The Primacy of Politics: Social Democracy and the Making of Europe's Twentieth Century

by Sheri Berman

Political history in the industrial world has indeed ended, argues this pioneering study, but the winner has been social democracy - an ideology and political movement that has been as influential as it has been misunderstood. Berman looks at the history of social democracy from its origins in the late nineteenth century to today and shows how it beat out competitors such as classical liberalism, orthodox Marxism, and its cousins, Fascism and National Socialism by solving the central challenge of modern politics - reconciling the competing needs of capitalism and democracy. Bursting on to the scene in the interwar years, the social democratic model spread across Europe after the Second World War and formed the basis of the postwar settlement. This is a study of European social democracy that rewrites the intellectual and political history of the modern era while putting contemporary debates about globalization in their proper intellectual and historical context.

Genres: History, Politics, Nonfiction, Political Science, European History, Economics, Philosophy

240 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2006

Reviews

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pageturner, fucked up my day planning because I couldn't look away from it, thanks a lot for that Sheri Berman.

This book allowed me to make very concrete the issues I have with some of the traditional marxist historiographies of the early 20th century, which have built up incrementally over years of reading, being in the movement and taking in the stories we tell ourselves. Fittingly, the book is an anti-marxist paean to social democracy.

The marxist view of social democracy hasn't changed much since Lenin wrote Imperialism. Socdem parties are traitors to the revolution, who voted for war credits, embraced the nation and class collaboration, and seduce the working classes into working for a system that is inherently anti-worker. This is an intellectually neat scheme: all divergence of social democracy from the marxist trunk which it came from is to be explained as an act of betrayal and class disavowal. These parties, led by luminaries like Kautsky, Vandervelde, De Man, Turati, Guesde and Blum, still defined themselves within the marxist tradition, however. What united all these European parties in practice was their helplessness. As has been repeated ad nauseam, Capital and Marx's other works don't concern themselves with recipes for the future, but with critiquing capitalism. The parties saw themselves as heirs waiting for it to die; reforms could only be attempted to strengthen the position of the party, but as an end in itself they are like putting a terminally ill patient on life support.The state itself, which I've come to realize is crucially undertheorized in marxism which is why academic marxists like Poulantzas, Althusser and Milliband had to spend decades groping their way back to some conception of it, protected by their obscurity from shocking marxist orthodoxy too much, was branded by its class nature and hence could only ever be a machine for oppression and betrayal. This pubescent obstinacy was tenable as long as the practical challenge of governing was at arm's length. Once, however, the parties gained electoral prominence, after World War I, they were too big to remain in eternal opposition and had to enter government. Two obstacles made that impossible: locking arms with bourgeois parties, as most of them were, was seen as a betrayal of the working class, and the marxist toolkit left few policy options open after elementary democracy was won. Time and time again, paralyzed by the chimerical dual goal of working within the system at the same time as preparing for its overthrow, parties fumbled the ball, abstained from participating in government, rejected half-measures only to give the room to the right-wing parties who had few qualms about imperfect programmes.

Creatives like Bernstein (who you should read, if you're a marxist -- crystal clear and impeccably argued) and De Man had tried to force a break from marxist orthodoxy, underlining that prophecies central to it (like the immiseration of workers, the shrinking of the petty bourgeois middle strata, the evaporation of small farmers) simply weren't coming to fruition, and that a viable political strategy required a fresh analysis of a world Marx and Engels could only see the birth pangs of. But they weren't able to dislodge the parties from their fossilized canon.

This 'impossibilism' (as the mainstream French socialist party's outlook would be dubbed by the 30s) was challenged by a challenge from the left and the right. The Bolshevik revolution, "the revolution against Capital, not capitalism", as Gramsci would write, threw out the determinism inherent in historical materialism, and built state socialism out of a peripheral civilization where capitalism was only a embryonic figment. Fascists, on the other hand, whose leaders often cut their teeth in the socialist movement before becoming disappointed by its inability to achieve change, embraced the State -- neglected by both liberals and marxists -- to force through massive social transformation, based on a cross-class alliance, using the mobilizing force of war-time nationalism to shake loose complacent political organizations. The result was that fascists were the first political force to credibly tame capitalist crisis, without uprooting society as a whole. Their longevity and popularity must be linked to that fact, not to the "authoritarian personality", "ur-fascism", false consciousness on the part of the worker or a terrorist agression on the part of finance-monopoly capital (it is striking how those with the most elaborate theories of fascism were least able to understand it as a process, only managing to defeat it militarily in the form of the Soviet Union).

Swedish social democracy was the sole exception to this socialist immobilism. Never having been strongly under the sway of marxist dogma, though its leaders were well-versed in it, from 1918 the SAP had been committed to a program of deficit-financed counter-cyclical spending to eliminate unemployment and boost production -- taking inspiration for this not from Marx, who had little to say on the business cycle (Rudolf Hilfdering, Marxist finance minister in the German SPD, rejected a similar work-creation programme that might have cut off the appeal of the nazis, by condemning it as "un-marxist": the cycle of crisis and boom should be left alone), but from Anglo-Saxon liberals. Coming into power through coalition governments with left-liberals and farmers' parties, it was a massive success in combating the effects of the crisis, and no fascist party ever crossed the 1% vote threshold in Sweden (before the 1980s that is).

After the Second World War, this anti-crisis programme would be generalized across Europe, defining what would become known as the welfare state, shared by social democrats, christian democrats and conservative communitarians alike. These all came to understand that if they wouldn't push through anti-crisis measures, fascists would.

This understanding of fascism, much closer to Polanyi than to Togliatti or Dimitrov, has a searing technical clarity and moral importance, that the reductionist and determinist Third International view (monopoly capital x finance capital embraces the lumpenproletariat and the downwardly mobile petty bourgeoisie, seeks to eradicate pluralism and beat back the challenge of socialism) simply doesn't have. These theories are ideology in the pure sense of the world: an intellectual stopgap justifying the ignorance of those who accept the programme of a group or party. But they offer no way of combating it (if it's a coalition of every social group not in wage labour, do you want to eradicate them all? Somehow find a shortcut to throwing out capitalism before the capitalists can beat you back?). This view is the condensed attitude of a war band, who beats or is beaten. But politics is not just a power struggle, but also a question of concrete, historically located challenges with multiple policy options and no guaranteed, prophesied outcome. Lenin, ironically, knew this when he jetissoned the marxist library as embodied by Kautsky and embarked on a new and improvised adventure (however that may have turned out). The lack of interest on the part of Marxist parties for the technicalities of governance, and solving challenges not simply "at the root" (the root of cancer is cell metabolism; wanna try chemo or do you want to opt for replacing every single cell with something physiologically inert?) but at the sharp edge where they impact society, meant that they came into power unprepared and unwilling to find solutions. Fascism was not the reaction of a bourgeoisie fearful of communism, but of civil society as a whole wracked by crisis (capitalist, yes, but curable) which the attendant socialist parties were uninterested in curing.

Berman's book throws endlessly illustrative quotes and episodes at you from a handful of European countries between 1880 and 1940. I couldn't recommend it more. The treatment of De Man is selective -- Belgian socialists were both marxist ánd opportunists happy to govern in coalition with liberals and conservatives; Berman treats De Man as an individual theorist instead of a Party Figurehead, and it's less clear to me how the party fits into this specifically. But that's a minor gripe. Read this, dislodge the fossilized ideological gunk, stop worshiping the canonical cathedral that you can spend your life adding to without ever seeing its end, but which has almost zero practical significance. Wish I'd done it sooner.

[Adam Gurri · Rating 5 out of 5]

To begin with, let me just say: this is a fantastic book that packs a lot of underexamined but pivotal history into just a little more than 200 pages. I cannot recommend it enough for anyone who wishes to better understand the 20th century and the political legacy that lives on to this day.

Berman wants to argue that only social democracy can thread the needle between the economic determinists and the retrograde forms of communitarianism offered by ethno-nationalists. To make this argument, she carefully traces the history of its development.

The history goes as follows: capitalism caused unprecedented enrichment but also unprecedented social dislocation. Liberals became early advocates of it because of the former. Marxists rose to prominence by offering an optimistic vision for those craving it after experiencing the dislocation. But both liberals and Marxists believed in the primacy of economics; politics is impotent against economic laws indifferent to human intention.

As this determinism left Marxists with little to offer in terms of practical plans of action, critics within the socialist movement arose. These critics, known as socialist revisionists, converged on two broad elements: communitarianism, specifically of the nationalist sort, and the notion that capitalism could be tamed without eliminating it, in order to take advantage of its engine of enrichment while moderating its disruption. In short, the revisionists shared a belief in the primacy of politics, of intentional political actors to mitigate the effects of economic forces.

What made social democrats social _democrats_ was their specific emphasis on, you guessed it, democracy and democratization. In Sweden, Berman's one case where social democrats triumphed early and carried the day well into the post-war era, establishing democracy was a plank in the social democrats' platform early, and defending and expanding it became a plank once it was established. Eduard Bernstein, the top socialist revisionist of the era, likewise emphasized a reformist party platform pursued through democratic means.

However, in Germany, France, and Italy, the social democrats were largely a minority force within Marxist parties. And the internal struggles with the orthodox Marxists divided the left, leaving room for fascists and national socialists to step in.

The treatment of fascism and national socialism's rise, and its relation to socialist revisionism, is fascinating. The key thinkers and actors of these movements were socialist revisionists of the "revolutionary revisionism" sort; these also believed in communitarianism and the primacy of politics, but believed that society needed to be transformed, with violence if necessary. And yet, in spite of the undemocratic nature of these movements, the line between their history and social democracy's is quite muddy. Several key contributors to the theory of social democracy went in for national socialism or fascism in a big way once they were ascendant. Others, like Georges Sorel, were influential on the communist left and the fascist right in equal measure. And many reformists within the big Marxists parties jumped ship; Mussolini being the most famous example.

