Two elections results in Europe have resulted in two significant setbacks for the workers’ movement.
In Germany, the membership of the Social Democratic Party voted by a postal ballot to support a new ‘grand coalition’ with the Christian Democrats, confirming that Angela Merkel will get her fourth consecutive term as Chancellor.
It was with a huge sigh of relief from Merkel that the result was announced by the SDP leadership, because there remains a huge body of opposition in the party to more coalition with the CDU and at one point it looked touch and go whether there would be a majority. In event, just over half the membership voted in favour – 52 per cent – while 26 per cent voted against and 22 per cent did not vote at all. The majority for coalition, although large, was smaller than a similar vote that was held four years ago.
The agreement for a new coalition was only achieved at some cost to the SPD leadership. After the congress voted for coalition with only 56 per cent in favour, the leader, Martin Schulz, resigned and is likely to be replaced by to Andrea Nahles. She had, according to the Financial Times, “pleaded, mocked and cursed her way through an improvised address that swung the vote [at the Congress] in favour of a coalition”. An SPD member of parliament from Hamburg commented that “without her we would not have made it. The speech turned everything around,”. After the Congress, in the weeks of the postal ballot, Nahles barn-stormed around Germany, using all her authority as a former ‘left’ and leader of the Jusos (Young Socialists) to persuade Party members to support a new coalition.
After the ballot result, the incoming SPD coalition finance minister, Olaf Scholz, declared, “Now we have clarity.” Unfortunately, for German workers and SDP members, that is precisely what they do not have. In the recent general election last September, the SDP got one of its worst post-war votes – just over 20 per cent – precisely because the SDP had already been in coalition with the CDU and many voters could no longer distinguish one of the main parties from the other.
AfD protest vote
There was a big increase in ‘protest’ votes for the extreme right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) Party, including former traditional SDP voters in former industrial areas now suffering high unemployment and social distress. Despite having previously promised just after the election that there would be no more coalitions, Martin Schulz negotiated a new deal with Merkel, triggering a wave of opposition in the Party.
Not surprisingly, the SDP is slipping back even further in electoral support: polls show it languishing around 16 per cent and the prospect of a new general election, in the event of there being no coalition agreement, was used to scare Party members into a coalition. But in the longer term, being in coalition with Merkel will do even more damage to the SDP. As living standards are challenged, SDP ministers and the SDP itself will bear the burden of blame and that will probably push the Party even further into electoral decline. What is worse, because the SPD is in coalition, the AfD becomes the ‘official’ opposition and they will use that additional publicity and authority to their great advantage.
It remains to be seen whether or not the left opposition in the SPD can regroup and rebuild. It is no small thing that nearly 120,000 Party members voted against the coalition, despite the scare tactics of Nahles and other Party leaders. The majority of the current Jusos are opposed to the deal. It is within this opposition that Marxists and the left in the Party will need to rebuild and fight for socialist policies, for a programme in the interests of the working class and for an end to coalition with the CDU. It might be a long and hard road, but it is the only one open to socialists in the Party.
No left alternative in Italy
In Italy, there was no real ‘left’ party in the running at all. The Democratic Party (PD), allegedly on the ‘centre-left’, was formed out of an amalgamation of what had been the former Communist and Socialist Parties, jettisoning all its socialist credentials along the way. As this party has moved further to the right in recent years, it resembled nothing more than the New Labour experiment of Tony Blair, barely distinguishing itself from other parties of Italian capitalism.
The PD government has presided over an Italian economy that was seriously lagging behind the other larger European economies. Industrial production today is still around 20 per cent below the level it had reached in 2008. Italian state debt is the second-highest in Europe after Greece, at around 130 per cent of GDP. There is over 10 per cent unemployment and that does not even count the hundreds of thousands of young workers in precarious and low-paid jobs. In 2014, PD prime minister, Matteo Renzi, introduced labour reform, on the pretext of creating jobs, but fully 60 per cent of jobs now being created in Italy are part-time jobs, with all the insecurities that go with that.
