The classics of social democratic thought

Antonio Gramsci’s Selections from the Prison Notebooks

John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty Anthony Crosland's The Future of Socialism Karl Polanyi's The Great Transformation

Anthony Giddens The Third Way: The Renewal of Social Democracy

Robert Skidelsky on John Maynard Keynes Patrick Diamond on Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Mitchell Cohen on T.H Marshall's Citizenship and Social Class

Roger Liddle on The Blair Revolution: Can New Labour Deliver?

Alain Bergounioux on Léon Blum's For all Mankind (À l'échelle Humaine)

Iain McLean on Richard M. Titmuss' The Gift Relationship

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http://www.policy-network.net/content/357/The-Classics-of-Social-Democracy

The classics of social democratic thought The landmarks of conservative thought, ranging from Friedriech Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom to Milton

Friedman’s Capitalism and Freedom, have served as powerful narratives for the politicians and

thinktanks of the right in the US and Europe. This ability to harness the work of prominent intellectuals

and to draw on a liberal tradition has offered some consistency to the political discourse of the right.

This consistency remains unmatched by the centre-left which finds it more difficult to lean on a coherent

body of discourse. As the centre-left wrestles with the tough questions of today, familiarity with both the

classics of social democratic thought and influential political tracts can play a significant role in kicking-

off a sustained period of revisionism and revival.

In this series prominent thinkers and policymakers will revisit key texts and essays which have been

seminal to progressive thinking. From the early architects of Swedish social democracy to Karl Polanyi’s

analysis of the commodification of human relations brought about by capitalism or Tony Crosland’s

critique of social democrat's attachment to statism and public spending, high-level commentators will

revisit these works to stress their relevance in our collective attempt to close the current ideological

vacuum and renew social democratic thinking.

Sally Davison on Antonio Gramsci’s Selections from the Prison Notebooks

Gramsci’s notion of hegemony offers an indispensable way of thinking about creating the conditions for

political change.

John Skorupski on John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty

150 years after its publication J.S Mill’s On Liberty retains the radicalism with which it spoke to Victorian

Britain. What can it contribute to rethinking social democracy today?

Giles Radice on Anthony Crosland's The Future of Socialism

The enduring legacy of this classic text lies in the rich revisionist creed which drove Crosland to bring

social democracy up to date for his time.

Adrian Pabst on Karl Polanyi's The Great Transformation

In rejecting both market liberalism and state socialism, Polanyi’s blend of political idealism and

economic realism offers some telling insights for the modern centre-left.

Anthony Giddens on The Third Way: The Renewal of Social Democracy

The title was regrettable, misunderstood and misinterpreted yet the issues raised in the book

still have relevance for the renewal of social democracy today.

Sheri Berman on the early architects of Swedish social democracy: Ernst Wigforss, Nils Karleby

and Per Albin Hansson

The insights championed by these great thinkers are as relevant today as they were in the past:

capitalism is not a zero-sum game and it is the left’s role to develop programmes that promote growth

and social solidarity together.

Robert Skidelsky on John Maynard Keynes

The battle lines may have changed from the means of production to big finance but the state remains

the ultimate protector of the public good.

Patrick Diamond on Franklin Delano Roosevelt

In contrast to social democrats today, FDR’s style of leadership empathised with the anxieties and

frustrations of the people and boldly seized the opportunity of a crisis for progressive ends.

Mitchell Cohen on T.H Marshall's Citizenship and Social Class

In speaking of the development of civil, political, and social citizenship as an evolutionary sequence,

Marhshall's elegant classic points to a vigorous concern for both liberty and equality.

Roger Liddle on The Blair Revolution: Can New Labour Deliver?

Setting out to build on the past, rather than destroy what previous governments did, this political tract

highlights both New Labour’s accomplishments and its systematic shortcomings.

Alain Bergounioux on Léon Blum's For all Mankind (À l'échelle Humaine)

At a time when the parties of the left in Europe are re-examining their identity, it is useful to draw on

Blum’s writings to remind us that socialism is first and foremost a humanist political culture.

Iain McLean on Richard M. Titmuss' The Gift Relationship

The implications of Titmuss’ study on human blood and social policy should not be forgotten as we

reconsider the core principles of our economy.

What Antonio Gramsci offers to social democracy SALLY DAVISON - 10 OCTOBER 2011

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Gramsci’s notion of hegemony offers social democrats an analytical framework within which to better understand and challenge the entrenched interests of capital in society and a way of thinking about creating the conditions for political change A key dilemma for social democrats today is to find a way of challenging the dominance of capital and business interests while remaining located within a gradualist framework that does not envisage any immediate prospect of fundamental change. If no serious alternative is on the cards, is there any point in critiquing the way that capitalism functions? If the left’s influence appears to be diminishing, why not accept that there is no alternative to the market? Without contemporary answers to these questions, social democrats face continuing decline: throughout the current financial crisis their popularity has been plummeting, largely because they have been unable to make a principled stand against those responsible for what has happened – for indeed many have largely embraced the same policies. Social democrats lack a politics that can simultaneously both act as a critique of capitalism and yet accept that it is the system in which they will continue to operate for the foreseeable future. I believe that Antonio Gramsci – a man who endured bitter defeat, prison and

death in Mussolini’s Italy – continues to offer the best answers to these questions, precisely because he was forced to confront the question of how popular resistance could continue to be marshalled at a time of defeat, and how to turn resistance into the kernel of a new society. His concept of hegemony offers a way of thinking about creating the conditions for political change while recognising that there is little immediate chance of a major breakthrough. In fact Gramsci has been described by Stuart Hall as ‘our foremost theorist of defeat’ – perhaps another reason to turn to him today! Gramsci’s unrelenting realism, his ‘pessimism of the intellect’, did not prevent him from continuing to maintain an ‘optimism of the will’ throughout his political life.1 Gramsci was a founding member and later leader of the Italian Communist Party, and thus was on the revolutionary side of the split in the Second International that took place after the first world war and the Bolshevik revolution. Born in Sardinia, by the time of these events he was living in Turin, the centre of industrial activity in Italy, and a city where at first there appeared to be the chance for a Bolshevik-style popular uprising. However after the defeat of the factory council movement and the rise of fascism, Gramsci sought to analyse how those in power continued to find new ways of maintaining their position. While he was in prison – from 1926 to 1937, when he died – he set himself the task of understanding the causes of the defeats suffered by the revolutionary left during the 1920s, and of theorising an alternative path of action in Europe and America. The key selection of these writings is Selections from the Prison Notebooks, translated and published in 1971.2 Rather than a frontal war between dominant and subordinate classes, Gramsci saw a more protracted struggle taking place in civil society, within all the organisations of social and cultural life – and between political alliances around the fundamental classes. Each side in this ‘war of position’ would seek to attain hegemony, i.e. not just a temporary majority for a tactical programme, but a position of intellectual and moral leadership that would provide solutions to other classes and social groups, and unify them around a strategic vision and programme. This recognition that in countries with well developed civil societies the political battle takes place across a very wide terrain – and Gramsci’s unique way of exploring this terrain in all its complex inter-relationships of economy, politics and culture – remains crucial for the left today, including for social democrats (who remained in the Second International after the historic split, but whose weakness, in contrast to the leftists, has often been an apparent willingness to wait for ever for even the smallest of ‘reformist’ gains, and not to seek to grasp the essential contours of the battle). In his notions of a war of position, and the battle for hegemonic leadership, Gramsci speaks both to revolutionaries who long for change but recognise it is not on the horizon, and social democrats who reject oppositionalism but want to make headway against the political economic and cultural dominance of capital. Gramsci’s notion of hegemony

Perhaps Gramsci’s most important concept for contemporary politics is his notion of hegemony – rule that is secured through the broad consent of the population, rather than through domination. This is secured partly through making concessions to subordinate groups, but most crucially through seeking to make the ideas of the interests represented by the dominant classes appear to be the obvious ‘common sense’ of a whole society. (‘Common sense’ is another key Gramscian term.) The idea of hegemonic rule helped to account for the difficulties that had been faced by socialist parties of all kinds in the 1920s, but also, even more importantly, it opened up the possibility of thinking about ways in which socialists could try to develop counter-hegemonic strategies, to build alliances based on a different kind of common sense. The working class needed to find a way of representing their interests in terms of ideas that would strike a chord across society, to show that they could represent the whole of society and not just their own sectional interest. Capitalist hegemony – which of course takes different forms in different times and places – was something that much work went into securing, work that was carried out by the ‘organic intellectuals’ (another key Gramscian term) who do the cultural and ideological work that seeks to secure consent for the class they serve – for example priests or journalists. A contemporary example would be those working in corporate PR. Hegemony is never stable, and this means that, however strong it appears to be (however much, for example, the market is presented as the only way of organising society), it is possible to intervene to disrupt that hegemony and put forward an alternative way of looking at the world, an alternative moral and political philosophy. Gramsci understood that capitalism would always encounter crises of finance and production (i.e. boom and bust can never be a thing of the past), and he sought ways of understanding how the crises within hegemonic rule that are possible consequences of such crises could be taken as opportunities for counter-hegemonic forces to put forward their new solutions. He saw that specific forms of hegemonic rule could be remade in such moments of crisis – so that either the existing dominant class would regroup to piece together a new hegemonic strategy, or a new challenge could be made to their whole way of thinking and doing. Thus fascism represented a new configuration of alliances and ideology within Italy that allowed business interests to continue to predominate after the battles of the first world war. (To be sure force was also involved, but the support of large sections of the population was secured through fascist rhetoric and social organisation, and a new articulation of different interests and ideas.) The concept of conjuncture was crucial in this analysis. ‘Conjunctural analysis’ is pitched at a level that looks at cultural, ideological and social forces, as well as at the underlying economic structures, of any given moment. A conjuncture is a coming together into a particular articulation of all the complex forces operating in a society during a given period, to form a settlement that is able hold for that period; and it can partly be characterised by the particular nature of the common sense ideas that help hold together its specific hegemonic alliance of dominant interests. When a crisis disrupts such a settlement – such as the recent financial crisis – there may be an opportunity to intervene to put forward a whole new way of thinking about and organising society. That is clearly something that has not happened during the recent financial crisis –

and one reason for this is the huge amount of work put in by organic intellectuals of the corporate world in support of their way of making sense of the world, and the lack of a parallel strategic vision by social democrats. Stuart Hall and Gramsci Stuart Hall, the intellectual who has most creatively deployed Gramsci’s insights for the analysis of contemporary society, made one of his most important contributions to British politics when he analysed Thatcherism in these terms. He saw Thatcherism as a new hegemonic project, which intervened in the stasis of the 1970s – a time when the postwar social consensus was no longer secure, and for a while no government appeared to be able to solve Britain’s problems – to redefine the political terrain and secure consent for a new set of common sense ideas about how to run a country. Drawing explicitly on Gramsci, he discussed the shift to the right (‘the great moving right show’) as a response to an ‘organic phenomenon’ – a process of long-term deep structural changes and contradictions in economy and society – and argued that political forces in favour of the status quo had intervened to create a new balance of forces – a new ‘historic block’ – in order to maintain their power. As he also argued: ‘these new elements do not “emerge”; they have to be constructed. Political and ideological work is required to disarticulate old formations, and to rework their elements into new ones. The “swing to the right” is not a reflection of the crisis: it is itself a response to the crisis’.3 As Hall notes, Thatcher succeeded in translating free market economics into: ‘the language of experience, moral imperative and common sense, thus providing a “philosophy” in the broader sense – an alternative ethic to that of the “caring society”’. He describes this as a ‘translation of a theoretical ideology into a popular idiom’. Thatcherism articulated a new populist politics through drawing attention to the weaknesses of the current settlement, through addressing people as consumers rather than producers, and articulating together a set of disparate ideas characterised by Hall as ‘authoritarian populism’.4 None of this analysis would have been possible without Gramscian concepts. Stuart Hall also drew on Gramsci’s essay ‘Americanism and Fordism’ as a good starting place for analysing the ‘new times’ that Thatcherism both responded to and nurtured.5 In this essay Gramsci was trying to analyse a new epoch – Fordism – and to assess the prospects for the left at that time. As Hall points out, in his analysis Gramsci considers a broad range of issues, not only new forms of capitalist accumulation and industrial production, but also a very wide range of cultural issues, and a discussion about the kind of person this epoch might produce. Hall takes this as an example of an approach that attempts to deal with the complexity and ‘over-determined’ nature of any given historical conjuncture, and thereby meets the need for a corresponding complexity of analysis. Some critics have argued that Hall’s analysis was too pessimistic – that he was so attuned to the brilliance of the Thatcherite project that all he could do was admire. This is to miss the point of the analysis. In understanding how

Thatcher was able to respond to the conjunctural crisis of the late 1970s, we can see that Thatcherism was a political project that worked to secure consent of popular forces for its particular aims. The lessons from this are, firstly that hegemony was actively constructed – it was not inevitable; and, secondly, that that the left could also set about constructing a project that tapped into popular thinking with a view to mobilising around a different set of aims. It is important to note that this is not the same as listening to focus groups and reflecting their views. The idea of a hegemonic project is to take the elements of good sense that already exist (for example social aspirations already present such as support for public services, or people’s sense of hospitality towards strangers) and articulate them together to create new ways of making sense of the present, embodied in a political programme. Since these writings of the late 1970s and 1980s, Hall has revisited these debates in terms of analysing Blairism and more recently Cameronism. He argues that both these later political formations did not represent new political conjunctures, but were phases within a wider settlement that can be characterised as neoliberal – the period of the resurgence of business and finance interests after their temporary (slight) taming after the second world war. The common sense of this whole period has been dominated by the idea that there is no alternative to the market. As Hall argues, market forces can be seen ‘as a brilliant linguistic substitute for “the capitalist system”, in that it erases so much of what capital actually does’ (summoning up as it does a benign picture of colourful stallholders and vegetables). And: … since we all use the market every day, it suggests that we all somehow already have a vested interest in conceding everything to it. It conscripted us. Now, when you get to that point, the political forces associated with that project, and the philosophical propositions that have won their way into common sense, are very tough to dislodge.6 As the work of Stuart Hall as briefly outlined above clearly demonstrates, thinking with Gramscian ideas allows us to get a much clearer understanding of the complexities that make up the current political situation – both in terms of the underlying features and the more subjective elements. It also alerts us to the need for intellectual work in countering the dominant current sense, but at the same time affirms to us that it is possible to do so. And, not least, it indicates that paying attention to cultural issues is a critical part of political life. This essay is a contribution to the Social Democracy Observatory series on "The classics of social democratic thought" Sally Davison is managing editor of Soundings End notes 1. ‘I’m a pessimist because of intelligence, but an optimist because of will’, letter from prison 1929 – this is one of the most famous quotations from Gramsci, but its origin is also attributed to Romain Rolland. 2. Antonio Gramsci, Selections from Prison Notebooks, Lawrence & Wishart 1971.

