Could we say that socialism is as old-fashioned as disco music in Europe? I know,
many of you will think this is just one opinion. But before you
launch into writing in the comments section, take a look at this map.
In this map you can see the remaining social democratic governments in Europe at this time.
If you notice, there are hardly any countries in red. And some of them,
like Spain, are plummeting in the polls.
Which means that it’s not just an opinion we have here at VisualPolitik: it is a fact.
Social democratic parties have less and less power every day. And some of you will say: Let's see,
[Name of Host]! Football and democracy are like that! Sometimes you win and sometimes you lose.
The problem is that there are many countries in Europe where socialist
parties are not even the second political force.
And this is a trend that has been going on since the financial crisis of 2008.
I’ll give you an example: France. For decades, France was a two-party country. The main
political forces were the center-right UMP and the Socialists. But in recent years, the political
battle has been between the ultra-nationalists of Marine Le Pen and the liberals of Macron.
The Socialists have become the "THIRD PARTY" Something similar could happen in Germany.
And what about Greece? The PASOK social democrats are on the verge of disappearing.
In other words: the problem is not that the socialists are losing elections...
The problem is that they may disappear altogether! Again,
this is not an opinion. It is something very real that is happening.
And what about the countries that do still have socialist governments? For example: Denmark.
Yes, it is true, Denmark has a social democratic government headed by a woman: METTE FREDERIKSEN.
Now, this lady is nothing like what you might imagine for a Nordic socialist. Her immigration
policy makes VIKTOR ORBAN look like a tree-hugging hippie. She has even pledged to have 0 refugees.
That’s right. Put another way: socialism seems to be on the verge of disappearing.
And the few remaining socialists are mutating into things that bear little
resemblance to the socialism we have known so far.
Put another way: socialists are having an identity crisis where there are three tribes fighting:
true socialists, third way and postmodernists. And it is not at all clear which of them will win...
or if another new tribe will emerge to try to get socialism back on track.
Many of you will ask, how is this possible? After all, there are more billionaires than ever before.
Many people say that the inequalities between rich and poor are getting more and more pronounced.
So why have so many people in Europe stopped voting for socialist parties,
what is happening, and is there any way to resurrect social democracy in Europe?
Today we are going to answer these questions but first let's look at a bit of history.
The first question we have to ask ourselves is: What is the working class? Think about it:
if there is one thing that defines socialists, it is the working class.
They are the parties called to represent the common people.
Now then, what is a worker and how is he or she defined? According to Karl Marx,
workers are those who do not own the means of production.
That is to say, we could divide society into two groups: the capitalists, who own companies
and factories, and the workers who provide the labor, receive a salary and do not own property.
Having made this clarification, our history begins in 1918. That is the year
of the definitive clash between COMMUNISTS and SOCIALISTS. Both had the same goal:
to put an end to capitalism and establish a dictatorship of the proletariat.
The difference is that the COMMUNISTS did it by means of a violent revolution in Russia.
The SOCIAL DEMOCRATS wanted to achieve it by winning elections in liberal democracies,
passing new laws and making a gradual transition.
As you can imagine, the pure Marxists said that the social
democrats were deluded thinking they could change the system from within.
However, history has shown that the social democrats were right.
Yes, it is true, the orthodox Marxists had their revolutions... in agricultural
countries. Both Russia and China had their communist revolutions. But... in industrial
and wealthy Europe... That Europe was the stronghold of the social democrats.
In 1918, Germany was the first country in the world to have a
social democratic government. Think about it: if politics is the market,
the socialists had the perfect product. It was aimed at the majority group: the workers.
Remember this was 1918. Almost the entire economy was based on industry:
a few capitalists dominated the enterprises and the rest were workers.
Workers who were potential voters of the German Social Democratic Party.
This is how the boom of socialism began. After Germany came the Nordic countries:
Sweden, Norway, Denmark, all of them were countries with huge industrial
sectors. All of them were the perfect breeding ground for socialist parties to take over.
But wait a moment because this is only the beginning! In 1929 something happened that
triggered the success of social democracy until it became the dominant ideology.
Yes, you guessed it, we are talking about the Crash of '29, the great collapse of the
financial system. At that time, the political parties that defended the free market lost
all credibility. The majority of voters switched to voting for left-wing parties. Parties that
defended the interests of the workers. From the United States to the Nordic countries,
all democratic governments reinvented themselves.
