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After the New Social Democracy Offers a Distinctive Contribution to Political Ideas fitzpatrick cvr 8/8/03 11:10 AM Page 1 Social democracy has made a political comeback in recent years, After thenewsocialdemocracy especially under the influence of the Third Way. However, not everyone is convinced that this ‘new social democracy’ is the best means of reviving the Left’s social project. This book explains why and offers an alternative approach. Bringing together a range of social and political theories After the After the new new social democracy engages with some of the most important contemporary debates regarding the present direction and future of the Left. Drawing upon egalitarian, feminist and environmental social democracy ideas it proposes that the social democratic tradition can be renewed but only if the dominance of conservative ideas is challenged more effectively. It explores a number of issues with this aim in mind, including justice, the state, democracy, welfare reform, new technologies, future generations and the new genetics. Employing a lively and authoritative style After the new social democracy offers a distinctive contribution to political ideas. It will appeal to all of those interested in politics, philosophy, social policy and social studies. Social welfare for the Tony Fitzpatrick is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Sociology and Social twenty-first century Policy, University of Nottingham. FITZPATRICK TONY FITZPATRICK TZPPR 4/25/2005 4:45 PM Page i After the new social democracy TZPPR 4/25/2005 4:45 PM Page ii For my parents TZPPR 4/25/2005 4:45 PM Page iii After the new social democracy Social welfare for the twenty-first century TONY FITZPATRICK Manchester University Press Manchester and New York distributed exclusively in the USA by Palgrave TZPPR 4/25/2005 4:45 PM Page iv Copyright © Tony Fitzpatrick 2003 The right of Tony Fitzpatrick to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Published by Manchester University Press Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9NR, UK and Room 400, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010, USA www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk Distributed exclusively in the USA by Palgrave, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010, USA Distributed exclusively in Canada by UBC Press, University of British Columbia, 2029 West Mall, Vancouver, BC, Canada V6T 1Z2 British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data applied for ISBN 0 7190 6476 7 hardback 0 7190 6477 5 paperback First published 2003 111009080706050403 10987654321 Typeset in Palatino with Frutiger by SNP Best-set Typesetter Ltd., Hong Kong Printed in Great Britain by CPI, Bath TZPPR 4/25/2005 4:45 PM Page v Contents List of figures page vi Preface and acknowledgements vii Introduction 1 Part I 1 The long march back 11 2 Justice and citizenship 34 3 The security state 53 4 Social democracy in Europe 73 Part II 5 Productivism and beyond 95 6 A model of ecowelfare 110 7 The welfare of future generations 130 8 The new genetics 153 9 Democratising welfare 176 Conclusion 201 References 209 Index 230 TZPPR 4/25/2005 4:45 PM Page vi List of figures 1.1 Conservatism and social democracy page 25 6.1 A model of ecosocial welfare 125 8.1 Eugenic influences on the early welfare state 163 TZPPR 4/25/2005 4:45 PM Page vii Preface and acknowledgements A couple of years ago I was feeling pretty pleased with myself (the word is ‘smug’) at having published quite a few pieces of work, in a range of subjects, while barely out of short trousers (believe me, in academic years I’m still being bottle-fed). ‘Do you know what you ought to do’, I mused on one particular ego-fuelled day, ‘you ought to publish a compilation’. What a sad sight. A young, handsome, eligible lecturer swanning around, imagining that society is awaiting his Greatest Hits collection. Not even the fact that academic books barely register on publishers’ sale charts could stop me (they are usually only read by friends and family, and even they moan when you don’t give them a discount). The world urgently needed my help and my help was what it was going to bloody well get. Fortunately, time and sobriety intervened – as time and sobriety have an irritating habit of doing – and the plan changed, as people to whom I described the original version began to inch away from me with eyes averted, so most of what follows is new. Inevitably, parts of my ego creep back into the following pages, perhaps as compensation for the fact that writing is a lonely business, but mainly because when addressing the con- temporary state of social democracy, and trying to point out where you think it’s