* European Union
(REBATI coalition partners. He has reorganised government team, and is pushing throu the largest packet of budget cuts in th history of post-war Germany.
French prime minister Lionel Jospin has the same long-term goals. Though he is still careful to wave the flag of traditional social democratic values, in opposition to the Schroeder-Blair 'new centre.
Italian prime minister Massimo D'Alema didn't even wait until after the elections. He calmly attacked the retirement pension system during the election campaign. No surprise that his centre-left PDS scored a miserable 16%. Party leaders are now promising more consultation with trade union leaders, and less "American style" politics. ...in crisis
The elections reveal a new stage in the crisis of the traditional labour movement.
There is a fundamental shift in the relationship between social democratic parties and trade unions. For over 100 years, this pair ensured the stability of the European capitalist system, while
The new Europe? The June elections to the European Parliament sent a major shock wave through the political system. François Vercammen reports. In Italy the presidents of four parties have resigned. Social democrats in Flanders polled even less than the fascist Vlaams Blok. In France, the presidential system established by Charles de Gaulle is in terminal crisis.
The big shift in European politics is mainly the result of the crisis of social democracy. Centre-left and labour parties are in power everywhere except Spain and Ireland. As a result of their unpopular policies, part of their traditional base has deserted them.
A huge number of EU citizens didn't bother to vote. But these abstentionists aren't unpolitical. They aren't happy with the EU, but that doesn't mean they reject the idea of European integration. And former social democratic voters haven't (yet) switched their allegiance to right wing parties.
The composition of national parliaments hasn't changed (except in Belgium and Luxembourg). But the election sent clear warning signs to all the governing parties.
The centre-right European People's Party is demanding a bigger share of European Commission members (previously divided between the centre-right and centre-left blocs which dominate European politics). 2 International Viewpoint #314 September 1999
The social democrats...
More and more voters reject the current (neoliberal) political consensus, and are looking for a deep change in the way society is run. Many social democratic voters are unhappy with the antisocial policies of their "leaders'.
The Balkan war increased the popularity of "tough" social democratic prime ministers and foreign ministers. But the "Kosovo effect" didn't boost support for their governments, or make much difference to voters.
Smaller non-governmental parties which opposed the war generally suffered a fall in electoral support. Italy's Refounded Communists, Spain's United Left, and the joint French campaign of the Revolutionary Communist League (LCR) and Workers Struggle (LO) all scored less than expected.
EU leaders, most of them social democrats, have drawn their own conclusions from the latest Balkan war. They want to demonstrate EU power, through "common defence", a more effective domination of eastern and central Europe, and more coordinated top-level decision making (hence all the talk about "institutional reform.") This new muscular strategy more-or-less officially replaces their previous-formal-commitment to building a "social Europe" alongside their economic common chancellor Gerhardt Schroeder has already bitten the bullet. His social democratic party was punished by voters, but not as much as his Green wining enough reforms to maintain a significant base of support among working people.
In the 1980s, social democratic leaders tried to "disconnect" from the trade unions, to reassure the bourgeoisie. But a growing segment of the ruling class would like to reincorporate the labour movement into the political system, to improve stability. Trade union leaders are starting to realise these new possibilities, in terms of legislative access, high-level consultation, and material privileges. The problem is that the social democrats no longer have sufficient electoral credibility among working people. So how will the new relationship between capital and labour be managed?
Some social democratic parties are also wrestling with a deeper, collapse. Neoliberal reforms have alienated their base among manual and clerical workers, and they have not won significant new support among white collar voters and youth.
How heavy will the electoral consequences become? And if this means opposition, what alternative policies could they credibly argue for?
Green parties won many of the votes lost by the social democrats (except in Germany). But these parties are overwhelmingly in favour of the neoliberal consensus. They have overcome their inhibitions, and Joined governments in Germany, France and (since these elections) Belgium.
Under Joschka Fischer (Germany) and Daniel Cohn-Bendit (France), the Greens have completed their mutation into a liberal/libertarian current.
The Greens have never built a comparable base of electoral support to
the social democrats. Without a stable, organised base, they can only rely on well-educated and well-paid urban strata. This explains the recent call by Germany's Young Greens to "liquidate the protest spirit of 1968, and absorb the country's other small liberal party, the FDP.
This crisis of the old and new political forces which support the neoliberal consensus has deepened the gap between "most ordinary people"— who are unhappy and cynical, and the social movements which try to organise resistance-and "their" political-institutional representatives, who are going in the opposite direction. Desperately seeking legitimacy
The loss of sovereignty towards the EU supranational state is a particularly strong problem in the Scandinavian countries. Denmark's two anti-EU movements won more EuroParliament votes than the country's social democratic government. Sweden's (ex-Communist) Left Party won an impressive 16% 4%
Elsewhere, the situation is quite different. Most voters in Germany, France, Belgium and Holland see the EU as a fait accompli, and the only geo-economic strategy for their country. And many in Ireland, Spain, Italy and Greece see the EU as a valuable source of subsidies and other support. Of course, this does not prevent criticism of the EU, particularly where it is associated with policies of austerity and privatisation.
