European elections provide some shocks
By François Vercammen
The June elections to the European Parliament sent a major shock wave through the political system.
In Italy, the presidents of four parties have resigned. Social democrats in Flanders polled even less than the fascist Vlaams Bloc. In France, the presidential system established by Charles de Gaulle is in terminal crisis.
The big shift in European politics is mainly the result of the crisis of social democracy. Centre-left and labour parties are in power everywhere except Spain and Ireland. As a result of their unpopular policies, part of their traditional base has deserted them.
A huge number of EU citizens didn't bother to vote. But these abstentionists aren't apolitical; former social democratic voters haven't (yet) switched their allegiance to right-wing parties.
The composition of national parliaments hasn't changed (except in Belgium and Luxembourg). But the elections sent clear warning signs to all the governing parties.
The centre-right European People's Party is demanding a bigger share of European Commission members (previously divided between the centre-right and centre-left blocs which dominate European politics).
Social crisis
More and more voters reject the neo-liberal political consensus and are looking for a deep change in the way society is run. Many social democratic voters are unhappy with the anti-social policies of their "leaders".
The Balkans war increased the popularity of "tough" social democratic prime ministers and foreign ministers. But the "Kosovo effect" didn't boost support for their governments, or make much difference to voters, and smaller, non-governmental parties which opposed the war generally suffered a fall in electoral support.
European Union (EU) leaders, most of them social democrats, have drawn their own conclusions from the war. They want to demonstrate EU power through "common defence", a more effective domination of eastern and central Europe and more coordinated top-level decision making (hence all the talk about "institutional reform"). This new muscular strategy more or less officially replaces their previous, formal, commitment to building a "social Europe" alongside their economic common market.
German Chancellor Gerhardt Schröder has already bitten the bullet. His Social Democratic Party was punished by voters, but not as much as his Green coalition partners. He has reorganised his government and pushed through the largest packet of budget cuts in the history of postwar Germany.
French Prime Minister Lionel Jospin has the same long-term goals, though he is still careful to wave the flag of traditional social democratic values, in opposition to the Schröder-Blair "new centre".
Italian Prime Minister Massimo D'Alema didn't even wait until after the elections, calmly attacking the retirement pension system during the election campaign. It was no surprise that his centre-left Party of the Democratic Left scored a miserable 16%. Party leaders are now promising more consultation with trade union leaders, and less "American-style" politics.
Labour movement
The elections revealed a new stage in the crisis of the traditional labour movement.
There is a fundamental shift in the relationship between social democratic parties and trade unions. For more than 100 years, this pair ensured the stability of the European capitalist system, while winning enough reforms to maintain a significant base of support among working people.
In the 1980s, social democratic leaders tried to disconnect from the trade unions, to reassure the bourgeoisie. But a growing segment of the ruling class would like to reincorporate the labour movement into the political system, to improve stability. Trade union leaders are starting to realise these new possibilities, in terms of legislative access, high-level consultation and material privileges.
The problem is that the social democrats no longer have sufficient electoral credibility among working people. So how will the new relationship between capital and labour be managed?
Some social democratic parties are also wrestling with a deeper, "strategic" collapse. Neo-liberal reforms have alienated their base among manual and clerical workers, and they have not won significant new support among white-collar voters and youth. If this means passing from government into opposition, what alternative policies could they credibly argue for?
Green parties won many of the votes lost by the social democrats (except in Germany), but these parties are overwhelmingly in favour of the neo-liberal consensus. They have overcome their inhibitions and joined governments in Germany, France and (since these elections) Belgium.
Under Joschka Fischer (Germany) and Daniel Cohn-Bendit (France), the Greens have completed their mutation into a liberal/libertarian current.
The Greens have never built a comparable base of electoral support to the social democrats. Without a stable, organised base, they can only rely on well-educated and well-paid urban strata. This explains the recent call by Germany's Young Greens to "liquidate" the protest spirit of 1968, and absorb the country's other small liberal party, the Free Democratic Party.
This crisis of the old and new political forces which support the neo-liberal consensus has deepened the gap between "most ordinary people" (who are unhappy and cynical) and the social movements which try to organise resistance, and "their" political-institutional representatives, who are going in the opposite direction.
