I.

Introduction

Socialism, concept and party-based political movement, originally based in the organized working class, generally antagonistic towards capitalism. While the final aim of socialists was a communist or classless society (see Communism), they increasingly concentrated on social reforms within capitalism. As the movement developed, the concept itself acquired different meanings in different times and places.

The term began to be used in the first half of the 19th century by radical intellectuals who considered themselves to be the true heirs to the Enlightenment. The principal early theorists were Robert Owen, Claude Henri de Saint-Simon, and Charles Fourier. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels later dubbed them “utopian socialists”, regarding them as the forerunners of their own conception of “scientific socialism”. The term “utopian socialism” came to designate those thinkers who expressed discontent with the social and economic institutions that arose out of the triumphant bourgeois order, but were unable to provide a theoretical explanation of its operations (see Economics). Inevitably, the utopian socialists appeared in history as if their tasks had been to pave the way for their modern socialist successors, hence the terminology often employed: early socialism, proto-socialism, Frühsozialismus, pre-Marxian socialists, and so on.

II.

Early Socialism

Like their followers and successors, the utopian socialists objected to capitalism on ethical and practical grounds. Capitalism, they claimed, was unjust: it exploited workers, degraded them, transformed them into beasts or machines, and enabled the rich to get richer while the workers faced misery. They also maintained that capitalism was an inefficient and irrational mechanism for the development of society’s productive forces. It underwent cyclical crises caused by overproduction or under-consumption, did not provide work for all, allowing human resources to be unused or under-utilized, and produced luxuries instead of necessities.

At this early stage socialism could be seen as a reaction against the alleged emphasis of liberalism on individual achievements and private rights at the expense of collective welfare. Nevertheless, socialism was also a direct descendant of liberalism. In common with liberals, socialists were committed to the idea of progress and the abolition of aristocratic privileges; unlike them they denounced liberalism as a façade behind which capitalist greed could flourish unimpeded.

Nevertheless, the early socialists did more than set out utopian plans. They were the first to assemble a critique of industrialization from the perspective of modernity rather than from a longing for the society of yesterday. Industrial society, they claimed, was here to stay and could, if regulated according to certain principles, be a true civilization, that is a system of artificial (in the sense of non-natural or man-made) rules for associated civil life. They recognized that there was something deeply unjust in contemporary society: the existence of a new type of poverty amid considerable wealth, the ever-increasing isolation of individuals, and the unceasing and heartless competition prevailing among them. However, such moral outrage at poverty, individualism, and competition was not the prerogative of socialists. It was embraced with equal or even greater energy by writers and thinkers as diverse as Honoré de Balzac, Thomas Carlyle, and Benjamin Disraeli. What distinguished the early socialists from these and other conservative or “reactionary” thinkers, or from anarchist radicals who harked back to the primitive communism of idyllic agrarian society, was an optimistic and positive view of industrialization. The question was not to return to a pre-industrial order, or seek to protect and alleviate the sufferings of the “losers” thrown onto the scrap heap by economic progress. The point was to understand the need for a new organization of society.

III.

Industrialization and Marxist Socialism

With Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, socialism acquired a theory of history and a theory of exploitation. Marxism held that capitalism was the result of a historical process characterized by a continual conflict between classes. History proceeded through stages. Each stage consisted of a specific economic system to which corresponded a particular system of power and hence a specific ruling class. The capitalist stage was not everlasting, they claimed, but a temporary historical phenomenon bound to die. By creating a large class of propertyless workers, capitalism sowed the seeds of its own demise. It would eventually be succeeded by a communist society.

Though superior to the socio-economic systems that preceded it, the present capitalist system, Marx and Engels argued, was unfair. The relations between entrepreneurs (capitalists) and the proletariat (the workers) appeared as a contract between equal parties, since there is no compulsion to sell one’s labour. The workers sold their labour and received wages in return. In reality this contract, they claimed, disguised a profound inequality since the capitalists “cheated” the workers by appropriating far more than they paid out in wages and other necessary production costs. This appropriation, which they called “surplus-value”, gave the owners of capital great wealth and control over the economic development of society. They thus appropriated not simply wealth but also power.

