Social democrats lost when the Berlin Wall fell and they abandoned idealism to the neo-cons.JOHN GAPS III
Twenty years ago, when the Berlin Wall was breached and the Soviet empire was collapsing, only diehard believers in a communist utopia felt unhappy. A few people, of course, clung to the possibility of what was once called "actually existing socialism." Others criticized the triumphalism of the "new world order" promised by George H.W. Bush. And the way West Germany rolled over the wreckage of its East German neighbour seemed almost like an act of cruelty.
Still, except in China, 1989 was a good time to be alive. Many of us felt we were seeing the dawn of a new liberal age in which freedom and justice would spread, like fresh flowers, across the globe. Twenty years on, we know it was not to be.
Xenophobic populism is stalking Europe's democracies. Social democratic parties are shrinking, while right-wing demagogues promise to protect "Western values" from the Islamic hordes. And the economic debacles of the past few years seem to bear out Mikhail Gorbachev's recent warning that "Western capitalism, too, deprived of its old adversary and imagining itself the undisputed victor and incarnation of global progress, is at risk of leading Western society and the rest of the world down another historical blind alley."
The way it looks now, liberals, in the "progressive" American sense of the word, may actually have been among the losers of 1989. Social democrats were always despised by communists, and vice versa. But many social democratic ideals, rooted in Marxist notions of social justice and equality, were thrown out, like the proverbial baby, with the bathwater of communism.
This process was already under way before the fall of the Berlin Wall, with the free-market radicalism of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. Society doesn't exist, Mrs. Thatcher once famously declared - only individuals and families count. Everyone is for themselves.
For many people, this had the ring of liberation - from overregulated markets, from overbearing trade unions, from class privilege. That is why it was called neo-liberalism. But free-market radicalism undermined the role of the state in building a better, more just, more equal society. Neo-liberals are less interested in justice than in greater efficiency, more productivity, the bottom line.
While the neo-liberals were slashing and burning their way through old social democratic arrangements, the left was dissipating its energies on cultural politics, "identity" and ideological multiculturalism. Democratic idealism was once the domain of the left, including social democrats and liberals. In the United States, it had been the Democratic Party, embodied by John Kennedy, that promoted freedom around the world.
But in the late 20th century, it became more important to many leftists to save "Third World" culture, no matter how barbaric, from "neo-colonialism" than it was to support equality and democracy. People on the left would defend brutal dictators (Mao, Fidel Castro, Pol Pot, Ruhollah Khomaini) simply because they opposed "Western imperialism."
As a result, all politics derived from Marxism, no matter how loosely, lost credibility and finally died in 1989. This was, naturally, a disaster for communists and socialists - but also for social democrats, for they had lost an ideological basis for their idealism. And without idealism, politics becomes a form of accounting, a management of purely material interests.
This explains why Italy, and later Thailand, chose business tycoons as leaders. Voters hoped these men who had accumulated so much personal wealth could do the same for them.
Yet, the rhetoric of idealism has not quite disappeared. It has merely shifted from left to right. This, too, began with Mr. Reagan and Mrs. Thatcher. They took up JFK's promotion of democracy in the world. Once the left abandoned the language of internationalism, democratic revolution and national liberation, it was taken up by neo-conservatives. Their promotion of U.S. military force as the strong arm of democracy may have been misguided, crude, arrogant, ignorant, naive and deeply dangerous, but it was indisputably idealistic.
The allure of revolutionary élan has drawn some former leftists to the neo-conservative side. But most liberals have been deeply alarmed by the neo-cons, without finding a coherent response.
Having lost their own zest for internationalism, a common liberal response has been a call for "realism," non-interference and withdrawal from the world. This often may be the wiser course, but it hardly inspires. So it is that a left-wing internationalist such as French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner can find a home for his idealism in his country's conservative government.
For the first time since the Kennedy administration, the United States is one of the only liberal democracies in the world with a centre-left government. Can President Barack Obama lead the way to a new era of social and political idealism? It seems unlikely. His efforts to provide Americans with better health care, for example, is not so much an innovation as an attempt to catch up with programs most Europeans and Japanese have long taken for granted. For this, he is already being called a "socialist" by his enemies.
Mr. Obama is neither a socialist nor a mere political accountant. He has some modest ideals, and may yet prove an excellent president. But what's needed to revive liberal idealism is a set of new ideas on promoting global justice, equality and freedom. Mr. Reagan, Mrs. Thatcher and Mr. Gorbachev assisted in the end of an ideology that once offered hope and inspired real progress, but resulted in slavery and mass murder. We are still waiting for a new vision that can lead to progress - this time, we hope, without tyranny.
Ian Buruma is professor of human rights at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y. His latest book is The China Lover.