Progress in an age of fear?

14. Mai 2010 _ Tobias Dürr
Die niederländische Wiardi Beckman Stichting, die der sozialdemokratischen Arbeitspartei PvdA nahesteht, startete eine internationale Online-Debatte zu Tony Judts wegweisendem Buch "Ill fares the land". Der US-Amerikanische Wissenschaftler formulierte darin seine Thesen zur Erneuerung der Sozialdemokratie. Hier finden Sie den Beitrag von Tobias Dürr.

Tony Judt’s new book, based on his by now famous October 19 lecture documented in the New York Review of Books (and, in German, in the Berliner Republik), is an invaluable and timely contribution to the debate on the future of Social Democracy and progressive politics. More than that: Ill Fares the Land is the kind of radical intellectual stimulus that could, and should, help to kick-start a whole new debate. The fact that the Wiardi Beckman Stichting has immediately realized the potential of this book once again testifies to the alertness this important European think tank is deservedly appreciated for. Indeed, for everybody interested in the past, present and future of social democracy Ill Fares the Land is an absolute must-read (together with Richard Wilkinson’s and Kate Pickett’s game-changing The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better, a book just as important as Tony Judt’s and frequently referred to by the author).

Finding something intensely stimulating does not imply complete agreement; a “must-read” need not necessarily be a “must-agree”. But whether one shares all of Tony Judt’s conclusions or not: Ill Fares the Land is a book that forces those of us to radically reassess our arguments who believe the state of affairs both at home in Europe and in the world at large urgently demands a new progressive departure after three decades of neoliberal dominance. Can and should Social Democracy continue to be the party of progress 21st century? And if Social Democrats stand for progress and change, what kind progress and change should they advance? What direction must progress take? Or could it be that progress is the wrong answer our problems, after all? These are some of the important and provocative questions Tony Judt raises.

Obviously the concept of open-ended progress in human affairs and the belief in the possibility of progress have been constitutive for social democracy. Historically, social democracy is unthinkable without the notion that things can, and should, get better. It was conservatives who believed in the existence of a “natural order of things” which, being “natural”, ought not to be upset or radically altered. Conservatism in its original and literal form was a fundamentally pessimistic ideology. That changed with the advent of neoconservative and neoliberal hegemony three decades ago. Tony Judt, incidentally, has precious little to say about how that hegemony was facilitated in no small part by the failure of social democratic policies and politicians during the 1970s. But he rightly points out the philosophical sea change the new hegemony brought about: “It is doctrinaire market liberals who for the past two centuries have embraced the relentless optimistic view that all economic change is for the better. It is the Right that has inherited the ambitious modernist urge to destroy and innovate in the name of a universal project.”

While this observation is uncontroversial among social democrats it is the conclusion Tony Judt draws with regard to the task of social democracy that should (and will) stir debate. In his original New York lecture Tony Judt drastically put it thus: “If social democracy has a future, it will be as a social democracy of fear. Rather than seeking to restore a language of optimistic progress, we should begin by reacquainting ourselves with the recent past. The first task of radical dissenters today is to remind their audience of the achievements of the twentieth century, along with the likely consequences of our heedless rush to dismantle them. The left, to be quite blunt about it, has something to conserve.”

Now, Tony Judt clearly has a point. In the recent British election campaign David Cameron’s Conservative [sic!] Party actually tried to woo voters by claiming the Tories were “more progressive” than Labour. The same tendency is evident in all our western societies. The political space once filled by real or “conservative Conservatives” actually intent on, well, conserving things and discouraging change has long been left vacated. All the major parties now stand for transformative dynamism of some kind or other. This even applies to Green parties clamoring for ecological transformation or a “Green New Deal”. And clearly, al lot of the changes proclaimed as “progress” during the last three decades have not turned out to be improvements at all. As Tony Judt rightly reminds us: “The materialistic and selfish quality of contemporary life is not inherent in the human condition. Much of what appears ‘natural’ today dates from the 1980s: the obsession with wealth creation, the cult of privatization and the private sector, the growing disparities of rich and poor. And, above all, the rhetoric which accompanies these: uncritical admiration for unfettered markets, disdain for the public sector, the delusion of endless growth.”

But the truly intriguing conclusion Tony Judt draws from all this is that in the 21st century social democracy, of all parties, must be-come the force of real conservatism: “We take for granted the institutions, legislation, services and rights that we have inherited from the great age of 20th century reform. It is time to remind ourselves that all of these were utterly inconceivable as recently as 1929. We are the fortunate beneficiaries of a transformation whose scale and impact was unprecedented. There is much to defend.” Which is why “social democrats, characteristically modest in style and ambition, need to speak more assertively of past gains.” Yes, they should, indeed, because as Tony Judt stresses in truly Burkean fashion: “To abandon the labors of a century is to betray those who came before us as well as generations yet to come.” Here I could not agree more. I disagree, however, when Tony Judt seems to play off the task of defending “past gains” against the task of working towards the progressive goal of A Future Fair For All (as the British Labour Party captioned their recent party manifesto; it clearly wasn’t the slogan that sealed the fate of the New Labour era).

