There is a heart-breaking scene in Margarethe von Trotta's marvellous biopic Rosa Luxemburg. It is the last night of the 19th century, and the elite of the German Left, of whom Luxemburg was one of the most distinguished leaders and original thinkers, are gathered for a new-year ball.
As midnight strikes, a banner is unfurled from the balcony above the revellers. If I remember the subtitles correctly, it reads: "As the last century was the century of hope, so the 20th century will be the century of fulfilment."
When the film was made, in the mid-1980s, such confidence in the future already seemed to belong to an almost unimaginable past. The rise of fascism, the grim perversion of socialism by the Stalinists and the proliferation of weapons capable of planetary annihilation had all seen to that. At the end of 2001, a year that has kicked away, at home and abroad, many of the last supports for any kind of rational optimism, belief in what used to be called human progress can seem like pathetic self-delusion.
At home, the tribunals of inquiry into corruption and mismanagement have ground relentlessly on, but there is no great sense of justice being done or public catharsis being achieved. Instead, there is an almost daily parade of unrepentant arrogance by senior politicians and business people. The spectacle feeds the notion that those who run our affairs treat the citizens they are supposed to serve with cynical disregard. This is unfair to at least some of them, but in this arena perception becomes reality. That is not to say that such investigations should not take place, only that our way of implementing them seems hopelessly unwieldy and counterproductive.
The debacle of the Nice referendum indicates an even wider malaise. The fine ideal of Europe as a great collaborative enterprise, where nations substitute mutually beneficial co-operation for bloody conflict, was severely damaged. Not, for the most part, by the No campaign activists, many of whom raised legitimate concerns about sovereignty, neutrality and democracy. The real injury was inflicted by the contempt displayed for their constituents by the Yes campaigners, here and in Brussels. First they took acquiescence for granted, hardly bothering to engage in persuasive debate with the public. The shockingly low turnout was a red warning light that the gap between citizens and decisions that affect their lives is now close to unbridgeable.
But the worst offence was the pro-Nice lobby's reaction to the result. Many of its representatives incarnated the worst fears of their opponents by revealing an underlying belief that democracy is a good thing only if it produces the outcome you favour.
This was the worst of messages to send as we enter an election year, in which the range of real choice seems narrower and less meaningful than ever. Ruair∅ Quinn may have briefly raised the morale of his faithful with his rallying cry of "Get the bastards out", but Labour has long ceased to present a coherent or attractive alternative on the Left. On the Right, the PDs are reduced to two or three powerful personalities rather than distinctive policies.
Only the Greens and Sinn FΘin offer radically different political menus, but as the latter gains parcels of power it is likely to move closer and closer to the catch-all politics of Fianna Fβil. Gerry Adams may visit Havana, but his party's centre of political gravity, and its bank accounts, lie much closer to Washington DC.
And Washington, as we have seen in the dramatic months since September 11th, is now the undisputed centre of the new world order. Its apparent victory over the Taliban has given the US the illusion that it can also control the periphery, and everything in between. That illusion could prove very dangerous for all of us. The great wave of sympathy that all people of goodwill felt for the American people after the terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers should not blind us to some frightening aspects of their government's policies.
President Bush's pre-war dismissal of a series of international agreements, from small-arms control to the Kyoto protocol on global warming, is a far clearer indication of his world view than the brief period of coalition-building before his attack on Afghanistan. (And look how quickly he has turned on the Palestinians to see how little need he now feels to be even-handed). The rapid and, for the US, virtually bloodless defeat of the Taliban has put his administration in a position of unprecedented global power. It is hard to believe this power will be used in the interests of the wretched of the earth, who send us messages of misery that arrive in containers in Wexford and Dover, on pathetic rafts off the coast of Andalusia or in little boats across the Rio Grande.
The deepening of the crisis of world hunger and disease, side by side with the production of massive wealth and mind-boggling technological advances, is the greatest challenge facing humanity, along with the galloping degradation of our environment.
Yet the world's only superpower has turned its back on those challenges. For foreign policy the US now offers us only a scenario of war without end, in pursuit of a shadowy but lethal terrorist enemy who cannot, by definition, be defeated on the battlefield.
The failure and collapse of the so-called socialist bloc has left the world's poor without an earthly hope, and it is no great wonder that many of them are now attracted by an unearthly one. The galvanising energy of fundamentalist religion of any variety is indeed terrifying to anyone who believes that the rights and liberties born with the French Revolution are universal and non-negotiable.
But the US, outside its borders, has cared very little about such rights. It was Washington that supported and sustained the Pinochet dictatorship (on another September 11th), and many others around the world. It is Washington that likes to play best buddies with such repulsive regimes as the Saudi monarchy, and it was Washington that fostered and financed Islamic fundamentalism in Afghanistan when it suited its interests.
It may be worth rehearsing these facts at the turn of the year. For those of us who still like to think we are on the Left, they are reminders of how very deeply we have failed to find viable frameworks to transform the values of liberty, equality and fraternity into living forces in our societies.
Having said that, there are diverse signs that things can change for the better.
Opposition to racism is a lively force among Irish young people. Pinochet and Milosevic have at least been confronted with the enormity of their crimes, in the most dramatic instances of a new commitment to human rights in the international justice system. Through non-governmental organisations and the so-called anti-globalisation movement, new models of democratic activism may be emerging. Despite everything, we should perhaps recuperate political hope, the value that animated the 19th-century Left, while steeled by our knowledge of what has happened since then. The best political resolution for the new year is probably still the terse injunction of German socialists in the face of Nazism: pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will.
Paddy Woodworth is an Irish Times journalist and the author of Dirty War, Clean Hands, a recent book on the Basque conflict (Cork University Press, £20.08/€25.50)
woodworth@ireland.com
