Book review of Donald Sassoon’s “One Hundred Years of Socialism: the West European Left in the Twentieth Century”
The recent general election victories for the left in Britain and France look set to have a major impact in Western Europe. Along with Germany, these countries make up the backbone of the European Union, and in terms of social democracy have, by and large, been the intellectual inspiration for many others. Sassoon employs the term socialism, throughout his book to describe those parties he examines, those that have traditionally been on the left. However, this is not the usual terminology, and such parties will be referred to here as social democratic. Sassoon does drop the pretence at one stage when he describes the dropping of the aim of full employment by the Labour Party with as the abandonment of social democracy, a term which he uses infrequently and never defines.
In these, the large European countries, the electoral record has been poor, and the record of the French Socialists (Parti Socialiste – PS), with the most recent experience of office, was, to put it mildly, disappointing and led to a quite spectacular defeat in the 1993 parliamentary elections, although in the second round run-off for the presidential election in May 1995 have the PS candidate, Lionel Jospin, did better than many had predicted. The British Labour Party regained office with a huge majority on 1 May after eighteen years in opposition and the PS followed suit shortly afterwards with a dramatic swing from the centre-right coalition. The German Social Democrats (SPD) have an opportunity to regain power next year after sixteen years out of office.
These three elections will largely determine the form that social democracy in Western Europe takes as we enter the next century. If the German SPD joins the others in power then there is a possibility that social democracy can, once again, be the intellectually dominant force in Europe as it was during the ‘golden age’ of the 1950s through until the mid-1970s. During this time it was not always even necessary for the social democrats to be in office, as many on the right undertook policies that the left could have been proud of. Social democracy dominated the mind-set of politicians, and, more importantly, of the population. But with the collapse of the ‘Great Capitalist Boom’, as Sassoon terms it, the underpinnings and coherence that seemed to justify social democracy gave way. Without the proceeds that economic growth provided, social democrats could not improve the lot of the people through the redistribution of this surplus.
So how are these parties attempting to regain office? According to Sassoon, in the conclusion to his work, ‘the main achievement of socialism in the last one hundred years has been the civilizing of capitalism’ (p.767), but that is now something that the left is failing singularly to do. The role of the markets has been upgraded in the eyes of social democrats so that to talk about the power of the markets, the role that they can play and the good that they can do, is no longer seen as incompatible with social democracy, which was the case earlier in the century, and even under Anthony Crosland their role was a more limited one. This has the consequence of also downgrading the role that the state can play in economic and social affairs. The rise of globalization, however overstated, is not being tackled by those on the left, but allowed to gather pace unhindered; this is not ‘socialism civilizing capitalism’.
Where Sassoon’s analysis is particularly strong is in his examination of the three-pronged attack on the basis of social democracy from the workers, women, and the green movement. All three receive attention as matters of great contestation which arose in the 1960s to challenge the established left. The rise of worker militancy has given way to capitulation, as the full-time, male, lifetime employment in the old manufacturing base of industry has given way to new forms of production, and more part-time and female employment, thus removing the traditional blue-collar electorate of the parties of the left at the same time as altering the policy options available. Sassoon examines these developments in the West European countries that form the basis of his work, with some given more time and space than others, to show that, indeed, the number of workers has diminished, but also that they have become more fragmented. It is not that these changes are fundamentally hostile to the chances of the left – what has caused most consternation has been the failure of the left to cope with these alterations in its environment. It has been unable to expand its electoral base to keep pace with change, so that even the ‘successful’ social democratic parties, such as those in Sweden and Norway, have seen fluctuations in their support and survive in government mainly on a minority basis, or in coalition with others. So a challenge for social democrats as we approach the millennium is to reconstitute an appeal that can break down the barriers between those who are increasingly concerned about insecurity and those who feel relatively secure. Whereas, in the past, the majoritarian project for the left could be based around working class concerns, although other groups were never totally ignored, that is no longer the case. The new majoritarian project has to appeal to much more diverse and fragmented interests. The trade unions that bound the working population together to varying degrees in all the countries of Western Europe, have been hit by the changing work patterns and must also alter their outlook to widen their appeal to the unemployed and to contracted workers. With these changes in work patterns, and hence the amount of taxation revenue and economic surplus available to governments, the welfare state has become a political battlefield and another area which the left is still coming to terms with, in both how to fund its priority programmes and, indeed, what those programmes are. The left has still to change its image from a producerist to a consumerist one, which the population can trust to deliver high quality public services which benefit the consumers and not the producers. The tactic of many on the left during the last twenty years has been to use the public sector to absorb excess unemployment, as has been the case in Sweden, but this is now under threat. The demands on taxation revenue grow and people become less willing to pay. So even though Britain has a low rate of taxation compared with many other European countries, people are still averse to paying.
