Peter Wilson’s story paints a gloomy picture for the traditional left of politics in Europe, once considered the heartland of social democracy, but it’s hard to gauge what are the real issues driving the election results through Peter’s lense. It seems that Peter is more concerned portraying the left in retreat in a veiled attack on Oz’s own pseudo left government but what is more revealing in the German results is the collapsing support for mainstream political parties. As the Guardian points out,
the two big parties which have headed every German government since the second world war are now down to less than 57% of the vote. All the minor parties polled strongly and increased their shares. For the first time in modern Germany, all the parties in the new Bundestag have polled more than 10% but less than 40%. Multi-party politics has never been more deeply entrenched in Germany than it is now.
This is not to say that the left have failed, clearly they have and the right will crow the result loudly from every rooftop. Their rapture is likely to be increased when the UK goes to the polls and Labour gets slaughtered. People in Europe it seems, are disillusioned with the left wing agenda.
Which is perfectly understandable. The left in mainstream politics has in recent times attempted a rather bizarre double act. On one hand they have been trying to advance a social justice platform, yet on the other hand they have been accommodating to the so-called free enterprise system. A kind of cake and eat it too philosophy. The idea seems to be that if the capitalist system is allowed to make money then it can be taxed to achieve more equality within society, through the heavy hand of state intervention.
Fundamentally the plan is flawed because it fails to address two key issues. The capitalist system is a code of behaviour that rewards the individual at the expense of the rest. At its worst, it simply becomes a dog eat dog competition until the surviving dogs realise they have more to gain from working together and exploiting their combined positions of strength, giving rise to monopolies and duopolies the world over. It is not a system that can be modified by broad political intervention, in fact most governments become captive to economic forces as we have seen in recent times. The huge government bailouts of the banks in the US are the most glaring example where substantial public money is returned to the private sector which effectively robs the public of any chance of substantial state investments in other areas, such as the environment or health.
The other flaw is that state intervention to help redress inequality inevitably fails to deliver a clear result. The capitalist system will often celebrate its victories be they creation of extreme wealth or the employment of the poor yet we rarely see any equivalent publicity for the levels of literacy, relocations of refugees or public initiatives to house and feed the unemployed. Often these things are actually portrayed as negatives, refugees are stealing jobs and public housing become ghettos for drug abuse and crime.
So in a sense the left has failed. It has failed to address the code of behaviour that drives the right and simultaneously punishes the left for being soft. It has allowed power to remain in the hands of the rich who continue to propagate the illusion that effort equals reward and it has failed to articulate a serious alternative. Quite simply it has failed to deliver to the people, a failure based not on faulty goals but on an inability to bring such goals to fruition.
Yet there is a fundamental logic that sustains the so-called left. The capitalist system is by nature unequal, in fact equality is virtually the enemy of the market since markets are based on two different positions of power, buyer and seller. The problem of inequality is rooted in the exchange. A system that seeks to redress market inequalities simply fails to offer enough incentive to do otherwise. Compelling as it might appear, a strategy to punish the profiteers of the market isn’t enough, a genuine alternative is required.
Individual needs must be addressed. The market based approach to meeting the individual needs is what we have right now but it clearly cannot be sustained. Environmentally there are foreseeable limits to so-called economic growth and socially, a continued journey down the path of monopoly capitalism will produce even greater inequality. It would seem unproblematic to assert that most people have basic physical needs and that these could be satisfied by shared communal entities. In a sense, state based public utilities are such a thing, they are owned by the public, profits are retained by the people and a service is provided. Unfortunately they tend towards corruption, but that failure isn’t built into the idea, its simply a fault in its application.
Ultimately, for any collective or shared system of meeting peoples needs, there must be a genuine recognition and acceptance of responsibility for actions and outcomes on the part of the participants. Simply creating state based enterprises without also charging those enterprises with the imperatives of continuous evolution and improvement immediately condemns the idea to future irrelevance. Equally important is the celebration of success delivered by shared enterprise, recognising that together we can do much more than we will ever achieve by working individually.
At the broad level of mass politics, the state concept is failing not because it must fail but because it has become entrenched and inaccessible to the individual. The modern democratic state is ultimately the expression of the collected will of the people yet the political system as it has evolved tends to disenfranchise the individual in favour of government. Consequently people blame governments for failing to meet their own needs yet are in a bizarre paradox, governments are the common expression of public aspirations and a vehicle for their realisation.
Any government that fails to be of the people, by the people and for the people must eventually collapse unless maintained by force. The demise of the current centre left in Europe is not an indication that the notion of a shared democratic future that can meet the needs of the individual but not at the expense of the environment or other people, is dead. Rather it indicates that renewal of ideas that drive a collective approach to our problems must take place. Contrary to the assertions of the right, the capitalist system does not have a monopoly on the creation of ideas.
Moving to the Right | The Australian.