Nearly all of the book is spent building up to World War II. All of that part is deeply compelling. However, the book suffers from last-chapter syndrome, except in this case it is the last two chapters. The next to last chapter describes the ascendance of social democracy in Europe after the war, and the last chapter attempts to chart a forward course.

The chapter on post-war social democracy, in my view, undermines Berman's claim that social democracy, and not liberalism, was what stood triumphant at the end of the 20th century. By Berman's own telling, the social democrats put on almost as mediocre a political performance after the war as they did before it. Other groups, like the Christian Democrats and various forms of high liberals, pursued similar reformist platforms, but more successfully. Moreover, social democrats came to be associated with a set of specific welfare policies that have had trouble weathering the globalized economy. Berman's suggestions for the future are vague and often feel overdetermined by the specific controversies of the 20s and 30s.

What is more, Berman did not convince me of a key point of her core premise, that there is a cohesive framework one can call social democracy. There are many varieties of communitarianism, welfarism, of democratism, and each has been combined with one or more of the others in various ways. She makes a powerful case that the political situation of Europe was very favorable to the first two of those three ingredients; hence the appeal of fascism and national socialism. She deserves credit for her intellectual integrity in refusing to shrink from the commonality of these two horrors with social democracy, but there were points in the book where I began to wonder if social democracy was merely an unmurderous and more democratic fascism. I doubt that was the impression she intended to leave me with. Say what you will about Marxism, it was a very distinct and cohesive framework - to a fault, as Berman rightly emphasizes. But if "distinct" and "cohesive" are terms that could be applied to social democracy, Berman certainly does not make it appear so.

I don't want to leave on a critical note, however. This book is a masterpiece; it is remarkable the ground she is able to cover in so little space. I cannot recommend it highly enough, as a work of history, even if I do not think she ends up making the case she sought to.

[Rob M · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Primacy of Politics is a deep but surprisingly narrow exploration of how social democratic parties severed themselves from Marxism in the early 20th century.

There is clearly nothing author Sheri Berman does not know about the revisionist debates within the mass socialist parties of Italy, Germany, Sweden, and France in the first half of the 20th century. She lays out the historical political arguments with convincing clarity and with open partisanship on behalf of the revisionists.

Berman champions her subject to such an extent that The Primacy of Politics is both a political history and a serious theoretical argument in its own right. Berman, like her subjects, argues against the futility of class struggle and social ownership of the means of production, and in favour of cross class alliance building and indirect state interventionism to steer capitalism rather than abolish it. Berman completely demolishes the orthodox marxist 'quietism' of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a politics that preferred to allow the crisis of capitalism run its own course without dirtying itself by participation in bourgeois governments. It is as self evident to Berman as it was to the social democrats of the 1920s that capitalist society was not, in fact, creating a huge proletarian majority and the de facto socialisation of the means of production, and was actually transitioning into forms of democratic and economic complexity unforeseen by Marx, forms which could be steered by reformist participation of workers' parties in bourgeois democracy.

On the negative side of the balance is Berman's partial blindness to certain external factors which pushed the engine of social democracy forward. Firstly, communists feature only as an intransigent ultra-left breakaway which allowed calmer heads to break with Marxism officially. The push and pull of the Russian Revolution (and, indeed, Stalinist industrialisation) on Western political and economic thought is completely ignored.

Berman gives an easy, almost uncritical, ride to the social democratic acquiescence to the First World War. Indeed, she heavily implies it was inevitable pragmatism in the face of nationalist sentiment. Far from being one of the worst political betrayals of all time, it may even have been a good thing for bringing the inevitable divide between practical reformists and delusional revolutionaries to a head.

Further, not once is the relationship of social democrats to their country's respective imperialist projects even alluded to. Imperialism is happening somewhere else for Berman, and is not relevant to the story she's trying to tell.

It's true to form for social democrats to write their own history with the structural pressures of communism and imperialism pushed into the background, as if politics were no more than a binary relationship between parties and electorates, but its sad to see it here in an academic work.

Another area where Berman's argument starts out strong, but ends up feeling weak, almost cowardly, is her insistence that social democracy is best achieved without class struggle. Instead, social democrats were correct to pursue a 'people's party' strategy that employed indirect state intervention and welfarism to promote the general good and reign in market forces, without directly attacking private ownership. However, on several occasions she admits that the main reason for this strategy is that capitalism would simply fight social democracy to destruction if it tried too much funny stuff. What Berman presents at first sight as having the political courage to do what's possible is, in reality, an admission of political cowardice.

She admits as much towards the end, when she paints a picture of the grey, hollowed-out social democratic parties of the late 20th century achieving electoral victories, but unable to convince themselves or others of their own purpose once in power.

And now to the ugly part of the narrative.

