SOCIALISM.

Socialism is a generic term attributed to movements, persons, and parties committed to some forms of nonmarket ways of allocating resources. The definition of socialism itself has been a terrain keenly contested by socialists themselves—from social democrats to communists. Since key aspects of socialism have constantly undergone adaptation and change by the political parties that have been its main proponents, it is preferable to examine how these parties have evolved historically and politically rather than to attempt to provide a watertight definition of the concept.

ORIGINS

The doctrine emerged in the course of the nineteenth century claiming some continuity with the republican traditions of the French Revolution and the democratic ethos of equality and human rights. Socialists distinguished themselves from anarchists by insisting that the abolition of the state could not be the immediate objective of the movement and by accepting the necessity of intermediate objectives within capitalism. By the end of the century, throughout Europe, the majority of workers organized in trade unions regarded themselves as committed to the long-term of goal of socialism understood as an "end state" following the abolition of capitalism and of the private property of the means of producing wealth.

By 1914 socialist parties—almost all inspired by some variant of Marxism—had succeeded in obtaining considerable electoral support in much of western Europe, particularly in the Nordic countries, where Socialists had polled 29 percent in Denmark (1913), 47 percent in Finland (1916), 36 percent in Sweden (1914), and 32 percent in Norway (1915). They were also strong in German-speaking Europe, with 35 percent in Germany (1912) and 25 percent in Austria. In Belgium the Socialist Party had reached 30 percent, thanks largely to the Francophone industrial belt. In France and Italy the highly factionalized socialist movement had succeeded in obtaining the support of almost 20 percent of the electorate. Great Britain, though one of the most advanced industrial countries in Europe with a large working class, constituted a special case, since the Labour Party before 1914 was neither electorally significant nor Marxist.

Continental socialist parties based their outlook on some variant of the Erfurt Program jointly drafted by Karl Kautsky and Eduard Bernstein and adopted by the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) in 1891. This distinguished the long-term aim of the movement—the abolition of capitalism—from objectives that could be achieved under capitalism, such as universal suffrage, social reforms, and the eight-hour day.

Socialists assumed that the working class, organized by the trade unions and the Socialist or Social Democratic Party (the names were then interchangeable), would be the central agency that could achieve both the long-term and the immediate aims of the movement. The development of capitalism itself would bring about the circumstances for a rapid transition toward socialism. The form of this transition was uncertain and debated at length within the movement. Some, such as the French Socialist leader Jules Guesde (1845–1922), thought that it would require a revolutionary upheaval along the pattern of the French Revolution, others, such as Rosa Luxemburg (1870–1919), assumed that a mass general strike would paralyze society and force the bourgeoisie to abdicate power, and others yet—such as the German Social Democratic theorist Eduard Bernstein (1850–1932) and, less forcefully, Guesde's French rival Jean Jaurès (1859–1914)—believed that universal suffrage would provide the working class with the peaceful means of gaining a parliamentary majority and legislating socialism into existence. Bernstein, in particular, since the 1890s, suggested that the party should abandon the prospect of a final goal of socialism and dedicate itself to incremental reforms.

Socialism, however, was a complex mélange of ideas and conceptions reflecting the social and political structure of the countries within which it was operating. In countries where political democracy was not extant—such as the Russian Empire—a more combative and insurrectionist ethos prevailed. In others, such as Germany, Socialists built up parallel organizations, from choral societies to public libraries, that formed a powerful alternative network.

The outbreak of the First World War found the majority of socialist parties patriotically rallying round their national state, notably in France and Germany. In Italy, however, only a small minority, led by Benito Mussolini (1883–1945), then a Socialist, supported the war. In Russia all the factions of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party, from the Mensheviks to the Bolsheviks, refused to approve the war credits.

In spite of their original pacifist position most European Socialists supported the war because it was difficult for any mass organization to resist pressure from their own supporters, who were, at least initially, swept up in the general enthusiasm for what had seemed a short conflict.

The October Revolution of 1917 and the birth of the modern communist movement further exacerbated—and made final—the split in the socialist movement. Under pressure from the newly formed Communist International—or Comintern (1919)—communist parties supportive of the Bolshevik Revolution were formed, usually, but not always, by seceding from the main Socialist Party. In all instances, however, socialist parties were able to hold on to the support of the majority of the left electorate. In France, for instance, the Communists who seceded at the Tours Congress (1920) captured a majority of the Section Française de l'Internationale Ouvrière (SFIO)—as the French Socialist Party was called—but had the support of only a fraction of the SFIO electorate.

THE INTERWAR YEARS

A wave of radicalism swept throughout Europe after 1918 without producing either new communist regimes or a major upsurge of support for socialist parties except in the Scandinavian countries and to a lesser extent in Britain, where the Labour Party supplanted the Liberal Party as the Conservatives' main opponents.

Such situations led most Socialists to reject their previous policy of noncollaboration with "bourgeois" parties. The British Labour Party formed its first government (1923) with the support of the Liberal Party, the French Socialists found themselves in de facto alliance with the Radicals, the Spanish with the Republicans, the Swedish with the Liberal Party (1917) and then with the Agrarian Party (1936), the Norwegians with the Farmers' Party (1935), and the Germans with the Center Party (among others).

Socialists did not just change their alliance strategy, they also saw the capitalist economy under a new light. The First World War had provided some parties, notably the French and the German, with some experience of government. After the war many Socialists recognized that, as a consequence of the growing role of the state during the war, traditional liberal economic policies were being challenged even by some on the right of the political spectrum who advocated a "corporatist" cooperation of the main social forces, especially the employers' associations and trade unions. Under the threat of working-class unrest, the interwar years witnessed a blossoming of employer-union pacts such as the Stinnes-Legien pact of 1918, which established in Germany a joint labor-management board for economic regulation; the albeit ineffectual "Whitley Councils" in Britain; the Matignon Accords of 1936 following the victory of the Popular Front in France; and the employers-employee pacts in the Nordic countries such as the Saltsjöbaden agreements in Sweden (1938) and the so-called Main Agreement in Norway (1935). Even the British trade unions, notoriously hostile to any corporatist approach, began, under the dominant influence of Ernest Bevin (1881–1951), to be systematically included in Royal Commissions and committees of inquiry alongside employers and government representatives.

That some sort of agreement between employers and trade unions was necessary had been first recognized in Germany by the SPD during the 1920s. What this pact amounted to was a "class compromise" whereby the labor movement "traded" growth and productivity in exchange for social reforms along the lines advocated by Rudolf Hilferding, the Social Democratic minister of finance in 1923 and 1928–1929, in a number of essays and speeches on the theory of "organized capitalism."

Such trends led to a further bout of confrontation between the mainstream socialist parties and the communist parties that, prompted by the Soviet Union, denounced the Socialists as "social traitors" (1928), a policy known as the "Third Period" of "class against class," hoping that the forthcoming economic crisis would bring about a final confrontation resulting in a communist revolution. Such policies further divided the Left just at a time when the threat of fascism accelerated—above all in Germany.

