Breaking the chains

Social democracy, which was once hailed as an antidote to both the soulless harshness of dog-eat-dog capitalism and the centralised conformity of state socialism, seems to have lost its distinctive role.

Most formerly social democratic parties, including the Labour Party in Britain, have signed up unconditionally to the tyranny of neoliberalism.

This has meant undermining the welfare state, comprehensive education, the NHS, public housing provision and other aspects of a collective security approach that a minority of socialists and social democrats within the party still defend.

A similar position pertains in once powerful and influential parties in Europe, such as in Germany, where the SPD is a junior partner in the coalition headed by arch-conservative Chancellor Angela Merkel.

And the EU itself is striving to institutionalise neoliberalism as the economic basis of the bloc, using the European Court of Justice (ECJ) to subvert existing member-state legislation relating to industrial relations and workers' rights.

This is despite the back-flip performed by the TUC and the Labour Party 20 years ago when EU commission president and French Socialist Party politician Jacques Delors came to TUC annual conference to spin a yarn about the EU being a workers' paradise in comparison to the Tory hellhole of Britain under Margaret Thatcher's government.

Many trade unionists thought that they had spotted a short cut to prosperity and workers' rights and jumped on the EU bandwagon.

Reality has proved otherwise, as recent ECJ decisions have shown, along with a continent-wide assault on pensions, job security, working conditions and state benefits.

To that can be added a growing willingness of European states to undertake military duties in other parts of the world, usually at the behest of US imperialism.

It is paradoxical that, while much of what Bush administration officials called "old Europe" has agreed to march to the tune of Yankee Doodle Dandy, a growing number of Latin American states have begun to assert, for the first time, the independence that they won from the Spanish empire in the 19th century.

Cuba, Bolivia and Venezuela are usually cited as being in the vanguard of this change, but change has been apparent in many of the states previously belittled as being in "Washington's backyard."

The draft constitution published by Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa and expected to be confirmed by the country's Congress on Thursday night echoes the declarations of popular sovereignty, social justice and equality.

Its rejection of US military bases, democratisation of economic policy, respect for indigenous languages and for same-sex unions, recognition of domestic work as productive labour and non-discrimination against undocumented immigrants contrast favourably with current practice in Britain and other EU states.

This is not to suggest that Ecuador, or anywhere else in Latin America, is a socialist paradise. We've already fallen for the EU line once.

But it should remind us all that, no matter how often the rich and powerful try to tell us that socialist principles are outdated, there will always be evidence somewhere in the world contradicting that propaganda.