case of some parties, measures to help the disadvantaged, etc.).12 In the social-democratic rhetorical system, ‘social cohesion’, ‘solidarity’, ‘social justice’ are stipulated as prerequisites, at once moral and economic, of any well-governed society: ‘neo-revisionism involves rejecting old policies, not old ethical principles, old ways of achieving desirable ends, not the ends’, Donald Sassoon has written.13 Yet this is only partially true. To take an example: the concept of equality has often become ‘equality of opportunity’ or ‘equality of life chances’ (particularly in Great Britain); and the ‘right to work’ has become ‘employability’. In reality, the new social-democratic elites have only partly renounced the ‘traditional’ values and cultural codes of the postwar period. But seeking to reactivate the inherited partisan imaginary, without at the same time neutralizing it through all this labour of ‘redefinition’, ‘reinterpretation’ and ‘enrichment’, amounts to a Herculean task.
At root, the definition of the ‘social’ and of ‘equality’ by contemporary socialists/social democrats is largely conditioned by acceptance of the neoliberal option: their proposals in social policy like to think of themselves as ‘realistic’, and must submit to economic ‘constraints’ and the imperative of the national economy’s ‘competitiveness’. Thus, neoliberal and anti-liberal ingredients coexist, constituting a double-edged system of ideological/programmatic reference points. This system, within which different ideological/programmatic options are possible, produces stances adjusted to the circumstances of political competition and/or the interplay of inner-party power.
To summarize: ultimately, social democracy’s move towards a moderate neoliberal discourse, embellished with a more traditionally social-democratic social discourse as well as a post-materialist sensibility,14 creates a somewhat ‘social-liberal’ programmatic profile. With ever-increasing difficulty, neoliberal-inspired modernization is concealed beneath a rhetoric that merely condemns the ‘excesses’ of economic liberalism: ‘unbridled liberalism’ or ‘ultra-liberalism’. And the struggle against poverty is increasingly reduced – even at a discursive level – to the struggle against ‘social exclusion’.15
Of course, the semantics of discourse and those of action are not identical. This is an ordinary and routine law of political life. As for the ‘semantics of actions’, the neoliberal option ends up weighing heavily in socialists’ governmental practice, despite a more composite discourse inflected to the ‘social’. Moreover, implementation of the ‘natural party of government’ strategy occurs largely ‘at the expense of the traditional blue-collar sector and especially workers in uncompetitive and declining industrial branches’.16 Thus, moderate economic liberalism, which – particularly since the second half of the 1980s and still more in the 1990s – has infiltrated socialist programmes, sets its stamp very clearly on their actions in government (see Chapter 10). At a governmental level, liberal economic logic is dominant; neo-Keynesian and ecological compensations get the meanest share.17
viii.The objective of the ‘natural party of government’ strategy ‘is to build an even broader social/electoral coalition than … the social democratic “catch-all” approach of the 1950s and 1960s because it appeals to groups outside the white-collar and blue-collar working classes … by offering “something for everyone” to match the electoral appeal of conservative parties’.18 In reality, this strategy, an updated and renovated formula of the semi-catch-all strategy of the 1950s and 1960s, constitutes the historically most striking and emphatic social opening to the middle classes and the world – and civilization – of enterprise. Simultaneously, at the level of rhetoric it represents the accentuation of an existing trend: socialist discourse addressing itself to either the whole electorate, or segments of the electorate, on the basis of a less and less classist semantics. Stress is clearly put on consensus, not class divergence. Hence the technocratic, ‘responsible’ and ‘modernist’ character of the current discourse. Hence also the semantic shift, in the group orientation of the discourse, from social classes and quasi-classes (high-, middle-, and low-wage earners, employees and employers), to individuals (the citizen, the voter), to non-classes (families with children, savers, women, youth, the elderly, etc.), or to the entire ‘nation’ (the people, the voters, etc.). Today, socialist/social-democratic parties combine, and aim to combine, the most advanced ‘ideological de-polarization’ with the most developed interclassist sociological format in their history. But this does not mean that they opt for ‘pure’ interclassist strategies.
Overall, then, and setting aside national specificities, these parties present themselves in ideological and electoral competition as – at one and the same time – moderately neoliberal, moderately close to ‘old-style’ social democracy, moderately attuned to the ‘new politics’, and – exceptionally – moderately ‘law and order’. Simultaneously, they present themselves as resolutely ‘modern’, ‘open’, and ‘competent’ parties, parties ‘of all the people’. ‘Moderation’ and ‘modernity’, the distinctive and pervasive marks of the new strategy, aim to produce a ‘positive bandwagon’ effect: reinforcement of socialist influence among all social classes and categories, particularly blue- and white-collar workers. Basically, the ‘natural party of government’ strategy aims to make socialists the most ‘modern’ representatives of, and ‘spokesmen’ for, the general interest. The socialist parties are national parties of government, even when they are not in government.
The peculiarity of these strategies, which always bear the impress of national history and the context of political rivalry, is that they are quite often fleeting and uncertain about their boundaries, and fragment into an extended series of particular cases. Today, however, unlike in the 1980s, their centre of gravity is rather well-defined, as we have just described. In fact, what the German social democrat Kurt Sontheimer wrote of the imponderables in the SPD’s programmatic debate in the 1980s more or less applied to all the socialist formations of the period:
The decision to embark on the programme review was taken in a situation in which it is extraordinarily difficult to arrive at a clear picture of developments in the world and in society. That is the dilemma in which the party finds itself. It knows that in these changing times, a reorientation appears necessary but change itself makes reorientation hard to accomplish.19
The 1980s were a decade of programmatic uncertainties, the absence of any grand design, and pragmatic – and often opportunist – adaptation to the constraints of governmental action (‘governing as a learning experience’). The 1990s (particularly the second half) were years of ideological and programmatic clarification. Today, although it is not definitive, reorientation is sharper, more offensive than defensive, and tends to be defined in more or less related terms across different countries.20
The Legitimacy and Variations of the ‘Natural Party of Government’ Strategy: The British, Italian and French Cases
New Labour and Democratici di Sinistra
In the second half of the 1990s, the social-democratic programmatic appeal was more clearly articulated, and its new contours became sharper. That is why I shall not attempt a systematic enumeration of the different national strategies, with a view to an exhaustive list: they will be defined comprehensively, not extensively.
Let me nevertheless make a small exception to examine three borderline cases more closely: the British Labour Party (and New Labour), the Italian Communist Party (and PDS), and the French Socialist Party. Absence of governmental legitimacy having been more pronounced here than elsewhere (for different, and often opposed, reasons), the strategic responses of these parties will make it possible – in and through their differences – to refine our analysis of the ‘natural party of government’ strategy.
During the 1980s, Labour’s credibility gap assumed a cruel form for a party with a governmental vocation: a deficit in modernity and competence. Labour was seen as ‘old-fashioned, incompetent and over-dependent on the trade unions’; as the party of ‘a high-tax, inefficient and state-controlled economy’.21
In its strategy for government, the Blair group undertook a number of reforms. In the first place, it reformed the party organization (strengthening of party discipline, reduction in the influence of activists and trade-unionists, a politics of communication aimed at ensuring ‘tight control over all policy pronouncements’, a strong and quasi-plebiscitary leadership). Next, it redefined the ideological and programmatic positioning of Labour (‘radical centre’, abrogation of Clause 4, occupying the niche of ‘renewal’, ‘change’, ‘realism’ and the ‘nation’, major overture to the ‘moderate middle-income majority’ and the world of enterprise, an economic philosophy and programme strongly coloured by neoliberalism).22 Through this profound (one might say ‘unbridled’) revisionism, Blair was able to create a clear and unambiguous contrast between ‘old’ and ‘new’. The new options have been presented – and perceived – as a radical victory over the legacy of the past. Indeed, compared with the reorientation undertaken by the Kinnockites (Kinnock had likewise opted for the ‘natural party of government’ strategy), Blair’s policy – following on from his predecessors, but dramatizing the design and complexion – sees itself, and is seen, as a project of transgression. Conferring high visibility on the revision in progress, Blair crossed a critical psychological threshold, and created a symbolic rupture: New Labour is a different Labour. The break is paraded, and infused with new references and ideas; on occasion it is even provocative. Thus, firmly brandishing its ‘radicalism of the centre’ and its politics of ‘renewal’, this great old party has ended up presenting itself as the expression of moderation and modernity in the British party system, as the most modern version of the public interest. New Labour, posing and imposing itself as a political force equipped to combine efficient technocratic management with political and institutional innovation, and these two objectives with the ‘moral’ exigency of greater social equity, has created a new ‘interpretative order’ in the British political system to its own advantage. And it matters little whether this fully pertains to the deregulatory paradigm imposed by Thatcher, with marginal modifications.
An identical project of transgression, in yet more radical form, was adopted during the transformation of the PCI into the PDS (1991). Electing to desacralize the past and its symbols, the Occheto leadership group clearly challenged Italian communists’ ‘sense of continuing identity’. The PCI, ‘in transforming itself into a non-communist party of the left … removed the primary cause of a “blocked” party system’.23 This was demonstrated by its accession to power in 1996, nearly fifty years after communist ministers were excluded from government by the Christian Democrat Alcide de Gasperi.24 Certainly – at least since the spectacular strategy of the ‘historic compromise’ – the PCI was a party with a ‘systemic’ identity. Stamped with the seal of ‘illegitimacy’ on account of its communist character, with the historic compromise it had adopted a strategy of radical moderation, a strategy inconceivable for the overwhelming majority of European social democrats of the period, however resolutely moderate. Nevertheless, the nome glorioso remained a major obstacle on the PCI’s path to legitimacy and power: the final obstacle for a party with a ‘semi-social-democratic’ ideology that dared not speak its name. The final obstacle – and the most important. For friends and foes alike, for the people and the elites, for every variety of power and counter-power, for communist militants themselves, the term ‘communist’ still designated a party that was different from the others, a party that could not be like the others. ‘The name is our soul,’ wrote a Greek poet. In effect, the abandonment of its name and symbols, symbols of identity, was a crucial victory on the score of legitimacy (and hence the ‘natural party of government’ strategy). As with the ‘great revision’ in the SPD symbolized by Bad Godesberg (1959) and the Grand Coalition (1966–69), in Italy the ‘battle of the name’ was above all a battle for the party’s legitimation as a natural party of government.
The quest for governmental legitimacy, and the concrete content of this legitimacy, are always bound up with the national context, party-political and ideological, of competition. For the PCI, the important thing was its name: ‘the importance of not being communist’.25 For the Labour Party, the path to legitimacy goes through an affirmation – or rather, the emblematic exhibition – of its ‘modernity’ and ‘competence’: the importance of not being ‘old-fashioned, incompetent and over-dependent on the trade unions’. For the SPD of the 1950s, legitimacy goes through its adaptation to the new national realities in a country traumatized by its division; it also, and simultaneously, went through exaltation of the party’s ‘modernity’: the importance of not being ‘red’ and ‘incompetent’. In all three instances, revision was rectification on the legitimacy front, an attempt to restore the electoral competitiveness of the parties in question.26 Revision involved founding a strategy of large- or small-scale political conquests on a strategy of grand ideological renunciation. To revise is to turn ‘handicaps’ and ‘defects’ into positive weapons. It is to turn the ‘pirated’ rhetoric of competitors against them – even if that means largely adopting their way of seeing the world and society.
‘The past is a scarce resource,’ writes Arjun Appadurai.27 But power is still more scarce.28 The cases of Labour and the PCI (transformed into the PDS in 1991 and the Democratici di Sinistra in 1998) indicate that when the governmental illegitimacy – and electoral weakness – of a great left-wing party threatens to persist, the importance of the ‘scarcity of power’ tends to prevail over the ‘scarcity of the past’. Hence a harsh settlement of accounts with the past. Hence the transgression of inherited party prohibitions and affinities. In both instances, the accusation of ‘repudiating our past’ has become the cri de cœur of the inner-party opposition – and justly so. The cases of New Labour and the PDS demonstrate what the ‘natural party of government’ strategy signified: ‘we are moderation and modernity!’
