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EUROPE's LEFT: a NEW CONTINENTAL BLEND Donald Sassoon the French Election Was a Profound Blow to the European Left

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EUROPE's LEFT: a NEW CONTINENTAL BLEND Donald Sassoon the French Election Was a Profound Blow to the European Left 22 May 1986 Marxism Today EUROPE'S LEFT: A NEW CONTINENTAL BLEND Donald Sassoon The French election was a profound blow to the European Left. But it would be wrong to think the European Left is taking a hammering. What is more, some parts of it have been doing some important rethinking. THE DEFEAT of the Left in France is political stage in Britain, West Germany, democratic and the communist currents of depressing, but the overall situation of the Holland, Italy and Spain and ecology has the European Left were each relatively European Left is not uniformly gloomy become a major issue in most countries, united and coordinated by their respective though, on the whole, the debits outba- especially in Germany. commitment to Atlanticism and Soviet lance the credit-entries. Clearly political developments have not foreign policy. Now this old distinction is The pessimists will point to the con- been uniform, even though West Euro- much less relevant. Besides, in spite of tinuation of conservative rule in Britain pean countries have reached a remarkable their antagonism and rivalry, the two and West Germany, to the election of a degree of convergence in their economic trends did share a common premise: the right-wing government in France, to the and social structure. Their economies are assumption that the nation-state was the continuing split between Socialists and deeply intertwined. They tend to be each fundamental terrain of socialist trans- Communists in Italy, to the weakening of others' main trading partners. All are formation and that all political problems the peace movement after the successful affected by the collapse of the (same) could be resolved once a left government installation of Cruise missiles in Western traditional manufacturing sectors such as had subjected the state machine to its Europe and to the boost the European shipbuilding, steel and heavy engineering. control (or had constructed a new state Right has received from the overwhelming Nearly all face the most formidable level of machine). victory achieved by Ronald Reagan in unemployment since the 30s. The diffe- The expression 'national roads to social- 1984. They will also point to the revival of rent governments have tended to adopt a ism' has been commonly used to describe traditional ideologies as a reaction against policy of containment of public spending, the strategies of the communist parties the alleged permissiveness of the 60s, the jettisoning some aspects of the welfare since the war, but it could be equally well growth of right-wing populist racism state, cornerstone of the class compromise used to characterise those of the socialists. (France), and the weakening of trade un- between labour and capital which had Keynes, as much as Lenin, took the na- ion influence throughout the continent. underpinned the economic growth of the tion-state as the main terrain of political The optimists will point out that in the 50s. Finally, all European states face inter- action and the state as the chief instrument 80s, for the first time since the war, national economic trends which escape any of change. This concentration on the state left-wing governments were elected in form of national control. led in most cases to statist politics, the Spain, Greece and France. They will stress The same problems and issues crop up tendency to see solutions as emanating that the political success of the new Right everywhere: 'What is happening here is from the top, the chronic distrust of move- has not been as devastating as it is some- ments from below, the refusal to recognise times made out to be. Its only real victory forms of organisation other than those has been in Britain with the advent of most component parts of the traditional to the labour movement, ie, Thatcherism, and even here it has failed to European Left have had to unions and parties. provide a long-term solution and is becom- admit that there is a crisis of To some extent this was inevitable. ing unpopular. In West Germany it has Political parties fight in a national environ- been forced to moderate its policies. In socialism ment, take part in national elections, pre- France and Portugal it co-exists with a sent national programmes. The assump- Socialist president while it has been defe- that the workers are disappearing. That's tion of all this must be that the state and its ated in Sweden. The optimists will also all. Nothing like this has ever happened to institutions are in effective control of what find comfort in the increasing divisions us, but we cannot return to the past', so goes on within the national borders and between Western Europe and the USA and