THE ＧＬＯＢＡＬＩＺＡＴＩＯＮ ＆ ＧＯVＥＲＮＡＮＣＥ ＰＲＯＪＥCＴ， ＨＯＫＫＡＩＤＯ ＵＮＩＶＥＲＳＩＴＹＷＯＲＫＩＮＧ ＰＡＰＥＲ ＳＥＲＩＥＳSocialism in the Twentieth Century:
a historical reflection
Ⅰ－１１

Donald Sassoon, University of London＊

Paper for the Symposium, East Asia-Europe-USA Progressive Scholars’ Forum2003 , 11-15 October, 2003.
＊

None of these papers should be cited without the author’s permission.

East Asia-Europe- USA
Progressive Scholars’ Forum, 2003
Socialism in the Twentieth Century: a historical reflection

Donald Sassoon
Queen Mary, University of London
1. Introduction
Those who venture to discuss the meaning of socialism confront two distinct
but not incompatible strategies: the essentialist and the historical.
The essentialist strategy proceeds in conventional Weberian fashion. Socialism
is an ideal-type, empirically deduced from the activities or ideas of those commonly
regarded as socialists. Once the concept is constructed, it can be used historically toassess concrete political organisations, their activists and thinkers and measure theextent to which they fit the ideal type, why and when they diverge from each other,and account for exceptional behaviour. This procedure, of great heuristic value, is stillbroadly accepted and widely used, even though its theoretical rigour is highly dubious
as the analysis rests on a somewhat arbitrary selection of the ‘socialist’ organisations
and individuals used to produce the ideal-type concept of socialism.
This procedure has the added disadvantage that, if strictly adhered to, it does
not allow for historical change. Once the ideal-type is defined, novel elements cannot
easily be integrated into it. However, life must go on, even in sociology. So whensomething new turns up, such as a revisionist interpretation, all that is required is tohoist the ideal-type onto the operating table, remove -if necessary- the bits which nolonger fit, and insert the new ones. Thus rejuvenated, the concept of socialism canmarch on, rich with new meanings; social scientists, armed with a neatly repackaged
ideal-type, acquire a new lease on life, produce more books on the new socialism andmake academic publishers happy.
Alternatively, sociologists may defend the old ideal-type, pronounce the newrevisions incompatible with it and declare socialism dead. They can then write more
books on the death of socialism and make academic publishers happier still.
Activists, unconsciously Weberian, proceed in the same essentialist fashion,either exalting the new revisionism and its intelligent adaptation to the realities of anever-changing world, or bitterly recriminating the changes which have occurred,evidence of yet another dastardly betrayal of the old faith. In so doing they keep‘socialism’ (i.e. their idea of socialism) alive, its body on a life-support machine,
waiting for better times. Such clash between modernisers and fundamentalists is aregular fixture of political movements -especially where ideologies and values are ofcentral importance as is the case in socialist and religious movements.
It is evident from the tone of the above remarks that I favour the second
strategy, the historical one, though this has problems too. Its opening move is the1same as that of the essentialists: one selects the organisations and thinkers which
self-identify as socialists and tell their stories in a conventional empirical fashion,highlighting similarities and differences. However, no definition of socialism isrequired: socialism becomes what socialists do. No prediction can be made: the deathof socialism, like that of feudalism- can only be declared when it is universallyacknowledged and no longer a matter of dispute, that is, when there are no socialists
left except for the usual cranks, who, along with flat-earthers, may have someremaining anthropological interest.
While the essentialist strategy is overwhelmingly concerned with the questionof definition, the historical one is obsessed with change and causality -why dosocialists behave as they do? -and hence with the context within which organisations
and thinkers act as they do. This method, far from discounting the importance ofideology, regards it as an integral part of the history of the movement. What is ofinterest here is the connection between the particular ethical view of the world
championed by socialists and their action in the domain of practical politics. How
such theory and such practice are modified over time is thus the central preoccupationof the historical approach.
This procedure, with its emphasis on the inevitability of historical change, isclearly less judgmental than the essentialist one. However, like all historicist
narratives, it suffers the persistent hazard of falling into a determinist version of
events: whatever happened had to happen. It is useful to be conscious of this and beaware that, within determinate circumstances (this is not a minor proviso), things
could have proceeded differently. In particular, it is worth reminding ourselves thatwhile it is true that the socialist movement arises with the inception of industrial
society and tracks its development, it is never a necessary component of it. There
have been, there are and, in all likelihood, there will be industrial societies without asignificant socialist movement such as the USA and Japan. Similarly, there have beensocieties with a powerful socialist movement where the process of industrialisation
had barely begun.
2. The Two Socialisms
At the beginning of the twentieth century socialists knew that their movement
was contingent to capitalist society. It is true that the version of Marx’s theory most ofthem adhered to implied that socialism was a state of affairs that would succeed
capitalism, but they had noticed that the fastest growing capitalist society in the world,the USA, did not have a socialist movement. They were also equally aware that themost developed capitalist state in Europe, Great Britain, home of powerful tradeunions, had, at most, only an embryonic socialist party. From their point of view,
Britain was an advanced capitalist society with a backward socialist movement.
Conversely, some of the still mainly agrarian societies of Europe -such as Italy and
Finland- had fairly strong and electorally successful socialist parties.
In Russia the movement appeared divided -like the whole of the Russian
intelligentsia, between westernising and slavophile tendencies.1 The westernisers
assumed that the duty of socialists was to accelerate the development of capitalism,
because only capitalism could provide the terrain for a further advance towards
socialism. The slavophiles surmised that Russia would be able to skip western-style
capitalism. Populist anti-capitalists -such as V. Bervi-Flerovski, author of The