Sparked by the collapse of the New York stock exchange in 1929, the long-awaited crisis finally arrived, bringing about massive unemployment in Europe but no political dividends for either Socialists or Communists, since it accelerated the Nazi takeover. During the whole of the interwar period only two western European communist parties had developed a significant electoral base: the Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands (KPD) and the Parti Communiste Français (PCF). The advent of Nazism destroyed the KPD along with all the other parties. In France, however, the PCF, after the advent of Nazism, adopted a less sectarian position, abandoned the Third Period policies and, encouraged by Moscow, joined the Socialists in a pact. A similar understanding was reached in Spain. It was the birth of the Popular Front. In 1936 the Popular Front, led by the Socialists, obtained a significant electoral victory in both countries. The consequences, however, were far from positive in Spain, where the reformist policies of the Popular Front unclenched a counteroffensive by the military establishment, acting on behalf of landed and church interests. The ensuing bloody civil war resulted in the victory of Francisco Franco (1892–1975), whose authoritarian regime lasted until his death in 1975. In France the first Socialist government—led by Léon Blum (1872–1950) and supported by the Communists—although short-lived, established thanks to a wave of strikes the working week of forty hours, paid holidays, compulsory arbitration of labor disputes, and the nationalization of the Bank of France. Between 1922 and 1926 Blum had developed a conceptual distinction between the conquest of power and the exercise of power. The former was a revolutionary, though not necessarily violent, act that led to socialism. The second meant pursuing limited reformist goals without challenging existing property relations. Such a distinction was used in 1936 to explain and legitimize the new Popular Front government.

In spite of the relative success of many such reforms, most Socialists still conceived of socialism as a "model of society," that is, as a "final goal." There were exceptions, notably in Scandinavia and especially in Sweden. The Swedish Social Democrats (Socialdemokratiska Arbetarepartiet , or SAP), were able to combat unemployment more effectively than the German SPD and the British Labour Party. In so doing, between 1932 and 1938 they laid the foundation for what would become the modern Western European conception of social democracy after the Second World War: the compromise between labor and capital, with a welfare state and full employment.

Between the war and 1932 the SAP had repeatedly been in government, either in coalition with the Liberal Party (October 1917–March 1918) or as a minority government (March–October 1920, October 1921–April 1923, and October 1924–June 1926). Coalition with a bourgeois party had become acceptable on the grounds that Sweden had a politically backward bourgeoisie that could not be relied on to carry out the democratization of society. The Swedish Social Democrats did not put forward any plans for constitutional reform or for abolishing the monarchy and had dropped from their 1932 electoral manifesto all references to socialism and to socialization of the means of production. There were to be no major nationalizations. Instead the SAP established a successful "corporative" structure for permanent negotiations between employers, trade unions, and government on labor-market and social policies. In the 1930s the Swedish Social Democrats introduced employment-creation programs, a housing program to the benefit of large families, indexation of pensions, near-universal maternity benefits, paid holidays, and state loans to newly married couples. Similar policies were promulgated in Denmark and Norway, so that one could speak in broader terms of a Nordic model, harbinger of post–Second World War social democracy.

Less successful was the interwar experience of government of the British Labour Party. After 1923 its dependence on the parliamentary support of the Liberals made it impossible to contemplate the nationalization of the mines, railways, and electric power stations. Besides, it had no plans for dealing with unemployment. Defeated at the 1924 elections it was returned to power in 1929 to head another Liberal-supported minority government. The Labour leadership decided that economic responsibility entailed following the advice of the treasury (the "treasury view"). Faced with an increase in unemployment, the cabinet split. The resulting crisis led to the formation of a "National Government" dominated by the Conservatives but led by the former Labour prime minister, James Ramsay MacDonald (1866–1937). The Labour Party remained in opposition until 1940 during which time the ideas of John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946) on the causes of unemployment became influential within the Labour Party.

AFTER 1945

The Second World War provided European socialism with the chance of becoming a significant political force. In the aftermath of the conflict the Soviet model was extended to much of Eastern Europe but, in the democratic West, socialist parties became the main opposition to the Conservatives and Christian Democrats everywhere except in the Republic of Ireland and Switzerland. During the war the armed Resistance against the Nazis was dominated by the Communists, whose greater militancy and stronger organization proved far superior to that of the often-divided Socialists. Once the conflict was over, however, the Socialists turned out to be far more popular than the Communists (except in France and Italy)—a pattern that was repeated thirty years later, in the mid-1970s, when the dictatorships of southern Europe (Greece, Portugal, and Spain) collapsed, benefiting the Socialists rather than the Communists, even though the latter had a more important role in the Resistance.

