The "Social Europe"— demagogy on a West European scale
AT THE last European elections, the socialist and social democratic parties had a chance to talk big about the social dimension in building Europe today." All-round champions of the Single Act, the socialists responded to their voters'
October 16, 1989 • #171 International Viewpoint anxiety about the transformations underway in Western
European, presenting themselves as unconditional defenders of a "social Europe." Moreover, François Mitterrand, now chair of the EEC for six months, is promising to advance
Implementation of the social aspects of the Single Act. But what does the "social Europe" actually involve?
CLAUDE GABRIEL aking advantage of the divisions
T and hesitations that European integration has provoked in many right-wing parties, the, Socialists are arguing for a united Europe able both to meet the capitalist demands of the "big market" and to defend social gains. So, they are offering themselves as candidates for setting up the Europe of the bosses and at the same time for defending the workers' interests. Aware of the difficulty of this enterprise, they keep claiming that they are assuming the "challenge."
Jacques Delors, president of the Brussels Commission, for example, has written: "And what if Europe became the place, if not the means today for realizing the social democratic idea?
"And what if the European dimension prevailed over the external or internal changes that have led to this model losing its luster?..In fact, the social democratic project today faces two challenges that together and independently threaten its advance - the external challenge of the development of world-wide relations and the internal challenge posed by new aspirations and types of behavior." 1
Will the opening up of markets create jobs?
However, no sooner were the European elections over than moderation and realism re-entered such declarations. The point of departure for arguing the social
"Cecchini thesis democratic
Report," which concludes that the opening up of markets will represent a gain of
175 to 255 billion ECUS for the companies. From this, the report deduces that in the medium term 1.8 million new jobs can be created, and ultimately 5 million. It would then be possible to rely on the economic rationalization implied by the Single Act to prevent the growth of inequalities and an erosion of gains and to launch an attack on the problem of unemployment.
Opinion polls carried out at the beginning of 1989 pointed up the rise of doubts and fears among wage earners about the consequences of European integration. Through practical experience, workers began to perceive the dangers implied by the Single Act. An example are the mergers and restructuring that the bosses have justified in the name of European challenges, and which inevitably lead to lay-
Proliferation of agreements between firms
The misty horizons of the Cecchini Report thus are not convincing those who are suffering the dramatic effects of the big market in the here and now. On the other hand, the "social challenge" demagogues do not seem to be upset by the proliferation of agreements between firms, takeovers and relocation of plants that are helping to undermine working-class resis-
The social democratic parties, however, always insensitive to apprehensions about the European project. The emphasis put on the social dimension during the electoral campaign was a response to this. But the Socialist leaderships now face another problem — pressures and criticisms from the union bureaucracies. The latter are undoubtedly worried about their own credibility with their memberships, attacked in the name of Europe.
tance more and more from a [social democratic] government that is applying a neofree-enterprise policy in response to the concerns of employers confronted by th building of Europe." 2 Jean Kaspar of the French Democratic Confederation of Labor (CFDT), for his part, has explained: "The problem is not what sort of Europe we want. The CFDT will not accept a Europe reduced to a mere economic framework for reconversions and takeovers."3 The same tack is now being taken by all the union leaderships. Some are old converts to the EEC, others of more recent vintage. Today all of them (and rightly so!) are worried about the future.
Worry about future of institutional role . However, if some union leaderships talk this way, it is not because they are interested in putting up a strong fight for the workers' demands. "Realism" and class collaboration have long prevailed over all other considerations in these circles. Their main worry is about the future of their institutional role in a Europe in which capital is becoming more centralized, and where the established relationships between the unions and the state apparatus are going to lose some of their force.
Conflicts then appear between desires and realities. The union leaderships may hope to re-create at the European level the cosy relations with governments that they have sometimes enjoyed within the national context. But their friends in the Socialist parties do not always see things the same way, especially when these parties are in government or even in the Brussels Commission itself.
In general, social democrats say different things depending on whether they are in or out of power. Laurent Fabius, for example, who headed the French SP slate in the European elections, is no stickler for 1. Europe sans frontières, Les Socialistes et l'avenir de la CEE, a collection of articles by Socialist leaders, EPO, Antwerp, 1989. In this work, the Dutch Wim
"The challenge facing social democrats today is to define a new system of labor relations making it possible for a special social model of Europe to survive and develop in a positive direction." 2. Le Monde, February 8, 1989. 15 3. Le Monde, June 8, 1989.