2

Situation of the Working Class in Russia (1869), a book much praised by Marx- held
the view that the mir, the Russian peasant commune, provided communal principles
which could and should be made universal. Russia could avoid the iniquities ofcapitalism and offer the rest of the world the example of a superior social system
based on nation-wide solidarity and co-operation. This mirage of overtaking andoutstripping the West remained a fundamental feature of nearly all revolutionary
Russian beliefs. A century later, the abandonment of this ‘Great Idea’ coincided withthe collapse of the entire communist system.
The westernising and slavophile positions converged towards a notableconsensus: the real problem facing Russian society was one of modernisation which
was then regarded as being coterminous with industrialisation. The issue was whether
this should be left to the capitalists themselves or should be undertaken directly bysocialists. Those who held the second view were inevitably pushed towards the
proposition that to achieve socialist-led industrialisation it was necessary to be incharge of the political apparatus itself, that is, to be in command of the state. It did not
follow that the state should necessarily own the means of production. There werevarious possibilities. The state could substitute itself for a class of capitalists visibly
unable to perform its historical task; alternatively the state could encourage thecapitalists and help them to industrialise the country or, again, it could stimulate someentrepreneurs, for instance in agriculture or in new or/and smaller concerns, or it
could provide financial incentives to a managerial class operating in a quasi-market
even where private property had been abolished. The appropriate mix of state andmarket was never an issue settled once and for all and it certainly did not follow
inevitably from the October Revolution. After all, much of the subsequent history of
Russia -from war communism, to the New Economic Policy, to Stalin’s
five-year-plans, to the limited and inadequate economic reform of the 1960s and1970s- can be seen as a dispute over the relationship between markets and politics.
This version of socialism or developmental socialism can be described as an
ideology of modernisation or development. Though its final goal is a socialist society,its practical tasks consisted in developing an industrial society under conditions where
it was felt that if socialists did not do it either no-one would (and the country would
stagnate) or foreigners would do it (and the country would be like a colony). Thiskind of socialism -one is tempted to define it as capital-building socialism- coincides,
more or less, with communism and its state socialist variants.
The other variety of socialism, -the main concern of the rest of this essay- canbe conceived as a form of regulation of capitalism.2 Its task is not to develop an
industrial society; the capitalists themselves are busy doing just that. Far fromrequiring any ‘help’ from socialists, they can do it better and faster without them -as
nineteenth-century Britain and twentieth-century America and Japan amply
demonstrate.
This coincides with what came to be known as Social Democracy. The
contrast between developmental or modernising socialism and socialism as capitalist
regulation is, of course, far more profound than this. The former, whether in the
USSR or in Cuba or in China and North Korea exhibited marked authoritarianfeatures and intolerance of dissent and of pluralism which matched and in some cases
exceeded those of capitalist authoritarian regimes. The latter brand of socialism
coexisted, in all instances, with democracy, pluralism, and human rights. Such a3comparison is often, quite legitimately, made by social democrats themselves who
point out that developmental socialism (i.e. communism) was never liberal whilesocial democracy was never dictatorial. It is tempting to agree, to follow convention
by distinguishing communism from socialism, and to leave it at that.
Unfortunately, this would leave a number of problems unsolved. The passage
from pre-modern to modern society, at least in its initial phase, has seldom beenaccompanied by democracy and human rights in their twentieth century meaning.
Even in Britain or the USA, not to speak of Germany and Japan, the pattern was one
in which the suffrage was non-existent or severely restricted, freedoms were seriously
limited, trade unions were banned or subjected to harsh control.3 In some instances
the process co-existed with slavery and genocide (the USA), racism, colonialism,
rigid authoritarianism (for instance in Japan) and one-party rule (for instance in
Taiwan and South Korea until relatively recently). Full democracy and human rights
were established later. They were, in other words, the outcome of a political struggle,
and not an imperative accompaniment of the first phase of the process ofmodernisation. Social democracy, where it existed at all, was in the forefront of thepolitical struggle for democracy and human rights, goading along the liberal parties,
then far less democratic, and even the conservative parties, then barely democratic,
towards political reforms.
Social democrats, however, when capitalism was not fully developed, wereusually in opposition. The modernisation of the country, the development of
capitalism, its profitability and productivity were not their concern. They came to
power only when the first phase of industrialisation was over, unlike the communists
who came to power facing the problem of industrialising the country (with a few
significant exceptions such as Czechoslovakia and East Germany). It does not follow
from this that the degree of authoritarianism exhibited by communist rule wasjustifiable or inevitable. In principle, other, less harsh and cruel forms ofmodernisation could have been devised. The point is that the two forms of socialismthat have characterised the twentieth century are not comparable. Ideologies areshaped by the kind of societies within which they operate and the relationship they
have to political power, that is, to the state. Social democrats ruled only whencapitalism was well established and democracy had become the common property ofthe main political parties. Communists had to develop an industrial society. Social
Democrats (or socialists, I shall use the two terms interchangeably) had to manage it.
Communists prevailed in less developed societies, socialists in developed market
economies.
3. Individualism and Collectivism
One of the many paradoxes confronting the historian of socialism is that thenotion of managing market societies was not part of the ideological armoury ofsocialists although this is what they all ended up doing. At the turn of the century,socialist ideology distinguished between an end-goal and short- or medium-term
demands. The end-goal was a socialist society vaguely defined as the abolition ofprivate property. The short-term demands were varied but, on the whole, they aimed
at achieving three aims: the first was the democratisation of capitalist society, thesecond was the regulation of the labour market (for instance, the eight-hour day) andthe third was the socialisation of the costs of reproduction of labour: free medicine,4pensions, national insurance -in short, costs which would have had to be absorbed byindividual workers. This third goal is what we now call the welfare state.
The values which informed this politics were those of equality, social
solidarity and the establishment of minimum standards of life. If all citizens were to
be of equal worth, they all (including women) had to have the vote, had to be treatedequally, and have the same rights. Illness, unemployment and old age were to beprotected by a common fund, centrally administered and financed. The definition ofwhat would be the minimum standards of civilised life could not be left to the sphereof civil society, that is to the arbitrariness of the market. It had to become a politicalmatter. The state was to be called upon to enforce a system of protection that would
not exist or would exist in a rudimentary form if left to market forces. This was thebasis for subjecting the conditions of work to state regulation: health and safety
procedure were to be strengthened and enforced and a limit placed on the length of
the working day. To force the state to operate in this way, it was necessary to
democratised it, i.e. to detach it from the exclusive control of the dominant classes. I
take this to be the essential meaning of T.H. Marshall ‘s Citizenship and Social Classand other essays, (1950).
The extension of democracy socialists advocated was not based on classprinciples but on the principle of individual rights. Universal suffrage, after all,assumes that all individuals have exactly the same worth when voting: each, literally,
counts as one. The ballot had to be secretly cast by a lone individual making an
individual choice. In the domain of politics, socialist, far from being class-conscious,
were staunch individualists. It is worth reminding ourselves of such unexceptionalviews, historically well-documented, at a time when socialists are criticised (andsupinely accept to be criticised) for their alleged class collectivist position. Those who,at the turn of the century, defended a class conception of democracy were the liberals
and the conservatives not the socialists. Liberal or conservative parties defended anelectoral system that allocated votes in terms of the wealth possessed or earned byeach individual. Throughout Europe they also accepted and defended an upper
chamber that over-represented or represented only the members of the upper classes.
As I write, such an institution still exists, incredibly enough, in Britain, the ‘mother of
democracy’. Furthermore, liberal and conservative parties were not only guilty of‘class-ism’, but also of sexism. Not only did they oppose the enfranchisement of theworking class, they also opposed that of women. Their opposition to working classsuffrage may have been based on opportunism: workers, they felt, would haveincreased the electoral weight of dangerous socialists. Women, on the other hand,were believed to be more likely to vote for conservative and traditional parties, yetthese resisted female suffrage -a rare instance of ideology and principle prevailingover self-interest.
Socialists, of course, often did not fight for female suffrage with great vigour,
but this had little to do with principle. Some were moved by their commitment togradualism and moderation (the modern requirement to keep everyone happy, jolly
them along, upset no-one and remain united). It thus essential to proceed by stages
and to achieve full manhood suffrage before extending it to women. Other socialists
were moved, quite simply, by political opportunism: it was clear to them that theenfranchisement of women would give a distinct advantage to religious parties. When5