La Gauche plurielle
In France, the persistent weakness of the left in the initial postwar period lay in its division, a direct result of the presence of a communist party that was powerful and sometimes hegemonic. This was the source of the socialists’ inability to compete in enduring fashion in the centre, despite their ‘right-wing’ political profile. Thus, the SFIO was unable to establish itself as a credible force of government – not because it was not moderate, but because it was too moderate.29 Now, the alliance between socialists and communists (sealed in 1972) turned out to be the appropriate political response to the congenital weakness of the French left, permitting it to establish itself as a natural force of government. Thus, the left’s governmental vocation was established thanks to the revitalization of the left-wing discourse of the socialists, in and through a left-wing – not a right-wing – ‘symbolic break’. The governmental strategy of the Union of the Left in the 1970s (PS + PC + Left Radicals) was – by the standards both of France and of other European countries – a radical and somewhat centrifugal strategy. Obviously, the extraordinary skill of the socialist leadership of the time in managing the ambivalence, and in playing sometimes to the left and sometimes to the right, facilitated a rallying from both the ‘left’ and – above all – the ‘centre’ of the political scene: this was the ‘centripetal paradox’ of a centrifugal strategy.30 It is therefore important to emphasize that the strategy of the Union operated only in part conversely to the other paradigms of the natural party of government strategy of the time (what Thomas Koelble called the ‘socialdemocratic strategy’).31 Indeed, the strategy of the Union was ‘paradoxical’ and ‘paradoxically’ effective. It was paradoxical because it was simultaneously a strategy of ‘oligopolistic competition’, aimed at reducing the influence of the PCF, and one of ‘vote maximization’, aimed at making the left the majority in the country. It was paradoxically effective because, in making a strength of the contradiction, it succeeded – almost simultaneously – on both counts.32
Gérard Grunberg attributes the PS’s return to power in 1997, following the dark years of the early 1990s, three factors:
(a)resolution of the central question of party leadership: only with the 1995 presidential election and Lionel Jospin’s campaign did a genuine leadership impose itself at the head of French socialism, which until then had lacked an uncontested leader. Following his good showing in 1995, Jospin established himself as a leader who was competent, modern, popular, and – not least – largely uncompromised by the ‘excessively liberal’ economic policy of the preceding socialist governments (notably those of 1988–93);
(b)the policy of rallying the left (PS + PCF + small dissident formations), and its opening to the ecologists – something that had been stubbornly pursued by successive socialist leaders since the defeat of 1993;
(c)the reactivation of the left/right divide, particularly in the economic and social sphere, by advancing a political and programmatic platform inspired by a certain ‘neo-Keynesianism’.33
Does ‘French socialist voluntarism’ – as Mario Telo called it34 – represent a challenger to British ‘new revisionism’? In certain respects, yes. For the French, the role of public power (national and, if possible, European) should not be restricted to protecting the market against its own excesses. Regulatory, redistributive and some entrepreneurial activity by the state is regarded as useful, even necessary.35 Labour-market ‘flexibility’ is viewed with some mistrust. Commitment to a European power, economically active and in a position to guarantee the social state, is strong, and contrasts with the reserved attitude of British Labour, which conceives the EU as an economic zone largely unregulated by non-economic forces. Moreover, measures proposed before the elections (reduction of working time to 35 hours without loss of pay; creation of 700,000 jobs for the young, half of them in the public sector; a halt to privatizations, which in the event was not confirmed by governmental action; conditions on the franc’s participation in the impending European single currency) conveyed the impression of a moderate turn to the left.
Thus, as in the 1970s, the French socialists’ natural party of government strategy in the 1990s, combining an opening to the left with a ‘rainbow coalition’, is an original strategy by comparison with the majority of current strategic formulas for government. And it is no less effective electorally.
The success of the PS’s governmental strategy can certainly be considered as a separate, isolated case, a sort of ‘marginal’ instance compared with the majority of ‘normal’ cases. Such an interpretation would reduce this strategy to the celebrated ‘French exception’. However, this kind of explanation ignores the fact that the ideological course of the PS was not so ‘exceptional’, particularly after 1984. While it was in government (and particularly from 1984 to 1986 and 1988 to 1993), the PS contributed decisively to the legitimation of the neoliberal programme, and found itself in the vanguard of ‘supply-side socialism’. It even found itself at the heart of European integration, and was among the promoters of the neoliberal-inspired Maastricht criteria. Moreover, this notorious ‘exception’ is only a semi-exception. Jospin’s PS based its strategy for government on the same ingredients as socialists in other countries: an incontestable and popular leader; the register of ‘modernity’, ‘responsibility’ and ‘competence’; ‘across-the-board appeals to the whole electorate’; and a pragmatic, prudent and European approach to economic issues (which combined neoliberal logic with proposals derived from a ‘soft neo-Keynesianism’).
Nevertheless, it is still true to say that compared with what is proposed by New Labour or the majority of socialist and social-democratic parties, even compared with their previous record in government (1984–86 and 1988–93), the French socialists’ programmatic and symbolic repertoire proclaims its left-wing credentials loud and clear, unquestionably containing dimensions that are scarcely neoliberal or non-neoliberal. As in other countries, the French PS’s natural party of government strategy signified la modernité, c’est nous! However, this ‘modernity’ was not quite the same as that advanced by Tony Blair, Massimo D’Alema or Gerhard Schröder. The French case demonstrates that one ‘modernity’ is not necessarily much the same as another.
The ‘Natural Party of Government’ Strategy: The Factors Contributing to its Adoption
Thomas Koelble has pertinently demonstrated that the pace of adoption of the ‘government party’ strategy, and its concrete content (and the content matters!), depends on ‘competing internal interests and the intraparty games played by politicians, activists and unionists’.36 But this pace – and content – also depend upon international economic constraints, the swing of the ideological pendulum in a country, the intellectual climate, ideological struggle and, obviously, the ‘articulation’ of social interests. This remains true even where those interests do not participate in the ‘intraparty game’, because they find themselves virtually outside the socialist or social-democratic organization.
In this respect, the French and Greek cases are illuminating
‘Today, there is room for a resolutely modern, authentically left-wing politics,’ French Prime Minister Lionel Jospin asserted on 23 June 1998.37 This space – whether rhetorical or real is largely beside the point – would have been inconceivable in France without the great strike movement of December 1995 and the ‘social miracle’ (Bourdieu) of the French unemployed movement. In effect, the impressive social mobilization of that December introduced other variables and considerations into the erudite discourse of the scientific-intellectual elite (particularly economists) and the strategies of political actors. This literally extraordinary demonstration proved a powerful advertisement against supporters of the neoliberal, modernizing and technocratic consensus, and served as a ‘corrective’ to it. As a result, the terms of a new rhetoric took shape on the French political scene and, more specifically, inside the PS – despite the fact that trade-union influence in the French PS is marginal, and consequently plays no more than an indirect role in the formulation of party policy. Thus, in a country where the neoliberal project seemed incapable of keeping its promises, and a society where the social movement was able to reactivate a whole ‘egalitarian’ cultural core, the formulation and deployment of a left-wing governmental strategy – or, to be more specific, more left-wing than the strategy of other socialist parties – was a perfectly ‘rational’ option. Basically, given the intellectual ambiance in the country, the presence of the PCF, the discredit of its own previous (neoliberal-inspired) administration, the PS could not have dreamt of presenting itself as the natural party of political alternation without this left-wing option.
Let us take another example. In the EU countries, the need to meet the convergence criteria stipulated by the Maastricht Treaty strongly encouraged several left-wing parties in government to inflect their policy in a neoliberal direction during the second half of the 1990s. The risk of finding themselves excluded from participation in Economic and Monetary Union, which was often considered a major national political objective, made the ‘race for the criteria’ the vehicle of an important strategic repositioning (particularly in the three countries ‘in danger’: Italy, Belgium and Greece).