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EUROPE For example, Apolinar Rodríquez, lead- er of the General Workers' Union (UGT, the union confederation historically linked to the social democrats in the Spanish state) has said: "We are taking our dis-
International Viewpoint #171 • October 16, 1989
EUROPE the old socialist traditions: "The development of the left in Europe in different directions will certainly lead to a questioning of old positions. At the same time, this can be productive for the left forces, because it forces us to look at some of our traditional ideas - the role of the public sector, the effectiveness of social redistribution policies, the forms of education and so on. "4
The union bureaucracies, moreover, are not the only worried ones. At various levels and in various ways, depending on the country the fear is now appearing in the social democratic parties, that the dynamic of the Single Act may break down the old consensus too rapidly and thereby endanger social peace. Even if you are ready to believe in the Cecchini's report's optimistic extrapolations, no one can fail to recognize that now capitalist reconversion is leading to plant closures and workforce reductions.
Free circulation of goods, capital and labour
Already, the demands imposed by deregulation and the opening up of the public services to competition have provoked major reactions such as the nurses' strikes in a whole series of EEC countries. This is why even the British Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock, whose new-found belief in Europe is well known, has said that "if 1992 is centered exclusively on the free circulation of goods, capital and labor, what the Single Market will establish will be a free circulation of ployment and depression. "5
These warnings are not of course leading to any questioning of the EEC project. The social democrats generally are definitively committed to "the European enterprise," in accordance with the needs of capital. However, aware of the new contradictions that this has engendered, even in their own ranks, they aspire to rebuild at the European level the conditions for social compromise that they have previously advocated in a national framework.
In defending the perspective of social guarantees in the context of the Single some Socialist leaders indeed explain that a strong "social aspect" will benefit industrial competitiveness against the US and Japan. They argue that the establishment of new "labor relations" through building Europe will be a "force for innovation and productivity "6. Austrian Socialist leader Bruno Kreisky, has written: "What we need is not speculative capitalism but a 'moderated' capitalism....Consensus is a cumulative
A section of the social democracy is trying, within the context of the EEC, to revitalize a neo-Keynesianism in crisis at the national level. It is arguing, without any great conviction, for a specific Euro16 pean development model. But for that, EEC economic integration would have to be achievable in the short term. There is thus a strong temptation to propose a protected economic space. But this is not what the Single Act since it envisages, responds to a also growing internationalization of the world
The big economy.
market means "openthe market"
ing up possible
(until a return to protectionist restrictions). In order to manage the labor force, the bosses do not hesitate to employ the Japanese model (for example in auto)
or even third-world models.
The error of the social democratic reasoning consists in thinking that the big market will provide for a homogeneous European industrial fabric against Japanese and
American competitors. According to this argument, the European bosses may also find uses for a European specificity combining high productivity, strong buying power and a high-level of social protection.
This is to forget that the setting up of the big market is not simply a response to the challenge of American or Japanese competition. This aspect is overshadowed by the worldwide reorganization of capital. Thus, some big European firms have already made inter-European alliances in some of their activities, American or Japanese ones in others.
The call for the Single Act and steps towards a unification of Europe does not at all mean that some sort of European employers' code is taking shape. It is therefore utopian to appeal to the bosses for a specifically European social project that could be a basis for new and stable arrangements. The bosses do not seem much worried - and for good reason from their point of view about the growth of unsteady jobs, pressures for
5. Europe sans frontières.
6. See in this regard, F. Chalamet and F. Murillo (coauthors of the report "For a social Europe") in the
May-June 1989 issue of the magazine Projet, pub-
7. Pour en finir avec le chômage en Europe, La
Découverte, Paris, 1989, p.67.
8. For example, out of 212 European firms that made research agreements with other firms, more than 50% did so with a non-European firm. Out of 197 joint subsidiaries formed in the EEC from 1982 to 1985, 41% were with firms outside the EEC ("Les entreprises de haute technologie et l'Europe," Philippe de Woot,
Gestion économique, Paris, 1988). From 1980 to 1984,
38% of foreign investments by European firms were in
Europe and 61% in the US. (source: Eurostat). For
Sunday working or for nightwork for women, attacks on health care and so on.