And, if you thought that the Second World War brought this whole socialist wave to a halt... you
are wrong. From the 1940s to the 1980s, the entire developed world embraced an economic system where
the State played a fundamental role in business. This was the era of the birth of the Welfare
State, Keynesian economics, high taxes and large public enterprises. The socialists were red hot.
Okay, maybe they couldn't overthrow capitalism... but they were capable of reforming it.
However! Everything changed again in the 1970s. The social democratic model
collapsed. And 10 years later, so did the Soviet Union. Suddenly,
the idea of ending capitalism, slowly or revolutionarily,
was no longer attractive. So both socialists and communists stopped winning elections.
But if you thought that this was the end of socialism in Europe... You are wrong!
The social democrats did not die. They simply evolved. This is how the so-called "THIRD WAY"
was born. The "third way" was the response by the left to the fall of pure socialism.
And I know what a lot of you are thinking! The third way? Wasn’t
that when the social democrats totally sold their soul to capitalism? Yes,
that's what both communists and classical socialists would say. But the truth is that
the third way allowed the socialist parties to sweep the floor once again in various elections.
This was the era of Tony Blair in the UK, Gerhard Schroeder in Germany and even Zapatero in Spain.
In fact, more or less the 1990s and 2000s were the golden years of the left in Europe. These days,
however, things have changed. Why? We are going to take a look right now.
("A WORKING CLASS HERO IS NOTHING TO BE")
If any of you are affiliated with any left-wing party, you will surely have heard it a thousand
times "The problem with the socialists is that they have forgotten the working class!".
The question is... Who are the working class today? If we go to Marx's definition:
workers are those who earn a wage and do not own the means of production. By this definition,
SATYA NADELLA, the CEO of Microsoft, is working class. No. I have not gone
mad. The CEO of any company is a worker who is paid a salary. The salary is set
by the board of shareholders, who are the ones who own the means. However,
no one can imagine a chief executive joining a union, can they? Well, obviously not.
The first thing we have to do is to redefine the working class.
We could say that blue-collar workers are those who have unskilled jobs. That is,
people who work in mechanical jobs that do not require a university degree. Until the 1980s,
this was the majority group throughout Europe. But today,
the reality is very different. Take a look at this graph.
In this graph you can see how there are fewer and fewer “workers” in France. We
have used the example of France but we could have used almost any other European country.
Manual jobs are in danger of extinction. And the new majority working class all over Europe
are... professionals: that is, people who have gone to university and work in offices.
They already account for more than 20% of the workforce in Europe. Think about it,
almost all industry has left Europe for China and other Asian countries. And
the new factories are nothing like the factories of the 20th century.
It used to take hundreds of assembly line workers to produce a car. Now that work is done by robots.
And the workers who manage those robots are specialised engineers who have gone to university.
You don't believe me? Well, we're going to travel to the Land of the worker par
excellence, France! That’s right, France! If there is one country famous for its strikes,
its protests and its unions... It has to be France. But how many workers are
actually members of trade unions today? Well, take a close look at the graph.
If you notice, unions peaked in the late 1970s. From then on they have been in continual decline.
Now only 8% of the French working population is unionized. And France is just one example.
I could have shown you a very similar graph if we were talking about Spain,
the UK or almost any other European country (The only exception I have found is Belgium,
which maintains a union membership of 50% Why? Well, that's a topic for another video).
And I know what some people will say! Really? the working class has
disappeared? But that's not possible! There are still a lot of groups living
in marginal situations. There are the rich and there are the poor.
And yes, you are right. But those poor people are no longer “workers”.
I’ll give you an example: Spain. If you’re watching this video from Spain, you already
know that the Spanish economy is going from bad to worse. All the data show that there is more
and more inequality between rich and poor. But the poor are not the workers but... The unemployed!
Roughly 40% of young Spaniards are unemployed. As you can imagine,
if a politician approaches a young unemployed person to talk about labor rights,
the young person would say "all that would be great... If only I had a job!"
But wait a minute because we're not done! This trend started in the early 2000s. That was the
moment when the working class started to disappear in Europe. But the year when the real collapse
of socialism began was 2008 – yes, exactly! That was the year of the Financial crisis.
