When Internationalism Mattered

Early March marked the one hundredth anniversary of the founding of the Third International, the Communist International or Comintern. For the most part, the anniversary went unnoticed.

An exception was an article in Jacobin by Loren Balhorn entitled The World Revolution That Wasn’t. Balhorn is a youthful contributing editor of Jacobin.

Not so long ago, the legacy of the Comintern still prevailed -- Communist Parties in virtually every country constituted, dominated, or greatly influenced their country’s left. Perhaps those of us who lived through or well remember that time should be grateful for its commemoration by Balhorn. But because Balhorn does not fully grasp the significance of the Communist International, he delivers a small favor, a very small favor indeed.

For Balhorn, the Comintern was a failure. Its history was quite simple:

The International’s first four years of existence witnessed multiple uprisings and revolutions, socialist and other radical organizations exploded in size, and it appeared that the world could really be on the cusp of socialist transformation.
Yet the Communists failed to realize this transformation. The Soviet Union remained isolated and grew increasingly authoritarian and stagnant. When it met its end in 1991, its failure triggered neoliberal capitalism’s truly total globalization and the collapse of the international left as a powerful force able to oppose it.

To illustrate the lost opportunity of the Comintern, Balhorn cites the planned German rising of October, 1923, an event that he derisively calls the “German Floptober.” Like so many liberal and social democratic accounts of the Weimar period, Balhorn buys into the myths of Communist incompetence, betrayal, and, contradictorily, both timidity and ultra-leftism. The reality was somewhat different, though, when viewed against the backdrop of social democratic perfidy. Like the liberals of today, the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) was willing to work with the devil to achieve or protect political goals and to avoid, at all costs, a socialist revolution.

In the case of the SPD, Communist calculations were necessarily shaped by the collaboration of the SPD with-- indeed, the eager recruitment of -- the German extreme right, the proto-fascist Freikorps, and the German army in the slaughter and defeat of Communist risings in 1918 (Spartacist), 1919 (Bavarian Soviet Republic), and 1920 (in the wake of the Kapp putsch).

The Kapp putsch is particularly instructive. When a counter-revolutionary plot of some Freikorps and army elements marched against the social democratic-dominated Weimar government, President Ebert and most of his SPD government fled Berlin, cautiously calling for a general strike against the coup. The workers responded and, within days, brought the rightists to their knees with the greatest, most paralyzing strike in German history.

Buoyed by their overwhelming demonstration of working class power, workers kept to the offensive, rising throughout Germany in a revolutionary wave. In Germany’s industrial heartland, workers formed a Red Ruhr Army of 50,000-80,000 armed workers supported by 300,000 miners. The Communist and left socialist workers defeated Freikorps and regular army units, eventually taking the entire Ruhr area.

Treacherously, the SPD government unleashed the forces sympathetic to the coup-- the Freikorps and the Reichswehr-- on the insurgents, resulting in the slaughter of hundreds if not thousands of Communist and Socialist workers. Most of the extreme right coup participants were amnestied, many later joining the ranks of the Nazis, while many strikers were punished.

Is it any surprise that Communists many times referred, in ensuing years, to social democrats as “social fascists”? In the case of Germany, the treachery of suppressing the left and collaborating with the extreme right emboldened and cleared the way for fascism. And certainly, the all-too-frequent collaboration of social democracy with reaction to forestall revolutionary change earned the enmity of revolutionaries.

Without the historical context of social democratic betrayal, liberal historians and the anti-Communist left have constructed the widely-held myth of Communist intransigent, ultra-left sectarianism in the working class movement.

Balhorn enthusiastically subscribes to that canard:

The failed German Revolution would have disastrous long-term effects, entrenching a divide between Communists and Social Democrats that greatly weakened the resistance to Hitler’s rise and culminated in the destruction of the German workers’ movement — one of the great tragedies of the twentieth century.

Given the resolve of the era’s social democrats and liberals to defend capitalism against revolutionary change at all costs, Communists had no choice but to go it alone.

Moreover, the coddling of the Freikorps, the Reichswehr, and putsch-happy Nazis by the SPD and its Weimar allies made a tactical anti-fascist alliance nearly impossible in Germany. Nonetheless, the Communists sought working class unity in many instances, contrary to the liberal mythology that blames the rise of Nazism on Communist sectarianism.