it came to principles and values, however, all socialist parties stood firmly on the sideof real universal suffrage.
Thus socialists were far more consistent defenders of individual democratic
rights than liberals and conservatives. However, in the pursuit of their second aim, theregulation of the working day and, more generally, the regulation of the conditions ofwork, socialists took a clearly collectivist position. The contractual relation whichassociated capitalists and workers was one of individual to individual. In exchange foragreed wages, each individual worker undertook to perform a determinate operation,
in determinate conditions and for a determinate length of time -a situation Marx andhis followers described as ‘formal’ equality, meaning that such agreement was
between juridically equal parties, a contractual relation between equals which
disguised a massive inequality in power. Furthermore, capitalists had substantial
advantages, especially where there was a considerable surplus of labour which, in theinitial stages of industrialisation, was the norm.
The formation of trade unions was a collective means of redressing thisinequality of power. Their chances of success depended on a variety of factors themost important being the absence of legal impediments to their effective functioning.
Here, the unions were in favour of retrenching the state and might well have adopted
the latter-day slogan of ‘getting the state off their backs’. When it came to the politicalenforcement of minimum standards, however, the unions were in favour of bringing
the state back in to create, to use, once again, modern terminology, a level playing
field among entrepreneurs, preventing them from competing at the expenses of theworkers.
The third aim, the creation of what was later called the Welfare State, entailed
the socialisation of some of the costs of reproduction of the working class. The
collective tax fund (to which the middle classes were expected to contributedisproportionately) or the forcible extraction of contributions from the capitalists
could be used to help finance pensions, national insurance and medical expenses. This
would have had obvious beneficial effects for the workers and their families, but it
also allowed the entrepreneurs to pay them less. While wages are necessary for the
reproduction of the working class, the development of non-wage benefits meant thatmonetary wages (as opposed to real earnings) could be lower than they would havebeen if there were no other benefits.
The success obtained in reaching these aims differed from country to country.
Much depended on the relative strength of the two contending classes, capitalists andworkers, the wealth of the economy, the power and dominance of landed aristocraticinterests, the prevailing political ethos, the position of the Church. For instance, at theturn of the century, the USA had the most rapidly developing economy in the world,
but wave upon wave of immigrant labour acted as a break on the formation of
powerful politically-inclined trade unions, and the competition among capitalists
enabled some to opt for a high wage strategy (Fordism) which helped prevent theformation of a larger market for consumer goods than would have been the caseotherwise. While the American political élites were also largely impervious to tradeunion pressures, they were less resistant to those stemming from the large class of
small farmers. The ensuing polarisation more or less isolated the trade union
movement and weakened its political development, hence the development of apeculiar anti-big business populism.

