Two Socialist Victories

WITH the rise of Margaret Thatcher and Helmut Kohl, and with François Mitterrand’s flirtation with centrism, it has come to be widely believed that socialism is on its way out in Western Europe. The title of a recent book—Is Socialism Doomed? The Meaning of Mitterrand, by Daniel Singer (the European correspondent for The Nation, no less)— has a definitely post-mortem air. Two important elections held last month, however, give us reason to think again.

In the May 8 elections in the West German state of Schleswig-Holstein, 54 per cent of the vote went to the Social Democratic Party (which is much farther to the left than in the days of Helmut Schmidt). The SPD now has control of the provincial parliament, which Chancellor Kohl’s Christian Democratic Union had dominated for the past 38 years.

EK

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Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn

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Presidential Election

Margaret Thatcher

Communism

WITH the rise of Margaret Thatcher and Helmut Kohl, and with François Mitterrand’s flirtation with centrism, it has come to be widely believed that socialism is on its way out in Western Europe. The title of a recent book—Is Socialism Doomed? The Meaning of Mitterrand, by Daniel Singer (the European correspondent for The Nation, no less)— has a definitely post-mortem air. Two important elections held last month, however, give us reason to think again.

In the May 8 elections in the West German state of Schleswig-Holstein, 54 per cent of the vote went to the Social Democratic Party (which is much farther to the left than in the days of Helmut Schmidt). The SPD now has control of the provincial parliament, which Chancellor Kohl’s Christian Democratic Union had dominated for the past 38 years.