Many of you will think: How is that possible? The Financial crisis was
the collapse of the free market, the proof that neo-liberalism had failed, wasn't it?
Well, from the electoral standpoint, the opposite phenomenon occurred.
Let me give you an example: Greece.
The Greek social democratic party, the so-called PASOK,
was one of the two major parties in that country. To give you an idea, in 2009 they had 43.9%
of the votes. Six years later, in 2015, PASOK was left with only 4.68% of the vote.
Yes, that’s right. They didn't even make it to 5%.
Today, in 2021, the numbers are still very similar. PASOK has gone from being
a governing party to being a pensioners' club with a lot of time on its hands.
So what can the Socialists do to regain the confidence of voters? What can
a European do when he runs out of ideas? Where can he find inspiration? Well, pay attention...
(COPYING THE AMERICANS) I know... looking to the
United States to copy ideas doesn't seem like the most anti-capitalist solution in the world. But,
let's be honest, the United States has the most professionalized politics in the world.
Campaign consultants in the United States use polls,
market research and databases to run campaigns. That explains why the
left-wing in this country was the first to realize that the working class has changed.
To give you an idea, in 1980, 20% of jobs in the US were in industry. In 2016 that figure was
only 8%. In 1979, unions in the United States had 20 million members. In 2013, even with a
much larger population, there were only 14 million members. But wait a minute because that's not all!
Some might think that the working class is more likely to vote for left-wing parties,
right? That's the basis of this whole video. However, for decades,
opinion polls have been saying just the opposite.
If we understand the working class as people in "blue collar" jobs,
we soon learn that being blue collar is... A predictor of voting Republican! Yes,
that’s right (Of course, we are not saying that all blue collar workers vote Republican,
but we can say that the Republican Party is the preferred choice in this group).
In other words: dividing society by classes is no longer a good strategy for harvesting
votes. At least not if you are a left-wing politician.
However, there is another way of dividing society that can work. Do you know who does vote mostly
for left-wing parties? Racial minorities! Both Hispanics and African-Americans are
much more likely to vote Democrat. And that is how the so-called "identity politics" was born.
And that is also how a new ideology emerged. An ideology that is neither communism,
nor socialism, nor third way... We are talking about POSTMODERNISM.
The postmodern left no longer focuses on material equality but on identity-oriented
politics. I don't think I need to explain any further. Just listen to the speech of any
left-wing politician in your country and you will know exactly what we are talking about.
The problem: What happens when you try to import these policies into Europe? Well,
the main problem is... How many people of African origin are there in Europe?
Are there really that many oppressed racial minorities? Can we really say that Europe is
the same as the United States? Well, that’s what we are going to look at right now.
(THE END OF SOCIALISM?)
All socialist parties are engaged in open war at the moment. A battle between the
classical socialists, the third way and the postmodernists. In the UK they tried to go
back to their origins. That explained the rise of JEREMY CORBYN as leader of the Labour Party.
Jeremy Corbyn was a return to the essence of socialism. So how did he do in the elections, you
may ask? Well... you can judge for yourselves. (General election 2019: 'Worst night for
Labour since 1935'. BBC 13 December 2019)
We are seeing something very similar in Spain. In Spain,
the Socialist Party currently governs jointly with Podemos, which is an extreme left-wing party.
For years, Spain was the exception to the rule. It seemed the last bastion of socialism in Europe.
However, the polls are starting to look worse and worse for the Spanish government. And you
only need to look at this map to understand that what we are saying is very real.
And you may be wondering where all the votes are going that used to
go to the socialist parties? Part of the answer can be found in this map.
If you notice, there are not only red and blue countries. We also have dark
blue countries and orange countries. The dark blue ones are the countries
with nationalist right-wing governments. The orange ones are the liberal center.
These two ideological currents are becoming more and more significant.
In some countries like France we could say that they are the new bipartisanship.
We are no longer talking about socialists versus conservatives but nationalists versus liberals.
Other countries such as Germany are seeing the rise of other groups such as environmentalists.
So now the question is over to you: Are we really facing the end of socialism, will we
see other ideological currents replace it, or will we see a fourth way that will bring the socialist
parties back to a new golden era? You can leave me your answer in the comments.
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