Berman may have a mysterious blind spot to communism and imperialism, but she dedicates a heavy chunk of her analysis to the dialectic between social democracy and fascism (!). Both, she argues, attempted to build cross class coalitions against laissez faire capitalism, while actively fighting against a Marxist conception of socialism in order to win the support of the middle classes, small farmers, and industrialists. She is a clear admirer of the fascist corporatist system of economic management and argues more or less explicitly that the core of social democracy is corporatism plus political freedom. Sweden, she argues, avoided a fascist takeover precisely because its social democrats freed themselves from Marxist shibboleths in time to emerge as a national, cross class 'peoples party'.

Its hard to deny what she's saying is, in some sense, true. Both fascists and social democrats were competing for a cross class electorate in favour of extensive state control of the economy on the one hand, while harbouring a deep fear of the communist challenge to private property on the other. However it's an ugly argument, and a partial one. Perhaps it is true that, in a sense, post-war social democracy emerged as a way of democratically fulfilling the social demands raised by fascism. But it also emerged as a form of progressive politics that capitalism would consent to under the duress of the Soviet Union and its allies.

Very rarely will you read a social democratic thinker showing their workings quite so clearly as this, especially in this, our latter age, when social democracy has little meaning beyond dismantling the welfare state at a slightly slower pace. Berman's cry for social democracy to regain its sense of purpose is heartfelt, but her own argument shows why this is unlikely. If social democracy ever had an internal dynamism, it was fuelled by a real desire to carve out a road to socialism within parliamentary democracy. Shorn of its fundamental political horizon, social democracy is little more than a historically contingent set of policy tools that have long since failed to operate. Berman knows this and, Janus-faced, argues that social democracy must find its revolutionary voice once again, while simultaneously arguing it had no choice but to choke it off in the first place.

[Teddy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good history of the development of social democracy and fascism in 20th century Europe. Everyone on Twitter makes fun of "horseshoe theory," but it really is true that both of these ideologies have their roots in the revisionist socialism that emerged in opposition to orthodox Marxism. And the line between the two ideologies at least in their nascence was blurry. Of course then one of them wound up being responsible for the darkest chapter in world history, while the other went on to give Sweden and Norway and Denmark robust welfare states. Go figure.

[James Hodgson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great work of history, with a few sizable omissions. For example, there is no mention of the role of the Marshall Plan in post-war Europe's economic boom, nor of the importance of Christian Democrats in drafting post-war Europe's constitutional politics. Similarly, Berman's normative conclusions in the final chapter are unconvincing, and its not clear how they follow (if they do) from the history she recounts here. It seems that, despite the grandiose claims of the book's subtitle, social democracy actually played a very limited role in shaping Europe's twentieth century, outside of a handful of Scandinavian countries. Still, the book is a very engaging and illuminating history, even though it comes across as politically conflicted.

[Oliver Kim]

When the Revolution comes, I know I’ll be first against the wall as a capitalist roader -- or if my executioners are being pedantic, a Bernsteinian Social Democratic Revisionist. As a former Fed employee and Goldman Sachs intern, I've long since booked my spot at the front of the line. So I hope I'm not revealing anything new when I say that I enjoyed Sheri Berman's The Primacy of Politics, which argues forcefully that social democracy was largely responsible for the flourishing of postwar Europe.

Social democracy is the awkward middle child of ideologies. It's what most well-meaning urban twenty-somethings probably believe in, but it lacks the kind of (literally) hefty book of ideology that supports more extreme views, like Marxism or Libertarianism. (Karl Polanyi's The Great Transformation probably comes the closest.) Naturally, young social democratic nerds are at a disadvantage in high school intellectual combat, when the Libertarian nerds pummel them with their dogeared copies of Atlas Shrugged, take their lunch money, and then solemnly trace the sign of the dollar in the sky.

But what social democrats have instead of theoretical consistency is a real track record at delivering equitable, generally happy societies. The Primacy of Politics follows the intellectual and political history of the social democrats and their forebears, to show how these places were made. Rather than recount the full historical play-by-play, I’ll summarize three of her big themes.

The first is that ideology matters, and a foolish attachment to theory over reality can wreak serious political damage. Orthodox Marxism is historically determinist, believing that the actions of individuals and political parties are ultimately irrelevant for change—the impersonal forces of economic development will necessarily bring about socialism. When the revisionists led by Eduard Bernstein split from mainline Marxism at the turn of the 20th century, they argued that the facts behind this theory had changed—capitalism was far from its death throes, and there would be no inevitable tide to carry Europe to socialism. Instead, socialists would have to achieve it themselves through reform and political action.

Though influential, these views were pilloried by the socialist establishment of the time, many of whom still held on to the magic of historical determinism. So when the turmoil of the First World War swept socialist parties to their first electoral victories, actual power came as a surprise. Lacking a specific program of change, they fumbled on passing major reforms. In France, the socialists refused to participate in government, producing a succession of unstable cabinets that satisfied no one. In Italy, unwilling to “make” its own revolution, the socialists even refused to lead a nascent worker’s council movement. Perhaps the worst example came in 1931, when Germany’s Social Democratic Party (SPD) nixed the WTB Plan, a deficit-financed work creation program, on the grounds that such an “offensive economic policy” was “un-Marxist” and contrary to the historically determinist “logic of capitalism”. Only after the disasters of fascism and another world war did the SPD shed its commitment to orthodox Marxism—in 1959.

