Poor Social Democracy

The United States mid term results are a terrible blow to reconstructing social democracy as an attractive and valid political stance.  In its time and place social democracy has served some countries well: Germany, for instance , while now led by a centre-right Chancellor and Coalition, has prospered and continues to prosper in part  because of social democratic ideas on working people's input, and embodiment into decision-taking in firms and institutional systems, remaining in place.

Indeed it can be argued that the best of social democracy has been accepted and that what is left is now being hi-jacked by two main groups: former socialist, communist and even iffier idealogues of the wilder shores of the defeated left; and private careerists who see in politics a personal route to and enjoyment of a lifestyle and living standards otherwise for them unattainable .

The first group will be seen off in the nature of things - anno domini will take them into old age and political irrelevance;  their main function now seems to be delivering the physical and financial resources of the working people's former organised defence structures - trades unions, co-operatives, mutualised financial institutions, foundations etc., into the hands of the latter, the careerists.  Not that the old placemen of the left are not willing to enjoy the rewards of office, if not Office.  After all, they didn't come into politics not to take what they deserved, not most of them anyway.

The careerists are simply destructive of the ideals that belong, rightly, to social democracy.  Self-righteous, self-important, determined in their occupation of what they define as the moral high ground, moulded into an apparatchik mindset by the democratic centralist tendencies imposed by former practioners of the socialist and communist movements who control the purse-strings, they are, above all, committed to the ending of democracy in the market capitalist state.  Their objective is the managed economy in the managed post-democratic region under global progressive governance.  With themselves as the managers.

These people are already enjoying the heightened life styles they seek to instal for themselves permanently; even lowly minions are business-classing about the world and have made it into the four stars in desirable metropolises. The bigger fish command personal security, private jets, discreet airports, free mansions, and all life-expenses paid, with every whim from the personal abuse of others to launching invasions of other countries catered for.  Cut off their heads at the polls and they are reborn into the networks of 'casualties of as yet undefeated democracy' to continue their pernicious assaults on our lives and wealth, tended by their creeps and learner-careerists, safety-netted from the fall into obscurity by knowledge gained from office, or Office.

This is why it is so important for them to maintain a public face of virtue unrewarded, minor failure to communicate rather than major disaster that brought the country to its economic knees, launcher of wars, yes, but of just wars; no different from, wholly comparable with, other political, historical and admired figures. 

They haven't gone away, you know. There is just too good a thing to be made of  riding on poverty, inequality,  unemployment, unfairness and unhappiness in all their forms.  There's a perfect example of their way of being at the weekend in Rome - one or two elders and a raft of careerist juniors come together in considerable style (in an out-of-date sort of way) to discuss 'Renewing Social Democracy: contribution to a European-wide debate'.  It's funded by the European Institute for Progressive Studies, the Gramsci Institute, the Fondazione Socialismo, and the Ebert.  Lot of our taxpayer money in there, and a lot of our fathers' and grandfathers' and even great-grandfathers' resources, so painstakingly put aside to help the working people.