The concept that politics is no longer important is wrong and dangerous, writes TONY KINSELLA
ONE CAN be forgiven for not noticing the French Socialist Party's new Declaration of Principles - not many people did. The declaration, endorsing the mixed economy, represents the PS's formal migration into mainstream social democracy.
Social democracy was born in the 1920s, bloomed in the 1930s, and has transformed our planet over the last 70 years. Its very success now poses it, and us, with profound intellectual challenges.
Majorities in most labour movements rejected the Soviet model in the 1920s and triumphed following the failure of laissez-faire liberal economics to respond to the Great Depression. The world's first social democratic government was elected in Sweden in 1932, the same year US voters chose Franklin D Roosevelt and his New Deal administration.
Three-quarters of a century later the essence of social democracy has become the global norm, even in countries such as ours where the Labour party has never been more than a junior coalition partner. Mixed economies with free enterprise as the main source of wealth generation, balanced by public regulation and intervention, are not ideologically challenged by any mainstream force. Candidates do not campaign against public provision and regulation of education, health, public infrastructure and services. They argue instead that their party will manage them more efficiently.
Running a modern state consumes between 40 and 50 per cent of national wealth, or gross domestic product. Public expenditure of more than 50 per cent of GDP provokes a public reaction, whereas anything significantly under 40 per cent threatens the social compact.
Expenditure under Margaret Thatcher's governments hovered around 43 per cent. The one modern exception is the US, with public expenditure at about 29 per cent of GDP.
We are reminded of the consequences of that approach by the country's crumbling infrastructure - or the one-sixth of its population that has no health cover - on a daily basis. US voters are reacting and, if the polls are to be believed, seriously considering voting for an African-American pledged to increasing expenditure and raising taxes.
One measure of social democratic success has been the disappearance of the traditional working class. The sons and daughters of the industrial workers, agricultural labourers and miners who voted social democrats into power had the opportunity to attend university, and became teachers, architects and lawyers.
Conservatives, having initially opposed such reforms as being too expensive, or threatening society's "real" values, have come to recognise their effectiveness and popularity.
This very success has, ironically, robbed both the advocates and opponents of social democracy of their respective bases and even of their raisons d'etre. Middle class social democratic parties emotionally evoke their proletarian roots, while conservative movements talk up their "business cultures". Both sides have become so focused on marketing themselves as competent that neither offers a coherent view of the society they seek to achieve.
Irish politics adds its own twist to this visionary vacuum. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael trace their heritages back to the 1922-23 Civil War, and differences based on long-vanished class elements. They may have become virtually indistinguishable centre-right entities, but they still won 69 per cent of the vote in 2007.
Parties further to the left, or right, of this central consensus tend to be small and marginal. Successful ones, like the PDs once were, can exercise some influence; others just plough their lonely, pointless, purist furrows.
All this may have served us well but now significantly sterilises political reflection and debate in all our societies. It is a sterility that feeds the menacing concept that politics and political structures are no longer important.
Whatever the merits of that concept, it clashes with our entry into a period that demands major political choices about the comfort and survival of our species.
Food is the starkest example. Our planet produces more than enough food to feed its population. Yet 14 per cent of the global population is starving. While this is an improvement on the 20 per cent who starved 30 years ago, a child still dies of hunger on our planet every 10 minutes, every day, 365 days a year - a human crime against humanity.
We produce enough food but fail to distribute it - a damning failure at many levels. Correcting that failure requires political decisions, but ones our political processes have real trouble addressing.
Imagine a global referendum on the abolition of world hunger. There might be some No votes, but a Yes figure of more than 90 per cent seems probable. Who could vote in favour of infants starving to death in the midst of plenty?
Then what? Faced with global climate change how can our species organise and pay for a global food system worthy of the name? Even if we as individuals were prepared to pay an extra cent of income tax to realise such a worthy goal, how could we express that desire?
The majority of our nation states are 20th century creations offering us systems to select national governments on a planet threatened by global challenges. Our political parties are rooted in questions they long ago answered. We need to move forward, to develop political structures and engage in political debate about our tomorrows. Our yesterdays inform us, but as LP Hartley wrote: "The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there."
Our recent referendum experience is hardly encouraging. The No side peddled fears, real or imaginary, anchored in that foreign past while most Yes protagonists did not even attempt to place our choices in the context of humanity's future. Failure to consider our future political requirements is more than indolence.
It is a crime.