The route that social democrats have adopted at this present time is to dilute their social democratic commitments. They rely increasingly on the market, accept much of the neo-liberal reforms especially in the economic context, have abandoned full employment as an aim, etc. To Sassoon these parties are the ‘only Left that is left’ (p.777) – a highly depressing and quite negative view to take. The idea that, because these parties were of the left, we now have to accept what they do in the name of socialism (or social democracy) is a retreat. Just because these parties were of the left does not mean that they will continue to be so, or that when in power they produce social democratic ends. Those parties that made it to power in the 1980s failed precisely to do this. Were the achievements of the French Socialists in aiding the rise of the National Front social democratic? Were the massive increases in the level of unemployment in France social democratic? Were the rise of political corruption, alleged insider dealing and ‘difficulties’ in party funding social democratic? The answer is clearly not. The main problem on the left is to define what being on the left means today. Such a view as Sassoon’s does not take us very far down the road to such a definition. His very brief overviews of the performances of the parties of the left that actually won elections in the 1980s, the exception to this being the examination of France, mean that he does not allow the reader to view the triumphs and mistakes in these countries that give us the clues to how the left should operate now. Parties learn from one another and apply those lessons within their nationally specific contexts, so that if we ignore the very important recent lessons the left is bound to fail.
Just as the left must learn from its immediate past, it must learn from its more distant past, and again this aspect is glossed over by Sassoon as he devotes very little of the book to the past, and the inter-war period especially. He does claim that the book is a ‘history of the socialist organizations’ (p.xxi) and not of ‘socialist ideas’ (p.xxiii) but in this modern era the success of the parties is becoming more dependent on new ideas being developed. The issue of the European single currency may be the one which motivates social democrats to come together and reconsider two elements of their thought and thus act as a catalyst for new thinking. Firstly, it may mean that they move together to defend their historic achievement, the welfare state. Secondly, it may prove to them that whilst the level of the nation state is appropriate for some political and economic action, the international stage is increasingly important. The future of social democracy does not lie in the large battles over ownership but nor does it lie in capitulation to the market. Social democracy has to work with the market rather than against it, but it is important to remember that choices do still exist for the nation state to decide the nature of the capitalism that it develops.
As a history of the left One Hundred Years of Socialism works very well, highlighting aspects of the development of socialism that many other authors have ignored, such as foreign policy and feminist influence, and will be an indispensable guide to anybody interested in the development of the left during this century. It is encyclopaedic, bringing together diverse countries in one text, and has obviously taken years of painstaking work. But there is a crisis on the left and a book of this magnitude ought to analyze its essential elements. To deal only fleetingly, if at all, with, inter alia, the rise of a culture of individualism, globalization, the fall in membership of the parties linked to the rise of new social movements (not just the development of the Green movement at the end of the 1960s) and the decline in trust in political parties and politicians, combined with the challenge over the nature of leadership in a more diverse environment, is to miss major elements of that crisis.
Contemporary Politics, Volume 3, Number 3, 1997, p290-292