3. Stuart Hall, ‘The Great Moving Right Show’, Marxism Today, January 1979. Available at: http://www.amielandmelburn.org.uk/collections/mt/index_frame.htm. 4. For more discussion on authoritarian populism, see Stuart Hall et al, Policing the Crisis, Mugging, the State and Law and Order, Macmillan 1979. 5. ‘Americanism and Fordism’, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, pp277-318. 6. Stuart Hall and Doreen Massey, ‘Interpreting the crisis’, Soundings 44. Image: Flickrenric 2011 This is a contribution to Policy Network's work on Globalisation and Governance.

Tags: Antonio Gramsci , social democracy , hegemony , social change , Sally Davison , Stuart

Hall , centre-left , Prison Notebooks

Comments

John_LA

06 September 2014 19:23

As a republican conservative, this is an eye-opening article! What we have here is an intellectual,

professor no less, confronting the reality that even a partial implementation of socialism, having brought

about “continuing decline: throughout the financial crisis” of their own making, has nothing to offer to

compete with capitalism in the way of recovery. Instead of admission of failure, she decides to put

forward a solution based on Gramsci’s principles,... like it was a fresh new approach. It has been a bitter

experience to watch Gramsci’s principles at work in America. Obama, the ideologue, as the cat’s-paw to

George Soros along with the far left cooption of the Democratic Party, judicial system, press, Hollywood,

educational system, etc. have followed Gramsci’s principles and demagogued America’s civil society

against itself. Social destruction, cultural Marxism, is firing on all cylinders. Although, if we look more

closely, we find the general population isn’t buying it. That is why government popularity is at an all-time

low – and I mean LOW. Government officials, Democrat and mainstream Republican, have the bit in

their teeth and are running amok expanding the government, violating the Constitution, implementing

illegal as well as unconstitutional programs, laws, and turning agencies of the government into coercive

entities against the people. Gee, sounds like the complete success of socialism, and if you mean

following the road to hell, we might even get there. However, even while the left is calling everybody

who disagrees with them a racist, unrepentant neocolonialist, greedy, squanderer of the world’s wealth

and resources, the proletariat is beginning to notice the persistence of the continuing economic decline.

Yes, the excrement Lenin referred to is beginning to wonder if socialism isn’t what they vaguely

remember what they were told it was - utopia. Worse, the masterminds like Sally Davidson are

beginning to doubt – not that socialism can’t be crammed down the throat of an unwilling population, not

that the most prosperous successful government the world has ever produced can’t be destroyed, not

that a civil society can’t be unraveled with demagoguery, factionalism and class envy, and not that

recovery can’t be blocked by the biggest Cloward-Piven strategy ever devised using the national debt to

drive the world practically into the second dark ages. No, they are beginning to doubt whether they and

all the other elitists can survive the coming planned calamity and still maintain their lifestyle at the

expense of the rest of the population the way all previous socialist tyrannies have. They are beginning to

doubt whether the new socialist order at its best would really be better than “vulture capitalism” at its

worst. However, the most interesting thing is that her reaction to this realization is to go from dispensing

the Kool-Aid to drinking it, and not only drinking it, but savoring each nuance as one is transformed from

lucid to delusional. First, begin with a lie – “throughout the current financial crisis their (socialist

democrats) popularity has been plummeting, largely because they have been unable to make a

principled stand against those responsible (she means capitalists here) for what has happened.”

However, it is irrational, even for a socialist democrat, to take a stand or make an argument much less a

principled one against themselves. It is a triumph of Gramscian leftist strategy that perverted the entire

loan/mortgage industry into making loans to unqualified recipients that brought on the financial crisis.

This triumph consisted of dislodging common sense (making loans to qualified applicants) and replacing

it with a political program that mobilized a good social aspiration (more people owning their own home)

into a moral imperative by (disabling standards of financial qualification established by years of

experience) and in the name of a “caring society” making loans to unqualified applicants. The results of

which have been “historical” to say the least. Both Hall and Davison see the laws of economics as

simply a Gramscian hegemony project that can go either capitalist of socialist, and it is up to you which

you believe will work. What they don’t see or won’t tell you is that it is not. Free market economics is the

language of experience, moral imperative and common sense because it works, and statist utopian

socialism throughout all history and experience simply does not work. And no amount of Gramscian

mind games or self delusion will make it work or even let you think it is working, when it is not.

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Araceli

23 November 2012 22:06

“All men are intellectuals”, evreyone of us has the possibility, the rational ability to use his or her intellect

in a proper, useful way. Nevertheless, only few people are regarded, in our society, as intellectuals.

According to Gramsci being intellectual was, and to me still is, seen as a social status rather than being

seen as the fundamental precondition of every human being. According to Gramsci, the organic

intellectuals are not the solution for this problem; as a matter of fact, an organic intellectual is not a

simple, traditional intellectual that stands apart from society, but it is an intellectual extremely integrated

with it. An organic intellectual operate on a cultural, ideological and semiotics level, helping articulating a

specific hegemony with the aim to maintain the status quo. Gramsci believed that the only way

education could have use to criticize the hegemonic status quo was the creation of a working class

culture made by working-class intellectuals. In Gramsci opinion’s this is the only way in which education

can become popular, innovative and critical. Gramsci expressed these theories more than 50 years ago

and, unfortunately, I have to say that, nowadays, they are preeminently remaining theories rather than

practice. Having experienced both an Italian and an American university I have seen how the Italian

system still makes the gap professor-teacher much more clear than in the American system. In an

university like JCU this gap is less emphasized and less perceived by students, but, nevertheless, the

fact that professors are less seen as “detached intellectual” does not make JCU an anti or non

hegemonic university.

Vivek

23 November 2012 10:29

What I believe that Gramsci is syaing with the following quote is that all men are intellectuals however

most men don't have the capital to do what those in power can do because there is a distinction

between classes. In regards to education, it can be argued that it functions in the same way because it

divides us all into little departments of what we are good at and what we are meant to do, and like Marks

would state this is important for the capitalist system because it will only help to perpetuate capitalism

because good forbid that we have a holistic education and we are too smart to overthrow the capitalist

system. Also from an early age through standardized test, we are continually told what are our areas of

competence and then latter on we are told what major to choose for, like John Cabot, on the basis of

what is our area of strength according to the result of our standardized test. Also I think that another way

that capitalist and hegemony work together in the education system is through the idea of meritocracy

by perpetuating the myth that if you work hard one day you too will be able to get a certain kind of job

and when someone does make it that far you are told that the only reason you haven't been able to is

because you haven't worked hard enough. I think the best example of this is shown in the grading scale

of the school or universities like John Cabot where the student is predisposed to fail because there is a

50 percent chance that you will fail then succeed, and hopefully you will fail so that you can spend more

money making up the class and increase the profits of the University. Another example of this is the

Dean's List where only the hardest working and brightest students who passed all of their exams and

get good grade are shown to the whole student body that if you worked hard as these few students have

some day you too will be able to be part of this list. I think that Universities purposefully create a division

of major and etc because it helps the system of hegemony so that through separation so that like a

factory we all specialize on a certain area of work, because for example, if we all knew how to build a

car what would be the point of working in a factory. Its true that JCU and other facilities allow for critical

thinking, however, the student is indoctrinated to think critically in regards to one area of study which

cripple you if you don't know how to understand other areas of society. Also, JCU is part of the

hegemonic system because it allows you to think that you have a choice when you don't because in

order to attend this school you have to fit into their standards and they trick you into thinking that they

have your best interest and are giving you what you need through the wording of their catalog.

http://www.policy-

network.net/pno_detail.aspx?ID=4064&title=+What+Antonio+Gramsci+offers+to+so

cial+democracy

John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty JOHN SKORUPSKI - 23 MAY 2011

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150 years after its publication J.S Mill’s On Liberty retains the radicalism with which it spoke to Victorian Britain, laying one of the core foundations that would subsequently influence the social democratic movement. But Mill’s essay does not belong exclusively to the political left or right, and raises troubling questions about the emergence of democracy itself – what then, can it contribute to rethinking social democracy? A very simple principle Mill's central theme in the essay is what he calls the ‘very simple principle’ of liberty. According to the principle of liberty, ‘damage, or probability of damage, to the interests of others, can alone justify the interference of society’. Mill offers greater protection still to expressions of opinion. Interference with these, contrasted with actions in general, is legitimate only when ‘the circumstances in which they are expressed are such as to constitute their expression a positive instigation to some mischievous act’. This is a stronger criterion than the one provided by the main liberty principle for actions in general. There are important questions about how these principles should be interpreted. While the ‘very simple principle’ is indeed simple to the extent that it is not complicated, its import is elusive. Conscious of this, Mill restates it in a variety of ways through the essay and devotes the last chapter of the essay to a series of applications intended to clarify its ‘meaning and limits’. Overall, Mill's explanation of his principles is clear enough, but translating them into detailed policy then raises new questions. Mill’s principles plainly have some controversial implications. For example, they rule out appealing to the addictive and self-injurious nature of drug use as an argument for (as against drug dealing) illegalising it. Likewise, they permit freely agreed assisted suicide, unless it could be shown that such suicide would be harmful in some way to people other than those freely involved in the collaborative act. Further, Mill would no doubt have opposed legislation against incitement to racial and religious hatred as unacceptably diffuse, since he held that the law should focus specifically on positive instigation to wrongful acts. On the other hand, in some cases Mill is less permissive that we are. He believed it to be, for example, a ‘moral crime’ to bring into existence a child if one is unable ‘not only to provide food for its body, but instruction and training for its mind’. In each case Mill’s principles channel the burden of argument in a healthy way. Nevertheless, even though Mill’s principles are much clearer than some want to claim, arguments about their meaning persist. Mill’s principles make best sense from a liberal individualist standpoint. In contrast, from the communitarian perspective distinctions between what harms only me and what harms others becomes problematic, for the reason that to the communitarian there is no deep way of demarcating where my good ends and the good of another begins. Social policy must be founded on the good of the community, and for the communitarian that good is not

reducible to particular individual goods in the way that the liberal individualist is happy to admit. This raises a problem as to which camp is being superficial. A liberal individualist will say that a proper understanding of self and society does nothing to undermine Mill’s distinctions. On the contrary, it is unrestrained communitarian rhetoric about the social nature of the self that is superficial. The real truth in the dictum that humans are essentially social is compatible with Mill’s principles, whereas what lurks behind the communitarian interpretation of that dictum is an incipiently authoritarian social ideal, whether religious, socialist or merely conformist. Nor do liberal individualists have to hold, and Mill did not, that the only entities that have ethical significance are individuals. Social entities such as family, society, and nation are ethically significant, and allegiance to such groupings is basic to the forms of solidarity at the foundation of any decent, not least liberal, politics. A thinker for the Left? There are communitarian and individualist traditions at both poles of the political spectrum, and for this reason philosophically interesting challenges to Mill’s principles can come from the Right or the Left. By the same token, these principles can appeal to individualist traditions on either side of this spectrum. However, Mill had much more to say about society and politics than is contained in the essay on Liberty, so taking his views as a whole, can we place him on the Left or Right? Part of the difficulty in answering this question is that it is no longer obvious how this spectrum works, but two questions still seem important. Firstly, the question of what justice requires. How far does it require the state to intervene actively in redistributing resources, as against restricting itself to ruling out unfair discrimination, or unfair inequality of opportunity? Second is the question of state action versus individual action. Here we encounter a philosophical issue that goes beyond economic questions of ‘market or state’ allocation of resources, or how far the state can beneficially engage in macro-economic management – the issue of one’s ideal of life in society. Again this problem is woven into disagreements between the liberal individualist and the communitarian traditions. What are the good, decent, life-enhancing ways of living together? Do they necessarily include collective action through a democratic state, not merely as a functional necessity but as an ideal? Alternatively, are they best embodied in a mix of self-reliance, voluntary cooperation and competition open to all, with the state restricting itself so far as possible to a regulatory role? As noted above, Mill's outlook does not align perfectly with any current political package, but on these questions it fits more easily with the Left than with the Right. Mill favours free competition on efficiency grounds, but recognises a series of cases in which regulation is in the public interest. For Mill, private property derives its ultimate justification and limits from its usefulness for guaranteeing to people the fruits of their own labour and abstinence. He infers that tax on earned income (above an untaxed minimum that suffices for