None of these realities, however, resembles the pious image of a "European" capicompetitiveness in the social well-being of the wage earners.?
It is especially astonishing that this reformist aspiration is to depend on a rapid emergence from the crisis and strong economic growth. What will happen to all these fine words if overall economic growth in the EEC remains depressed below 4 four percent in the coming
The social dangers the Single Act poses for the workers are of various sorts:
• Industrial reconversion and new forms of competition in the service sectors (public and private) are bringing layoffs, changes in the rules and conditions of work, and freezing of wages.
• The threat that the bosses may more and more take as their benchmark those areas of the EEC where the conditions are best for them, in each industry or even in countries as a whole, as for example in example, the French firm Michelin plans to buy the US firm Uniroyal for 4 billion francs 9. Another innovation (more recent in some than in others) by the Socialist parties is to link the social sphere and ecology in their warings about too much of a free-enterprise foreign market. This would be praiseworthy, if only it were clear that this was more than electoralist demagogy, at a time when the Green vote is showing a strong rise. The best way to do that would be for the govemments controlled by these parties to take radical measures in this field, and apply the correct idea that there is i relationship between defending social gains and defending the environment. 10. See the fears expressed in the report of the Europe-
Commission on Employment chaired by Bruno Kreisky. Pour en finir avec le chômage en Europe, p.53.
The thineen "fundamental rights"
proposed by the Bruseals Commission for a European "Social Charter"
EUROPE ures. "16 This is a noble enterprise no doubt, but, when all is said and done, a very modest one.
The debate takes on quite different dimensions when it becomes necessary to respond to the question of possible Euro-
1) Free circulation of workera (In particular workers in border areas who are employed in member states other than those they Inhabit).
2) Employment and payment (defined as including the payment of "fair wages" to tempotary workers vis-a-vis full-time workers)
3) Amellorallon of living conditions ("partnership in progrees").
Includes restructuring and flexibility in working hours, as part of a definiflon of the maximum hours of work allowed per week, but also in relation to all atypical forms of employment, work of fimited duration, seasonal work, part-time, temporary, week-end and night work, etc.).
4) Social protection (Including the fixing of a minimum revenue for the unemployed in law).
5) Freedom of assoclation and of collective bargaining (In particular at a
European level "If the social partners wish It").
6) The right to vocational training.
7) Equality of ireatment for men and women.
8) The right of workers to information, consultation and participation
(the accent being put above all on consultation with the workers of trans natlonal enterprises, for the introduction of new technology, and in cases where restructuring has an Impact on employment).
9) Protection of health and security in the workplace.
10) Protection of children and adolescents.
11) A minimum guaranteed income for the elderly.
12) Protection of the handicapped
13) Protection of the consumer, southern Europe.
There is a danger of
"social dumping." with relocation of plants to areas where social production costs can be cut."
• The effects of growing regional inequalities in living and working conditions, between those that are undergoing cumulative growth and those on the downward
• A growing tax burden on wage earners as some states try to compensate for loss of revenues brought about by a reduction in Value-Added Tax or prevent capital flight by cutting taxes on income from
• The attempts made in some industries to use the European reorganization speed up changes in work-flexibility, fixed-term contracts, subcontracting and
• The fact that the "big market" opens the way for freely
European enterprises. The influx of Japanese companies into countries such as
Great Britain, the Spanish
France foreshadows added pressure on working conditions.1
In addition to all this, there is the threat that, facing a growing "multinationalization" of big enterprises and policies decided by the Brussels Commission, the national workers' movements may have less capacity to react and defend them-
Overall, a sharpening of competition among European workers represents the big danger for social gains - including pressure on social protection systems, on the rules for representation of wage earers in the plants and pressure on wages and working conditions.' Competition among working classes within the EEC poses a challenge to national legal systems and legislation. This concerns not only relations between wage earners and their bosses but also has to do with the specific histories of the states and national institutions.