The loss of sovereignty to the EU supra-national state is a particularly strong problem in the Scandinavian countries. Denmark's two anti-EU movements won more European Parliament votes than the country's Social Democratic government. Sweden's (ex-Communist) Left Party won an impressive 16%.
Elsewhere, the situation is quite different. Voters in Germany, France, Belgium and Holland see the EU as a fait accompli and the only geo-economic strategy for their country. Voters in Ireland, Spain, Italy and Greece see the EU as a valuable source of subsidies and other support. Of course, this does not prevent criticism of the EU, particularly where it is associated with policies of austerity and privatisation.
This north-south differentiation is likely to continue. The question of EU supra-nationality has begun to undermine the "national" political system in Britain and France, two of the largest countries in the EU.
Dissident nationalists split the vote of Britain's Conservatives and France's Gaullist right. Both parties have a long history and sizeable support within the working class and petty bourgeoisie. They cannot easily digest and enthusiastically support the surrender of national sovereignty involved in the single European currency and fiscal and military integration.
Most of Britain's Labour voters are also opposed to closer European integration. So are French socialists of the Chevenement current, and supporters of the Communist Party. France's influential intellectual circles are also increasingly suspicious of the supranational EU state.
Europe of regions
The growing political importance of national and regional questions has actually strengthened the EU. Politicians in Corsica, Scotland and Wales are arguing for a weaker link with central government, in a framework of EU cooperation. Since "independence within Europe" offers stability plus national identity, nationalist and regional parties are gaining strength everywhere.
British PM Tony Blair thought decentralisation would reinforce Labour's traditional domination of the Scottish and Welsh political climate. He could not have been more wrong. In Spain too, regional and separatist parties are gaining ground, particularly in municipal elections.
The other great question which haunted the European elections was the relationship between state and society. Not only is there a debate about the state's role in economic regulation (the world crisis, globalisation), but state "interference" in social relationships is less and less tolerated.
This is a very contradictory process, partly reflecting the omnipresence of the market and "free" competition, partly the shift of power from politicians to judges and partly the result of the evaporation of traditional schemes to protect the poor and the weak.
But this process also reflects the growing awareness of "civil society". All forms of domination are being challenged, though not with the same subversive spirit as in 1968.
Moral attitudes on fundamental questions like life, death, birth, sexuality and education are evolving rapidly, which requires new legal responses to homosexuality, abortion, euthanasia and genetic engineering.
Progressive parties aren't the only ones finding it hard to respond. The Christian Democratic right is also in deep confusion.
The pope's increasing intervened in Italian and world politics has helped smash up the Christian Democrats. The slow reinvention of Flanders' Christian Democrats recently collapsed and even Germany's Christian Democratic Union-Christian Social Union (CDU-CSU) is losing its urban voters and increasingly becoming a party of the old, the rural and the reactionary.
Germany's conservatives did well in the European elections, but much of this success went to the CSU, a clearly reactionary and specifically Bavarian party.
The electoral awakening of the hard right current has generally taken votes away from the traditional conservative parties.
Left recomposition
In this context, a new, radical left is taking shape across Europe. It includes the Workers Struggle-Revolutionary Communist League list in France, other far-left groups which have outgrown sectarianism and ultra-leftism, those Communist parties which have survived the collapse of Stalinism and (at least partially) distanced themselves from that phenomenon, some currents of social democracy and some (unstable) Green currents.
Despite its growing electoral success, this radical left movement is still very clearly a counter-current, in a general climate of working-class defensiveness.
The challenge for these parties is to address the actually existing society, recognising its centres of resistance, organisation and militant vitality.
West European society is increasingly agitated. Can the anti-capitalist left parties overcome the inadequacies of their past, and find the organisational forms, activities and ideas to capture the radical spirit?
[Abridged from the July-August issue of Inprecor, the French sister magazine of International Viewpoint. Contact IV at <International_Viewpoint@compuserve.com> or subscribe by sending $35 payable to Solidarity Publications, PO Box A105, Sydney South NSW 2000.]