security) should be at a constant not a progressive rate, but that wealth acquired through gift, bequest or inheritance can be taxed intensively and progressively enough to reduce large fortunes to the average over a few generations. Furthermore, he strongly sympathises with collective ideals of working together for the common good, and for that reason is supportive of producer co-operatives, while presciently rejecting centralist versions of socialism. Policy in the spirit of Mill then, would be radically redistributive, while simultaneously encouraging competitive markets among producers, including workers’ co-operatives. It would be a programme which prioritised the reduction of unearned wealth more strongly than anything available today. However they rethink their views, social democrats will continue to hold an ideal of living together that values especially what people do as citizens. To be sure, individuals should also be self-reliant planners of their own life, and generous private benefactors, but on the social democratic view there is value inherent in collective action expressed through a democratic state, particularly in the collective provision of social security. It is valuable because it develops a distinct and important human virtue. One need not enter into debates regarding individualism and collectivism at this point, and indeed Mill is a valuable example of how one far one can go within an overall stance that remains liberal and individualist. Of course, the social democratic ideal is not the only ideal of social life. Against it stands the libertarian ideal of self-reliance and purely voluntary co-operation. Its most attractive expression presents it as the ideal of a certain kind of freedom — an ethic of personal independence which insists that contributions are always voluntary and never compelled. But this is not the conception of liberty formulated in Mill’s essay on Liberty. On Liberty's principles do not conflict with the libertarian ideal, but at least as understood by Mill, they do not conflict with the social democratic ideal either. Libertarians might argue the latter perspective does conflict with the Liberty principle by arguing that failing to help others is not the same as actively damaging their interests, and therefore imposing a scheme of aid on individuals who have not freely agreed to it violates Mill’s principle of liberty. However, Mill himself does not take the principle that way: he clearly thinks that social obligations are legitimate if they have been imposed by a properly democratic decision, so long as their content does not itself violate the Liberty principle. Thus, a decision to level down all great fortunes, made by proper democratic procedures, would not violate liberty, whatever other arguments against it there might be. On Liberty and the tyranny of the majority These issues of debate are interesting from the Millian perspective, and he was certainly exercised by them. Valuable discussions of competition and cooperation, the principles of taxation, the green economy and so on can be found in his other works, but most importantly On Liberty is about something quite different, for which Mill felt more deeply than anything else – the threat

of tyranny inherent in democracy of a mediocre conformism, capable of ‘enslaving the soul itself’. It is precisely here, I would suggest, that social democratic thinking has something important to learn from Mill. Though Mill goes out of his way to highlight this theme in the introductory chapter, it is often underplayed in analysis of his essay. On Liberty is the work of an optimistic civic egalitarian, one who is also a passionate and anxious liberal elitist. Now clearly Mill is a liberal rather than an authoritarian, and the principles forwarded in On Liberty are one good way of characterising what liberalism is. But he is no populist. He argues that after a level of security and decent comfort have been reached (already reached, according to Mill, in his own time), what really matters for human beings is not affluence but virtue and insight into true value. Yet while many have virtue, only a few have the moral creativity or the independent insight into value that is required to invigorate social and personal life. This leads to the claim that we have a duty to educate each other, and those that enjoy insight into true value have a duty to take part. They must not stand aside in an exclusive enclave, but lead others by example and persuasion, rather than control. In order to do this they require the freedom to develop themselves and their ideas. Mill feels as strongly as he does about On Liberty’s principles because he thinks that only they can protect the independence of such people against democracy’s tendency to majoritarian despotism. What makes them especially urgent for modern democracies is the protection they give to unpopular criticism and unwelcome insight. This is an important insight for political thinking, and not least social democratic thought. Yet what consequences social democrats should draw from it is another matter. Social democracy and the decay of the liberal republic – the relevance of Mill's essay today Modern democracies insinuate, in more and less subtle ways, a compliant egalitarianism of consumerist values. An exploitative culture of celebrity and personal display dominates their common spaces, and increasingly their politics. Meanwhile dissident elites withdraw into enclaves, or ‘gated’ mental communities. This is a formula for the decay of the liberal republic. Today it is at least as great an anxiety as Mill and other classical liberals foresaw, and if anything the situation is accelerating. Are Mill's principles of liberty either a necessary or a sufficient remedy? Or should social democrats think the problem through afresh, and approach it in some different, perhaps stronger, way? Social democrats should agree with Mill about an underlying premise: what is best for us is virtue and insight, in which there is a duty to educate each other. No liberal principle is infringed if that duty is pursued through the collective action of a democratic state, and thus social democrats and classical liberals may find common ground here. For social democrats this may involve a shift in thinking from a conception of social justice – that has always been unclear

– to a focus on civic equality as the foundation of the public good of a democracy. As Mill saw, however, civic equality is not the only element in a democracy’s public good. In addition to the question of how to achieve and maintain civic equality is that of how to invigorate the spirit of a liberal republic in an undermining commercial environment. For example, Britain has a variety of publicly funded educative institutions, originally founded in the classical spirit of public liberalism that are now in decay. It has become obvious that the state patronage on which they rely generates its own deep problems, but that does not mean there is a better alternative. I suggest that it is these issues, pertaining to the maintenance of public good in a modern democracy, that Mills essay can alert social democrats to, and to which in that tradition’s renewal it should attend.

John Skorupski is professor of moral philosophy at the University of St Andrews. He is the author of John Stuart Mill, The Arguments of the Philosophers, London: Routledge 1989 This essay is a contribution to Policy Network’s series on “The classics of social democratic thought.” Visit the Social Democracy Observatory ≥ http://www.policy-

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Crosland and The Future of Socialism GILES RADICE - 30 JULY 2010

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The enduring legacy of this classic text lies in the rich revisionist creed which drove Crosland to bring social democracy up to date for his time Anthony Crosland’s The Future of Socialism, published in October 1956, was arguably the most important revisionist work of the post-war period. Crosland was a leading Labour politician who became an innovative education secretary under Harold Wilson and James Callaghan’s foreign secretary. But it was for his book, The Future of Socialism, that he will be most remembered. It was highly ambitious, but since his early twenties Crosland had wanted to emulate the example of Eduard Bernstein, the German socialist democrat, and write the definitive work on revisionist socialism for his generation. Bernstein’s Evolutionary Socialism, published at the end of the previous century, had first refuted Marx’s theory that capitalism was about to collapse.

Crosland’s aim was to bring social democracy up to date for his time. He told a friend: “I am revising Marxism and will emerge as the new Bernstein.” Drawing not only on economics but also on political theory, history, sociology and industrial psychology, he covered the policy areas of education, social welfare, industrial relations, as well as economic and fiscal theory. He saw sociology as particularly important: “I am convinced that this is the field, rather than the traditional fields of politics and economics, in which the significant issues for socialism and welfare will increasingly be found.” Crosland’s underlying thesis was that the harsh world of the 1930s had been transformed by wartime changes and by the reforms of the post-war Labour governments, led by Clement Attlee. The Marxist theory of capitalist collapse, so firmly espoused by socialist intellectuals before the war, had, in Crosland’s view, been clearly disproved. On the contrary, output and living standards were rising steadily. At the same time, the commanding position of the business class had been reduced by the increased powers of government and the greater bargaining power of labour. Managers not owners now ran industry. The combination of rising living standards, redistributive taxation and welfare benefits had substantially reduced primary poverty. He argued that, in the new situation, ownership of the means of production was largely irrelevant. “I conclude,” he wrote, “that the definition of capitalism in terms of ownership…has wholly lost its significance and interest now that ownership is no longer the clue to the total picture of social relationships; and that it would be more significant to define societies in terms of equality, or class relationships, or their political systems.” One of the crucial points about The Future of Socialism was the distinction it drew between ends and means. “Ends” were defined as basic values or aspirations, “means” as describing the policy or institutional methods required to promote these values in practice. According to Crosland, in contrast to the ends, which remained constant, means were open to revision. The revisionist task was to subject means to searching scrutiny in the light of changing conditions. Indeed, uncomfortable as it might be to acknowledge, the means (such as nationalisation) apparently most suitable in one generation might be wholly inappropriate in another. Modern socialism, Crosland argued, was not about public ownership but concerned with improving welfare and providing social equality. “The socialist seeks a distribution of rewards, status and privileges egalitarian enough to minimise social resentment, to secure justice between individuals and to equalise opportunities; and he seeks to weaken the existing deep-seated class stratification with its consistent feelings of envy and inferiority, and its barriers to uninhibited mingling between the classes.” Over fifty years later, it is easy with the benefit of hindsight to criticise The Future of Socialism. Crosland was too optimistic about economic growth. “I no longer regard questions of growth and efficiency as being, on a long view, of primary importance to socialism,” as he over-confidently proclaimed. His definition of equality has been criticised as being too doctrinaire and rigid,

though Crosland sought not an unsustainable or undesirable equality of outcome but to remove unfair and unnecessary barriers. He also ignored racial and sexual equality. He appeared sometimes to be an uncritical supporter of public expenditure (though he later made significant qualifications). He was too complacent about conservative opposition to socialist ideas and policies, ruling out “a wholesale counter-revolution.” Above all, he had nothing to say about the international context in which Labour governments had to operate. Croslandism was “revisionism in one country.” Yet, accepting that it was a tract for its times, its authority, style and mode of thinking have ensured that The Future of Socialism is still read today. The crucial point about Crosland is that he was a revisionist. The revisionist approach is made up of a number of crucial processes. Analysing what is actually happening as opposed to what a particular dogma says ought to happen; distinguishing clearly between values and methods; subjecting methods above all to scrutiny and, if necessary, being prepared to modify these in the light of changing conditions. In short revisionism is not a doctrine but a radical cast of mind, a critical way of evaluating human affairs and politics, in order to develop strategies and policies which are both informed by values and, at the same time, take account of change. By definition, it is provisional, always open to reappraisal. The way of thinking behind The Future of Socialism is still crucial for us today. Social democratic parties, under political pressure across Europe and the world and faced by powerful forces, including globalisation, insecurity, immigration, labour market instability, and climate change, need to reappraise their strategies and policies in the light of change. Crosland’s basic approach, if not his precise prescriptions, remain highly relevant to their task. Giles Radice was Labour MP for Durham North and Chairman of the powerful Treasury Committee until he became a life peer in 2001. His book, "Trio: Inside the Blair, Brown,Mandelson Project," will be published by IB Tauris on 14th of September 2010. His previous books includeFriends and Rivals: Crosland, Jenkins and Healey and The Tortoise and the Hares: Attlee, Bevin, Cripps, Dalton, Morrison. He is a former chair of Policy Network. This is a contribution to Policy Network’s series on The Classics of Social Democratic Thought http://www.policy-

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A paradoxical politics: The Great Transformation and the future of social democracy ADRIAN PABST - 25 JUNE 2010

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In rejecting both market liberalism and state socialism, Polanyi’s blend of political idealism and economic realism offers some telling insights for the modern centre-left Twenty years after the collapse of state communism, the ongoing crisis of ‘free-market’ capitalism, which has plunged Europe into the worst economic turmoil since the Great Depression of 1929-32, provides a unique opportunity to chart an alternative path. Now that the dominant orthodoxy of neoliberalism has been shown to be intellectually dead and morally bankrupt, both left and right must look to genuinely fresh ideas and transformative policies. While in some European countries like the UK and France the centre-right has switched from a neo-liberal to a more communitarian discourse, it is unclear whether ruling parties have the political will to curb the power of global finance or the determination to improve the lot of workers, families, local communities and underdeveloped regions. Meanwhile, European social democracy looks to Keynesianism and Green movements for new economic and political inspiration. Notwithstanding the important insights which the Keynesian and Green traditions offer, both remain in the end wedded to a social-liberal, utilitarian creed that privileges personal choice and individual emancipation at the expense of communal interest and the wider public good. This ideology of social liberalism is entirely compatible with the ideology of economic liberalism that has failed so spectacularly. Indeed, the dominant language of ‘choice’ legitimates the extension of free-market mechanisms (aided and abetted by the regulatory state) into virtually all areas of socio-economic and cultural life – including education, health, the family and sex. Today’s scale and intensity of commodified labour and social relations is beyond Marx’s worst fears. Thus, much of the contemporary left and right remains caught in a fundamental contradiction between calling for more economic egalitarianism, on the one hand, and advocating ever-greater social liberalisation, on the other hand. Moreover, older civic virtues of justice, mutuality and reciprocity have been sidelined and supplanted by the new economic values of fairness and aspiration. Worse, these ‘progressive’ values represent a new cosy consensus that endorses the logic of capitalist democracy which tends towards an ever-greater centralisation of power, concentration of wealth and financial abstraction from the real economy and the shared natural world on which we all depend. On these and other issues, the significance of Karl Polanyi’s intellectual legacy can hardly be overstated. In his seminal book The Great Transformation – The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time published in 1944, he combines a compelling critique of unbridled ‘free-market’ capitalism with a non-statist vision of socialism that is politically far more democratic and