The Single Act seeks to accelerate economic integration by relying on competirationalize economic apparatus. Why should management of the labor force be exempt from this creed of competition? Why should the bosses, in the absence of pressure from social struggles, accept the constraint of rules in this area, when the entire philosophy of the Single Act is to reject administrative
As regards social policy, the Single Act calls for "dialogue... that can result in contractual relationships. "14 The Brussels Commission initially concentrated on two "social questions." The first was free circulation of labor, which is preparing the for a vast European labor market.15 The second was the social dangers in order "to discern in time the consequences that creating the internal market may have on employment for specific categories of persons or given regions, in order to forestall these effects or at least take the necessary compensatory meas11. Among other examples, Volkswagen moving to Spain and the closing of the Peugeot factory in Belgium. 12. See, for example, the recent Peugeot affair in France. 13. For example, flexible weekend work in Volkswagen in Spain, while this has been rejected by the firm's German workers. 14. Article 118 B. 15. This includes free access to public jobs and the pean social legislation. What scope could real common social regulation for the BEC have, given the neo-free-enterprise motivations of the Single Act and the differences in each state?
In 1981, the French Socialist government mooted the idea of a European "social space." Since then, a lot of water has gone under the bridge, and in 1989, Jacques Delors acknowledged: "If I had proposed the social space, I would have provoked a religious war, and Europe would still be in the midst of stagnation. "17 That's the name of the game. Delors is only following the orientations of the big European employers, who are adamantly opposed to EEC social legisla-
This leads to a rather peculiar terminological debate, with some talking about a declaration of principles, or even a "common foundation," while others call for a document with the force of law. In response to the unions who demanded formal guarantees, Delors replied: "I have never said that this would be a directive. A solemn declaration would have considerable moral value. "18 Ernst Breit, president of the European Trade-Union Confederation (ETUC)', offered his own view of this in May in Le Monde: "If Delors has declared himself in favor of a solemn declaration, that means that he has said exactly the opposite of what he said a year ago in Stockholm. "20 Report provides undigestible
In a report summing up the thinking in several seminars on the big market, you find the following undigestible stew: "If you accept that labor costs will be different over a long period owing to unevenness in the factors that make development possible, you have then to give up the idea of a "foundation," the idea of a highway that sets the general direction in which all the countries have to travel at varying speeds. A 'dynamic convergence' has to be imagined. It will take time. Moreover, the convergence has to be real."21
What meaning is there in this clutter of words? For the moment, we are due for a statement by heads of states and governments. In June 1990, and not before, the Commission may propose a series of right for the unemployed to continue to collect their compensation if they move to another country. Article 118 of the treaty stipulates that "member states pledge to seek to improve the work environment in order to protect workers' health and safety, and set themselves the objective of harmonizing in a progressive direction the conditions that exist in this area. 16. Report by Manuel Marin, president of the Europe- an Commission, September 7, 1988. 17 17. Libération, August 29, 1988.
International Viewpoint #171 • October 16, 1989
EUROPE measures and a "Charter." Today, it is proposing 13 fundamental rights (see box), the formulation of which remains ambiguous and general. Binding legislation is not projected, except for the right to health care and safety in the plants. The rest, whose legal character has not been established, requires unanimous agreement of the states, with everyone left at the mercy of a veto, or a compromise at the lowest common denominator.
A series of established rules are already being adopted. It is useful, however, to look at their limitations in some detail to get an idea of the present juridical vacuum. They apply above all to working conditions (health and on-the-job safety); and, in passing, make it possible to curb the dangers of unfair competition. These directives set minimum thresholds. They provide for no system of supervision. They apply only where "practice or legislation in force in the member states permit."
Then there comes the whole area of guarantees of social rights, as well as structures for involving and informing the workers. This precisely is the focus of the debate over whether a "charter," and "foundation", or a "statement" is indicated. It is also on these questions that the new French chair of the EEC is loudly proclaiming his ambitions. Governments must be left the
Initiative
But, as usual, after a lot of radical verbiage in the media, the French leaders are now saying that a "charter" can be adopted in the form of recommendations (!), and that governments must be left the initiative to integrate them into their national legal systems. "Instead of following a policy of all or nothing, it is better to aim for consensus among partners," the French minister of labour has added.
There is also the attempt to create a European statute governing limited companies for firms based in at least two countries which would enjoy special tax breaks. This statute is supposed to open the way in a yet-to-be-determined form for joint representation of the workers in various countries, But this scheme has been in the works now for 13 years!