In some places, like Saxony, SPD workers rebelled against the leadership’s anti-Communism and forced a united front government with the Communists (1923), defying the national SPD. Consequently, SPD leader and Reich President Ebert permitted the army to depose the government and suppress the Communist Party.

After the victory of the Nazis in the spring 1932 Landtag election in Prussia, it was the Communists who called for unity of action between SPD and KPD workers, as noted by the German Nobel Peace prize-winning journalist martyred by the Nazis, Carl von Ossietzky, a call that went unheeded.

It was, of course, the German Communists who issued the appeal for a general strike after Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor, an appeal rebuffed by the Social Democrats.

The realities of German Weimar history leading up to Hitler’s consolidation of power clash sharply with the mythologies promoted by liberal and social democratic historians. The facts point to a collapse of social democracy in the face of economic crisis and political reaction rather than a failure of Communism or the Comintern, as Balhorn would lead us to believe.

To leap from the failure of European revolutions in the early 1920s to the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991 and to pronounce the Communist International therefore a failure and irrelevant is surely an ill-informed judgement. There is no way to explain the twentieth-century fight against (and defeat of) fascism without acknowledging the central role of Communism and the Comintern. The foundations for that fight were laid in the Comintern-organized internationalist defense of the Spanish Republic in the 1930s, a heroic effort that even served as the centerpiece of an iconic Hollywood movie, Casablanca, and numerous other celebrated cultural artifacts of the time. The Comintern-organized international response to fascism’s assault on Spain remains, to this day, the most inspiring example of selfless solidarity with the cause of social justice.

Though the Comintern ceased in 1943, its legacy of Communist unity continued well after the war, through successful revolutions in Europe, Asia, and elsewhere and through the liberation of nearly all of the colonies. While the unity of the Communist movement was broken by the Chinese Communist Party and its allies, at one point, two-fifths or more of the world’s population was ruled by political organizations claiming adherence to Marxism-Leninism. At the same time, significant Communist organizations existed throughout the capitalist states.

To be clear, the Soviet Union fell because it lost the Cold War. Why it lost the Cold War is important, though a different conversation. But it is an improper conclusion to judge a state to be unworthy, flawed, or failed simply because it lost at war. Many just causes, many movements for emancipation have tasted defeat and, unfortunately, will again. And surely the sanctions wars conducted by today’s imperial bullies demonstrate that war is not only armies meeting on the battlefield. But the success or failure of the Soviet Union and the Communist movement must be judged by a careful and thorough look at the balance sheet, given the alignment of forces, the level of material development, the plans met, the benefits achieved, and the social progress won. Some thirty years after European socialism’s demise, opinion polls still show widespread nostalgia for the system in the former socialist states.

To say, as Balhorn does, that the Soviet “...failure triggered neoliberal capitalism’s truly total globalization and the collapse of the international left as a powerful force able to oppose it...” is regrettable. The logic of capitalism-- faced with the ineffectiveness of the Keynesian model-- triggered the return to market fundamentalism-- so-called “neoliberal capitalism;” the relegation of millions of well educated workers from the former socialist countries to the capitalist labor market did indeed dramatically lower the cost of labor globally, fueling the growth of profits and global trade expansion.

But once again, it was social democracy, including its liberal and Labour embodiment, that yielded to triumphant capital’s assault upon public institutions, welfare, regulation, living standards, wages, and social protection, an assault that pundits have dubbed “neoliberalism.” With the failure to manage the system through Keynesian prescriptions, social democracy quickly surrendered to the forces of brutal, unfettered, unreconstructed capitalism.

Just as timid “socialists” preferred to placate the right in the 1920s rather than join with the forces of revolutionary change, the social democrats of today make common ground with the corporate globalists and the market fetishists, thus, paving the way for the growth of right-wing populism.

