RUTHFULLY YOURS

A rejection of social democrats is reconfiguring the continent’s politics

Everyone has noticed the collapse of Europe’s social-democratic parties, largely because it is unmissable. Take, first, the three big parties in the EU. France’s Socialist party went from a governing majority in the presidency and the National Assembly to 7 percent of the total vote in last year’s presidential election and virtual disappearance from parliament. Germany’s Social Democratic party (SPD) fell to 20 percent in the recent elections (and it’s fallen further during the negotiations over forming the new German government). Italy’s Democratic party managed a little better, winning 23 percent of the votes for both the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies. All three had started 2017 as parties serving in government — two as the dominant partners in coalitions.

This implosive trend started earlier and went further in Central Europe. Poland’s socialists lost power in 2005 when Polish politics became a contest between the urban, liberal Civic Platform and the rural, conservative Law and Justice party. They haven’t really come back since. Hungary’s Social Democrats lost office in 2010 and have since splintered into several parties; a five-party Left coalition won a quarter of the total vote in 2014 and splintered again; at present they are debating whether to form a new coalition for the forthcoming election on April 8. The Czech Social Democrats went from government into a polling debacle of 7 percent à la française last December. And Spain, Holland, Scotland, and other once reliably progressive places have seen similar collapses.

It’s not difficult to list the reasons for this cull, because so many agonized social democrats have already done so. The primary cause is generally agreed to be that the parties have either lost or abandoned their founding base in the mass working-class electorate. That happened because social democrats, who were increasingly composed of progressive middle-class intellectuals, usually working in the public sector, lost interest in blue-collar issues and were actively hostile to the conservative social values (patriotism, hard work, church) that appealed to workers as much as to the bourgeoisie. Eventually the workers noticed and began to drift off to other parties.

Pierre Manent, the classical-liberal French political scientist, has noticed that “Europe” played an important role in this tendency in the French and other parties because it replaced the proletariat as the proper focus of progressive loyalty. Environmentalism, feminism, immigration, and gay rights were other issues that replaced socialism and the welfare state in the social-democratic hierarchy of values. The disappearance of the Soviet Union disillusioned a small but passionate set of activists. And, finally, David Goodhart, a veteran journalist and former leftist, discerned a growing division in Britain and other advanced societies between the “Somewheres” (locally rooted people with modest ambitions) and the “Anywheres” (globally rootless professionals). A different kind of class war was overtaking the Left-vs.-Right conflict between the working and middle classes within a society — and producing a new politics.

When the South African parliament passed a motion, by 241 votes to 83, to change the nation’s constitution to allow white-owned land to be expropriated without compensation, the Guardian, Britain’s equivalent of the Washington Post, was coy about reporting it. Even now, it has not mentioned the measure on its website, except indirectly.

The reasons for this coyness can only be surmised, but one might have supposed that, given the newspaper’s long history of interest in South African affairs, a development with such potentially catastrophic long-term, and even short-term, effects would be considered of some importance. The proposal, if ever fully acted upon, would produce a crisis to dwarf Zimbabwe’s, with starvation and famine avertable only if 10 million or 15 million South Africans succeeded in finding somewhere to migrate to.

The motion in parliament was proposed by Julius Malema, a former radical member of the ruling African National Congress, now leader of a splinter party called the Economic Freedom Fighters, which received 6 per cent of the vote and has the same proportion of seats in the parliament. They dress entirely in red and call for radical redistribution of wealth, as if an economy were a stew or soup to be ladled out in portions. Malema, who, if the large financial scandals connected with his person are anything to go by, excludes himself from his own economic egalitarianism, said in 2016 that he was not calling for the slaughter of whites—at least, not yet.