economically much more egalitarian than the false ‘third-way’ of Clinton and Blair or the vapid communitarianism of the post-neoliberal centre-right. Debunking the state versus market myth First, Polanyi radicalises Marx’s critique of capitalism. Since Marx, we know that capitalism treats money as if it had a life of its own. As such, capitalism views capital as a reality in its own right, with power and agency. And in order to enhance the reach of money, the capitalist economy turns human labour into a commodity whose value is determined exclusively by its market price – itself the product of the iron law of supply and demand. The trouble is that the Marxist critique of capitalism does not go nearly far enough. Left to itself, the capitalist economy also views land and human relations as commodities that can be freely traded on the universal marketplace. As such, the unfettered free market violates a universal ethical principle that has governed virtually all cultures in the past: nature and human life have almost always and everywhere been recognised as having a sacred dimension. Indeed, the Industrial Revolution and its aftermath have led to a “catastrophic dislocation of the lives of the common people” – a ‘satanic mill’ grinding men into masses, as Polanyi puts it. In thus subordinating society and the environment to the self-regulating ‘free’ market, capitalism does not simply disrupt traditional cultures (as Marx already remarked). It also causes widespread social disintegration and ecological devastation. Long before the contemporary Green movement, Polanyi linked the future of our common natural habitat to the forces of economic market liberalisation. Secondly, Polanyi repudiates centralised solutions like uniformly regulated markets or nationalised industries in favour of pluralising the bureaucratic state and strengthening the autonomy of civil society. Unlike most Marxists and social-democrats, he argues that the conventional liberal opposition of state and market is largely deluded. Just as the ‘free’ market needs the state to remove social barriers that hinder the free flow of capital, so the central state needs the market to dissolve communal bonds that limit intrusive state control. In The Great Transformation, Polanyi notes that the creation of free-market exchange in labour, land and money in Britain in the 1830s coincided with an unprecedented expansion of state power aimed at disciplining the populace – an account that precedes and in some measure surpasses Michel Foucault’s work on bio-politics and Giorgio Agamben’s writings on ‘bare individuality’. Moreover, the growing convergence of state and market mirrors the increasing ambivalence of left and right – Polanyi’s third argument. The commonly held belief that the left protects the state against the market while the right privileges the market over the state is economically false and politically questionable, as Polanyi’s book intimates. Just as the left now views the market as the most efficient delivery mechanism for private wealth and public welfare, so the right has always relied on the state to secure the property rights of the affluent and to turn small proprietors into cheap wage labourers by stripping them of their land and traditional networks of support.

The latter were never perfect, and there is certainly no golden age that we could or should return to. But the point is that such networks are based on the principles of reciprocity and mutuality. Here Polanyi draws on the important anthropological insight that human beings desire social recognition more than material wealth and that culture restricts commercial exchange: pace Adam Smith, “not the propensity to barter, but reciprocity in social behaviour dominates”. As a result, the economic system should be a function of social organisation, not vice-versa. In turn, that’s the reason for Polanyi’s imperative to re-embed both state and market within social relations. Some uncomfortable truths for contemporary social democracy Taken together, Polanyi’s three arguments about the nature of capitalism and the nexus between state and market confront social-democracy with some uncomfortable truths about appealing to the central state as a bulwark against the ‘free’ market. First of all, Polanyi’s book is a call to uphold the sanctity of life and land against the commodification by the ‘market-state’. In this respect, social-democracy must denounce not just Thatcher’s disastrous policy of financial liberalisation and deregulation but equally Blair’s and Brown’s support for the privatisation of the public sector as well as New Labour’s shameless attack on civil liberties and its mindless promotion of equality and other ‘social’ legislation. In reality, equality laws do not simply protect individuals from unjust privilege or unfair discrimination – though they can correct some scandalous instances of injustice. The trouble is that such laws also mark the central imposition of sameness on all sorts of different groups and intermediary bodies by enforcing monolithic norms and standards upon social actors who should benefit from exemptions based on freedom of conscience. All this has brought about a historically unprecedented situation where universal liberty and happiness are equated with personal choice and comfort – an impoverished utilitarianism of which Jeremy Bentham would have been proud. Likewise, decisions over life and death are reduced to matters of individual will and negative freedom. By thus removing legal and moral provisions to defend the inviolability of human (and other animal) life, the Thatcherite-Blairite settlement betrays the humanist legacy that many progressives purport to uphold but in reality betray. Linked to the convergence of state and market is the second lesson of Polanyi’s book for social democracy today, namely that the centralisation of political and bureaucratic power has also facilitated a concentration of financial and property wealth at the expense of real wage growth, thus producing soaring income and asset inequality. For the extended reach of markets creates economies of scale that favour the sort of consolidation that can only be described as cartel capitalism. Unlike statist socialists, Polanyi argues for the decentralisation of power and the ‘localisation’ of wealth, re-embedding political and economic processes in social relations. Far from advocating a naïve communitarianism that masks the retrenchment of the state, Polanyi’s thinking gestures in the direction of a guild socialism as envisioned by G.D.H. Cole and others, whereby both workers and consumers would co-own capital and receive assets as part of elected councils or ‘guilds’.

The third lesson that Polanyi’s Great Transformation holds for contemporary European social democracy relates to welfare reform. Centralised statist welfare plays at best a compensatory role in relation to laissez-faire economics and at worst is secretly complicit with the extension of the market into hitherto largely self-regulating areas of the economy and society. Indeed, the welfare state merely regulates the conflict between capital owners and wage labourers without fundamentally altering relations between capital and labour. Whilst it does provide some much-needed minimum standards, statist welfare subsidises the affluent middle classes and undermines (traditional or new) networks of mutual assistance and reciprocal help amongst workers and within local economies. Today, a renewed emphasis on the principles of reciprocity and mutuality translates into policies that incentivise the creation of mutualised banks, local credit unions and community-based investment trusts. Thus, Polanyi warns against the fallacy of appealing to a welfare model that traps the poor in dependency and redistributes income to the wealthy. At the hands of Thatcher and New Labour, the welfare state was first rationalised and then deployed to fashion “the freely-choosing reflexive and risking individual removed from the relational constraints of nature, family and tradition”, as John Milbank has rightly remarked. At a time of fiscal austerity, ageing populations and the ballooning deficits of social security and pension systems, the social-democratic left must look beyond redistributive policies to asset-based welfare and decentralised models that foster human relationships of communal care and mutual help – rather than state paternalism or private contract delivery. For example, social democrats could advocate a system that combines universal entitlement with localised and personalised provision, e.g. by fostering and extending grassroots’ initiatives like ‘Get Together’ or ‘Southwark Circle’ in London that blend individual, group and state action. Both initiatives reject old schemes such as ‘befriending’ or uniform benefits in favour of citizens’ activity and community-organising supported by local council – instead of being determined by central target and standards. Nurturing the social bonds of trust and reciprocity The fourth set of lessons for contemporary social democracy concerns a series of economic reforms. Polanyi’s vision for an alternative economy, which is re-embedded in politics and social relations, offers a refreshing alternative to the residual market liberalism of both left and right. In practice, an embedded model means that elected governments restrict the free flow of capital and create the civic space in which workers, businesses and communities can regulate economic activity. Instead of free-market self-interest or central state paternalism, it is the individual and corporate members of civil society who collectively determine the norms and institutions governing production and exchange. Specific measures include, first of all, extending fair-trade prices and standards from agriculture and the food industry to other parts of the economy. This could be done by strengthening the associative framework and giving different sectors more autonomy in determining how to implement a

set of desirable goals debated and voted upon by national parliament, regional assemblies or city halls. Second, replacing the minimum wage with a just, ‘living wage’ that reflects the true value of labour. Here the example of London Citizens is very instructive – a network of different local communities and faith groups that has persuaded City Hall and a growing number of corporate businesses to sign up voluntarily and pay their staff the ‘living wage’. Third, at the level of the G20 and the EU pushing for global capital controls in the form of the Tobin tax and bank levies (including voluntary caps on interest rates), coupled with new incentives to reconnect finance to the real economy, by promoting investment in productive, human and social investment. The overriding aim must be to preserve the sanctity of natural and human life and to promote human associations that nurture the social bonds of trust and reciprocity on which both democracy and markets depend. Finally, Polanyi debunks the dominant anthropological myth since Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations that we are economic, ‘trading’ animals with diffuse moral sentiments who follow their “propensity to truck, barter and exchange one thing for another”, as I have already indicated. Instead, Polanyi contends that we are fundamentally gift-exchanging animals who primarily seek mutual social recognition instead of merely individual material gain. Throughout The Great Transformation, he contrasts the modern, secular idea of a universal commercial society dominated by abstract formal contracts and proprietary relations with a more Romantic vision that is neither nostalgic nor utopian but blends political idealism with economic realism. Fundamentally, he rejects both market liberalism and state socialism, arguing that both destroy the autonomy of civic culture and the freedom of civil society. By calling for radical political and economic decentralisation, Polanyi’s guild socialism is far more radical than left-wing communitarians. Thus, Polanyi’s contribution to twentieth-century political thought is to show that socialism’s statist turn inaugurated either the collectivist statism of the Marxist-Leninist tradition or the complicit collusion of state and market in much of twentieth- and early twenty-first century social democracy. As a European thinker of Hungarian origin who resisted fascism in Austria and Germany, Polanyi is uniquely positioned to help Europe’s social-democrats develop alternatives to neo-liberalism and to the incoherent, ‘liberal’ communitarianism of the contemporary centre-right. Adrian Pabst is a lecturer in politics in the University of Kent at Canterbury. He writes frequently on political economy, geopolitics and Europe for the comment pages of International Herald Tribune, The Guardian and The Moscow Times. Currently, he is writing The Politics of Paradox, a book about alternative to capitalist democracy http://www.policy-

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The Third Way revisited ANTHONY GIDDENS - 28 JUNE 2010

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The title was regrettable, misunderstood and misinterpreted yet the issues raised in the book still have relevance for the renewal of social democracy today My book The Third Way was first published in 1998. I first of all planned to call it The Renewal of Social Democracy (which eventually I relegated to the status of sub-title). If I had published the book under the original title, it would have been clear that it was rooted firmly in social democratic traditions. However, it would probably have reached only a limited audience of academics and policy specialists and I wanted to attract a wider readership. I wasn’t by any means the first to use the term “third way” itself, which crops up recurrently in the history of political thought – used most often by authors on the left but also occasionally by those on the right. The phrase was resurrected by the Swedish Social Democrats in the late 1980s, but its return to popularity came mainly from its adoption at roughly the same time by Bill Clinton and the thinktank to which he was closely connected, the Democratic Leadership Council. The “third way” was self-consciously associated with the invention of the term the “New Democrats” in the US – and later with “New Labour” in Britain under the leadership of Tony Blair. I wrote the book initially in part as a result of taking part in dialogues which Bill and Hillary Clinton had established with Tony Blair in 1997 and which continued in expanded form for some years afterwards. On its appearance The Third Way did in fact spark a lot of attention in the Anglo-Saxon world. What I didn’t anticipate was just how great an impact the book would have in a diversity of other countries around the globe. Its success allowed me to meet and talk at first hand with a large number of centre-left leaders in those countries. At that point there was world-wide interest in Clinton and Blair, who had led their respective parties out of a long period in the electoral wilderness. Yet in the end I came to regret having chosen the title The Third Way, even if it did bring the book so much attention. The reason was precisely that “the third way” became so widely associated specifically with the New Democrats and New Labour. Although I was sympathetic to some of the core policies of both I had a lot of reservations too, especially as the years passed. The “third way” became a corrupted term, not just because of some of the policies followed by the two parties but because of the attacks on them by critics, especially from the left. Some of these seemed to me misinterpretations – such as the idea that New Labour was ideologically empty, had abandoned the ideals of the left, or was a continuation of Thatcherism with a softer face. But these misinterpretations increasingly came to be how the “third way” was seen, as a weak, poorly-developed substitute for left-of-centre thinking, rather than, as I intended, a means of promoting its revival.

So let me reassert what in my terms the “third way” (tw) was about, and what it was not. The tw for me was NOT a “middle way” between left and right, socialism and capitalism, or anything else, but a left-of-centre political philosophy, concerned with exactly what was stated in my original title, the renewal of social democracy. It was NOT a succumbing to neo-liberalism or market fundamentalism. On the contrary, I argued that social democrats had to move beyond two failed, or compromised, philosophies of the past, one being neo-liberalism, the other being “old-style social democracy,” characterised by a top-down state ownership of the “commanding heights of the economy” and Keynesian national demand management. The tw was NOT merely some sort of pragmatism. On the contrary, the values of the left retain their essential relevance, but as I saw it far-reaching policy innovation was needed to realise them in a world experiencing major social and economic changes. I identified these changes as the intensifying of globalisation; expanding individualism; the growth of reflexivity; and the increasing intrusion of ecological risk into the political field. So far as globalisation is concerned, some more “nots” are in order, given the misunderstandings of the notion that abound. Globalisation, I argued, is NOT a single force, but a complex set of influences. It is NOT to be identified solely with the global marketplace – the communications revolution is at least equally important as a driving influence. Nor is it an implacable power before which we must all bow down. Rather it is a fractured and contradictory one – in the emerging global age, although we are all far more interdependent than ever before, nation-states retain a great deal of influence because they are the prime source of political legitimacy, and of legal and military authority. Individualism, I asserted, operates at the opposite pole from globalisation but is deeply influenced by and at the same time influences it in return. The rise of individualism remains as contentious as when I first wrote the book. Many see it as essentially noxious, as undermining social solidarity and common moral commitments, but for me important elements of emancipation are involved - the capacity for self-determination and an escape from the fixities of tradition and habit. Individualism isn’t intrinsically the enemy of social cohesion or common morality; rather, these have to be recast in terms of more active forms of mutual obligation and personal responsibility than in the past. When I wrote The Third Way the internet was in its infancy. Yet for the most part the internet has deepened and extended processes that were already visible at that time. I referred to these generically as the increasing reflexivity of modern social life. Reflexivity means that individuals and groups have regularly to decide how to act in relation to a flow of incoming information relevant to those decisions; its advance fundamentally alters the nature of politics and government. Political support becomes more de-aligned than in the past and levels of party membership start to plummet. Attitudes of deference to authority figures, and established institutions, including politicians and parliaments, decline. The consequences are multiple and shifting. Activism can increase, but often operates outside the orthodox sphere of parliamentary government. At the same time, disillusionment with politicians and the orthodox parliamentary process can produce periods of widespread apathy.

