Cohen Redemanuskript

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Social democracyin Europe. Towardsa decent society.

Redemanuskript Job Cohen Jubilumsfeier der Berliner Republik Meistersaal am Potsdamer Platz, 21. April 2010

Sehr geehrte Damen und Herren,liebe Genossinnen und Genossen,

zunchst gratuliere ich der Berliner Republik zu ihrem zehnjhrigen Jubilum.Zehn Jahre Berliner Republik in dieser Zeit hat sich Ihre Zeitschri als Dis-kussionspodium r progressive Politik und neue politische Ideen etabliert,mit einem o enen Auge r Debatten und intellektuelle (oder: gedankliche)Entwicklungen im Ausland. Das ist es, was mir an ihrer Zeitschri besondersge llt: die internationale O enheit und Neugier. Und das ist genau das, wasdie Europische Sozialdemokratie braucht und was ihr ntzt. Gerade in Zeitenwie diesen, die voller gesellscha licher Turbulenzen sind.

Ich bin sehr roh, hier au Ihrer Geburtstagsparty sprechen zu dr en. Ichmache das zuerst au Deutsch. Ja, das stimmt, wie ast alle Hollnder: mit Lou-is-van-Gaal-Akzent. Dieser hollndische Trainer von FC Bayern Mnchen hat

die deutsche Sprache schon bereichert, so habe ich das verstanden und zwarmit seiner Au orderung Chancen zu kreieren, was ja nicht nur in sportli-chen Wettbewerben interessant ist, und mit seiner Parole Gladiolen oder Tod,wobei Arjen Robben dann r die Gladiolen gesorgt hat. Ich habe daran gedacht,hier, an diesem Abend, meiner Rede den Titel: Europische Sozialdemokratie:Tod oder Gladiolen zu geben. Ich habe das doch nicht getan. Ich mchte diesenwichtigen Vortrag nun au Englisch ortsetzen, weshalb meine Rede aucheinen englischen Titel bekommen soll, selbst wenn der dann etwas ernstha erist. Er lautet: Social democracy in Europe. Towards a decent society. SozialeDemokratie in Europa: r eine anstndige Gesellscha .


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So, Ladies and Gentlemen,

Your gala is taking place at an important moment in time. It is election time inthe UK, where the Labour Party, a er an incredible long o ce in government,is struggling or upholding its New Labour Project against the Tories and theLiberals. A Future Fair or All, their election mani esto, is a bold attempt tofght the a ershocks o the fnancial crisis, partly caused by the City itsel , andto ght the crisis o trust in politics which is a severe problem in the UK a erthe expenses scandal. The good news is that Labour, a er a disastrous gap inthe polls, is coming back. The electoral outlook is much less gloomy than itseemed to be be ore. In doing so, Gordon Brown and his party is repudiatingthe pessimist determinism that existed in circles o European social democracyjust a er the disastrous results o the European elections and a er the disap-pointing outcome o your own Federal elections.

I there is one message I will bring you tonight, it is this one: there is no need orpessimist determinism about the uture o social-democracy. O course, I knowall the analyses. I am not a nave optimist, but we see in the UK that economiccompetence counts a lot, as does the ideal o a uture air or all.

In the Netherlands we witness that our story o social cohesion and solidarityis getting a new momentum in times o severe economic shocks and in timeso populist attacks against the rule o law in democracy and migrant communi-ties. The social democratic fght against undecency is recognized while we areentering the election campaign in the Netherlands.

This weekend we have our party congress, where I will be elected (i the ru-mours are right) as ront runner o the Dutch social democracy. In the verycomplex and ragmented multi-party-system o the Netherlands, I will tell thesocial democratic story o social cohesion, solidarity and international coopera-tion. That is the story my country needs more then ever.

The Netherlands: a political laboratory.

In recent years, you must have been puzzled by what is going on in your neigh-bour country Holland. Cabinet crises, political murder, huge electoral shi s,while only some years earlier it was Modell Holland in terms o low unem-ployment and fexicurity. So the Netherlands seems to be a laboratory o political moods, models and ashions: both in a positive and a negative sense.