Balhorn concludes:

The political landscape today is nothing like 1919... We are still at the beginning of a potential mass socialist movement — a priceless opportunity we cannot afford to waste… Today the distinction between revolution and reform appears less immediately relevant. With overall levels of class struggle and organization still at historic lows, and insurgent politicians like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Jeremy Corbyn popularizing socialism in a way not seen in decades, it seems obvious where the action is… The problem is that no revolutionary left of any significance exists. To abstain from the breathtaking developments in electoral politics will ensure only that nobody notices that socialists are trying to pull them to the left at all.

Yes, the ‘problem’ is that the revolutionary left is very weak-- still reeling from the loss of the Soviet Union and the social democratization of many Communist Parties in the post-war and Perestroika era. But the labor movement is very weak as well. The peace movement has fallen upon hard times. In fact, nearly all social justice movements have declined in recent years. That is only more reason to redouble our efforts to build them.

Yes, the ‘political landscape’ is not 1919; it is more like 1914! With the rivalries between imperialists heating up nearly every day, there is an urgent, dire need for action, action against war, action that has not been forthcoming from existing political forces. War danger on the India-Pakistan border, drone attacks in Somalia and Afghanistan, threats of invasion in Venezuela, plots of “regime change,” fighting in Syria and Yemen, the abrogation of treaties, aggressive war games, death-dealing sanctions, and nuclear saber-rattling are just a few of the daily threats to peace that could explode at any moment, just as they disrupted the appearance of peace at the turn of the last century.

Balhorn’s contrast between ‘reform and revolution’ is not useful. There are no revolutionary agents that have not won the confidence of the masses through fighting for immediate reforms challenging capital and ameliorating the suffering of working people. Conversely, reformism has never won enduring concessions from capital unless insurgents or revolutionaries were breathing down the necks of the capitalists-- that’s the dialectics of political struggle.

We should be mindful of the fact that the success of Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez, Corbyn, and others is as much or more a matter of mass dissatisfaction searching for an expression (as it is to some extent with Trump) than it is any commitment to a particular ideology. The Democratic Party (and to a lesser extent, the Labour Party) has never been a friendly home for socialism. Since the time of Woodrow Wilson, the notion that the Democratic party can be enlisted to tame corporate capitalism has been dashed by its corporately-controlled leaders. To think that a new generation of young, dynamic, and capable progressives can transform the Democratic Party is either wishful or muddled thinking. For the moment, the Democratic Party and a burst of social democracy may be ‘where the action is,’ but history suggests that it will not be there for long. It must be compromised or grow independent and more militant.

As in 1919, the task of revitalizing the revolutionary left is urgent. Decades of social democratic degeneration into a cheerleader for “a rising tide lifts all boats,” a sponsor of market solutions, and an apologist for obscene inequality, underscores the need for an authentic anti-capitalist movement.

At the same time, the emergence of left trends in the US and the UK signals a popular thirst for a new politics and legitimizes a conversation about socialism. That conversation should not, must not be constrained by electoral fetishism or shepherded into old, compromised institutions. How this trend evolves will, of course, help shape the left of the future. We must help to shape it.

But the revitalization of an independent left, a Marxist-Leninist left will be the necessary step toward a genuine anti-capitalist and revolutionary left and our greatest contribution.

That is the real lesson of the Communist International.

Greg Godels

zzsblogml@gmail.com

Spinning Liberal Tales

It comes as no surprise that The Nation magazine endorses Hillary Clinton for President (10-24-16). As the leading left-liberal publication, The Nation huffs and puffs high-minded principles before surrendering to the Democratic Party establishment. Nonetheless, it’s always interesting to see how they arrive at their submission.

Of course, it’s all about Trump. He’s not on our side. As a statement of the obvious, that conviction is unmatched. But is Clinton on our side?

The Nation’s editors assemble a tortured list of Clinton positives and Trump negatives that stretch the truth, shrug off uncomfortable facts, and hail irrelevancies. She exhibits “grace under pressure,” they tell us. She has been a “forceful advocate of health-care reform” since 1992. And for wild-eyed fantasy: She “is running on the most progressive platform in the modern history of the Democratic Party.” 

Trump’s charge that the elections are “rigged,” on the other hand, is “an assault on the very basis of democratic governance itself.” So the elections are not rigged in favor of the rich, white, and powerful?

