The tower of Babel of the European Left

In a recent article, Le Monde called the year 2008 the Austerlitz of Social-Democratic thought. The Austerlitz reference is to the great battle in Moravia where on December 5, 1805 Napoleon destroyed the armies of Russia and Austria. Last year French Socialists lost miserably in national elections that swept conservative Nicolas Sarkozy into power. Also in 2008 the French Socialist Party succumbed totally to the market system: for the first time since its foundation in 1905 it abandoned all references to slogans of Revolution. Already in 2005 the French Socialist Party had adopted a Social Democratic program: adherence to the idea of European unity and acceptance of the reformist idea that the market economy system can be saved.

That surrender of principles initiated the decline of the Socialist Party in this country. The party is split between pro- and anti-“Europeans” on one hand and between partisans of the market economy and defenders of a regulated economy on the other. This division reflects the fundamental division of modern French Socialism since its foundation in 1905: between orthodox Marxists hostile to reformist ideas and the impulse of the main body to participation in government. The dilemma has long plagued European Socialism: revolution or reformism and the urge to govern within the capitalist system.

The abandonment of original 19th century Socialist principles is often referred to as “going to Bad Godesberg.” The reference is to the congress of German Social Democrats in 1959 in the small town near Bonn when the big German party officially abandoned the class struggle. That congress changed the face of German Socialism from that which had emerged from the party congress of 1925 in Heidelberg (after the disasters of European Socialism as a consequence of its support of war during WWI) where Socialists again invoked the class struggle as they had earlier, the nationalization of the means of production and the role of the State in the economy.

At Bad Godesberg, however, German Socialists decided that holding to the political program of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels would be no less than their “reduction to a sect” on the German political scene. Revolution or evolution was the question. German Social Democrats chose the latter.

For decades Bad Godesberg split European Socialism. Italian Socialists (and Communists) still today refer to the Bad Godesberg landmark. Especially since also the bulk of Italian Communists have now made the ideological journey to that German town. Likewise British Socialists of the Labour Party under Tony Blair paid homage to Bad Godesberg in 1995, one year after Blair's rise to power, 26 years after Bad Godesberg and 77 years after the birth of the Labour Party. To liberate itself from the image of the eternal loser, Blair completely reshaped and restructured the party after 15 years of the Thatcherite revolution. Blair's Labour thus abandoned its Marxist credos dating from the October Revolution in Russia and in one swipe erased the party's ideological past. Scandinavian Social Democrats have long been reformists, the chief proponents of mixed economies.

While the European Right in power gloats, today's Left reality is indeed sad. Disarray reigns in most every party of the Left, in European and also especially the American Left—Socialist, Social Democrat or Communist movements. Disarray also in just what the Left idea is. Too many ambitious leaders some places, too few in others, while Anarchists deny the necessity of leadership at all. Insane concept for the Left! For people do not act alone. Or, left to their own doing, they go off in many directions. One needs a direction. One needs leadership. In Europe the situation is clear: the result of the lack of unity and leadership is before our eyes: decomposition of the Left into more and more splinter parties and groups.

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