Declining fortunes of the left Continents liberal movement bereft of ideas and leaders Throughout Europe, the left is in dire straits, being trounced in national elections and thrown out of office. Just five of the European Unions 27 member states have governments led by the left, and the left appears set to lose power in Spain, the only large member state that has such a government. In 2007, the French Socialists lost their third straight presidential election. In 2009, the German Social Democrats had their worst election defeat since the establishment of the federal republic. Last year, the British Labor Party suffered its largest loss in nearly 80 years. In Italy, the left is too divided and leaderless to put even an embattled and scandal-ridden Silvio Berlusconi in danger. The Polish Socialists failed to garner more than 13 percent of the vote in the most recent parliamentary and presidential elections, and opinion polls for this fall's parliamentary elections predict they will gain little more. The lefts misfortunes are all the more startling given the current economic climate. Voters could be expected to consider the financial crisis and the worst economic recession since World War II as repudiations of the free market and the parties that defend it. They did not. Instead, they deserted the left. Throughout Europe, voters are giving their support to the trusted, traditional parties of government, the parties of the right. They prefer cautious stewardship of the economy over grand stimulus spending plans. The decline of the left started long before the financial crisis. Not only did it never overcome the fall of the Berlin Wall and the blow that delivered to socialist ideology, it never recovered from the economic downturn in the early 1980s and the resulting crisis of the European welfare state. In that downturn, voters across Europe turned to the right. The leaders of the right moved policy away from the old welfare state that had failed to deal with higher production prices and increased international competition. They cut taxes, privatized state-owned companies and created a European internal market. Voters rewarded them by keeping them in office. In 30 years, the left has failed to come up with a credible answer to the crisis of the welfare state. It has not managed to formulate clear ideas on how to preserve the European social model in a global economic environment. The left worked its way back to power in the 1990s by moving to the center. Gone were the days when it sought to nationalize major private companies or planned to leave NATO and the EU. Its success proved to be short-lived, however. In moving to the center, the main parties of the left lost their identity. They pursued the policies of the right, without the rough edges, socially more liberal and often in a more media-savvy manner. They failed to present a substantively different alternative, however. And that is still true today. The centrist policies the left pursued in the 1990s appealed to highly educated professionals but were less popular with the lefts traditional working-class base. In response, its base fled to the extreme ends of the political spectrum. Internal divisions weakened the left and kept it from power. In France, the main candidate of the left did not even make it to the second round of the presidential race in 2002, while the eight candidates to his left together garnered more than a quarter of the vote. In the 2009 German elections, the Social Democrats got just 23 percent, whereas the Greens and the Left Party together won more than 26 percent. In addition the left lost working-class voters to the extreme-right across Europe. In the meantime, a new generation, including Angela Merkel, Nicolas Sarkozy and David Cameron, took charge on the right. These leaders were well-known to the public and presented clear plans for reform long before they took control of government. The left has no such leaders. Who leads the left in Germany, France or Italy, and what are their plans? To get back to power, the left will have to demonstrate leadership, overcome its internal divisions and present ideas that attract the support of its traditional base as well as centrist voters. This is particularly difficult because its base has a hard time adjusting to the global economic environment and the pressures that increased competition puts on the welfare state and the benefits it receives from such a state. Alternatively, the left could just wait for the right to stumble. Governing during economic crises requires implementing unpopular measures, and at some point, the right may pay a price for them. The left already is doing well in opinion polls. Denmark is electing a new parliament this fall and may well be the first to turn to the left. If the left does not address its fundamental problems, however, its political recovery will be fleeting. For its recovery to last, it will need to overcome its internal differences and come up with a credible answer to the crisis of the welfare state, an answer that attracts voters from the center and the left. Christophe Crombez is a national fellow at Stanford Universitys Hoover Institution and a professor at the University of Leuven in Belgium. http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/aug/16/declining-fortunes-of-the-left/ An excellent comment: The Euro's are about a decade ahead of us in the socialism failure curve, only because of our size. Socialists' new motto is "100 years of failure means NOTHING!" Hayek was right, Keynes was WAY wrong, there's no longer any dispute. Small government, term limits, balanced budget amendment, TEA Party. http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/aug/16/declining-fortunes-of-the-left/ Stick a fork in it; socialism is done. Time to repair the damage wrought by the welfare state. _
Don't give up on the left, they are are working overtime on new ideas. Take Paul Krugman (please!): http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2011/08/18/what-do-we-need-to-fix-the-economy/ His economic solution? Go to war with space aliens! Now is that change or what?
