By: Ian Christie

Ian Christie — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 10:40:30 +0000

Thanks for this , Andrew. I have reservations about grand cyclical models – mainly because there is only one history to test them against and derive them from – but am keen to be persuaded that we might be in a moment that is open to the revival of social democracy, which has been on the ropes in every possible respect since the mid-1970s. What is striking is just how few opportunities have arisen for and been seized by the left (of all stripes) since the current crisis of financialised capitalism broke in 2007. Social democrats were neither prepared for it or able to frame a coherent political response; the system has since been rescued by neoliberal policymakers, who are shocked but not shaken out of their worldview or political convictions. The crisis has reinforced the centre-right (and to some extent the hard right) in Europe. In the USA Obama was elected just at the wrong moment – he profited from the crisis of 2008 but has gained no kudos for his efforts to clear up the messes he inherited. Rather, the experience of systemic economic pain has energised an hysterical populist strain on the US Right, which next month stands perversely to benefit from impatience with Obama’s version of social democracy (which is bland in the extreme by European standards). How do we explain this? One answer is that the fear and insecurity of economic crisis do not produce social solidarity but a search for reassurance from familiar values and stories, and a search for scapegoats. (The Tea Party movement is in effect a scapegoat-hunt, accompanied by disjointed chants of reassuring mantras and recollection of better times.) Another is that the crisis has been big enough to scare the affluent but not big enough to make them feel much empathy with the poor. A third is that the very progress of affluence, individualism and financialised capitalism has eroded the social conditions for solidarity and the ‘intermediate associations’ and ‘commitment devices’ (Avner Offer) that gave expression to it – unions, mutuals, churches, parties. The language of social democracy has faded and the means of transmitting and amplifying it have also been badly damaged and depleted. This is not to say that left-communitarian values and institutions cannot be revived or reinvented – just that they are rebuilding from a shattered base, in a context in which the priorities of capital still set the terms of admissable public debate.

Comments on: Thinking about Ed

By: Ian Christie