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Recasting Bourgeois Europe: Stabilization in France, Germany and Italy in the Decade After World War I
The book examines a critical topic in the disciplining of forces for change: how political and economic elites retained their power following world war, economic dislocation, and domestic turmoil—stresses that seem to make social leveling inevitable. Charles S. Maier uses a comparative approach to study this phenomenon as it occurred in France, Germany, and Italy in the decade after World War I.
The author concentrates on those disputes through which the basic distribution of power wee contested or exposed: conflicts over nationalization, taxes. and inflation; relations between capital and labor; reparation quarrels, tariff negotiations; and parliamentary elections. He finds that although existing elites were compelled to share their power with new leaders, much of the traditional European class structure was preserved and the capitalist system remained intact through a major evolution away from classical parliamentarianism toward patterns of interest group representation.
The conclusion of the book suggests that this system of stability, despite its interruption by the Depression, Nazism, and World War II, anticipated political solutions achieved after 1945.
The author concentrates on those disputes through which the basic distribution of power wee contested or exposed: conflicts over nationalization, taxes. and inflation; relations between capital and labor; reparation quarrels, tariff negotiations; and parliamentary elections. He finds that although existing elites were compelled to share their power with new leaders, much of the traditional European class structure was preserved and the capitalist system remained intact through a major evolution away from classical parliamentarianism toward patterns of interest group representation.
The conclusion of the book suggests that this system of stability, despite its interruption by the Depression, Nazism, and World War II, anticipated political solutions achieved after 1945.
672 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1975
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About the author
Charles S. Maier
37 books8 followersA specialist in European and international history, Charles S. Maier is the Leverett Saltonstall Research Professor of History at Harvard University.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
January 28, 2022
How liberals, conservatives and reactionaries cooperated to neutralize progressives and rescue bourgeois Europe after the First World War is this book’s story. A huge, fact-filled product of archival scholarship, it provides an exhaustive (and sometimes exhausting) examination of political processes in Italy, France and Germany between 1919 and 1929, focusing on elites, interest groups and classes. The conflicts and maneuverings among and within these sets of actors form one part of the drama. What fascinated me, however, are the accounts of how they overcame their mutual antagonisms in pursuit of one overriding goal, namely containment of the Left -- meaning not only communists, but also social democrats. In doing so, politicians followed rules of parliamentary and electoral procedure. But the outcome for democracy was suicidal. Rescuing bourgeois Europe sooner or later meant submitting to fascism, a force carried forward on waves widespread dissatisfaction with a corrupted, ineffective bourgeois elite. Liberals and social democrats, where they were not complicit in fascism's advance, offered only feeble opposition.
Those years saw the erection of political scaffolding that is today, a hundred yeas later, still detectable. The relevance of Recasting Bourgeois Europe seems starker than ever. To cite just one passage among many:
The gains of socialism testified to a bourgeois failure of nerve they made counteraction urgent and sanctioned a violent assault on liberalism itself. Thus, even as the radical right rhetorically lashed out against the parasites of finance or corrupt party politics, it moved with violence against the major organized opposition to bourgeois institutions. Disillusioned liberals, traditionalist conservatives, nationalists, and new right-radicals converged in their hostility to socialism and the democracy that permitted it to thrive.
Substitute the term “social democracy” for the word “socialism”, and analogies with politics looming up in parts of Europe and the USA today seem unmistakable. 'Contain the Left' remains standard operating procedure.
Those years saw the erection of political scaffolding that is today, a hundred yeas later, still detectable. The relevance of Recasting Bourgeois Europe seems starker than ever. To cite just one passage among many:
The gains of socialism testified to a bourgeois failure of nerve they made counteraction urgent and sanctioned a violent assault on liberalism itself. Thus, even as the radical right rhetorically lashed out against the parasites of finance or corrupt party politics, it moved with violence against the major organized opposition to bourgeois institutions. Disillusioned liberals, traditionalist conservatives, nationalists, and new right-radicals converged in their hostility to socialism and the democracy that permitted it to thrive.
Substitute the term “social democracy” for the word “socialism”, and analogies with politics looming up in parts of Europe and the USA today seem unmistakable. 'Contain the Left' remains standard operating procedure.
August 16, 2018
In this classic work Charles Maier classifies the stability of the late 1920s as a "conservative achievement" in that the facade of pre-war social order was successfully restored- if only for a brief moment.
In the three countries which Maier surveys, "bourgeois" as a term came to mean the old pre-1914 world of societal relations, which stood in direct opposition to "socialism", a word which symbolised a new form of human interaction. To appear to restore (for indeed a full restoration was impossible) "bourgeois Europe", a new form of political-economic interaction was needed- Maier terms this "corporatism".
Under corporatism, different interest groups, say labour or agriculture, would lobby within Inter-war institutions, turning them into battlegrounds of self-interest. Thus the location of power shifted from parliament to government departments, such as the Weimar Ministry of Labour.
Socialism lost the subsequent battle due to the threat of mass unemployment, a focus on production and the intervention of American bankers on the side of the bourgeois ideal. On top of this, workers increasingly saw themselves more than their position in the workplace, but also as consumers, holidaymakers etc. This trend was continued post-war, in my opinion constituting the most important factor in the formation of today's Europe.
I would have liked Maier to discuss Empire and Colonialism more. How did France's (and indeed Italy's) African Empires affect the policies of their bourgeoisie and labour force? Can Germany be included in this analysis? Nonetheless, for an older book this work was exhaustive and a personal favourite.
Quotes:
1.
“As men of the 1920's employed the term, bourgeois invoked fundamental questions of social hierarchy and power. It remained the code word for a matrix of relationships defined in opposition to what socialists suggested as alternatives. For the elites of the 1920's, bourgeois Europe was both elegiac and compelling: the image of an ancien regime that was still salvageable and whose rescue became the broadest common purpose of postwar politics” (7)
2.
