Capitalism and Social Democracy

Studies in Marxism and Social Theory

by Adam Przeworski

Three principal choices, confronted by socialist movements as they developed within capitalist societies, are examined to trace the development of socialist strategies since the mid-19th century.

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

280 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1985

About the author

Adam Przeworski is the Carroll and Milton Professor of Politics and (by courtesy) Economics at New York University. Previously he taught at the University of Chicago, where he was the Martin A. Ryerson Distinguished Service Professor, and held visiting appointments in India, Chile, France, Germany, Spain, and Switzerland. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 1991, he is the recipient of the 1985 Socialist Review Book Award, the 1998 Gregory M. Luebbert Article Award, the 2001 Woodrow Wilson Prize, the 2010 Lawrence Longley Award, the 2010 Johan Skytte Prize, the 2018 Sakip Sabanci Award, and the 2018 Juan Linz Prize.. He recently published Why Bother with Elections? (London: Polity Press 2018).

Reviews

[Zachary · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quickly goes from incredible to polisci horseshit

[Guille · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a groundbreaking work of the analytical school within Marxist tradition. It deals with some interesting topics, but I found it marred by certain conceptual flaws that somehow framed the argument the author was trying to make. Of course if one acceptes the premises he makes, the argument flows nicely, but I think some of them are either controversial or false, which kind of undermines the whole relevance of the arguments made.
For example, in Chapter 1, Przeworski says that capitalism is "a form of social organization of production and trade, based on an advanced division of labor, oriented towards the needs of others, towards commerce" (I'm paraphrasing as I read a translated version). I think this is not really accurate. Satisfying other people's needs might be the ultimate objective people expect capitalism to fulfill, but that is not the orientation it has. Capitalism is purely orientated towards the production of benefits, end of story. The idea would be that by having the incentive of producing benefits, both the division of labor and production would be oriented towards satisfying the needs of people, but capitalism is perfectly able of generating benefits without satisfying needs. A fine example would be the recent case of Martin Shkreli, who manufactured licenses on several life-saving medicines and increased their price by more than a 5,000%. Clearly, needs here are irrelevant for his company: his sole motivation was to increase benefits, regardless of who's left in the curb.
Another conceptual problem is at the basis of Przeworski's discussion of the trade-off between parties recruiting working-class or middle-class voters. Przeworski talks that before there is a class struggle between classes, there is a struggle to define classes themselves. A struggle over class before there is a strugle between classes. Yet at the same time he does mention some "objective" notions of what the working class is. This somehow echoes the debates about what a social class is and its potential mobilization in political struggles (the most extreme of them being the Laclau idea of everything being constituted by discourse, with no materialistic grounding, something attacked by amongst others, Norman Geras). Yet it is even more confusing because it sometimes seems like Przeworski wants to keep both ideas at the same time without explaining the extension to which each one applies. in the end, I didn't really know why he chose to define the working-class as narrowly as he did, what he understood by the vague notion of "middle class", and what criteria he thought were the ones that could clearly differentiate "class identities" (and why they couldn't be "blurred" in political action). I think Erik Olin Wright's work on what are social classes, how they can be differentiated and how they form their identities on the basis of the dynamics of exploitation to be much more useful and elegant (incidentally, during Wright´s courseshe has dealt with this exact issue inthe dialogues with his students).

[Zach · Rating 5 out of 5]

This cuts straight to the core of the constraints that a democratic socialist politics faces. It’s is, I would argue, appropriately skeptical of the notion that an electoral majority could legislate its way to socialism, but he isn’t thereby dismissive of a politics of reform. Workers, he argues, have good, short to medium term material reasons for choosing class compromises which maintain profitability while trying to equalize income distribution and cushion the fall of those who find themselves out of the labor market. Even if socialism would hypothetically boost productivity and worker welfare in the long run, he finds that social democratic movements will choose class compromise over the gamble of transition. Thus, for the foreseeable future democratic socialist movements will remain a politics of reform within capitalism. This fact, he thinks, should be faced squarely by social democrats, whom he does not think are class traitors deluding workers. Social democracy comes up against real, material limits when trying to form a majority which would support wresting investment from private hands.

The post-script to the book is Przeworski’s account of the distinction between a social democratic and truly communist politics. It’s almost an ode to the latter, one which wants to preserve the imagination of a society entirely different than ours and not simply equalized in its miseries. Social democracy is a politics of equality, he says, where as socialism/communism is a politics of freedom, a type of freedom that is unattainable under the rule of capital. These two poles of politics still provide inspiration to contemporary socialist movements and their rifts. This post-script provides the clearest portrait of their essential differences I’ve seen. It’s where to point someone to who wants to understand why, for example, Bernie Sanders politics are distinct from a more radical, libertarian/anarcho/left/etc. communist politics.