With amazing audacity, the editors simply dismiss Clinton’s obscene bond with corporations and foreign tyrants, a bond that is sealed with tens of millions of dollars of barely-concealed quid pro quos. They assert that “progressives will have to continue to push her” away from these rich and powerful benefactors.

As for her super-hawk foreign policy, The Nation concedes that Clinton is wrong on everything from Palestine to Russia and Syria. Though she is seemingly “intent on deepening a New Cold War,” we are invited to “break her hawkish habits,” as though her role in killing tens of thousands is akin to curbing a smoking habit or losing weight.

Presidential candidate Jill Stein is the fly in The Nation’s ointment. She is all the progressive things that Ms. Clinton is not. She stands against the corporate, war-mongering tide and not with it. Here, The Nation engages in a remarkably clumsy dance around the Stein option, laying alleged failings of the Green Party at her feet: “...her cause has not been helped by the Green Party’s reluctance, or inability, to seek, share, and build power, with all the messy compromise this often entails. Instead of the patient-- and Sisyphean-- task of building an authentic grassroots alternative, the Greens offer a top-down vehicle for protest.”

But isn’t building an “authentic grassroots alternative” exactly what the Stein candidacy is all about? Isn’t Stein reaching out to The Nation readers, Sisyphus, or anyone else interested in changing the bankrupt political scene in order to build precisely the power that the editors claim to want to see? The apparent truth is that The Nation would like Jill Stein to go away and take her principled positions with her, clearing the way for a heavy dose of lesser-of-two-evil scare tactics.

The most-tenured Nation columnist, Katha Pollitt, bats clean-up on the magazine’s Hillary team. She relishes the opportunity, entitling her column The Case for Hillary. In offering her brief, she gives a list of 12 reasons, beginning with reproductive rights: “I’m putting this first because they’re crucial to everything you care about…” [my italics]. Everything we care about? As important as reproductive rights are, does Pollitt really believe that reproductive rights trump all concerns? Did she consider African American mothers whose sons have been murdered by police? Did she even weigh the daily slaughter of hundreds if not thousands throughout the world at the hands of US weapons or the weapons of its surrogates? Does poverty, lack of health care, and inferior education count in her reproductive-rights calculus?

Pollitt, like far too many upper-middle class white liberals, is blind to class and race. Those from other classes or races are not part of “us,” and the concerns of the “other,” though real, are not significant barriers to the “simple human happiness” that she argues flows from reproductive rights. Like the Evangelicals standing on the other side of the abortion barricades, she is incapable of imagining anything more important to others than that battle. She, like the right-wing fanatics, trivializes all other wrongs.

Against the Big Lie

Pollitt’s defense of Ms. Clinton reaches disturbing dimensions when she raises oft-repeated lies about Communist sectarianism leading to the empowerment of Hitler. She references a supposed moment when “...German communists scorned the weak-tea socialists in the 1932 election with the slogan ‘After Hitler, us.’” Like other similar red-baiting slanders that circulate on the left in every election cycle, this one bears little or no relation to the truth. Defenders of lesser-of-two-evilism assert that the German Communists stood in the way of working class anti-fascist unity, that they welcomed Hitler’s rise, that they spurned joint action. These charges are meant to apply supposed lessons from history to the politics of our time, suggesting that independent militancy and principles stand in the way of unity against the specter of extremism. If disaffected voters would throw their votes at the feet of the slightly-lesser-evil, like the German Communists should have done, we could avoid the specter of a greater evil.

While there are many for-hire historians who will affirm these claims, they are based on fiction.

The “1932 election” that Pollitt cites was, in fact, five critical elections: a first-round presidential election in March, the second and final round, the important Prussian Landtag election in April, a Reichstag election in July, and another-- the last relatively legitimate Reichstag election-- in November.

One surely unimpeachable perspective on these elections was that of journalist Carl von Ossietzky. Ossietzky was a prominent and respected left-wing commentator associated with the left wing of social democracy and often critical of the Communists (KPD). From a family of fallen aristocrats, Ossietzky’s anti-fascist credentials and integrity were impeccable-- he received the Nobel Prize in 1935 and died in a Gestapo prison hospital in 1938.