Finally, there is the increasing intrusion of ecological risk into the mainstream of political life. We are living “after the end of nature” in the sense that many formerly natural processes have become anthropogenic – they are influenced, sometimes even determined, by human intervention. Climate change is the most significant and far-reaching expression of this process, but its impact stretches much more widely. I would have included a more extensive discussion of climate change had I been writing the book today. The crucial theme I introduced, however – the penetration of “outer” and “inner nature” (the human body and even mind) by science and technology – remains intact. The opportunities this circumstance produces are dramatic and far-reaching. Yet they are accompanied by risks quite different from any we have had to face in the past, because we can only to some extent use past experience to guide us. The point of the book, to repeat, was to find a way beyond market fundamentalism on the one hand and old-style social democracy on the other, and to apply this framework to political problems ranging from those of everyday life (such as the future of the family) through to issues of a global scale. The core preoccupation of social democrats should be with the re-establishment of the public realm, public institutions and public goods, following the long period in which market-based philosophies ruled the roost. The public sphere is not the same as the state; reform of the state has to be high on the agenda, wherever it is unresponsive to citizens’ concerns, captured by producer interests or has become overly bureaucratic. Markets have their distinctive qualities – chief among them their fluidity, capacity to respond to a multitude of pricing signals and to stimulate innovation - and social democrats should recognise and help deploy these. However, markets need regulation to shape them to the public purpose. In the book I picked out especially the need to regulate world financial markets, which I identified, to quote from The Third Way, as “the single most pressing issue in the world economy.” In the work I gave a lot of attention to civil society – the Big Society, as the Tories now call it. Yet civil society will not flourish if the state is pared back. Public goals can best be achieved if there is an effective and dynamic balance between the state, marketplace and the civic order. Each acts as a check on the other and also provides a stimulus and challenge to them. The recovery of community, civic pride and local cohesion should be a major concern of social democratic politics. These can’t be founded (Tories take note) upon nostalgia for a disappeared - and often imaginary - past of social harmony but have to be achieved through new mechanisms. This theorem applies to the family as well as other areas. Because it was so widely misinterpreted I gave up using the term “the third way” itself some years ago. Yet, as I hope I have shown, most of the issues that I raised in the book are still with us. Anthony Giddens is a former director of the London School of Economics and a Labour peer. His most recent book is "The Politics of Climate Change"

This piece is a contribution to the Policy Network series on The Classics of Social Democratic Thought http://www.policy-

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Keynes and social democracy today ROBERT SKIDELSKY - 28 JULY 2010

The battle lines may have changed from the means of production to big finance but the state remains the ultimate protector of the public good For decades, Keynesianism was associated with social democratic big-government policies. But John Maynard Keynes’s relationship with social democracy is complex. Although he was an architect of core components of social democratic policy – particularly its emphasis on maintaining full employment – he did not subscribe to other key social democratic objectives, such as public ownership or massive expansion of the welfare state. In The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, Keynes ends by summarising the strengths and weaknesses of the capitalist system. On one hand, capitalism offers the best safeguard of individual freedom, choice, and entrepreneurial initiative. On the other hand, unregulated markets fail to achieve two central goals of any civilized society: “The outstanding faults of the economic society in which we live are its failure to provide for full employment and its arbitrary and inequitable distribution of wealth and incomes.” This suggested an active role for government, which dovetailed with important strands of left-wing thought. Until The General Theory was published in 1936, social democrats did not know how to go about achieving full employment. Their policies were directed at depriving capitalists of the ownership of the means of production. How this was to produce full employment was never worked out. There was an idea, originally derived from Ricardo and Marx, that the capitalist class needed a “reserve army of the unemployed” to maintain its profit share. If profits were eliminated, the need for that reserve army would disappear. Labour would be paid what it was worth, and everyone willing to work would be able to find a job. But, apart from the political impossibility of nationalising the whole economy peacefully, this approach suffered from the fatal flaw of ignoring the role of aggregate demand. It assumed that demand would always be sufficient if profits were eliminated.

Keynes demonstrated that the main cause of bouts of heavy and prolonged unemployment was not worker encroachment on profits, but the fluctuating prospects of private investment in an uncertain world. Nearly all unemployment in a cyclical downturn was the result of the failure of investment demand. Thus, the important thing was not to nationalise the capital stock, but to socialise investment. Industry could be safely left in private hands, provided the state guaranteed enough spending power in the economy to maintain a full-employment level of investment. This could be achieved by monetary and fiscal policy: low interest rates and large state investment programmes. In short, Keynes aimed to achieve a key social democratic objective without changing the ownership of industry. Nevertheless, he did think that redistribution would help secure full employment. A greater tendency to consume would “serve to increase at the same time the inducement to invest.” And the low interest rates needed to maintain full employment would lead in time to the “euthanasia of the rentier” – of those who live off the rents of capital. Moderate re-distribution was the more politically radical implication of Keynes’s economic theory, but the measures outlined above were also the limits of state intervention for him. As long as “the state is able to determine the aggregate amount of resources devoted to augmenting the instruments [i.e., the capital base] and the basic reward to those who own them,” there is no “obvious case” for further involvement. The public was never to substitute for the private, but merely to complement it. Today, ideas about full employment and equality remain at the heart of social democracy. But the political struggle needs to be conducted along new battle lines. Whereas the front used to run between government and the owners of the means of production – the industrialists, the rentiers – now, it runs between governments and finance. Such measures as the efforts by the European Parliament to regulate the derivatives market or the British government’s ban on short selling in the wake of the financial crisis or the demand to caps bankers’ bonuses are contemporary expressions of the wish to reduce the power of financial speculation to damage the economy. The new focus on the need to tame the power of finance is largely a consequence of globalisation. Capital moves across borders more freely and more quickly than goods or people do. Yet, while large global firms habitually use their high concentration of financial resources to press for further de-regulation (“or we will go somewhere else”), the crisis has turned their size into a liability. Being too big to fail simply means being too big. Keynes saw that “it is the financial markets’ precariousness which creates no small part of our contemporary problem of securing sufficient investment.” That rings truer today – more than 70 years later – than in his own day. Rather than securing investment for productive sectors of the economy, the financial industry has

become adept at securing investment in itself. This, once again, calls for an activist government policy. Yet, as Keynes would have argued, it is important that the expansion of government involvement is informed by sound economics rather than political ideology, social democratic or otherwise. State intervention needs to bridge gaps that the private sector cannot reasonably be expected to do on its own. The current crisis has shown with utmost clarity that private markets are unable to self-regulate; domestic regulation is therefore a key area in which government has a role to play. Similarly, time-inconsistency issues prevent large international firms from compartmentalising their markets. Re-erecting barriers to capital flows in the form of international taxes, thereby cordoning off crises before they turn global, is therefore another task for government. Keynes’s main contribution to social democracy, however, does not lie in the specifics of policy, but in his insistence that the state as ultimate protector of the public good has a duty to supplement and regulate market forces. If we need markets to stop the state from behaving badly, we need the state to stop markets from behaving badly. Nowadays, that means stopping financial markets from behaving badly. That means limiting their power, and their profits. Robert Skidelsky, a member of the British House of Lords, is professor emeritus of political economy at Warwick University, author of a prize-winning biography of the economist John Maynard Keynes, and a board member of the Moscow School of Political Studies. This article is a contribution to Policy Network’s series on The classics of social democratic thought. © Project Syndicate http://www.policy-

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FDR: The progressive as hero PATRICK DIAMOND - 27 JULY 2010

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In contrast to social democrats today, FDR’s style of leadership empathised with the anxieties and frustrations of the people and boldly seized the opportunity of a crisis for progressive ends Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the world’s first great crisis leader, and arguably the first great politician of the television age. As well as an astonishingly adept communicator, FDR remains an important ideological

antecedent for modern progressivism and social democracy, particularly in the current climate of capitalist crisis and the global politics of recession. Roosevelt was a dominant leader because he appeared to have the answers to people’s problems during a period of extraordinary turmoil and uncertainty in American life, a nation that, as he put it, was by the early 1930s, “frozen by a fatalistic terror.” The United States was gripped by paralysis and self-doubt in the face of a severe economic depression and stock market collapse. FDR rose to the occasion, speaking directly to people and energising the nation behind the drive for recovery. He understood that recessions are moments of opportunity as well as crisis, but only if politicians are very bold in seizing them, as Andrew Gamble has recently reminded us.1 They have to frame narratives that are popular and credible, accompanied by radical solutions that are capable of unifying the country. And they have to be prepared to face great opposition, just as FDR did. In contrast to Roosevelt’s victories, parties of the right historically have proved themselves to be more adept at seizing the advantage and framing the narrative. This is exactly what has occurred in Western Europe since the first banking crisis in August 2007, where Christian democracy has dominated the political landscape at the expense of the centre-left, which has suffered a succession of serious reversals and defeats. Social democracy has relatively little idea about how to protect people from global storms. First, it has allowed the crisis to be redefined as a crisis of debt, rather than a crisis of financial market failure. Second, the left has flirted with the rhetoric of capitalist collapse, when it is more likely that the crisis will lead to the rebirth and renewal of capitalism. The issue will be how to better protect people by promoting the resilience both of institutions and the population at large through a new social compact. In Britain, before the financial crisis took hold, Labour promised “British jobs for British workers,” but this did not appear plausible or credible, particularly to skilled, ‘blue-collar’ voters. After the collapse of the banks it acted decisively to prevent widespread financial failure, but it had no long-term plan for institutional reform to rebalance the economy away from overdependence on financial services, hedge funds and derivatives. Arguably, social democratic governments have been insufficiently bold in challenging the vested interests of the markets. In the face of neo-liberal orthodoxy, they have been reluctant to position themselves as reformers of financial market capitalism, contesting the excesses of bankers and financiers. Yet this is exactly what the public have been demanding as a pragmatic response to systemic failure and unjustified reward in the financial sector. It was precisely this error that FDR battled to avoid. He served as President from March 1933 to April 1945, the longest tenure in American history. FDR may have done more to alter the course of American society and politics than any president before or since. Roosevelt was a defining figure who understood the importance of the politics of security, in which governments strive to protect ordinary citizens in dark and dangerous times. In his second inaugural address in 1937, he took stock of what had changed in America since he assumed the presidency: “We refused to leave the problems of our common

welfare to be solved by the winds of chance and the hurricanes of disaster.” Under FDR, the federal government assumed a new and powerful role in the nation’s economy, and in the health, welfare and well-being of its citizens. Trade unions were granted the right to organise and bargain collectively, and the Fair Labour Standards Act of 1938 put a floor under wages and a ceiling on hours. Financial aid was provided to the sick, elderly and unemployed who could not provide for themselves, and special assistance was granted to agricultural and rural America through price supports and development programmes. By embracing an activist fiscal policy in the late 1930s, the government took on responsibility for managing monetary and financial shocks. The New Deal programme as a whole ensured that the economic and political benefits of American capitalism were distributed more equally among the population. All of this was achieved at some political cost, despite Roosevelt’s landslide victory in 1936 with 61 per cent of the popular vote. Many wealthy Americans could not even bear to utter Roosevelt’s name and he was commonly referred to by the rich as “that man in the White House”. But he was unwavering in his revolve to carry through a great programme of economic and social reform, declaring: “The test of our progress is not whether we add to the abundance of those who have much. It is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.” FDR was a heroic progressive president, but of course his record should not be exempt from criticism. At the end of the 1930s, unemployment remained at very high levels; while weak purchasing power meant that without the outbreak of the Second World War, stagnation may have engulfed the American economy. The New Deal propped up many failing industries and sectors, and opportunities for innovation and the renewal of America’s infrastructure were missed. That said, Roosevelt’s triumph was in seizing the opportunity of the crisis and redefining it for progressive ends, transforming American society and politics and emerging as a defining figure in American history. Patrick Diamond is a senior research fellow at Policy Network, Gwilym Gibbon fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford and a visiting fellow in the Department of Politics at the University of Oxford This is a contribution to Policy Network's series on The Classics of Social Democratic Thought 1. See Andrew Gamble, Capitalist Crisis and the Politics of Recession (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009) http://www.policy-

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Reconsidering “Citizenship and Social Class” MITCHELL COHEN - 28 JUNE 2010