[sube · Rating 4 out of 5]

Written before the fall of the Eastern Bloc and chiefly the USSR, "Capitalism and Social Democracy" seeks to account for the story of social democracy's rise, and why it was unable to reform capitalism in favor of socialism. The main story Przeworski maps in this collection of essays is that social democracy, originally a socialist movement, faced a key limit: It was intent on seeking political power, however the industrial working class (which he sees as decisive and not a more inclusive definition of the working class) was not becoming a majority, but continually a minority. In this situation, social democracy had to abandon its class orientation - with this, it had to compromise on socialism, instead of simply focusing upon a series of reforms to increase general well-being. These reforms, however, undermined themselves because they focused on achieving full employment and high investments, when they achieved such a situation however, the high taxes would prevent enough savings for capitalists to invest them into profits.

Much of the rest the book deals with is the question of why the working class does not rise up for socialism, but instead pursued 'class compromises' with others - and argues this is because capitalism can offer material compromises through unions and social democratic parties, which can genuinely benefit the interests of workers - as revolutionary politics are instead a trade-off short-term for workers, as they will lead to deterioration of the situation.

However, as the book was written before the end of the Cold War, it does not account for the transformation under neoliberalism: the assault on working class structures and institutions, however, some things discussed in the book can help explain it. As the book argues, workers tend to a strategy of moderate resilience, i.e. striking periodically without a radical uprising or such. As this is within one generation the most rational decision, this however is very painful for the capitalist economy; in this context, neoliberalism arises, as a response to the crisis of capitalism led in part by unions encouraging such moderate resilience. It also discusses how democracy increasingly became less accountable to mass politics, which has led to many of the issues now.
The main issue of the book is that it is quite academic and can get very boring, however, it is the best book to understand why the Western working class has gone the path it did and the dream it fought for has mostly collapsed, for worse in my opinion.

[Avery · Rating 3 out of 5]

5/5 for the first two chapters and the postscript, which are incredibly generative in rethinking problems of the classical Marxist movement. The rest sort of lost my attention, I do understand the math but I don't particularly care about it, and it's really tedious to read and keep track of all those variables. Just read the first two chapters and the postscript.

[Samppa Sirnö · Rating 5 out of 5]

Erinomainen kirja reformistisen työväenliikkeen historiasta ja "kapitalismin kultaisesta ajasta" keynesiläisen luokkakompromissin aikana 1930-luvulta uusliberalismin nousuun. Kirja on marxilainen, mutta käyttää nykyaikaisen taloustieteen matemaattisia välineitä. Se on kirjoitettu kuitenkin niin, että normaali lukiomatematiikka riittää sen ymmärtämiseen, selkeät kaaviot auttavat. Kirja on analyyttisen marxismin koulukunnan parhaita tuotoksia ja suositeltavaa kaikkialle joita kiinnostaa viime vuosisadan historian taloudelliset taustat.

[Alma Wallin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sa riktigt intressanta saker om socialdemokratiska partiers strategier i ett kapitalistisk elektoralt system. Sen spårade Adam när han började prata om materiella basen, men avslutningen (att människan kanske inte vill vara fri från arbete för då har frihet förlorat sitt värde) va nästan sorglig.

Disclaimer till mamma: jag är varken socialist eller marxist (trots att jag är en tjej som äger en skinnjacka), det var bara läsning för skolan. Och denna kvinna behöver klara sitt Goodreads mål för året…

[Jesse · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read this book!

"There is every reason to believe that capitalism will continue to offer an opportunity to improve material conditions and that it will be defended by force where and when it does not, while conditions for socialism continue to rot. This is why conditions for utopia cannot be a substitute for the struggle to make capitalism more efficient and more humane. Poverty and oppression are here, and they will not be alleviated by a the possibility of a better future. The struggle for improving capitalism is essential as ever."

In this brilliant work Przeworski applies rational choice theory to explain why socialism's most long lasting achievement has been to strengthen capitalism. Constrained by the realities imposed by democratic competition, capitalist economic organization and the immediate demands of workers, Marxist parties had no choice but to bolster the gains of the bourgeois. This is not to discount this achievement. Through the use of Keynesian economics, full employment and a wide safety net, socialist parties have succeeded in turning every economic action into a public concern. While socialism remains as utopian as ever, the achievement of "efficiency, equality and full employment" has democratized capitalism. The workers may not own the means of production but they are now able to control them. This is no small achievement: social democracy has been a stunning success.