declared the new (Communist) leader of that something can be done at the national in the fact that the new Soviet leadership the CGIL, the main Italian union, but it level. This kind of politics led to an seems to be seriously committed not just to could have been said by any trade unionist overestimation of the potentiality of the better public relations but also to a rapid living in the real world. The Left every- state level at the expense of the local and improvement in East-West relations. where is very much in the same soup even the supranational levels. Moreover, new progressive social subjects though it is, on the whole, disunited and There is thus a thread linking the con- have become firmly entrenched: the uncoordinated. cept of the nation-state and statism. One of women's movement has had an impact in the great achievements of the new Right virtually every West European country; a The Left and the nation state has been to keep these two concepts sepa- strong peace movement has succeeded, at This was not always the case: for nearly rate. The 'nation-state', subsumed in the least for a time, in holding the centre of the two decades after the war the social- ideology of nationalism, is allowed to May 1986 Marxism Today 23 The Left in Western Europe The information in the boxes gives the share of the vote scored by the major left parties in each country. The map indicates the political complexion of the government in some of the major West European countries. right-wing government left-wing government France-right-wing government and left-wing president Italy-predominately right-wing government but left-wing prime minister Olof Palme, until his tragic SWEDEN assassination Swedish prime Social Democrats (SAP) minister and leader of the 44.9% Social Democrats. Palme was Communist party (VPK) one of the great figures of the 5.4% postwar European Left. Total left share 50.3% BRITAIN Labour party 27.6% Total left share 27.6% 'general election June 1983) Alessandro Nalta, Enrico Berlinguer successor as general secretary of the Italian Communist party, which remains arguably the most impressive left-wing party in Peter Glotz, secretary-general Europe. of the West German SPD and one of the key figures in its rethinking. An interesting feature of recent years has been the growing convergence FRANCE WEST GERMANY between the SPD and the Socialist party (PS) 31.04% Social Democrats (SPD) PCI. Communist party (PCF) 38.2% 9.78% Greens 5.6% Total left share 40.82% Total left share 43.8% (general election March 1906) 'general election March 1981} PORTUGAL Socialist party (PS) 20.77% Communist party (PCP) 15.49% Total left share 36.26% : general election (October 19851 Andreas Papandreou, the Greek prime minister and the architect of the revival of the Greek Left after the overthrow of the colonels. ITALY Socialist party (PSI).. 11.4% Communist party (PCI) 29.9% Total left share 41.3% SPAIN general election June 1983) Socialist party (PSOE) GREECE 48.4% Pasok 45.8% Communist party (PCE) Communist party (KKE) 5.4% 9.9% Total left share 53.8 Communist party (interior) ( general election October 1982) Felipe Gonzalez, the (KKE-es) 1.8% charismatic leader of the Total left share 57.7% Spanish Socialist party and (general election June 1985) prime minister since 1982. 24 May 1986 Marxism Today maintain positive connotations while stat- necessary to come to terms with the new tionalists too accept that the European ism (which is taken to mean most forms of forms of capitalist development. Left is in crisis but blame social democracy state intervention) is mercilessly criticised. Europeanists, on the other hand, share and the old Keynesian assumption that it is At the same time the policies which flow with the traditionalists a lasting commit- possible to resolve the fundamental contra- from this critique make the nation-state ment to the goal of socialism, but, unlike dictions of capitalist society. Class remains less relevant and the conception of 'nation- them, recognise that drastic revisions are the fundamental issue. The information al roads' even less realistic. Why? Because necessary. Both Europeanists and centrists society is just another stage of capitalist the Right calls for deregulation every- are generally pro-EEC, but the former development. New issues, such as femin- where, for the free movement of capital, emphasise that the long-term goal of Euro- ism and ecology, they say, express at best for the abolition of all restrictions to trade, pean integration must be the independ- real social demands but they must be for unimpeded currency flows etc, in other ence of the whole of Europe (East and integrated into working class politics. words, for the removal of obstacles to the West) from both superpowers while the 'National roads to socialism' remain the growth of international capital. The result latter have a clearly Atlanticist conception foundation of any political advance.
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