Marx and his followers regarded the working class as fundamentally homogeneous. All workers were united “in essence”. They had, as the concluding remarks of Marx’s and Engels’ 1848 Communist Manifesto put it, “nothing to lose but their chains”. Their common aim was to try to improve their conditions of life under capitalism, struggle against the existing social order, and overcome it by bringing about a new stage of history in which there could be real equality. Consequently, workers were urged to organize themselves into political parties and trade unions, and reject any attempt to divide them. Socialists disregarded other differences among workers, be they of religion, ethnicity, nationality, and gender. All these, they argued, played into the hands of the established powers, for a divided working class was the surest way to ensure the continuation of capitalist rule. In practice, of course, such differences could hardly be ignored and socialists were constantly having to make adjustments to their doctrine in order to remain in touch with the working class.

In 1864 Marx and Engels, in co-operation with British and exiled continental labour leaders, founded the International Workingmen’s Association, generally known as the First International. It was a largely ineffectual committee split between British reformists, the more radical continentals, and various anarchist groups. Marx moved its headquarters to New York to remove the anarchists. It was eventually wound up in 1876.

By the end of the 19th century Marxist socialism had become the leading ideology of all working-class parties in industrial countries, with the exception of the labour movements in the Anglo-Saxon countries, where it never established itself.

The transformation of socialism from a doctrine held by a relatively small number of intellectuals and activists into the ideology of the new mass working-class parties coincided with the industrialization of Europe and the growth of the proletariat between 1870 and 1890. Most European socialist or social democratic (the terms were interchangeable) parties were created in those years and, in 1889, their representatives met in Paris to celebrate the centenary of the French Revolution, and form a new association, the Second International, to replace the First. While each party was centralized and nationally- based, the International was a loosely organized confederation, upholding a form of Marxism popularized by Engels, August Bebel, the leader of the German Social Democratic Party (SPD), and Karl Kautsky, its chief theorist. Following Marx, they held that capitalist relations would eliminate small producers until only two antagonistic classes, capitalists and workers, would face each other. A major economic crisis would eventually open the way to socialism and the common ownership of the means of production.

What gave the socialist movement its winning edge over other rival currents of thought within the working class movement (such as anarchism) was that it had a better organization and a more realistic approach to political strategy. Socialism appeared to be better adapted than its rivals to the mode of organization of the working class into ever larger units of production. Huge factories and plants gave those employed in them a feeling of solidarity and a common resentment against their bosses which was less likely to develop in small workshops. Socialism, unlike millenarian movements, looked optimistically towards the future, though little more definite was said about it other than vague generalities about the end of class society and the withering away of the State. Only after the Russian Revolution would it be possible to point to a model of “actually existing” socialism.

By the beginning of the 20th century, socialist parties, in alliance with the trade unions, fought for a minimum programme of reforms to be obtained in the short or medium term while maintaining that their final goal remained the elimination of capitalism and the birth of a socialist society. This two-stage conception was enshrined in the manifesto of the Second International and in the programme of the most important and successful socialist party of the time, the German SPD (founded in 1875). This programme, approved at Erfurt in 1890, and drafted by Karl Kautsky and Eduard Bernstein, provided a summary of Marxist theories of historical change and exploitation, indicated the final goal, namely communism, and established a list of “minimum” demands that could be implemented within capitalism. These included major political reforms, such as universal suffrage, equal rights for women, a social protection system of national insurance, pensions, a universal medical service, the regulation of the labour market aimed at introducing the eight-hour working day, and the full legalization and recognition of trade unions.

The prestige of social democracy in Germany meant that its internal theoretical disputes would be a matter for debate throughout European socialism just as, years later, the internal vicissitudes of the Bolsheviks would have a correspondingly wide impact on the rest of the international communist movement. The orthodox Marxist position represented by Karl Kautsky came to be challenged by Eduard Bernstein in a series of articles published in the late 1890s. Bernstein’s position was that capitalism had reached a new stage not foreseen by Marx and had developed a structure capable of avoiding crises. The advent of parliamentary democracy, he claimed, enabled the working class to struggle in conditions of legality; power could thus be achieved peacefully within the existing State. Though Bernstein and his supporters were in a minority virtually everywhere, his “revisionist” views came eventually to dominate the social democratic and socialist parties of Western Europe after 1945.