More generally, the area of contractual relations projected by Article 118 B of the treaty (in the event that "the partners consider it desirable") remains barely outlined. For the moment things are still at the level of a desire for "dialogue among social partners," on the model of the Val Duchesse meetings between the European bosses and the ETUC. 22
The unions and all the workers have an interest in seeing this lead one day to inter-professional accords and industry-wide contracts at the level of the EEC as a whole.23 But the European employers 18 remain fiercely opposed to that, because it would rapidly compromise the hoped-for effects of the Single Act regarding comparative advantages and weakening the labor movement.
The sum of such measures remains thus quite modest!? And no one has dared to predict big progress in the short term. There are indeed various sorts of con-
Thatcher rejects binding social measures
The social democrats (mainly) explain that the delays in setting up their "social Europe" are the result of the obstacle posed by the free-enterprise rightist governments, above all Thatcher's. It is true that the latter government has unrelentingly denounced schemes for binding social regulation. But the present impasse cannot be explained simply by the stubbornness of the "Iron Lady"! The British veto argument, for the moment, is being used to cover up the hypocrisy of social democrats, who are trying to reconcile the irreconcilable.
Nonetheless, there is no doubt that the social democracy is following and will continue to follow the options chosen by the employers for realizing their capital. This is what explains the increasing slippage of the French government on the "social charter" and the powder-puff war that Delors is waging against the freeenterprisers. What is involved here? In establishing European legislation, the question of national prerogatives and specificities will inevitably be posed. Where will national jurisdiction start and where European? How can such diverse situations be unified, and how can every-
This brings us back to the contradiction the ruling class faces today. It is well advanced in European integration, but for the moment it is incapable of resolving the problem of a European state. It is in fact quite significant that "in the part devoted by the treaty [the Single Act] to the 'rights and interests of the workers,' there is no obligation to adopt binding statutes and, moreover, the addition of a restrictive clause rules out majority vote in this area. "25
Facing this dilemma, Delors sees the 18. Le Monde, June 8, 1989. In 1988, in the report entitled "The social dimension of the intemal market" which was the Brussels administration's first general approach to the problem, it was already written that "there may be a middle, more nuanced road" between too binding legislation and laissez-faire. Europe sociale, special issue.
The European Trade Unions Confederation (ETUC) includes 35 confederations in 21 West European countries. It claims to bring together 44 million people, or 40% of the working people in West Europe. The French CGT and Spanish Workers' Commissions have been denied membership up until now. ETUC was founded in 1973. Its activity is essentially 20. This refers to the ETUC congress held in the Swedish capital in 1988, at which Jacques Delors declared himself in favor of a foundation "negotiated by the social partners and reflected subsequently in future in the form of a division of "tasks": "The European way does not consist of emptying national governments of their substance but rather of recreating a margin of autonomy enabling them to assume their essential tasks....The European way would enable a re-situated state to resume its mission of coherence and orientation." This is supposed to make it possible to make a distinction between the community (macro-economic) level and the national level, using "the budgetary, tax and parafiscal incentives best suited for transforming the ponderous structures of the labor market" , and, on the other hand, the regional level "where the fine adjustment of demand and supply of
But there is a gulf between projecting this and actually carrying it out. If the objective is to free the European executive from the responsibility for all concrete measures affecting the "ponderous structures" and the "fine adjustment" of the labor market, how can they claim to want at the same time to provide the EEC with social legislation binding everywhere?
Specific histories of each workers' movement
However, the difficulty goes beyond the bourgeoisie's internal conflicts. National laws represent specific histories combining the special traditions and gains of each workers movement. Thus with regard to the difficult project of a European statute on limited companies, the trade unions themselves are divided over the possible options for workers' representation, the German (co-management), French and British "mo-
The Socialist grand scheme of giving the Single Act a social angle looks more and more like a mere profession of faith. You cannot enthuse over the stimulus offered by the new forms of competition that the big market is creating and at the same time want to limit social competition workers in accordance with the unevenness of their situations from one country to another and from region to region. The "virtuous" competition that the Single Act establishes obviously EEC legislation." Le Monde, June 8, 1989. 21. Europe Sociale, Vol. 1, Supplement 7/88, Brussels. 22. Val Duchesse, a chateau in the Brussels region where an initial meeting of this type was held in November 1985. 23. The Dutch Vredeling's draft directives on the need for consulting wage camers belonging to the same European multinationals has been in mothballs for years. 24. In this article, I have deliberately left aside the question of the Social Fund and the Regional Fund, which in principle offer states the means to compensate for social setbacks or regional problems caused by the big market. It will be noted, however, that these are partial and belated mechanisms, and their use in national frameworks has already shown to have only a very limited effect. 25. Bulletin de l'IRES, No. 20, Paris, 1989, p.86.
