New York Times Claims European Socialism is Failing.

[Big Orange]

Most of this article comes across as bullshit, most of the economic rot did not originate from socialist dominated countries, economic turmoil ejected the US Republicans as well, the more rightwing political parties in Europe are in general economically to the left of the Democrats, and even this article insinuates that:

Europe’s Socialists Suffering Even in Downturn
By STEVEN ERLANGER
Published: September 28, 2009

PARIS — A specter is haunting Europe — the specter of Socialism’s slow collapse.

Even in the midst of one of the greatest challenges to capitalism in 75 years, involving a breakdown of the financial system due to “irrational exuberance,” greed and the weakness of regulatory systems, European Socialist parties and their left-wing cousins have not found a compelling response, let alone taken advantage of the right’s failures.

German voters clobbered the Social Democratic Party on Sunday, giving it only 23 percent of the vote, its worst performance since World War II.

Voters also punished left-leaning candidates in the summer’s European Parliament elections and trounced French Socialists in 2007. Where the left holds power, as in Spain and Britain, it is under attack. Where it is out, as in France, Italy and now Germany, it is divided and listless.

Some American conservatives demonize President Obama’s fiscal stimulus and health care overhaul as a dangerous turn toward European-style Socialism — but it is Europe’s right, not left, that is setting its political agenda.

Europe’s center-right parties have embraced many ideas of the left: generous welfare benefits, nationalized health care, sharp restrictions on carbon emissions, the ceding of some sovereignty to the European Union. But they have won votes by promising to deliver more efficiently than the left, while working to lower taxes, improve financial regulation, and grapple with aging populations.

Europe’s conservatives, says Michel Winock, a historian at the Paris Institut d’Études Politiques, “have adapted themselves to modernity.” When Nicolas Sarkozy of France and Germany’s Angela Merkel condemn the excesses of the “Anglo-Saxon model” of capitalism while praising the protective power of the state, they are using Socialist ideas that have become mainstream, he said.

It is not that the left is irrelevant — it often represents the only viable opposition to established governments, and so benefits, as in the United States, from the normal cycle of electoral politics.

In Portugal, the governing Socialists won re-election on Sunday, but lost an absolute parliamentary majority. In Spain, the Socialists still get credit for opposing both Franco and the Iraq war. In Germany, the broad left, including the Greens, has a structural majority in Parliament, but the Social Democrats, in postelection crisis, must contemplate allying with the hard left, Die Linke, which has roots in the old East German Communist Party.

Part of the problem is the “wall in the head” between East and West Germans. While the Christian Democrats moved smoothly eastward, the Social Democrats of the West never joined with the Communists. “The two Germanys, one Socialist, one Communist — two souls — never really merged,” said Giovanni Sartori, a professor emeritus at Columbia University. “It explains why the S.P.D., which was always the major Socialist party in Europe, cannot really coalesce.”

The situation in France is even worse for the left. Asked this summer if the party was dying, Bernard-Henri Lévy, an emblematic Socialist, answered: “No — it is already dead. No one, or nearly no one, dares to say it. But everyone, or nearly everyone, knows it.” While he was accused of exaggerating, given that the party is the largest in opposition and remains popular in local government, his words struck home.

The Socialist Party, with a long revolutionary tradition and weakening ties to a diminishing working class, is riven by personal rivalries. The party last won the presidency in 1988, and in 2007, Ségolène Royal lost the presidency to Mr. Sarkozy by 6.1 percent, a large margin.

With a reputation for flakiness, Ms. Royal narrowly lost the party leadership election last year to a more doctrinaire Socialist, Martine Aubry, by 102 votes out of 135,000. The ensuing allegations of fraud further chilled their relations.

While Ms. Royal would like to move the Socialists to the center and explore a more formal coalition with the Greens and the Democratic Movement of François Bayrou, Ms. Aubry fears diluting the party. She is both famous and infamous for achieving the 35-hour workweek in the last Socialist government.

The French Socialist Party “is trapped in a hopeless contradiction,” said Tony Judt, director of the Remarque Institute at New York University. It espouses a radical platform it cannot deliver; the result leaves space for parties to its left that can take as much as 15 percent of the vote.

The party, at its summer retreat last month at La Rochelle, a coastal resort, still talked of “comrades” and “party militants.” Its seminars included “Internationalism at Globalized Capitalism’s Hour of Crisis.”

But its infighting has drawn ridicule. Mr. Sarkozy told his party this month that he sent “a big thank-you” to Ms. Royal, “who is helping me a lot,” and Daniel Cohn-Bendit, a prominent European Green politician, said “everyone has cheated” in the Socialist Party and accused Ms. Royal of acting like “an outraged young girl.”

The internecine squabbling in France and elsewhere has done little to position Socialist parties to answer the question of the moment: how to preserve the welfare state amid slower growth and rising deficits. The Socialists have, in this contest, become conservatives, fighting to preserve systems that voters think need to be improved, though not abandoned.

