Commentary No. 15, May 1, 1999
"Shoals ahead for the European left"
It is perhaps appropriate on the last May Day of the twentieth century that we discuss the serious difficulties the war in Serbia/Kosovo is about to create for the European left. May Day celebrates working-class militancy in a hostile environment, in which the government was presumed to be basically unfriendly. However, already in the late nineteenth century, European left movements, whose basic support was to be found in the working classes and the poor, decided to seek state power via electoral processes. They founded their strategy on a sociological assumption which has turned out to be false. They assumed that their social base was numerically the majority of the population and that therefore all that was needed in order to obtain state power was to secure a system of universal suffrage and then mobilize their votes.
They did in fact achieve universal suffrage and they did mobilize their votes. But nonetheless they found it difficult to win elections. What went wrong? It was the arithmetic. The working classes and the poor are indeed the overwhelming majority of the world's population. But the workings of the capitalist world-economy, concentrating wealth in a few countries, meant that, in those countries, the working classes and the poor, by the twentieth century, added up at most to 30-40% of the population. Their votes alone could not put left parties in power in western Europe (and, by extension, in North America and Australasia).
There was another consideration. In all European countries except Great Britain, the electoral system was either one of proportional representation or of elections in two rounds. Either of these systems encourages the emergence of multiple parties. The net result was not only that often there were several left (and several right) in a given country, but that the serious left (as well as the serious right) had to seek "centrist" votes in order to win elections. In general, this has been harder for the left than the right, since those who thought of themselves as "centrist" normally have been more fearful of left electoral victories than of right ones. And this of course has been especially true to the degree that the left parties at a given time in a given place used a very militant discourse, promising to "change society."
What then could left parties do? Left parties were in a position to be serious contenders in the parliamentary game only after the First World War. But even then, they did not win many elections in the interwar period. For one thing, the left parties were dramatically split between the Second and Third Internationals, and in many countries they essentially split the vote between them. One solution, pioneered by the French, was the Popular Front. This never really worked because of the depth of the chasm between the two groups and the fact that the Communist parties were tightly bound to shifts in the foreign policy of the Soviet Union. This situation continued at least until the 1960's.
But there was another problem as well. Left parties, even in countries where there was in effect only one, were placed before an elementary tactical dilemma. To attract centrist votes, they needed to moderate their program. But in doing so they risked alienating a part of their base. The trick was to pick up votes without losing an equivalent number. It turned out not to be so easy. In the post-1945 Cold War atmosphere, given these problems, right parties won more often than not. This gave rise to rethinking tactics.
Once again, the French pioneered a solution. Let us call it the Mitterand-Jospin solution. What Mitterand did in the 1981 election was to use a Popular Front tactics to achieve power, and then use power to marginalize the Communist Party. The outcome was a realignment of votes within the left bloc of votes, such that the Socialist Party was clearly the leading party. This was the period of the emergence of the Greens as well in Europe, including in France. And here is where Jospin came in. He led the French Socialist Party to an almost accidental electoral victory in 1997 and then constructed a government of what he called "la gauche plurielle" (the plural left). Unlike the Popular Front, made up of equal and mutually suspicious partners, the plural left government was a Socialist government with ministers drawn as well from the four smaller "left" parties: the Communist Party, the Greens, the MDC (a peculiarly French, Jacobinist party), and the Left Radicals (a leftover from the middle class Radical-Socialist Party that had once been strong and had been a mainstay of the 1930's Popular Front). The far left parties have remained outside, but their popular vote has been quite small.
What was interesting about the concept of the plural left is that the parties all agreed to work together on a common program despite their differences, which they talked about but said would not interfere with their participation in the government. It was a formula of constant compromise within precise agreed-upon limits. What should be noticed is that the French concept of the plural left (a dominant Socialist party combined with smaller parties) has been adopted as well, with variations according to the national situation, in Italy and Germany. Thus it is that, whereas in the beginning of this decade, virtually all European governments were right governments, by 1999, virtually all were left governments, and notably in the big four countries - France, Germany, Great Britain, and Italy - all of which had plural left governments (except Great Britain, which has a single-member, winner-take-all system of voting). It seemed not too long ago a winning formula that would be useful for many decades to come.
What has this to do with the war in Serbia/Kosovo? The plural left did survive the first shock of the NATO bombings. While the Communists, Greens, and others have been critical (or at least some of their leaders have been), they have all refused to allow their criticisms to escalate into a withdrawal from the government. BUT, and this is the important thing to realize: the critics have all made it clear that they could live with the bombings, but not with a land invasion. A land invasion could lead to serious political shakeups in France and Italy and a realignment of the German Social-Democrats with the Free Democrats. It might also lead to a crisis in the Greek government.
If the plural left collapses as a result of the war in the Balkans, it may not be so easy to reestablish a left alliance of this sort afterwards. Confidence in the viability of a plural left will have been undermined. We may then be in for a new era of right governments in western Europe. And in such a situation, even the British Labor Party might get some of the rebound.
Immanuel Wallerstein
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These commentaries, published twice monthly, are intended to be reflections on the contemporary world scene, as seen
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