“Rather than seeking to restore a language of optimistic progress, we should begin by reacquainting ourselves with the recent past”, Tony Judt suggests. But why should we have to choose? I find this alleged contradiction inexplicable and, frankly, even counterpro-ductive with respect to the social democratic cause I share with Tony Judt. Of course it is right to fight for a social democracy that defends civil and social standards achieved in an earlier era - equality, justice, decency, the belief in the possibility and the virtue of collective action for the collective good. In this specific and limited sense social democrats need to be “conservative” indeed. But as any football player knows, a team that scores in the first ten minutes of a match and then merely tries to defend their meager lead for the remaining eighty minutes (instead of remaining on the attack and proactively engaging the opposition in their own half) is very likely to be punished for their timid tactics. In politics, no less than in football, it pays off to be proactive and believe in your own ability to score yet again.

Put differently, if social democrats have a cause worth fighting for (as they do) they need to take their ideas to the people instead of just taking cover and, hoping for the best while expecting the worst. It is true, in the now defunct era of neoliberal dominance social democrats were on the defensive. They did not believe in their cause any longer because they had lost their very own social democratic “language of optimistic progress”; and they continued to lose that optimistic language of progress because they did not believe in their cause any longer. One thing led to another - and vice versa.

That vicious circle must stop. Yes, we have every reason to be scared. Market radicalism may be toast. But the destruction of everything European social democrats achieved in the postwar decades still is a distinct possibility. Climate change, endemic financial and economic crises, population growth, energy scarcity, demographic imbalances, mass migration, food shortages, terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, nuclear proliferation, electorates either distracted or panic-stricken - the world really has become a dangerous place. But in times like these, backward-looking “parties of fear” held together by little more than the anxious wish to slow the erosion of their earlier accomplishments will never be able to bring together much more than temporary blocking minorities.

Instead we must again dare to convince ourselves that the idea of a progressive, forward-looking social democracy has every potential to attract majorities in the 21st century. If social democrats themselves do not believe they have something valuable to offer that would make the future a better place, why should anyone want to follow them? Did Martin Luther King proclaim: “I have a nightmare”? Did Barack Obama become president of the United States and bring about health insurance for millions of formerly uninsured Americans by bemoaning neoliberal hegemony? Or did he do it by convincing enough people that positive change and progress and a better future were still possible?

Maybe, even probably that better future fair for all will never come. The 21st century progress dilemma is all too clear. In his recent book The Politics of Climate Change Tony Giddens encapsulates it well: “Our civilization could self-destruct - no doubt about it - and with awesome consequences. Doomsday is no longer a religious concept, a day of spiritual reckoning, but a possibility imminent in our society and economy. […] No wonder many take fright. Let’s go back! Let’s return to a simpler world! They are entirely understandable sentiments and have practical application in some contexts. Yet there can be no overall ‘going back’ - the very expansion of human power that has created such deep problems is the only means of resolving them, with science and technology at the forefront. There will probably be nine million people in the world by 2050 - after which world population hopefully will stabilize, especially if the least developed countries make significant economic and social progress. Ways will have to be found of providing those nine billion people with a decent way of life.”

This is the world we’re in - urgently in need of progress and wide-awake social democracy to solve at least some of the problems past progress, not least, has created. We cannot at all be sure that will be able to pull off that trick, for the stakes seem overwhelmingly high. These doubts in turn discourage the progressive spirit, which makes success even less likely. What we do know, however, is that conservatism, social democratic or otherwise, will not save us. We may be doomed if we choose more and, hopefully, better progress - but we will definitely be doomed if we do not. Or as Tony Judt concedes himself: “The past really is another country: we cannot go back.”

Making this point in no way implies that social democrats and other progressives have nothing to learn from the past. Quite the contrary! Our success in tackling the unprecedented challenges ahead of us will utterly depend on whether enough people in our own western societies understand the preciousness, the sheer improbability and fragility of the postwar social democratic settlement. Tony Judt is right to warn us not to take anything for granted. We need to understand what we have lost, and we need to understand what we might still lose: “If we are going to build a better future, we must begin with a deeper appreciation of the ease with which even solidly-grounded liberal democracies can founder.”

That solemn warning is clearly appropriate, and Tony Judt deserves praise for relentlessly hammering home his message. “Social democracy does not represent an ideal future”, he concludes. “It does not even represent the ideal past. But among the options available to us today, it is better than anything else to hand.” For this very reason social democracy will remain indispensable in the 21st century, though not as the ersatz conservatism Tony Judt has in mind but as the optimistic and progressive, yet hard-headed creed this dangerous age is so urgently in need of.