After the new social democracy

Tony Fitzpatrick

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780719064777
• eBook ISBN: 9781847795724
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

Collating a range of social and political theories, this study engages with contemporary debates regarding the present direction and future of the Left. It proposes that the social democratic tradition can be renewed but only if the dominance of conservative ideas is challenged more effectively.

PART I

1
The long march back

If Eric Hobsbawm (1994) is right and the twentieth century effectively ended in 1991, then the new millennium was considerably less new by the time we were popping the corks, the balloons and, most importantly, the aspirin. And if he is also correct to portray the last century as the ‘age of extremes’, then where does this leave us? Have we become wise enough to avoid the mistakes of the past or have we simply been experiencing the interregnum before the emergence of new forms of extremism? Tony Giddens (1994) had the foresight to recognise that these alternatives are not necessarily exclusive, that reflexivity and fundamentalism are both coherent responses to the risks of our ‘second modernity’ (Beck, 1992; Beck et al., 1994). This ambivalence has characterised the post-communist years, with the globalisation of deregulated markets, consumer values and western power being accompanied, first, by the mobilisation of social movements opposing corporate capitalism and then by the globalisation of insecurity, fear and revenge (Mouzelis, 2001).

Yet is Giddens (1998, 1999, 2000, 2001) also correct to suppose that the NSD is the best means of charting a way through this landscape of confusion and ambiguity? Possibly, if we accept the following reasoning. All attempts to construct ideal societies have failed. The state utopias of the Left have led either to totalitarianism or to a crippling backlash of taxpayers, consumers and capital markets; the market utopias of the Right have led to social exclusion and civic decline. Therefore, we should not only attach ourselves to the political Centre, but also seek to radicalise that Centre by evading the conceptual barriers between Left and Right, public and private, state and market, justice and efficiency, security and flexibility, equality and freedom. It is this radicalisation that Giddens refers to as the NSD.¹ By transcending these dichotomies – rather than simply trading off between them – we provide ourselves with an alternative not only to the ‘Old Left’ and ‘New Right’, but also to the siren calls of nationalist, ethnic and religious fundamentalists. For if we can find a way to negotiate the risks and hazards of this second modernity, through the emotional and cultural empowerment of reflexive citizens, then we can better resist the nihilistic certainties of the ‘new extremisms’.

This is a powerful and compelling narrative but does it stand up to scrutiny? The purpose of this book is to engage with key features of the NSD in order to answer that question and to suggest why and how more radical alternatives can be developed. The aim of Part I is to criticise those key features in order to help us towards an outline of an alternative social philosophy in Part II, one that I shall term ‘ecosocial welfare’ or ‘ecowelfare’ for short. We begin in this first chapter by reviewing the main principles, justifications of and main objections to the NSD. Some of the following objections are then pursued at greater length in Chapters 2–4 as a means of setting us up for the arguments in Part II.

New Labour

A political ideology is a constellation of ‘nodes’ (ideas, principles and concepts) which establish a set of relations between one another that are constantly evolving, due to the theoretical developments of that ideology’s supporters and its critics, and to changing circumstances both in society and in other ideological formations. The NSD undoubtedly constitutes such an ideology. It contains (a) a critique of existing society, (b) an impression of a better one and (c) an explanation of how to get from (a) to (b) (Ball and Dagger, 1991). Yet the core components of the NSD are by no means unique to itself. Instead, it borrows its primary values and principles from established ideologies but rearranges them in such a way that a distinctive ideological position emerges nevertheless. This not only makes the NSD what Freeden (1996) calls a ‘thin’ ideology, in that its nodes are not peculiar to itself, but means that the relational network linking its core components is in an accelerated state of flux, given the nature of the NSD’s intervention into our social conjuncture. Indeed, some have argued that pragmatism and populism are the key features of the NSD (Powell, 2000) and that it is little more than a practice in search of a few philosophical trimmings that hardly constitute an ideology. While agreeing that the NSD lacks the focus and robustness of liberalism, socialism, feminism, etc., its possession of (a), (b) and (c) means that pragmatism is not its only feature.

And yet this pragmatism is perhaps the main problem with which we have to wrestle. How do we distil what new social democrats say and do into a coherent series of ideas? Do we treat the NSD merely as a political programme? Is the NSD merely a rhetorical device that governments have employed in trying to square various circles? How do we name something as NSD in the first place? All of these questions are relevant, but my solution is to take the line of least resistance and examine the NSD in what arguably remains its purest form, that of Tony Blair’s post-1994 Labour Party and the ideas which have been deployed to both motivate and justify its approach. For whereas other ideologies cannot be reduced to the actions and pronouncements of political parties, it is the very thinness of the NSD which allows us to organise our analysis around the actions and discourse of political parties. And although there are certainly other recent governments which may qualify for the label – principally in the USA, Netherlands and Germany, as well as several countries in the Southern Hemisphere (Gledhill, 2001), especially New Zealand – it is in the UK that the NSD, and associated terms such as the ‘Third Way’, have been applied most often and most consistently.^2,3 Of course, this solution is not ideal, as it might be said that, as with any ideology, the NSD has no pure form, for even within New Labour the influence of old social democracy has still been visible.

So for our purposes the first question we need to ask, ‘what is the NSD?’, can be reformulated as ‘what is new about “New Labour”?’, a question that requires to plot the party on the political graph. Once we have addressed this question we should be in a position to outline the NSD’s key principles and features (cf. Buckler, 2000).

First, let us dispense with two claims. The first claim is that there is no such thing as New Labour, i.e. that the party under Blair has been just as socialist/conservative (delete according to taste) as the Labour Parties of Attlee, Wilson, etc.; the second is that New Labour bears absolutely no relation to what preceded it. Both of these claims ignore the nature of ideology and the fact that the networks which relate nodes together are constantly evolving, as are the principles and concepts themselves. The first claim underestimates the scale of that evolution, whereas the second claim overestimates it by neglecting the continuities between present and past. Once we reject these claims we are left with the following six interpretations:

1 The party has frequently described itself as applying traditional values in a new context. What has changed are not the basic beliefs and ideals, but the social and economic environment within which they have to be realised, necessitating radically new policy instruments, practices and institutions. New Labour is new because the times are new and not the goals to be achieved (Mandelson and Liddle, 1996; Blair, 1998; cf. Blair and Schroder, 1999; Hombach, 2000).

2 Some academic commentators agree and go on to regard the continuities as outweighing the discontinuities (Rubinstein, 2000; Larkin, 2001; Allender, 2001). However, contrary to its self-image, the Labour Party has never been particularly radical (except when out of power) because it has always had to appeal to middle-class voters and ensure that international capital is not scared away by the prospects of a Labour Government. Social democracy has always been a politics of ‘catch up’, of adaptation to economic and social developments, and so New Labour is not really that new, despite the undoubted weaknesses of traditional social democracy.

3 However, these views have been disputed by those such as Driver and Martell (1998, 2000, 2001; cf. Coates, 2001) who insist that what has changed is not simply the means that the party employs, but the ends that it attempts to achieve. What is new about New Labour are underlying values and principles that are substantially different from those held prior to Blair’s ascendancy. As such, New Labour is neither a social democratic party, as this has been traditionally conceived, but nor does it represent Thatcherism Mark II, since it retains an anti-Thatcherite emphasis. Instead, its politics are the politics of post-Thatcherism, i.e. an adaptation to the society and economy which Thatcherism engineered, and which involves a substantial leap to the Right, though with some tilting back towards the Left, albeit a Left that rejects socialism and embraces the market economy.

4 Others go further and insist that New Labour is effectively a kind of ‘Left Thatcherism’ in that it has accepted almost all of the radical Right agenda and has merely used the vocabulary of the Centre-Left to justify this surrender (Marxism Today, 1998; Mouffe, 2000; Heffernan, 2000; Callinicos, 2001).

5 Others have wondered whether New Labour is forming a Left version of Christian Democracy (Marquand, 1998). Having flourished across Europe, Christian Democracy is broadly on the Centre-Right, embodying the idea of a social market where everyone is able to participate in the market economy regardless of social background. Capitalism can be humanised through welfare institutions, strong families and strong communities without the need for large-scale upheaval. Although never really taking hold in Britain (though the paternalistic conservatism that Thatcher swept away might be construed in similar terms), New Labour could be thought of as a compromise between social and Christian Democracy (cf. Huntington and Bale, 2002).

6 Another interpretation suggests that New Labour is a reinvention of ‘new liberalism’ (Beer, 2001; cf. Freeden, 1999; Stears and White, 2001). New Liberalism flourished at the end of the nineteenth century and represented a shift away from classic liberalism in its recognition that individuals are socially interdependent. But because this interdependency is undermined by economic injustice, state action is required to rectify the flaws of capitalism, though a state which is still limited in scope and ambition lest the spaces of individual liberty be undermined. New liberalism had all but vanished by the First World War, after which British politics was dominated by a damaging standoff between conservatism and socialism. But with the eventual discrediting of socialism, the way was open for a rejuvenation of new liberal ideas in the form of a social democratic politics that has divested itself of socialist myths. This is an interpretation which appeals to many within New Labour, convinced by David Marquand’s (1991) contention that conservatism has dominated British politics because progressives of the Centre and the Left allowed themselves to be divided throughout the twentieth century, as the latter yearned for a post-capitalist society that the former always knew to be illusory.

Which of these interpretations should we prefer? In fact, I do not think we can identify any of them as exclusively right or wrong, as each helps to temper the potential excesses of the others. The attempt to weave the above interpretations together looks something like this. New Labour has reconfigured rather than abandoned many of its previous beliefs and values (1), i.e. it has altered the relational network between principles rather than jettisoning old principles for new ones. This means that we should not lose sight of the historical continuities (2) and acknowledge that the Labour Party has usually been forced to play catch-up. However, whereas from the 1950s to the 1980s the party was always readapting to a consensus that it had initially shaped between 1945 and 1950, by the 1990s the Keynesian agenda had been dispelled by the Right and so the politics of catch-up led to the most substantial Rightward revision in the party’s history (Bara and Budge, 2001). Therefore, its reconfiguration was one of ends and not just means (3), so that its relational network came to resemble many aspects of Thatcherism (4) though this accommodation has been moderated by a paternalistic belief in the common good (5). So the party has abandoned all but the most harmless and general references to socialism, meaning that aspects of late nineteenth-century liberalism have been reinvented (6).

If this narrative is convincing then what does it tell us not just about New Labour, but about the NSD? First, it tells us that three conditions seem to be required for the NSD to have emerged:

• The Right must have adopted significant elements of both free market liberalism and social authoritarianism in its political programme (a combination which I will now refer to throughout this book as ‘conservatism’).⁴

• The Right must be in the ascendancy, constituting an actual or potential threat to the existing political settlement.

• The Centre-Left movement must lack confidence in itself, be divided and/or social democracy must lack any real social and institutional roots to the point where it is unable or unwilling to resist the hegemonic formation of a new settlement, a settlement to which it eventually adapts its traditions and values.

Obviously, this is no more than an hypothesis which extrapolates from the UK’s experience and considerable research would be needed to assess the extent to which it applies to other examples of the NSD around the world. Nevertheless, the hypothesis suggests a second point. The ascendancy of a conservative agenda is only a necessary condition for a shift in the ideological spectrum. Even where this ascendancy is visible, it may nevertheless fail to alter the existing settlement if the Centre-Left holds firm and does not feel the need to dilute social democratic politics. I will return to this argument in Chapter 4, but the final point is this. The NSD is not merely an accommodation to conservatism, but a means by which the radical Right’s agenda is socially and economically embedded to a degree that the Right could not manage on its own. As Heffernan (2000: 175) puts it, ‘… the conservative agenda underpinning the politics of Thatcherism may even be strengthened by Labour in office: a “Nixon goes to China” syndrome, one which marks the abnegation of the social democratic project’.