EUROPE more contradictory, and we cannot accept the "small is beautiful" philosophy that overlaps with all the so-called theories about the disappearance of the industrial working class.
There is certainly cavo a decline in the numbers of workers in big plants and an increase of those in small and
Sewek - Kollegen
S: 35 Stondenmedium-sized enterprises. 26 But the present course of centralization of capital clearly points in another direction. And it is woshe bei includes competition between working conditions, wages and systems of social protection.
While the European big employers are moving ahead to install the Single Act, ETUC and the workers movement in general are paralyzed and sunk in the deepest confusion. The ones primarily responsible for this are the social democrats — witness Delors' conjuring act in front of the British TUC in 1988, when he claimed that the social Europe would put pressure on the Thatcher government. The Labour leadership at the time pretended that playing that card would be enough to defend the workers' interests and get new gains.
There is no more dangerous illusion for the workers movement than the idea that all that is needed to stave off the threat to social gains. is to apply pressure within the European institutions.
Soporific speeches of "socialist comrades"
This would mean taking for good coin the soporific speeches offered by the "Socialist comrades," especially those most implicated in European administration, and thinking that you can negotiate With the bosses without putting the pressure of social struggles on them at a time when they are preparing to launch major attacks against the workers through various types of deregulation. They are aiming in the same way to challenge even certain fundamental gains.
The stakes are therefore considerable, because it is out of this transition that the future relationship of forces among the classes will come. To think that the basic weapon the workers have is pressure within the European institutions, to say nothing of co-management of building the EEC, would be a suicidal illusion.
The formulation of new social gains at the all-Europe level will come out of struggles. Nothing will come from the bounty of the bosses, and not a lot more from social democrats in government. The workers will will begin to oppose the consequences of European integration in their own countries, perhaps without immediately recognizing how much is determined at the European level. But they will realize little by little that the same problems are facing other wage earners in the same company or the same industry in the EEC.
New methods of struggle required
Solidarity, and then coordination of struggles will loom as an unavoidable necessity in order to defeat the schemes of the bosses and the governments. Getting industry-wide contracts or the possibility to bring together representatives of wage earners in various countries to negotiate with the bosses of a trust will require new methods of struggle and first of all the establishment of a relationship of forces.
Many commentators have explained in these last years that the union movement should change its objectives and forms of organization in line with the multiplicasubcontracting firms, service establishments and the growing segmentation of production. The reality is much from the latter process that the workers' movement should deduce its objectives. The growing number of mergers and buy-outs in Europe and elsewhere points up the urgency for a corresponding concentration of working-class and trade-union forces.
In taking control of Plessey, GEC and Siemens "bought" 26,000 workers. The recent merger of Daimler-Benz and MBB has created an industrial group employing 380,000 wage earners. This is not the time for atomizing the trade-union movement, country by country, region by region, plant by plant, but rather for making a special effort to break down prejudices and recreate the conditions for a new internationalism, for expanding links among workers.
Convergence of nurses' struggles
The union bureaucrats will never take this direction. For them, this would mean choosing the camp of struggles, of democ racy and openness, of a definitive break with social democratic options. The dynamic of the struggles themselves, however, is objectively generating motion in that direction.
This happened with the convergence of nurses' struggles in six European countries. Today, British engineering workers are demanding a 35-hour week. Why not take advantage of this to bring about a coordinated joint struggle for this objective in the European engineering industry as a whole? * 26. The problem of unionization of small and medium enterprises is a serious problem for the workers move 19
Norwegian elections
International Viewpoint #171 • October 16, 1989
Until 1988 unemployment countries.
remained comparatively low. Even during the five years of the bourgeois governunions ment up until 1986, the trade fought and won a 37 and a half hour working week in the face of a long planned lockout by the bosses in that year.