How did these disasters come about? Berman’s second big theme is how the Right can undercut the Left’s appeal by stealing its economic ideas. The book’s best chapters trace the common intellectual roots of fascism, national socialism, and socialism. Inspired by the swelling nationalism around World War I, thinkers like Hendrik de Man and Benito Mussolini took socialist ideas but replaced notions of class struggle with those of national and, later, race-based identity. Gradually more and more of the bits about actually helping the poor were shed, but a core of “working for the common good” always remained—and proved to be political dynamite.

When the Depression hit, the Nazis pursued vast public works programs to fight mass unemployment. They even imported anticapitalist rhetoric to harness populist feeling without scaring off big capital: the Nazis distinguished between capital that was “rapacious”—financial, commercial, most of all Jewish—and “creative”—industrial, productive, Germanic. (Think also of today’s contrast between “globalists” and “job creators”.) This rhetoric justified the theft and violence that underwrote generous public spending. Compare these moves with the anemic earlier response of the German SPD, who reluctantly supported painful austerity in the name of saving the ailing republic. In the mind of the “average” German, who was working for them?

Which leads to Berman’ third and final theme, the titular primacy of politics. I’ve already discussed one aspect—trying to actually effect change through democratic politics, rather than sitting around waiting for spontaneous revolution like the return of Lord Xenu. But if you disavow revolutionary violence, how can you bring about change?

A core tenet of Marxism is class struggle—labor against capital. But by the 1920s, it was clear that Marx’s prediction that most of the population would become proletarianized was not happening. This created an electoral conundrum for socialist parties, which were founded explicitly as worker’s parties. While the SPD consistently won pluralities in Weimar Germany, they refused to expand their appeals beyond their traditional base, and struggled to get more than a quarter of the vote. Potential middle-class and rural SPD voters were gobbled up by the Nazis, who in 1933 banned the SPD outright.

The successful counterfactual is Sweden. Under the leadership of Hjalmar Branting, the Swedish Social Democrats (SAP) took an early revisionist stance, emphasizing reform and political liberalization over Marxist determinism. Most importantly, they worked hard to grow their base beyond the industrial proletariat, expanding to incorporate small farmers and eventually even members of the middle class. The SAP increased state intervention in the economy and grew the welfare state by couching these moves in the language of Swedish solidarity—a “people’s home” where the state worked on the behalf of the “weak” and the “oppressed”.

Following the Swedish example, Berman’s overall conclusion is that that the better world that socialists dream of will have to be built reform by reform. She has two main recommendations. First, socialist governments should vigorously pursue policies that make people’s lives visibly better. Watered-down policies—or worse, austerity—usually just leaves the Left holding the bag as second-rate members of the Establishment, exposing them to populist attacks from the Right. And second, more controversially, Berman argues that social democrats can perform an outflanking maneuver of their own—by responding to people’s genuine desires to belong to a specific community and couching their ideas in common national symbols and ideals, but leaving out the racism.

Now, is any of this possible? Berman wrote this book in 2006—are we any closer to a communitarian social democracy in America?

The glib but honest answer is no. There is no broad-based political movement of working people to build a social democracy in the United States. This remains a deeply conservative country. In 2020, when Bernie Sanders led the Democratic primary for a brief few weeks—likely the farthest any self-proclaimed socialist has made it to the American Presidency—most of the core constituencies of the Democratic establishment rallied out of nowhere to clobber his campaign.

Now, was this because Sanders’s socialist policies were politically unpopular, or just because of the big red socialist label that came on the box? Surely at least partly the former. If I have a complaint about The Primacy of Politics, it’s that for a book with “politics�� in the title, it rarely grapples seriously with the tradeoffs of winning elections. For instance, in Berman’s account, victory for social democrats was the natural product of (1) pursuing large-scale social reforms and (2) expanding cross-class appeal, without acknowledging how these objectives can sometimes cut against each other. When winning elections comes at the cost of cutting back some meaningful reforms, what is the correct balance to strike?

This question has no easy answers, not least in this country, where institutional bias and right-wing propaganda have stacked the deck against large-scale expansions of government. The 1990s neoliberal turn of Democrats and UK Labour, while electorally successful, likely went too far, blurring the distinction between Left and Right in the minds of voters. New cross-cutting cleavages (or rather, growing consciousness of old ones) like race, gender, and sexual identity also challenge Berman’s call for an expanded, cross-class movement united around a common identity.

But if there’s one clear lesson from this book, it’s that ideological consistency will be the easiest thing to lose. Decades after the Cold War, the S-word is just starting to lose some of its stigma among young people—but there remains a deep-seated antipathy that I think will be hard to break. Just as socialism lost its Marxist stripes to build the European welfare states, the only successful social democracy in America will likely be one that publicly disavows its intellectual roots: socialism in everything but name.