“While Europeans sought stability in the image of a prewar bourgeois society, they were creating new institutional arrangements and distributions of power. What began to evolve was a political economy that I have chosen to call corporatist. This involved the displacement of power from elected representatives or a career bureaucracy to the major organized forces of European society and economy, sometimes bargaining directly among themselves, sometimes exerting influence through a weakened parliament, and occasionally seeking advantages through new executive authority. In each case corporatism meant the growth of private power and the twilight of sovereignty” (9)
3.
“Bourgeois society, considered in retrospect, amounted to a conservative utopia. It incorporated a collection of images, ideas, and memories about desirable ranking in a tensely divided industrial Europe. As a utopia it spurred conservative, and ultimately corporatist strategies, once simple restoration proved beyond reach. These corporatist arrangements not only helped reentrench prewar elites, but also rewarded labor leadership and injured the less organized middle classes. The history of stabilization after World War I thus involved, not a political freeze or simple reaction, but a decade of capitalist restructuring and renovation. The tension between bourgeois utopia and corporatist outcome-part of history's constant dialectic between men's intentions and their collective realization-provides the interpretive structure for what was a key era of conservative transformation.” (15)
4.
"A defining characteristic of the corporatist system that we have sought to analyze was the blurring of the distinction between political and economic power. Clout in the marketplace-especially the potential to paralyze an industrial economy-made for political influence. Consequently, economic bargaining became too crucial to be left to the private market, and state agencies stepped in as active mediators." (582)
5.
"In the long run the major possibility for social consensus derived from a slow transformation of the principles of class division. Class consciousness was undergoing a double evolution. In the world of work, identification as proletarian or bourgeois was becoming less compelling than interest-group affiliation, less a principle of common action in the economic arena. Yet the world of production was only one reference point for social stratification and political loyalties, and one of diminishing importance throughout the twentieth century. While European socialism appealed to man as worker from its origins, the European right sought to make social roles outside the sphere of production the major determinants of political allegiance." (584)
In the three countries which Maier surveys, "bourgeois" as a term came to mean the old pre-1914 world of societal relations, which stood in direct opposition to "socialism", a word which symbolised a new form of human interaction. To appear to restore (for indeed a full restoration was impossible) "bourgeois Europe", a new form of political-economic interaction was needed- Maier terms this "corporatism".
Under corporatism, different interest groups, say labour or agriculture, would lobby within Inter-war institutions, turning them into battlegrounds of self-interest. Thus the location of power shifted from parliament to government departments, such as the Weimar Ministry of Labour.
Socialism lost the subsequent battle due to the threat of mass unemployment, a focus on production and the intervention of American bankers on the side of the bourgeois ideal. On top of this, workers increasingly saw themselves more than their position in the workplace, but also as consumers, holidaymakers etc. This trend was continued post-war, in my opinion constituting the most important factor in the formation of today's Europe.
I would have liked Maier to discuss Empire and Colonialism more. How did France's (and indeed Italy's) African Empires affect the policies of their bourgeoisie and labour force? Can Germany be included in this analysis? Nonetheless, for an older book this work was exhaustive and a personal favourite.
Quotes:
1.
“As men of the 1920's employed the term, bourgeois invoked fundamental questions of social hierarchy and power. It remained the code word for a matrix of relationships defined in opposition to what socialists suggested as alternatives. For the elites of the 1920's, bourgeois Europe was both elegiac and compelling: the image of an ancien regime that was still salvageable and whose rescue became the broadest common purpose of postwar politics” (7)
2.
“While Europeans sought stability in the image of a prewar bourgeois society, they were creating new institutional arrangements and distributions of power. What began to evolve was a political economy that I have chosen to call corporatist. This involved the displacement of power from elected representatives or a career bureaucracy to the major organized forces of European society and economy, sometimes bargaining directly among themselves, sometimes exerting influence through a weakened parliament, and occasionally seeking advantages through new executive authority. In each case corporatism meant the growth of private power and the twilight of sovereignty” (9)
3.
“Bourgeois society, considered in retrospect, amounted to a conservative utopia. It incorporated a collection of images, ideas, and memories about desirable ranking in a tensely divided industrial Europe. As a utopia it spurred conservative, and ultimately corporatist strategies, once simple restoration proved beyond reach. These corporatist arrangements not only helped reentrench prewar elites, but also rewarded labor leadership and injured the less organized middle classes. The history of stabilization after World War I thus involved, not a political freeze or simple reaction, but a decade of capitalist restructuring and renovation. The tension between bourgeois utopia and corporatist outcome-part of history's constant dialectic between men's intentions and their collective realization-provides the interpretive structure for what was a key era of conservative transformation.” (15)
4.
"A defining characteristic of the corporatist system that we have sought to analyze was the blurring of the distinction between political and economic power. Clout in the marketplace-especially the potential to paralyze an industrial economy-made for political influence. Consequently, economic bargaining became too crucial to be left to the private market, and state agencies stepped in as active mediators." (582)
5.
"In the long run the major possibility for social consensus derived from a slow transformation of the principles of class division. Class consciousness was undergoing a double evolution. In the world of work, identification as proletarian or bourgeois was becoming less compelling than interest-group affiliation, less a principle of common action in the economic arena. Yet the world of production was only one reference point for social stratification and political loyalties, and one of diminishing importance throughout the twentieth century. While European socialism appealed to man as worker from its origins, the European right sought to make social roles outside the sphere of production the major determinants of political allegiance." (584)
September 25, 2023
Richly detailed classic. Maier's style stresses the particularities and finer points of certain events. This might make comparison more murky but he still does a reasonably good job out of it. He is in his element the most when writing about Italy.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews