Neil Kinnock Interview: Conversations with History; Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley
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What do you see as the effect of the end of the Cold War on political parties in the West in general and especially on the left-of-center parties?
It's strange, because in the postwar, and indeed the pre-war period, there was an unbridgeable abyss between Democratic Socialism, of which I'm a part of, and Soviet communism. Whilst there were people in every establishment in the Western world who would regard themselves to be diehard opponents of communism, I have to say that in the Democratic Socialist movement there was an extra dimension to our quarrel with communism. It wasn't simply strategic, or born of a fear for the market system, but it was fundamental and ideological. And what always astounded me and still astounds me is the way in which despite that history, decades of history in which Democratic Socialism showed itself to be not only divergent from but hostile to communism, there was still in the public mind of the West an idea that we were somehow a wholly-owned subsidiary or another part of the corporate organization of world communism.
Your opponents were saying that.
And of course, there would be gestures on the left, self-indulgent gestures that would sometimes give the impression that we did have a kind of alliance with communism. I don't mean with specific communists; I've shared platforms in resistance to industrial closures, against the Vietnam War, and anti-apartheid movements with people who are communists, and that's fine. I respect the fact that they were part of those movements for liberation, okay, but I'm talking about communism, the organization, the ethos of communism. And because of those occasional gestures from the left of being accommodating of the Soviet system and because of the attacks of the right, there has been fixed in the public mind in all of the Western countries the idea that the corrosion and collapse of communism under the burdens of its own incompetence and injustice somehow signaled an end of socialism
What we've had to do over these last few years, not to sufficient effect as far as I'm concerned, so we're still having to do it, is to demonstrate that what died was Soviet communism, what continues to live is Democratic Socialism. In a world whose interdependence is proved daily and whose need for cooperation is demonstrated by the hour, we who should have interdependence and cooperation as a central part of our ethic as far as the world and its operations are concerned, should consider this to be a time of great opportunity, because we've got answers that the world could use.
Now, I think that's the only way to deal with it, to say it was next to damn all to do with us when it existed. In the wake of its collapse, we have to demonstrate that the command economy, the regimented society, the oppressive idea of the party and police state are what we regard to be enemies, alien to our belief. Our basic value is individual liberty. We are realists and understand that can't be achieved without cooperative and collective activity in society, and that, in the name of democracy and individual liberty, is what we offer to the world. Making ourselves absolutely distinct should be an easier task now that the hammer has snapped and the sickle is blunt.
What about the problem posed in this international environment of international solidarity between socialist and left-of-center parties versus national interests. That is, as labor parties of a particular country, concerned about the condition of workers and so on, is there a tension there, or do all the forces point in the direction of cooperation?
No, there's a tension there, and it's very clear that in the short term there are many, not only industrial classes, employee classes in many countries, but ownership classes as well who say that the answers must lie within the nation-state, within the established ideas of sovereignty, and while there's every sympathy for the world, we've got to look after ourselves first and all the rest of it. So, there is a tension between that and the creed that says there are no single-nation answers to any of the major problems of the world now, and that the course of cooperation, partnership, entanglement, entwining, and common agendas is the only sensible course to take.
Now, to do it on a philosophical basis is not to be persuasive, so we have to do it in the context, for instance, of the operation of global corporations, in the context of the international effect of environmental damage, in the context of the division between the North and South of the world. So that even if people aren't compelled by the moral argument for supporting and sponsoring economic growth in the South, and relieving starving and suffering people, they must be persuaded by the idea that destitute people make lousy customers, they've got no money, they buy nothing. So that there's an interdependence between the industrial manufacturing productive world and the poor world, and one of the answers to the huge levels of unemployment that we've got now, for instance in Europe, is to economically enfranchise the South of the world so at the very least people become customers instead of supplicants.
We can meet those arguments of introversion, of nationalistic attitudes, in the short term by saying realism takes us in the direction of international cooperation, and if you want to secure a future five years from now, the policies of generosity and extroversion must take their place, and not the policies of meanness, short-sightedness, and introversion. We win arguments on that practical basis in a way we never could if we only made an appeal to the sentiment or to the morality, valid though that appeal to the morality really is.
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