6

Britain followed a different path. In the nineteenth century its working class
was large and well organised, and had, by the standards of the time, a long history of
struggles and militancy. No established party could ignore the workers. The religious
fragmentation of the country and especially of the working class contributed topreventing the formation of a confessional party along the lines of continental
Christian democracy. The result was that, in the second half of the nineteenth century,
Liberals and Conservatives competed with each other for the support of the labouringclasses and incorporated in their own programme aspects of a social democratic
platform before that could find an outlet as an organised political party. This helped
delay the formation and growth of a large British socialist party along the lines of theSPD. On the continent, a similar process of co-option was under way: nation-building
required the incorporation of demands emerging from the lower classes and took theform of what was called in Germany a form of ‘state socialism’ -built by Bismarckand supported by the socialist leader Ferdinand Lassalle. Liberal, conservative andnationalist parties were in the forefront of this movement. They were eventuallyjoined by Church-based parties particularly when the Roman Catholic Church
abandoned its intransigent defence of the ancient regime and adopted a new position
towards what it called the ‘social question’ with the publication in 1891 of Pope Leo
XIII’s encyclical Rerum novarum.
4. Socialists, Liberals and the State
By the beginning of the twentieth century the three key aspects of themedium-term programme of social democracy could be found in some form in otherparties. It follows that it was no longer possible, if it ever was, to establish a clear andpermanent distinction between socialists and non-socialists in terms of practicalpolicies.
There were, of course, also massive differences: socialists remainedcommitted to the long term aim of achieving a post-capitalist society, possessed a setof distinctive symbols, advanced their demands in a more radical way, pursued andexplored new forms of struggle, such as the political strike, remained opposed toovert co-operation with other parties, and, with the exception of Britain, expoundedanti-clericalism. In other words socialists tried to distinguish themselves in all
possible ways from what they persisted in regarding as a monolithic bourgeois bloc.
The continuous attempt by anti-socialist forces to incorporate socialist
demands should be regarded as evidence of the success of socialists and of theirability to shape and influence political developments. But it also makes it impossible
to construct a full-proof definition of socialist policies.
The extension of democracy, the institution of the welfare state, the control of
the working day were socialist aims and policies, but one can always find, at any
moment, similar demands advanced and implemented by non-socialist parties, be theyright, centre, conservatives, liberal, Christian or nationalist. From the outset,‘socialism’ was not the prerogative of socialists.4
It is true that socialists were forced, in their everyday practice, to trim theirdemands and accept compromises, but so were the conservatives and liberals. The
extension of democracy and the advance of mass society meant that no political party
could hope to obtain sufficient support either by defending the status quo in toto (theessential conservative position) or by proposing to return to the status quo ante (the7essential reactionary position). Reformism triumphed. It was adopted by the mostvaried forces: in Germany by Bismarck and the later Wilhelmine nationalists as wellas the ‘social’ Christians of the Zentrum party; in Italy by the majority wing of the
Liberal Party (Giovanni Giolitti) and the emerging forces of political catholicism; inFrance by the Radicals of the Third Republic; in Britain by both Disraeli’s andSalisbury’s conservatives as well as Joseph Chamberlain, Gladstone, the New
Liberals, Asquith and Lloyd George; in Austria by the antisemitic Social Christians ofKarl Lüger and in Holland by the new confessional parties in alliance with the moreenlightened Liberals.
The impact of this turn to the social was more visible at the local level than at
the national. Local authorities were busy devising imaginative schemes to improve
the social conditions of urban life through public health programmes, housingdevelopments, slum clearance, poor relief -that is by developing an important local
public sector. This evolving ‘municipal socialism’ was seldom, if ever, the work ofsocialists. The success of reformist socialism, like the success of all political
ideologies, lay in the fact that it did not have a monopoly of what it stood for. In
politics success consists in ensuring that what one thinks as normal or desirable orpossible becomes the shared attitude, the common property of the entire polity. To
achieve this, however, it is necessary to formulate demands which are detachable
from the ideological package (the symbols and language) which accompanies it. Thiscan only be realised when the connection between ideological values and practicalpolicies is vague and loose, and thus ready to be endlessly renegotiated. It is precisely
because it is perfectly possible to be in favour of adequate pensions without signingup to the end goal of socialism that adequate pensions can be fought for by liberals
and conservatives. Consistency and coherence may enable small political sects tosurvive indefinitely, but they spell certain ruin for parties and movements with realhegemonic ambitions.
Approaching socialism as a political programme that overlaps with that ofother parties helps to highlight the importance of the long-term aims, of the symbols
used, of the privileging of a particular class. Socialist parties, like other parties, had toadvance contradictory positions. On the one hand they put forward a realistic
programme could appeal to as many people as possible; on the other, they stressed
what was absolutely distinctive and unique. They knew successful policies werelikely to be imitated and popular demands taken over. To counter the probabledispersion of support, socialists presented themselves as the authentic champions ofreforms. At the same time, they emphasised that these were not ends in themselves
but steps to a situation -socialism- where they would no longer be necessary because
the social problems had been eliminated. Thus the insistence on the final end was not
only part of a recruitment strategy aimed at intellectuals and others with millenarian
aspirations. It was also a convincing way of reinforcing the appeal of what mightotherwise appear as limited reforms. Similarly, the insistence on the working classwas not just derived from Marxist theory -the non-Marxist British Labour Party was a
far more vociferous advocate of a ‘proletarian’ consciousness than most of its
continental counterparts. It was the recognition that that particular social grouprepresented the most likely source of support for social and economic reforms.
The struggle for democracy, for the welfare state and for the regulation of theworking week thus created a wide arena of struggle in which all the main parties