This is the legacy of the PD in government. Italian politics is known for its corruption and nepotism and nothing the PD has done while in power has made the slightest dent on that reputation. It was hardly surprising, therefore, that the PD lost ground in the election. More than a quarter of the electorate were not even motivated to go out to vote, so uninspiring with the options of offer. The turnouts in general elections have been declining with each successive vote and this time the rate of abstention reached a 30-year high. There is a widespread feeling that the ‘political class’ is completely out of touch with ordinary voters and that was reflected in the out-turn.
As predicted by opinion polls, the PD got a hammering, winning less than 20 per cent of the vote. Some of the votes lost by the PD would have gone to the left, to a tiny new ‘Free and Equal’ Party, but as we write, it is not clear if that small party will even have enough votes to pass the threshold for seats in the Senate.
Italian workers have been used to voting for the ‘least worst’ option for a long time, but on this occasion, what is notable in the results is the fact that there has been a significant increase in ‘protest’ votes. These have gone to the ‘Five Star Movement’ (M5S), founded by ex-TV comedian Beppo Grillo, which got around 32 per cent, as well as Forza Italia, on 14 per cent and La Lega, formerly the Northern League, with 17 per cent. Through Forza Italia, Silvio Berlusconi who, perhaps more than any other Italian politician, typifies political corruption and degeneracy, was hoping to be the ’kingmaker’ in a new coalition with La Liga, which is led by out-and-out xenophobe Matteo Salvini.
Racism made ‘respectable’ by the right
These two right-wing parties competed with each other to make immigration the key issue of the election campaign and, as happened in Britain around the EU referendum, they have largely succeeded in making racism almost a ‘normal’ part of political discourse. Berlusconi and Salvina have both supported a policy of mass deportation of ‘illegal’ African immigrants and the PD have utterly failed to offer an alternative narrative to the viciously racist propaganda of these two parties who have blamed poor health, housing and jobs on immigration.
Probably a majority of the support for M5S would have come from the left, from workers who previously supported the Democratic Party or the Socialist and Communist Parties before that. In the election, it toned down its previous opposition to the EU and instead switched to more radical social policies, including a Universal Basic Income (UBI) for all. It is likely that this policy alone will have won it many votes from young workers, part-time workers and the unemployed and from Italy’s considerably poor population.
The M5S party has in the past opposed coalitions with other parties, but it may well be forced into a deal with the PD to prevent a coalition of right-wing parties coming into office. But the party is an unknown quantity and, other than claiming to be against corruption and the political status quo, its political programme is unclear. Although it is not impossible that it could even form a coalition with one of the right-wing parties, this is less likely. What is more likely is that between them the PD and the M5S will have enough Senate seats – 158 – to form a majority, at least for a period of time, before there is another general election. One thing seems clear: this election opens up a period of increased turmoil, instability and volatility in Italian politics and that does not augur well for the living standards and rights of Italian workers.
The lessons of the German and the Italian general elections must be taken on board by socialists in Britain and across the rest of Europe. As long as the parties associated with the labour movement put forward ideas and policies that are indistinguishable from the main capitalism parties, then they are doomed to electoral failure. The SPD and the PD are on the same trajectory as Pasok in Greece, PSOE in Spain, and other European ‘socialist’ parties, many of which are now barely polling in double figures.
The net result of the decline of these traditional workers’ parties is the rise of reaction, in the form of the AfD in Germany and La Liga/Forza Italia in Italy. These are not yet the classical fascist parties that we saw in Germany and Italy in the inter-war years; they represent reaction in a parliamentary form. Nevertheless, the rise of these parties is a warning to the labour movement of more vicious and infinitely more dangerous reactionary movements in the future, if the parties of the labour movement fail to offer a way out for workers from the impasse of falling or stagnating living standards.
March 5, 2018