In his newspaper columns in Die Weltbühne, Ossietzky tells a story far removed from the fantastic anti-Communist narrative. In the lead-up to the first round of the Presidential elections, the Social Democratic Party, despite being Germany’s largest party at the time, chose not to run a candidate against both the reactionary incumbent President, von Hindenburg, and Adolf Hitler. It argued that the party’s stance was not pro-Hindenburg, but anti-fascist, a splitting of hairs that did not impress Ossietzky: “It is not that fascism is winning, but that the others are adapting it… A passing insult tossed by the demagogues of the Berlin Sports Palast jerks ten Socialist deputies from their seats, and forces them to prove themselves as fatherland-lovers… the initiative lies with the right.” Ossietzky writes: “Readers continually ask me for whom one should vote on March 13th. Is there really nothing better, they ask, than pursuing this fateful and discouraging policy of the ‘lesser evil’?”

He goes on:

As a non-party man of the left I would have been happy to vote for an acceptable Social Democrat… Since there is no Social Democratic candidate then I will have to vote for the Communist… It must be emphasized that a vote for Thälmann means neither a vote of confidence for the Communist Party, nor major expectations. To make left-wing politics it is necessary to concentrate strength where a man of the left stands in the battle. Thälmann is the only one; all the others are various shades of reaction. That makes the choice easier.

The Social Democrats say: “Hindenburg means struggle against fascism.” From which source do the gentlemen draw this knowledge?

It is nonsense to describe Thälmann’s candidature as simply a gain of numbers. Thälmann will probably receive a surprisingly high number of votes… The better that Thälmann does, the clearer it will be what a success could have been won with a united socialist candidate…

Within a week of his election, Hindenburg-- designated the “anti-fascist” candidate by the Social Democrats-- called for the banning of all left-wing party-affiliated mass organizations. Before nine months passed, the Reich President had appointed Adolf Hitler Chancellor and handed rule to the Nazis. Ossietzky knew at that time what a colossal mistake it was for the Social Democrats to refuse to run a candidate, to support Hindenburg, and to refuse to support Thälmann: “Invisible hands are at work in the web and woof of official policy, trying to bring Hitler, thrown out through the front door, in again up the back stairs.”

In January of 1933, immediately after von Schleicher was deposed as Chancellor and prior to Hindenburg appointing Hitler, the German Communists suggested a united general strike; the Social Democrats rejected the offer to collaborate.

Ossietzky urged unity between Communists and Social Democrats as early as April of 1932. After the Nazis made major gains in the important Prussian Landtag election, Ossietzky saw only two effective responses: either the Social Democrats invite the KPD into the existing Prussian government (something that they had refused to do) or the two parties form a united front. The KPD had already raised the second option one day after the election. The Central Committee called for “mass meetings of the workers in every factory and every mine… in all trade unions…[to] compile a list of joint demands, elect action committees and strike committees composed of Communist, Social Democratic, Christian, and non-party workers…”  

Despite the negative portrait painted of KPD tactics by liberal commentators, the German people showed their growing confidence in the KPD in the two Reichstag elections. Of the three major parties, only the KPD made gains in both elections, adding nearly 30% to its deputies while the SPD lost nearly 16%. Clearly, the KPD’s militant anti-fascism was growing in popularity with the working class.

It is probably too much to hope that liberals will retire the red-baiting canard of Communism ushering in fascism, any more than there is hope that partisan Democrats will cease blaming Ralph Nader for their pathetic surrender to the right in the 2000 election.

Clearly, the lesser-of-two-evils approach will not go away anytime soon, though it has failed to halt the many decades of the rightward drift of the political center. Could it be that those who own the two parties are sponsoring this persistent shift to the right in order to gauge just how long liberals, labor, and the left will tolerate it without making a break with the Democratic Party establishment?

One would do well to put aside Cold War textbooks and liberal smugness and take a long look at the dynamics of oppositional politics in the Weimar era leading up to Hitler’s ascension to power. There are lessons from that period beyond desperately collaborating with bourgeois and reactionary parties. The severe economic crisis of that time was only answered by a demagogic and extreme nationalist movement and by the militantly anti-capitalist, revolutionary movement. 

The Social Democratic Party chose a different path: it sought to manage capitalism along with its bourgeois parliamentary counterparts. They failed. Disaster ensued.

Zoltan Zigedy

zoltanzigedy@gmail.com

Is There Life After Social Democracy?

“Labour's problems aren't very different from those of other Western social democratic parties... In this sense we are experiencing not merely a crisis of the British state but also a general crisis of social democracy” (Labour Vanishes, Ross McKibbin, London Review of Books, November 20, 2014).

McKibbin's summary assessment of social democracy is both keen and cogent. Social democracy, the political expression of twentieth-century anti-Communist reformism, has arrived at a juncture that challenges its vision as well as its political vitality. In McKibbin's words: “Over the last twenty or thirty years the great social democratic parties of Germany, Austria, Scandinavia, Australia and New Zealand (and now France) have bled support...” One could add, though in a less dramatic way, the ersatz US social democratic party, the Democratic Party.

In a real sense, social democracy drew its energy from its posture as an alternative to Communism. For various reasons-- fear of change, anti-Communist demonology, ignorance, imagined self-interest-- many of those disadvantaged by capitalism took refuge in the tame, gradualist, and militantly anti-Communist parties claiming space on the left. By advocating an easy parliamentary approach, charting a cautious, non-confrontational road, and enveloping the effort with civility, social democratic thinkers believe they can win popularity and smooth the sharp edges of capitalism.

After the founding of the Soviet Union and the birth of international Communist parties-- many of them mass parties-- the old Socialist International hewed to a reformist line that separated it from Communism while posing as advocates on the side of the workers and for socialism. Parliamentary successes followed from the adoption of moderation and the condemnation of Communism, a lesson learned only too well by practical leaders.

The model for social democracy after the Bolshevik revolution was undoubtedly the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). Assuming power after the abdication of the Kaiser, the SPD swiftly suppressed the revolutionary zeal of the masses and established a parliamentary regime. By suppressing Communism, the SPD sought to accommodate the hysterical fears of the bourgeoisie and the petty bourgeoisie, a tactic destined to permeate social democratic thinking to this day. Despite being the largest party bloc in the Reichstag until July of 1932, neither appeasement of the right nor “responsibly” overseeing a capitalist economy under great duress would rescue the SPD and Germany from the rise of Nazism. Social democrats are fond of blaming the SPD's failure on the militant left or right-wing extremism, but they willfully ignore the blatant fact-- equally true today-- that people turn away from centrist parties when they fail to keep their promises. Ruling Germany became more the goal of the SPD than ruling it well and in the interest of Germany's working people.

With Communists' resistance to fascism earning the respect and trust of the people, as it did throughout most of Europe, social democracy fared poorly after the War. It is well established today that where European social democratic parties were prepared to distance themselves loudly and forcefully from collaborating with Communists, “friends” in the US were only too happy to give them covert and overt aid. The CIA and the host of other acronymic entities created by the US government to subvert anti-capitalist and pro-labor activities worldwide found willing collaborators in social democratic parties, especially among those who clearly identified Communist success with social democratic failure. It was not long before the opportunism of anti-Communism infected the entire social democratic movement: In 1951, the Socialist International formally dissociated itself from Communism, characterizing it as terrorist, bureaucratic, imperialistic, and freedom-destroying. Articles 7, 8, 9, and 10 of the Frankfort Declaration excommunicate Communism, condemning it to the netherworld with all of the fervor of the Inquisition.

But opportunism begets opportunism. By 1959 any pretense of socialism was erased from the grandfather of social democratic parties, the SPD. With the Godesberg program, the SPD effectively renounced a commitment to socialism, replacing it with vague notions of social justice and allusions to democratic advances. German social democracy thus made its peace with capitalism, under the banner of anti-Communism, and would, henceforth, pledge to never stray from the path of reform.

Nearly all other socialist and social democratic parties followed suit. In place of socialism, the doctrine of social welfare emerged as a tepid surrogate for eliminating exploitation from social and economic relations. Social democracy created an artificial, divisive wall between marginally well-off working people-- the so-called “middle class”-- and their more destitute class brothers and sisters. Instead of expropriating the expropriators, social democracy insists that the burden of pacifying the poor should be borne socially, with much of that burden falling on working class families.