IV.

Socialism in the Early 20th Century

The hegemonic role of the German SPD in the European socialist movement at the turn of the century was due to a combination of factors: the prestige and importance of Germany, the prestige of its intellectuals, its superb organization, and above all its electoral strength and the weakness of socialist parties in countries of comparable importance such as France and the United Kingdom. In 1890, when the German Reichstag (Parliament) desisted from renewing laws restricting the activities of the SPD, the party became, in percentage terms, the largest in Germany. By 1912, in spite of an unfavourable electoral system, it had also become the first party in the Reichstag with 110 seats. By 1914 it had 1 million members.

Before 1914 socialists assumed that all their demands could be achieved peacefully in democratic countries, and that violence might be necessary where despotism prevailed (as in Tsarist Russia). They all ruled out participation in “bourgeois” governments. The majority assumed that their task was to build up the movement until the eventual collapse of capitalism would enable socialism to be established. Some, such as Rosa Luxemburg, impatient with this wait-and-see attitude, advocated the use of the mass general strike as a revolutionary weapon to be deployed when required.

Though the German SPD provided the main organizational and ideological model for other socialist parties, its influence was less pronounced in southern Europe where French influence was more significant. The French socialists, however, could not offer a model to rival the SPD in spite of the importance and prestige of the French revolutionary tradition. It was ideologically weak and organizationally divided. The painful and difficult revival of working-class activity in France after the crushing of the Paris Commune in 1871, and the persecutions that followed, failed to help the socialist movement to cohere and develop. By 1911 France had only 1 million organized workers, while the British and German trade unions each had around 3 million members.

Strong trade unions, however, did not necessarily entail strong socialist parties. The powerful British trade unions created a separate Labour Party only in 1900, well after the rest of Europe—and not until 1918 did the Labour Party give itself a socialist goal enshrined in Clause IV of its constitution. Until 1900 the British trade unions preferred to influence the Liberal Party in order to secure their basic rights. Trade unions in the United States too were unable or unwilling to form a separate party of any significance. The wave of immigrants seeking work there, and the widespread persecution the unions were subjected to, made it difficult to do more than lobby the existing political parties.

On the eve of World War I all socialist parties were united in at least one aim—the prevention of the impending war. When this did erupt, however, the two most important socialist parties of the time, the French and the German, opted to support their own governments. Many saw this as a betrayal. In reality, this “social patriotism”, as it was dubbed by its opponents, was not just a form of opportunism (for the war was, at least initially, popular among the workers). In both France and Germany, socialists had acquired a stake in the existing social order; universal or near-universal male suffrage had given them some degree of representation in parliament, and with this some negotiating strength to secure civil rights and social reforms. Where socialists had made little or no gains, or were banned and persecuted, as in Russia, there was no ground for patriotism.

The war thus effectively broke up the limited unity that had kept together Europe’s socialists. The Russian Revolution of 1917 was a further body blow against socialist unity. It separated the supporters of the Bolsheviks, led by Lenin, from reformist social democrats, most of whom had backed their national governments during the war. Most communist parties were formed in the years immediately following World War I by Lenin’s supporters within the socialist parties. In all instances, however, throughout the years leading to World War II, the socialist parties and not the communists remained the dominant current in both the European labour movement and in the electorate as a whole, under a variety of names: the Labour Party in Britain, the Netherlands, and Norway; the SPD in Germany; the Social Democratic Labour Party in Sweden; the Socialist Party in France and Italy; the Socialist Workers’ Party in Spain; and the Workers’ Party in Belgium. In the Soviet Union and, later, in the communist countries which emerged after World War II, the term socialism indicated a transitional phase between capitalism and communism, the phase Lenin had called the “dictatorship of the proletariat”. Communists remained committed to a centralized and authoritarian view of socialism whereby all the main decisions would be taken by the Communist Party as the unelected representative of the working class. Communists everywhere owed their primary allegiance to the Soviet Union and followed uncritically all the twists and turns of Soviet policy. Socialists rejected such concepts and accepted all the basic rules of liberal democracy: free elections, civil rights, political pluralism, and the sovereignty of parliament. The rivalry between socialists and communists was interrupted only occasionally, as in the mid-1930s, in order to join forces against fascism. After World War II Soviet control over the more powerful communist parties, such as the Italian, became less pronounced, and, in such cases, the distinction between socialism and communism became less apparent.

