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Janerik Larsson

Janerik Larsson

 

Den brittiska debatten om Labourpartiet handlar i hög grad om partiledaren Ed Miliband och hans förmåga – eller brist på förmåga – att entusiasmera brittiska väljare så att partiet kan ta över makten när valet kommer (sannolikt i maj 2015 om inte David Camron väljer möjligheten att utlysa valet tidigare vilket han kan).

Den klassiska brittiska vänstertidningen New Statesman har i sitt nya nummer en mycket utmanande artikel:

Social democrats face irrelevance at best, extinction at worse

Ord och inga visor:

No social democratic party anywhere in the world is on the front foot. Sure, parties may find themselves in government – as they do in Denmark, Germany and France, in their own right or as part of a coalition – but this happens by accident and tends to be down to the failures of the right. And in office, social democrats tend to follow austerity or austerity-lite measures.  No social democratic party has a strident and confident set of intellectual and organisational ideas that propel a meaningful alternative political project. The future looks incredibly bleak. Why?

The reasons are not hard to find.  Social democracy is a 19th-century construct that achieved some successes in the 20th-century but is hopelessly prepared for the 21st century. This is because all the forces that once made social democrats strong have disappeared. The collective experience of the war, the existence of a unified, organised and seemingly growing working class and the brooding presence of the Soviet Union – a threatening alternative to free markets that forced big concessions from employers who feared revolution happening in the West – all combined to ensure that capitalism momentarily made historic compromises with social democratic parties. 

With hindsight, this ”golden era” should be viewed as a historic blip but social democrats have continued to mistake it as the norm. They then compound this error to devastating effect. Having lost their external sources of power, they focus almost entirely on electing ‘the right leaders’ who, they believe, will re-enact the ‘golden era’ from above. This is a technocratic politics devoid of movements, any understanding of historic context or the geo-politics that shapes the everyday actions of politicians and people alike. Social democrats are surfers without waves. 

I Sverige valde Håkan Juholt att ansluta partiet till den nykommunistiska retoriken och till de flestas förvåning slog Stefan Löfven också in på den kursen – efter riksdagsvalet.

Neal Lawsons artikel har intressanta slutsatser också för den svenska socialdemokrati som tror att det finns en väg tillbaka till offentliga monopol, politisk-byråkratisk centralstyrning av medborgarna. Jag trodde att Maktutredningens slutrapport – Demokrati och makt i Sverige (SOU 1990:44) – hade gett klart besked från folket. Men nu är det nostalgi efter tiden efter andra världskriget – då välfärdsstatsbygget tog fart – som präglar politiken och som styr inte bara hos Löfven utan även i Stockholms stad. Sällsamt.

Men framtiden finns inte där.

Social democrats are going to have to let go. There is no place for elected vanguards, who do things to people and for them. Social democrats are going to have to know their new place as just one source of empowerment for citizens. Instead of pulling policy levers, the job is to create the platforms so that people can collectively change things for themselves. This is a more humble role, but essential and entirely possible in a networked society in which the internet has become the main nexus for human culture. Parties need to open up and out. They need to see themselves as simply part of much wider alliances for change, and not the sole repository of all wisdom and action. Parties are going to have to become really democratic, localising power and building platforms for collaboration around things like energy, loans and new media.

Jag tror förvisso att det finns lärdomar här också för andra politiska partier.

 

New Statesman

Om gästbloggen

Janerik Larsson är gästbloggare hos SvD Ledare. Han är skribent, författare och journalist, verksam i Stiftelsen Fritt Näringsliv och pr-byrån Prime. Bloggar om svensk politik och har en internationell utblick mot främst brittiska och amerikanska medier.
Åsikter är hans egna.
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