“The Socialists can’t adapt to the loss of their basic electorate, and with globalism, the welfare state can no longer exist in the same way,” Professor Sartori said.

Enrico Letta, 43, is one of the hopes of Italy’s left, currently in disarray in the face of Silvio Berlusconi’s nationalist populism. “We have to understand that Socialism is an answer of the last century,” Mr. Letta said. “We need to build a center-left that is pragmatic, that provides an attractive alternative, and not just an opposition.”

Mr. Letta argues that Socialist policies will have to be transmuted into a more fluid form to allow an alliance with center, liberal and green parties that won’t be called “Socialist.”

Mr. Winock, the historian, said, “I think the left and Socialism in Europe still have work to do; they have a raison d’être, and they will have to rely more on environment issues.” Combined with continuing efforts to reduce income disparity, he said, “going green” may give the left more life.

Mr. Judt argues that European Socialists need a new message — how to reform capitalism, “recognizing the centrality of economic interest while displacing it from its throne as the only way of talking about politics.”

European Socialists need “to think a lot harder about what the state can and can’t do in the 21st century,” he said.

Not an easy syllabus. But without that kind of reform, Mr. Judt said, “I don’t think Socialism in Europe has a future; and given that it is a core constitutive part of the European democratic consensus, that’s bad news.”

New York Times

[Samuel]

giving it only 23 percent of the vote, its worst performance since World War II.

As an American I find this hilarious.

Where the left holds power, as in Spain and Britain, it is under attack. Where it is out, as in France, Italy and now Germany, it is divided and listless.

Wait- the ruling party in a democracy under attack? How can that be? No one would ever attack the ruling party in order to try to bring them down- it is just the cornerstone of parlimentary democracy.

Europe’s center-right parties have embraced many ideas of the left: generous welfare benefits, nationalized health care, sharp restrictions on carbon emissions, the ceding of some sovereignty to the European Union. But they have won votes by promising to deliver more efficiently than the left, while working to lower taxes, improve financial regulation, and grapple with aging populations.

So Europe's right... is socialist. They just want to make the system more flexible and cut some benefits.

Europe’s conservatives, says Michel Winock, a historian at the Paris Institut d’Études Politiques, “have adapted themselves to modernity.”

Unspoken commentary: "Unlike those stupid Americans. "

In France it appears they have a problem with the party itself, and not the left, falling apart. So I don't see any real sign socialism is failing rather than people are adjusting things to globalization and trying to make their countries more competitive.

[[R_H]]

Interestingly enough, there's a similar article on Spiegel.de, but it's about social democracies in Europe, not European socialism.

[Dahak]

What the article fails to mention is that the current ruling "right" CDU/CSU here in Germany by no means gained votes in the election. They just lost less than the SPD (the social democrats), while the "small" parties all gained. It's more a problem of the big parties not keeping up with the changes in the general political and social changes in the society...

[salm]

The article also failed to mention that "The Linke" a real leftist party won a truckload of votes. Furthermore, the article even says that the conservatives are embracing socialist ideas. How the fuck is socalism "losing" when even conversatives implement socialist ideas? All in all the conservatives (CDU and FDP) won 48% and the left leaning parties (SPD, Greens, Linke) won 45%. It´s pretty even.
The article would make sense if it used SPD insead of socialism who, indeed, lost significantly.

[Vendetta]

giving it only 23 percent of the vote, its worst performance since World War II.

As an American I find this hilarious.

Protip: Most European countries have more than two parties.

[Simon_Jester]

I think he may be laughing because of the idea of 23% of a country's population voting for socialists, which by American standards is utterly inconceivable.

Please note that this does not mean he's laughing at Germany.

[Samuel]

That is exactly it. I know that most of Europe runs by Parlimentary systems with multiple parties. The closest a US third party ever got was 27.4% in 1912, but that was only because the canidate had previous been a major part of one of the two main political parties.

I find the idea that "only" 1 in 4 people voting for the socialists means socialism is declining is completely ridiculous. In the US such a large voting block would form the core of one of our political parties.

That and it is still the second largest party... it would be like claiming the death of the Republican party just due to their failure in the last election.

[Serafina]

Hm, lets see:

Virtually every party (except some Nutjobs like the NPD) stands for "soziale Marktwirtschaft" - socialsim right in the name.
Even the FDP, which is the most liberal party of all the notable ones.



SPD and LINKE have together 33% - and both are socialist parties.

But even the CDU/CSU is pretty socialist by US-Standards - they are way more socialist than the US-Democrats.
If you want a party that has even remotely comparable standards than US-parties (the democrats, not the GOP) then you have to look at the FDP - and they have ~15%.

