Social democracy and the shift to the right.

[Kingfish]

What was the cause behind the major shift to the right with respect to social democratic parties (in particular those in the UK and Australia), why did it happen and why did it occur around the 1980s and not previously?


This shift happened so quickly and was so large, I have trouble understanding how members of these parties could still be a part of them after such a change.

My thinking was that it was a result of globalisation which made unions far less influential and business proportionately more influential, thus giving the parties the freedom to abandon their social democratic leanings. However my understanding of this “theory” is based more on correlation rather than a real understanding.

[Tim Cornelis]

Instinctively, I've always believed it to be globalisation as well -- increased global competitiveness making extensive social policy a strain on economic growth. Why did it occur from the 1970s onward though? Increased productive technology outside Europe? I'd be interested in an answer as well.

EDIT: Ah right, improved means of transportation of mass produced consumer goods.

[TheSocialistMetalhead]

Perhaps you should try reading texts written for social democrat party congresses in that era. That might give you some useful insights.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Perhaps you should try reading texts written for social democrat party congresses in that era. That might give you some useful insights.

Perhaps you could be more helpful and link to said texts? This is the learning forum, after all. There's meant to be an atmosphere of comradeship and cordiality here.

To the OP: a lot had to do with WW1 as a trigger I believe - it forced those within existing Social Democratic parties to practice what they preached, and clearly some who called themselves Marxian socialists were not actually prepared to abandon their latent nationalism and class collaborationism when faced with the actual prospect of war.

[Kingfish]

To the OP: a lot had to do with WW1 as a trigger I believe - it forced those within existing Social Democratic parties to practice what they preached, and clearly some who called themselves Marxian socialists were not actually prepared to abandon their latent nationalism and class collaborationism when faced with the actual prospect of war.

I can understand that shift to the right as nationalism rearing its ugly (yet surprisingly strong) head due to the sentiments stirred up by the war, however I fail to understand what was the catalyst for find the shift in the post 80s period (which I think was a far larger shift). I know technology and US dominance had been making globalisation larger but why the 80s, I mean these parties don't even try to hide their neoliberalism any more.

+ A personal anecdote before I started taking international politics seriously I genuinly thought that Tony Blair must have been a member of the Conservative Party based on what I read about him doing in regards to the house of lords and Iraq.

[Queen Mab]

There was a crisis of profitability in the 70's and early 80's that Keynesian economics (counter-cyclical state spending to keep full employment) was unable to solve. Capital realised that the only way to restore profitability was to break up the welfare state and destroy the social compact that social democracy depended on. And the huge upsurge in worker militancy after May '68 showed that a social democratic welfare state wasn't even a hedge against revolution anymore.

So basically, social democracy was junked because it didn't work. Which is why I find it maddening that some people think advocating reforms will win people over to socialism. It won't, because workers know reforms don't work.

[Popular Front of Judea]

There was a crisis of profitability in the 70's and early 80's that Keynesian economics (counter-cyclical state spending to keep full employment) was unable to solve. Capital realised that the only way to restore profitability was to break up the welfare state and destroy the social compact that social democracy depended on. And the huge upsurge in worker militancy after May '68 showed that a social democratic welfare state wasn't even a hedge against revolution anymore.

So basically, social democracy was junked because it didn't work.

It did work ... but not for the right set of people. The working class benefited from social democracy, the investor class not so much.

[Queen Mab]

It did work ... but not for the right set of people. The working class benefited from social democracy, the investor class not so much.

Er, under social democracy there was rampant exploitation, warfare, racism, sexism, violent suppression of workers and more. Social democrats lead the blunting of the post-WW1 revolutionary wave that ended in a historic defeat for the working class. So I don't really see it as beneficial.

[Popular Front of Judea]

The OP was asking about the end of the post WWII settlement ... right?

OP read David Harvey's short and accessible A Brief History Of Neoliberalism if you want to know how we ended up here.


Er, under social democracy there was rampant exploitation, warfare, racism, sexism, violent suppression of workers and more. Social democrats lead the blunting of the post-WW1 revolutionary wave that ended in a historic defeat for the working class. So I don't really see it as beneficial.

[Tim Cornelis]

Perhaps you could be more helpful and link to said texts? This is the learning forum, after all. There's meant to be an atmosphere of comradeship and cordiality here.

I think it was more of an advice where to start research, not a jab as in "geesh, why don't you go look up these texts (you idiot)" as you've seem to have interpreted it a bit.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

It did work ... but not for the right set of people. The working class benefited from social democracy, the investor class not so much.

Nah.

European social democracy was a sham. It persuaded the workers to accept lower wages in return for lower inflation. Who benefits from a low wage, low inflation economy? Financial speculators from the capitalist class, not the workers. It was only Marshall Aid, and a false confidence in the long-run relationship between output and unemployment that lasted into the 1960s, that kept the keynesian facade going for so long in the post-war period.

By the late 1960s, this facade was breaking down in Britain at least, with a devaluation and, by the 1970s, social democracy was dead. The oil crisis of 1973 was just one last pull of the trigger, with the 'social democratic' Labour government getting the UK bailed out by the IMF in 1974.

So, social democracy in Britain, for example, worked for barely two-decades before collapsing under its own contradictions. It was initiated by the capitalists, it worked for the capitalists, it was dismantled by the capitalists, and it screwed the workers. Social Democracy did NOT work for working people.

[Popular Front of Judea]

So, social democracy in Britain, for example, worked for barely two-decades before collapsing under its own contradictions. It was initiated by the capitalists, it worked for the capitalists, it was dismantled by the capitalists, and it screwed the workers. Social Democracy did NOT work for working people.

Compared to the period preceding it and the period following it did. For a brief period in American history spanning a generation we had a working middle class. No it didn't last long and there is no way to bring it back. But let's acknowledge that it did in fact exist.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Compared to the period preceding it and the period following it did. For a brief period in American history spanning a generation we had a working middle class. No it didn't last long and there is no way to bring it back. But let's acknowledge that it did in fact exist.

It wasn't keynesianism, though. It was welfare based on the fact that, coming out relatively unscathed from the war, the US could aid other countries' recoveries and established markets in Europe for its exportable goods. It was phoney and it's not something that could be re-created again, because it wasn't based on economic principles - it wasn't keynesianism working, it was dollar imperialism that allowed the western countries to bribe their populations for a short period of time.

[Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages]

How can something you admit only managed to survive for a brief period be considered a success?

[Popular Front of Judea]

How can something you admit only managed to survive for a brief period be considered a success?

Um because working peoples expectations were permanently changed? Before the war working people did not expect own a new(er) car, to have a house of their own, to have their children go on to college. We can argue about the sustainability of such a vision but the memory of that time lives on.

OP: I would also strongly encourage you to read Stayin' Alive: The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class (http://books.google.com/books/about/Stayin_Alive.html?id=h9acQrZmpmAC)

[Zukunftsmusik]

Um because working peoples expectations were permanently changed? Before the war working people did not expect own a new(er) car, to have a house of their own, to have their children go on to college. We can argue about the sustainability of such a vision but the memory of that time lives on.


Memory, shcmemory. The glorious days of social democracy was, in addition to what the boss and others have pointed out, also the glorious days of anti-communism and strangling of any possible labour conflict in the name of growth (ie. cars, self-owned houses etc).

Communists don't measure a period's success in raised standard of living, but in "amount" of class struggle. We learn from struggle, not from bigger living rooms and exotic grocieries.

[reb]

It didn't happen quickly or over night. Social-democracy has always had this inherent flaw with it's fetishist for bourgeois political structures, it's participation in parliament and it's management of capital. This also includes, as an inherent feature, the division of the labor movement with socialism and even the concept of this division being a real thing. So there was no real working class participation. So when global capital re-structured itself in the 70s, social-democracy had to follow upon it's coattails.

[Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages]

Um because working peoples expectations were permanently changed? Before the war working people did not expect own a new(er) car, to have a house of their own, to have their children go on to college. We can argue about the sustainability of such a vision but the memory of that time lives on.

I think we can clearly demonstrate that it was not a permanent change by walking outside. If it were true that peoples expectations had permanently changed, we wouldn't see strikes at the worlds largest retailer consisting of only 15 or 20 people at a time. The consciousness that was formed under the post-war economy was one that demanded more and more reforms, but little more than that outside of a few radical movements.


