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Steve McGiffen
To cite this article: Steve McGiffen (2012) What's Left of the Left: Democrats and
Social Democrats in Challenging Times, Socialism and Democracy, 26:3, 193-196, DOI:
10.1080/08854300.2012.724900
Article views: 58
James Cronin, George Ross, and James Shoch, eds., Whats Left of the
Left: Democrats and Social Democrats in Challenging Times (Durham,
NC and London: Duke University Press, 2011)
for the most part free education up to doctoral level, free health care,
benefits when I was out of work, a living wage when I was in it, and
so on. Western Europe in the 1970s, including Britain, was one of
humanitys great achievements, and it was social democracy that
could claim the credit.
Forty years on and though I continue to see myself as a revolution-
ary, I would accept what I was told by many older, more moderate
socialists back then: the world is a complicated place, and achieving
socialism within this complicated world is an extremely complicated
problem, one which may admit of a wide variety of solutions. Yet
that is now far away from the message of the movements which
have descended from social democracy, an ideology which no longer
characterises what is known as the centre-left. And this is where
my problems begin when I come to consider this book, whose
editors believe that (t)he idea of transcending capitalism and creating
socialism has completely disappeared.
To be fair, the breathtaking arrogance and sheer ignorance of this
statement does not do justice to all of the essays which follow it. Never-
theless, the title is absolutely misleading. This book isnt about the left
at all. I am, I hope, not being purist. You dont, in my view, have to be a
revolutionary socialist to be on the left. Surely, however, the word left
has long been associated with a programme based on at least a degree
of social ownership? Reformist, radical, or revolutionary, I would
allow them all, in their huge variety, into the left tent. But people
who will not merely allow, but enthusiastically support the entry of
the market into health care, the privatisation of post offices and
public transport systems, who are now going along with the vicious
austerity policies being inflicted on Europes peoples what have
these market liberals to do with the left?
What we have instead of a real answer to the question posed in the
title is the sad story, in a number of essays by a variety of authors, of
Book Reviews 195
current Euro-shambles.
A real book on whats left of the left would be a worthwhile exer-
cise, even if, like this volume, it confined itself to Europe and North
America. Such diverse Communist, post-Communist and left socialist
parties as AKEL in Cyprus, Greeces Syriza, the Icelandic Left-Green
Movement, Denmarks Enhedlisten/Red-Green Alliance and the
Socialist Party of the Netherlands (SP) are interesting subjects for
study. None of these parties would accept the books assumption
that there is no alternative to capitalism, and each has solid electoral
support. Indeed, as I write, just under a month before the Dutch
general election, the SP is topping the polls, with one voter in four
stating his or her intention to opt for a party which was, until 2006,
on the fringes of electoral politics. Beyond parliaments, moreover,
new movements are arising Occupy being the best known in the
English-speaking world based on an understanding that far from
being the only viable system, capitalism isnt viable at all. In fact, its
destroying the planet, and there is no way to reform it so that it func-
tions without doing so.
That is a problem for all of us. There is no chance of whats left of
the centre-left, which is a major part of this problem, becoming part of
its solution. The best we can hope for is that those honest progressives
who somehow cling to their faith that it can be restored to its original
purpose will wake up and smell the results of the planetary destruction
in which they are complicit.