8

participated. It also brought about a fundamental feature of twentieth century
socialism: its étatism. It is only relatively recently that socialists themselves havecome to question it. The growth of an exceptionally strong centralised state in the
USSR and the development, between the wars, of so-called totalitarian states offeredthose opposing socialism an ideal platform. Fascism, Nazism and Stalinism may havebeen extreme forms of state-worship, but did not socialist thought itself comeperilously close to it? Had not socialists developed a ‘love affair’ with centralised
control. Was not the welfare state itself -often depicted as the product of acompassionate and socially concerned ideology- but the moderate face of anobsession with controls, bureaucracy, and top-to-bottom direction? Was it not in fact asystematic onslaught against individual freedoms and incentives?5
Socialists have now accepted, partly out of political opportunism, partly out ofconviction, partly out of that chronic ignorance of their own history that blights
modern political movements, that there is an element of truth in such criticisms. In
fact étatism was an inseparable and inevitable part of the practice of socialist (i.e. ofreformist practice) but not of its ideology (i.e. of its revolutionary commitment to asocialist end-goal). Throughout the nineteenth century, when socialists were in
opposition and the movement in its infancy, socialism was against the state. The
reasons are so obvious and have been investigated so thoroughly that here they canmerely be restated: the state was -to Marxists and non-Marxists alike- a bourgeois
state which deprived workers of the right to vote and produced legislation which, byand large, favoured the entrepreneurs, the aristocracy and the middle classes far morethan the workers. The anti-state position of the socialists had some substance. For
similar reasons the European confessional parties, where they existed, and the Roman
Catholic Church also regarded the state as an alien force. It was, after all, in the handsof unbelievers and rationalists (as in France and Italy) or ‘state-worshippers’(Bismarck and German nationalists). The Church realised perfectly well what liberal
propaganda has always attempted to disguise, namely that the power of the state wasusually the inevitable counterpart of the cult of the individual. In the nineteenth
century the state was regarded by Liberals as the essential means with which to break
down the resistance of traditional privileges, or local power and clear the way for thedevelopment of national markets and hence for the accumulation of capital. Similarly,
conservatives regarded the state as the main instrument to be used to slow down theadvance of liberal reforms. The real étatists, in the nineteenth century, were theliberals and the conservatives.
Gradually, at first imperceptibly at the beginning of the twentieth century,
more overtly between the wars and conspicuously after the Second World War,socialists came to recognise that the state was the best political weapon available forthe implementation of the three components of the original politicalprogramme -democracy, welfare and regulation of labour market.
It is rather surprising that this acceptance of the state -not just the state as aconcept, but the state as a machine, as a coercive apparatus- came so late in thedevelopment of twentieth century socialism. There was, in the years before the FirstWorld War an optimistic view of the possibility of forcing the bourgeois state toimplement the socialist reform programme. In principle they were not wrong. Without
the state there could not have been a socialisation of some of the cost of reproductionof the working class (the welfare state) and a regulation of the working day. Powerful9trade unions, without a political party, could have struggled alone and negotiated with
employers over the length of the working day, the conditions of work, holiday pay etc.
They could have acted as a pressure group and wrest concessions from governing
political parties. This was, prior to the Second World War, the British experience. Twopatterns emerged: on the continent, the length of the working day and similar labour
market regulations were obtained from the state; in Britain these were left to the ‘classstruggle’, that is to the trade union’s confrontation with the employers.6
The continent followed the principle of universal rights: where the eight-hour day
was won, it was won on behalf of all citizens. In Britain any gain would be confined
to union members.
The endorsement of the state was thus not part of the ideology of socialism. It
was instrumental to the achievement of their medium or short-term aims. The
commitment of socialists to the state grew as these aims became more significant andas the final aim of a post-capitalist state receded ever more into the future. Universal
suffrage made the state more receptive to the demands made by the socialists onbehalf of all citizens. It also made it more legitimate and hence more powerful. It
enabled socialists to achieve political power by ‘capturing the state machine’. Thisfacilitated the implementation of the rest of their reform programme -the regulation of
the working day and the socialisation of some of the cost of production andreproduction. This transformed industrial society.
Socialists and liberals shared equally positive assumptions about industrialism,
but had different views on what the relationship between the political system andindustry should be. As far as Liberal theory, as opposed to its practice, was concerned,
the purpose of the state was to remove obstacles to the advance of industrial society.
Once this was achieved, industry -as part of civil society- should be allowed todevelop without interference. It is noteworthy that this was precisely the position
reached by some of the early socialists, in particular Saint-Simon.
The socialists were ambivalent about civil society. On the one hand, theywanted to be as free as possible to organise and use collective action to achieve theirdemands, thus joining with the liberals who wanted broad market freedom. On theother hand, they viewed civil society as a space where the distribution of power andmoney was so uneven as to dilute considerably the equality of rights achieved in thepolitical arena.
5. After the First World War
Socialists thus regarded the state either as an alien force or as machine which
could be used for the redistribution of power. They hoped that they could control
capitalism and eventually replace it. What they did not assume is that they could
manage capitalism. And here lies the other substantial zone of agreement betweensocialists and liberals. Before the First World War, no socialists, whether Marxist or
non-Marxist, moderate or authoritarian, contemplated a planned economy. Howsocialism should be organised was an issue on which socialist parties were quite silent,or resorted to vague generalisation of no practical value. The intellectuals were of nohelp. Marx somehow thought that the socialist economy would run itself, it would be‘the administration of things’ whatever that meant. Lenin piously suggested that a
cook would be able to run it. Kautsky, like most social democrats of the time, simply
believed that the question could be resolved only when capitalism had fully developed