In the nineties, the Netherlands was amous or its so-called Poldermodel: theharmony model o cooperation and consensus in Dutch labour relations andpolitics. Symbol o this model was the so-called Wassenaar Akkoord betweenunions, employers and the government to ght the unemployment crisis inthe Netherlands. The Poldermodel was our best export product; it inspired


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Gerhard Schrders Bndnis r Arbeit and it brought the Dutch Trade Unionsand Employers Organizations the highly respected Bertelsmann Preis.

But since 2002 the Netherlands became a laboratory o multicultural tensionand polarisation. Pim Fortuyn, who gave voice to the discontent among theDutch population about immigration, Islam and wel are state re orm, was mur-dered just be ore the elections in 2002 the country was in shock. Two yearslater, we witnessed a second political murder. The flm director Theo van Goghwas killed by a radical Muslim in the streets o Amsterdam.

As a result the political debate, the public discourse and social attitudes aboutmigration and immigration have hardened and have become unrestrained.Holland seems to be a lot less tolerant than it used to be. In our party landscapewe are today con ronted with a strong populist movement. There has been anatmosphere o anger and alienation in the Netherlands about immigrationand integration. It accounts or the explosive cocktail with which the debateon minorities has been conducted. You must have trouble to ollow and un-derstand these changes in our country. Whats the matter with Holland? I canunderstand your con usion about the rapid changing mood in the Netherlands.

Let me try to explain what has been going on and what kind o answers we havetried to give in response to this turbulence by re erring to my experiences asMayor o Amsterdam, a city which considers itsel to be geistesverwandt withthe creative dynamic city o Berlin.

Amsterdam & Berlin

Amsterdam and Berlin, these cities are both known or their tradition o ree-dom and tolerance, tolerance or artistic expression, or di erences in li estyleand culture, etc. Our Grostdte , our big cities, are a pressure cooker o creativedynamism, but also o tension and polarisation. Amsterdam is a city with a longtradition o migrants. Today in a globalised world Amsterdam consists o more than 170 di erent nationalities and cultures. Managing this diversity, asit is called, is a rich and beauti ul thing to do or social democratic politicians.But there are serious shadow sides as well. It can sometimes be hard work tokeep the city integrated and to bridge the social, economic and cultural di er-ences.

Major changes globalisation, individualisation, democratisation, privatisationand secularisation have, together with migration, led to a society in which

people ace one another as strangers. Feelings o ear and alienation are beingcompounded by the nuisance caused by the criminality o groups o young peo-ple rom ethnic backgrounds with which people are con ronted in their ownneighbourhood or district. This year we commemorate the sixth anniversaryo the murder o Theo van Gogh. And like so many other people, I remember


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that day o the murder vividly. It brought anger rst and distrust immediatelya er, which meant that the local government had to act.

Actions to defend social cohesion, actions against polarisation

So we set up an action programme, called Wij Amsterdammers we, thepeople o Amsterdam, expressing that we did want to bind all the people o good will in terms o social capital. The aims were

1. to encourage better bonding within and bridgingbetween ethnic groups

2. to promote the empowerment o minorities3. to increase social trust and4. to actively counteract the development o negative

images and prejudices.

I will just give you an example o how this action program works in practice.In 2003, some Moroccan-Dutch lads disrupted the Second World War Remem-

brance Day ceremonies. In the a ermath o that, the media reported on prob-lems in schools with Muslim youths during lessons on the Second World Warand the persecution o the Jews. Holocaust denial was also involved. Jewishmen are increasingly reluctant to wear a yarmulke in public.

There was a lot o ear in the Jewish community and they wanted badly to talkabout these issues with representatives o the Moroccan community. Just asunacceptable as those incidents are the numerous examples o discrimina-tion against Muslims in everyday li e. We all know about all di erent sorts o discrimination in their daily li e.

There ore I decided to chair a number o discussions between representatives o the Jewish and Moroccan communities in 2004 and 2005. With a ew exceptions,the people involved in these discussions had seldom, i ever, met be ore. Thediscussions were intense and rank. No attempt was made to avoid sensitivesubjects like the confict in the Middle East, in which all o us are deeply in-volved. But even though our points o view and opinions may di er, especiallyon this complex issue, there was something stronger that bound us togetherand kept us at the table: the conviction that we are rst and oremost citizenso Amsterdam, that we are all living there and there ore will tolerate no ormo discrimination whatsoever.


