Socialism's comeback

At the beginning of the century, the chances of socialism making a return looked close to zero. Yet now, all around Europe, the red flag is flying again.

By Neil Clark Published 04 December 2008

"If socialism signifies a political and economic system in which the government controls a large part of the economy and redistributes wealth to produce social equality, then I think it is safe to say the likelihood of its making a comeback any time in the next generation is close to zero," wrote Francis Fukuyama, author of The End of History, in Time magazine in 2000.

He should take a trip around Europe today.

Make no mistake, socialism - pure, unadulterated socialism, an ideology that was taken for dead by liberal capitalists - is making a strong comeback. Across the continent, there is a definite trend in which long-established parties of the centre left that bought in to globalisation and neoliberalism are seeing their electoral dominance challenged by unequivocally socialist parties which have not.

The parties in question offer policies which mark a clean break from the Thatcherist agenda that many of Europe's centre-left parties have embraced over the past 20 years. They advocate renationalisation of privatised state enterprises and a halt to further liberalisation of the public sector. They call for new wealth taxes to be imposed and for a radical redistribution of wealth. They defend the welfare state and the rights of all citizens to a decent pension and free health care. They strongly oppose war - and any further expansion of Nato.

Most fundamentally of all, they challenge an economic system in which the interests of ordinary working people are subordinated to those of capital.

Nowhere is this new leftward trend more apparent than in Germany, home to the meteoric rise of Die Linke ("The Left"), a political grouping formed only 18 months ago - and co-led by the veteran socialist "Red" Oskar Lafontaine, a long-standing scourge of big business. The party, already the main opposition to the Christian Democrats in eastern Germany, has made significant inroads into the vote for the Social Democratic Party (SPD) in elections to western parliaments this year, gaining representation in Lower Saxony, Hamburg and Hesse. Die Linke's unapologetically socialist policies, which include the renation alisation of electricity and gas, the banning of hedge funds and the introduction of a maximum wage, chime with a population concerned at the dismantling of Germany's mixed economic model and the adoption of Anglo-Saxon capitalism - a shift that occurred while the SPD was in government.

An opinion poll last year showed that 45 per cent of west Germans (and 57 per cent of east Germans) consider socialism "a good idea"; in October, another poll showed that Germans overwhelmingly favour nationalisation of large segments of the economy. Two-thirds of all Germans say they agree with all or some of Die Linke's programme.

It's a similar story of left-wing revival in neighbouring Holland. There the Socialist Party of the Netherlands (SP), which almost trebled its parliamentary representation in the most recent general election (2006), and which made huge gains in last year's provincial elections, continues to make headway.

Led by a charismatic 41-year-old epidemiologist, Agnes Kant, the SP is on course to surpass the Dutch Labour Party, a member of the ruling conservative-led coalition, as the Netherlands' main left-of centre grouping.

The SP has gained popularity by being the only left-wing Dutch parliamentary party to campaign for a "No" vote during the 2005 referendum on the EU constitutional treaty and for its opposition to large-scale immigration, which it regards as being part of a neoliberal package that encourages flexible labour markets.

The party calls for a society where the values of "human dignity, equality and solidarity" are most prominent, and has been scathing in its attacks on what it describes as "the culture of greed", brought about by "a capitalism based on inflated bonuses and easy money". Like Die Linke, the SP campaigns on a staunchly anti-war platform - demanding an end to Holland's role as "the US's lapdog".

In Greece, the party on the up is the Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA), the surprise package in last year's general election. As public opposition to the neoliberal econo mic policies of the ruling New Democracy government builds, SYRIZA's opinion-poll ratings have risen to almost 20 per cent - putting it within touching distance of PASOK, the historical left-of-centre opposition, which has lurched sharply to the right in recent years. SYRIZA is particularly popular with young voters: its support among those aged 35 and under stands at roughly 30 per cent in the polls, ahead of PASOK.