10and when the working class had acquired a superior culture and intellect. Bernstein,
as he declared more than once, was not much interested in a socialist society,preferring to fight for the improvement of the conditions of the working class undercapitalism. There were no plans to create a large public sector, or to nationalise theeconomy.7
The war changed matters and not only for socialists. Politically it broke theisolation of socialists from bourgeois parties in all the contending countries, associalists in France and Germany put the defence of ‘their’ state over international
solidarity. In economic matters, states were forced to manage the economy, regulating
labour markets, production and distribution to an unprecedented extent. The idea ofmanaging the capitalist economy was firmly installed on the agenda of liberals,
conservatives and socialists alike.
In Russia the collapse of Tsardom and the ensuing military debacle created a
power vacuum which allowed the Bolshevik seizure of power. Even then theautomatic response of the Bolsheviks was not the abolition of private property and theconstruction of a planned economy. During the civil war the forcible top to bottom
control of the economy was due to requirements of the military situation, not toideological preconceptions. The ‘step back’ towards the adoption of the New
Economy Policy was seen as a return to a market economy, not as the harbinger of
new forms of economic management. The planning mechanism installed by Stalin in
the late 1920s was not the inevitable consequence of the Bolshevik victory (ten years
after their seizure of power!) but the outcome of a vigorous political conflict which
saw the victory of the planners over their more gradualist opponents. In other words,
even in what had become the USSR, socialism had not been always identified withthe abolition of market forces or with a state monopoly of the economy.
Elsewhere in Europe, socialists turned out to be reluctant economic
interventionists. One of the effects of the Russian revolution was to remove fromsocialist parties their more radical cadres who formed communist parties. Nowhere
were these able to secure the support of a majority of the socialist electorate, even
where, as in France, they had been able to rally the majority of party activists. The
upshot was that some socialist parties, though radicalised by the war, were freer topursue more conciliatory policies towards parties of the centre and the centre-left.
Before the war all socialist parties, without exceptions, accepted the political principlethat under no circumstances would they co-operate with ‘bourgeois’ parties. During
the war and even more so afterwards this principle was abandoned. In the 1920s and1930s socialists were finally able to achieve political power and to form governments.
In all instances they were able to do so only in alliance with other parties: in Sweden,in France, in Germany, in Britain, in Spain.8
Some of the ideological barriers which had been erected to distinguishsocialists from the rest came tumbling down. As we have seen, in terms of practicalpolitics, these barriers had been flexible all along. After the war and particularly in the
1930s, key aspects of the reform programme of social democracy came to be acceptedby other political forces. Radical organisations of the right (fascists and right-wing
populists) incorporated some of the social demands of the Left, including major
features of welfare reform, but rejected the democratic politics which accompanied
them. Liberal, Catholic and centrist forces accepted the principles of universal
suffrage, though in some cases (France, Belgium and Switzerland) still excluded the11female half of the population. The principle of the regulation of the working day
became almost universal accepted.
The incorporation of some aspects of the welfare state while repressing thepolitical forces which most strongly advanced it became the hallmark of the populist
authoritarian regimes which prevailed in areas of central, southern and eastern Europe
such as those of Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. In some of the remaining democratic
states of Western Europe a period of uneasy compromise between labour and capitalcharacterised the inter-war period.
The existence of a communist movement forced the socialist parties todevelop ideological barriers to their left. They did so by stressing the importance ofpolitical democracy. This they no longer regarded only as the best political shell forthe implementation of their economic and social demand but also as the thing that
fundamentally distinguished them from the communists. Socialists, however, werealso influenced by key aspects of the new communist ideology, namely theimportance of the expansion of state ownership. The regular re-interpretation of thefamous Clause Four of the Labour Party is emblematic. Adopted in 1918 almost as anafterthought, it vaguely referred to the ‘common ownership’ of the means of
production, distribution and exchange. How this would work in practice remained
unclear. To some, it referred clearly to a socialist future. To others it became part of a
gradual process towards a socialist society: capitalism would eventually be abolishedas firms and entire industries came to be absorbed into an ever-expanding public
sector. To others again, public ownership would compensate for market failures,
eliminate inefficient firms, and prevent private monopolies.
The process of osmosis between left and right which had started before theFirst World War continued and was accelerated by the crisis of 1929. Liberals were nolonger so certain that the state which interfered the least was the best. The rapidly
developing unemployment which had de-stabilised Germany and threatened France
and Britain was seen as evidence that the socialists had been right at least on one
point: market forces did not naturally lead to an equilibrium but to chronic instability.
In Italy the fascist regime reacted to the crisis by taking over most of the banking
system, but limited state intervention became acceptable even in liberal andconservative Britain.
Nevertheless, the old pre-WW1 view that capitalism and socialism wererigidly separated -one shared with the communists- remained in place almost
everywhere between the two wars. When socialists came to power they refrained fromextending the public sector, and did not attempt to direct the economy. Capitalism,
they believed, could not be managed except by capitalists, hence the respect fororthodox economics exhibited by socialists in Weimar Germany after 1928, in Britain
when Labour was in power in 1929-31 and elsewhere, such in Belgium and in the
Scandinavian countries. The most that could be done was to set up systems ofconciliation and negotiation between capitalists and trade unions, one of the many
schemes of ‘partnership’ between the two sides of industry which are still -at the
beginning of the twenty-first century- hailed as the dernier cri in socialist modernity:from the Stinnes-Legien pact of 1918 which established in Germany the joint
labour-management board for economic regulation, to the ‘Whitley Councils’ inBritain, from the Matignon Accords of 1936 following the victory of the Popular
Front in France, to the National Recovery and Wagner Acts of 1933 and 1935 in the12USA, from the Saltsjöbaden agreements in Sweden (1938) to the Main Agreement in
Norway (1935).
Nevertheless, to most socialists, then as later, practicalsocialism meant protecting the workers and their families by developing the tried andtested policies of welfarism and regulation of the conditions of work. The victory of
the Popular Front government in France was a clear sign that whenever they couldsocialists should ‘occupy power’ -and implement needed reforms- even though thetime had not come for the ‘exercise of power’ to use Leon Blum’s famous distinction.
In opposition some socialists advanced schemes for planning the economy -as in
Belgium with Hendrik de Man’s Plan du travail, or, to use its more appropriate
Flemish title, the Plan van den Arbeid- and advocated a mixed economic system
including, in addition to a private sector, a nationalised sector consisting of credit
institutions and former private monopolies.9 This obviously required a strong andefficient state. Conservatism, right-wing authoritarianism, the technocratic liberalismof Keynes and Lloyd George and all shades of socialism converged on this. The only
main ideology still defending the minimal state, classical liberalism was on the run,after the collapse of 1929, even in its Anglo-Saxon heartland.
6. After the Second World War
After the Second World War, European social democrats became leading
contenders for power in virtually all the democratic countries of Western Europe. Of
their three-pronged platform, the first -universal suffrage- had become theunquestioned basis of all politics with some significant exceptions which all occurred
where socialist parties did not wield any powers: the southern states of the USA
which, until the early 1970s, deprived blacks from exercising their right to vote inmost elections, Switzerland where many cantons (in which socialists were weak)
restricted suffrage to men only until 1971 and South Africa where -until the collapseof the apartheid regime- a multi-party system excluded blacks from effective politicalparticipation.
So strongly recognised was the principle of universal suffrage that it was
adopted or maintained -albeit in principle only- in most of the newly decolonised
countries and in all communist states; dictatorial rule was secured not bydisenfranchisement but by the elimination of all effective political opposition.
The principles of welfarism and full employment never had such universal
legitimacy. They became state policies prevalently in Western Europe and where
socialist parties were strong such as in Australia. As for the public sector, it was
expanded throughout Western Europe, but there was little connection between theextension of the public sector and the strength of socialists. Post-war nationalisation
occurred under the impetus of conservatives (Gaullism), Christian Democrats inAustria and Italy, socialists (in the UK). One of the smallest state-owned sectors in
Europe was in the social democratic Nordic countries.
No common foreign affairs principle was adopted in the post-war period. The
pre-World War One rhetorical commitment to pacifism remained, after the Second
World War, a sub-culture within the socialist parties. These were divided between
Atlanticists and neutralists and between those in favour of the political integration ofEurope and those who remained committed to a national conception of socialism.
Only in the 1990s did Europeanism became a factor uniting all socialist parties unlike Atlanticism which, even after the collapse of the USSR and the eastward

