Europe and populism

I wrote a slight post earlier this week about the debate in Germany over ownership and corporate governance, a subject that has more potential for levity than you might think. The author of a piece in the Morning Star on this subject, Neil Clark, also contributes to The New Statesman this week on "Socialism's comeback", ostensibly an account of recent gains in support by far-left parties in continental Europe. In the print edition, the article is labelled a "special report", so the editor of the NS presumably regards it as a factual account and not just an opinion.

I don't wish to dwell too much on the author, who I'm not convinced is on top of his subject, but instead point to an aspect of the piece that is worth drawing out, especially as it appears in a left-wing periodical. It relates to this circumlocution: "The left's espousal of unrestricted or loosely controlled immigration is also, arguably, a major vote loser among working-class voters who should provide its core support. No socialist group in Britain has as yet articulated a critique of mass immigration from an anti-capitalist and anti-racist viewpoint in the way the Socialist Party of the Netherlands has."

It is certainly true that the parties Clark enthuses about see electoral dividends in opposing immigration. But it's odd that an article on this subject in the NS, of all places, should avoid any mention of the ideological context of such sentiments.

I'm not especially close to recent Dutch politics, but I do have an interest in Germany. Consider the figure whom Clark refers to stirringly as "the veteran socialist 'Red' Oskar Lafontaine, a long-standing scourge of big business". Lafontaine is a former SPD finance minister who broke away to establish the Linkspartei, or Left Party. But Lafontaine's target is not so much big business as foreign business and foreign workers. I recommend on this subject a paper on the rise of nationalism in German politics, written by Jans Herman Brink of Sussex University, in which Lafontaine's message is astutely analysed. Note in particular Brink's account of the intervention that has made Lafontaine an incendiary figure in German politics:

In June 2005 during a demonstration in the East German city of Chemnitz, Oskar Lafontaine argued in front of a monumental bust of Karl Marx:

"The state has an obligation to stop family men and women becoming unemployed because Fremdarbeiter (‘foreign workers’) with low wages take their jobs."

This statement was extraordinary not solely because Lafontaine turned against foreign workers who, under the terms of the EU, already have or will get the right to settle and work in Germany. The use of the concept of ‘Fremdarbeiter’ is also controversial. This word, it is true, already existed before the assumption of power by the National-Socialists, but in the collective memory of many Germans it is Nazi jargon used to indicate the millions of forced labourers from abroad. However, Lafontaine denied this connotation and in the left liberal daily Frankfurter Rundschau added the remarkable conclusion: ‘The Nazis were not in the first place xenophobic but racist. That is very different’.

That was indeed a remarkable assertion. The only sense I can make of it is that Lafontaine wishes to distance his message from that of Nazism by claiming for himself the mantle of xenophobia. And while Fremdarbeiter is properly translated as foreign workers, there is an unmistakable racist connotation to the term. Hence the controversy.

Lafontaine's words drew fierce condemnation from many quarters. One protest I particularly respect is from a group of writers that includes the musician and former East German dissident Wolf Biermann. Their letter, published in Die Welt, notes that Lafontaine's accusations against foreign workers, who supposedly take the bread and butter of German workers, is conscious positioning on the right-wing fringe ("am rechten Rand der Gesellschaft"; literally, on the right edge of society).

I could go on, but I trust the point is made. The NS is a magazine that I have had more or less sympathy with under a succession of editors - more under my friend John Lloyd, less under recent figures - but is always an important voice on the centre-Left. It appears on this occasion to have published an article under the heading "the European Left" that is in fact about the wider but less numerous phenomenon of European populism, and that advances a claim about this movement's "anti-racist viewpoint" that is neither substantiated nor, in my opinion, accurate. This is worthy of comment when the magazine is presenting the article as a report; and it is particularly worthy of comment when the magazine aims to be an organ of progressive opinion.

Comments

[Eddy Elfenbein]

As I’m sure you know well, the marriage of socialism and racism isn’t exactly new. I’m still not convinced of the difference between the two. Free enterprise, however, places great emphasis on trade, cooperation and expanding markets, which makes it not merely anti-racist, but the greatest enemy of racism in world history.

[karsten]

Yes, just as 'ein Fremdkörper in der Philosophie' has racist connotation -- the more odious for its context.