Seriously, claiming that socialism is failing is utterly ridicoulus - all that happened is that one party lost some votes, mostly in favor of a even more socialist one.

[B5B7]

Even in the midst of one of the greatest challenges to capitalism in 75 years, involving a breakdown of the financial system due to “irrational exuberance,” greed and the weakness of regulatory systems, European Socialist parties and their left-wing cousins have not found a compelling response, let alone taken advantage of the right’s failures.

See how Americentric he is. Most of what happens with the European parties and their voting is to do with internal European politics, not as a reflection of what happens in America [which certainly had some economic impact in Europe].

[Crown]

Europe’s center-right parties have embraced many ideas of the left: generous welfare benefits, nationalized health care, sharp restrictions on carbon emissions, the ceding of some sovereignty to the European Union. But they have won votes by promising to deliver more efficiently than the left, while working to lower taxes, improve financial regulation, and grapple with aging populations.

So Europe's right... is socialist. They just want to make the system more flexible and cut some benefits.

This. Nail on head and all of that. I suspect that the author of the article purposefully (or his editor) chose a provocative article title, which then goes on to be contradicted within the text itself. Slightly amusing, and a little sad really, but journalism today is shoddy through and through.

[K. A. Pital]

Seriously, I can't believe that crap even passes as "journalism". "Hey look, socialist democrats got less votes than other parties, which basically are also supporting social democracy. Socialism in Europe collapses! SPECTER OF COLLAPSE OF SOCIALISM! Hahaha! Look, I can do witty pseudo-Marxist quotes!"

New York Times? I'd have to file a motion for renaming the US papers. In that motion, I will propose the replacement of the word "Times" with the word "Rag".

[Rye]

I think one of the key refutations of the article is that in Britain, the conservatives have marketed themselves essentially as very little in the way of policy change WRT socialised healthcare and society in general, just some lower taxes, lose some services here and there, but they are mainly just a change of administration to deal with Labour's problems. Of course, I doubt this is true, and I think the old tories and right wing still exist, but under Cameron, the marketing has been a lot more Left/Centre than it was, say, under Thatcher or Major. Add into this the rather spectacular rise of Vince Cable in popular opinion and the Left is far from dying compared to laissez-faire fundamentalism.

[Bluewolf]

If I remember correctly, there has been many articles where an American paper/report etc has tried to show the end of socialism/rise of capitalism/rise of religion etc to prove a point. Actually I think the last on itself was on religion. Again for reasons stated these are weak articles, accuracy wise. The idea of some cuts and being more efficent is perfectly natural in a climate like this. Of course you will want to save money and look like your not wasting it!

[Surlethe]

You guys should have seen how the Wall Street Journal spun the socialists' losses - Europe reconsiders capitalism, or something like that. Sure, Europe may be reconsidering the balance between social security and economic efficiency, but wherever they redraw the line it will be far, far to the left of the US consensus.

[Bluewolf]

If you could find that article Surl, I'd be greatful as I'd like to see. it. Its funny as it stems from that plack and white view of socialism and capitalism. We use both, no one or the other though its considered that we are either one or the other.

[salm]

If you could find that article Surl, I'd be greatful as I'd like to see. it. Its funny as it stems from that plack and white view of socialism and capitalism. We use both, no one or the other though its considered that we are either one or the other.

The use of the word "socialism" also varies from place to place. Here, when speaking about socialism, you normally mean something like the system used in the DDR or the Soviet Union. When talking about what we have now people usually refer to it as social democratic.

[Thanas]

Or "social market economy" which basically a variation of Capitalism in which the state limits certain practices and keeps certain services to itself/under tight regulation.

[[R_H]]

Or "social market economy" which basically a variation of Capitalism in which the state limits certain practices and keeps certain services to itself/under tight regulation.

Which the USA is as well. It's just not as socially democratic as Europe.

[Surlethe]

Some of the WSJ's coverage of Germany's election:

Germany's return to reform politics[Op/Ed]
Loss forces party shift in Germany
Germany goes for growth [Op/Ed]
Mandate for change in Germany
Center-left faces staggering losses

[Tribun]

After reading these links from the WSJ, I call most of it bullshit. The only thing they prove is, that they know very little of Germany. The main factor why the SPD lost so much was just that they had had little chance to show profile in the Great Coalition and couldn't serve the voter groups that had more severe demands or make up for the social reforms they did in earlier years.

As for the whole other shit... Nothing much will change. Merkel knows that as soon as she tries cuts, her party will be severly punished. There is no money for great presents to their voter groups, which is also bad for them. In half a year at the latest, they will hate to be the government, since now they have no scapegoat.

Sometimes I can really only shake my head at the shit that sometimes is written about my country in foreign papers that don't bother to look deeper.

[Bluewolf]

Given that a load of articles have been like that in the past , Tribun, its hardly surprising.

Anyway, thank you for the articles, Sul.