Once the conflict was over, the socialist and social democratic parties were in power in virtually the whole of democratic Western Europe, though they shared power with other parties everywhere except in Britain, Sweden, and Norway, where they governed on their own. In Britain the Labour Party achieved a historic and unexpected victory in 1945. The Labour Party had prevailed because, unlike its Conservative opponents, it expressed the mood of the time: the egalitarian ethos of the war and the social solidarity enhanced by having to face a common enemy. The war enabled Labour to acquire a national-patriotic identity, something that Socialists had sought in vain before. The considerable social reforms that were promulgated in the successive five years, particularly the establishment of the National Health Service, offered noncommunist Socialists a powerful model of reform within capitalism, the welfare state. In one form or other the pursuit and development of this social model became the hallmark of the new variant of European socialism: social democracy.

Elsewhere socialism meant something different. In some Latin American countries, in parts of decolonized Africa, and in some Asian countries, notably India, socialism was seen as providing a model of state-led industrialization and modernization. In Eastern and central Europe socialism became subsumed by communism, and social development followed a pattern similar to that of the Soviet Union.

There is little doubt, however, that a centralized state was considered everywhere to be a useful instrument for the introduction of welfare socialism. The idea that reforms would have to be introduced from above could coexist perfectly well with the democratic rule that prescribed a prior electoral sanction. Once this was achieved, politicians were entitled to implement their program using all instruments provided by the state. Thus a statist (economic planning and control by the state) mentality suited social reformers exceptionally well, and the temptation of social engineering was seldom resisted, especially in countries where there was little upheaval and considerable continuity and where socialists could realistically aspire to government.

The development of mass democratic politics had led these parties to formulate appeals that included the whole people and were no longer directed toward the "working class" as a separate group. The concept of working class itself was dramatically enlarged. It now included all "working people" and thus also many members of the employed middle classes without whose support electoral victory would be problematic. Even before deindustrialization had started with the consequent diminution in the size of the working class, Socialists were aware that the support of a considerable section of the middle classes was mandatory.

A remarkable radicalization of middle-class youth occurred toward the end of the 1960s, particularly in France (May 1968) and Italy (the "hot autumn") in conjunction with a revival of working-class militancy—strikes were at their highest in Europe in the years 1960–1965. The consequences for socialist parties were minimal, except in France, where the Socialist Party was entirely reorganized under the leadership of François Mitterrand (1916–1996), whose alliance with the Communist Party paved the way for the Socialist victory of 1981 and the eventual marginalization of the Communists.

The larger communist parties of Western Europe, mainly the French and the Italian, followed, in their practical policies, an orientation not dissimilar to other Socialists, while demarcating themselves substantially in foreign policy by maintaining a close link with the Soviet Union. This link grew less strong in the following decades, particularly in the 1970s, when the failures of central planning in the USSR became increasingly apparent. Even within the Soviet bloc, notably in Czechoslovakia, some Communists propounded a vision of "communism with a human face" by removing the more salient authoritarian and undemocratic features of communism and operating a rapprochement with Western socialism. Though this experiment was terminated by the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 (condemned by the Italian Communist Party though not by the French), it was revived, paradoxically, in the USSR itself when Mikhail Gorbachev (b. 1931) became its leader in 1985 and started the process of renewal that would lead to the unintended dismantling of the USSR and the collapse of the communist bloc. Many of the ruling communist parties, notably in Hungary, Poland, and Romania, recycled themselves as social-democratic and socialist parties, winning elections without being able to stem the impetus of neoliberal economic policies.

By the new millennium the mainstream socialist parties in Europe had abandoned not just the hostility toward capitalist social relations that they had originally possessed but even the concepts and terminology associated with the doctrine of socialism. To all intents and purposes they had become, at most, the defenders of welfare reforms. The idea of subverting capitalism had been abandoned.

See alsoCommunism; Social Democracy.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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Donald Sassoon