European socialism is undergoing a profound crisis. If we leave aside the Scandinavian social democracies of the landscape is where the social conlittualità is less acute, and infants socialist parties of Eastern Europe, we can see that in other cases - France, Britain, Germany, Italy - live the socialist parties a period of great diicoltà. The only exception is Spain. In France, the crisis began in 2000 with the failure of the "plural left". Policies for economic recovery in 1997 was followed by a more liberal since 1999. Lionel Jospin, the Socialist leader and then prime minister, was the symbol of this change in course. When the increase of abstention multinational election. In Britain, the symbol of the failure of New Labour has been the disappearance of its founder, Tony Blair. On balance, the much celebrated third way was not merely a repetition, the more watered down and winking of Thatcherism, based on the dismantling of public services and privatization. Today the Labour Party is in free fall. During the last Congress leader Gordon Brown has proposed an alternative welfare state, based on a "new economic, social and political" and "market regulation". But he has speciicato where resources should go to inanza his project and has not clarified how it intends to convince the middle classes, who want more social welfare and lower taxes at the same time. Britain is not part of the euro zone and therefore has more freedom in managing public debt and deicit budget, which reached respectively 80 and 12.4 percent of GDP. But the number of unemployed, who are already three million, is expected to grow: Iscala without incentives and without further increases in public spending seems impossible to save the jobs. From Rome to Berlin In Italy the Socialist Left has collapsed in the nineties and was sucked into a black hole. The birth of the PD, with the alliance between former Communists and the Christian Democrats, has had two negative consequences: the death of socialism, understood as the ideological and political project, and the creation of a large basin for the election of reactionary populism Silvio Berlusconi. The current crisis in the Berlusconi benefit more than the left is exposing its weakness. In Germany the Social Democratic Party (SPD) has been in crisis since 2000, when one of its leaders, Oskar Lafontaine, riiutò to support the liberal turn of Gerhard Schröder. In 2005, the SPD has lost the elections and agreed to form a coalition government with the Christian Democrats International
823 November 27, 2009 19 (CDU). Get used to weave alliances with Right, the Social Democrats have not been able to offer credible solutions to the crisis and today are the party of the European left in greater diicoltà. In addition to the split be desired by Lafontaine, founder of the leftist party Die Linke, since 1998 the SPD has lost about ten million votes, even in favor of Green, Liberal and Christian Democrat, and the recent election to the presidency of Sigmar Gabriel, without a centrist ideological proilo Dein, suiciente does not seem to change things. This brief overview of a new welfare system allows us to identify some trends. First of all the Western socialist parties in the nineties have agreed to adapt to globalization, choosing the so-called third way: not oferta just do not have an alternative plan to their traditional constituency (the middle classes and popular), but do not even understand all the consequences of their choice. In this way have become more aidabili from the standpoint of government, but have lost much of their identity. Hence the current paradox: the socialist parties are overwhelmed by the crisis of liberalism, while the liberal right not hesitate to apply the traditional recipes for the welfare Afront recession. In other words, the right is proving to be more pragmatic of the left, abandoned socialist ideas, he blindly aidata the virtues of social liberalism. In Western Europe, moreover, the left-wing forces are incapable of react to the shift to the right of society, a phenomenon that is the result of the instability created by the deregulation of economic and social development of recent years and that translates into strong demand for security (social, economic and identity) and a return to nationalism. These two underlying trends are present everywhere in Europe, lay bare the serious identity crisis of social democracy, which no longer has a project speciico. In the past 15 years, the victory of liberalism was not only economic, has been largely ideological and cultural. The left does not seem to have more tools, methods, or the vision to interpret the world and to act. It has a growing diicoltà Differenciate from the right. This lack of projects and ideas is masked by a rhetoric based on the defense of traditional values: solidarity, equality, freedom and tolerance. The point is that the socialist parties seem to remember the importance of these values \u200b\u200bonly when the opposition to forget when they go to the government. The European Socialists are facing a critical crossroads: either they develop a credible or are destined to disappear slowly. What to do with the crisis of globalization? How to react to riiuto of Europeans towards liberalism? How Afront the disappointment and skepticism of the working classes and middle? The birth of a new European welfare state, now more necessary than ever, depends on the answers that the European left will be able to give to these questions. sb
THE AUTHOR Sami Nair is a French political scientist of Algerian origin. He teaches at the University Paris VIII and is working with several European newspapers, including El País and Libération.
Sami Naïr, "El Pais", Spain by 'The International'
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