What's Left?

Horror vacui: Nature abhors a vacuum. Written some 2,300 years ago, the thesis of Aristotle is also true for the world of social political ideas. And it seems that it is the most precise possible description of our situation today, early 2009. The preeminent neo-liberal discourse that was dominant in the last three decades has collapsed by today. Framed by nationalized banks, community cash injections to market players, direct intervention on the stock exchanges, the history of the global economic crisis shows clearly that a completely new set of rules based on very different theoretical principles will operate from now (and this process is far from over yet).

While practice is progressing towards a very clear direction that brings the role of the state into the forefront once again, theory can only trail behind all that. It would be a serious theoretical challenge to define how the world will look like after the crisis. The attitude of left-wing economists is well reflected by the joy of Will Hutton who called the collapse of Lehman Brothers the sweetest day of social democracy. Others point out that, compared to previous periods of state expansion (the 1930's or the 1960's), there is a professional consensus that this is a temporary expansion of the state only. However, I believe that it is too early to herald the ideological renaissance of proactive social democracy. It is more the fear of the vacuum that we can see, much more than a desired ideological renewal.

The balance that was: the Third Way

Since the Beatles - and perhaps with the exception of David Beckham - the most successful British cultural export article has been the New Labour Party of Blair and Brown characterised by the third way. What was the reason for this international success that is far from self-explanatory? I think the main reason was that it could recombine the dominant liberal ideology along leftist values in such manner that it became attractive also for the middle-class. The third way - as we know from the books of Giddens - was looking for, and indeed found a progressive path between traditional, orthodox social democracy and the new neo-liberal hegemony. This led to political success through useful and efficient social projects.

The third way could also be successful because it implemented the unity of innovative policies that were based on coherent values and embedded in an established ideological context. Also it could implement a comprehensive organizational and communicational modernization in the Labour Party that was becoming too heavy and frozen in its past. This organizational reform that domesticated and humanized liberalism was a recipe for success that the whole of Europe was open to. Two data that say more than any amount of words: at the turn of the millennium when the Progressive Governance movement started there were 15 social democratic governments in the EU-15 countries. Today, even if we count generously, there are maximum 6 countries from the 27 members states where social democrats are in power, and we are quite far from being able to talk about the dominance of a coherent ideology. This restructuring did not happen like a landslide but was rather part of a process. On the other hand, it also indicates that the troubles did not start with the financial crisis last autumn: the crisis situation has only strengthened the dilemmas of looking for a way out and has put them into a new, more dramatic context.

Looking back at the history of the left in the last decade, the work done in the framework of Progressive Governance was the peak of the process, from where the road took us downwards - at least in Europe. First because of terrorism, and because of the anxiety caused by immigration and the sustainability issues of welfare and social systems the progressive left came under increasing pressure after 2001, which in turn led to an increased loss in the political space. The fundamental characteristic of this new situation was highlighted by Wouter Bos when, after neo-liberalism, he identified strengthening and increasingly isolationist populism as the main ideological competitor to the progressive left. This duel in the headwind of the zeitgeist usually led to election defeats of the progressives - even in places where the fundamental dilemma was in fact confronted.

The interim state

The global economic crisis halted the process of searching for a way out for an instant - short term crisis management tasks must come to the forefront in a state of emergency. Not that the task has become any simpler as we look ahead into the future: the downsizing of production capacities to fit shrinking consumption, and hesitantly and partly involuntarily reconsidered welfare benefits are expected to strengthen the anxieties that have already appeared in the beginning of the 2000's. The challenge facing the progressive left is at least as big as at the end of the eighties - as the task then was to find a new ideological path between the neo-liberal hegemony and orthodox leftist values, one should construct the antidote to isolationist and populist ideologies that are getting stronger on both the left and the right.

For that we have to dig down to the fundamental values which define the social democratic model as it is under continuous pressure to modernize. This does not at all mean that the program of the third way should be thrown into the waste bin of history. It does not seem that there is a viable alternative to capitalism, however regulated, and the market economy operating in coordination with social aspects. However enthusiastically some left-wing leaders leash out against bankers and speculators with a rhetoric that almost reminisces of good old times, cooperation with the business sector - an important tool and also value of the third way - will also remain with us.

