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An Obituary for the Social Democrats

A Political Tradition Fades in Germany

By Franz Walter

For almost as long as anyone can remember, the Social Democrats have been a vital part of Germany's political landscape. Now, though, voters are abandoning the SPD -- and the party has turned its back on itself.

A political party of historic importance is imploding in Germany. Even worse, though, is that the Social Democrats (SPD) themselves don't seem to care. Indeed, it is precisely this indifference, this indolence and this lethargy among prominent party members that explains in part why the SPD has sunk to such low depths.

The Social Democrats have never made things easy for themselves. For decades, the party was wracked by infighting and arcane ideological disagreements that were difficult for outsiders to grasp. But today, it is not the powerful wings of the party that are at loggerheads with one another, battling it out over questions of substnace. Instead, it is merely individual cliques becoming embroiled in intrigue-filled skirmishes, the content, purpose and goals of which are an enigma to others within the party.

Of course, the SPD -- despite having hit a new low point in the polls with just 20 percent support -- will not disappear from the radar screen completely. It could even be that support for the SPD may even recover slightly -- after all, the SPD's historical foil, the Christian Democrats (CDU), is not doing particularly well either. But the SPD will no longer be the impressive party that it once was. All that remains is to write the obituary for a remarkable party -- one that often acted as a moral pillar in Germany even as long stretches of political bumbling damned it to spending most of its history in opposition.

Losing Blue-Collar Support

The SPD of 2008, at any rate, has bid farewell to itself, turning its back on much of what made it great. First, the SPD has disconnected itself from the working class. Since the 1998 general elections, much of the SPD's slide has resulted from blue-collar voters turning their backs on the party. Support among workers having dropped 15 percent in the last decade. In a number of state elections during the second term of SPD Chancellor Gerhard Schröder (from 2002 to 2005), the SPD lost as much as one-fifth of its blue-collar support.

For the SPD, this shift is a profound disaster. The industrial working class has long formed the ideological center around which the SPD orbited. It was the party's raison d'etre, the source of party stability and the guiding light of all its efforts. The cool, unsentimental exodus of the working class has robbed the SPD of its core image, an image built up over more than a century. The SPD without support from the workers is a party stripped of its goal -- namely that of emancipating the lower classes.

It is for this reason that many Social Democrats have been wallowing in an identity crisis in recent years. Earlier, the Social Democrats felt confident of their role in society and knew their interests. This certainty no longer exists and nothing has emerged to take its place. As a result, the SPD feels agitated, helpless and directionless.

But the departure of the proletariat from the SPD is not the only loss that is weighing heavily on the Social Democrats. Since then, an even deeper transformation of the Social Democratic concept has occurred. The SPD, since its very beginnings, has always depended heavily on its members and its structures -- far more so than the CDU. The CDU could always rely on other resources whereas the SPD had to rely on pulling its members together and using its organizational capabilities to the fullest.

Struggling Mightily

Now, though, the SPD is not just losing support from the working class, but it is also losing members. The process began long ago, but since 1990, the party has lost vast numbers -- close to 400,000 people have turned in their membership cards. In the state of North-Rhine Westphalia, a proud Social Democratic bastion for almost half a century, the CDU surpassed the SPD in 2003, and it now enjoys an advantage of 22,000 members.

Even in Germany's blue-collar heart, the SPD is struggling mightily. In industrial Dortmund, the SPD now has less than a third as many members as it did in 1969. Recent surveys show that support for the SPD is lagging behind that of the CDU in the region -- hinting that a recent trend of failure in local and municipal elections, costing the SPD thousands of positions, may continue. Nationwide, CDU membership is likely to soon overtake that of the SPD. In the mid-1960s, the SPD boasted a 450,000-member lead over the CDU. All of that has now been lost.

The SPD, as a result, is losing its organizational underpinning, a foundation which helped support the party even in the most difficult times. The disappearance of the classic party official is symptomatic of this shift. Until well into the 1980s, such officials were respected and important powers in the party structure. Former Chancellor Willy Brandt deliberately involved lower-level party secretaries. But Gerhard Schröder, the last SPD chancellor, couldn't have cared less about them. Thousands are now embittered and looking to the left -- where the Left Party of Oskar Lafontaine, a former SPD leader himself, is waiting to provide them a new political home.

A Loss of Charm and Persuasiveness

All of this has led to the SPD mutating into the type of party its members have long despised: a boutique party for the middle class. The loss of purpose weighs heavily on Social Democrats. This too began long before Schröder. As far back as the late 1980s and early '90s, many of the reliable old Social Democratic recipes lost their charm and persuasive power. As much as the SPD loves debating, this negative trend was never addressed. Some clung defiantly and nostalgically to the traditional promises of classic socialism. But the more they did so, the more likely they were to cast their votes for the Left Party.

Others chose to turn their back on tradition and look toward political views borrowed from their center-right, upper middle-class adversaries. This, essentially, is what led to the important welfare reforms passed by Schröder. No one in the SPD quite knew what to make of the party's new direction. Was the social welfare system the root of economic evil because it drove up government spending while limiting individual responsibility and participation, the willingness to invest, and even the scope of individual liberty?

Or was the social welfare state, as the anti-reformers would have it, a successful and attractive model -- worth preserving even though it required updating and revision -- for the dismantling of deep class differences, promoting opportunity and integrating complex societies? To this day, the Social Democrats have failed to provide an answer to these questions.

Within the party, it was possible to find supporters for both alternatives. And it was with depressing frequency that young SPD parliamentarians would change from one viewpoint to the other. In short, this spring's confusion within the Social Democratic camp has been long in the making.

The confusion, however, is hiding an important reality: The SPD has become the party of Germany's center. But the center is a part of Germany's political landscape that also happens to be rapidly shrinking. The benefits of centrism are clear: The SPD has a wealth of coalition options, making its path to power that much shorter. But centrism is not much of a motivator for the SPD's once highly motivated activists. And a centrist political agenda pursued by a fatigued party has not proven to be an effective recipe for developing new leadership.

Admittedly, this is something of a doom-and-gloom scenario. It is quite possible the party's ability to reinvent and revitalize itself is greater than its current troubles make it seem. Parties change as the political environment around them change. The friction and infighting that result from such shifts do not automatically mean the party is doomed.

Underprivileged and Humiliated

The Social Democrats, in particular, have often gone through difficult transformations, and have often emerged all the stronger. As the opposition party of the lower classes, the party could consistently rely on a source of regeneration. But those days are gone. The SPD's current leadership, rooted primarily in academia, lacks the experience of being underprivileged and humiliated.

The SPD of 2008 is no longer an emancipation movement. Instead, it is in the autumn of its long history as the party of the German worker. In its new form -- that of an interest group representing those just arriving in Germany's new center -- it will play a different role in the 21st century. And the new lower classes of this century -- for whom the knowledge-based society contains more pitfalls than opportunities -- will also have to adjust. They will need a new model to leverage political and social effectiveness.

It is not unlikely that the new disenfranchised of the 21st century, the "dregs," as one SPD cabinet minister contemptuously calls them, will find themselves facing off against the old party of the 20th century worker. As the "protective power of the new center," the new SPD will be called upon to fend off claims from below.

History is full of social groups and movements that have undergone similar shifts. Nostalgia for the old SPD, however, is difficult to avoid.

Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan