Political parties: Lonely at the top (Economist article)

[Die Neue Zeit]

http://www.economist.com/node/21559901



BELONGING to a political party has never been cheaper. It costs just €20 ($25) a year to be a member of the Socialist Party in France. Britain’s Conservatives ask you to stump up only £25 ($39). New political movements set you back even less (£12 for membership of the Pirate Party UK), or are more like social networks (merely signing up online makes you a tea-party “member” in America).

Yet despite such attractive prices, Europeans and Americans are turning away in droves from affiliating with any one party. Membership has been falling for many years, but the decline seems to be accelerating and taking on a different quality. The factors that gave rise to mass parties are fading and unlikely to return, as Ingrid van Biezen of Leiden University and her colleagues argue in a recent paper ominously entitled “Going, going… gone?”.

Party membership has shrivelled in Europe since the 1980s, and at an especially fast rate in the first decade of this century. In roughly ten years up to 2008 party membership fell in Germany by 20%, in Sweden by 27% and in Norway by 29%. In Britain, where the decline is even more pronounced at 36%, the Caravan Club now has more members than all the political parties put together. Not everywhere has seen the same trend: parties remain strong in Austria, for instance. In Italy membership has even bounced back somewhat, thanks to newish parties such as the Northern League.

In America, where people can state a party preference when registering to vote, the proportion of voters eschewing a party affiliation and calling themselves “independent” reached an average of 40% last year, a record high. The share of independents usually drops in presidential-election years, but in May the figure touched 44%—nine points more than at the same stage of the campaign in 2008 (see chart).

People have many reasons for falling out of love with parties. In a globalised and complex world, more voters doubt that politicians can solve their problems. As individualism has grown stronger, political tribalism has weakened. The decline of unions has hurt parties on the left.

But shifts in the media and in technology matter, too. Forty years ago political parties could still count on a mostly deferential media. Now the internet lets multitudes of politicos thrive. Many voters see better ways of making their voices heard than parties, which Russell Dalton, of the University of California at Irvine, terms “old technology”. Blogging provides more interesting forums than ward meetings ever did. The internet also reduces the cost of asserting your political identity. Why fill out forms and carry a party card when you can sign a petition online, tweet and sport a wristband to show you care?

A parallel development is the rise of a new type of voter, whom Mr Dalton terms “apartisan”. This is not just a new label for swing voters who respond like weathervanes to the gusts of policy that parties put out. Rather, explains Mr Dalton, apartisans are “floating voters on steroids”: they are young, educated and vote at almost the same rate as partisans. They can be on the right or left. They are not interested in parties explaining their programmes to them. Instead, they try to get parties to adopt their views on issues they care about.

Single-issue pressure groups have always been a feature of politics, but apartisan voters are now shaking up American elections. Exhibit one is the tea party. But apartisan voters are present in European politics, too, accounting now for a fifth of the electorate in Germany and Switzerland. Their voting preferences are very fluid: in the 2009 German election, half of apartisan voters said they settled on their vote only in the last week of the campaign.

Despite their declining membership, the established parties are remarkably robust. Americans Elect, a much-heralded internet-based project to find a third-party centrist presidential candidate to challenge the dominant two, has flopped. Newer and minor parties have done better in recent European elections, but none has succeeded in winning power outright.

Some say that the old parties could even stage a comeback—thanks to prolonged economic troubles. Ms Van Biezen highlights what she calls the “re-politicisation” of parties. One example is in Greece, where Syriza has transformed itself from a loose alliance of left-wing groups into the formal main anti-austerity party.

It is more likely that the decoupling of voters from political parties will continue. But how much does it matter? Party leaders may not mind much. They will not have to listen to all those pesky members’ resolutions at party gatherings. And although it may be harder for a party to run a campaign with fewer volunteers, it is not necessarily bad for governing, argues Mr Dalton. Politicians will give more weight to wider opinion outside the party.

Even so, there are drawbacks. Without fee-paying supporters, parties will have to find financing elsewhere—which makes them more dependent on donations from vested interests. Paul Whiteley of the University of Essex notes the increasing separation of political life from the rest of society. In the 1950s most Britons would have known somebody who was a party member. Now, few do. Ms Van Biezen thinks that as parties hollow out, celebrity and dynastic politicians may become more prevalent. And a more fragmented political spectrum can make forming governments much harder.

The risk is that mass political parties, despite being abandoned by many of their members, will seem strong—until they quickly fall apart. History is littered with once-dominant institutions that were imperceptibly hollowed out and then suddenly collapsed. Such a tipping point could be near, particularly in Europe. If so, the landscape of Western politics could suddenly look very unfamiliar.