going wrong, some soapbox oratory is impossible to avoid. But hopefully the egoism does not get in the way of the book’s main purpose: to make connections. The world is a frightening place at the moment (though when was it not?) filled with people who seem to imagine that what it is really missing is another set of fundamentalist dogmas. Having won the war against communism, for instance, it turns out that many anti-communists have yet to win the war against them- selves. Yet there are many out there who are working for something dif- ferent, for something more humane, and although not everyone who belongs to this group can or should be placed under the heading of social democracy, this isn’t a bad heading from which to start. So this isn’t a TZPPR 4/25/2005 4:45 PM Page viii viii Preface and acknowledgements manifesto either but it is, hopefully, an attempt at dialogue which dis- cerns, amid the clamour of the asylums within which we insist on living, some voices of sanity. Many thanks to the usual suspects, Chris Pierson and Hartley Dean, who gave valuable feedback on the draft manuscript. Chapter 3 is a revision of two earlier pieces of work: ‘New Agendas for Criminology and Social Policy’, Social Policy and Administration 35(2) (2001) and ‘Critical Theory, Information Society and Surveillance Tech- nologies’, Information, Communication and Society 5(3) (2002). I am grateful to Blackwell and Routledge, respectively, for permission to use these. Chapter 7 is also a revision of two earlier pieces of work: ‘Dis/Count- ing the Future’, Social Policy Review 13 (2001), edited by Rob Sykes, Cath Bochel and Nick Ellison, and ‘Making Welfare for Future Generations’, Social Policy and Administration 35(5) (2001). I am grateful to Policy Press and Blackwell, respectively, for permission to use these. Chapter 8 is a revised version of ‘Before The Cradle: New Genetics, Biopolicy And Regulated Eugenics’, Journal of Social Policy 30(4) (2001). Reprinted with permission of Cambridge University Press. The rest of the book was written between February and May 2002 during a semester’s study leave and my thanks go to the School of Soci- ology and Social Policy, University of Nottingham, for that opportunity. TZPIN 4/25/2005 4:47 PM Page 1 Introduction I cannot now remember what else I did that day. I must either have pressed on into town to my office or else bought something for lunch and returned home to work. I do recall how beautiful the day was that mid- morning. How the pavements yawned and stretched under a sun clam- bering eagerly towards its dive into the windless blue sea of a sky. As if the light that precedes it had been scattered across the visible world, making it brighter than ever before. I also remember that the walk to the school took less than 10 minutes, or almost 18 years, whichever you prefer. And then that night. With millions of others into the dizzy dark hours, stunned witnesses to our impact upon each other’s lives. And what of the journey away from that school, once the ballot boxes had been rewarehoused and the children’s desks returned? For that day has certainly joined the backward procession of memories. Of other days, when dark cars rolled towards Buckingham Palace, when industrial com- munities were transformed into museums of themselves, when social ties faded behind the very individuals they bind together, when an elderly women stood in Downing Street and tears drained finally down a face that must have seen, but never acknowledged, the tears of others. But what else? We no longer have recourse to that old standby, ‘the jury is still out’. In fact the jury returned long ago and its members have been beat- ing each other up ever since. For the thing about New Labour is that it has both fulfilled expectations and betrayed them. It has fulfilled the expectations we had and betrayed the expectations we should have had. New Labour succeeded and failed because our expectations of it, and it of us, were always too low. And if you want to understand why New Labour became so popular and so disliked you have to under- stand the lack of trust in ourselves that those low expectations have engendered. But this is not a book about New Labour. Blair and Co. have an impor- TZPIN 4/25/2005 4:47 PM Page 2 2 After the new social democracy tant walk-on part, but are then killed off before the first act is over. It is a book about the new social democracy (NSD) of which New Labour has been perhaps the best but by no means the only representative. More specifically, it is a book about imagining a social democratic future that diverts from the NSD, about how we can raise our expectations once again and so learn to trust each other more.
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