In Norway, socialists are already in power; the ruling "red-green" coalition consists of the Socialist Left Party, the Labour Party and the Centre Party. Since coming to power three years ago, the coalition - which has been labelled the most left-wing government in Europe, has halted the privatisation of state-owned companies and made further development of the welfare state, public health care and improving care for the elderly its priorities.

The success of such forces shows that there can be an electoral dividend for left-wing parties if voters see them responding to the crisis of modern capitalism by offering boldly socialist solutions. Their success also demonstrates the benefits to electoral support for socialist groupings as they put aside their differences to unite behind a commonly agreed programme.

For example, Die Linke consists of a number of internal caucuses - or forums - including the "Anti-Capitalist Left", "Communist Platform" and "Democratic Socialist Forum". SYRIZA is a coalition of more than ten Greek political groups. And the Dutch Socialist Party - which was originally called the Communist Party of the Netherlands, has successfully brought socialists and communists together to support its collectivist programme.

It is worth noting that those European parties of the centre left which have not fully embraced the neoliberal agenda are retaining their dominant position. In Spain, the governing Socialist Workers' Party has managed to maintain its broad left base and was re-elected for another four-year term in March, with Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero promising a "socialist economic policy" that would focus on the needs of workers and the poor.

There are exceptions to the European continent's shift towards socialism. Despite the recent election of leftist Martine Aubry as leader of the French Socialist Party, the French left has been torn apart by divisions, at the very moment when it could be exploiting the growing unpopularity of the Sarkozy administration.

And, in Britain, despite opinion being argu ably more to the left on economic issues than at any time since 1945, few are calling for a return to socialism.

The British left, despite promising initiatives such as September's Convention of the Left in Manchester, which gathered representatives from several socialist groups, still remains fragmented and divided. The left's espousal of unrestricted or loosely controlled immigration is also, arguably, a major vote loser among working-class voters who should provide its core support. No socialist group in Britain has as yet articulated a critique of mass immigration from an anti-capitalist and anti-racist viewpoint in the way the Socialist Party of the Netherlands has.

And even if a Die Linke-style coalition of progressive forces could be built and put on a formal footing in time for the next general election, Britain's first-past-the-post system provides a formidable obstacle to change.

Nevertheless, the prognosis for socialism in Britain and the rest of Europe is good. As the recession bites, and neoliberalism is discredited, the phenomenon of unequivocally socialist parties with clear, anti-capitalist, anti-globalist messages gaining ground, and even replacing "Third Way" parties in Europe, is likely to continue.

Even in Britain, where the electoral system grants huge advantage to the established parties, pressure on Labour to jettison its commitment to neoliberal policies and to adopt a more socialist agenda is sure to intensify.

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307 comments

Mon, 2008-12-08 00:33 — a.m.r.

writeon, re: the Romans
You're very welcome. Unless you're being sarcastic, in which case, a little bit less welcome.

writeon : "What would your world look like after the Revolution? The answer is simple. It would be wonderful."

The question was not "what will it look like" but "how will it work? How will the formation of elites be avoided?".

Your answer, that you need complete power, but must keep your plans secret, reminds me of the antics of scam artists and snake-oil merchants, charlatans or the mentally ill.

Fri, 2008-12-12 09:40 — writeon

It's not socialism, it's "socialism"

It's not communism, it's "communism"

Why isn't kind of qualification just as valid as differentiating between democracy and "democracy"?

The West doesn't have an exclusive patent on the concept of democracy. Western democracy isn't *The* Democracy, it's a form or type of democracy, a variant, Western societies are not absolutey "democratic". They are "democracies" with qualifications. They are not all the same, they differ. Some are clearly more democratic than others. Some have reasonably fair voting systems - proportional representation, others don't - first past the post.

It is sectarianism gone mad, blinding oneself to unpleasant reality, to exclusively concentrate on the shortcomings and crimes, the mass murders of the "red" side, yet choose to ignore the mass killings carried out by Western governments for centuries and up to today. Can one ignore the 2 to 3 million Iraqi dead, the result of seige, invasion and occupation, so easily?