Between the wars socialists were able to form governments, usually in coalition with or supported by other parties. They were thus able to be in power, albeit intermittently, in the 1920s in Britain and Germany, and in the 1930s in Belgium, France, and Spain. In Sweden, where social democrats have been more successful than elsewhere, they governed without interruption from 1932 to 1976. The first experiences of government of socialist parties ended in failure. In Spain the Popular Front government (1936-1939), a coalition of left-liberals and socialists, supported by the communists, provoked a fierce reaction from clerical and military circles led by General Francisco Franco. The ensuing Spanish Civil War was concluded with Franco’s victory and the establishment of a dictatorship that lasted until 1975.

In France a similar popular-front government, elected in 1936, was more fortunate. It introduced significant social reforms but was effectively ousted from power after less than a year. In Germany, after the military defeat of 1918, the SPD was able to form a government and introduced significant social legislation, including the eight-hour day, the promotion of full employment, unemployment legislation, social insurance, housing reform, universal suffrage, civil rights, and a constituent assembly—in other words, they fulfilled the “minimum” programme enshrined, some 30 years before, at Erfurt. However the SPD was not able to consolidate these gains and remained out of power for most of the 1920s. By the beginning of the 1930s the consequences of the Wall Street Crash had brought about such an increase in unemployment and a wider social discontent that the road was opened not to a socialist revolution in Germany, as the communists had hoped, but to the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (see National Socialism).

The 1930s were in fact grim years for the European socialist parties and for democracy in general. When World War II broke out in 1939 the only European countries that could still be deemed democratic were Belgium, Britain, Denmark, Finland, France, Iceland, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, and Switzerland . Everywhere else authoritarian regimes of the right and, in the Soviet Union, of the left, held sway.

World War II offered a new chance to European social democracy. Although the main resistance in the territories occupied by Nazi Germany and its allies tended to be led by the communists, the socialist parties emerged from the war as the main party of the left almost everywhere. In Western Europe only in Italy, France, and Finland were the communists stronger. In Eastern Europe, under Soviet influence and/or occupation, the socialists amalgamated with the communists, usually against their will, and, in effect, became banned.

V.

The Post-War Years

After 1945 West European socialists, while remaining formally committed to socialism as an “end state”, that is a society where wealth would be held in common, turned to a conception of socialism “as a process”—the position which had been advanced by Eduard Bernstein at the end of the 19th century. In practice, this meant that, while their most committed supporters held on to the idea of a final goal, socialist parties, now frequently in government, concentrated on social and economic reforms under capitalism. Though these varied from country to country, socialist reforms included, first of all, the introduction of a comprehensive welfare system which, in the formulation borrowed from the British liberal reformer William Beveridge, would protect all citizens “from the cradle to the grave”, and secondly, the attainment of full employment using techniques of macroeconomic management developed by another radical liberal, John Maynard Keynes.

In Britain these reforms were the main achievements credited to the first post-war Labour governments (1945-1951) led by Clement Attlee. Their most significant and popular policy was the creation of the National Health Service, funded out of taxation. Elsewhere in Europe, socialists, thanks to their enhanced electoral weight, achieved some of their aims either by being in government with other parties or by being able to put effective pressure on centrist governments. It is mainly after 1945 that socialism became associated with the management of the economy by the State and with the expansion of the public sector through nationalization. While socialist activists envisaged state ownership as a first step towards the abolition of capitalism, in general, nationalizations had more practical aims, such as rescuing weak or inefficient capitalist enterprises, protecting employment, improving working conditions, or controlling public utilities. While nationalizations have been commonly associated with socialism, they were often resorted to by governments led by non-socialist parties, such as in France (1945-1947), Austria (1945-1947), and Italy (1945-1947 and in the 1960s). Conversely, a successful socialist government like the Swedish Social Democratic Labour Party (1932-1976, 1982-1991, 1994- ) did not extend state ownership and opted instead for controlling the labour market and maintaining full employment while providing a system of “fair wages” known as the “solidaristic wage policy”. This consisted in having the trade unions and the employers jointly determining what a fair wage might be in a range of occupations. Firms unable to pay such wages would have to improve their efficiency or go out of business. The resulting unemployment would be rapidly absorbed by well-run training schemes. Clearly, abolishing capitalism was no longer regarded by Swedish socialists as a realistic aim. They preferred to concentrate on a regulation of capitalism to meet working-class needs as represented by the trade unions. Such a policy, at least until the 1980s, far from weakening Swedish capitalism, appeared to strengthen it. Sweden for long remained one of the richest and least unequal societies in the Western world.