This defeat for the bosses was the real reason behind Gro Harlem Brundtlands return to government later that year. She immediately started to demobilize the trade unions and carry through a program of transferring resources from the working class to the bosses, a program that the
THE September 11 elections in Norway showed the increasing polarization of Norwegian politics. The ultra-right Progress
Party (FrP) got 13% of the vote and 22 seats in the new
Storting (Parliament).
The other big surprise was the 10% vote for the Left Socialist
Party (SV), double Its vote in 1985. The chief losers were the traditional big parties, the Right Party (Høyre) and the ruling social democratic Norwegian Labour Party (DNA) of Prime
Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland.
RUNE SOMA
HE FrP's result was expected after they hit 12% in the local elections two years ago. The party started in the early seventies as a parallel to the Danish party of the same name. Its main focus was to protest against taxation and government regulations. After years of bitter internal conflicts, Carl I. Hagen has emerged as the party's strong man. He has turned the FrP into a well-oiled
US-style election machine with a right-wing populist ideology.
Under cover of opposing bureaucracy, the party puts forward a Thatcherite economic program of social spending cuts, reduced taxes and privatization of social services. At the same time they single out scapegoats for the country's economic and social problems — people on welfare, single mothers, the unemployed, immigrants and refugees. A small racist organization, the FMI, whose leader was recently sent to prison for a year for planning to bomb a refugee centre, campaigned for the FrP in the openly elections without any protest or comment from Carl I. Hagen.
A new bourgeois coalition promised
In fact the 13% result was a disappointment for the FrP. In the polls just before the election, the FrP was moving up towards the 20% mark — one poll even gave them more than Høyre!
In spite of their political differences, above all on the issue of Norway's relationship to the European Community, the three main bourgeois parties, Høyre, the
20 KrF (Christian Social Party, and the SP
(Center Party) promised the voters a new bourgeois coalition after the elections. They also agreed that there would be no deals with the FrP. The election results gave new confidence to the smaller partners of the bloc, KrF and SP, since, for the first time in years, they stopped losing votes, or, in the case of KrF, actually gained. The big loss of votes for Høyre, on the other hand, weakens its position in relation to its partners. It will strengthen those tendencies in the party that want to pull the party closer to the FrP, and will make the negotiations for putting together a new government very difficult. Heyday of Norwegian social democracy is passed social democracy is passed. The result for the DNA was the worst since the Second World War. The main reason for the DNA's decline is the breakdown of the social democratic model of "class compromise" established after the war. With the DNA as the arbitrator, big capital and the trade unions traded rising living standards and social reform against industrial peace and modernization. The end of the long postwar boom removed the economic foundation of this policy. In Norway, the expansion of the high-profit oil industry concealed the changed situation for many years.
The massive inflow of revenue from the North Sea gave the government plenty of room for maneuver. Although successive governments have tried to implement anti-working class policies, the results have been less than in other European bourgeois coalition was unable to implement. Interest rates were raised to restrict private consumption, a wage freeze was imposed by law, new closures of state-owned companies in trouble were pushed through and social expenditure was further restricted. In 1989 unemployment reached 100,000, the highest figure since the thirties.
Factory closures triggered sharp protests
This openly capitalist policy led to conflicts with the trade unions and the party's working class base. The wage-freeze was met with protests going far beyond the traditional left opposition in the trade unions. Factory closures, carried through with the government's blessing, have triggered sharp protests, including from the DNA's own local branch leaderships. towards the rising social problems in the cities and its direct responsibility for the unemployment, makes it difficult for the DNA to continue to portray itself as the party of the traditional working class values of solidarity and brotherhood. It also makes it very difficult for the DNA to effectively counter the FrP's ultra-right agitation. This is an important explanation for the substantial growth of the DNA's closest left competitor, the Socialist Left
Besides putting itself forward as the defender of all the traditional social democratic virtues, the SV scored high on the "green" questions. As in Europe, environmental questions are of young people. The SV has traditionally been strong in the environmental movement, both politically and through being present in the activities.
This position was strengthened during the election campaign, where the SV came came out as the only party that took "green" issues seriously. Furthermore, the SV boldly took the FrP on over a variety of issues, such as racism and social security. In the general climate of polarization, this clear-cut policy produced results.