Nevertheless, we presumably must reconsider some other core elements of our ideology. In case of state services, securing the possibility of choice for customers will probably be pushed into the background by the security of universal services - the approach of the third way probably needs to be revised in this case. The risk community will stay with us, however, the ability and readiness of the individual will probably be smaller than envisaged by the original third way concepts. The life career model that spans from baby bonds through student loans to bank facilities that cover housing loan repayment instalments and to various refined pension saving schemes is also questioned. The model of the citizen who manages his own assets and makes investments will face substantial problems not only in countries with an undeveloped financial culture like Hungary but also in regions of Europe that don't carry a post-communistic legacy.

But these do not concern the core values that I mentioned above, so our revision will also not equal the outlining of a new, coherent concept of the world. In order to live up to the challenge of such a greater task, if the context is so difficult to comprehend, it makes sense to retreat to "anthropological constants" and think about the lessons of the crisis from the aspect of group psychology.

We know from group psychological research that when old rules suddenly lose their meaning, when "the usual order of things changes", when earlier habits no longer give guidance in the wilderness of life, the need to belong to the group increases. Ethological experience shows that primates will cuddle up together when the storm and lightning come. Experiencing togetherness is there to mitigate the anxiety caused by the unusual and unknown. 

We can draw two consequences if we accept this metaphor as a starting point for the current global social and economic situation. On the one hand, the pendulum that swung towards individualism so far will swing back in the next period. On the other hand, it is easy to see that defensive collective identities that seem to give an "answer" to the situation for the populist right, such as "the nation defined in contrast to aliens", the "hard working middle-class as opposed to parasites" are almost naturally available to the right. Once again, the progressive left faces a problem here: the definition of such collective identities is not self-evident for it, and it usually is not its strength.

The whole thing is further complicated by the fact that this communal experience has a different pattern today than in earlier structures of the public dimension. As Chris Anderson, the editor of Wired Magazine points out in his book "Long Tail", cultural consumption and the identities formed as a consequence become more and more fragmented and segmented with the spreading of the internet. The prevailing trend gets lost in the shadow of global idols and allows the formation of such endlessly diverse communities through digital technologies that were unfathomable before. Ninety-eight percent of the hundreds of thousands of songs available on iTunes are downloaded at least once a year - exciting and unknown groups are born in the "long tail", only a few members on an individual basis but, aggregated, they happen under that curve that stretches practically endlessly. If this cultural pattern becomes dominant, then we have good reason to assume that the large collective identities mitigating these anxieties will also change. Even if they define themselves along the traditional labels of the "nation", "middle-class", "tough, masculine, honest people", the reality behind these labels, the communicaitonal structure will be innovative. This is a challenge also for the defensive, inward turning right - but it generates no automatic advantage for the progressive side.

On the other hand, we can also think about the history of the near past from the aspect of anxiety management. Maybe it is no accident that the progressive success period of the nineties evolved in parallel to the end of the cold war and the spreading of the connecting universal optimism of the Fukuyama kind. That zeitgeist was in support of individualization and the relative devaluation of defensive collective identities. However, this is not the end of history but the end of a story today: the end of the story of free market capitalism.

Changes based on group dynamics go against the value changes of the last 30 years. In modern societies, according to sociologists, the increase of material wealth and a stronger development of the middle-class nurtured the values of individualization and growing freedom.   These trends are interrupted, maybe even broken by the crisis, and we cannot even exclude durable movements in the opposite direction. However, ideology is different from social scientific theories, among others, in that it does not wish to merely interpret reality through understanding. The purpose of interpretation is the shaping of reality through political utilisation. Therefore in our case we cannot be satisfied with stating that the next decade will probably prefer defensive collective identities, a situation with which right-wing populism is assumed to find easier to get attuned to than the progressive left as we know it today.

Towards a new equilibrium

The situation is difficult but far from hopeless. Namely, we can see a gradually enfolding experiment for the seamless  coordination of the left and the communal principle in the largest and strongest democracy of the world, the United States. Of course I mean the election victory and governance of Barack Obama, which - even if it does not deny what I have written so far but -  it demonstrates that it is not impossible to give an answer that can successfully release the anxiety and fill the ideological vacuum. The rhetoric of the Obama campaign is interesting from three aspects in this context.