If one really cares about human rights and focuses on mass-killing, surely all the killing has to be taken into account, even the killing carried out by Western democracies?

And what exactly is "freedom"? Is freedom really so simple a concept to define?

And this sentimental idea that the West is so generous and alturistic with its foreign aid is yet another gross oversimplification on top of all the other partisan oversimplifications, one on top of the other.

One can choose for political/ideological and purely dogmatic reasons to devide the world into two simple catagories, the Good and the Bad, us and them. I suppose it's a comfort to imagine the world resembles a propaganda cartoon, it's certainly far easier to "understand", but such an attitude has precious little to do with complex and contradictory reality.

Mon, 2008-12-08 04:14 — Laurenceofberk

WHAT IS "SOCIALISM" ANYWAY?

Since everything from Norway to the Khmer Rouge
has been called "socialist", I'm a little sad that there
has been so little dialogue about the meaning of the
word here. What, as "writeon" asks, would your world
look like after the Revolution? Not a stupid question
at all.

Is it, "a political and economic system in which the
government controls a large part of the economy and
redistributes wealth to produce social equality?" But
Francis Fukuyama is an enemy of socialism. Why
should we take HIS word for it?

If we go back to Marx, we see that socialism is
emphatically NOT government control of industry, but
control by the working class. And since workers are
the great majority, socialism = control by society.

Can a "socialist" state produce workers' control? The
history of the 20th century seems to indicate
otherwise. Socialism has to be built from the bottom
up:
co-operative systems such as Spain's Mondragon,
seizure of factories as in Argentina, or the
decentralized "communal councils" of Venezuela,
which also supervise some production.

When the majority of workers have experience with
co-operative production, or have been struggling for it,
then it is possible to have a "socialist" state, which will
be necessary, among other things, to make sure that
co-operatives function democratically. (In Venezuela
many of the co-ops are fraudulent.) But the state has
to be watched carefully by the decentralized units of
co-operation.

Lenin and Trotsky were counter revolutionaries. They
expropriated factories already being run by workers'
councils and soviets, and gave them over to the party-
state. (cf. " Bolsheviks and Workers Control", by
Maurice Brinton)

In building the "Socialism of the 21st Century,"
Venezeula has only a partial, beginning idea. It is up
to us to continue the dialogue.

Fri, 2008-12-12 10:08 — writeon

This is futile I suppose, but just for the record, if anyone ever bothered to read this thread some time.

"Communism" has never been implimented by any government anywhere. Communism is a political theory about how one could organize society in the future. A theory, a form of Utopian goal. It's never been put into practice. It's a goal. Like brotherly love, the end of war, hunger and poverty. Communism was something to strive for, part of an ongoing process. As a concept it was generally held by socialist thinkers that communism would follow naturally and organically as socialism took root and evolved. The timescale envisaged was substantial, measured in centuries rather than decades. Probably the only examples of a form of primative "communism" in existance are isolated tribes in the Amazon, but this is debatable and complex. What isn't debatable is that "communism" has never existed or been tried, successful or otherwise in any modern or advanced society.

Socialism is a different story. There have been attempts to introduce varieties of "socialism" in several countries,with varying degrees of success, to say the least. It's not clear whether China is still a "socialist" regime anymore or not. Social Democracy in Europe has proved extremely successful in a number of Nordic countries. Perhaps the most successful example of a form of "socialism", but this is highly controversial, is the United States! Which could be said to have form of "militaristic socialism" or perhaps "ruling class socialism"? or "capitalist welfare socialism". It's certainly not the "free market" that primarily characterises this system, but rather a form of "inverted socialism" for the rich and Darwinian capitalism for the rest of society.

Mon, 2008-12-08 07:42 — jared__

I have a problem with the given definition of socialism. Socialism DOES NOT NECESSARILY mean state control. Instead, it means a society based on social values rather than capitalist values. This could take the form of collective community control over business, Participatory Economics, or any other multitude of other approaches which put economic control out of the hands of 'capitalists'.

Mon, 2008-12-08 08:27 — writeon

a.m.r.

I think you take yourself way too seriously, along with the pantomime of society. You really seem to work hard at not understanding what I've written. This seems deliberate and somewhat unfair. I suppose there's a reason for this, though it's not my style.

Surely it can't have passed you by completely that I've "compromised" and drawn two, parallel, or alternative
future societies? One is a form of bourgeois "democratic" society, like one of the Nordic countries, with a mixed-economy, social classes, a strong welfare state, substantial inequalty ect.

The other alternative, my personal favourite, my idealised society, God! do I really have to spell things out like this? is one with me as benevolent and popular dictator. Imagine me as Robin Hood overturning the entire country and not just Nottingham. After I'd finished off the Sheriff, Gisbourne, Prince John, the whole gang. It would be King Richard's turn. I wouldn't have handed him the kingdom on a silver platter, no, I would have declared a republic and the empowerment of the peasants. Dividing the lands of the crown, the church and the nobles among the people. So that's one elite down!

Unfortunately, in the real world, it's more difficult to control the creation of powerful and undemocratic elites, compared to the mythical England of Robin Hood.

It's somewhat confusing and paradoxical that "democracies" are ruled by powerful elites. I come from this group, yet it doesn't sit well with me somehow. I suppose it's got something to do with my anarchist sympathies.

Restraining the power of elites and heirachy and the tendancy of "free markets" to create vast disparities of wealth, isn't going to be easy, but it's not impossible, difficult though. Luckily for me, I've got the combined brain power of the 95% of the population who, as Dictator, I've released from bondage and am empowering, so that in time they can take over the running of society, minus the ruling class, who are being "re-educated."

Fri, 2008-12-12 10:46 — writeon

I don't want to appear like I'm defending totalitarianism in Russia or China and the disasterous policies adopted their under the worst excesses their dictatorships. To do so would be both foolish and dishonest.

Obviously if one is an ardent believer in the blessing of Western style democracy and capitalism the follies, mistakes and disasters, the sheer brutalilty of these regimes, and their formal ideology of "socialism" are an anathema and can be used as an example of how not to organize society. This is perfectly valie and understandable.

But of course, we in the West, who feel threatened by the very idea of a socialist alternative to capitalism, the threat to ruling class hegemony, will choose to concentrate on the glaring faults of these two regimes as examples of how bad things can get.

But I think it's unfair to concentrate on the negative aspects of China and Russia exclusively. The dominant alternative system, Western capitalism, also has its negative characteristics too, which one cannot just ignore. By all means attack the socialist states and their disasterous policies, but then in all fairness one has to apply the same analytical vigour to the practice, both historical and contemporary, of "free market" capitalism, which after all is and always has been the dominant form of soical organization in the world.

It's also disingeunous to arbitrarily choose a historical cut-off point for mass murder that includes the excesses of China and Russia, yet does not include the "genocidal" and imperialist politicies of the West, which are too numerous to mention. Obviously not including them on the great "genocide scale" is politically motivated, as the number of deaths the West is responsible for exceeds that of the the bloodiest "socialist" regimes. Only, understandibly, partisans choose to forget and ignore these mountains of corpses in their ideological and dogmatic war with the "reds" on the battlefield of the "Truth."

Mon, 2008-12-08 08:55 — writeon

I'm not sure my brave new world could be called "socialist" though. It could just as easily be defined as "conservative" I suppose. But it certainly wouldn't have an anti-democratic and powerful elite effectively in control of society. Capitalism would be strictly controlled and be put back inside the confines of the marketplace. Within this smaller and environmentally friendly marketplace, their would be lots of "freedom" and "competition" among the few remaining capitalists, only it would be a kind of reservation, or zoo, perhaps we'd sell tickets, so families could visit "Capitalist On the Nevernever Land" and marvel at how these people live?

More concretely, the elite would be absorbed over time into the rest of society through a punative tax system that would gradually take away their wealth and redistribute to the rest of society.

