"Ah! The Ghost of Michael Harrington!" said Neil Kinnock of the British Labour Party in a loud stage whisper as the DSA delegation passed by to take their seats at the SI's World Congress in Paris this November. Kinnock's witty aside unsettled a few of our six delegates, but I was touched that Kinnock (in his own backhanded way) had cared to acknowledge how important Michael Harrington had been for the SI during the Seventies and Eighties. At that time Harrington was the SI's leading American spokesperson and a valued advisor and strategist for the SI 's ruling triumvirate of Olaf Palme, Willy Brandt and FranHois Mitterrand. For more than a decade DSA's marginality at home was compensated within the SI by Harrington's brilliance as an essayist and his energy and insight as a socialist strategist. But this also meant that the DSA connection to the SI was largely a one-man show. Since Michael's death in 1988 - and with the disappearance of the generation of European leaders who had welcomed him into their ranks- the relationship between DSA and the SI has never been the same.

In the era of Tony Blair, Gerard Schroder and Massimo D'Alema - Europeans whose American policy often seems limited to the pursuit of photo-ops with Bill and Hillary and ever closer ties to the DLC -- one quickly gets the impression that DSA's status as a member organization has turned into something of an embarrassing "legacy" for the current SI Secretariat in London, that is, when it is not overlooked altogether. This was sadly in evidence, for instance, during the July session of the Gonzalez Commission on Global Progress with Clinton Administration officials and NYU economists in Washington last summer, when inexplicably DSA was not notified of first SI major meeting to be held in the States since the World Congress at the UN in 1996.¹

The change in our standing could also be felt in Paris, where without Bogdan Denitch (DSA's voice within the International since 1991 whose expertise on Eastern European and world development issues is widely respected), to head our delegation and to take the floor in our name, we kept a low profile. Although our delegates did good work networking with the international press and other delegations in the corridors², our lack of visibility points up the difficulties of DSA' position within the SI. We are a "full member party" and, along with the SDS/USA, are the lonely representatives of Democratic Socialism/Social Democracy in the World's Superpower. But neither of the American member parties measures up to the three criteria for organizational relevance established by the departing SI President, Pierre Mauroy, at the Paris Congress.

In his opening speech (which was also his last as the SI's President), Mauroy claimed that in the Nineties, the Socialist International had become "the leading political organization in the world, if we take the only two criteria which matter: the geographical area which its covers and the political forces which it represents."³ Over the past twenty-five years the SI has expanded its membership from forty parties when Willy Brandt assumed its Presidency in 1976 to nearly one hundred and fifty member parties today. Its membership roster translates into a significant Socialist presence in Europe, the Middle East and Mediterranean, Sub-Saharan Africa, India and the Pacific Rim and Latin America.

Mauroy's second criteria was the SI 's political "weight" -- here defined by the size of electoral representation of its member parties with their "hundreds of millions of voters worldwide" and by the fifty or so that are parties of government on "all world's continents." And as if to underline the point, the podium was crowded with the assembled leadership of the thirteen European Union countries plus elected leaders from Eastern Europe, the new president of Argentina, and the new delegate of the ANC. This impressive display of worldwide political influence was further demonstrated the next day by the comradely embrace exchanged by Yasser Arafat and Simon Perez which was given to the tumultuous applause of the 1000 delegates.

To these two criteria Mauroy added yet another: "ideological modernity." He saw the SI string of electoral successes as evidence that the Right in the Nineties had been driven from power worldwide mainly because of the Democratic Left's capacity for ideological and programmatic innovation. Mauroy then concluded, "it's true that we have changed. And it is precisely because Social Democracy has known how to adapt to change that we are the leading organized political force in the world today." For Mauroy the essence of the programmatic shift came from the fact that "Socialist International no longer limits its ambitions to the simple redistribution of wealth but also includes its creation,"⁴ a comment that echoed Tony Blair's remark that "the everywhere debate about the future of left¯ is centered on the issue of "whether we can stand for fairness and enterprise together."⁵

Needless to say, a DSA which has no elected representatives and which fields no political candidates, will be hard put to meet the test of electoral relevance (i.e. popular, democratic legitimation) that would allow it to fit comfortably into the existing SI club. Nor can it easily pass the ideological test of "modernity." In particular, DSA's ideological program of opposition to global corporate capitalism places it on the outer fringe of the SI today. In the eyes of European leaders like Blair or D'Alema who equate "modernization" with the market based reform of the Welfare State, our refusal to buy into the neo-liberal agenda makes us a "conservative organization" and a political adversary. Our criticisms of the American "model" and market led globalization will be ignored by them, and the DSA could find itself marginalized within the SI - along with the rest of the hard left opposition to the "centrist" policies which operate within the limits set by the "global capital markets.

For the British Prime Minister the "debate today is no longer about whether we modernize but how; and how fast. My case is straightforward. In history the left always wins when it is not just about justice but about the future too...We must take on the forces of conservatism, left and right, who resist change, whether its the right who believe the knowledge economy is a just a passing fad or those parts of the left defending the status quo, promoting tax and spend or yielding up the territory of law and order to the right. Because make no mistake. If we don't become the reformers, the right will step in and take our place."⁶

Blair for one had no doubts that we could marry capitalist enterprise to social fairness, but his French hosts did not share this enthusiasm for the neo-liberal policy consensus. FranHois Holland, the General Secretary of the French Socialist Party, was prepared only to say "yes to the market economy, but not to a market society." Lionel Jospin shared Holland's skepticism about market reforms. The French Prime Minister declared: "In itself, the market creates neither meaning, nor direction nor project. For us the market -- even regulated, even controlled -- does not eliminate the need for the social contract We refuse the commodification of societies."

Jospin even found a place in his remarks for a favorable reference to the relevance of Marx's critical analysis of Capitalism and our continuing need to "think through Capitalism in order to challenge it, to control it and to reform it."⁷ One conclusion he drew from this was that the Left had to "reflect on the reasons that have led us to allow the return of times of stagnation and massive unemployment." For Jospin " our first priority today as socialists is to work for full employment." His second priority was to demand the regulation of capitalist globalization -- rejecting Blair's description of it as a raw, uncontrollable force that sets the limits within which Socialists must work. "Globalization must not be based on unlateralism." Jospin declared. "On the contrary, it must encourage the emergence of a balanced and multi-polar word. The world needs rules For" as Jospin said in conclusion, "this century has shown us that socialism without liberty does not exist. But socialism without equality becomes meaningless."

In contrast, Blair summed up the Congress debate in these terms: "Some will talk of social democracy, some of democratic socialism. Some of the centre-left, some just of the left. I do not minimize the real and genuine debate that underpins these terms. I simply say it is the debate itself that is important, not the labels." In a sense he was right, but also disingenuous. What he left out of his description was the rejection by the SI leadership of his proposals for the reform of the SI itself. Last spring, Blair suggested that the SI should be dissolved into a larger "centre-left" association that would include Clinton's New Democrats alongside New Labour. Then shortly before the Congress, he proposed that the SI could drop the "S-word" from its name in favor of a more neutral "centre-left" label. None of these proposals were accepted, but clearly show that up until ten days before the Congress opened, Mr. Blair took the issue of labels very seriously indeed.

All of these maneuvers were brushed aside in Mauroy's blunt declaration in favor of "a Socialist International which is more international without being less socialist,¯ a preference endorsed by "the great majority of our member parties, for whom the political struggle is still structured around the left/right divide between progressive and conservative forces." In a clear rebuke to Blair, Mauroy added that "for myself" as well as for "the Socialist International, the 'third way' is still located in between Capitalism and Communism." In short, the Paris Congress represented a thinly disguised defeat for the European advocates of the "Third Way" for which their meeting with Clinton (and his entourage of hundreds) in Florence in late November provided little consolation.

It came as no surprise then that the one continent which Luis Ayala, the SI General Secretary, passed over in his official report turned out to be North America. Neither the renewal of the AFL/CIO; the victory of the Mexican PRD in Mexico City, or the work of the Canadian NDP were deemed worthy of mention in his remarks - although the Gonzalez commission's meeting with the New Democrats in Washington was singled out for praise. The same silence was observed in the plenary speeches made by Jospin, Schroder and Blair. The one notable exception came in the plea made by Massimo D'Alema to the delegates to recognize that "dialogue with the American Democrats is fundamental to the process of strengthening the ties between Europe and the other continents and will allow socialist forces in Europe to have a direct relationship with other democratic and progressive cultures acting in the world."⁸

D'Alema's speech only hints at the problems for the SI that flow from its weak ties with American political organizations and personalities. For how can one claim to be the world's leading political organization when Russia, China and the United States are all but absent from its ranks? More particularly how can one deal with the global impact of U.S. "unlateralism" in the absence of a working relationship with America's Democratic Party. This practical issue in many ways was the central question hanging over the theoretical debate between Lionel Jospin and Tony Blair over "The Third Way "

Ironically at the turn of a new century, everything from the global reach of the Internet and the American dominated global media culture to the dramatic street protests in Seattle against the WTO, poses the riddle of what America's political "exceptionalism" means. Even as America's corporate giants in global communications and information technology like Microsoft and AOL/Time Warner rework economies and cultures around the world, our political elites remain largely divorced from the policy debates that bring the rest of the world's democratic leaders to forums like the UN or the SI World Congress. Despite the close collaboration between American and transnational NGO's which was so much in evidence in Seattle this November, the institutional and cultural isolation of our two national parties remains almost complete.

The Democratic Party, for instance, belongs to none of the existing Internationals, although it sends observers to three: the Liberal, Christian Democratic and Socialist Internationals. At the Paris Congress, they were represented by one guy from the National Democratic Institute who turned out to be Canadian. Similarly, the American media presence was limited to the local stringer from UPI who was kept asking whether there was "really a story here worth covering." In short, our cultural dynamism and national self- absorption both fascinates and repels the "outside world" -- a world that is often much more interested in us than we are by it. This gap in political awareness raises the issue of when and how Americans can be brought into the global conversation about global problems and on what terms.

The American "challenge" to the SI was confronted head-on in the maiden speech of newly elected SI President, Antonio Guterrez, (Portugal's Socialist Prime Minister), who formally committed himself to seeking out American partners with whom the International could collaborate. This settled the question of whether the SI will seek contact with American Democrats and progressives, but left open the issue of how and where. More to the point, Guterrez did not touch on the vital question of which Democrats? Will the SI's contacts be limited to Clinton's New Democrats or will the Progressive Caucus in Congress also be included in the international dialogue? How this is worked out is a strategic concern for DSA, for it will determine how much space exists for us to be a player in the coming conversation between the SI parties and American labor and progressive NGO's over globalization.

Given the current configuration of forces within the SI, our space is limited. At best DSA today finds itself closest to Jospin's Socialists. At worst we risk isolation by being identified by Blair's "Centre Left" with the marginal "Left Group" of the European Parliament - which is made up of parties like the French Communists, who are the Socialists' coalition partners in France, Italy, and Germany, but still outside the ideological mainstream of European Socialism. If the "Third Way" advocates ultimately succeed in promoting the ideological "re-centering" of the International -- as they already tried to do with Felipe Gonzalez's Commission on Global Change -- the position of DSA within the SI will become both more difficult and marginal.

1. Also known as the "stealth congress" for its almost complete invisibility in the American media.

2. 2. Our delegation, for instance, received positive press attention in France with an article in Paris conservative daily, Le Figaro, which published an interview with Penny Schantz and myself, ® Les dernier des Hurons, ® (the last of the Mohicans), in its November 10^th issue, and laid the foundation for an official meeting with new PS Secretary for International Relations, Regis Passerieux in early December.

3. Pierre Mauroy, speech to the SI Congress, November 8^th, 1999, my translation from the French.

4. Ibid, my translation.

5. Blair, Congress speech, November.

6. Blair ibid. pps 1-3.

7. Jospin, Congress Speech, English text November 8^th 1999.

8. Remarks by Massimo D'Alema, November 8^th, 1999, my translation.