An interesting article from a social democrat who laments the rise of the progressives. Interestingly he correctly characterizes the current state of the Democrats and Republicans in the US today.
What Happened to Social Democracy?
In a world that seems to be divided between neoliberal orthodoxy and identitarian dogmas, it is possible to miss the waning presence of traditional social democracy. Born of the radical Left in Marx’s own time, social democrats worked, sometimes with remarkable success, to improve the living standards of working people by accommodating the virtues of capitalism. Today, that kind of social democracy—learned at home from my immigrant grandparents and from the late Michael Harrington, one time head of the American Socialist Party—is all but dead. This tradition was, in retrospect, perhaps too optimistic about the efficacy of government. Nevertheless, it sincerely sought to improve popular conditions and respected the wisdom of ordinary people.
In its place, we now find a kind of progressivism that focuses on gender, sexual preference, race, and climate change. Abandoned by traditional Left parties, some voters have drifted into nativist—and sometimes openly racist—opposition while more have simply become alienated from major institutions and pessimistic about the future.1In the United States, the Democrats have become almost indistinguishable from the big Wall Street firms and tech oligarchies,mainstream media, and other wealthy elites. Democrats once ruled mining and manufacturing towns; today, they represent 41 of the 50 wealthiest Congressional districts. The Republican Party, meanwhile, has evolved from the country club Wall Street party into one reliant on white working-class voters, and increasingly minorities, like Latinos, who appreciate that Trump delivered the first real income gains in a generation.
Similar patterns have emerged in Europe, which has also experienced “job polarization” resulting from shrinkage of the middle-wage sector, notably in Germany, France, and Sweden—countries long associated with social democracy.6 In Britain, Labour has suffered enormous erosion of its once-solid working-class base; concern about uncontrolled immigration and the erosion of national sovereignty drove support for Brexit among blue collar workers. In 2019, the Tories won roughly half the once-reliable working-class vote, compared to a third for Labour.7
Read the entire article at the link.Progressives, and President Biden, suggest these job losses can be made up with “green jobs.” Unfortunately, this is something of a fairy tale; analysis by the Building Trades Unions shows that green jobs pay far less and last far less long than the positions they hope to replace. Rather than find a way to boost blue-collar jobs, there’s a growing appetite to employ the powers assumed by the executive during the pandemic lockdowns (for which the working class has borne the brunt) as a “test run” for a policy of dampening economic growth (“de growth”).Life in the new green regimes will be ever-more restrictive and socially regressive; the Biden administration, for example, is discussing such things as taxing gas mileage to pay for infrastructure, something that would be wildly unpopular outside of a handful of dense, transit-dependent cities. Similar dangers lurk for Europe’s working class. In Britain, high energy prices have been linked to the continuing decline of the local steel industry. Higher energy prices in heavily industrialized Germany have hurt the working class far more than the affluent rich.
Low-income energy consumers, meanwhile, are particularly harmed by the enforced shift to renewables. The Jacques Delors Institute estimates that already some 30 million Europeans could not adequately heat their homes this winter. Deutsche Bank’s senior economist Eric Heymann predicts that green policies will create “a European mega-crisis” and a “noticeable loss of welfare and jobs.” This kind of naturally unpopular program, he points out, will necessitate “a certain degree of eco-dictatorship.”
Cultural wars
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