Outside the Scandinavian countries, the 1950s turned out to be difficult years for European socialists. They were out of power almost everywhere. In Eastern Europe they were banned by communist regimes, and in Portugal and Spain by right-wing dictatorships. In Britain the Conservative Party was in power for 13 consecutive years following Labour’s 1951 electoral defeat. In Italy and Germany, Christian Democracy dominated the political scene, while in France Charles de Gaulle and his conservative supporters were the beneficiaries of the political crisis caused by the Algerian War of Independence; having taken power in 1958 the Gaullists held on to it until 1981.

The remarkable expansion of capitalism during the 1950s and 1960s put an end to the assumption that under capitalism the working class would be constantly impoverished or that the economy would stagnate. West European socialist parties began to discard Marxism openly (something they had already done in practice), accepted the mixed economy, loosened their links with the trade unions, and abandoned the idea of an ever expanding nationalized sector. While a significant percentage of the working class continued to vote for the parties of the centre and of the right, socialist parties increasingly sought to attract middle-class centrist voters. To do so they discarded many of the symbols and rhetoric of their past, such as the red flag or the designation of members as comrades, which they shared, embarrassingly, with communists. This late 1950s revisionism proclaimed the new goals of socialism to be wealth redistribution according to principles of social justice and equality. Ideas such as these were popularized in Britain by Anthony Crosland (The Future of Socialism, 1956) and enshrined by the German SPD in their Bad Godesberg programme of 1959. All social democrats assumed that continuous economic growth would sustain a thriving public sector, assure full employment, and fund a burgeoning welfare state. These assumptions were often shared by Conservative and Christian Democratic parties, and they corresponded so closely to the actual development of European societies that the period between 1945 and 1973 has sometimes been referred to as the era of “social democratic consensus”. Significantly, it coincided with a golden age of capitalism. The wealth generated by economic growth funded the welfare state. Not only was the development of capitalism not incompatible with the reforms advocated by socialists, but it seemed to make such reforms possible. Communist countries, at least in the 1950s, grew rapidly too, but their growth was mainly quantitative: the quality of consumer goods they produced was always inferior to those of advanced capitalist societies.

By the 1960s the socialists began to return to power. The victory of the Labour Party in Britain under Harold Wilson in the 1964 elections brought to an end 13 years of conservative rule. In the following six years, Wilson’s government attempted, not always successfully, to establish some kind of management of the economy in cooperation with the trade unions and the employers. Of greater long-term significance was civil liberties legislation: capital punishment was abolished, homosexuality and abortion were legalized, and laws against discrimination on ground of race and gender were promulgated.

In West Germany, the SPD returned to power in 1966, and, first with Willy Brandt, later with Helmut Schmidt, ruled for 15 years, at first in coalition with the Christian Democrats, then, after 1969, with the Liberals. They concentrated on economic development and new forms of industrial democracy, known as Mitbestimmung or co-determination. They also initiated a policy of rapprochement with East Germany and the Soviet Union known as Ostpolitik.

VI.

