Group of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists & Democrats

Group of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists & Democrats perspectives for 26 May Social democracy is one of the oldest European political families, only preceded by the Conservatives and Liberals. Divided, the S&D group should score below expectations and the results should certainly be repeated in the European hemicycle, used to the traditional S&D-EPP tandem. A look back at the history of European social democracy and its prospects for the upcoming elections. Social democracy is one of the oldest European political families, only preceded by the Conservatives and Liberals. Europe's socialist, labour and social democratic parties often have a secular existence and historical tutelary figures. The Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) was founded in 1887 by Karl Marx's own sidekick, Friedrich Engels. The French PS is the direct heir to the SFIO founded in 1905 under the aegis of Jean Jaures. British Labour, created in 1901 by the Scot Keir Hardie. The Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) was founded in 1879 by - ironically in history - a certain Pablo Iglesias. In Nordic countries such as Norway, Sweden and Finland, social democracy enjoyed an almost uninterrupted reign between the 1930s and the 2000s. At the turn of the millennium, Europe was experiencing a period of genuine social democratic hegemony, with leaders such as Tony Blair in the United Kingdom, Lionel Jospin in France, Gerhard Schröder in Germany, Gro Harem Brundtland in Norway, etc. The 2008 crisis has gone through this, and social democracy has collapsed or even collapsed as an electoral and ideological force. The example of the Greek PASOK is the most telling in this respect: as an unavoidable political force since the end of the colonels' junta, it was swept away in 2015 by Syriza and is now struggling to find a space in the center-left. The French SP also paid the price of the Dutch five-year period, going from total hegemony in 2012 to a very low score of 6.36% in the first round of the 2017 presidential election. The question, as it has been raised in recent years, is therefore whether social democracy has lost its historical driving force. The Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats in the European Parliament - the name of the Socialist Group since the Italian Democratic Party joined it in 2014 - certainly remains the second largest force in the European assembly with 185 seats, between the 216 of the EPP (Europhiles Conservatives) and the 77 of the CRE (Eurosceptic Conservatives). However, of the 28 EU Member States, only 5 are currently led by socialist, labour or social democratic forces. These are Spain, Portugal, Sweden, Slovakia and Malta. The figure is low compared to the 9 Member States governed by EPP members and the 8 governed by ALDE members (Liberals), even though the latter has only 69 MEPs. Let us therefore return to the origins of European social democracy. It is always important to go back to the past to understand the present. What is social democracy? Socialism is both a social philosophy and a political current. The term appeared in the 1780s under the pen of Abbot Siéyès, but was not popularized until after the end of the French Revolution. It is intended as a response to the "social question" that took shape with the birth of the workers and urban proletariat in the Industrial Revolution. Faced with the excesses of emerging capitalism, the first socialists were above all utopian, anti-political thinkers: Saint-Simon, Fourier, Cabet... It was not until 1848 that socialism made a sensational entry into the European political scene: it was the publication of the Marx-Engels Communist Party Manifesto, the participation of Albert l'Ouvrier and Louis Blanc in the provisional government of the Second French Republic, etc. Karl Marx, in his book Le Dix-Huit Brumaire by Louis Bonaparte, defines social democracy in these terms: "A common programme was outlined, common electoral committees were created and common candidates were presented. The social demands of the proletariat were taken away from their revolutionary point and given a democratic turn. The petty-bourgeoisie's democratic demands for democracy were taken away from their purely political form and their socialist point was brought out. This is how social democracy was created.” The People's Spring was nevertheless a bitter failure for the socialists, which led to the creation of the First International under the aegis of Marx and the anarchist Bakunin. The strong tensions within the International, then the repression of the Commune in 1871, led to the rupture between Marxists and anarchists. However, socialist ideas have progressed a lot in Europe. It is necessary to understand the distinctions between the different currents that were organized at that time. A social democratic party (Germany, Spain) is based on adherence to the Marxist ideology of class struggle and a close alliance with other mass organizations, mainly trade unions. A Labour Party (United Kingdom, Norway) is only the political body of the trade union centres, which push for reformist demands without necessarily adhering to the Marxist vision. A socialist party (France) is cut off from the trade unions - Charte d'Amiens -, with a small number of members, but strongly ideologized and advocates proletarian revolution, at least in words. Nor should we have a hermetic conception of these divisions, and understand that the evolution of European socialist parties since their creation is above all a function of their respective national histories. It should also be noted that the vast majority of these parties were gathered within the Second International, or Workers' International, created in 1889. The International was first and foremost a subject of debate between reformists and revolutionaries: the former defended the progressive improvement of the working class condition through parliamentary reforms within bourgeois democracy, while the latter advocated a violent proletarian revolution. These two tendencies coexisted: the Bolsheviks led by Lenin were originally only a fraction of the Russian Social Democratic Workers' Party. The rupture was consummated in 1914 when the reformist majorities within most European socialist parties voted for war credits, to the great displeasure of the revolutionaries who had remained faithful to the pacifist line of the International. It was the birth of the communist movement, with the October Revolution of 1917 and the Spartakist insurrection of 1919. From then on, the socialist movement was to be split in two, between social democracy and communism. Without formally denying Marxism, the old social- democratic parties had clearly moved towards parliamentary reformism. Social democracy in the European Communities The relationship between social democracy and Europe has therefore always been contradictory. Indeed, the latter was as opposed to sovietism as it was to American capitalism. At the end of the Second World War, social democracy therefore saw Europe as a means both of reactivating the old internationalist project and of affirming the independence of the continent and its moral ideals. However, Europe's founding fathers were not socialists. Robert Schuman, a pacifist Christian Democrat, was one of the parliamentarians who had voted for full power in Marshal Pétain, before being arrested by the Gestapo and finally fleeing to the free zone in 1942. Alcide de Gasperi, Jean Monnet and Konrad Adenauer also belonged to the Christian Democratic family. Only Paul- Henri Spaak was a socialist, but distinguished by his strong criticism of the USSR's foreign policy and his position as NATO Secretary General between 1957 and 1961, before leaving the Belgian SP at the end of his political life for the benefit of French-speaking centrists. After the creation of the ECSC, the failure of the CED and the European Political Community paved the way for Europe to be founded on economic foundations. However, the communists and many socialists had expressed serious reservations about the EWC project. Economic Europe has always been criticised by the left, which saw in it the risk of a liberal policy being applied from above, without national parliaments and governments having a say. For this reason, Labour opposed the United Kingdom's accession to the European Communities in 1972, led by Prime Minister Tory Harold McMillan. At the Thatcherian time, when Labour had had the nickname of loony left, its programme included the release of the EEC. The French and Spanish socialists, in power in the 1980s, resigned themselves at the turn of the century to avoid the disintegration of the European Monetary System dominated by the German mark. Yet Europe seemed to be committed to social democracy: the PES was the winner of the first direct election to the European Parliament. The Socialists would win the next three European elections before losing their first place to the EPP in 1999. This was also the time of the Jacques Delors Commission. A French socialist from Christian trade unionism, he would leave a deep imprint on Europe. It was under its two successive presidencies that the Single European Act and then the Maastricht Treaty were signed. The fall of the Berlin Wall was a turning point for European social democracy. Most European socialist parties had abandoned Marxism in the 1960s and 1970s: Labour had never joined it, the SPD renounced it at the Bad-Godesberg Congress in 1959 and the PSOE at the time of the Spanish Democratic Transition. The last party not to have given up its revolutionary ambition was the French PS. His transition to reformism and a market economy was only endorsed in his 1991 declaration of principles, which did not prevent Lionel Jospin, Prime Minister, from rejecting the "market society" in opposition to most of his European social democratic colleagues. The social-liberal shift of the European socialist movement was in fact only the acceptance by them of the neoliberal paradigm imposed by Thatcher, Reagan and the fall of the USSR.

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