The Rape of Europa
ADRIAN BLEIFUSS PRADOS
Following-up on an earlier post regarding the European parliamentary elections, I thought I’d say the something on the results. Here is the composition of the new parliament with the center-left bloc, the Party of European Socialists in light red and the conservative European People’s Party in blue:
Most of the news outlets are presenting the results as evidence of an overall right-ward political shift across the continent. The alternative left-wing analysis might be that a recession-radicalized populist electorate is punishing social democracy for its timidity and slow response to the economic crisis.
As I see it, the real lesson of this low-turnout election is that Europeans are not particularly interested in the European Parliament, despite that body’s ever-growing powers and responsibilities. Low turnouts naturally favor an unrepresentative sample of the most motivated voters, which in this case includes some pretty unsavory characters.
It might be worth pointing out that the European right is much more ideologically complicated than our good old GOP. European conservatives are at once populist and elitist, with Christian Democratic, neoliberal and Gaullist influences in the mix. Perhaps, collectively, they more closely resemble the Republican Party of 50 years ago in their diversity. Few right-wingers in Europe would support anything so barbarous as the death penalty, torture, or a “free market” approach to health care.
The low voter participation should alarm us because the European Parliament might be a prototype for future representative international institutions.
The left’s most predictable argument is that voters will turn out once they see an exciting, transformative platform that will address their needs and concerns. But I think there is a more fundamental problem with representative government on such a vast scale that we have yet to figure out and resolve. If, in many ways, Washington D.C. is far-removed from neighboring Baltimore, imagine how distant Strasbourg or Brussels must seem from a working class neighborhood in Lisbon or a little village in Lithuania.
I’m pretty skeptical of left-wing localism, especially with regards to economics, but the localist arguments against large-scale democracy can’t be easily dismissed. I think it’s time for some brainstorming.
I’m not too upset about these election results, as odd as it may sound. The rejection of these “social democratic” parties isn’t a rejection of egalitarianism in Europe; the center-left in Europe was more than happy to run Europe with the center-right. I see in the UK, for instance, lots of room for an alternative left of Labor. If Labor voters didn’t come out and they could only get 16 percent of the vote and with the Greens doing well, you really see that a left-green coalition could gain some steam and at the very least become one of the main oppositions in Europe.
In France the radical left and the greens got a far bigger share of the left vote than the Socialists too, another place where the mainstream center-left have been made the minority within the left.
In Greece and Portugal the left did really well too. There is definitely room for a left alternative throughout Europe, let’s see what materializes from it, will it just be a renewed social democracy or something that finds a way to at least push for more structural change.
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I share your feelings about localization as well.
Like Bhaskar I’m not super alarmed, but I don’t see anything actually good in these results. The hard left gained three seats, the social democrats lost twenty. The greens and the centrist liberals both lost seats, so it was a big win for the right. The radicals may be gaining on the center left but that’s not so great when the left-of-center is losing overall.
I wonder whether or not the already large and growing size of the nascent European polity will eventually start mirroring the nature of the U.S. national political system. The population sizes and the territory covered would be roughly similar, and while there are numerous important differences in political culture between Europe and America, I wonder if certain aspects of Madison’s vision of a large republic that inhibits the formation of coherent political factions, especially on the basis of class conflict (see Federalist #10) will eventually manifest themselves in the European Parliament.
I realize this is kind of apropos of nothing, but it’s something that I’ve been wondering about the last few days. I think that there’s definitely a danger of localist/nationalist sentiment overwhelming and diluting transnational class solidarity, and subsequently the socialist movement, within a continent-wide, multinational and multiethnic parliament. Perhaps that’s one of the reasons why the left didn’t do very well in the recent elections.
Left voters just didn’t vote, look at the raw numbers. I don’t think European voters shifted far to the right. Where there was a left alternative many voters favored it, like in Ireland.
I completely agree that nationalist sentiment is a threat, but the left have often been stoking these flames.
I think that leftists should reject protectionism, and in general attempts to reassert the sovereignty of the nation-state in the face of global capital and integration. I also think that attempts by some in the anti-globalization left to create self-sufficient localities is utopian, and actually dangerously utopian. Now the EU’s expansion of hyper-capitalism is something that labor and left parties will naturally oppose, but the long-term question is whether the left will speak in the language of reaction or project a progressive vision that I guess would still be described as “proletarian internationalist.”
I think it would be a mistake to abandon the nation-state as a site of struggle in favor of some fuzzy notion of internationalism. International organizations like the EU (and the IMF, WTO, etc) are still made up of individual nation-states, and individual governments still have considerable influence over the policies adopted by such organizations. People are still highly attached to their local and national communities (how could it be otherwise?), and I don’t think it would help the left to let the right monopolize the language of nationalism. I still think that the task of building global social democracy begins at home.
Good point, and I’ll concede a lot to that, but don’t you think the language of all the “No” campaigners on the Lisbon treaty for instance sounded the same.
The left and the right. Maybe this was a mis-perception on my part.
If the goal was just the expansion of global order of more humane capitalism, electoral efforts at the nation state would be important so would taking over institutions like the IMF/World Bank and EU parliament. People forget that the original goal of some of these institutions was a global “new deal” and they operated from broadly keynesian basises for much of their history. If that’s the goal then people like Krugman, Stiglitz, the left-wing of labour, the right-wing of Die Linke would be promising scenes of this struggle.
Rebuilding a labor movement, a socialist movement and militant campaigns based in class-struggle for structural change is a different task.
At work, no time to elaborate (or proofread).
I was initially quite dismayed by the results, but I tend to agree with Adrian that Europeans just don’t care about the EP.(and this is coming from someone who just earned an MA in German and European Studies!) It is a highly bureaucratic, confusing body that most citizens simply cannot understand or relate to.
I don’t have time to write much more now, but I would direct your attention to this excellent Washington Post article on the matter by DSA [vice]-chair Harold Meyerson:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/09/AR2009060902597.html
Good article.
Looking back at my point it made it seem like I was deriding social democratic efforts. I actually wasn’t. My main point though is that if the goal is simply to reform capitalism and try to spread a sustainable, just development across the world — a hard task and a noble goal indeed — then why shy away from using the current institutions and instruments of global capitalism?
“National sovereignty” has been proved bankrupt by the bourgeoisie itself. Does “financial cosmopolitanism” ring a bell?
On a purely reformist basis, they can’t or won’t tax the superwealthy on a global basis (much less put it to public vote globally). They certainly can’t address capital flight issues at a national level (beyond cheap “Tobin taxes”).
Localism is also dangerous politics. The SPD sold out eventually because it already started engaging in coalitionist politics at the local and regional levels before WWI. Hello, Die Linke!
[I don't have anything against local autonomy, so-called "participatory budgeting," and local currency alternatives to government money, though.]
Perhaps globalized trade unions can aid in the development of transnational class struggle.