The 1970s and the “Crisis of Capitalism”

The sharp increase in petroleum prices in 1973 was the trigger that led to widespread inflation in the economically advanced world while growth rates faltered. At first this favoured the socialist parties because it was generally assumed that in order to restore growth, employers and governments would have to reach some understanding with the trade unions and that a socialist government would be in a better position to act as a mediator. Further evidence that the general conjuncture of the mid-1970s favoured the left was provided by the collapse of the three remaining right-wing dictatorships of southern Europe—Portugal, Spain, and Greece (where there had been a military takeover in 1967). As democracy became consolidated the socialists were able to elbow out their communist rivals, become the leading party of the left and achieve political power.

The idea of a crisis of capitalism reappeared in political discourse. A growing ecological consciousness (see Ecology), though not necessarily aligned with socialism, implied that unchecked capitalist growth was inimical to the environment. Feminism challenged conventional conservative morality. US prestige had been weakened by the Vietnam War, concluded in 1975 with the victory of communist North Vietnam, and by the Watergate scandal that led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon.

VII.

The Turning Tide of the 1980s

By the late 1970s and early 1980s, however, the tide, at least in northern Europe, particularly in Britain and Germany, was turning against the left. Rising unemployment had weakened the trade unions and, by increasing poverty and the problems associated with it, made social protection via the welfare system far more costly than it had been in the days of full employment. To maintain welfare standards while unemployment increased required a high level of taxation to be extracted from those still in employment. This proved unpopular. Conservative parties detached themselves from the political consensus and argued that it was necessary to “roll back the State”, reduce public spending, and privatize state-owned companies. Socialists were increasingly on the defensive. They were accused of being “statist”, bureaucratic, and spendthrift. By 1980 the size of the factory-based proletariat was in decline throughout Europe. Increases in productivity were no longer paralleled by the creation of new jobs. On the contrary, they enabled increased production to be achieved at the expense of employment while redundant workers were no longer absorbed in expanding sectors. Though the socialists never depended exclusively on the working class for their electoral victories—indeed, a significant proportion of workers always voted for Conservative and Christian Democratic parties—the shrinking of the traditional working class in the 1970s and 1980s further weakened the appeal of the socialists. Working-class identity became far less pronounced in this period while the divisions between workers deepened. The prosperity of skilled workers employed in successful private enterprises contrasted sharply with a growing pool of casual and unskilled labour—many of whom were immigrant workers or women employed part-time. To regard the working class as a “universal class” which prefigured a post-capitalist future seemed increasingly anachronistic. The growing economic interdependence that rapidly developed in the 1970s and 1980s, and was often referred to as globalization, meant that traditional macroeconomic Keynesian policies had become less effective. Domestic reflation (pumping money into the economy to achieve an increase in demand) brought about balance of payments problems (since some of the demand was for goods produced abroad) and inflationary pressures. Socialist governments discovered this to their cost in Britain in the 1970s and in France in the 1980s.

In Britain and Germany the socialist parties lost elections in, respectively, 1979 and 1981. They remained out of power until the second half of the 1990s. Matters changed significantly, however, in France and in Italy. In both countries the left, instead of being dominated by socialists as in the rest of Western Europe, was deeply divided between socialists and communists. This had helped centrist parties (the Gaullists in France and the Christian Democrats in Italy) to remain in power continuously until 1981 (France) and 1994 (Italy). In France, communists and socialists had begun to patch up their differences in the 1960s but the rapprochement was long and tortuous. It paid off in 1981 when the socialist leader François Mitterrand was elected president, and a government dominated by the socialists, and which included the communists, was formed. No such entente was reached in Italy where the socialists remained the junior partner in a succession of Christian Democratic governments. It was only after the collapse of the governing parties in 1991-1992, in the wake of sensational corruption scandals, that a reconstituted communist party, now known as the Left Democrats, could achieve power at the head of a heterogeneous coalition from 1996 to 2001, when it lost power to a new right-wing government led by the media magnate Silvio Berlusconi.

In international affairs most socialist parties sided with the West during the Cold War, even though important minorities within each party sought a middle way between capitalist democracy and Soviet communism, denounced US foreign policy, and voiced their solidarity with the developing world. On the whole socialist parties in power followed a bipartisan foreign policy.

VIII.

Socialism Across the World

Strong socialist or Labour parties have remained substantially confined to Europe or to countries whose population is or was mainly of European extraction, such as Australia, New Zealand, and Israel. The United States, which has never had a significant socialist party, is the main exception to this rule—something that has often puzzled socialist theorists who wrongly assumed that industrialization would always be associated with a strong socialist movement. The Social Democratic Party in Japan was out of power from the end of World War II to 1993 when it led, albeit briefly, a governing coalition. In Indonesia, after gaining independence from the Netherlands, there was a relatively strong left that included both socialists and communists. The 1965 anti-communist military takeover led by Suharto equated socialists with communists and persecuted both in equal measure, in effect annihilating them. No socialist tradition remained to take advantage of the return to democracy in the 1990s. In Latin America only Chile produced a significant socialist party, strong enough to survive underground after the military takeover of 1973 and be elected to power after the end of the dictatorship. In the 1990s Brazil, after years of military dominance, saw the new social democratic party of Fernando Henrique Cardos win the presidential election, but as his administration veered between neo-liberalism and social reforms, his social-democratic credentials were in dispute. His more radical successor, Luis Inacio Lula da Silva, generally known as Lula, won the presidential elections in 2002 at the head of a recently created Workers’ Party. Lula himself was a trade union leader and his new party has considerable support from organized labour. This is not a necessary sign of leftism, especially in Latin America where the most important political movement supported by the trade unions was the right-wing populist party founded in Argentina by Juan Perón, whose influence outlasted its creator.

Elsewhere socialism was usually a local variant of communism, hence the frequent references to African socialism or Arab socialism. In Asia and much of Africa, socialism was an ideology advocating modernization by the State, rather than an outright anti-capitalist doctrine. Socialist ideas, though they seldom led to the formation of significant separate parties on the West European pattern, greatly influenced independence and anti-colonial movements, notably the National Congress Party in India, the African National Congress in South Africa, and post-colonial regimes such as those of Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. When in power, African socialist parties concentrated on nation-building and social reform often at the expense of democratic rule and civil rights. The ideas of social democracy also influenced many parties outside Europe, particularly, though not exclusively, those in the economically advanced parts of South East Asia since the economic crisis that has affected the area in the late 1990s. An appeal to ill-defined “Asian values” was made to provide a justification for proposing forms of social control over markets that are reminiscent of social democracy. Notable examples of Asian parties and leaders which might be defined as social democrat have been Kim Dae-jung, elected president of South Korea in 1998, and Chen Shui-bian, the leader of the Progressive People’s Party of Taiwan, elected president in 2000.

IX.

Socialism After the Collapse of Communism

The collapse of communism in the Soviet Union and in Eastern and Central Europe, though it led to the transformation of many of the former communist parties into socialist parties, brought no comfort to the left in Western Europe. The crisis of communist command economies was generally seen as further evidence that the spontaneous decisions of millions of individual consumers through the market mechanism was better at allocating resources than any form of state interference. Neo-liberal ideologies thus gained ground everywhere. These too, however, proved unpopular. European electorates became increasingly concerned that austerity programmes would seriously impair public services, healthcare (free in virtually the whole of Europe), and education. Electoral successes of the left in Europe may be seen as a conscious or unconscious recognition by a majority of voters of the necessity of some kind of renegotiation with a new kind of capitalism that was more assertive, more powerful, and more global; and, as a tacit acknowledgement, that it may be better to entrust such renegotiation to political forces that, historically speaking, have always been hostile to the ideology of the untrammelled market.

Having abandoned a considerable part of their previous ideological commitments, socialist parties returned to power in unprecedented number. As the millennium came to a close they were in power in almost all member states of the European Union (EU), including the four largest countries: Britain, France, Germany, and Italy. Commentators who had declared socialism dead in the wake of the collapse of communism had to revise their views and heralded the beginning of a new socialism. Generalizing on the results of elections is often to become a hostage to fortune. By the beginning of the millennium the message was mixed. In 2001 Tony Blair, the leader of the British Labour Party, who had gone further than his continental colleagues in abandoning the more radical aspects of the socialist tradition, was confirmed prime minister with almost the same large parliamentary majority he had achieved in 1997. In 2002 Gerhard Schröder became the SPD Chancellor of Germany for the second consecutive time, though with a narrow margin. A similar success was achieved by social democrats in Sweden. The right, however, won in Italy (2001), France (2002), and the Netherlands (2002 and 2003), and had previously lost power in Spain, Denmark, and Norway. More worrying was the realization that the fastest growing parties in Europe were right-wing populist formations able to attract the vote of a section of the electorate concerned about growing unemployment and crime, and willing to attribute the blame to immigrant communities and ethnic minorities.

