The prosperity and social harmony western countries experienced in the aftermath of the Second World War were largely underpinned by social democratic principles and policies. Yet in more recent decades social democracy has been in retreat, as shown by the decline of centre-left parties across Europe.
Paul Collier, a distinguished economist, recently outlined his vision of how western societies can renew social democracy. His central contention is that we must re-establish a national “domain of shared identity”.
Collier isn’t the only prominent thinker to make this sort of argument. Sheri Berman, a political scientist, also suggests that social democracy’s revitalisation requires a “strong sense of fellow feeling … fostered within national borders”.
These scholars emphasise shared identity due to social democracy’s strategic goal. This ideology’s starting point is that capitalism produces “unprecedented material bounty” but at the same time has socially deleterious consequences, such as extreme inequality, social dislocation, and atomisation. Its proponents therefore seek to harness the productive capacity of capitalism while protecting society from its harmful effects.
Historically, the principal mechanisms for achieving this goal have been democratic politics and the state. When in power, social democrats used the state to try to tame capitalism and promote social goods and protections enhancing society’s wellbeing. This typically involved Keynesian economics, cross-class cooperation, and robust welfare programmes.
In order to back a social democratic agenda, citizens must believe certain things. We must feel a duty towards the wellbeing of society as a whole and trust that most other citizens feel the same. Without this sense of common purpose, we’re unlikely to support state limits on our self-interest, behave cooperatively, and endorse generous welfare policies.
Yet building such solidarity isn’t easy. Human egoism is strong, and we’re only likely to willingly prioritise the social good over our individual interests if our sense of affinity to one another is stronger. Hence social democracy’s need for a sphere of shared identity.
In the post-war era, nationality was the collective identity that fostered solidarity. Collier argues that it should serve this function again “for the simple reason that the nation is the entity within which the tax revenues needed to meet [mutual] obligations can be raised”. Of course, Collier isn’t calling for a return to aggressive nationalism, but something akin to patriotism.
Western societies are currently blighted by many of the problems social democracy seeks to overcome, and they need a new sense of shared identity to renew a social democratic agenda. But is nationalism really the way to go?
As Collier himself notes, the national solidarity of the post-war era has dissipated in recent decades, largely as a result of globalisation and the spread of the knowledge economy. Under these conditions, metropolitan centres boomed and university graduates benefited, while provinces declined and the value of manual skills fell. Moreover, the metropolitan skilled – as Collier calls them – gained more esteem from their professional roles than they did from nationality and so “withdrew from shared identity with their less fortunate citizens”. Politically, metropolitans gained influence and since they felt less duty towards their hard-hit compatriots the latter were cut adrift.
Collier is right to say these things and the implication of his argument is that there is a particular onus on the metropolitan skilled to help refashion a shared identity at the national level. There is, however, a major obstacle to this path. Metropolitans haven’t just shunned nationality in favour of professional identities; they have also shunned it in favour of a globally oriented sense of self. At its heart, this globalist inclination consists of what Ross Douthat calls a “liberal Christianity without Christ”. That is, metropolitans typically cherish individual freedom, especially in the cultural domain; they typically reject transcendental authority and so regard all modes of life as equally valid (provided these don’t crimp other people’s autonomy); and they tend to fervently believe that their stance is universally applicable.
It doesn’t seem likely, therefore, that this group would cede their globalist orientation to embrace a nationally-bounded solidarity. On this basis, we might conclude that an alternative is needed and, in keeping with the metropolitan outlook, propose a global sphere of identity and solidarity as the way forward. This might make more sense in any case, as it would give us more control in a world of hyper-mobile capital and transnational corporations.
However, global solidarity is a much more remote prospect at present than Collier’s preferred course, not least because of the continuing salience of national identity, particularly among non-metropolitans. So, despite its difficulties, nationalism may be the most realistic option and so the best way to go. If that is the case, then those who want to revive social democracy need to think about how to make the shared identity of the nation attractive to metropolitans. That is an immense challenge.