Europe after socialism and social democracy

With the demise of socialism and social democracy in Europe a new politics is coming into existence.

Is a new pattern of political alignment appearing in Europe? On 31 May Peter Spiegel wrote in The Financial Times:

“We may be witnessing a generational change in European political dynamics. Traditional left-right divisions have narrowed… In its place, we are seeing a new division, between globalisers and localisers. The urban elites on both the left (intellectuals, liberal internationalists) and the right (free traders, global business leaders) face a challenge to their postwar consensus from a new group of revanchists. This political force also comes from both the left (trade unionists, working-class whites) and the right (rural nationalists, far-right xenophobes).”

How does an observation such as Spiegel's fit with a Marxist conception of society? I think it must be something like this:

While a particular system of class relations (i.e. owners of capital versus people who can only acquire the means to live by selling their labour power) is a concomitant of any kind of capitalism, political ideologies and identities within and across social classes under capitalism vary over time and from place to place. In other words, in different capitalist societies or in one society at different times, the politics can be markedly different.

That said, in Europe at least in the twentieth century, the major political division that ran though society tended to mirror class relations. Large numbers of working class people identified with the parties of the left, communist and social democratic, while non-socialist parties, liberal or conservative, had their base among capitalists, managers and professional people. This political division based on social class grew and became sharper, at least until the mid 1970s.

The strength of the left across Europe in post war Europe tended to force all non-socialist factions into an electoral alliance against the left. With the demise of the left since the end of the twentieth century, the raison d’etre for that anti-socialist unity has attenuated, so different currents of non-socialist opinion can again compete against each other in the political sphere.

How then is the right dividing? We can see nationalistic elements breaking away from the main parties of the right. The mainstream right remains attached to running a globalised capitalism within a liberal democratic framework, while the nationalist right attempts to rally "the people" against outsiders, immigrants, the EU, etc.. In Britain, this phenomenon is to some extent straitjacketed by the first-past-the-post electoral system, which favours a duopoly of political parties. Nonetheless, the continued electoral existence of the UK Independence Party, UKIP, shows the trend.

The left, once a coalition between socialism and progressive liberalism, is splitting along the same lines as the right. Political liberalism, internationalist in outlook, retains its hold within much of the intelligentsia, but this cosmopolitan movement is ever more at odds with illiberal and parochialising tendencies, now masquerading as the British left. I will mention two here: so-called Blue Labour and multiculturalism.

Following New Labour’s 2010 election defeat, a movement has developed within the Labour Party to shift the party’s image from urbanite Middle England to a kind of political “Chavism” – or what is increasingly called Blue Labour. In essence, this an attempt to steal some of the clothes of the fascistic right and incorporate them in Labour’s image; e.g. promoting nationalism, scapegoating immigrants, being tough on crime, etc. Authoritarian populism of this kind is epitomised by the New Labour ex-Communist former Home Secretary John Reid.

Multiculturalism, meaning the use of the state to facilitate and maintain separate cultural identities, may run counter to the ideas of Blue Labour, but it has nothing to do with either political liberalism or socialism. Under multiculturalism, just as under a mono-cultural system, the rights of individuals are trumped by the demands of traditional cultural groups and their governing hierarchies. In a mono-cultural society one culture supposedly binds everybody within a state; in multiculturalism your ethnic origin determines which community norms bind you. One only has to look at the growth of faith schools in Britain to see this in action.

That the leading dynamic on the “left” has become a battle between two parochial and illiberal currents, Blue Labour and multiculturalism, is itself proof the demise of socialism and social democracy.

The main conclusion to arise from the short essay is that the heart of the left, the symbiosis of political liberalism and the struggle for socio-economic equality, seems to have fallen off the agenda. Socialists can today only choose the least worst option from what remains.

Stalinism: its meaning and role

It is unhelpful to use the term “Stalinism” to discuss contemporary British politics.

In nearly every case, it is much better to use: authoritarian, illiberal, intolerant, bureaucratic, arbitrary, etc., depending on the exact meaning one wants to convey. Comprehension is always aided by choosing precise language to represent social phenomena. But what is Stalinism? And when is it correct to use the term?

I think it is possible to distinguish two valid uses of Stalinism. In a narrow usage, we can talk about the politics of Stalin in the Soviet Union, and by extension in the world communist movement, from the late 1920s through to Stalin’s death in 1953. In discussions of British politics that usage is only relevant for reflecting on the history of the British Labour movement.

In a broader sense, however, we can use Stalinism to refer to Stalin and his henchmen’s poisonous bequest to the worker’s movement across the world. Stalinism has the following characteristics:

- The party is committed in name to realising the interests of the working class and bringing about social progress.
- A hierarchical top-down managed party is desired in which members are required to obey the leadership.
- Party policy has the form of a directive which is binding on all members; dissent amounts to treason.
- Intellectual and cultural matters are subordinate to party policy and thinking.
- All other organisations should be brought into line with party policy.
- Maintaining the leading role of the party is the first priority of all activity and trumps all moral and other political principles.

When parties of this kind come into power the whole of society is organised around these principles. These ideas formed the backbone of communist rule in Eastern Europe 1948-89; though often in practice some of these principles were compromised.

In the first three quarters of the twentieth century, Stalinism cast its dark shadow, not just within communist parties, but also as a pathology which came to plague many people on the wider left. Let me give one extreme example to indicate the pathology.

Artur London, a Czech communist, suffered the show trials of the early fifties, and despite his wife calling for the severest penalties to be inflicted on her husband, he was merely sentenced to life imprisonment. On rehabilitation in the early sixties, he was asked whether his confession had resulted from torture. ‘No,’ he replied, ‘but had I insisted upon my own innocence, some people would have believed me and that would have undermined people’s faith in the Party.’

The Artur London syndrome, namely total personal identification with a political movement, functioned effectively because it drew on two sources. One was to summon up a subconscious desire for religion and submission to a God, though in this case a secular one, the Party. The other was the practical idea (but in my view a false one) that a monolithic body of people acting always in unison could achieve the Promised Land whereas an assembly of free individuals never could.

Today, the influence of Stalinism in Britain remains in two locations, both quite marginal. One is the tiny groups of people who run political parties, which resemble sects or political museums. The other is a generation of older New Labour politicians who were themselves once members of the Communist Party of Great Britain, e.g. John Reid, Kim Howells, who carry their Stalinist political baggage like a prisoner with a ball and chain.