Therefore, the principles of New Labour and the NSD are not just a reconfiguration of the relational network of social democratic principles, but a means by which conservative concepts and values are embedded across the ideological spectrum, further colonising the repertoires and domains of the social field. What continue to be recognisable Centre-Left concepts are given a conservative content that inhabits and converts the space long populated by what, as a signature of this colonisation, comes to be designated as ‘old social democracy’ (and ‘Old Labour’). The NSD is not equivalent to conservatism, but it is a conduit for conservatism: ‘social democracy, even when it is neoliberalized, is not neoliberal’ (Moschonas, 2002: 173). So, NSD principles are unremarkable in themselves. What is remarkable is the process to which they are being subject, due to the adaptive strategies of social democrats within a conservative context, a process which not only reconfigures those principles, but further embeds the radical Right hegemony that first impelled it. In short, what is new about the NSD is not so much the Rightward lurch of social democracy, but the ‘social democratisation’ of conservatism, i.e. the way in which, with the Centre ground having been dragged towards the Right, market liberalism and social authoritarianism have been given a Centre-Left voice. What we will need to decide by the end of this chapter is whether this social democratisation represents a new politics or whether it is little more than a sophisticated surrender to the Right’s hegemony.

However, this account is to anticipate the critique that is pursued later on in this chapter and throughout Part I. Before examining it in more detail we obviously have to appreciate the NSD’s basic principles, again using New Labour as our exemplar.

Principles and justifications

The NSD is based upon five key principles: community, meritocracy, reciprocity, inclusion, pragmatism. Note that this section and the next – which presents the main objections to the NSD – are only intended to outline the main arguments that have emerged from the debate. The aim is simply to establish a framework that will be elaborated upon over the course of the next three chapters.

Community

Many commentators have noted the attachment of New Labour to community (Lund, 1999; Heron, 2001). At its crudest New Labour represents community as a third way between the attachments of the Old Left to collectivism and of the New Right to individualism, with the former being criticised for ignoring civil society and the latter for reducing civil society to the blind interactions of economic exchange (Blair, 1998; Giddens, 1998: 78–89). Community is offered as a virtue in obvious opposition to Thatcher’s proclamation that ‘there is no such thing as society, only individuals and families’, but avoids treating ‘the social’ as an abstract quality that abandons reference to the local and the private. Community therefore emphasises both the lived relations of family, neighbourhood and civic attachment, but also the broader social relations that make individuals interdependent and through which we express a need for ontological solidarity and belonging.

Because community is a notoriously vague, contested and all-purpose concept, there was an initial interest shown by New Labour in communitarianism, the political philosophy arguing that communal relations (Gemeinschaft) are constitutive of who we are and what we do, rather than being the contingent, ephemeral properties imagined by liberalism (Etzioni, 1994; Fitzpatrick, 2001a: 81–4). The attraction of communitarianism was that it enabled New Labour to define community as distinguishable from the state and the market, while allowing it to develop an economics that utilises both the public and private spheres. Subsequently, New Labour has made more reference to ‘social capital’ (Putnam, 2000) and ‘stakeholding’, each term signifying the interactive, associative networks through which we participate in society and contribute to the enhancement of ‘human capital’ (skills, qualifications, employability), trust and bonds of cooperation. The essential intention though is to reconcile social cohesion with individual effort, traditional values with modern circumstances, local needs with global imperatives.

Meritocracy

As a reaction against what it sees as state collec...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of figures
• Preface and acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part I
• Part II
• Conclusion
• References
• Index