[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

Great article comrade! I prefer to read the Business press the most since they sort of need the ruling class to be informed.

[Die Neue Zeit]

To put my time-and-again point in a more negative spin: class-for-itself, genuine class struggle (class-based political struggle), etc. can be chucked out the window if workers don't realize the imperative to form a concrete political party-movement of its own. All we'll get are the "vested interests" behind every celebrity and dynastic "politician."

[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

To put my time-and-again point in a more negative spin: class-for-itself, genuine class struggle (class-based political struggle), etc. can be chucked out the window if workers don't realize the imperative to form a concrete political party-movement of its own. All we'll get are the "vested interests" behind every celebrity and dynastic "politician."

Yes, of course. I do not understand what you were trying to transmit in the last sentence though, sorry.

[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

Generally this is a good development, and to be honest, the article is quite (surprisingly) forward in its conclusion!

[Dennis the 'Bloody Peasant']

In terms of resources and funds, any existing working class party has got some stiff competition. For example,

UK Parties income for 2011

Labour (£31.3m)
Conservatives (£23.6m)
Lib Dems (£6.2m)
SNP (£5m)
Co-operative Party (£1.09m)
UKIP (£1.06m)
Green Party (£710,253)
BNP (£648,890)
Plaid Cymru (£624,253)
Not saying that success / support for any workers party is a dependant on money alone, but it's gonna be hard to beat even the smallest bourgeois party in terms of numbers.
Admittedly, I don't have solutions to this but felt like pointing it out and getting others' perspective.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

That's a very good article, actually. And quite true, too, from my short experience with the local Labour Party a few years ago. An absolute shell, it was.

To the above poster^^^, I wouldn't worry about any mass working class party in terms of money (if that is what you desire), since by definition a mass party would have at least a few hundred thousand members and probably into the millions - it would easily be able to compete financially just off membership dues alone, if it was a genuinely mass party. Only the demise of teh Labour Party would lead to space for a left-of-Labour mass party, if you think that is a desirable outcome.

[Dennis the 'Bloody Peasant']

That's a very good article, actually. And quite true, too, from my short experience with the local Labour Party a few years ago. An absolute shell, it was.

To the above poster^^^, I wouldn't worry about any mass working class party in terms of money (if that is what you desire), since by definition a mass party would have at least a few hundred thousand members and probably into the millions - it would easily be able to compete financially just off membership dues alone, if it was a genuinely mass party. Only the demise of teh Labour Party would lead to space for a left-of-Labour mass party, if you think that is a desirable outcome.

Fair enough, a truly mass party would have all the support and clout (physically and financially) to challenge the current two party rule.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Yes, of course. I do not understand what you were trying to transmit in the last sentence though, sorry.

In that last sentence, I was merely paraphrasing from the article.


Generally this is a good development, and to be honest, the article is quite (surprisingly) forward in its conclusion!

Why? I am arguing that this is a bad development. The article was about "political parties" in general, not just mainstream "parties."

[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

"The risk is that mass political parties, despite being abandoned by many of their members, will seem strong—until they quickly fall apart."

Well seeing as most party memberships are to mainstream parties i thought this was a positive sign... hm, i think i see now what you mean though. You mean oligarchic politics and superficial politics are a bad development, yes.

[Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages]

Perhaps the time for political parties is at an end? Is it realistic to expect this tactic to last forever? Social democracy was revolutionary only for a period of time, how do we determine when vanguard or mass parties have reached the end of their usefulness?

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

how do we determine when vanguard or mass parties have reached the end of their usefulness?

1991.

We have over 20 years of evidence of the decline of the usefulness, impact and popularity of both vanguard and mass parties.

I'm no political scientist - though I have studied a bit - but it seems to me as though the party model is failing, both through the eyes of the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.

[Tim Finnegan]

I would be interested to hear how the partyists would explain the failure of any meaningful party-orientated tendency to emerge out of the UK student struggles of recent years. Given that students are, as a stratum, already prone to radicalisation, and already disproportionately represented among the ranks of the sects, it seems like we should have seen a mass-influx of students to the ranks of the various would-be vanguards. And yet, nothing of the sort occurred. A trickle, maybe, but nothing demographically significant, and not even enough to threaten the staggering turnover these parties have among that age group. So what gives?

[Q]

Why? I am arguing that this is a bad development. The article was about "political parties" in general, not just mainstream "parties."