And that’s okay—it’ll be taking the lesson of this book, about the primacy of politics, to heart. In the end, only Bernsteinian Social Democratic Revisionist nerds like me will care.

[Will · Rating 4 out of 5]

Berman argues that ideologies operate on a "supply and demand" basis, and that Social Democracy as an ideology filled a demand which arose out of discontent with liberalism and orthodox Marxism. This, along with a distinctive communitarian-political (as opposed to an alienating, economic) focus, means that we may talk of Social Democracy as a distinctive ideology, as opposed to a watered-down version of liberalism or Marxism. Fascinatingly, Berman compares SD to Italian fascism and German National Socialism, in that the later two were also political-communitarian ideologies which rejected the centrality of economics, but in far darker ways.

“The story of the twentieth century, and the reason that its second half was so different to its first, is thus to a large degree the story of how capitalism and democracy were rendered compatible, so much so that we now see them inextricably linked and as the necessary and sufficient preconditions for social stability and progress.” (1-2)

“The ideology that triumphed in the twentieth century was not liberalism, as the “End of History” story argues; it was social democracy.” (2)

“Social Democracy, at least as originally conceived, represented a full-fledged alternative to both Marxism and liberalism that had at its core a distinctive belief in the primacy of politics and communitarianism.” (8)

“This book will stress the crucial role played by political parties in the development and date of ideologies… political parties functioned as what the ideational literature calls “carriers”.” (11)

[Samuel Brander]

I admire Berman’s holistic approach, attempting to grasp the general meaning of social democratic ideology for 20th century European history, rather than narrowly focusing on specific social democratic policies (welfare state, Keynesianism etc.). It’s just a shame that her views on the allegedly ”unpolitical” character of othodox Marxism is so simplified, to put it generously.

[Joosep · Rating 5 out of 5]

Väga Salajase Sotsiaaldemokraatliku Lugemisklubi 1. raamat. Ühelt poolt veidi nukker raamat, sest kirjeldab veenvalt, kuidas piiranguteta vabaturumajandus viis eelmise sajandi esimesel poolel autoritaarsete poliitiliste jõudude esiletõusuni -- liiga palju äratundmist tänasesse päeva. Teisalt väga helge ja optimistlik raamat, sest kirjeldab ühe konkreetse ja realistliku alternatiivi võimalikkust. Ühtlasi ka üsna ladus ja loetav raamat, st hea sissejuhatus sotsiaaldemokraatiasse, soovitan!
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“As the great social democrats of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century recognized, the most important thing politics can provide is a sense of the possible. Against Marxist determinism and liberal laissez-fairism, accordingly, they pleaded for the development of a political ideology based on the idea that, in spite of everything, people working together could and should make the world a better place: the result was the most successful political movement of the twentieth century. The problems of the twenty-first century may be different in form, but they are not different in kind; there is no reason that the accomplishment cannot be repeated.”

[Marius Bagu · Rating 5 out of 5]

A tour de force!

"As the great social democrats of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century recognized, the most important thing politics can provide is a sense of the possible. Against Marxist determinism and liberal laissez-fairism, accordingly, they pleaded for the development of a political ideology based on the idea that, in spite of everything, people working together could and should make the world a better place: the result was the most successful political movement of the twentieth century. The problems of the twenty-first century may be different in form, but they are not different in kind; there is no reason that the accomplishment cannot be repeated."

Well, I couldn't agree more. I am glad and grateful that I live in a social-democracy.

Great work worth reading!

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

very insightful. How the social democratic parties in Europe created the highest form of civilization (yet).

[Gabor Scheiring · Rating 5 out of 5]

A truly amazing account of 20th century Europe, and the importance of social democracy.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Extremely interesting and useful framing of the development of political ideologies over the first half of the 20th century in Western Europe, organized around how they prioritized economics (capitalism) or politics (democracy).

Author argues that laissez-faire liberalism and orthodox Marxism both believed economics (specifically capitalism) prior to and more important than politics, only differing on whether capitalism was good or bad. By the end of the 1800s, the failures and excesses of an unregulated market were obvious, but the liberals kept defending no regulation and the Marxists rejecting political reform in hopes of a revolution they believed inevitable.

In response, ideologies that believed in the primacy of politics over economics were able to gain power. Two of these, national socialism and fascism, radically rejected democracy for authoritarian or totalitarian control. The other, social democracy, became a stalwart defender of democracy which (along with their pragmatic rejection of class struggle and historical materialism) differentiated them from previous Marxist socialists. All three agreed capitalism needed to be controlled but not destroyed, and that it should be subservient to ‘the needs of the people.’ These needs were interpreted in extremely different ways, creating both the worst and best governments in Europe.

This analysis is excellent and eye-opening, but it feels as if it has a missing part. Being primarily a book about the left and the center for most of its length, its pivot to talk about the far right feels it is missing something even though it fits well into the econ-politics framework. The conservative (monarchist, religious) forces of the econ over politics period is completely ignored, so the rise of fascism narrative misses half its context. My initial instinct is to add a ‘culture’ or some other rightist criteria to the econ-politics dynamic in order to better understand these groups. In fact, it is clear from a very alarming page in the otherwise prescient conclusion that the author’s lack of analyzing guiding rightist ideas leaves her social democracy vulnerable to some very ugly possibilities.

[Zoltan Pogatsa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Berman explains how the German Social Democrats were sitting on their hands in the Weimar Republic, refusing to implement anticyclical job creation. This lead to the rise of Hitler.
The Swedes, on the other hand, did do job creation, plus a lot more. The Welfare State, the Folkhemmet, the Rehn-Meidner model, and later feminism and sustainability. In other words they built a system that balances freedom with economic democracy.
So when Giddens and Blair came along - the Third Way that Berman correctly calls Liberal rathee than Social Democratic - the Right came back in most of Europe. But not in Scandinavia.

[Pedro Ribeiro · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book is very interesting. The Primacy of Politics gives a very good overview of the break between 'orthodox' and 'heterodox' marxism.

Besides that, the author spent many pages showing how fascism and social democracy are related (and in others aspects, different, of course). The argument was good and, at least for me, new.

On the other hand, there's little information in the book about the others nordic countries (how did social democracy developed, for instance, in Norway and Finland?) I was expecting too a few pages talking about Olof Palme, the swedish PM that perhaps personified social democracy, but there's no mention (at least explicit) of his government and policies.

[Óscar · Rating 4 out of 5]

A pesar de ciertas pegas a lo que se refiere dentro de la teoría política, considero que es un muy buen libro para adentrarse dentro de la socialdemocracia y las formas de socialismo no-ortodoxo que se fraguaron entre los siglos XIX y XX.

[Andrew · Rating 2 out of 5]

Read for its general review of European Social Democracy, but not for its analysis or revisionist history.

[Nina😽😽 · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kursbok. Inte dålig. Men hade kunnat vara betydligt kortare och mer koncis. Hon upprepar sig väldigt mycket. Däremot intressant ämne.

[Andreas Haraldstad · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting read, framing social democracy and the whole of the 20th century ideological struggle in a new light. The core thesis of the book is that social democacy, rathern than liberalism, was the real winner of the ideological struggles of the twentieth century, becoming the dominant ideology of the postwar era. This was due to its unique answers to the problems caused by modernity and free market capitalism. It was able to unite both capitalism, democracy and social stability into one coherent package.

The period between the end of the 19th and start of the 20th century was preoccupied with discussing solutions to the problems caused by modernity, especially the upheaval created by capitalist market forces. Berman argues that neither laissez-faire liberalism nor orthodox Marxism could provide any solutions to these problems as they were both constrained by "scientific rules". Liberalism on the dogma that free markets automatically created better societies and orthodox Marxism that the forces of historical materialism and class struggle automatically would lead to a socialist society. Against these dogmas, democratic revisionists within the Marxist movements across Europe started to propose an alternative program, focusing on politics above historical materialism and communitarianism above class struggle. Berman shows this through her book, focusing on the background of democratic revisionism, in various continental European countries and their gradual coming to terms with "bourgeois democracy" in the early part of the twentieth century. She then sketches how the movement, with Sweden and Scandinavia in general as a notable exception, lost ground to the rising forces of Fascism and National Socialism, before the movement eventually triumphed in the post-war era until the rise of neoliberalism in the 1980s.

Interestingly, Berman also points out the similarity between the origins of Social Democracy, National Socialism and Fascism. They all evolved as an answer to the problems of modernity and free market capitalism, but where National Socialism and Fascism had no respect for democracy, Social Democracy managed the task of uniting capitalism, social stability and democracy.

All in all, an interesting read which proposes a coherent and intellectually stimulating challenge to the predominant views on 20th century ideological struggles. If I was to point out a weakness in her argument it would be that her general thesis does not always fit her presentation. Her argument is the triumph of social democracy, but her focus in the book is so much on the disagreements within the social democratic parties and the struggles their faced that it is hard to pinpoint exactly where to find this triumph (outside of Scandinavia). One interpretation is to see it in the more controlled mixed economy, social stability and growth of the welfare state between WWII and 1973, but this is not made very clear in the book. Still, the book is interesting and quite short and thus well worth a read.

[Karl · Rating 4 out of 5]

A nuanced history of social democracy and socialism. According to Berman the great difference between on the one hand Social Democracy and Nazism as opposed to laissez-faire and communism is that the former believe that politics really can form society, whereas the latter believe that in the end economic laws are what shape the world.

The book describes the history of Social Democracy in Germany, Italy and Sweden at length, describing how the movement initially sprang out of communism, based on a wish to change society by gradual reform. Although conservative in method (even Burkian) the Social Democrats were radical in a way that to day is hard to imagine and supported things like abolishing private companies.