On the one hand, it not only demonstrated but also reclaimed for Democrats the collective desires attached to the greatness of the American nation and the ability to make the American dream come true. After eight years of Bush administration and the disappointment in the promise of "compassionate conservatism", these phenomena were stronger than ever, which was augmented by the historical stakes of the election: the election of the first black or woman president (vice president), the biggest crisis since several generations, and finally the hope of starting over and reunifying the country.

This was primarily attached to the consciously undertaken role of Obama as a healer, which offered a remedy for both historical and current grievances. The new Democrat president took a third-way position in a new sense of the word: he could overcome traditional division lines, and was able to reach out his hand to the majority of Americans despite his liberal-leftist background. Even if he did not do that with a Democrat, Clintonite public policy approach, he is still, in the philosophical sense, the worthy continuer of third-way traditions that focus on the middle-class and the inhabitants of Main Street in the countryside in addition to urban citizens.

Also, one of the greatest succeses of Obama was that he could attain this national reconciliation with the decided support of the rainbow coalition that has traditionally been the objective of Democrats. Namely, in addition to the middle-class the campaign could also mobilize minorities: in the sense of races, gender, sexual identity and religion. He was able to create the coalition of hope by fitting the tiles of the mosaic, which gave a new identity to social layers that were apolitical or perceived politics as a dandy sport and turned consciously against it.

This latter thought leads us to the third concept: the contents of this coalition, collective identity - the announcement of the "green new deal" has been an important new element in this in comparison to the 1990's. With his public economic stimulus and reform package optimized for the twenty-first century, he is the first president who has given a priority to the issues of environment protection and energy in his policies. Joint work to protect the climate of the planet (and not least to reach the energy independence of the country) means the integration of a discourse into the mainstream that can be the basis for a new collective identity, which in turn can become an efficient answer to the trends of turning inwards by overwriting former division lines.

An inspiration but not a model

While reveling in the euphoria of the beginning of an era dominated by Democrats we should not forget that the success of Obama happened under very particular circumstances. These circumstances (getting stuck in the war in Iraq, the dire financial crisis, the unpopularity of George W. Bush of historical proportions) created the proper ground for proclaiming the emphatically progressive politics of change.

However, it is far from definitely decided if the election victory and governance of Obama will be the exception or the rule in the years of the progressive left ahead. What is certain is that the factors of the success of Obama as demonstrated above are a source of inspiration for all of us. Having said that, it cannot be seen as an easy-to-copy, coherent system of views and policies that can be "copy-pasted" into any different economic and social environment. Contrary to the third way that started its tour around the world with the Clinton administration in the early nineties, Obama's way is not yet an (almost) universal model.

And finally there is something that links Clinton and Obama. The title of the famous autobiographical campaign video of Clinton from 1992 was "The Man from Hope" as the then hopeful candidate had indeed been born in a little town called Hope. Obama's slogan was also hope in addition to 'change'. This is printed on his posters turned cultural icons, and this is used by his supporters that roam the Web 2.0 world of the internet. Of course this is no accident: as any pre-school for campaign strategists will teach you, the symbolic possession of hope is the key to political success. However, there is something we forget about in late modern politics: at least on the progressive side this hope cannot emanate from the charisma of the leader only. Two things are necessary to form hope into a comprehensive message that reaches many people. On the one hand it is necessary to demonstrate that we know and understand what is going on in the world, we are able to project some sort of order into the chaos, we know where the road forward lays. On the other hand this solution, this plan should be made socially open; this is the way that we are going to go down, and You can join this direction in this or that manner, this is why it will be good or you, this is why you will feel comfortable if you come along with us, if things work out the way we would like them to work out. If we think through all these it becomes obvious that progressives of the 'Old Continent' face formidable challenges in both dimensions of constructing hope.

So while relying on it, progressives in Europe should also be prepared for the difficult decade that lays ahead. They should find an ideology that reflects to the anxiety the is becoming ever stronger in the society. They should carve out narratives that can define communities in the progressive way. Collectives that can provide protection to the people in this insecure environment. The feeling of belonging to a group that can ascertain that, in the difficult years of reconstruction, it is not Evil hiding in all of us but the equally omnipresent Good that can define our deeds.

Tibor Dessewffy, Sociologist, President of DEMOS Hungary Foundation