These thoughts are those of an observer, not an expert. They reflect my reading of current events, which convince me that the people of Europe are vulnerable to a loss of basic rights. My concern is for the kind of omniscient government James Madison warned against in Federalist No. 47. I appreciate the success the international system in Europe has had in the years since World War II – how it avoided wars that devastated the first half of the Twentieth Century, how it largely eradicated the poverty and disease that are war’s accompaniments, and how it helped democratize former totalitarian states. Nevertheless, there is no alpha and no omega to history’s timeline. The “deep state” that is the EU grows larger and more intrusive. As well, bad men and women lurk on sidelines, biding their time, waiting for opportunities to seize power. It is the threat of authoritarianism that concerns, no matter whether it emerges through an individual or via the state, or whether it comes from the Right or the Left.

Something is wrong in Europe. If today’s EU were so desirable, would Brexit have happened? If the EU is such a positive factor, why do administrators in Brussels feel a need to punish the UK for leaving? Why do they rail so aggressively against those who disagree with their concept of union? Why have populist parties risen, like Podemos in Spain, the Five-Star movement in Italy and the Freedom Party in Austria? Consider the political malfunctioning in Germany and Poland. The glue that binds the Union has weakened. Why?

Bureaucrats in Brussels have become more autocratic, in terms of demands on member states. For example, it is estimated that between 60% and 65% of laws, regulations and directives governing the British people were made in Brussels. London and other democratic capitals have become vassals to the EU, in terms of borders, trade, rules, regulations and laws. On the other hand, disintegration of the Union, it is feared, could lead to the nationalist policies that helped start the First World War, the depression that followed and the Second War. No sensible person wants to re-create another period similar to 1914-1945.

The catalyst for the discontent has been immigration on an unprecedented scale, affecting the economy, along with cultural and democratic institutions. It is true that most refugees have a humanitarian need. They come from towns and cities devastated by Islamic extremists – principally Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq in the Middle East; Eritrea, Nigeria, Somalia and Sudan in North and Sub-Saharan Africa. But, it is also true that among those refugees are radicalized young men.

Russia’s presidential election on March 18 passed without great excitement, since Putin’s victory was never in doubt. He won 77 percent of the vote, with just over two-thirds of eligible voters taking part. While a few reported irregularities have received extensive publicity in the Western media, this result fairly accurately reflects the country’s current mood.

In Russia elections are impacted by foreign and security issues to a much greater extent than in the U.S. Putin’s numbers were helped by Britain’s unprecedented anti-Russian campaign following the poisoning of former double agent Sergei Skripal in Salisbury on March 4. The government in London promptly accused the Russian government and Putin personally of ordering the attack. A week before the election it expelled 23 Russian diplomats, and Moscow retaliated by ordering out the same number of Britons. Most ordinary Russians believe—not without reason—that they are subjected to serious external challenges, and that the incumbent is better equipped to deal with them than any likely alternative.

As for the Salisbury case, ordinary Russians make the common sense argument that had the authorities intended to kill Skripal as an example to other potential traitors, they could have done so during his four years in Russian jail 2006-2010. Those with security background insist that Russia (and the USSR before 1991) has never targeted an exchanged spy, that intelligence services on both sides would be loath to jeopardize the institution of swaps; and that there was no motive to kill Skripal almost eight years after the swap and three months before the 2018 FIFA World Cup which Russia is due to host in June and July. It seems clear that had a military grade nerve gas been used (and Britain has refused to provide any samples thus far), Skripal and his daughter would have died instantly. Finally, false flag operation is a distinct possibility: the gas allegedly used (“Novichok”) is actually a family of nerve agents which has been known for decades and could have been produced by several other countries.

The second factor favoring Putin’s victory was Russia’s improving economic situation. The mix of Western sanctions imposed in 2014 and the fall of crude oil prices (from $108 per barrel in September 2013 to under $30 in February 2016) caused a two-year period of stagflation, but Russia’s economy started growing again in 2017. It is no longer dependent on foreign liquidity, exchange rates are stable, the fiscal deficit is under 2% percent of GDP, and inflation of 4% is at an all-time low. Putin’s major domestic challenge will be to direct more private investment into manufacturing, and especially import substitution ventures. At the moment, Russia’s share of investment in GDP is only 20%, less than one-half of China’s 43%. On current form the country may be able to catch up with the global growth rate of three percent, but not before 2021.