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What's Left of the Left: Democrats and Social Democrats in Challenging What’s Left of the Left What’s Left of the Left Democrats and Social Democrats in Challenging Times Edited by James Cronin, George Ross, and James Shoch Duke University Press Durham and London 2011 © 2011 Duke University Press All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America on acid- free paper ♾ Typeset in Charis by Tseng Information Systems, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data appear on the last printed page of this book. Contents Acknowledgments vii Introduction: The New World of the Center-Left 1 James Cronin, George Ross, and James Shoch Part I: Ideas, Projects, and Electoral Realities Social Democracy’s Past and Potential Future 29 Sheri Berman Historical Decline or Change of Scale? 50 The Electoral Dynamics of European Social Democratic Parties, 1950–2009 Gerassimos Moschonas Part II: Varieties of Social Democracy and Liberalism Once Again a Model: 89 Nordic Social Democracy in a Globalized World Jonas Pontusson Embracing Markets, Bonding with America, Trying to Do Good: 116 The Ironies of New Labour James Cronin Reluctantly Center- Left? 141 The French Case Arthur Goldhammer and George Ross The Evolving Democratic Coalition: 162 Prospects and Problems Ruy Teixeira Party Politics and the American Welfare State 188 Christopher Howard Grappling with Globalization: 210 The Democratic Party’s Struggles over International Market Integration James Shoch Part III: New Risks, New Challenges, New Possibilities European Center- Left Parties and New Social Risks: 241 Facing Up to New Policy Challenges Jane Jenson Immigration and the European Left 265 Sofía A. Pérez The Central and Eastern European Left: 290 A Political Family under Construction Jean- Michel De Waele and Sorina Soare European Center- Lefts and the Mazes of European Integration 319 George Ross Conclusion: Progressive Politics in Tough Times 343 James Cronin, George Ross, and James Shoch Bibliography 363 About the Contributors 395 Index 399 Acknowledgments The editors of this book have a long and interconnected history, and the book itself has been long in the making. Having participated in the upheavals of the 1960s and spent the next two decades on the socialist left in different parts of the country, the three of us met in the late 1980s on the Boston collec- tive of the journal Socialist Review. Although our faith in the socialist project subsequently ebbed, we remained both committed to progressive politics and fast friends. As our political views evolved, our friendship endured and was nurtured over the next fifteen years through regular outings to action movies of uneven quality that our vastly more discriminating wives refused to see. When one of us departed for California in 2003, we looked over the next several years for ways to keep in touch beyond the occasional e-mail and visit. It was then that the fourth member of our movie group, Lou Ferleger, suggested to Jim Cronin that with our collective expertise on European and American politics, the three of us should collaborate on a book. With the center-left parties that we all studied and agonized over in difficult straits, Jim proposed an edited volume on the parties on both continents. The other two of us jumped at the chance to work together on a project close to all our hearts. We pulled together a stellar cast of contributors who wrote draft chapters that were presented and discussed at a stimulating conference at the Center for European Studies at Harvard in May 2008. A conference in spring 2009 to celebrate George Ross’s retirement at the Brandeis Center for German and European Studies was also used to present work based on some of the chap- ters in this book. After several rounds of revision by our authors and two lively, scotch- fueled editorial meetings near Lake Tahoe and on Cape Cod, we produced the book before you. In pulling this volume together, we have of course accumulated many debts. First and foremost, we wish to thank our authors, who we think have contributed chapters of exceptional quality. We also appreciate the help of Valerie Milholland and Miriam Angress at Duke University Press in shepherd- ing this book through the editorial process. viii Acknowledgments Lou Ferleger deserves another mention, both for suggesting this volume and for being our great friend through all these years. Thanks too to Peter Hall and Patricia Craig at the Center for European Studies and to Sabine von Mering, Karen Hansen, and Judy Hanley at the Brandeis Center for German and European Studies and Department of Sociology for supporting and host- ing our two meetings. Thanks as well to Joanne Barkan, Andrea Campbell, Joel Krieger, Michel Löwy, Richard Valelly, Eleni Varikas, and Kathrin Zippel for joining us and commenting on the chapters presented at the Harvard con- ference. We also want to thank James Clifton for his excellent work on the references. Last but by no means least, we want to thank our wives—Laura Frader, Jane Jenson, and Barbara Baran—exemplary