The case of PASOK is, in this respect, exemplary. Threatened with being held responsible for Greek estrangement from the EU, PASOK found itself ‘compelled’ to jettison its ‘macroeconomic populism’ of the 1980s, and work to enlarge the perimeter of the market (by privatizations) and reduce debt and the budget deficit.38 Under considerable ‘external’ pressure (not missing the EMU train), particularly after 1996 PASOK conducted a major reorientation of its policy and ideological profile in a neoliberal direction.39 PASOK, which has always been distinguished by its excessive ‘tacticism’ and frequent policy switches, definitively abandoned its initial strategy – the famous ‘national-popular’ strategy (with nationalist and populist overtones) – only in 1993 and, above all, from 1996 onwards. Basically, it has replaced the extraordinarily effective ‘national-popular’ strategy that established it as the ‘natural party of government’ with a different strategy conforming to the dominant model of the moment, and equally effective. Its very belated adoption was due less to the ultimately limited resistance of the trade unions and party organization (the great autonomy of its charismatic leader has allowed PASOK considerable tactical and strategic flexibility since its foundation in 1974) than to the extraordinary success of the previous strategy in electoral terms. This made a sizeable strategic turn far from rational, for in politics, as in sport, one does not change a winning team and strategy. However, the imperative of adaptation to the constraints of EMU, which rendered the ‘populist’ strategic posture of the 1980s utterly untenable, set up an irresistible dynamic without which PASOK’s governmental credibility would have been irreparably jeopardized.
So, if it is clear that the adoption of a vote-maximizing approach ‘is more difficult for parties with a strong organizational connection to blue-collar unions in declining industries’,40 it is equally clear that the content of this strategy and the timing of its adoption depend on various parameters (context of competition, ideological contest, ‘external’ constraints). Precisely in so far as it is a majority and governmental strategy, the ‘natural party of government’ strategy is linked in constitutive fashion to the representations and expectations of public opinion, as well as the ideological struggle within a society.41 It is not a political/programmatic confection that emerges fully formed from the head of political decision-makers or intra-party games.
The ‘Race to the Centre Ground’ and
Programmatic Convergence
The ‘natural party of government’ option has often been considered – not unreasonably – ‘as the only choice social democratic parties have if they want to maximize votes’.42 A rapid examination of the forms it has taken in the cases of Great Britain, Italy and France proves, however, that there is definitely ‘a “leftist” and a “rightist” alternative within the government party strategy’.43 This is confirmed by the Swedish social democrats’ rapidly abandoned strategy of ‘economic democracy’ during the 1970s.
In the past, the distance between ‘left-’ and ‘right-wing’ alternatives was greater than it is today, and the contrasts were noticeably stronger (to take only three ‘extreme’ cases as examples: the SPD’s Grand Coalition [1966–69] versus the French Union of the Left [1972–84], or the SAP’s economic democracy strategy). At present, the distance between the different versions of the ‘new’ social democracy is considerably less. Ideological and programmatic convergence prevails over divergences. And even if he exaggerates somewhat, Laurent Bouvet is not very far from the truth when he claims that ‘Blair often says out loud what numerous European social-democrat leaders think, or even do, on the quiet.’44 To see in the divergences between ‘Blairism’ and ‘Jospinism’ an opposition between ‘social-liberalism’ and ‘neo-Keynesianism’ is thus to underestimate the many similarities between the French and British paths. The differences are certainly appreciable and significant at the level of discourse. Having rallied to the ideology of deregulation, and obsessed with embodying the ‘centre ground’, the British centre-left differs from the French socialists, who are closer to the ‘people of the left’ and a more interventionist logic. But in terms of governmental practice, the two experiences do not diverge fundamentally (see Chapter 10). New Labour’s strategy and the PS’s ‘plural left’ strategy are different. But although they are distinct, they belong to a common genus, the same eidos. At present, a majority of socialist/social-democratic parties is situated between the French and British cases – two limit-cases – in a vast strategic and programmatic ‘no-man’s-land’.
Viewed from this angle, the French case, quite the reverse of blurring the distinctiveness of the governmental party strategy, only serves to bring out its content more precisely. As with the SAP’s left turn in 1975 to an ‘economic democracy’ strategy – or, in another context, PASOK’s ‘national-popular’ strategy in 1977–89, which made it a robust and quasi-dominant governmental force – the French experience proves that it would be erroneous to attribute a ‘unique’ content to the ‘natural party of government’ strategy. Hence, to identify it with different formulas for the ‘race to the centre ground’, as is generally done, is simply to perpetuate a misinterpretation. This misinterpretation certainly takes the facts into account, but takes account of only some of them. On the other hand, to regard the different socialist and social-democratic postures as irreducible to one another is to undervalue the common ideological, programmatic, cultural and sociological armature that unites socialism in Europe to an unprecedented degree.
The Magical Return of Social Democracy:
From ‘Ruse of Defence’ to ‘Ruse of Attack’
As I have shown, the electoral record of European socialism yields contradictory impressions and highlights the diversity of national situations. However, if we compare the period 1974–99 with 1960–73, socialist parties have experienced a noticeable erosion of their influence, without this preventing them from everywhere being in a position to exercise power, particularly in the second half of the 1990s (see Chapter 6). The majority of socialist and social-democratic parties are in, or have returned to, power. This is a ‘magical return’, in René Cuperus and Johannes Kandel’s fine phrase.45 Yet it does not constitute a miracle. This state of affairs permits some observations and justifies some hypotheses.
Considered over a long period, electoral socialism has unquestionably become more unstable and less robust. It has become weaker. But this does not necessarily betoken weakness. In systems of competitive democracy, strength or weakness is defined by a party’s competitive status. This describes a relative position of strength whose true import depends on the electoral weight of the party, the electoral weight of its principal opponents, and the configuration of the ‘opposing bloc’, the rules of the game, the structuration of the party system. Now, even during the electorally very difficult 1980s, the socialist and social-democratic parties remained formations with a very strong competitive status. Their zone of electoral influence, which varied according to the party, was always close to the governmental threshold. This level of influence, however diminished in comparison with the past, allowed them either to be in power or legitimately to aspire to it in the comparatively short term, whether alone or as the dominant or equal partner in a coalition government. With the possible exception of the British Labour Party in the first half of the 1980s, social democrats were not a political force on the brink of catastrophe (notwithstanding approaches which exaggerate their ‘decline’). To put it very simply: they remained in the game of alternation. Now, the first condition of success for major parties with a governmental vocation is precisely to be in the game of alternation. By continuing to present itself as the natural force of governmental alternation (for want of establishing itself as the left-wing alternative), social democracy was able to profit from the ‘field of possibilities’ – real and potential – peculiar to every electoral market.46 If social democracy has not lost its role as the pole of alternation, it is largely because it did not lose its role as the dominant pole within the left.47 This being so, social democrats have been well placed to attract the vote of those who become discontented with incumbent conservative governments – less as a function of their ideology or programme than because of their central (which does not mean centrist) strategic position in the disposition of party forces; and thus to renew their electoral vitality and governmental capacity.
If socialists and social democrats remained ‘in the game’, this was not solely down to them. It also depended on the opponent and the weaknesses of the ‘opposing bloc’. The domination of neoliberal ideology has destabilized the whole of the left, but it has not installed a ‘fundamental consensus’ that enjoys the same legitimacy and stability as the postwar, social-democratic consensus. That consensus was based on an ‘exchange’, a veritable quid pro quo that allowed a conjuncture between three otherwise contradictory interests: the ‘sectional’ interests of the working class, the interest of capital in unfettered growth, and the interest of the national community in general well-being. By contrast, the conservative-liberal consensus was and is rather unilateral, divides society, and creates deep fractures. The base of consent has shrunk. Indeed, as Eustache Kouvélakis and Michel Vakaloulis have stressed, no new compromise seems set to take over from the defunct Fordism, because the ‘capacity to define a common good that the “subaltern classes” would get something out of is in question’.48 Thus, in so far as it exists, the new ‘fundamental consensus’ is passive and rather ‘permissive’. Where it is active, it is solely at the level of the elites and those who find themselves ‘on the “right” side of the social divide’. The neoliberal consensus among elites and strata which benefit from market liberalization has only partially found its logical continuation among the ‘people’. In a sense, if the neoliberal wave has subsided fairly quickly, it is also because ‘various sections of the middle classes did not identify with it’.49 In other words, the nature of the conservative-liberal consensus was such that it precluded any transformation of the ideological and intellectual hegemony of the right into a durable political and electoral hegemony. The ‘new right’ has destabilized the traditional social zones of left-wing political-electoral influence, but it has not really been able to occupy them. The zones of ‘social scorched earth’ left behind by conservative/liberal administrations create, and re-create, living space for socialist forces. Peremptory diagnoses of the decline of social democracy have not taken stock of the reality – that is to say, the vitality – of this space.
Furthermore, the strong rise of the new populist extreme right in some countries certainly absorbs the left’s natural social supporters, but it divides and hampers the classical right enormously. This facilitates the effectiveness of the socialists’ natural party of government strategy. The 1997 victory of the ‘plural left’ in France would be inconceivable without the destabilization of the ‘liberal-Gaullist’ bloc by the rise of the Front National. Similarly, the electoral recovery of the Austrian social democrats in 1995 was greatly helped by the fear aroused by a possible post-electoral alliance between the ÖVP and the FPÖ.
In addition, the relative delegitimation of the communist and ex-communist parties, consequent upon the collapse of the ‘planned economies’, has lessened – at least temporarily – the possibility of formulating effective class political appeals to compete with social-democratic overtures – something that could have contributed to creating a wide and unbridgeable gulf between the social-democratic elites and working-class/popular strata.
All these reasons, however, would not be enough to explain the return in strength of the social-democratic parties without their labour of programmatic renewal. The new social democracy has won not despite, but because of, its novel programmatic profile.
‘The game plan of the losing side’, Norberto Bobbio has written, ‘is to produce a synthesis of opposing positions with the intention in practice of saving whatever can be saved of one’s own position by drawing in the opposing position and then neutralising it.’50 Elsewhere (paraphrasing Machiavelli’s language) I have dubbed the strategy described by Bobbio as the objective ‘ruse’ of weakness: the ideologically weaker party adheres to the stronger ideology of its opponent, ‘copying’ it ideologically the better to confront it electorally.51 Thus, imitating the right, which partially adhered to its ideology in the initial postwar period, the moderate left has partially – that is, moderately – adhered to neoliberal ideology. In effect, confronted with the ‘thematic victories’ won by the supporters of neoliberalism and the ‘new politics’, social democrats have proceeded – as indicated above – to two major revisions: on the one hand, a neoliberal and ‘modernist’ aggiornamento, followed and complemented in some cases by a determination to occupy the ‘centre’; on the other, an ecological and ‘post-materialist’ aggiornamento. In other words, they have ‘copied’ their opponents. But if this is the case, why have voters opted for the ‘copy’, not the ‘original’? Why have they chosen social democrats who are in the throes of neo-liberalization, not the neoliberals themselves?
Quite simply, because social democracy is not – and cannot be – a copy. Take the example of neoliberalism. By virtue of its historical connection with the world of labour, its more popular profile and interventionist tradition, social democracy, even when it is ‘neoliberalized’, is not neoliberal. That is why, following an initial phase of profound ideological destabilization, it was able to establish itself as a force that is simultaneously both modern and equipped to cushion the violence of neoliberal change. Social democracy – neoliberalized social democracy – has precisely re-established its dominion in Europe against the neoliberals, amid the fears about inequality and insecurity provoked by the neoliberal project. The fin-desiècle social-democratic victories were a reaction against the excesses of ‘market fundamentalism’. To some extent, social democracy was able to integrate the neoliberal register, as well as the ecological/post-materialist register, into its own political rhetoric. This double ‘grafting’, ideologically questionable but electorally successful, indicates that contemporary social democracy is a political force with a great capacity for adaptation, not simply a short-sighted ‘rustler’ with narrow horizons. In all its versions (more or less liberal, more or less attuned to the ‘new politics’), contemporary social democracy proves a formidable electoral operator. For it has been able to insert the ‘pirated’ rhetoric of its competitors, on both right and left, into its own programmatic-ideological rhetoric (orientated towards the social). It has thus turned the rhetoric of its opponents back against them. In other words – to persist with an idiom inspired by Machiavelli – it has shown itself brilliantly capable of converting a ‘defensive ruse’ into an ‘offensive ruse’.52
Concluding Remarks
1.‘Typical’ postwar social democracy, particularly the ‘mature’ social democracy of the 1960s, was able to construct and impose itself as a natural force of governmental alternation, as a political force with a majority vocation. In opposition, this allowed it, among other things, to attract the vote of those who were discontented with incumbent governments. It allowed it to ‘identify itself with the opposition’, even when it was not the only important organized opposition, and thus to attract the moderate and centrist vote. Now, this ability – which was neither given from the outset nor acquired permanently, and was not characteristic of every left-wing party – made parties of a social-democratic type ‘competent’ and ‘moderate’ left-wing forces (see Chapter 4). They were able – that is, legitimated – to exercise power.
2.However, in politics and ideology, nothing is ever definitively settled – particularly at a time when the adversary’s ideas are dominant. The case of the British Labour Party in the 1980s or, in another register, the PCI (transformed into the PDS) – a semi-social-democratic party permanently in search of governmental legitimacy – has shown that the question of legitimacy remains (or can at any moment again become), at least for some parties, current. At present, the socialists/social democrats, long identified with a political approach close to the status quo, do not have to prove, as they once did, that they have jettisoned their anti-capitalist credo. The radicalism of their project is no longer a genuine political issue. Instead, since the second half of the 1970s, the challenge – in some countries, at least – to their status as a natural governmental force has been due to the disillusionment caused by their inability to steer the capitalist socioeconomic system effectively. It is, above all, the shipwreck of ‘economic leftism’ that has dictated a labour of programmatic renewal, to effect a new conjuncture between the ‘only possible alternative’ and the ‘natural alternative’.
3.Amid the growing penetration of neoliberalism, socialists had to prove their ‘modernity’ and ‘credibility’ if they were to be accepted (or once again accepted) as legitimate claimants to government by a large proportion of the electorate and the ‘centres of power and authority’. Above all, amid conflicting pressures from left, right, or ‘neither left nor right’, they had to invent an electorally winning programmatic/political formula, to (re-)establish their majority, governmental capacity. For that is the issue of issues for social democrats. It was the main engine behind the programmatic debate in the European socialist parties in the 1980s and 1990s. It was the great ‘dark shadow’ that hung over this debate.53
4.In adopting the ‘natural party of government strategy’ – better, in adapting it to new realities – socialists remained true to themselves. In largely abandoning their postwar programmatic options, they confirmed and perpetuated a constitutive element of their identity: their governmental vocation. Hence this paradox: ideological infidelity is not a sign of some break in continuity, but – and above all – a sign of continuity. Indeed, posing as the natural force of governmental alternation is an attribute that pertains to the deepest identity of the electoral operator called ‘social democracy’, such as we have known it during the postwar period. It is constitutive of the philosophy – and physiognomy – of social democracy, as of every political formation with a governmental vocation. Today, this vocation again imposes itself as a constituent that stems from the innermost being of social democracy. Socialists are attracted by the state, and ‘strong attraction’ has long formed part of their deepest being. Social democrats are like that. And in the final analysis, it would be ‘non-social-democratic’ for them to stop being like that.
5.Obviously, attaining natural party of government status, which opens the path to power, is not something that comes free of charge today, any more than it did in the past.54 This access, as well as the ideological, programmatic and organizational costs it entails, moulds and remoulds socialist and social-democratic identity. Indeed, opting for the ‘natural party of government’ strategy appears to be the principal trigger or accelerator of the redefinition of programmatic choices and, often, of the reinterpretation of the values and symbols of great left-wing parties lacking governmental legitimacy or losing electoral momentum. It is at the heart of projects of political innovation, whether these incline to the ‘right’ (most often), or the ‘left’ (less often). In a context of increased competitive pressure from left, right, or ‘neither left nor right’, and of social democrats’ diminished ability to defend their identity and social and ideological territory, the programmatic and ideological ‘response’ has become more composite, more complex, full of internal tensions. The social democrats’ position – and their degree of security – in the arena of party competition has changed. So has their response – and, with it, social democracy.
6.The new social-democratic ‘appeal’, product of a maturation that was gradual but, in the end, fairly rapid, makes the new social democracy a moderate force programmatically and ideologically: moderately liberal, moderately anti-liberal, moderately ecological and ‘post-materialist’. The new social democracy contains a little bit of everything: some ‘new politics’, a little neoliberalism (no doubt a little too much!), a dose of social democracy. But it is radically ‘modern’. In its programmatic identity, it is a ‘trans-border’ force – capital and labour, liberalism and anti-liberalism, regulation and deregulation, materialism and post-materialism, ‘security’ themes and cultural liberalism, old politics and new politics. The new social-democratic discourse is, in the majority of cases, minimalist: profoundly catch-all, profoundly flexible, profoundly pragmatic, and profoundly middle-of-the-road (which does not mean centrist). To use Donald Sassoon’s term, social democracy constructs itself as an ideologically ‘modest’ force. It is open to the ideas of competitors on the left, the right, and the ‘neither left nor right’; open – and this is too often forgotten – to ‘apolitical’ ideas, and also open to ‘things unsuspected and incongruous’.55
7.However, this social democracy with a ‘trans-border’ identity is not unaware of the danger of straying too far from its social and ideological roots. Hence its insistence (which is not merely rhetorical) on the social aspects of its political approach, and the frequent resort to traditional, and less traditional, left-wing themes (unemployment, the fight against social exclusion, social justice, equality, etc.). Even the most ‘right-wing’ social democrats do not really challenge the priority of the theme of equality (New Labour does so only in part). Even as redefined, equality is the theme – and site – where the left’s identity is rooted, where its fidelity is rooted. Accordingly, insistence on it is not a subsidiary feature in social democracy’s current programmatic identity. On the contrary, it is constitutive of that identity.
8.Nevertheless, the new programmatic ‘solution’ is not a mere pragmatic and moderate correction of the traditional social-democratic profile (which was already ‘pragmatic’ and ‘moderate’). On the contrary, it is a veritable redefinition of it. For neoliberal-inspired modernization, as well as the implementation of policies of deregulation and competitive rigour by socialists in government, directly challenge the hard core of the postwar programmatic formula: the socially and economically active role of the state, and the interests of the most deprived sections of the population. Thus, the latest phase of revision goes well beyond the political framework of postwar revisionism, even if its most conspicuous aspects come within its scope (see Chapter 17). 9. Having reacted to the dynamism of its competitors very effectively, and proved itself ready to envisage a real examination of its political and economic strategies, social democracy is clearly the victorious camp as we enter the twenty-first century. Unquestionably, this ‘victory’ is due in large measure to the weaknesses of the ‘opposing bloc’. But it is also due to the extraordinary capacity for renewal of socialist formations. Everything suggests that this capacity for renewal – in the language of political punditry, ‘strategic flexibility’ – is today becoming an important feature of socialist and social-democratic parties (both ‘left-wing’ and ‘right-wing’). It forms part of the new social-democratic identity. Possibly the most significant aspect of the new social-democratic programmatic profile is not the profile itself, but the very fact that it has been adopted.
10.The new social democracy has won because it has changed. It has not won despite its programme and ‘new look’ profile, but because of it. To deny this and expect social democracy, having won in this way, to behave as if it was not the ‘new’ social democracy is to deny the profundity of its switch in identity. Without a doubt, it was an ‘insipid’ and extremely moderate socialism that won the elections in the second half of the 1990s, not an ideological, class socialism.56 But it, and it alone, enjoys the legitimacy of the popular vote. And it is of little importance here if that legitimacy is fragile.
Notes
1.Herbert Kitschelt, ‘Left-Libertarian Parties: Explaining Innovation in Competitive Party Systems’, World Politics, vol. XL, no. 2, January 1988, p. 200.
2.The combined score of the left opposition in Greece (KKE + Left and Progressive Coalition + DIKKI) was 15.01% in the 1996 legislative elections, 20.7% in the 1999 European elections, and 11.41% in the 2000 legislative elections.
3.My calculations relate solely to legislative elections. On the map of communist influence after the 1999 European elections, see Marc Lazar, ‘PCF: beaucoup de bruit pour rien …’, Le Monde, 16 June 1999.
4.The British Labour Party, strongly marked by its working-class and popular tradition, and also by the role of socioeconomic issues in the structuration of its internal divisions, and highly ‘protected’ by the electoral system, has remained unreceptive to the emergence of post-materialist values and themes. This is also the case with the Belgian PS, which, before incorporating the ecological problematic into its programme (in the 1990s), ‘resisted’ the temptation of the ‘new politics’ more than other socialist parties. Confronted with the rise of qualitative demands, it invariably displayed ‘the contempt of a hegemonic formation in the French-speaking part of Belgium and a traditional workerism due, in large part, to the pressure of the FGTB’ (Pascal Delwit, ‘Le Parti socialiste’, in Delwit and Jean-Michel de Waele, eds, Les Partis politiques en Belgique, Éditions de l’Université de Bruxelles, Brussels 1996, p. 36).
5.Kaare Strom and Lars Svasand, ‘Political Parties in Norway: Facing the Challenges of a New Society’, in Strom and Svasand, eds, Challenges to Political Parties: The Case of Norway, University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor 1997, p. 24.
6.Francine Simon-Ekovich, ‘La gauche et l’écologie. Quelle adaptation possible?’, in Marc Lazar, ed., La Gauche en Europe depuis 1945, Presses Universitaires de France, Paris 1996, p. 460. In Scandinavia, particularly Sweden, Norway and Finland, a ‘green’ centre constituted around an ex-agrarian centre has ‘tapped’ the ecological thematic, often trapping the social democrats, together with the ‘new left’ parties, in a vice (ibid., pp. 463–4).
7.Stephen Padgett, ‘The German Social Democrats: A Redefinition of Social Democracy or Bad Godesberg Mark II?’, in Richard Gillespie and William Paterson, eds, Rethinking Social Democracy in Western Europe, Frank Cass, London 1993, pp. 25, 33.
8.Diane Sainsbury, ‘The Swedish Social Democrats and the Legacy of Continuous Reform: Asset or Dilemma?’, in Rethinking Social Democracy in Western Europe, pp. 41, 52.
9.See Erich Fröschl and Karl Duffek, ‘The Austrian Experience. Debates on the Austrian Social Democratic Platform’, in René Cuperus and Johannes Kandel, eds, European Social Democracy: Transformation in Progress, Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, Amsterdam 1998, p. 184.
10.Donald Sassoon, One Hundred Years of Socialism, I.B. Tauris, London 1996, p. 679; emphasis added.
11.Ivor Crewe, ‘Labor Force Changes, Working Class Decline and the Labour Vote: Social and Electoral Trends in Postwar Britain’, in Frances Fox Piven, ed., Labor Parties in Postindustrial Societies, Oxford University Press, New York 1992, p. 42.
12.On the main campaign themes of the socialist parties in the most recent elections, see the excellent book by Guy Hermet, Julian Thomas Hottinger, Daniel-Louis Seiler, eds, Les Partis politiques en Europe de l’Ouest, Economica, Paris 1998. This book offers a practical guide to political parties in western Europe.
13.Sassoon, One Hundred Years of Socialism, p. 738.
14.The latter is more marked in Scandinavia, Germany, and the Netherlands, less so in Austria, and rather weak in Great Britain, Belgium or Greece.
15.Of course, in some cases the trend towards neoliberal themes is stronger (e.g. New Labour in Great Britain, PSOE, PASOK after 1996). In others, the tendency is less marked (e.g. SAP, DNA, Danish SD, Belgian PS, British Labour Party in the second half of the 1980s, SPD in the 1980s, French PS since 1995, PASOK up to 1989).
16.Thomas Koelble, ‘Recasting Social Democracy in Europe: A Nested Games Explanation of Strategic Adjustment in Political Parties’, Politics and Society, vol. 20, no. 1, 1992, pp. 65–6.
17.The domination of neoliberal logic in social-democratic governmental practice makes it necessary to qualify the assertion of Donald Sassoon, who writes that ‘neo-revisionism cannot be viewed simply as a right-wing, social-democratic takeover of “genuine” socialist parties, as traditionalists have all too often lamented. Right-wing social-democrats were pragmatic, trade-union oriented, statist and gradualist socialists. They had little time for feminism or ecology, which they regarded as middle-class fads. In contrast, neo-revisionists often originated from the first “New Left”, and had been deeply influenced by the new individualist politics of the 1960s and 1970s’ (One Hundred Years of Socialism, p. 736).
18.Koelble, ‘Recasting Social Democracy in Europe’, p. 54.
19.Quoted in Padgett, ‘The German Social Democrats’, p. 35.
20.Socialist and social-democratic victories in Germany (1998), Great Britain (1997), Greece (1996 and 2000), in Italy with the PDS (1996), Portugal (1995), the Netherlands (1994), and in the Scandinavian countries, were secured along programmatic lines close to those described above.
21.Peter Kellner, ‘Why the Tories were Trounced’, Parliamentary Affairs, vol. 50, no. 4, 1997, p. 629.
22.See Dennis Kavanagh, ‘The Labour Campaign’, Parliamentary Affairs, vol. 50, no. 4, 1997, pp. 534–8; Colin Leys, ‘The British Labour Party since 1989’, in Donald Sasson, Looking Left, I.B. Tauris, London 1997, passim.
23.Martin Bull, ‘The Great Failure? The Democratic Party of the Left in Italy’s Transition’, in Stefen Gundle and Simon Parker, eds, The New Italian Republic, Routledge, London and New York 1996, p. 159.
24.Ilvo Diamanti and Marc Lazar, eds, Politique à l’italienne, Presses Universitaires de France, Paris 1997, p. 100.
25.David Kertzer, Politics and Symbols: The Italian Communist Party and the Fall of Communism, Yale University Press, New Haven, CT 1996, p. 69.
26.The condition of respectability, allowing these parties to establish themselves (Italy) or re-establish themselves (Great Britain) as legitimate forces of government, involved outside forces: recognition by economic and intellectual elites, the media, and the moderate electorate of the identity change of the parties in question. In this respect, it says a lot that in Italy, in contrast to the favourable attitude of the electorate as a whole, a majority of communist sympathizers and voters was at the time (1989) opposed to the name-change proposed by the party’s leadership (Jean-Yves Dormagen, I comunisti, dal PCI alla nascita di Rifondazione comunista, Editori Koinè, Rome 1996, pp. 74–6).