It was not only communism but also nationalism that was the basis of social democracy. Nationalists wanted the nations to work like communities, or even as families, united with the goal of reaching silly goals (like honor) and reasonable ones like bringing the "children of the nation" up to honest and healthy citizens. Nationalism and communism had the same paternalist agenda, both wanted to achieve the same basic things for its people. Modern social democracy is a democratic merger of the two political movements, which aims to create a healthy and modern people.

By 1912 the SPD (social democrats) were Germanies largest party, and would remain so until Hitler siezed power. Much of what was typical about the Nazi regime was social democrat policies that remained intact after the coup. The people car, the public health initiatives, the state run healthy vacation centers, the Hitler-Jugend and even racial hygene; all these things that we so strongly associate to Hitler, actually were part of Social Democracy. This is well illustrated by taking a look at Sweden, the place that social democrats really got to run.

In 1930s Sweden the state did whatever it could to forge strong children. Extensive free healthcare, athletic free summer camps, education et cetera. At the same time the state sterilized the mentally retarded and gypsies, something that would continue into the 1970s (though not for gypsies).

[Fred R · Rating 4 out of 5]

A serious and intelligent corrective to the solipsistic Anglosphere interpretation of the 20th century as a story of liberal democratic capitalism steering, often unsuccessfully, between the Scylla and Charybdis of Communism and Fascism. Where James Gregor traced the origins of Fascism/National Socialism in revisionist Marxism, Berman does the same for Social Democracy, which would eventually triumph throughout Europe. In both cases, the revision involved abandoning orthodox Marxism's emphasis on international class warfare for nationalistic communitarianism, and its paralyzing emphasis on economic laws for 'the primacy of politics.' Berman isn't unaware of the similarities between these intellectual journeys (Georges Sorel, for some reason, looks like the strongest link), and she makes 20th century political-ideological history seem like a race between the two factions to see which can shed its traditional Marxism (which hung like a nightmare on the brains of the living) quickly enough. At times, the Fascists were faster, and took control; at other times, the Social Democrats. Gregor somewhere pointed out how Soviet Communism traced a similar journey, so that it ultimately it seems like the entire political contest of the 20th century in Europe was between competing versions of revisionist Marxism. I'm not sure how to account for this, or why more traditionalist thinkers and classes couldn't muster similar intellectual and political energy. I suppose the neoliberal turn of the 70s that Berman decries could be considered the revenge of Manchester Liberalism, which had seemed dead very early on in the 20th century, but it's pretty clear that Social Democracy has survived some minor liberalizing reforms and belt-tightening, and will continue on virtually unchanged.

[Adam S. Rust · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sheri Berman tells of a well-researched and nuanced history about what she considers the winning ideology of the 20th century: social democracy. As Berman tells it social democracy emerged as a response to the failure of liberal laissez faire and Marxist theory. While social democracy emerged from the Marxist left, it rejected Marxism's ideas on class warfare and dialectical materialism for cross-class political alliances and the acceptance of "the primacy of politics", that is, acceptance of parliamentary norms as the best method for accomplishing socialist goals.

According to Berman the rise of fascism as a political force can be traced to the inability of Marxist-inspired Leftists to engage in the parliamentary political process in the 1930s. As a result the National Socialists were able to co-opt socialist rhetoric and combine it with a toxic stew of race-hate and contempt for multiculturalism and democratic norms. Under Berman's interpretation, Marxist passivity may have been as substantial a contributor to the moral abyss of World War II as Fascist aggressiveness.

Berman's arguments are well supported and thought provoking. The only downside to the book is her occasionally dry writing style. Still, for the reader who invests the time in persevering there is rewarding. The reader will get a greater understanding of the development of social democratic thought in the 20th century as well as some thoughtful, and from this reviewer's perspective hopeful, reflections on social democracy's prospects in an increasingly globalized world.

[Olethros · Rating 2 out of 5]

I guess this book says that... I am not sure what it says. It is essentially an account of the socialist movement in the late 19th and early 20th century. It's interesting as it outlines the different ideological factions within the movement, and how they interacted with each other, with other parties and with government, essentially paving the way for social democracy and national socialism.

I still don't understand what the title is all about, really.

[Bernhardina Hörnstein · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read parts of this book several years ago and felt it was an eye-opener. I read it again recently and I can say it's one of the best books on Social Democracy out there. Berman makes you understand the uniqueness of social democracy in all its failures and successes. If you are interested in social science, ideology, Europe, history and the 20th century, this reading experience is a must!

[William · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Primacy of Politics manages to be both engaging and easily read. I might not agree with Berman's conclusion about the social democratic hegemony, but as an overview of Europe's history of socialism it's great.

[Kostas Avgeropoulos · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is a great book that serves as a history of Social Democracy. It also asserts interesting similarities between Social Democracy and National Socialism.

I disagree with the conclusion, however, that Social Democracy is the "winner" of the 20th century.

[Rogerio Mattos · Rating 4 out of 5]

A historical account of the intelectual ideas on social democracy and a defense that ultimately the 20th century's second half of peace in europe was a result of politics. Well argumented and developed.