We can argue about the sustainability of such a vision but the memory of that time lives on.

That's kind of the point though, it's not sustainable which is why it collapsed. It didn't matter what the social democrats claimed in their congresses or what reforms they undertook, because the entire time the economy was still controlled by the capitalists, and nothing they did threatened to change that. Higher wages and new cars are fantastic, but you're only going to get them so long as the boss gets his profit. Once that gets threatened the mask comes off and out come the riot police to get you back to work. You can do this a thousand times and the results will be the same every time.

Advocating for reform is fine, who cares, but you're trying to make it into something it's not and something that history has repeatedly shown can't ever be.

[Logical seal]

Well for years we've been trying to infilrate the capitalists, What happended is they started infiltrateing us, and they did it damn well to.

[Popular Front of Judea]

I think we can clearly demonstrate that it was not a permanent change by walking outside. If it were true that peoples expectations had permanently changed, we wouldn't see strikes at the worlds largest retailer consisting of only 15 or 20 people at a time. The consciousness that was formed under the post-war economy was one that demanded more and more reforms, but little more than that outside of a few radical movements.



That's kind of the point though, it's not sustainable which is why it collapsed. It didn't matter what the social democrats claimed in their congresses or what reforms they undertook, because the entire time the economy was still controlled by the capitalists, and nothing they did threatened to change that. Higher wages and new cars are fantastic, but you're only going to get them so long as the boss gets his profit. Once that gets threatened the mask comes off and out come the riot police to get you back to work. You can do this a thousand times and the results will be the same every time.

Advocating for reform is fine, who cares, but you're trying to make it into something it's not and something that history has repeatedly shown can't ever be.

Since we are talking about the trajectory of my own family, which benefited from the post-war settlement I care. Yes it is pretty much over for the reasons that you and others have stated. That is the nature of reform. As long as we are on the treadmill that is capitalism it will always be a never ending struggle. And yes reforms will never change capitalism into anything else but capitalism

If we had the economy of the postwar period -- which pretty much ended in 1973 -- getting the morning shift to walk off the job at your local WalMart would be fairly easy. Of course it is also quite possible that WalMart would be a union shop by now. (If it in fact existed outside of Arkansas) Don't blame today's working people for an unwillingness to put their livelihoods on the line in a more unforgiving time -- and don't fault us for not being the revolutionary force that you wish us to be. We do not exist solely to further your idealistic agenda.

[the debater]

I have to ask, how would impossibilism fit into this whole picture?

[Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages]

Since we are talking about the trajectory of my own family, which benefited from the post-war settlement I care. Yes it is pretty much over for the reasons that you and others have stated. That is the nature of reform. As long as we are on the treadmill that is capitalism it will always be a never ending struggle. And yes reforms will never change capitalism into anything else but capitalism

If we had the economy of the postwar period -- which pretty much ended in 1973 -- getting the morning shift to walk off the job at your local WalMart would be fairly easy. Of course it is also quite possible that WalMart would be a union shop by now. (If it in fact existed outside of Arkansas) Don't blame today's working people for an unwillingness to put their livelihoods on the line in a more unforgiving time -- and don't fault us for not being the revolutionary force that you wish us to be. We do not exist solely to further your idealistic agenda.

I feel like you're trying to shift the argument for some reason. Who the hell is blaming working people for anything? It was explained why the post-war situation was unsustainable, why the post-war situation was unique and why it didn't actually work in spite of your conjecture otherwise. Believe it or not, I don't have any power over your family's trajectory under capitalism, so I'm not sure why you're resorting to moralistic hand wringing.

[Comrade #138672]

I have to ask, how would impossibilism fit into this whole picture?Good one. I think it confirms the viewpoint of impossibilists, at least in regard to reformism.


Instinctively, I've always believed it to be globalisation as well -- increased global competitiveness making extensive social policy a strain on economic growth. Why did it occur from the 1970s onward though? Increased productive technology outside Europe? I'd be interested in an answer as well.

EDIT: Ah right, improved means of transportation of mass produced consumer goods.Do you have a source?