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Europe: The Collapse of the Social Democrats
- Abstract
WHATEVER happened to reliable old European social democracy? Only a few years ago it was thought of as the political model of development that would keep Western Europe free, affluent, stable, and forever linked to the United States and the liberal system in general. Yet just before leaving office, that most quintessential of social democrats, Willy Brandt, was reported as believing that “Western Europe has only twenty or thirty more years of democracy left in it; after that it will slide, engineless and rudderless, under the surrounding sea of dictatorship; whether the dictation comes from a politburo or a junta will not make that much difference.”
The “surrounding sea of dictatorship” was, no doubt, a none-too-veiled reference to the Soviet Union and its emergence as the dominant military power on the European continent. This awesome presence-together with America’s perceived weakened resolve following Vietnam-is; however, only part of the explanation for forebodings like Brandt’s. Europe’s vulnerability is not only contextual but intrinsic. It is undergoing, of its own volition, and because of its own mistakes, rapid internal political change. The real issue for the continent today is the debilitated nature of its political consensus. And that, for practical purposes, means the debilitated nature of social democracy.
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