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Keeping it all together

My ideas about the mission o social democracy or the years to come havebeen deeply infuenced by these experiences in Amsterdam. Thats the reasonwhy I have accepted to be the candidate or the Dutch PvdA to run or the nextnational elections. The central mission o social democracy is in my opinion too er people a perspective o a decent society, a society with trust, social cohe-sion and mutual respect.

The social democratic story is in the end about binding, bonding and bridging.De boel bij elkaar houden, as it is called in my party. These are the amouswords o Joop den Uyl, our Willy Brandt o the PvdA o the seventies. De boelbij elkaar houden is quite di cult to translate. It is something like Keepingit all together, meaning Keeping people in society together, or to maintaina socially integrated society. Fight risky individualization, ragmentation andpolarization. Do not tolerate large inequalities, but keep all in society connectedto each other. It is a basic philosophy o European social democracy. And a nec-essary correction o the political direction we have taken in the last decades.

A call also or being moderate as an answer to anaticism and hysteria, bothrom extreme populist voices and rom disconnected elites that enrich them-

selves and preach an overall adaptation to the globalised world, but in themeantime pay little or no attention to the political, cultural and social costso this adaptation. It is one o the root causes or the existence o populism o discontent, ear and anger.

The message today o the PvdA, my message, is all about this new bindingnarrative o social democracy. I am looking or an inclusive society, not or anexclusive one. It is urgently needed to address these polarizing tendencies inour societies, and to give an answer to the new social and cultural questionswe ace.

And we are not only challenged by the cultural ragmentation, in li estyle, inextreme individuality, in multicultural separation, but due to the neoliberalmarket dogmatism and its outcome: the crisis o nancial casino-capitalism we are also con ronted with increasing social-economic inequalities and imbal-ances: between the ever richer top and the precarious bottom, with a ragment-ing middle class in-between. On top o that, we witness polarizing trends in ourdemocracy, with an increasing number o citizens losing trust in politics andpublic institutions becoming disconnected rom the democratic process.

Social democratic parties have to care about the anxieties o their voters. Andthey have to respond to these polarizing trends with a program o diminishingsocial-economic inequalities, promoting active citizenship and bridging cul-tural di erences. This is what I call the keeping all together-mission. What


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troubles me is that social democracy itsel threatens to ragment. One o thetasks is to keep the social democratic constituency together, the biotope o the Volkspartei, as a model, as pars pro toto or European wel are societies atlarge. What bothers me is that higher educated people tend to dri to the Greenparty, to the social-liberal parties, more parties or academic pro essionals thanparties with a broad base.

My appeal as leader o the PvdA is also directed to these young generations o academic pro essionals. Not to be indi erent towards- - what is happening in our big cities;- - what is happening with the low-skilled in our knowledge-based

economy; - - not to be uncritical against the dogmatic market-society.

In one word: not to be just consumers waiting or the new Ipads to come overrom the US, but to be involved citizens.

The mission of social democracy today: a common perspective

The nancial and economic crisis has hit our societies hard. But it has alsoopened up new opportunities to redesign our social and economic order andto nd a new political perspective. My point o departure is that promotingcohesion, bonding and bridging, will be crucial in the years to come. We sharea common destiny in a common uture o our society, our democracy and oureconomy. Nation by nation, and European wide.

Society To regain cohesion in our societies, we need to restore trust in and respect oreach other. We need a society where people belong. In order to succeed weneed three basic ingredients: - - we need empathy, understanding the others position; - - we need clear limits, based on our constitution and our rule o law

and we need en orcement o our rules and laws as well; - - we need participation, in civil society, in politics and in the economy.

This routing takes time and will depend more on local than on national initia-tives and interventions. Our city governments have to move orward and mobi-lize positive orces. The American expert in this feld, Ervin Staub, advised theCity o Amsterdam how to develop positive relations between the local ethnic

groups and Muslim minorities in Amsterdam, in the Netherlands and the resto Europe as well in a six steps plan.


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- - A rst step towards preventing polarization is to organize a real debate.- - Secondly, meetings are a crucial condition in order to establish a real

dialogue, and or this purpose meeting places are necessary, at school, atwork, in the public domain and on television.

- - The third step is to ensure that in the dialogue we treat each other withrespect.

- - The ourth step is to learn about each others culture, religion, and normsand values, as well as about each others ears and pain. The media couldand in my view should play an important role in this.

