A Profound Transformation
As we have just indicated, in their ‘mature’, 1960s form, social-democratic configurations were shaped by the combination of a number of attributes and a practical ideology associated with them. In the crisis years, the social-democratic constellation was no longer the same.
At the obvious risk of repetition, let us retrace some aspects of the social-democratic mutation.
Changes within the organization (end of the party-community, preponderance of the new middle classes, reduced working-class presence and culture, weakening of ‘identity’ incentives at the expense of ‘trade-off’ incentives, strengthening of the participatory and anti-authoritarian culture, redistribution of internal power in favour of the leader and experts, a leadership at once stronger and weaker, a less dense membership fabric) – these prompted the emergence of a new social-democratic organizational identity. ‘Integrative’ rationality (through the pyramidal armature, excessive bureaucracy, a summary but strong and strongly shared ideology, the communitarian-associative spirit, control by the centre over intermediate bodies) found itself considerably weakened. In addition, the increase in the leader’s autonomy facilitated a capacity for innovation ‘from above’ (whatever its political and programmatic content) and, as a consequence, strategic flexibility. This set of developments made contemporary social-democratic organizations composite structures, halfway between the mass party model and the electoral-professional model. All this led to a profound change in social democracy’s organizational mode of being.
The dominance of social-democratic parties on the left, which was often quasi-monopolistic, was challenged by the contraction of their electoral base and the emergence of peripheral, new political poles. Even in the second half of the 1990s, when Europe went pink once again, social-democratic electoral influence was inferior to what it was in the 1960s. More particularly, social democrats stricto sensu were stagnating electorally – not only relative to some distant electoral ‘golden age’, but also compared with their worst electoral decade, the 1980s. Taken as a bloc, socialist influence does not even match the level of the 1980s, a decade of mediocre electoral harvests. Socialism dominates the governments of Europe, but – notwithstanding superficial analyses – the electoral base of this domination is becoming less solid. Moreover, new left-wing oppositions, or oppositions that are ‘neither left nor right’, are asserting themselves virtually throughout Europe, and threaten social-democratic predominance. The competitive security of social democracy, once the hegemonic operator on the left of the political scene, is partially – but not decisively – impaired.
The sociological characteristics of social democracy in the 1950s and 1960s account only in part for contemporary social-democratic identity. More specifically, three cumulative and convergent changes have resulted in a serious alteration in the sociological equilibrium of social democracy’s political space.
(a)Within organized social democracy we observe a veritable inversion in arithmetical supremacy to the advantage of the salaried middle classes – urban, educated, and often from the public sector. Confirming the hegemony of the middle classes, the social structure of the organization differs profoundly from prewar working-class organizations, and even from the popular organizations of the 1950s. Still present in the organization, the ‘subaltern’ classes are reduced – particularly in their most plebeian fractions – to a species of second estate and subsidiary force.
(b)The tendency towards ‘de-proletarianization’ of the membership body is accompanied and complemented by a de-proletarianization – albeit less marked – of the social-democratic electorate. This contains two important aspects, among others:
| (i) | Social-democratic penetration among the working class has weakened significantly, though moderately. In addition, it has become less stable and less robust. The working class, sociologically the most structured and structuring component of the social-democratic electorate, proves politically more fragmented, ideologically more uncertain, and electorally more volatile than in the past. |
Thus, the first category of social-democratic-type parties established in this study (see Chapter 3) – those with maximum working-class penetration (systematically approaching or exceeding two-thirds of the working-class vote: prototypes were the SAP and DNA) – is in the process of disappearing from the electoral map. Very strong among manual workers, the SAP is the last remaining representative – or survivor? – from this category. However, its audience has been appreciably weakened, and lacks the firmness, constancy and imposing solidity of the past. Today, a majority of social-democratic formations belong to an intermediate category whose principal characteristic is the fluctuation of its influence around the symbolic threshold of 50 per cent of the working-class vote (for the most part, between 40 per cent and 60 per cent). The DNA and SPÖ (parties with traditionally deep working-class penetration), like the SPD and the British Labour Party, now belong to this category. In addition, the Danish SD, once very strong, appears to be located systematically below the 50 per cent level. Certainly, social-democratic overrepresentation among the working class is a constant that has never been seriously challenged. But from the viewpoint of electoral sociology, the designation of social-democratic parties as parties of the working class no longer possesses general validity.
| (ii) | In addition, the class cohesion of electoral social democracy has been seriously eroded. Its internal socio-demographic equilibrium has altered in the direction of a relative equalization between the working-class and ‘salaried middle strata’ components. The reduction in the relative weight of the working-class group is attributable to two factors: an important, absolute and relative, decline in the number of workers in the population; and proportionately greater working-class disaffection with the social-democratic parties. Bearing in mind that working-class defection is not too serious, the first of these is more important. |
In any event, the class specificity or class cohesion of these electorates, which historically registered the predominance of the working-class component, is being dissolved into a socially heteroclite mass. The current structure of the social-democratic voting coalition takes by far its most interclassist form in the entire history of social democracy. This drastically curtails social democrats’ ability to adopt coherent class policies, since it inevitably increases the potential electoral cost of such policies.
All this confirms the hypothesis of a significant recomposition. Neither class parties nor – sometimes – parties of the class, social-democratic formations are changing. From expanded coalitions of the working class they are turning into interclassist coalitions with a strong working-class influence. And the difference is by no means negligible.
(c)The link between socialist party and working-class trade-unionism – which, more than a bond of kinship and blood, was one of self-interest, founded on calculation and trade-offs – is loosening. This affects both organizational-institutional relations (the link as a ‘reciprocal penetration’) and the political trade-off (the link as partnership, which finds its fullest expression in the neo-corporatist phenomenon). What is involved is certainly not some ‘war of the roses’ (David Arter), but the relationship between the two basic historic components of the working-class movement has altered substantially. Tending in the same direction, the decentralization and destabilization of tripartite systems of national negotiation in a sense liberate the parties from the unions, and vice versa. The trend to ‘disinvestment of the political field by the unions’ (Patrick Hassenteufel), and towards the disinvestment of the industrial terrain by the social-democratic parties, is the logical consequence of this development.
Similarly, in the majority of countries where it has been implemented, the social-democratic compromise, which is an inherent potentiality in every social democracy, finds itself destabilized and fissured. More specifically, today the system of consultation and bi- or tripartite decision-making is less functional, less effective and less legitimate.
At the heart of these developments lies the programmatic exhaustion of social democracy. Its values and economic competence are called into question by the discrediting of Keynesian solutions and the fiscal crisis of the welfare state. Social democracy is in the process of dismantling a historic capital, whose principal yield was the social and cultural well-being of disadvantaged strata and the institution of social capitalism.
With this set of changes, we observe a breach developing in the coherence that marked the social democracies of the 1950s and 1960s. Throughout this period, enduring institutional, political and sociological characteristics (electoral constitution as the party of the working class, party/union link, control of the left of the political scene, pragmatic and consensual culture) rendered the social-democratic parties, and their ‘macro-policies’, ‘dynamically consistent’. These characteristics imparted coherence to significantly different public policies, which were implemented in highly diverse economic and political circumstances (e.g. Swedish or Austrian policy before and after 1973). They supplied a firm base and capacity for resisting the normal constraints of political life and economic administration without major ruptures and crises. But depending on the country concerned, they have progressively and variously been called into question. In the teeth of the macroeconomic crisis, this impressive construct withstood the new situation badly. In countries like Sweden or Austria, where social democracy was better equipped than elsewhere, the essentials were initially preserved (until the second half of the 1980s). But economic reality was stubborn. Locked in a stranglehold, and bereft of an adequate economic philosophy, social democracy exhibited strong signs of destabilization.
Obviously, as a specific institutional-political configuration, social democracy, although fissured, is still with us; it has not vanished into thin air. But its functioning and capacity for self-correction have been disrupted. Its economic modus operandi and its political-electoral modus operandi, largely interconnected, have been short-circuited. And in this sense, something important has been lost: the high degree of ‘dynamic consistency-coherence’. Moreover, this loss is not attributable solely to the loosening of the party/union link, or to the deterioration in social democracy’s electoral performance. The latter is simply the most visible aspect, and the most fraught with consequences, of the progressive but quasi-generalized mutation of the system of ‘social democracy’, which it simultaneously exposes and induces. In reality, the character traits of the social-democratic parties in their entirety are affected, as are their macro-policies, an example being tripartite bargaining systems that provided a structure of support for those policies. All the parameters that defined the social-democratic partisan space during the initial postwar period are more or less in the process of changing. This moulting process involves all levels of social-democratic life and reality. It simultaneously affects organizations, the union link, the composition of electorates, ideas – everything that goes to make up an identity.
Touched to the Quick: Social Democracy in a State of De-Social-Democratization
The postwar social-democratic project was fuelled by a considerable working-class presence (electoral, trade-union, organizational, cultural), and the high economic growth which, thanks to the Keynesian equation, made possible a conjuncture between working-class interests and the general interest. These have been eclipsed. The transformation of social democracy in progress is the effect of sociocultural and economic changes that go to the heart of its development, not the effect of some political and ideological assault at the margins.
In fact, today, two of the most essential links in the formation of social democracy’s identity and modus operandi have been shattered or greatly weakened: (a) the differentia specifica of the social-democratic programmatic and ideological appeal; (b) the constitution of the social-democratic parties as uncontested representatives of the working class.
Among the changes itemized in this work, the most significant are the ‘breakdown’ of the Keynesian equation, with which a whole social-democratic practice and culture were identified; and the ‘attenuation’ – in some cases even the loss – of the sociological specificity of the contemporary social democracies. With this dual development, the deep identity of postwar social democracy, its innermost memory and history, is called into question. The whole edifice is destabilized. The organization is in the process of losing its working-class and popular reference points, and the trade unions’ willingness to participate in the neo-corporatist process – like the process itself – is in doubt. The result is a marked reduction in the impact of the inherited social-democratic model, and a consequent imprecision in its contours.
In fact, at the heart of this socio-electoral, competitive and organizational disruption is the programmatic exhaustion of the social democracies, due to their inability to ‘steer’ the socioeconomic system. With the end of the Keynesian model as the privileged mode of regulation of the economic and the social, it is as if ‘the social-democratic or socialist idea … found itself questioned in its very foundations’.1 The exhaustion of the Keynesian solution means the end of the Croslandite conception of social democracy. In and of itself, it certainly does not entail the end of the social-democratic construct and modus operandi described throughout this study. But it contributes significantly to their profound – and irreversible? – destabilization.
The long history of social democracy has, of course, demonstrated on many occasions that ‘social-democratic originality consisted less in a specific policy [e.g. Keynesianism] than in an organizational and cultural tradition rendering several policies possible over time’.2 However, the economic crisis of the last twenty-five years has proved that the political effectiveness – not the originality – of social democracy largely revolved around a ‘specific policy’, that is, Keynesianism; and that its abandonment has contributed fundamentally to this ‘organizational and cultural tradition’ being called into question.
Moreover, the tendential transformation of the social-democratic parties, in their social structure and membership base, into ‘parties of the salariat’ (notably non-working-class wage-earners) presages a general mutation of parties of a social-democratic type. Given the cultural ascendancy of the salaried middle strata, we are witnessing a loss of working-class influence that is a good deal more significant than the sociological arithmetic stricto sensu suggests. The working class becomes a supporting class, which not only does not control the levers of endo-organizational power, but has lost much of its influence over them. The salaried middle strata’s massive entry into the organization makes them – particularly the fraction with sizeable cultural and educational capital – the ruling social category within the social-democratic bloc.
However, the persistence of the union link – albeit sadly weakened – and union involvement in political decision-making and the general operation of tripartite bargaining systems – likewise in crisis – somewhat reduces middle-class dominance within the social-democratic apparatus. Despite their lesser legitimacy, trade unions remain a powerful mechanism for the organization of the working masses. And they still tend – this is their most elementary role – to reintroduce the salience of class into political conflict through their discourse, activity and institutional weight. The electoral importance of the working class, and its constitution as a ‘class-for-itself’ through the unions, will always differentiate ‘typical’ social-democratic parties from those socialist parties whose social base was, and remains, the middle classes. Nevertheless, the position of social democracy in the world of labour has been weakened. This old working-class formation has lost its self-assurance and balance there. Its current social trajectory perfectly expresses its awkward position with the modern proletariat: as a political force it retains a sufficiently close relationship with its reference group to remain its principal interlocutor, in the absence of a better one, but is no longer connected to it by that fundamental bond of trust that its historical origins promised and permitted it. As an organization and a vehicle of public policies, social democracy remains linked to this world, but belongs less and less to it. Thus the relationship becomes increasingly instrumental. Many indices (reduced participation in the organization, protest voting or abstention by a not insignificant percentage of the party’s ‘natural’ social base, working-class voting for the new extreme right) show that working-class control over its own political representatives is increasingly exercised over the party, and less and less through it. Social-democratic capacity for the mobilization, orientation and representation of the working-class group and disadvantaged strata has diminished significantly.