This north-south differentiation is likely to continue. But there is another problem emerging. The question of EU supra-nationality has begun to undermine the national political system in Britain and France two of the largest countries
Dissident nationalists split the vote of Britain's Conservatives and France's Gaullist right. Both parties have a long history, and sizable support within the working class and petty bourgeoisie. They cannot easily digest and enthusiastically support the surrender of national sovereignty involved in the single European currency, and fiscal and military
Most of Britain's Labour voters are also opposed to closer European integration. So are French socialists of the Chevenement current, and supporters of the Communist Party (PCF). France's influential intellectual circles are also increasingly suspicious of the supranational EU state. Europe of regions
Meanwhile, the growing political importance of national and regional questions has actually strengthened the European Union. Politicians in Corsica, Scotland and Wales are arguing for a weaker link with central government, in a framework of EU cooperation.
Since "independence within Europe" offers stability plus national identity, nationalist and regional parties are gaining strength everywhere.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair thought decentralisation would reinforce Labour's traditional domination of the Scottish and Welsh political climate. He could not have been more wrong. In Spain too, regional and separatist parties are gaining ground, particularly in municipal elections.
This new dynamic reflects a vast, complex democratic question, which neither the nation states-nor the EUcan yet solve. State and society
The other great question which haunted the June EuroElections was the relationship between state and society.
Not only is there a debate about the state's role in economic regulation (the world crisis, "interference, globalisation). But state in social relationships is less and less tolerated.
This is a very contradictory process, partly reflecting the omnipresence of the market, and "free" competition, partly reflecting the shift of power from politicians to judges, and partly the result of the evaporation of traditional schemes to protect the poor and the weak.
This process also reflects the growing self-awareness of "civil society." All forms of domination are challenged-though not with the same subversive spirit as in 1968.
Moral attitudes on fundamental questions like life, death, birth, sexuality and education are evolving rapidly. This requires new legal responses to questions of civilisation like homosexuality, abortion, euthanasia and genetic engineering.
Progressive parties aren't the only ones finding it hard to respond. The Christian-democratic right is also in deep
The Pope is not making their life any easier. His obsession is saving the Catholic church from the steady decline in religiosity across western Europe. He has increasingly intervened in Italian and world politics.
On questions of capitalist exploitation, debt, the commercialisation of everyday life and human relations, and the Balkan war, the Pope is certainly to the left of "modernists" like the Greens, the social democrats, and "official" intellectuals. So his solution to the existential crisis is both reactionary and 'against the current."
The 'Pope factor' has helped smash up the Christian democrats, to the great joy of right-wing mavericks like Silvio Berlusconi. The slow reinvention of Flanders' Christian Democrats recently collapsed. Even Germany's CDU-CSU is loosing its urban voters, and increasingly becoming a party of the old, the rural and the reactionary.
Germany's conservatives did well in contents europe
2
The new Europe
• Francois Vercammen
4
The revolutionary vote in
France • Alain Mathieu
5
Portugal: Left Bloc
• Luis Branco
Britain: the cost of left
6 disunity • Veronica Fagan
6
Italy: Rethinking 'Rifondazione' • Livio Maitan
7
Spain: terrible result for
United Left • Jaime Pastor
Sweden: EuroPassivity
8
• Peter Lindgren americas
9
Québec's left
• Marc Bonhomme
Indonesia's Marxists
10
The power of propaganda
• PRD Education chief Wilson
12 They still jail trade unionists • Dita Sari
14
With the workers
Youth and the revolution
16
• Pramoedya Anata Toer asia
18
Vietnam's black gold
• Gerard Greenfield
21
Profile: Socialist Party of
Malaysia
22
Kashmir: Indian and
Pakistani left critics
23 Israel: Barak's dilema
• Michel Warshawski economics
24 The return of Keynes?
• Nicolas Benies
27 The fall of Eastern Europe
• Lázló Andor listings and reviews
28
Books:
• Löwy on nationalism
• neoliberalism in NZ
• India's Communists
Conference listing
34
35
ATTAC conference report
36
Magazines
36
Internet
International Viewpoint #314 September 1999 - 3
* European elections the Euro Elections, but much of this success went to the Bavarian CSU, a clearly reactionary and specifically Bavarian party. Their CDU partners in the rest of Germany actually lost votes.
The electoral awakening of the hard right current has generally taken votes away from the traditional conservative parties. Left recomposition
In this context, a new, radical left is taking shape across Europe. It includes the "Trotskyist" LO-LCR list in France, other far left groups which have outgrown sectarianism and ultra-leftism, those Communist Parties which have survived the collapse of Stalinism and (at least partially) distanced themselves from that phenomena, some currents of social democracy, and some (unstable) Green uiguon1 довл
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