27.Quoted in Kertzer, Politics and Symbols, p. 158.
28.Party competition always takes place ‘within a context of the structural “scarcity of power”’ (Danilo Zolo, Democracy and Complexity, Polity Press, Cambridge 1992, p. 44).
29.If the difficult process of legitimating the left proceeded in Italy (and Germany) via a strategy of radical moderation, which was an ‘extra-ordinary’ strategy in the strict sense of the word – i.e. a strategy utterly inconceivable for the great majority of parties of a social-democratic type enjoying greater competitive security – in France it required the extraordinary reversal in the balance of forces between the PS and PCF.
30.Gerassimos Moschonas, La Gauche française (1972–1988) à la lumière duparadigme social-démocrate. Partis de coalition and coalitions de partis dans la compétition électorale, doctoral thesis, University of Paris II, 1990, p. 420. In the words of George Ross and Tony Daley, ‘centrifugal centrism’ (‘The Wilting of the Rose: The French Socialist Experiment’, Socialist Review, vol. 16, nos 87–8, 1986, p. 38).
31.A strategy that was ‘the optimal vote-maximizing strategy in the postwar period until the end of the 1970s’ (Thomas Koelble, ‘Intra-party Coalitions and Electoral Strategies: European Social Democracy in Search of Votes’, Southeastern Political Review, vol. 23, no. 1, 1995, p. 134).
32.From 1974 the PS established itself as the dynamic and dominant partner within the Union (to the detriment of the PCF). With Mitterrand’s candidacy in the presidential election of that year, the Union turned in an exceptional electoral performance, only narrowly losing the election.
33.Gérard Grunberg, ‘La victoire logique du Parti socialiste’, in Pascal Perrineau and Colette Ysmal, Le Vote surprise. Les élections législatives des 25 mai and 1er juin 1997, Presses de Sciences Politiques, Paris 1998, pp. 189–93.
34.Mario Telo, ‘Europe et globalisation. Les nouvelles frontières de la social-démocratie européenne’, La Revue Socialiste, no. 1, 1999, p. 138.
35.Henri Weber, ‘Parti socialiste français et New Labour britannique: convergences et divergences’, La Revue Socialiste, no. 1, 1999, p. 22.
36.Koelble, ‘Recasting Social Democracy in Europe’, p. 66. The SAP and PSOE have adopted this strategy since 1982, whereas the SPD and Labour Party adopted it only in 1988, after a long sequence of electoral defeats. More specifically, according to Koelble, ‘the influence of trade union preferences are a crucial component of any understanding as to why some social democratic parties exhibit such difficulties in adjusting to new socio-economic and electoral conditions and why others do not’ (‘Intra-party Coalitions and Electoral Strategies’, p. 145).
37.Quoted in Le Figaro, 24 June 1998.
38.Gerassimos Moschonas, ‘The Panhellenic Socialist Movement’, in Robert Ladrech and Philippe Marlière, eds, Social-Democratic Parties in the European Union, Macmillan, London 1999.
39.However, this was a reorientation that had already been conducted to a certain extent in the period 1985–87 and in more coherent fashion from 1993 onwards.
40.Koelble, ‘Recasting Social Democracy in Europe’, p. 52.
41.It suffices to observe the market in left-wing ideas in France and in Great Britain. On the ‘London consensus’, see the analysis by Philippe Marlière, ‘Le “London consensus”: à propos d’Anthony Giddens et de la “Trosième voie”’, Mouvements, no. 3, 1998.
42.Koelble, ‘Intra-party Coalitions and Electoral Strategies’, p. 135; Crewe, ‘Labor Force Changes, Working Class Decline and the Labour Vote’, passim.
43.Koelble, ‘Recasting Social Democracy in Europe’, p. 54.
44.Laurent Bouvet, ‘Le blairisme est-il un socialisme?’, La Revue Socialiste, no. 1, 1999, p. 62.
45.René Cuperus and Johannes Kandel, ‘The Magical Return of Social Democracy’, in European Social Democracy, p. 11.
46.It must be emphasized here that the representative democratic mechanism always tends to ‘protect’ parties that adopt a strategy of power: the key rule of the majority, and the binary (not bipartisan) logic of the competition that flows from it, favour great parties with a governmental vocation.
47.The recuperation by social democracy of the themes developed by ‘new politics’ formations contributed to its consolidation as the pole structuring the left, as the uncontested pivot-pole on the left.
48.Eustache Kouvélakis and Michel Vakaloulis, ‘Le retour d’une affaire classée’, L’Homme et la Société, nos 117–18, 1995, p. 27.
49.Arnaldo Bagnasco, Le Monde, 23 December 1997.
50.Norberto Bobbio, quoted in the European, 21–27 September 1998.
51.See Gerassimos Moschonas, ‘tichii kai panourgia’, journal TANEA, 28 November 1997 (in Greek).
52.These terms are borrowed from Pierre Manent, Naissances de la politique moderne, Payot, Paris 1977, p. 21.
53.‘A recurring theme in the presentation of the Freedom Debate was the necessity of making adjustments to “new circumstances” so that Labour would remain a “40 per cent party”,’ Knut Heidar has remarked of the programmatic debate in the Norwegian Labour Party (‘The Norwegian Labour Party: “En attendant l’Europe”’, in Gillespie and Paterson, eds, Rethinking Social Democracy in Western Europe, p. 67). This sums up the frame of mind that characterized programmatic debates in several socialist parties during the 1980s.
54.The balance sheet of ‘natural party of government’ strategies is often uncertain. The success of such enterprises is not always – or not exactly – as anticipated, as the case of the PDS indicates. Certainly, in liberating themselves from their past and adopting a very moderate politics, the Italian ex-communists have been able to present themselves as the natural force of political alternation, and – finally – to assume the function of relief team in the Italian political system. But – was this the price to be paid? – they have opened up a large space on their left, into which the advocates of the ‘old name’, Rifondazione comunista, have swept. Despite the overly optimistic predictions of the PDS leadership, Rifondazione has constructed a left-wing space (ideological, organizational and electoral), which enjoys considerable influence and competes with the PDS (5.6% of the vote in 1992, 6% in 1994, 8.6% in 1996, and 5% in 2001). Challenging the capacity of the PDS (Democratici di Sinistra) to control the left segment of the political and ideological scene, this radical left-wing rival is of a kind to destabilize the PDS (Diamanti and Lazar, Politique à l’italienne, pp. 107, 110).
55.Beck, The Reinvention of Politics, p. 163.
56.Gérard Grunberg, Vers un socialisme européen?, Hachette, Paris 1997, p. 137.