Social democracy versus the nativist right

[Celerity]

If progressives are to defeat the populists, Jan Zielonka writes, they must offer a vision beyond the nation-state.

https://www.socialeurope.eu/social-democracy-versus-the-nativist-right



Social democracy is clearly struggling to return to its past glory. This time, the challenge does not come from Christian democrats but from the right-wing, nativist parties attracting votes across Europe, from Italy and Poland to even Germany and Sweden. The most frequent explanations for this predicament point to socio-economic factors: rising inequality and poverty, structural unemployment and decline of public services in health, transport and education. Much of this happened when social democrats and Christian democrats were in power, which suggests why the anti-establishment populist parties are now more in vogue than ever.

It would be naïve to think that changing leaders and massaging the messaging would make citizens go back to social-democratic parties en masse. The pragmatism displayed by such leaders as Olaf Scholtz in Germany, Elly Schlein in Italy or Keir Starmer in Britain looks like an endorsement of muddling through—an acknowledgement that for them ambitious leftish projects of the past are dead, yet new ones are hazardous or non-existent.

The good society

To bounce back, social democrats need to offer voters a more attractive and credible vision of the good society than that advanced by the nativist right. The vision of the right is familiar and straightforward: we need to restore three pillars of the good society—the family, the nation and the state. Do social democrats have something better to propose? Social democrats also need to show how positive change can be made to happen. Who will defend us from calamities—military, financial or environmental? Will it be the state, the market or civil society? Or maybe the European Union, the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, Greenpeace or the Vatican?

Curiously enough, right-wing rhetoric on the economy does not differ substantially from that of the social democrats. Both groups pretend to speak on behalf of ordinary working people rather than rentiers or bankers. Both groups castigate neoliberal economics generating inequality, poverty and social exclusion. Contrasts are clearer in the politics of family life. One group supports and the other opposes gay and interethnic marriage. Abortion and so-called ‘gender ideology’ are also matters of contention. However, some prominent nativists, such as Marine Le Pen in France, have not put familialist slogans on their banners. Many social democrats meanwhile worry that preoccupation with cultural issues diverts their parties from economic matters—the former focus on individual rights, the latter on the collective rights so dear to the social-democratic tradition.

State and nation..............

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