Ill Fares the Land (21 page)

In a similar way, the anger of early-19th century radicals in France and Britain was driven in very considerable measure by the belief that there were moral rules to economic life, and that these were being trampled underfoot by the new world of industrial capitalism. It is that sense of loss—and the revolutionary sentiments it stoked—which fired the political energies of early socialists. The Left has always had something to conserve.

We take for granted the institutions, legislation, services and rights that we have inherited from the great age of 20th century reform. It is time to remind ourselves that all of these were utterly inconceivable as recently as 1929. We are the fortunate beneficiaries of a transformation whose scale and impact was unprecedented. There is much to defend.

Moreover, ‘defensive’ Social Democracy has a very respectable heritage. In France, at the turn of the 20th century, the Socialist leader Jean Jaurès urged his colleagues to support small shopkeepers and skilled artisans driven under by the rise of department stores and mass production. Socialism in his view was not merely a forward projection into a post-capitalist future; it was also and above all a protection for the helpless and those threatened with economic extinction.

We do not typically associate ‘the Left’ with caution. In the political imaginary of Western culture, ‘left’ denotes radical, destructive and innovatory. But in truth there is a close relationship between progressive institutions and a spirit of
prudence
. The democratic Left has often been motivated by a sense of loss: sometimes of idealized pasts, sometimes of moral interests ruthlessly overridden by private advantage. It is doctrinaire market liberals who for the past two centuries have embraced the relentlessly optimistic view that all economic change is for the better.

It is the
Right
that has inherited the ambitious modernist urge to destroy and innovate in the name of a universal project. From the war in Iraq through the unrequited desire to dismantle public education and health services, to the decades-long project of financial deregulation, the political Right—from Thatcher and Reagan to Bush and Blair—has abandoned the association of political conservatism with social moderation which served it so well from Disraeli to Heath, from Theodore Roosevelt to Nelson Rockefeller.

If it is true, as Bernard Williams once observed, that the best grounds for toleration are “. . . the manifest evils of toleration’s absence”,
³⁷
then much the same should be said of social democracy and the welfare state. It is difficult for young people to appreciate just what life was like before them. But if we cannot rise to the level of a justificatory narrative—if we lack the will to theorize our better instincts—then let us at least recall the well-documented cost of abandoning them.

Social democrats are characteristically modest—a political quality whose virtues are overestimated. We need to apologize a little less for past shortcomings and speak more assertively of achievements. That these were always incomplete should not trouble us. If we have learned nothing else from the 20th century, we should at least have grasped that the more perfect the answer, the more terrifying its consequences.

Incremental improvements upon unsatisfactory circumstances are the best that we can hope for, and probably all we should seek. Others have spent the last three decades methodically unraveling and destabilizing them: this should make us much angrier than we are. It ought also to worry us, if only on prudential grounds: why have we been in such a hurry to tear down the dikes laboriously set in place by our predecessors? Are we so sure that there are no floods to come?

To abandon the labors of a century is to betray those who came before us as well as generations yet to come. It would be pleasing—but misleading—to promise that social democracy, or something like it, represents the future that we would paint for ourselves in an ideal world. But this would be to return to discredited story-telling. Social democracy does not represent an ideal future; it does not even represent the ideal past. But among the options available to us today, it is better than anything else to hand.

—GEORGE ORWELL,
HOMAGE TO CATALONIA

 

 

 

 

I
n October 2009 I delivered a lecture in New York in which I discussed some of the themes raised in this book. The first question came from a twelve year old schoolboy; I think it worth recording here, as it speaks to a concern with which I want to conclude. The questioner came directly to the point:
“Ok, so on a daily basis if you’re having a conversation or even a debate about some of these issues and the word socialism is mentioned, sometimes it is as though a brick has fallen on the conversation and there’s no way to return it to its form. What would you recommend as a way to restore the conversation?”

As I noted in my response, the ‘brick’ falls somewhat differently in Sweden. Allusions to socialism, even today, do not produce an embarrassed silence in European discussions any more than they do in Latin America or many other parts of the world. This is a distinctively American response—and the questioner, as an American child, had a very good point. One of the challenges of shifting the direction of public policy debate in the US is to overcome the ingrained suspicion of anything that smacks of ‘socialism’ or can be tarred with that brush.

There are two ways to meet this challenge. The first is simply to set aside ‘socialism’. We could acknowledge the extent to which the word and the idea have been polluted by their association with 20th century dictatorships and exclude it from our discussion. This has the merit of simplicity, but it invites the charge of hypocrisy. If an idea or a policy talks like socialism and walks like socialism, should we not acknowledge that this is what it is? Can we not hope to retrieve the word from the dustbin of history?

I don’t think so. ‘Socialism’ is a 19th century idea with a 20th century history. That is not an insuperable impediment: the same might be said of liberalism. But the baggage of history is real—the Soviet Union and most of its dependencies described themselves as ‘socialist’ and no amount of special pleading (“it wasn’t real socialism”) can get around that. For the same reasons, Marxism is irretrievably sullied by its heritage, whatever the benefits we can still reap from reading Marx. To preface every radical proposal with the adjective ‘socialist’ is simply to invite a sterile debate.

But there is a significant distinction between ‘socialism’ and ‘social democracy’. Socialism was about transformative change: the displacement of capitalism with a successor regime based on an entirely different system of production and ownership. Social democracy, in contrast, was a compromise: it implied the acceptance of capitalism—and parliamentary democracy—as the framework within which the hitherto neglected interests of large sections of the population would now be addressed.

These differences matter. Socialism—under all its many guises and hyphenated incarnations—has failed. Social democracy has not only come to power in many countries, it has succeeded beyond the wildest dreams of its founders. What was idealistic in the mid-19th century and a radical challenge fifty years later has become everyday politics in many liberal states.

Thus, when ‘social democracy’ rather than ‘socialism’ is introduced into a conversation in western Europe, or Canada or New Zealand, bricks do not fall. Instead, the discussion is likely to take an intensely practical and technical turn: can we still afford universal pension schemes, unemployment compensation, subsidized arts, inexpensive higher education, etc., or are these benefits and services now too costly to sustain? If so, how should they be rendered affordable? Which of them—if any—is indispensable?

The broader question, implicitly raised by their more ideologically-motivated critics, is whether such social service states
ought
to continue in their present form or whether they have outlived their usefulness. Is a system of ‘cradle-to-grave’ protections and guarantees more ‘useful’ than a market-driven society in which the role of the state is kept to the minimum?

The answer depends on what we think ‘useful’ means: what sort of a society do we want and what sort of arrangements are we willing to tolerate or seek in order to bring it about? As I hope I have shown in this book, the question of ‘usefulness’ needs to be recast. If we confine ourselves to issues of economic efficiency and productivity, ignoring ethical considerations and all reference to broader social goals, we cannot hope to engage it.

Does social democracy have a future? In the last decades of the 20th century, it became commonplace to suggest that the reason the social democratic consensus of the previous generation had begun to crumble was that it could not develop a vision—much less practical institutions—that transcended the national state. If the world was becoming smaller and states more marginal to the daily operations of the international economy, what could social democracy hope to offer?

This concern took acute form in 1981, when the last Socialist president of France was elected on the promise that he would ignore European-level regulations and agreements and inaugurate an autonomous (socialist) future for his country. Within two years, Francois Mitterrand had reversed course—much as the British Labour Party would a few years later—and accepted what now appeared inevitable: there could be no distinctively social democratic national policies (on taxation, redistribution or public ownership) if these fell foul of international agreements.

Even in Scandinavia, where social democratic institutions were far more culturally ingrained, membership of the EU—or even just participation in the World Trade Organization and other international agencies—appeared to constrain locally-initiated legislation. In short, social democracy seemed doomed by that same internationalization which its early theorists had so enthusiastically adumbrated as the future of capitalism.

From this perspective, social democracy—like liberalism—was a byproduct of the rise of the European nation-state: a political idea keyed to the social challenges of industrialization in developed societies. Not only was there no ‘socialism’ in America, but social democracy as a working compromise between radical goals and liberal traditions lacked widespread support in any other continent. There was no shortage of enthusiasm for
revolutionary
socialism in much of the non-Western world, but the distinctively European compromise did not export well.

In addition to being confined to one privileged continent, social democracy appeared to be the product of unique historical circumstances. Why should we suppose that these circumstances would repeat themselves? And if they do not, why would future generations necessarily follow their grandparents into the prophylactic and prudent compromises of earlier decades?

But when circumstances change, opinions should follow. We shall not soon hear again from the ideologues of free market dogma. The so-called G20 group of important countries is much resented by lesser states excluded from its deliberations, and its drive to become the decision-making center of the future carries significant risks; but the emergence of such a grouping surely confirms the return of the state to center stage. Reports of its death have been greatly exaggerated.

If we are going to have states, and if they are going to count for something in the affairs of men, then the social democratic heritage remains relevant. The past has something to teach us. Edmund Burke, in his dyspeptic contemporary critique of the French Revolution, warned against the juvenile propensity to dispense with the past in the name of the future. Society, he wrote, is “. . . a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead and those who are to be born.”

This observation is typically read as conservative. But Burke is right.
All
political arguments need to begin with an appreciation of our relationship not only to dreams of future betterment, but also to past achievements: our own and those of our predecessors. For too long, the Left has been insensitive to this requirement: we have been in thrall to the 19th century Romantics, in too much of a hurry to put the old world behind us and offer a radical critique of everything existing. Such a critique may be the necessary condition of serious change, but it can lead us dangerously astray.

For in reality, we only build on what we have. We are, as those same Romantics well knew, rooted in history. But in the 19th century, ‘history’ sat uncomfortably upon the shoulders of a generation impatient for change. The institutions of the past were an impediment. Today, we have good grounds for thinking differently. We owe our children a better world than we inherited; but we also owe something to those who came before.

However, social democracy cannot just be about preserving worthy institutions as a defense against worse options. Nor need it be. Much of what is amiss in our world can best be captured in the language of classical political thought: we are intuitively familiar with issues of injustice, unfairness, inequality and immorality—we have just forgotten how to talk about them. Social democracy once articulated such concerns, until it too lost its way.

In Germany, the Social Democratic Party is accused by its critics of abandoning ideals in pursuit of selfish and provincial objectives. Social democrats all across Europe are hard-pressed to say what they stand for. Protecting and defending local or sectional interests is not enough. The temptation to calculate thus, to conceive of German (or Dutch, or Swedish) social democracy as something for Germans (or Dutch or Swedes), was always present: today it seems to have triumphed.