This is about all I could find (so far). There is a map of the situation at the beginning of 2017. In the meantime, France’s Socialist Party has imploded and is no longer in government.
You are right that many parties that don’t call themselves Socialist or Communist are nevertheless Left or Centre-Left. Clearly that applies to Social-Democrats or Labourists. These have severed or never had links with Real Socialism as historically has been seen in Europe, and quite generally are minority members of coalitions. I maintain that their presence does not qualifies those governments as ‘leftist’. But that, ultimately, depends on where you draw the line. If anything that is not Lepen or Wilders (who, by the way, has an Indonesian mother) is leftist, including parties belonging to ALDE or PPE, then, OK, your statement can’t be objected.
Generally, I find these non-leftist parties not so intellectually conspicuous. They have proved to be unable to elaborate models that are not helpless remakes of past formulas that today translate only into isolationism. Not even Switzerland does that. And “care” was anything but absent in fascist regimes. But, OK, I guess you mean something else. Nevertheless, I suspect that leftist intellectuals would claim that the ghost world began exactly when they lost the upper hand, roughly since the eighties. Personally I believe that this claim shows very well why they lost the upper hand, together with the bottomless hubris of self-styling themselves as the only possible dignified thinkers, but it does not mean they are entirely wrong.
As for the latin ‘Communists’, I believe you are being too kind. The parties in themselves deserved indeed some respect until a generation ago, the old leaders were tough, rough yet decent people. Not their voters… These are the same who now engulf the ballots with votes for the populists. They have never seen politics and their parties as anything but lobbing, a way to reap a lot of “care” for themselves, while being dispensed of any care for their communities and their very sons (which, by the way, the begot only seldom). This is where I think you mistake Socialism for something else. Socialism was then (because no longer is), what populism is now. The promise of a niche of inflated affluence for the happy fews who hold imaginary rights (assuming that there may be rights that are not imaginary). It was the rights of the workers then (and back then they were not exactly few), it has become the priority of the nationals now (also because they generally no longer work). This attitude has been decisive for Brexit, it was the ruthless (and ineffective) elimination of a social competitor. If they really were still socialists, they would have cornered a government who offset the cost of the crisis on their shoulders. Instead they simply worked in order to have a bigger slice of the residual cake, with a naif reasoning that now appears fatally flawed, for now UK’s economy is halting while the inflation is on the rise.
It might be as you say. Still the Kanzlerin would not exactly agree, I guess you can give me that.
I think the German government implemented this ‘generous’ policy for two reasons: a) a considersable commercial surplus and the need to boost the internal market, have some inflation (which is a word that curls the toes of Germans, and yet they needed it) and possibly compensate a setback on their exports (which they do not even need in the end); b) defuse the populists, which they achieved successfully.
This can explain only the contingent case. In more general terms, welfare in my view is the only sovereign activity nation-state governemnts can still (think to) manage. As for the rest, they have almost no say on global economy, or on “globalization” tout court, and they can’t steer that unless they become part of larger governance schemes. Sure, there is a whole range of degrees of influence, yet not even the US can afford the alternative.
(The ECB would prove me wrong in a way, but… really?).
As of now, Switzerland is faring with a kind of Grosse Koalition (if I understood that correctly, because I never wanted to know anything about the Swiss government before today). None of the ruling parties has the name Socialist, but there is a Social-Democratic party. It looks similar in Austria, but the Social-Democrats should be the first party. Nevertheless these Austrian leftists do believe in borders, or so it seems.
If you mean the governments, that would be Belgium, Hungary, Poland… Even Norway.
Europe as we know it, as we have been taught to know it, probably is. And, given some common readings of ours, isn’t that what we already knew?
I mean, the man thought that the situation was already compromised by the massive urbanisation at the end of the XIX century… And was Socialism the cause or the effect?
“Necessity at work”…