- - The h step is to ensure that the basic criteria o the debate are clear toall parties involved.

- - The sixth step is to make the switch in due course rom dialogue to thedevelopment o a shared and non-exclusive but inclusive vision o societyand identity.

Democracy Strengthening our democracy evolves around three crucial concepts: a sel -con-

dent state, public interests and citizenship. Citizenship is not only essentialto create a more cohesive society, but also to enhance our democratic values

and practices. Keeping all those di erent people coming rom so many di er-ent cultures together requires, in the words o the Dutch author Geert Mak,

a new kind o common glue which will again create a kind o basic trust. Thisbasic trust is to be ound in a new interpretation o citizenship. Essentially,citizenship implies trust in one another as citizens o the same community,be that a village, a city or a country. Again to quote Mak: trust, not only ineach others good intentions, but also in the quality o administration and jus-tice, in the competence and integrity o politicians, in the civic-mindedness o managers and businessmen. To restore trust requires restoring responsibility.Responsibility both or yoursel and or the whole, whether that be the societyyou live in, the company you work or, the school your children go to, or thestreet you live in.

E ective citizenship should count on a sel -con dent state. A er decades o liberalization and deregulation o markets, it is time or a reassessment o thestate. This is not about a small state or a big state, an overpowering state or ashy state but about an e ective, ocused and sel -confdent state. The state ona national and European level has to re-establish clear points o re erence o public interests vis--vis markets. It has to create a ramework o public values,in order to embed, regulate and supervise markets certainly the fnancial mar-kets. A er a period where we seem to have trusted markets more than states,

we have to restore trust in the state, in the public domain and in public services.Clearly de ned responsibilities and politicians who are held accountable arein this respect a preliminary requirement.


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Economy Economic progress starts with social cohesion and an equal and inclusive so-ciety. These are not only moral standards, but also economic assets. A society,where everybody is stimulated and supported to participate, to belong and touse their talents regardless o age, place o birth or zip code simply per ormsbetter economically. In the years to come, with more older and less young peo-ple, we simply need everybody to participate in our economy. Not at all costs,but providing the possibilities to combine work and care, rm and amily. Weshould ask responsibility not only rom those who have to fnd their way backto the labour market, but also o the business elites who have profted so much

rom the economic boost. Why not put it this way: We also need a Hartz IV orthe business community.

I there is one lesson we have learned rom the fnancial crisis it is to constrainthe fnancial element, the fnancial interest, the fnancial risks in our economy.We have to move orward towards an economy o real entrepreneurship, notan economy o hunters and preys. An economy o innovative enterprises, tokeep our society strong, dynamic and sustainable, in order to create new growthand wel are.

An economy, too, that puts an end to precarious work as we know it romGnter Walra s latest book and opens up the opportunities or social mobil-ity. In our post-war model, we created opportunities to climb the social ladder:through school and urther education, by job promotion, by moving to a betterneighborhood, by increasing wages and by creating new opportunities or ourkids. That still happens, but we have to pay special attention or this part o thesociety. It is not a coincidence that becoming part o the middle class with allthe possibilities or personal development involved is one o the top prioritieso Barack Obamas program or change.

Conclusion

Ladies and gentlemen,

So let me conclude. I think our societies and our parties in Europe are at a cross-road. We have to make up our minds: In what kind o society do we want tolive? Do we make a choice or a society where unequality grows, immigrantsare considered as permanent intruders, markets dominate public interests,

nancial interests are considered as more important than entrepreneurship,

and people eel strangers to each other? Or do we choose the European modelthat we constructed with care and e ort a er the war, an inclusive societywith moderate di erences o income and wealth, a public sector that acts ascountervailing power to the market, with responsible citizenship at the topand the bottom, an educational system that cherishes engineers as well as me-


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chanics, with a green and innovative economy, with a clear rule o law and arelaxed diversity?

My answer is clear. Our common goal or the years to come should be what thephilosopher Avishai Margalit calls: the decent society. A society where peopletreat each other with respect and are treated with respect in the street, atthe workplace and by state institutions. An egalitarian and inclusive society,where the law rules, diversity inspires and work provides dignity. In this mis-sion, I believe, social democracy can fnd its new Deutungshoheit, as SigmarGabriel has put it.

Thank you or your attention. And have a great party tonight.

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