Differences between various parties and leaders of the left are often emphasized by the media. In reality, comparisons are difficult. Political parties are constrained by national traditions, economic circumstances, and, above all, by the institutional system. Britain, for instance, is, compared to federal Germany, a highly centralized state. But Britain has no constitution to bind its prime minister, and the electoral system usually produces a clear majority for the winning party, while elsewhere in Europe, coalitions are the norm. As a consequence, a British Labour government is far freer to implement its programme than any of its continental counterparts.

Important policy differences have always divided the left throughout the world, even in Western Europe, in spite of a common past and inherited traditions. Some socialist parties have been strongly pro-US, while others kept themselves and their countries out of the Atlantic alliance; some were enthusiastic pro-European, while others remained sceptical about the benefits of an integrated Europe. Nevertheless, a remarkable convergence of the European left has occurred over the past 15 years under a new moderate leadership advocating broadly centrist policies known in Britain as the “Third Way”, la Gauche plurielle in France, Neue Mitte in Germany, and the Polder Model in the Netherlands. The new line is that inflation is more dangerous than unemployment and that socialists should be pro-business. If one looks beyond the vicissitudes of electoral politics and the constant passages from opposition to government and vice versa, there is much to support the view that socialism, as it had evolved in the course of the 20th century, is, if not dead, at least moribund. Socialism—as represented by the socialist parties—had not only lost its original anti-capitalist outlook but is also coming to terms, albeit painfully, with accepting that, in the age of globalization, capitalism could not be adequately controlled, let alone abolished in individual countries.

X.

The 21st Century

Defining socialism at the beginning of the 21st century presents numerous problems. Most socialist parties have conducted a process of programmatic renewal whose contours are still unclear. Nevertheless, it is possible to catalogue some of the features that define European socialism as it faces the challenges of the 21st century: (1) recognizing that the domestic regulation of capitalist activities must be matched by a corresponding development of supranational forms of regulation (the EU, once contested by most socialists, is seen as providing a terrain for controlling the new interdependent economies); (2) creating a European “social space” as a harbinger of a harmonized European welfare state; (3) strengthening consumer and citizen power to countervail that of large enterprises and of the public sector; (4) adopting an agenda aimed at improving the position of women in society to shed the excessively male-centred image and practice of traditional socialism, and to enrich its long-standing commitment towards equality; (5) uncovering a strategy aimed at securing economic growth and increasing employment without damaging the environment; (6) organizing a world order aimed at reducing the gap between the advanced capitalist countries and those of the developing world.

This list is by no means exhaustive. Nevertheless, it highlights elements of continuity with traditional socialism: a pessimistic view of what the capitalist economy would be able to achieve if allowed to develop without constraints, and optimism regarding the possibility that a politically organized society would be able to progress consciously towards a more desirable state of affairs aimed at alleviating human distress.

The difficulty facing those who still call themselves socialists is that, while they need capitalism and the economic growth and prosperity that it can generate, capitalism does not need them. Capitalist societies can be organized in an economically sustainable way by offering only minimal protection to some marginal groups, such as in the US, or by devolving welfare activities to organizations of civil society such as large firms, families, and social groups, such as in Japan. These alternative models, particularly the US one, have a remarkable capacity to use each crisis to re-emerge greatly strengthened. Socialist leaders and followers are increasingly reluctant to identify themselves with the term socialism—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. It is as if they had accepted the definition of socialism given by its enemies—a definition that disparages socialism for its alleged illiberality, statism, anti-individualism, and dogmatism, and for rewarding inefficiency and mortifying initiative. This loss of confidence regardless of electoral successes is noticeable. One can lose elections and live on to fight and win another day. But to abandon control of one’s identity, of one’s history, and of one’s tradition may prove to be the final coup de grace for socialism.