Left is relative. Pretty much all of Europe's governments would be considered liberal compared to ours even with Obama in charge.
What's particularly amusing is how America defines "liberal" differently from most of the First World. Liberal is generally seen as a positive word in Europe (and I would guess Australia as well), whereas it gets demonized here.
the left is more and more something the stupid and immigrants vote for. If you have a job and want a normal equal soceity you vote right
Unfortunately the Right in most democratic capitalist countries clearly does what the big corporations and very rich tell them to do. This may be more effective for the big corporations and the very rich, but how is the average citizen going to benefit. Speaking of the United States, how will the average citizen benefit when the choice is between rescuing some part of Social Security (the policy of the Left) or abandoning it altogether (the policy of the Right)? How will the average citizen benefit by having his or her job shipped overseas and being replaced by a McJob? How will the average citizen benefit from deep cuts to services he or she uses every day, rather than see tax increases (or their equivalent) on big corporations and the very rich? How will the average citizen benefit from skyrocketing PRIVATE health care costs that the government refuses to rein in? A massive economic crash is coming in about a decade, and the average citizen is going to suffer greatly from its effects. If the Right is firmly in control at that point, they will take the brunt of the inevitable public backlash, so premature gloating is not a good idea. The Right had better hope there are a lot of liberals still around in public office to share the blame with when the deluge arrives.
The alternative for you I suppose would be for the poor to tell them what to do? How about by having a job? ...the man who (*)(*)(*)(*)s money has obtained it dishonorably; the man who respects it has earned it. Francisco d'Anconia Atlas shrugged...a fine read indeed.
Nutshell: Soft left reformist parties get in power, they are supposedly socialist parties but they have to do capitalism's dirty work. They cut wages etc and give socialism a bad name. In desperation people turn to the right. Then the knife really gets stuck in.
This 'left' you speak of, it is hardly left, mostly it is centre. You, or rather the article, mentions Spain. PSOE is not a left party.
Because of the unabashed authoritarianism that "liberal" governments support! Political Freedom without Economic Freedom is no freedom at all! Here is typical liberal thinking via The New Republic:http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/93961/failed-presidents-obama-history The problem is "significant Government role" means everything short of outright nationalization, or nationalization in all but name. You think Socialism is going to come with a clenched fist on a red flag? Not according to Fabianists. I'm sorry man but the majority of the Political Left in America seek nothing less than complete dictatorial fiat control of the US economy. They say it plain as day!! Why do you support political freedom but hate economic freedom so much you would strip the majority of it away from Americans?
In Europe, it might sometimes work that way, but in America, our right is so far along the spectrum that the conservatives of the Netherlands would likely be Democrats here.
As things currently stand, "economic freedom" in America is mostly just rich people recklessly throwing other people's money around in the stock market. There really isn't much economic freedom in America to begin with, but it's less the fault of government and more the fault of how our banking system is regulated by the same people with the most to gain from the regulations. The Federal Reserve is essentially a private institution with governmental powers. When investment banking executives determine fiscal policy, they're going to twist things to their favor at everyone else's expense. That's where the bailouts come from. It's not even about left vs. right. Obama is bought by Goldman Sachs, but so is his competition. The only way America actually would be set right is via a true labor revolution. That's not going to happen precisely because the powers that be are immensely proficient at keeping people complacent and/or convinced that the real culprits of the problems are the poor. That being said, vote for whoever you like. Voting won't help you in the long run though. Your best bet is to figure out an exit strategy from America. This is a fairly good country to make money in while you're young, but it's going to royally suck for my generation (Gen X) when we get old. SS is going to disappear within a decade or two, and the concept of retirement will go back to being a luxury of the rich in America. Countries like Canada and Australia (and a few of the smaller countries in Europe) are the only ones with solvent retirement programs, so it's a good idea to eventually move to one of those places later in life. The (*)(*)(*)(*)'s truly going to hit the fan here in the near future, and all the liberal bashing in the world isn't going to help you.
Yep, Europeans are waking up to this fact as well. Multiculturalism is seen as an attack on European culture now, and the progressives are its champions. _