Class, like socialism, was relegated to the dustbin. In its place was the concept of civil society with markets determining social status, compensation, and the distribution of goods and services. Those who lacked the physical or mental assets to compete for the “opportunities” afforded by markets were supposed to be protected by a metaphorical societal “safety net,” a set of programs designed to guarantee a marginal life for those alleged to be lacking competitive skills or spirit. Thus, the cry of “Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité,” so inspirational in the French Revolution, was diluted centuries later to the liberty of markets, the equality of the jungle, and the selfishness of individualism. The only vestige of eighteenth-century humanism remaining in social democratic theory is a shabby, porous net that guarantees that “losers” in the game of life will remain losers.

For decades, the supposed shining star in the social democratic firmament was Sweden. The myth of Swedish “socialism” sustained the few claims to social justice remaining intact with the soft left's assumption of the role of capitalism's handmaiden. Whatever credibility this view might have enjoyed was devastatingly punctured by an article written by Peter Cohen in the July-August 1994 issue of Monthly Review (Sweden: The Model that Never Was). Taking two Pollyanna articles from the previous year to task, Cohen, a long-time resident of Sweden, states emphatically: “Like all European Social Democratic Parties, the SAP [Social Democratic Workers Party] not only accepts capitalism but defends it against any attempt at change. The party has always argued that what is good for Swedish corporations is good for the Swedish working class.”

Cohen presages the fate of the US and European working classes when he explains that the SAP has always accepted that class collaboration “requires the working class to accept cutbacks-- of all types-- when corporate profits decline, and even when they don't.” Cohen outlines the virulent anti-Communism in the SAP that led it to support internment of Communists in WWII and work hand-in-glove with US Cold Warriors, citing its support for Pinochet's government and hostility to Portugal's revolution.

The SAP instituted the so-called “solidarity wage policy,” a cynical leveling of workers' wages within the total wage package. Cohen explains: “The “solidarity wage” does not affect the imbalance of income between workers and capitalists. It only redistributes wages between different groups of workers. It also makes the SAP look like a dedicated defender of the workers' interests.”

Cohen documents the role of the SAP in introducing private schools into the Swedish education system, in pro-capitalist tax “reform,” and in weakening Swedish social insurance (the “safety net”).

He cites the SAP's call (now ubiquitous in all capitalist countries) to retard workers' compensation in the interests of “competitiveness.”

Cohen's remarkable article is uncannily prescient of the evolution of social democracy over the two decades to follow his article, an evolution of closer and closer class collaboration. In his words: “The table manners shown by the strong in the course of their meal may be more attractive in countries with Social Democratic governments, but the digestive process is the same.”

It is tempting to see this development as a mutation of the social democratic ideal, as a departure.

It is not.

Instead, it is the trajectory of social democracy in a world where the specter of Communism has ebbed. Without pressure from the left, social democratic parties shed all pretense of representing the working class against capital and political power. Today, social democratic parties-- like the US Democratic Party-- function under the illusion that Europe and North America are classless societies, while acknowledging the problem of poverty plaguing the so-called “underclass.” Absent an aggressive commitment to resource redistribution, the 2007-2008 economic crisis has caught the moderate left in the vise of either imposing additional burdens on the majority to help the poor or ignoring their increasing desperation. To a great extent, they have chosen to ignore growing poverty while aiding capital in its effort to extract itself from the mire of global crisis. In essence, social democrats believe that capitalism can be steered out of the crisis without seriously modifying the existing relationship between capital and workers.

For workers seduced by social democracy, the romance has proven truly tragic. A partnership with capital combined with a commitment to buffering capital's “excesses” proves to be an extravagant self-deception; capital accepts no such concession. Rather than delivering capitalism with a human face, the architects of anti-Communist reformism have delivered division, concession, austerity, hardship, and imperial aggression.

But even more tragically, the failure of the social democratic project drives far too many people, including disillusioned workers, toward the extreme right, fascism, and neo-Nazism. Throughout Europe and the US, working people thirsting for answers have been betrayed by reformism. Unfortunately, they far too often turn to the right, a turn that conjures eerie images of the rise of fascism between the Wars.

Workers deserve a better option.

Zoltan Zigedy

zoltanzigedy@gmail.com