13

expansion of NATO, was not accepted by major socialist parties such as those in
Sweden, Finland and the Austria.
The international organisation the socialist parties had formed was never morethan a symbolic forum. Its pronouncement simply reflected in general terms a vague
consensus on matters of principles. In fact each socialist party behaved strictly as anational organisation whose priority was to safeguard of its own national polity and,
consequently, the requirements of its own national capitalism.
As we have seen, the connection between modern socialism and its state andhence with its own capitalism had started to be established towards the end of the lastcentury. It is thus hardly surprising that, as socialists proved successful in reforming
their capitalist societies, they were reluctant to let go of the existing regulatory
institutions: a large public sector, a powerful central bank, a mechanism of exchange
control, a complex system of subsidies and regional policies, an intricate mechanism
for the control of the labour market. This regulatory aspect became the fundamental
relation between socialism and capitalism and further reduced the importance of theolder goal of abolishing capitalism. This, in fact, had become largely of symbolic
value. It stood to represent that, however indispensable was a thriving economy forthe success of all other intermediate socialist goals and however distant were theprospects for a post-capitalist society, socialists still stood in an antagonistic
relationship to capitalism. However, the popular appeal of this symbolic message had
been much reduced. The prosperity associated with capitalist growth, theestablishment of full employment, the protective apparatus of the welfare state, thepatent incapacity of communist states to develop a consumer society comparable tothose in the west, had almost eliminated the deep-seated antagonism against
capitalism which had existed previously. Other political parties, such as thosecommitted to Christian and conservative values, who, in the past, had not been major
proponents of capitalism, discovered its virtues. The socialists did the same. Thus,
gradually but constantly, at varying speeds depending on differing politicalconjunctures and, above all, on electoral vicissitudes, the parties of the left dropped
their radical anti-capitalist symbols. This process, generally referred to as revisionism,
accelerated in the late 1950s with the German SPD Bad Godesberg Congress. It
continued in all parties, dividing both activists and leaders amidst the indifference ofthe electorate at large whose remarkable electoral stability is one of the mostsignificant factors of post-war West European history.
The victory of revisionism was almost inevitable. We have just alluded to oneof the reasons: the Left’s electorates were never seriously concerned with the longterm aim of abolishing capitalism. They were far more interested in medium-term
demands, and in a generic social justice particularly in education and health.
Consequently the revisionists, even when weak inside their parties, had always afairly strong following among voters. This could not fail to have an impact on thoseradical activists who wanted their parties to maximise the chance of winning elections.
There were, however, other reasons for the victory of revisionism. In almost all
instances, socialists could only hope to achieve power by forming a coalition withparties of the centre. Such accords would have been more difficult if socialists had
persisted with their anti-capitalist rhetoric and radical schemes of redistribution(which would require high level of taxation). There were, of course, instances where
socialists could achieve power only by reaching an understanding with parties to their14