Interclassist formations with a strong working-class influence, but culturally and organizationally focused on the new middle classes and the elites, today’s parties of a social-democratic type differ substantially from the great popular formations of the 1950s and 1960s, when working-class and popular representation was massive and influential. A fortiori they differ from the working-class parties of the beginning of the century.3
In reality, social democracy is faced with the vicious circle of its contradictions and weaknesses. Changes in social stratification prompt it to broaden out to segments of the population other than the workers – without, obviously, alienating their support. Implemented in various forms since at least the revisionist crisis of the 1920s, strategies of expansion ‘erode exactly that ideology which is the source of their strength among workers’.4 The link attaching the working class to social democracy begins to loosen as a result. Nevertheless, while the Keynesian equation proved effective, the subsidence of working-class politics at the level of electoral strategies did not lead to working-class disaffection. But the social deficit of current social-democratic policies functions as cause and trigger of workers’ reduced propensity to vote social democrat, and their reduced participation in membership activity. Workers are less susceptible than previously to the social-democratic appeal (programmatic, organizational, political), in part because it is less sensitive to working-class demands. It is a question of political rationality. ‘As Socialists become parties like other parties, workers turn into voters like other voters,’ Przeworski and Sprague have written. In this sense, social democracy reaps the fruits of its own politics. If the left does not want to, and cannot, identify with popular strata, the popular strata cease to identify with the left. Moreover, working-class defection cumulatively strengthens the predominance of the middle classes within the organization – a predominance which, in turn, exacerbates working-class defection.
Moderately neoliberal economic policies; a certain working-class electoral defection; the loosening of the link with the unions; the middle-class entry into the organization; class images diluted in favour of catch-all strategies; the continuous expansion of the middle strata – all these developments are interlinked as the symptoms and effects of an identical flux, a wave that slowly but structurally erodes the class specificity of the social-democratic parties. In this context, the strong presence in current social-democratic discourse of the ‘social’, that eternal favourite, barely withstands the test of the facts: behaviour in government. The new social-democratic construct – marked by the strong presence of the neoliberal component on the ideological and programmatic level, and by the middle classes on the organizational level – is buckling under its own weight: a very resilient historical line of ideological and sociological continuity is in the process of snapping.
Notes
1.Pierre Rosanvallon, La Crise de l’État-Providence, Seuil, Paris 1981, p. 134.
2.Alain Bergounioux and Bernard Manin, Le Régime social-démocrate, Presses Universitaires de France, Paris 1989, p. 184.
3.The link between a party and a social class typically includes ‘a connotation of interaction’ such that the one exercises its influence over the other. According to Kay Lawson, the link is a ‘connexion … with reciprocal impact’. The link between social-democratic party and working class is certainly not broken from the latter’s point of view – far from it – but it has been loosened. The link is conceived here in the dual and complementary sense of the term: in the sense of participation (in fact, the working class participates less and less actively within the social-democratic organization); and in the sense of representation (the working class identifies less and less with social democracy, as indicated by the workers’ reduced propensity to vote social democrat). Considered from the viewpoint of the party, the link has also loosened. Having opted for an interclassist appeal addressed to the widest possible ‘public’, social democracy has a diminishing desire to be, or present itself as, the body that represents the working class. Now, the manner in which a party-organization opts to ‘establish itself in representation’ influences the participation the party can anticipate in exchange, for participation in an organization is more induced than spontaneous. The participation of individuals is determined largely by encouragements, the incentives offered by the organization – material incentives (tangible rewards and benefits), incentives of solidarity (adherence to the group and identification with it), or programmatic incentives. (See Peter Lange, ‘La théorie des stimulants et l’analyse des partis politiques’, in J.-L. Seurin, La Démocratie pluraliste, Economica, Paris 1981, p. 249.) In the event, ideological and programmatic options, governmental performance and organizational choices, as well as the increasingly conspicuous preponderance of the middle classes within the party, do not excite the enthusiasm of popular strata.
4.Adam Przeworski and John Sprague, Paper Stones: A History of Electoral Socialism, University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1986, p. 55.