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In speaking of the development of civil, political, and social citizenship as an evolutionary sequence, Marhshall's elegant classic points to a vigorous concern for both liberty and equality An old conservative-minded contention goes something like this: start with an egalitarian ethos, you will bottom out at complete leveling. It’s a slippery slope to the end of individuality. This was not simply a social or economic claim. Once upon a time, this attitude stymied equality before the law, a liberal norm most of us would now take for granted. Once upon another time, it was used to forestall universal suffrage, now a democratic norm in any decent political order. Foes – at least many early ones -- of equality before the law or universal suffrage supposed that a society ought to be governed by natural aristocracy. This later became meritocracy for many of them. Surely, this marked considerable improvement, yet meritocracy was often conceived narrowly, evading consideration of how unearned social advantages or disadvantages shape life chances of most people. Let me pose this in a way that is not original yet, I think, revealing. Imagine two girls, both age five, with pneumonia. One, the daughter of well-off parents, lives in a well-to-do neighborhood. The other, daughter of a poorly or modestly paid working family, lives in outer boroughs. Why should the first girl receive better medical attention than the second? Does she “merit” it more than her counterpart? But how can she if you must do something in order to merit something else? Neither girl can be said to merit her mother and father – or to have chosen them. Parents, whether good or bad, rich or poor, do not, after all, issue from a child’s “free choice” any more than, say, her IQ. Should both girls be told to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, or should both simply have access to equally good care? And what, then, of their possibilities for schooling? No, that is not a leap from one matter to another. There is – I borrow from philosopher John Rawls and his followers -- a kind of birth lottery with enormous, unavoidable social consequences. Unavoidable? Not exactly. The two girls may not have chosen their parents, but the society into which they are born is, like all societies, a matter of many human choices. Priorities are set by them, and these embody or are shaped by a range of values; they can be sustained or changed politically. For instance, a government led by the British Labour party instituted a National Health Service after World War II. This transformed the citizenry’s access to medical care by making it a social right. For another, more recent example, Democrats recently legislated important if more narrow reform of the American health system. This came over objections of a Republican minority that hoped to impose its own priorities; and some conservative

politicians and pundits warned how this – really every -- social reform encumbers “free choice” and skids towards nothing less than totalitarianism. By now you are wondering: why this prelude to address the essay in the title of this article, “Citizenship and Social Class” by T. H. Marshall (1893-1981)? But consider the conceptual terrain touched so far: civil citizenship (particularly the ideas of equality before the law and individual rights), political citizenship (particularly universal suffrage), and social citizenship (the notion that all members of a polity ought to enjoy and to share at least a basic level of social-economic, and cultural well-being). Think now of the institutions and some of the rights linked to each dimension of citizenship: courts (to secure civil liberties); elections to a legislature (political rights); welfare systems (public education and health care). In fact, we’ve arrived at Marshall’s principle concerns. They were presented with Britain in mind, first as a lecture in 1949 and then in published form in 1950 by this professor of sociology at the London School of Economics (and later head of social sciences for UNESCO). The context is evident: the post-war creation of a welfare state. Marshall spoke of the development of civil, political, and social citizenship as an evolutionary sequence. The rights embodied in the first pointed to those of the second, and the second to the third. Each, in succession, was secured over the three centuries following the 1688 Revolution. Some scholars challenge dimensions of Marshall’s progression. I won’t dwell on these debates, in part because I am not an historian of Britain, and partly because my primary concerns here are the social democratic implications of his argument (which I will present in broad strokes and occasional paraphrase, and on which I will somewhat elaborate). Those social democratic implications derive from Marshall’s proposition that the very concept of modern citizenship is at odds with unmerited inequalities, and should be deployed to abate them. Citizenship, he explained, is a “status bestowed on all those who are full members of a community.” Those members share rights, duties and the protections of a common law. The bonds of modern citizenship grow among them first through the “struggle to win those rights,” and then, once gained, by their “enjoyment.” And so, modern citizenship is born also of “loyalty to a civilization which is a common possession.” Common: Marshall assumes that people are not simply egos batting about in artificially framed spaces that they happen to call nations or states. There is such a thing as “society”; the social individuals who comprise it ought to share a basic notion – and system -- of fairness rooted in mutuality. The kind of market fundamentalism that was rehabilitated closer to our times (in the Thatcher-Reagan era) is obviously at odds with this way of thinking. This thinking does not entail a simplistic negation of the positive accomplishments of classical liberalism or markets; it does propose that modern citizenship, as a status held by all, expands the domains of equality at

the expense of social class, with its vestiges of a pre-modern hierarchy of privileged estates. The persistent enrichment of citizenship rights, thought Marshall, ought to render important powers associated with social differences...increasingly less powerful. (This has been challenged from the left on the grounds that economic inequalities too easily, even inevitably translate into undue political influence). But let’s follow Marshall’s presentation in a little more detail. Civil Citizenship Civil Citizenship came first and consolidated the rule of law and equality before the law. Its rights are those “necessary to individual freedom – liberty of the person, freedom of thought, speech and faith, the right to own property and to conclude valid contracts and the right to justice.” Individual civil rights also undid statutes and customs that constricted the “right to work’; working people could now, in principle, move about legally in pursuit of employment. It is a right that also corresponded to capitalism’s need for labor markets. “Citizenship” and “freedom,” at least individual freedom, appear to have become interchangeable terms, Marshall noted. Yet a problem becomes obvious. If you accept equality before the law, must you not also accept equality in choosing lawmakers? In other words, the principle of civil citizenship contains within itself what Marshall calls a “drive” towards further equality -- political equality. The logic of civil rights subverts the idea that political rights should be restricted on account of social class. Political citizenship Political citizenship progresses in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The Reform of 1832, with its limited expansion of the franchise, was the “first infantile attempt” by political rights “to walk.” Steps, then strides, led eventually to universal suffrage. Political rights caught up with civil rights. Alongside these, a labour movement grew and a Labour party went into parliament. The results of this trajectory are uncontroversial by the standards of liberal democracy. The same is not so for Marshall’s next move, which was to assert that social rights must follow from political and civil ones. Social citizenship Social citizenship encompasses a “whole range” of rights, says Marshall, from “a modicum of welfare and security to the right to share to the full in the social heritage and live the life of a civilized being according to the standards prevailing in society.” These rights find their institutional home in what, with some variation, has now been characterized as a welfare state. (The term in English seems to have originated with Archbishop William Temple, who meant it to contrast with the “warfare states” of World War II). Social rights mitigate inequalities generated by market economies without abolishing markets.

Here, again, one principle implies another: if every citizen is equal before the law and should therefore be able to choose those who make laws, shouldn’t every citizen also be equipped, knowledgeable, and secure enough to enjoy their civil and political rights, and fulfill responsibilities that come with them? If yes, then decent education and living conditions must be aspects of citizenship. Without education, a citizen cannot make intelligent choices at the ballot box, and an uneducated citizenry also cannot sustain a minimally sophisticated economy. An educated citizen will be better able to exercise a civil right like free speech. And so we begin to perceive that social citizenship does not quash individuality, but together with the other aspects of citizenship, fortifies the foundations on which it may flourish democratically; it enables individual citizens to fare well. How shall we think about Marshall’s claims sixty years after they were made? One thing to note is that the “slippery slope” argument against thinkers like Marshall is obviously tendentious. Whatever the problems or weaknesses or costs of welfare states, whatever the difficulties in finding equilibrium between political community and markets, or between the state and civil society, or between public initiative and private innovation, this is evident: social citizenship did not abolish political citizenship in liberal democracies. Political citizenship did not extinguish civil citizenship. Note, too, that citizenship’s egalitarian drive does not “make everyone the same.” It can, Marshall points out, even increase economic inequalities. If health services are available to all citizens as a social right, members of better-off classes will find their disposable income increased; they can spend otherwise fees they once paid private doctors. “The advantages obtained by having a larger money income do not disappear,” remarked Marshall, but they are limited to consumption. This means that powers derived from economic disparities are undercut. (Again, critics on Marshall’s left would question the political efficacy of this claim). Neither would markets disappear, but social logic complimentary to Marshall’s would suggest that they be regarded as means rather than ends. Critics from the right often insist that expenditures on social citizenship are inevitably too costly. This claim seems to me to slope in another, slippery and dangerous direction. What if someone claimed that fair court systems (and thus civil rights) were becoming “too expensive”? He or she would – quite justly -- be treated with scorn. There are, however, untoward occasions when civil liberties are temporarily compromised to a degree in a liberal democratic society – wartime, for instance. So these rights are also not always considered absolute. Concessions are demanded occasionally in less exacting circumstances too – if, say, one legitimate civil liberty conflicts with another legitimate civil liberty. It might well be that a free press has to be restricted sometimes in some degree to guarantee that an individual has a fair jury trial.(1) But these examples differ qualitatively from calculation by nothing but financial cost. Marshall’s case, finally, is that each of the three aspects of citizenship can – indeed should – bolster the others in a decent society. Each may modify the

others, but they don’t pile atop or fuse with each other. If they did, the distinct concerns of their specific domains – civil, political, social -- would dissolve. Guaranteeing freedom of conscience is not the same as guaranteeing a fair vote or as making sure that a sick five year old member of your political community gets proper attention (or insuring that her family will not be ruined financially to obtain it for her). The point is not to be blithe about expenditures on social citizenship; they are real – as real as, say, taxes. But I do mean to suggest the need for moral wariness, indeed unease, when financial claims are advanced simplistically against the basics of social citizenship. After all, why should a citizenry be any less derisive of the idea that costs should curtail civil liberties than of the idea that social rights -- say, those of our five year old -- are too costly? Nonetheless, a weakness in Marshall’s essay, concerned as it is to show how rights progress from other rights, is its insufficient consideration of conflicts among rights. If conflicts like these arise, then the world-view of those who grapples with them becomes an urgent matter. Will it be public servants who fret greatly, are even sleepless about such trade-offs? Or will they be like those (on the right) who imagine that they have an all-solving paradigm in “The Market”? Or like those (on the hard left) who care little about civil and political rights because they possess the “scientific” plan for the end of days (rendering “bourgeois” rights uninteresting, even for socially disadvantaged people who might be struggling for social rights). Where shall we place Marshall’s essay in the intellectual history of the left? Most obviously his arguments have their lineage in a tradition associated with late 19th and early 20th century English “lib-labism.” This reformism looked to reconciliations between liberal and labour-oriented (or socialist) ideas, and contrasts to Marxism and its offshoots. Marshall’s argument is best situated in a space – call it indeterminate or open-ended -- between a liberalised socialism and a socialised liberalism, and this is, I think, as useful a location of “social democratic” thinking as can be found. It points to the vigorous concern for both liberty and equality that marks an intelligent left for today – a left that has learned from disasters done in its own name in the twentieth century, and which conceives itself as heir to what was best or useful in liberalism, rather than its negation. Marshall’s approach must be marked off in at least one additional way in our uncertain age of globalisation. Marx proposed that the urban, industrial proletariat was the “universal class” of history -- its interests those of humanity, its members foreseen to be the overwhelming preponderance of the world’s population. Nations, Marx imagined, would dissolve as capitalism propelled itself worldwide, class struggle intensified and revolution brought a utopian future free of states and classes. In contrast, “revisionists,” even the Marxist kind like Eduard Bernstein at the end of the 19th century, were skeptical of this prognosis. They doubted that social structures would relentlessly and simply bifurcate, yielding a reactionary minority and a radicalized, homogenous majority. Some

“orthodox” Marxists, especially in Leninist and Trotskyist mutations, later found a substitute for their vision of the proletariat in one of the Third World. Since orthodoxy is, well, orthodoxy, this allowed dogma to remain in tact even if its historical protagonist changed. In contrast, “revisionists” looked to the extension of democracy and reform to address social suffering, especially that of workers. Seen in this light, Marshall’s essay effectively turns Marxism on its head by making citizenship rather than a class into the universalizing medium. In fact, he presumes a national context. The state is, in his essay, is an expanding vehicle of rights and self-government, and “[T]he social health of a society depends upon the civilization of its members.” The state has undergone considerable transformations since Marshall wrote his essay. Those whom the birth lottery has placed in the 21st century are in circumstances that differ from his in various ways. Among other things, a government’s room to maneuver is narrower due diverse processes such as “globalisation” and “regionalisation (“Europeanisation” is one example). When Marshall wrote of the “civilization” of a citizenry, he thought mostly of his own; it was decades before immigration and multi-culturalism posed new questions about what citizens hold – or should hold -- in common. (This ought also to make us think about the fact that it is a birth lottery that gives most people automatic citizenship in this or that country). Challenges are also raised by these same processes to democracy itself; might it not weaken increasingly if political parties run for office advocating a set of policies but, on winning, lack sufficient fiscal tools to implement them? Social democracy’s most important achievements in the 20th century required the framework of a national state, one which also functioned as a kind of mediator between citizens and the world. Some contemporary thinkers offer concepts of “global” or “cosmopolitan” citizenship in response to changes of the last decades. These are often as appealing as they are abstract. It is difficult they can take meaningful, practical form -- especially if we value self-government and are concerned to secure civil, political, and social rights. It is with these in mind that we ought to reread and reconsider – and still value – T.H. Marshall’s elegant, short classic. Mitchell Cohen is professor of political science at Bernard Baruch College and the Graduate School of the City University of New York. He was co-editor of Dissent magazine (1991-2009) and will, in 2010-11, be CUNY Writing Fellow at the Leon Levy Center for Biography at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York This essay is a contribution to Policy Network's series on The Classics of Social Democratic Thought 1. In this article I borrow some notions from John Rawls’s A Theory of Justice even though he advocated a “property-

owning democracy” rather than a welfare state, and would have had some differences with Marshall. Still, I think they would be in the same trans-Atlantic party, together with people somewhat to the left and somewhat to the right of them.

http://www.policy-

network.net/pno_detail.aspx?ID=3869&title=Reconsidering+%e2%80%9cCitizenship

+and+Social+Class%e2%80%9d

A retrospective on The Blair Revolution ROGER LIDDLE - 20 JULY 2010

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Setting out to build on the past, rather than destroy what previous governments did, this political tract highlights both New Labour’s accomplishments and its systematic shortcomings The Blair Revolution was published in early 1996, mere months before New Labour’s astonishing landslide victory in the May 1997 general election. The book was conceived to attain two entwined goals in order to prepare New Labour for government. First, it sought to create a new intellectual identity for New Labour, one which drew on Labour’s rich history of revisionism but also illustrated how the party had irrevocably evolved since it plumbed the depths of internal crisis in the 1980s by outlining the political principles and style of leadership that would characterise the prospective Blair government. Second, it attempted to convey a sense of New Labour’s policy agenda for reforming Britain, not least in terms of our economic priorities, efforts to rebuild a spirit of society and community, plans for constitutional reform and commitment to pro-Europeanism. But I would hesitate to describe it as a “classic” of social democratic thought. We – the authors, Peter Mandelson and I – saw ourselves as thoughtful political practitioners, not theoretical thinkers. The book’s model was, therefore, not Anthony Crosland’s Future of Socialism; rather, we hoped to match the model of a quality political tract, much like Roy Jenkins’ Why Vote Labour in 1959. However, in many respects, the book’s political credence was ambiguous, perhaps typically so for how New Labour conducted itself. It certainly was not an official statement of party policy, yet because Peter Mandelson was the book’s principal author, famed for his closeness to Tony Blair, its arguments were deemed to be very influential. The ambiguity of the whole exercise was summed up for me in two episodes: Tony Blair personally dictating to Peter over the telephone what he wanted us to say in the opening paragraphs; and then Tony’s failure to show up at the book’s launch party, because of fears that too close an association with it might be damaging to him.

Given the book’s prominence, one of its most surprising features was how it came to be co-authored by us. For Peter it was an important stage in his unnecessarily long and painful development from Britain’s first ever “spin doctor” to his pivotal role as first secretary of state and lord president of the council in Gordon Brown’s government; or, to phrase it in the language of contemporary political gossip, an essential part of his transition from Blair’s clandestine “Bobby” in his leadership campaign to emerging as serious political player in his own right, one with a indisputable claim on high ministerial office in the prospective Labour government. The book also gave Peter the opportunity to inject some ideological substance into the New Labour project to supplement the more public relations-orientated reforms he had overseen in various guises since first becoming the party’s director of communications under Neil Kinnock in 1985. Yet, while Peter’s friends understood this rationale for him writing the book, they were somewhat taken aback by his choice of me as co-author. We both had Labour in our genes – but in the political mythology of the 1980s I had been an “SDP traitor”. Peter, of course, had remained in the party. Nonetheless, the late 1970s and early 1980s had been mutually traumatic: we both felt that the party we had grown up in was being destroyed; we both shared a deep commitment to the trade unions but the Winter of Discontent left us both feeling badly let down by their political manoeuvring; we both hated what the Hard Left was doing to Labour; and, as local councillors in Ted Knight’s Lambeth, we both witnessed at first hand the damage he inflicted on the party. I had as deep a sense as Peter of the emotional and ideological journey Labour had undertaken to present itself once again as a credible party of government but it was still characteristically bold for him to want to write the book with me. Many people at the time presumed he had done this because I would draft the manuscript and he would simply amend and sign it off. This, however, was not our working method. Peter drafted a third of the book – including the chapters on Blair as a leader; the importance of British-EU relations; and New Labour’s governing strategy – and we jointly co-authored a further fifth of the text, while I focused on the socio-economic content. We then swapped drafts and did revisions of each other’s work. At proof stage we spent a whole three days going through every chapter, reading it aloud and amending any phrases that could conceivably be subjected to media distortion – this was an example of the Mandelson thoroughness I would witness on many occasions in subsequent years. The Blair Revolution did not say everything I wanted it to but, at the same time, it did not say anything to which I objected. Inevitably, given the context in which it was written – a general election in prospect and Peter’s presumed influence on the manifesto, the book was an amalgam of intellectually sound and politically feasible arguments. As a result, the book was not sufficiently specific about the future of public services, an independence of the Bank of England, the putative architecture of financial regulation, and the euro, as well as our political and constitutional reform programmes. Yet, in many respects, this was not the book’s purpose; instead, it set out a framework for the

governing principles and political goals of Blair’s new, modern social democratic party and distinguished them from those of past Labour governments. Nevertheless, the difficulties and anxieties we encountered in the process of writing the book were instructive of the some of New Labour’s systemic shortcomings. My initial draft of the section on public service reform was, for instance, gutted after it was deemed to present the party with as yet unpalatable choices vis-à-vis the means of pursuing reform – we were to waste a great deal of time in our first term before some of these truths were acknowledged. Unsurprisingly, Gordon Brown did not want Peter Mandelson pre-empting his decision to make the Bank of England independent. More surprisingly, the issue that most exercised Tony Blair was our specific commitment to fiscal funding of mainstream political parties; he thought the prospect of higher taxes for politics could be immensely damaging to Labour. The shame is that he held to that view very strongly in government with ultimately disastrous consequences for both his premiership and personal reputation as a result of the (unfounded) allegations of the “cash for honours” crisis. However, when I look back at New Labour’s record in government I believe The Blair Revolution was a pretty fair forecast of our political priorities, central policy reforms and governing strategy. Indeed, as the second paragraph of the book intimates: “New Labour has set itself a bold task: to modernise Britain socially, economically and politically. In doing so it aims to build on Britain’s strengths. Its mission is to create not destroy. Its strategy is to move forward from where Margaret Thatcher left off, rather than to dismantle every single thing she did.” This is indeed what New Labour accomplished; as a political movement, it accepted that successful governments built on the cumulative foundations of those which precede them and, as such, a large and significant section of the Thatcherite settlement we inherited in office was incorporated into our framework for governance. Thus, until the global financial crisis of the current juncture, Labour stuck with the Tory reforms to industrial relations, privatisation, and secured the ceiling on top tax rates. At the same time, however, New Labour adamantly rejected the Thatcherite conceit that society no longer existed. Today, the National Health Service is a resurrected goliath of universal high quality healthcare; educational standards and opportunities have radically increased; higher education and research received unprecedented investment; cities and regions were rebuilt from the embers of Thatcherite destruction; abhorrent levels of child poverty have been alleviated; and our society is more tolerant, open, free, fair and liberal than before. But, of course, we should have achieved more and made far too many mistakes – some of those were evident in the omissions and evasions of The Blair Revolution. We were over-complacent about Britain’s economic strengths, not least in unbridled over-reliance on the financial services sector, and the long-term damage Thatcherism inflicted on the country’s productive and manufacturing base has left the British economy looking dangerously

unbalanced. We thought we could narrow inequality by focusing our efforts on poverty: it is now clear that the global forces driving inequality are much more powerful and that the 1980s and 1990s mantras of labour market flexibility will have to change. We also did not have a clear enough conception of the balance to be struck between centralism and localism, state provision and third sector innovation. This requires a new process of revisionism, one which learns from New Labour’s mistakes, builds upon its many successes and and prepares us once again for government. Roger Liddle is chair of Policy Network and a Labour member of the House of Lords. He is a former adviser to Tony Blair, Peter Mandelson and Jose Manuel Barroso http://www.policy-

network.net/pno_detail.aspx?ID=3879&title=A+retrospective+on+The+Blair+Revolu

tion

For all mankind ALAIN BERGOUNIOUX - 28 JUNE 2010

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At a time when the parties of the left in Europe are re-examining their identity, it is useful to draw on Blum’s writings to remind us that socialism is first and foremost a humanist political culture Léon Blum’s essay For All Mankind, written in 1941 while in jail and published in 1945 upon his release from a concentration camp, plays a distinctive role in the history of French socialism. It is not a book about theory and it does not make any definitive statements about socialist doctrine or principles. Arguably it does more than this: it offers a defining insight into what humanism should mean for socialists. The essay is set against a backdrop of dreadful hardship. Blum, who dominated French socialism for thirty years, was incarcerated and deported to Buchenwald for his resistance to Nazism. Prior to the fall of France in 1940 he had become a figure who passionately embodied the errors of communism. He was the first socialist to lead the Third Republic in 1936, using his leadership of the Popular Front to dramatically reduce the gap between “ideals and practice.” The inner strength which enabled him to resist and carry on fighting was his belief in a humanist value set which binds together justice, reason and wisdom. Blum’s optimism, even his naivety, took its fair share of criticism. He was often satirised, in particular by Marxists, for playing by the rules and for his reluctance to commit wholeheartedly to political struggle. Yet, what his insights into the Nazi-led defeat that swept France show us is that the nation’s

surrender stemmed from its leaders oblivion to the interests of its people; first and foremost on the part of the ruling class but also by the labour movement. “We became too strong, too cautious. We were progressively cast in the mould of everyday life. We became complacent. At a time when the nation was expecting a rallying cry from our ranks, no strong voice could be heard,” he wrote in reference to himself and other socialist leaders. His generation had failed their self appointed task. The essay argues that our representatives and leaders must remain closely in tune with the interests and needs of the people they are elected to serve. It shows that in pursuing their own self interest, the leaders of the left in France at that time had allowed a divide to develop which forbade them from stirring up the nation in times of hardship. In essence the ruling class had lost its virtue. At a time when the parties of the left in Europe are re-examining their identity and the crisis of representation they face, it is useful to draw on Blum’s writings to remind us that socialism is first and foremost a humanist political culture. Men of Léon Blum’s generation, and even more so in the generation previous to his, dared to speak of spirituality. Nowadays, this would cause a shock in modern socialist parties where cold reason and the interplay of interests dominate. Blum rejected such an approach: “all that is inescapable is not necessarily fair.” He passionately believed that people possess the “instinct of justice” and that moral choice can and should trump a narrow definition of self-interest. For Blum, democracy and socialism are absolutely interdependent and thus socialism could not exist if it did not adhere to the fundamentals of democracy and fairness. Herein lay his vision; a synthesis between socialism and democracy that would only materialise when the political class realised that their core mandate was not to impose their own interests upon the people, but to give people the skills and values to make their own democratic and ethical choices. It is a demanding view of political organisation. To avoid falling into the traps of avant-gardes who pretend to hold the truth, or of new oligarchies who use the people to serve their own interests, strong moral standards need to permeate socialism. Obviously, Léon Blum does not have the lexicon of our times; his concepts were devised within the framework of republican and Marxist traditions. Yet, the fundamental belief underpinning his reflection – and this is why his essay stands the test of time – is that democracy is the first and permanent resource of socialists. Social democracy should continue to confront itself with the ethical implications of its political choices. The quest for adequate means is obviously essential. The current crisis of capitalism demands new economic thinking. Yet a social democratic answer has to take the form of a moral critique of the limits and weaknesses of markets. In this respect, reading For All Mankind still proves incredibly pertinent as it reminds us never to forget our true aims. Alain Bergounioux is a French historian and director of the Revue Socialiste. He is the author of Le régime social-démocrate (1989),

Léon Blum: discours politiques (1997) and Les socialistes français et le pouvoir. L’ambition et le remords (2007) This is a contribution to Policy Network's work on Globalisation and Governance.

http://www.policy-

network.net/pno_detail.aspx?ID=3871&title=For+all+mankind+++

The Gift Relationship IAIN MCLEAN - 28 JUNE 2010

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The implications of Titmuss’ study on human blood and social policy should not be forgotten as we reconsider the core principles of our economy His socialism was as English as his patriotism—ethical and non-Marxist, insisting that capitalism was not only economically but socially wasteful, in failing to harness individual altruism to the common good (A.H. Halsey, 2004). For my money, The Gift Relationship is the only socialist classic of the last fifty years. Richard Titmuss (1907-73), the founder of the LSE school of social administration scholars (“Titmice”), never went to university. His only further education was a 6-month course in bookkeeping, and he worked for 18 years in an insurance office. He refused a peerage from Harold Wilson. His last book succeeded in showing that in one arena capitalism is socially wasteful, where thousands of academic tomes before and since have failed to. The subtitle of The Gift Relationship is From human blood to social policy. Titmuss’ central finding was that both the quality and quantity of blood for transfusion in the UK, donated through what is now the National Blood Service, were higher than in the US, where most blood at the time was supplied by the market. He showed that both the classic problems of insurance applied to blood supply: moral hazard and adverse selection. He did not use either term, but his evidence was clear-cut. In a market for blood, those with the unhealthiest blood – especially drug and alcohol abusers – had the strongest motivation both to supply it and to lie about their medical conditions. Hence, US supplied blood was more likely to give hepatitis to the recipient than was UK donated blood. Titmuss wrote before AIDS-contaminated blood laid waste to a generation of haemophiliacs in the 1980s, but that disaster showed how right he was. He conducted a survey of British blood donors. Some of their answers make up the most moving part of the book: My husband aged 41, collapsed and died, without whom life is very lonely – so I thought my blood may help to save

some-one the heart ache I’ve had. Or 1941. War. Blood needed. I had some. Why not? Or I thought it just a small way to help people – as a blind person other opportunities are limited. There is, I admit, a lot wrong with The Gift Relationship. The section on the social anthropology of giving adds nothing, and the section on apartheid South Africa is a curiosity. By modern standards the survey was slapdash and it commits the cardinal sin of “selection on the dependent variable” – i.e., of failing to survey non-donors. Titmuss wrongly says that his findings condemn the whole discipline of economics. But they go deeper than he realised himself. They led some of the best social scientists in the world (including Kenneth Arrow and Peter Singer) to clarify his findings and their implications. In essence, Arrow said: Adding a market mechanism to a donor mechanism restricts nobody’s freedom and increases supply; so what can be wrong with that? Singer retorted: The market does restrict freedom because it crowds out altruism. Fewer people would give blood for a small money reward than are prepared to give it for nothing. Titmuss’s findings have also protected the principle of non-market blood supply in the UK throughout all changes of government since he wrote; and induced US Administrations to encourage donation and discourage market supply of blood. The Gift Relationship is as relevant today as the day it was written. Iain McLean is Professor of Politics, Oxford University and a fellow of Nuffield College. His publications include ‘Good blood, bad blood, and the market: The Gift Relationship revisited’, Journal of Public Policy 6 1987 pp 431-45 (with J. Poulton), and, ‘Regulating Gifts of Generosity: the Aberfan Disaster Fund and the Charity Commission’, Legal Studies 19, 1999, pp. 380--96 (with M. Johnes) http://www.policy-

network.net/pno_detail.aspx?ID=3872&title=The+Gift+Relationship

Οι πρωτοµάστορες της σουηδικής σοσιαλδηµοκρατίας της Σέρι Μπέρµαν

Η ευρωπαϊκή σοσιαλδηµοκρατία χρειάζεται απελπισµένα ιδεολογική ανανέωση. Παρά τη

γενικευµένη αίσθηση πως ο καπιταλισµός διέρχεται µια κρίση για την οποία βασικοί

υπεύθυνοι είναι η πλεονεξία, η ανευθυνότητα, ο νεοφιλελευθερισµός και οι ανεξέλεγκτες

αγορές, πουθενά στην Ευρώπη δεν παρατηρείται άνοδος της επιρροής των αριστερών

κοµµάτων, ούτε εµπεδώνεται η αίσθηση πως δικαιώνεται η αριστερή κοσµοθεωρία. Αυτό δεν

είναι µόνο εκπληκτικό: είναι τραγικό. Όχι µόνο διότι αποκαλύπτει το γεγονός πως η

αριστερά είναι ιδεολογικά εξαντληµένη και εν δυνάµει πολιτικά εξουδετερωµένη, αλλά και

διότι έτσι µειώνεται καταλυτικά η δυνατότητα της Ευρώπης και του κόσµου να

αντιµετωπίσουν την τρέχουσα κρίση µε αποτελεσµατικότητα και συντονισµό.

Ερνστ Βίνγκφορς

Μολοταύτα, παρά τηγενικευµένη αίσθηση πως αντιµετωπίζουµε έναν εντελώς καινούργιο

κόσµο, τα προβλήµατα που καλούµαστε να αντιµετωπίσουµε σήµερα δεν είναι παρά

η τελευταία εκδοχή ενός πολύ παλιού ζητήµατος: του πώς δηλαδή θα εξασφαλίσουµε πως ο

καπιταλισµός θα δηµιουργεί βιώσιµη ανάπτυξη, ενώ ταυτόχρονα οι κοινωνίες θα

προστατεύονται από ηθικά και κοινωνικά ανεύθυνες συµπεριφορές και από το ξεθεµέλιωµα

παραδόσεων, κοινοτικών δοµών και πολιτιστικών παραδόσεων που επιφέρει η λειτουργία

του καπιταλισµού.

Σε αυτό το πολύ συγκεκριµένο ερώτηµα θέλησαν ήδη να απαντήσουν, εδώ και πάνω από

έναν αιώνα, οι σοσιαλδηµοκράτες, µη διστάζουν προς τούτο να διαρρήξουν τις σχέσεις τους

µε πολλούς συντρόφους τους εντός του σοσιαλιστικού κινήµατος.

Νιλς Κάρλεµπι

Στα τέλη του 19ου αιώνααναπτύχθηκε ένα σχίσµα στη δηµοκρατική αριστερά, µεταξύ αυτών

που θεωρούσαν πως η ύπαρξη ενός καλύτερου κόσµου προϋπέθετε το ξεπέρασµα του

καπιταλισµού (τους «δηµοκρατικούς σοσιαλιστές») κι εκείνων που θεωρούσαν αντιθέτως

πως ήταν δυνατό να υπάρξουν µεγάλες βελτιώσεις εντός του καπιταλιστικού πλαισίου (τους

«σοσιαλδηµοκράτες»). Η δεύτερη οµάδα, αν και είχε πλήρη συνείδηση των µειονεκτηµάτων

του καπιταλισµού, αναγνώριζε παράλληλα το πελώριοπαραγωγικό του δυναµικό και

επιχειρηµατολόγησε υπέρ της άποψης πως πρώτο καθήκον της αριστεράς ήταν να βρει

τρόπους να µεγεθύνει τα πλεονεκτήµατα της λειτουργίας των αγορών, µειώνοντας

ταυτόχρονα το κόστος της.

Οι σοσιαλδηµοκράτες υποστήριξαν επίσης πως η αδυναµία της αριστεράς να προσελκύσει

µεγάλες µάζες, που κατά τα άλλα αδικούνταν από το καπιταλιστικό σύστηµα, οφειλόταν

στην απήχηση των λαϊκιστικών και εθνικιστικών δεξιόστροφων κινηµάτων που

εκµεταλλεύονταν τους φόβους και τις ανησυχίες που προκαλούσαν οι διαρκείς αλλαγές που

είναι σύµφυτες µε τον καπιταλισµό.

Κατά τη διάρκεια του µεσοπολέµου, οι σοσιαλδηµοκράτες εξαπέλυσαν πολιτική επίθεση,

προκειµένου να επιβάλουν τις αντιλήψεις τους στο διεθνές σοσιαλιστικό κίνηµα και

ανέπτυξαν µια νέα στρατηγική για την αριστερά, που στηριζόταν στον κρατικό έλεγχο της

λειτουργίας της αγοράς στην τόνωση του πατριωτισµού των πολιτών. Η µόνη χώρα όπου το

βασικό αριστερό κόµµα υιοθέτησε ολόπλευρα αυτή τη στρατηγική ήταν η Σουηδία, που

ταυτόχρονα έγινε και η µόνη χώρα στην οποία η αριστερά επικράτησε ήδη από τότε της

ριζοσπαστικής δεξιάς και συνέπτυξε γύρω της µια σταθερή πολιτική και κοινωνική συµµαχία,

θεµελιώνοντας µια -πρωτοφανή για δηµοκρατική κοινωνία- µακροχρόνια πολιτική ηγεµονία.

Περ 'Αλµπιν Χάνσον

Η ανάδειξη του «σουηδικού σοσιαλδηµοκρατικού-εργατικού κόµµατος» (SAP) σε

αυτήν την ηγεµονική δύναµη, οφείλει πολλά σε άνδρες σαν τους Ερνστ Βίνγκφορς (Ernst

Wigforss),Νιλς Κάρλεµπι (Nils Karleby) και Περ 'Αλµπιν Χάνσον (Per Albin Hansson).

Οι Βίνγκορς και Κάρλεµπισυνέβαλαν στο να αποκτήσει το SAP µια νέα σχέση µε την

οικονοµική σκέψη. Τη δεκαετία του 1920, ο Νιλς Κάρλπεµπιεπέµενε πως «η βελτίωση

της αποτελεσµατικότητας της οικονοµικής δραστηριότητας ήταν, είναι και θα είναι

πάντα ο µόνος τρόπος να βελτιωθεί και η ευηµερία της κοινωνίας». Επίσης

επιχειρηµατολόγησε πως η «καπιταλιστική αστική ιδιοκτησία» θα έπρεπε να ιδωθεί ως µια

διάρθρωση αλληλένδετων δικαιωµάτων. Εξ ου και «όλες οι κοινωνικές

µεταρρυθµίσεις... που αναβαθµίζουν τον κοινωνικό έλεγχο επί της ιδιοκτησίας, µειώνοντας

αντίστοιχα τον ιδιωτικό, (αντιπροσωπεύουν βήµατα) προς τον κοινωνικό

µετασχηµατισµό... Αυτές οι κοινωνικές παρεµβάσεις στην πραγµατικότητα διευρύνουν τα

όρια του καπιταλισµού, αυξάνοντας εν τοις πράγµασι το ειδικό βάρος των εργαζόµενων

στην κοινωνία και τον παραγωγικό µηχανισµό. Αυτή είναι η αυθεντική και µόνη

σοσιαλδηµοκρατική άποψη» (ό.π).

Την ίδια περίοδο ο Βίνγκφορς, που είχε µελετήσει τον αγγλικό φιλελευθερισµό, άρχισε να

προτείνει «πρωτο-κεϊνσιανές» πολιτικές, επιχειρηµατολογώντας πως, ιδίως σε συνθήκες

κρίσης, ήταν δυνατό και επιθυµητό οι κυβερνήσεις να τονώνουν τη ζήτηση και να

διαχειρίζονται τη λειτουργία της οικονοµίας, σκοπεύοντας στην πλήρη απασχόληση και τη

σταθερή ανάπτυξη. Σαν τον Κάρλεµπι, ο Βίνγκφορς συνέβαλε να αποκτήσουν οι Σουηδοί

σοσιαλδηµοκράτες µια πολύ τεκµηριωµένη και διακριτή οικονοµική αντίληψη, αλλά και µια

δυναµική στρατηγική για την κατάληψη της εξουσίας. Για τους παραπάνω Σουηδούς

διανοητές, όσον αφορά την ανάπτυξη, ο καπιταλισµός παρέµενε το καλύτερο σύστηµα που

είχε επινοήσει ο άνθρωπος· χωρίς όµως το δηµοκρατικό έλεγχο, ο καπιταλισµός ήταν

καταδικασµένος να κυλάει από κρίση σε κρίση, χωρίς να παράγει την κοινωνική ισότητα και

τη σταθερότητα που επιθυµούσαν οι σοσιαλδηµοκράτες.

Εντωµεταξύ ο Χάνσον, που εκείνη την περίοδο ηγείτο του SAP, εκλαΐκευσε την αντίληψη

της Σουηδίας ως «folkhemmet» (λαϊκής εστίας), µια ιδέα που υπέκλεψε από την

ριζοσπαστική δεξιά. Υπογράµµισε πως «κάθε "εστία" βασίζεται στην κοινωνικότητα και

τη συλλογικότητα» και πως η σοσιαλδηµοκρατία είχε ως σκοπό να «κατεδαφίσει κάθε τι

χωρίζει τους πολίτες» (ό.π). Ο Χάνσον αναγνώρισε πως, ιδίως σε συνθήκες κρίσης και

αναστατώσεων, ο κόσµος έχει ανάγκη από µια αίσθηση «gemeinschaft» («ανήκειν», σε κάτι

ευρύτερο από το άτοµο). Χάρη σε αυτές τις αντιλήψεις, στη Σουηδία ήταν οι

σοσιαλδηµοκράτες που κατόρθωσαν να εµφανιστούν ως η δυναµική πολιτική δύναµη που

υπεράσπιζε την κοινωνική αλληλεγγύη και διέθετε ένα συναρπαστικό και ρεαλιστικό σχέδιο

να τιθασεύσει τον καπιταλισµό και να συµπαρασταθεί στο «λαουτζίκο», σε αντίθεση µε τη

Γερµανία και την Ιταλία, που το ρόλο αυτό ανέλαβε η λαϊκίστικη δεξιά.

Η θεωρητική διορατικότητα που έδειξαν οι µεγάλοι αυτοί σοσιαλδηµοκράτες διανοητές

διατηρεί και σήµερα όλη της την επικαιρότητα: ο καπιταλισµός δεν είναι ένα «παίγνιο

µηδενικού αθροίσµατος». Ρόλος της αριστεράς είναι να αναπτύσσει πολιτικές που θα

ενισχύουν ταυτόχρονα την ανάπτυξη και την κοινωνική αλληλεγγύη, αντί να καλεί τους

εργαζόµενους να επιλέξουν ή τη µια ή την άλλη.

Συγκεκριµένα, αυτό σηµαίνει πως η αριστερά προωθεί πολιτικές που θα βοηθούν τους

πολίτες να ελέγχουν τις αλλαγές, αντί απλά να τις φοβούνται. Επιπροσθέτως, η αριστερά

οφείλει να θυµάται πάντα πως οιµάζες επιθυµούν να αισθάνονται πως ανήκουν σε κάποια

νικηφόρα πολιτική κοινότητα. Ο «κοινοτισµός», όπως και και η δηµοκρατία, θεωρούνται

από τους Σουηδούς σοσιαλδηµοκράτες ταυτόχρονα µέσο και σκοπός της πολιτικής τους:

δεν αντισταθµίζουν απλά την εξατοµίκευση, τους διαχωρισµούς και τις διαφωνίες που γεννά

αναπόφευκτα ο καπιταλισµός, αλλά διευκολύνουν την επικράτηση και άλλων πλευρών του

σοσιαλδηµοκρατικού προτάγµατος. Επί παραδείγµατι, τόσο η ύπαρξη ενός ισχυρού

παρεµβατικού κράτους, όσο και η ανάπτυξη παλλαϊκών κοινωνικών πολιτικών, δεν µπορούν

παρά να θεµελιωθούν σε µια ειδική αντίληψη για την «πολιτικότητα», που καθορίζεται από

υψηλό βαθµό αίσθησης αδερφοσύνης και αναγνώρισης κοινών, συλλογικών στόχων.

Η Sheri Berman είναι καθηγήτρια πολιτικής επιστήµης στο πανεπιστήµιο «Κολούµπια»

http://www.toxotis.se/politika/artiklar_blogs/politika/socialdimokratia.html