Socialist Register has a clear theme - social democracy and what the left has to do to transcend it. The texts on social democracy contain a series of essays on the experiences in different and mainly Western European countries over the past years. The central core of this section is com. prised of pieces contributed by the editors that attempt to analyse the current impasse of European social democracy, and to then sug gest how to move beyond reformism. This project, let us leave on one side for the moment their conclusions, puts the Register into the same camp as International. It also decisively puts them into the opposite camp to that of the legion of ex leftists who have lurched to the right in pursuit of the fatuous holy grail of a 'Kinnock Atlee government. The dregs of this accommodation include Ben Pimlot who enthuses that the next Kinnock government is unlikely to disappoint in that it promises so littie ... politics, in an imitation of art, founds a minimalist school.
The editors make the point that a few years ago it would have seemed indecent to question the necessity for going beyond social democracy. Now the issue has to be debated. The crisis of the labour movement in Western Europe has made a layer of leftists question revolutionary socialism. A very interesting essay by Panitch turns this on its head: 'the impasse ... pertains far more to reformist gradualism precisely because this has been -and remains the primary practice of Western working class parties Panitch describes how social democracy contributed to the present crisis. During the fifties the socialist parties moved away from social ownership to state intervention based on welfarism and Keynesianism. The emphasis was on tripartite indicative planning and incomes policies. In the seventies, due to stagflation, this approach shifted to monetarism and, to placate the union leaders, legislation to strengthen union rights and to plan investment in production rather than to marginally retorm distribution of wealth. This was seen in Sweden with the Meidner plan for employee investment funds while in Britain it manifested itself in the Na tional Enterprise Board and the Bullock proposals for parity trade union representation on company boards. Panitch argues that the latter caused manufacturers to go into the Thatcher camp. The effect of this process and the austerity measures was to demoralise the elec32 toral base of the Labour Party. Labour was
Augusto Carlos Portugal: Socialist Party leader Mario Soares, representative of the new right wing in European social democracy. associated with the alien bureaucracy of the state and was wide open to a Thatcherite popularist and market oriented 'anti-state riposte.
Panitch contributes a useful dismantling of the 'new revisionism': the market socialism of Nove and the supporters of a new social contract like Hirst, Purdy and Hodgson. His major polemic is launched against Hobsbawm and includes a very spirited and necessary defence of Benn. Some of the ground has been worked before but Panitch concentrates his fire on a vital weakness of Hobsbawm. Hobsbawm systematically glosses over the failures of the Wilson/Callaghan governments and virtually lays the electoral defeat of 1983 at the feet of those who opposed wage restraint and the cuts, who fought for the demands of women and blacks and wanted to democratise the Labour Party. Panitch argues that the alliance that Hobsbawm is desperate to achieve is with the Labour right. But the right are not so dedicated to unity, will oppose all the reforms of the left that are necessary to win back broad support from working people and is hell bent on a witch hunt. Hobsbawn's
alliance precludes any socialist advance. This — the reviewer now pops out to wag his finger and draw a moral - is the fundamental problem of left Labourism.. The Labour Party has a dual class nature and any socialist progress within it precipitates a crisis and splits which threaten the immediate electoral opportunities of Labour.
The torrent of analysis in the Register trickles into the sand when the issue of what is to be done is posed. There is agreement that themes such as workers' control and democratic control of social decisions seem to be the most promising path. Miliband and Liebman attempt to spell out the organisational conclusions Social democracy has failed. The revolutionary left is rejected for its vanguardist awaiting a revolutionary crisis and the smashing of the state - which has never happened in Western Europe. This left is characterised by manipulative leaders and bad internal regimes. Without wishing to act as an apologist for the faults of the revolutionary left, their treatment by the editors is sloppy and superficial and fails to take seriously the contribution in practice and theory made by the majority of that left. For Miliband and Liebman an alternative is needed. 'That alternative entails a firm revolutionary commitment, namely the wholesale transformation of capitalist society in socialist directions. But it also involves a "reformist" commitment, in so far as it also seeks all reformism which can be seen to form part of a larger revolutionary purpose.' Well, so say all of us. But how are we to get this 'alternative'? Apparently the embodiment of this 'revolutionary reformism' IS the Communist parties, fundamentally flawed as they are by Stalinism and democratic centralism. We are told that the process of building healthy parties beyond social democracy will differ from country to country 'In some, Communist parties may come to shed their negative features and form the basis for a socialist realignment on the left; in others, that realignment will have to come from other left sources. However it comes to pass, the process is likely to be protracted: serious socialist parties cannot suddenly be conjured up out of nothing.' And that, very sadly, is as far as the editors take us. A rather less cursory analysis of the far left might have taught the editors that there are theories of how to intervene in fundamentally flawed mass workers parties, both social democratic and communist. These theories do not rely on a spontaneous shedding of 'negative features' but rigorously probe the limits of lett reformism and explore, as to a degree Panitch has done, the incompatibility of socialist advance within such parties with their continuing organisational integrity.
International, No. 3, March/April 1986
Kiss of the Spiderwoman
PETER PURTON Kiss of the Spider Woman. A film by Hector Babenco, starring William Hurt, Raul Julia, Sonia Braga. KISS of the