British citizens vote tomorrow. But, whatever some might hope, the vote is not the end of the political process. It will not clear mainstream party politics out of people's lives, It will not solve Britain's political crisis. It will make it worse.
A third or more of eligible voters will not vote. 15% of voters (nearly 4 million) say they are voting tactically and not for the parties that they support. 25% of voters who do vote will vote for non mainstream parties. (That was 10% in 2010.) Groups of newly elected MPs from different parties will bear almost no relationship to the numbers of people in the country who voted for that party. One party will, almost exclusively, represent the whole of Scotland. The largest party may be unable to form a government. Any government formed may have to rely on two parties or more - and without complete coalition arrangements. If the Tories squeeze a tiny overall majority they will lead us into political war, including their own civil war, over Europe, and almost immediately. The whole of the people of the UK, voting or not, are still further away from being genuinely represented in Parliament since winning the franchise, despite all the anxious bru ha ha of the election campaign and with the exception of the Scots. It's a dire mess.
In this context, the election in Scotland does look like a model of clarity. A highly politically educated section of the British Isles population have taken a decisive step in a broadly common direction. This seems to be a solid rock in Britain's political landscape for some time to come. But in fact, the coalescence of a large part of the Scottish working class around the SNP is simply the most dramatic aspect so far of the seismic fissures apparent within British Social Democracy, which itself is a determining element with the country's wider political crisis.
In various European countries social democracy has collapsed or is collapsing, the most obvious current example is in Greece. Italy and Spain do not now have a mass social democratic party as such. And now in Britain social democracy teeters on the edge. Naturally real life is an immensely complex and ever changing drama. And there are always different levels of explanation. However, there is a merit in underlining the simplest and most general observations as references, as they can start what inevitably will turn into a much richer discussion as it rises to the level of the concrete. In that problematic, two dates, 1989 and 2008, immediately suggest themselves as key turning points for western European social democracy.
!989 of course marked the end of the USSR. The impact of the USSR's existence on modern world history will be debated for centuries. For our purposes we need only recall what Lord Boothby said about the drastically radical programme of the post war Attlee government.
'If we do not give them reform, they will give us revolution!'
Despite Attlee's stance as a cold war warrior, the immense fact of the existence of a victorious USSR a few hundred miles away, gave pause to those in Britain (and the US) at the time who were shocked to the core about the nationalisation of the 'commanding heights', the 'giving away' of Empire and the cornucopia of free spectacles and false teeth now flowing down over all parts of the British population. In this atmosphere, Social Democracy could be successful, could restrain capitalism - 'for fear of something worse!' (It is notable that a similar reform programme was absolutely not available as British forces were demobbed after WW1, despite huge labour militancy, when the Russian Revolution was in its chaotic and crisis driven infancy.)
As Western Europe got richer and the obvious failings of a bureaucratic dictatorship in the USSR became more visible in the last quarter of the 20th century, the reforming programme of European Social Democracy began to be tailored to suit the new conditions. The emergence of France out of Guallism, and Spain and Portugal out of decayed fascism, plus a rich Common Market, meant that Social Democracy was the vehicle of choice for Common Market sponsored reform for a few years. And Scandinavian countries maintained high welfare models with weak ruling classes until globalisation. But by 2008 another great shift took place which turned a trickle of Social Democratic compromises with capitalism into a raging avalanche. Western banks nearly collapsed.
What was immediately exposed was the already great, and now accelerating, gap between those who have to work and the rich - who had turned the banks into their instant fortune making machines. And every Social Democratic party across the West joined their insistent call, that wage earners and those relying on the social wage must pay - to keep the system running. It proved a crossed Rubicon for the British Labour Party, especially in Scotland.
In Scotland working class people are voting SNP because it has presented itself as the real anti-Tory party, and it is against austerity. Labour are crippled by their own march into the lobby with the Tories, to set in law another £30 billion of cuts in the first three years of the new parliament. The SNP is becoming the new Scottish Labour Party, courtesy of the old one. It is now leading on the call for a British wide anti-Tory, anti-austerity alliance.
But does this successful manoeuvre by the SNP mark a change in the prospects of Social Democracy generally in its historical goal to find partnerships inside capitalism for reform and welfare? The SNP is of course of great significance in the evolution of Britain's current political crisis. It could quite quickly accelerate the decomposition of Miliband's parliamentary Labour Party as well as resurfacing the call for proportional representation. A left current will almost certainly grow inside the newly built SNP itself - especially if it wins an outright majority in the Holyrood elections. And that is one key sign that even the currently ecstatic SNP will not escape the unbridgeable contradictions facing the whole Social Democratic experiment in the West.
Under certain conditions as History demonstrates, Social Democracy can achieve real advances for the working classes and for society in general. The argument is now clear that such conditions show no sign of emerging in the West in general and in western Europe in particular. Where Social Democracy has not already died it is busy transforming itself into US Democratic style parties, whose basic offer is that they can manage capitalism 'better;' that have entirely broken from any commitment to a social and political base within a working class that it continually attempts to organise and renew.
The SNP will face this fact as its project of setting up another small Scandinavian country founders, and that is another political step that the Scots, in due course, will have to take. For now Britain's political crisis is full of possible dangers - for both main classes but for now the crisis is to be welcomed. Rebuilding a genuine working class movement is urgent but becoming more possible. As the murderous old Chairman once put it;
'Heaven and earth are in chaos. The prospects are good.'
Well ... they are better than they were.
No comments:
Post a Comment