NEWS | Wednesday, 10 December 2008

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All progressives now

JAMES DEBONO explores the genealogy of the progressive label used by Joseph Muscat to rebrand his party to attract the middle classes without becoming a replica of the centre-right Nationalist Party

Joseph Muscat is not the first person to try to introduce new middle class-friendly strains of DNA in his party.
Back in 1992 Alfred Sant started the long march to transform Labour into a winning electoral machine by ditching “old Labour” values, to discover a newfound love for markets and the private sector. Like Bill Clinton’s Democrats and Tony Blair’s New Labour, Sant ended up accepting the prevailing economic orthodoxy at a time when neoliberals celebrated the “end of history” after the collapse of the Soviet bloc.
But they ditched wealth redistribution in favour of wealth creation, in the hope that some of it will trickle down to the masses. While Clinton tamed “tax and spend” liberals by ushering in a decade of economic prosperity, Blair kept mutinous rebels in check by the sheer wide margins of his victories and by refashioning his party as the new political centre between the liberal democrats and a loony, unelectable Tory party.
Sant’s task in Malta was however further complicated by opposition from the old guard: although “redistributionist” in its core rhetoric, it was very much unlike traditional socialists on the continent, harbouring xenophobic and reactionary views on a wide variety of issues ranging from law and order, to streaming in education and an anti-European foreign policy.
After prematurely losing power in 1998, Sant allowed his party to revert back to old Labour’s nationalism, this time cleansed of its redistributionist agenda. By 2003, enamoured by the European project, the middle classes were back to the PN’s fold. By 2008, Sant was simply not credible for them.
Today, the new US President-elect Barack Obama talks of “spreading out the wealth”, and centre-right politicians like Nicolas Sarkozy advocate interventionist policies.
In Malta, newly elected Labour leader Joseph Muscat finds a favourable climate for his attempt to re-invent Labour without losing track of its historical mission.
In short, the tectonic plates of global politics have moved the political centre to the left again. Luckily for Muscat, the Nationalists – who have just discovered a love for balanced budgets and full cost-recovery plans – have found themselves entirely unprepared for a crisis which questions their most fundamental axioms.

Enter the progressives
Until recently in Europe, the term “progressive” was mainly used by parties to the left of social democracy or by new formations like the Greens, to distinguish themselves from mainstream socialists.
To a lesser extent, it was also used by some free market liberal parties like Ireland’s progressive democrats to distinguish themselves from mainstream conservatives.
As social democratic parties became more bland, new left-wing formations like the Greens emerged from the ranks of the ‘new middle class’ – a social class composed of educated professionals who owe their social status to ownership of cultural, rather than financial capital (education as opposed to wealth).
While posing little threat to the economic status quo as they distanced themselves from their radical origins, parties like the German Greens were able to turn civil rights, the environment and the defence of a “multicultural society” into major political issues. Only recently they elected Chem Ozdemir, the first ethnic Turkish leader of a mainstream European Party, who was immediately hailed as the German version of Barack Obama, even if he heads a party which commands 8% of the vote.

Americanised politics
It was in the United States that the term progressive started gaining mass coinage at the expense of the older, traditional “liberal” labels.
Ironically the term progressive was first appropriated by the centrist Democratic Leadership Council through the institution of the Progressive Policy Institute – a think tank which ditched “tax and spend” policies in favour of Clinton’s fondness for balanced budgets and de-regulated markets.
But in more recent times the progressive label was more associated with grassroots movements which emerged in opposition to the Iraq war. A sizeable group of anti-war Democratic members of Congress have also set up “the progressive democrats of America,” which also campaigns for a single-payer universal health insurance coverage.
Although Obama adopted more centrist positions, the movement which galvanised his candidature was oiled by the activism of left-wing organisations like the anti-war Move On, news websites like the Huffington Post and blogs like that of filmmaker Michael Moore.
It was Obama’s vague rhetoric of change that kept progressives on board as he welcomed moderate republicans like former secretary of state Colin Powell.
But winning over conservative working-class voters remained Obama’s greatest challenge. It was Obama who observed that these voters “expressed their bitterness by clinging to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”
Rather than abandoning his progressive views on abortion or immigration, Obama managed to win conservative poor voters by speaking for Main Street America, as Wall Street collapsed. For Obama the economic collapse didn’t happen by accident, but was “a direct result of the Bush administration’s trickle-down, Wall Street-first, Main Street-last policies.”

Enter the Progressivi
For Muscat, giving hope to his working-class constituency at a time of crisis, appealing to irked former Nationalists who simply want change, while reaching out to “progressives” who never felt at home in Labour in the first place seems a very tall order indeed.
For apart from his personal stance in favour of the introduction of divorce, what is so “progressive” about Muscat’s new movement? Where does he stand on streaming in schools, integration of migrants and taxation?
Even if he sticks to divorce as his sole progressive card, anti-divorce Labour MPs like Adrian Vassallo and Marlene Pullicino could still spoil his party by reminding us that there is still room for reactionaries in the PL.

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