The American capitalist model, where around 2 or 3 per cent of the population control towards 75% of society's wealth would not be acceptable in free and fair democracy. No, to aristocracy! Yes, to democracy! Indeed such concentration of wealth and power is clearly a stake through the heart of any democractic society, how could it be anything else? In my Utopia, which is probably further away than even I imagine, the weath of the nation would be fairly distributed among all the citizens, because, after all they create it? After ten years of my dictatorship things should be moving along nicely with its own momentum and I'd retire to my villa to grow roses and write poetry.

And as a footnote, my "revolution" wouldn't resemble the Russian, instead it would be modelled on, and have the status of the American Revolution, and be just as successful.

Fri, 2008-12-12 11:22 — genecrabtree920

Oh writeon!!! Again, you fail to see the point.

" the mass murders of the "red" side, yet choose to ignore the mass killings carried out by Western governments for centuries and up to today. Can one ignore the 2 to 3 million Iraqi dead, the result of seige, invasion and occupation, so easily?"

No one is trying to justify the capitalist country's many errors, massacres, and stupid wars! What we re saying (as Ive already told you) is that capitalism allows, and has allowed many times, freedom of speech, multiple elections, human rights, and economic growth. COMMUNISM HAS NEVER ALLOWED THAT. Thats what we re saying. We re saying that yes, both sides have done bad things. But communism has ALWAYS been bad. THERE ARE NO EXCEPTIONS. Thats the problem writeon. PAY ATTENTION. Or give me a list of exceptions. GO AHEAD- ID LIKE TO SEE YOU TRY.

"They are "democracies" with qualifications. They are not all the same, they differ."

Yes but again- same thing. Sometimes capitalist countries regularly allow a proper choice between competing views. COMMUNIST COUNTRIES NEVER DO. This is the difference. Pay attention- Im tired of repeating this to you only to have you rant on and on and miss the point yet again.

""Communism" has never been implimented by any government anywhere."

Yes but its the countries that try to implement it that fail every time, isnt it?? THEY ALL FAILED. WHY SHOULD ANYONE TRY AGAIN??

"This is futile I suppose, but just for the record, if anyone ever bothered to read this thread some time. "

This is true- I rarely bother to read all your posts. The reason is that there's so much repeating, poetic gibberish without any real meaning, and just general ranting that it's hard to pay attention- this one is no exception- I dont have the patience to read your whole rant. Try to say what you want to say quicker so we dont need to skip the gibberish.

Fri, 2008-12-12 13:29 — writeon

So the millions of dead care about whether they were killed by "socialist" bullets or "capitalist" bullets? Highly unlikely.

The idea, or logic, in the argument that mass killings can be excused or justified or ligitimised because they are carried out by "democracies" fails to impress me, sorry.

Who cares whether one is butcherd by democrats or totalitarians? Saddam killed hundreds of thousands, Bush killed hundreds of thousand of Iraqis. What's the difference? That Bush allows people to criticize him?

So we have "free and fair elections" a "free press" and can vote, fantastic. None of that is relevant to the dead. None of that means that our killing is "better" or can be justified as superior to the killing carried out by a tyrant. The dead are still dead. That they've been killed in a "good cause" by "good people" for "good reasons" is hardly relevant.

The North American Indians were exterminated by the Europeans who invaded North America. The Indians weren't asked for their opinion or asked to vote about their attitude to being invaded. At the same time the Europeans had a free press, freedom of speech, elections, the ruld of law, votes about all sorts of things. This pattern of imperial conquest was repeated all over the world. Bourgeois civil rights do not provide an excuse for imperialism or tilt the scale in favour of capitalism.

For people who are opressed the difference between opression by "democrats" or "communists" is of marginal importance.

The reason capitalism "succeeded" is, paradoxically, that historically it has been far better and ruthless in destroying it's opponents and conquering, than the "communist" states ever where, and it's been at it far longer.

Now, after its supposed triumph over communist totalitarianism, capitalism itself is collapsing as the structural and systemic faultlines split it open from top to bottom. The bourgeois myth of democracy revealed for what it is, a variant of totalitarianism.