To be honest, it doesn't surprise me a bit that we see this development. To sum up the grander historical overview: Mass parties are an invention from the later 19th century and were pioneered by the Marxist left. The bourgeois politicians only assimilated this form as to adapt themselves to a perceived threat.

Later, these parties transformed, to fit electoral goals and soon parties came to be synonymous with parliamentary, thus bourgeois, politics. Since the collapse of the left during the 1980's and 1990's, the whole need for bourgeois politicians to have mass parties has become redundant and even counter-intuitive. Of course we see a move to celebrity politics and dynasties. This is the essence of capitalist politics, where your vote is brought down to a brand of capitalist oppression.

In the Netherlands we have seen a similar trend. Markedly, Geert Wilders has explicitly chosen to make his party a no-membership party. He's the only member of the PVV. Total control.

I agree with Workers-Control-Over-Prod that the collapse of this form of politics is a good thing. Parties as vote-raising apparatuses is simply not what communists are about. A communist party is a genuine part of the working class movement, namely that part that consists of worker-leaders that try to educate, agitate and organize our class for revolutionary emancipation.

Parliamentary work is in this context one tactic, but that is not what most parties on the left are about. Parliamentarism, founding the party on the basis that gaining votes is all what really matters, has nothing to do with communist politics and I say good riddance to it.

[Vanguard1917]

I agree with Workers-Control-Over-Prod that the collapse of this form of politics is a good thing. Parties as vote-raising apparatuses is simply not what communists are about. A communist party is a genuine part of the working class movement, namely that part that consists of worker-leaders that try to educate, agitate and organize our class for revolutionary emancipation.

There would indeed be little point in trying to reinvigorate the old party politics. However, that's not to say that the conditions which caused its decline are particularly favourable. If party politics in bourgeois society was a product of the struggle between class forces, doesn't the decline of party politics reveal something about the current state of class politics? It seems to me that the 'hollowing out' of the main parties is very closely related to the fact that class politics no longer plays a central role in political life or society in general.

[Q]

There would indeed be little point in trying to reinvigorate the old party politics. However, that's not to say that the conditions which caused its decline are particularly favourable. If party politics in bourgeois society was a product of the struggle between class forces, doesn't the decline of party politics reveal something about the current state of class politics? It seems to me that the 'hollowing out' of the main parties is very closely related to the fact that class politics no longer plays a central role in political life or society in general.

My point is that the so-called working class parties for much of its existence in the 20th century only served to manage the class struggle in the favour of the continued existence of capitalism. It is a good thing that this form of politics is dying. It creates a new space for communists to operate in.

To put it negatively though, the further collapse of the existing mass parties shows to me that the working class lacks organisation as a class-collective and this is indeed the main question we need to resolve. We see quite a few experiments to solve this question and Occupy is just one very big example.

[Die Neue Zeit]

In the Netherlands we have seen a similar trend. Markedly, Geert Wilders has explicitly chosen to make his party a no-membership party. He's the only member of the PVV. Total control.

So I just read!


I agree with Workers-Control-Over-Prod that the collapse of this form of politics is a good thing.

How, comrade, would one then describe organizationally the likes of Die Linke, Front de gauche, etc.? I wouldn't characterize them as party-movements, but the decline of "political parties" would include these two baby steps under that umbrella. IIRC, membership in Die Linke itself fell recently.


Parties as vote-raising apparatuses is simply not what communists are about. A communist party is a genuine part of the working class movement, namely that part that consists of worker-leaders that try to educate, agitate and organize our class for revolutionary emancipation.

True.


Parliamentary work is in this context one tactic, but that is not what most parties on the left are about.

Again, true, since spoilage campaigns haven't been considered.

[Q]

How, comrade, would one then describe organizationally the likes of Die Linke, Front de gauche, etc.? I wouldn't characterize them as party-movements, but the decline of "political parties" would include these two baby steps under that umbrella. IIRC, membership in Die Linke itself fell recently.

A good question. Communists ought to be active in these parties, winning them where possible towards becoming a party-movement. This inevitably involves a battle around programme or the question "what are we building this party for? what is it supposed to do?".

These days that would be my take on work in the Dutch SP... If they'd ever let me back in. Actually, the SP is more backward and there is still a battle to be had on democracy within its ranks, as to break with its sectarian and bureaucratic culture.

[Vanguard1917]

My point is that the so-called working class parties for much of its existence in the 20th century only served to manage the class struggle in the favour of the continued existence of capitalism. It is a good thing that this form of politics is dying. It creates a new space for communists to operate in.

I agree with your first sentence completely, and i also agree that the demise of parties like Labour should not be mourned, but the disintegration of the old forms of political confrontation is still largely a product of the collapse of class politics. If class politics did re-emerge in society, and if the working class began to constitute itself as a political force once again, i can certainly see how the current dire and discredited state of social democracy and Labourism could potentially be advantageous. As things stand, however, the same developments which have caused the near-death of party politics have made the politics of socialism seem pretty irrelevant too. In other words, the demise of class politics - and the Occupy phenomenon you mentioned is, IMO, a very good illustration of this demise - is the cause not only of changes which we can maybe interpret as positive (the death of the old bourgeois parties which dominated the working class movement), but also of the downfall of radical leftwing politics.

[Q]

In other words, the demise of class politics [...] is the cause not only of changes which we can maybe interpret of positive (the death of the old bourgeois parties which dominated the working class movement), but also of the downfall of radical leftwing politics.

No contest there, be it that I place the collapse of communist politics much earlier, at latest at somewhere in the 1930's. After that we saw the workers movement dominated by Stalinoid parties ("official" communism) on the one hand and the Social-Democratic parties on the other.

"Official" communism has become irrelevant and mostly a historical factor and with that Social-Democracy also no longer had a break in pursuing its logical course of development towards neoliberal corporatism.

So, my contention is that while it may appear that the workers movement has collapsed in the last twenty years or so, since the fall of the USSR, in actual fact what we see in the West is only a collapse of the workers movement as managed by pro-capitalist forces.

This explains far better why it is so difficult for the far left to reorganize and why many predictions of its rise haven't come true so far, or at least not on a viable basis. We after all need to come to terms with a crisis we've been in for the past 80 years, if not more, despite that it may have appeared that the radical left was moderately successful in several countries in, for example, the 1960's to 1980's. It was however dependent on the bourgeois workers movement for this growth.

This brings me back to parties like Die Linke, Syriza, et al: As long as they remain within the parliamentarist strand of politics, they are simply not fit for purpose regarding any type of alternative that aims to transcend capitalism. Communists shouldn't fight for such parties to come to power. Instead, we should fight for the potential of transforming these organisations into a genuine mass party-movement. A different kind of party.

[Vanguard1917]

So, my contention is that while it may appear that the workers movement has collapsed in the last twenty years or so, since the fall of the USSR, in actual fact what we see in the West is only a collapse of the workers movement as managed by pro-capitalist forces.

So would you argue that a substantial workers' movement continues to be present in, say, the UK or the Netherlands? Didn't the collapse of social democracy/Labourism/'official communism' go hand in hand with the virtually unmitigated defeat of the working class in the 1980s?

[Q]

So would you argue that a substantial workers' movement continues to be present in, say, the UK or the Netherlands? Didn't the collapse of social democracy/Labourism/'official communism' go hand in hand with the virtually unmitigated defeat of the working class in the 1980s?

I think we're not linking up or communicating past each other for some reason.

Yes, the working class movement has collapsed in the past twenty or so years. This is a simple observable fact.

My point is that what has collapsed was not an independent, international and democratic working class movement, but one that was subservient to the state, nationalistic and bureaucratic. If our measure stick is the former type of movement, a communist movement, we really haven't seen such a movement on any big scale since the 1930's. Hence my statement that the far left really has been in a political crisis for the past 80 years.

[Q]

These days that would be my take on work in the Dutch SP... If they'd ever let me back in. Actually, the SP is more backward and there is still a battle to be had on democracy within its ranks, as to break with its sectarian and bureaucratic culture.

Actually, just signed the application form again. Wonder if I hear something back this time. But I don't get my hopes up.

[Die Neue Zeit]

As per my previous thread on bourgeois worker parties, I disagree with the CPGB in mourning about the Labour party. If it takes the replacement of the Labour party by the Lib Dems to open up space for a British equivalent of SYRIZA programmatically, of Die Linke and Front de gauche logistically, plus of all of them "charismatically," then that's a big step forward.

[Vanguard1917]

Yes, the working class movement has collapsed in the past twenty or so years. This is a simple observable fact

OK - i wasn't sure whether you were implying that only the former political leadership had collapsed while the movement itself remained intact.

But you're of course right that the working-class movement for most of the 20th century lacked political independence and a Marxist outlook. In Britain, workers' (and the wider left's) loyalty to Labourism was arguably the key barrier to the movement's progress.

Despite that, though, a workers' movement at least existed as a living, breathing force - one whose direction was often unpredictable and could be influenced through organisation and agitation. The situation today is unique in the sense that, for the first time in well over a century, the working class has no substantial existence as a collective political force in society, at least in the West.