David McKnight

Conference Report

Rethinking Social Democracy

What could be more appropriate in the age of neo-conservatism and in an era of post-communism than a conference devoted to an examination of the future of social democracy? Such was the motivation of the organisers of 'Rethinking Social-Democracy', the first of a series of three conferences on this theme, which took place in April 2004.	1
Held in London, the conference was sponsored by a number of European institutions including the Fondazione Instituto Gramsci in Rome, the Swedish Institute of Contemporary History and the L'Office Universitaire de Recherche Socialiste in France. On the British side, sponsors include the Fabian Society, the Manchester University Centre for Labour Studies, and the Labour Movement section of the UK Political Studies Association. Given this wide sponsorship, in many of the discussions a refreshing 'European' consciousness was present rather a narrow national awareness. It is quite clear that many French, Scandinavian and German intellectuals who support social democracy see the legal and social structure of the European Union (EU) as a vehicle for entrenching and spreading social democratic values to the East and to the South. In the context of Western Europe's stand against the invasion of Iraq, this foreshadows a longer term global re-alignment about which many hopes are held.	2
There were several impressive speeches. One was by Donald Sassoon, author of One Hundred Years of Socialism (Fontana Press, 1997). Sassoon argued that, paradoxically, the socialist movement never looked like achieving socialism and perhaps never could. But its great triumph was that it had achieved many 'non-socialist' aims such as the extension of voting rights, the eight hour day, reforms regulating working conditions, especially those for women and children, and other reforms which civilised capitalism. It had forced the capitalists to adapt some of their ideas and it had compelled the Catholic church to initiate its 'social policy'. It had promoted economic modernisation and decolonisation But it completely failed to achieve what appeared to be its central aim.	3
If we judged social democracy by the membership of the Socialist International (SI), said Marcel Van Der Linden, it appears that social democracy is undergoing a revival. From an affiliation of 36 parties in 1977, the SI now has 89 parties affiliated. The collapse of the Cold War is obviously a major factor, but as well, the SI has changed its identity. In the last 30 years, major changes have taken places in the underpinnings of social democracy. The link with trade unions is not strong and the unions themselves are weaker, the ideas of Keynsianism have collapsed, and the membership of parties is now ageing and declining. In fact social democracy is now undergoing a metamorphosis from being parties of reform with trade union backing towards something else which is not yet clear.	4
Tony Wright, one of small number of Labour MPs trying to develop an intellectual alternative to Blairism, spoke about the shock of continuing free-market ideological dominance and its persistence in the society at large after the demise of Thatcher. He noted the decline of many of the movements and institutions on which the Labour Left once relied. Today, he said, people live rich private lives but emaciated public lives. Nevertheless, he argued, love of a common life will reassert itself because of the insecurities promoted by a market society.	5
The Oxford don and former Labour MP, David Marquand, made perhaps the most controversial impact. Marquand has grappled with some of the problems in social-democratic and socialist ideas in a number of books. He spoke of socialist (actually strongly Marxist) theories of history which conveyed an inevitability of the triumph of socialism and an equally damaging over-reliance on the state as the vehicle for social change. Rather than the state, social democrats need to think about the concept of a 'public domain' which embodies different models of public participation, including local participation (eg in local hospital boards). More bleakly, he warned that the latest psychological data suggested that human beings are hard wired for suicide, presumably a reference to over consumption and global-resource depletion. The world presented problems for which traditional social democratic values had no answer, he said.	6
A backdrop to many of the conference discussions was a deep disillusionment, with the Blair Government, a widespread feeling among many academics and intellectuals, reminiscent of the early years of the Hawke government. On one level the underlying purpose of the conference seemed to be to 'rethink' a project that would answer Blair's Third Way, as well as the neo-liberal and Thatcherite project. But there was little direct debate linking past and present, with a view to the future. Instead, the historians present tended to default to the safe pastures of labour and trade union history, with few suggestions of their relevance to the current projects.	7
A recurring theme in several papers was the response of social democracy and socialist parties to affluence, youth culture, and post-material values. As well there was a move by a number of historians to take more seriously the ideas of 'revisionist' socialist writers such as Bernstein in trying to make sense of the current position of social democracy. The current of independent socialism which was opposed to both communism and to official social-democracy between 1920 and 1945 was also attractive to speakers like Stephan Berger (University of Glamorgan). The ideas of such thinkers challenged conventional socialist thinking by highlighting issues such as the morality of capitalism (rather than its economics), civil society, and non-state popular institutions. As part of this, Berger concludes, the Left must finally put aside its fixation with economics.	8
A number of Australians were present, apart from myself, and they included David Burchell of the University of Western Sydney, who spoke on Labor in office after 1983 and its aftermath under the Howard Government, and Andrew Scott, from RMIT who spoke on the modernisation of the Australian Labor Party. My own paper was largely about the need to rethink some of the fundamental values of social democracy and socialism in order to jolt the Left from its current impasse and move forward. Edited versions of it have appeared recently in the Australian Financial Review and in the Fabian Society newsletter, Australian Fabian News.	9
The next conference in the series will be held at the University of Wales, Swansea over Easter 2005, from 31 March to 2 April. Its theme will be 'The political economy of social democracy, past present and future'. More information is available at http://www. new-politics.net/current-issues/social-democracy/ rsd@new-politics.net	10

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