scholars and professionals all, for contributions to this book and to our lives, too numerous to mention. We love you all and appreciate your tolerance. Introduction The New World of the Center- Left James Cronin, George Ross, and James Shoch Left History and Its Crossroads The idea of the “left” has varied greatly since its first appearances on the benches of France’s revolutionary assemblies. Born of rebellion against per- ceived injustices in capitalist development, the left has had to adapt con- stantly, often painfully, to the dynamics of capitalism and the changing di- mensions of capitalist societies. The subject of this book is how parties and movements of the center-left have responded to the vast shifts that have oc- curred in worlds around them since the 1970s. But before turning to this, it is worth reviewing some of the left’s experiences with crossroads in the past.1 Faced with early industrialization, different lefts had tense discussions about whether the socialist movement should work through the state or work from the ground up through social movements like trade unions. Would social democracy come from high- level political action, or action at the very base of society? These discussions led to divisions between anarchists and socialists, memorialized in Marx’s vivid anti- anarchist polemics. In some places, like the United States, divisions between advocates of politics and advocates of trade unionism reproduced these earlier arguments in different forms. These early disputes have continued to help shape the trajectories of many, if not most, labor and socialist lefts since then. In the early twentieth century, after it had become clear that industrial capitalism had more staying power than earlier lefts had anticipated, there came new and bitter splits between revolutionaries and social democrats— Kautsky versus Bernstein being but one example. For social democrats, if capitalism was not about to implode, leftists had to settle in for the long haul by building and deepening a democracy which would eventually empower the people to demand changes to humanize harsh market societies. Revolu- tionaries concluded, quite differently, that if capitalism had unexpected stay- 2 Cronin, Ross, and Shoch ing power, quasi- military vanguards of professional revolutionaries should transcend it by putchist force. The vanguardists, inspired by the success of the October revolution in Russia, advocated disciplined party centralization to seize power and the building of socialism from above by technocrats of revolution acting in the name of the “masses.” The legacies of this division permeated and often poisoned the left’s twentieth century. Earlier left theorists had also assumed that the left would naturally be internationalist. “Workers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains” was one famous statement of this thesis. But in 1914, when real, existing socialists marched eagerly into the trenches in national uniforms to massacre one another, there came a shocking correction. The lesson was that from then on lefts would be national.2 Postwar Crossroads and Golden Ages The lefts that we are about to analyze emerged from another crossroads that began after the Great Depression and the Second World War. In Western Europe countries rushed to emulate the mass production consumer capital- ism pioneered in the United States, while the United States deepened its own version. Lefts in these nations were deeply touched by the general issues raised by this new society and economy, which often came simultaneously with new democratization, particularly in the societies where fascism and authoritarianism had won in the interwar period. The puzzle of this period, now seen by many nostalgically as a golden age, was whether left parties and movements would seek to transform capitalism into a new form of socialism or rather “settle” for the new compromises between capital and labor that postwar welfare states, Keynesianism, and new economic growth seemed to allow. Answers varied, and the world of postwar lefts became an exotic mosaic. Where lefts were divided between social democrats and communists, as in Latin Europe, they had difficulty winning power, and even extensive welfare states and protective employment relations systems were often promoted by others. British Labour occasionally won power, but had problems conciliat- ing Labourism with economic dynamism. The Swedes, the great success story, were never particularly Keynesian, but they built an egalitarian middle- class system which created stakeholders for social democracy and also had mecha- nisms to compete in the international economy. The Germans succeeded, again without much Keynesianism, when strong unions and innovative pri- vate sector exporters cooperated on wage restraint and flexibility, carefully supervised by a very demanding central bank. Americans, with fewer social- Introduction 3 ists and weaker socialist dreams, continued their waning New Deal trajectory, falling well behind their European counterparts.
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