by Sheri Berman (10.2.17)
Across Europe, social democratic or center-left parties are in decline. In elections this year in France and the Netherlands, the socialist and labor parties did so poorly that many question their future existence. Even in Scandinavia, considered the world’s social democratic stronghold, long-dominant parties have been reduced to vote shares in the high 20s and low 30s.
Even if you don’t support the left, this should be cause for concern. Social democratic parties were crucial to rebuilding democracy in Western Europe after 1945. They remain essential to democracy on the Continent today.
During the postwar years, social democratic parties acknowledged capitalism’s upsides and downsides. In contrast to Communists, center-left parties recognized that markets were the most effective engine for producing economic growth and prosperity. But in contrast to classical liberals and many conservatives, social democrats did not embrace markets wholeheartedly. Instead, the center-left insisted that it was possible — indeed, necessary — for governments to cushion markets’ most destabilizing effects. Capitalism would be kept subservient to the goals of social stability and solidarity, rather than the other way around.
By the late 20th century, this distinctive message had been mostly discarded. Instead, the left became dominated by two camps.
During the postwar decades, social democracy promoted solidarity and a sense of shared national purpose so as to avoid the fractures that undermined European democracy during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In contrast to Communists, who exclusively focused on class conflict, the center-left built bridges between workers and others. And in contrast to the individualism of classical liberals and many conservatives, the center-left’s emphasis was on citizens’ obligations to one another and the government’s duty to promote the good of society.
By the late 20th century, however, this understanding of social democracy’s goals had been largely abandoned. Some failed to address concerns generated by social and cultural change, either out of lack of understanding or out of a hope that solving economic problems would make them disappear. Others uncritically embraced these changes, promoting both cosmopolitanism and the interests and cultural distinctiveness of minority groups. This camp became associated with the politically deadly idea that strong national identities were anachronistic, even dangerous, and citizens made uneasy by their erosion were bigots.
These attitudes have fragmented the left’s constituency and made it impossible to rebuild the social solidarity or sense of shared national purpose necessary to support high taxes, robust welfare programs and activist governments.
During the postwar period, European politics was dominated by competition between a center-left and center-right that offered real policy differences but agreed on the basic framework of liberal, capitalist democracy. These parties were large enough to form governments, set agendas and get policies enacted. But as the outcome of the recent German elections makes clear, the center-left’s electoral demise has rendered it unable to form stable, coherent governments — which makes it more difficult to solve problems and leaves voters more frustrated with traditional parties and institutions.
This is one part of what has allowed populists to make inroads, as was clear during the German elections, where the far-right Alternative for Germany party promoted itself as the true “alternative” to the status quo. Even many within the Social Democrats acknowledged their party lacked a vision of where it wanted Germany to go.
If the Social Democrats and other center-left parties are unable once again to offer voters solutions to the challenges their countries face, their decline will continue, populism will flourish and democracy will decay.
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