left -for instance in France in the 1970s between socialists and communists. Here theagreed manifesto was radical, but the French socialists were able to use othersymbolic events to signal that they would be the dominant partner and that they would
be able to keep the communists under control -which is indeed what has occurred.
More generally, revisionists could always mount a successful challenge
because they always enjoyed a vital advantage: their conservative opponents (theparties to the right) and the media and power structures which backed them could
always be relied upon to stigmatise the radical left as hopelessly out of touch withmodern realities. In other words revisionism had the advantage that all centrist
positions have: they can play a game on two fronts. As part of the left they candenounce capitalist iniquities; as part of the centre they can distance themselves fromradicalism.
This underlines the main ideological achievement of modern socialism andalso its failure. The achievement lies in the fact that free untrammelled market
capitalism has never been able to establish itself as the dominant ideology ofEuropean politics. It manifestly failed to do so throughout Catholic Europe (Spain,
Portugal, Italy, Austria and southern Germany) where the leading non-socialist
ideologies have always taken a traditionalist form (Christian democracy) or anational-popular one (Gaullism) or an authoritarian-populist one (fascism). It also
failed to do so in Protestant Nordic countries where the agrarian parties actively
co-operated in the establishment of social-democratic hegemony. Only in Britain -theoriginal home of laissez-faire ideology- did free market conservatism gain a positionof relative hegemony during the 1980s. Yet, even there, it did so only almost bystealth thanks to an electoral system which worked to the advantage of the largest
party, disarray in the left and centre, and retreat of traditional ‘one-nation’conservatism.
The main ideological failure of social democracy is linked to one of the causesof its original success: having correctly identified the state as the principal regulatorof the capitalist economy it sought, successfully, to democratise it and use it. As longas the state held that position, social democratic strategy retained its full coherence.
But as various aspects of capitalism (especially its financial organisation) developedin a global direction, this state-oriented strategy began to falter. Social democrats andthe larger communist parties of the West remained wedded to a nationalist conceptionof politics and reinforced it constantly, ring-fencing their achievements (welfare,education, civil rights) within the territorial boundaries of the state, while capitalism
set out to stride the globe.
7. Conclusion
To predict whether socialism has a future is a futile exercise which isnevertheless undertaken with astonishing regularity by intelligent and well-informed
people. As we have seen, what socialism ‘really’ is has always been a matter ofdispute; as its precise meaning can be endlessly redefined and renegotiated, there is
no reason why the term could not be used indefinitely -or at least as long as capitalism
exists. The only condition for its survival is the existence of significant politicalforces ready to associate themselves with it. As long as the term ‘socialism’ is used todenote any forms of political regulation of capitalism, socialism will live on,frightening some, comforting others, regularly dying and yet reviving, the endless15

centre of debates and disputations.
Socialism as an anti-capitalist force, aimed at overcoming the present
economic arrangements of society and establishing an alternative social order where
resources are allocated on the basis of need, has been a dead force in Western Europe
for decades.
The claims of socialism to be a modernising force (socialism in its communist
guise) able to catch up with capitalist industrial societies has been completely routed
over the last twenty years. The collapse of the USSR constituted the mostconspicuous evidence of this defeat. Developments in China, where a communist
party is striving to establish capitalist relations, further confirms the historicalcollapse of the idea of communism.
At the beginning of the new century, socialism as a distributive force aimed atallocating vital resources, such as health, culture and education, outside of market
mechanisms and on the basis of social citizenship, that is, without excluding anyone,
is still surviving with no loss of support. Its recent electoral successes may be seen asa conscious or unconscious recognition by a majority of voters of the necessity ofsome kind of re-negotiation with a new kind of capitalism, more assertive, more
confident, more powerful, more global. And a tacit acknowledgement that it may bebetter to entrust such re-negotiation to political forces that, historically speaking, havealways been suspicious if not hostile to the ideology of the untrammelled market.
The difficulty facing those who still call themselves socialist is that, while
they need capitalism and the economic growth and prosperity which it can generate,
capitalism does not need them. Capitalist societies can be organised in an
economically sustainable way by offering only minimal protection to some marginal
groups (the USA) or by devolving welfare activities to organisations of civil society
such as large firms, families and social groups (Japan). These alternative models,particularly the American one, whose capacity to use each crisis to re-emerge greatly
strengthened is striking, have good prospects of a victorious outcome. Such
expectations are greatly strengthened by the increasing reluctance of socialist leadersand followers to identify themselves with the term socialism.
Such reluctance is a reflection of the uncontrollable multiplicity of meanings
the term has been encumbered with, and of the incapacity of socialists to produce
their own dominant meaning of the term. It is as if they had accepted that the‘hegemonic’ definition of socialism is that which has been given by its enemies, one
which disparages socialism for its alleged illiberalism, statism, anti-individualism,and dogmatism; for rewarding inefficiency and mortifying initiative.
No ideology can survive for long if its followers are embarrassed to identify
themselves with it.
ENDNOTES
1

The classic text is still Franco Venturi, Roots of Revolution, Grosset and Dunlap,
New York 1960
2
This is the main thesis of my One Hundred Years of Socialism. The West European
Left in the Twentieth Century, Fontana paperback, London 19973
On the weak roots of European democracy in the first half of the twentieth century,16

see Mark Mazower, Dark Continent, Knopf, New York 1999
4
Peter Baldwin, The Politics of Social Solidarity. Class Bases of the European WelfareState 1875-1975, CUP, Cambridge 1990
5
For a classic critique of socialism as a collectivist and anti-libertarian ideology see
Ludwig von Mises, Socialism, Liberty Fund, Indianapolis 1981
6
Gary Cross, A Quest for Time. The Reduction of Work in Britain and France, 18401940, University of California Press, Berkeley 1989
7
On Kautsky see Dick Geary, Karl Kautsky, Manchester UP 1987. On the wider debate
wee H. Tudor and J.M.Tudor (eds) Marxism and Social Democracy. The Revisionist
Debate 1896-1898, CUP 1988.
8
On the German Social democratic arty see Susanne Miller and Potthoff, Heinrich A
History of German Social Democracy. From 1848 to the present. Berg Publishers,
Leamington Spa 1986. On Sweden see Steven Koblic (ed.), Sweden’s Developmentfrom Poverty to Affluence 1750-1970, trans. by Joanne Johnson, University of
Minnesota Press, Minneapolis 1975. On Britain see Robert Skidelsky, Politicians andthe Slump. The Labour Government of 1929-1931, Macmillan, London 1967 and Ben
Pimlott, Labour and the Left in the 1930s, CUP, Cambridge 1977. On France see JulianJackson, The Popular Front in France. Defending Democracy, 1934-38, CUP,
Cambridge 1988.
9
Erik Hansen, ‘Hendrik de Man and the Theoretical Foundations of Economic
Planning: the Belgian Experience, 1933-1940’, European Studies Review, Vol.8, No.2,
April 197817