That admirable Revolution, to which we owe our being, is not over … we remain actors in it … the same men are still doing battle with the same enemies…. You have stayed the same. We have not changed.
(Georges Clémenceau, speech given in 1891)1
‘Political choice usually takes the form of a choice between two alternatives,’ wrote Maurice Duverger in his classic work on Political Parties: ‘A duality of parties does not always exist, but almost always there is a duality of tendencies. Every policy implies a choice between two kinds of solution.’2 The notion that political competition inevitably tends to a duality of tendencies is not new. ‘In truth,’ wrote Thomas Jefferson in 1823, ‘the parties of Whig and Tory are those of nature. They exist in all countries, whether called by those names, or by those of Aristocrats and Democrats, Côte Droite and Côte Gauche, Ultras and Radicals, Serviles and Liberals.’3
Obviously, far from being permanent, the identity of any political current and cleavage – in other words, the identity of any duality of tendencies – is changing. Political identities are simply the invariably uncertain and contested result of ‘multiple struggles’ over positioning – ideological, institutional or class positioning.4 Identities are events, major events of a certain duration, not ‘essences’. Once constituted and consolidated, the political and electoral market likewise possesses a certain duration. As a result, it tends to stabilize, at least for a period of time.
In fact, for a long period the European party systems – and hence the main political alternatives available to voters – were remarkably persistent, stable structures. Initially formulated by Seymour Martin Lipset and Stein Rokkan,5 and then adopted and adapted by others, this perspective reckoned European party systems, from the time of their original crystallization during the 1920s, to be strongly consolidated and to have remained essentially ‘frozen’ for half a century.
Now, especially during the last quarter of the twentieth century, party systems have entered into a phase of turbulence and increased instability. The relatively stable patterns of political polarization represented by the inherited cleavages, together with their sociological, ideological and political content, have been subject to challenge. New actors have sprung up (Greens, extreme right); others have undergone a profound crisis (communists); and yet others have recast themselves and hit upon a new identity (centre-left, centre-right). The question of a major electoral dealignment or realignment is on the agenda, and has been for a long time.
Also on the agenda is the issue of a major ideological realignment. Today, the great left-wing themes of a still recent past – the centrality of the working class and the state, nationalization, collective and solidaristic mass action, and above all anti-capitalism, whether real or rhetorical – ‘fall outside the parameter of significant debate’.6 And while the familiar ‘duality of tendencies’ and the binary logic of political competition survive, the idea, so dear to Duverger, that ‘every policy implies a choice between two kinds of solution’, is challenged. The ‘unbearable weight’ of a trend towards programmatic and ideological convergence seems to mark the competition between the great left- and right-wing parties. The parties that ‘haunt the house of power’ (in Max Weber’s memorable phrase) have become more interchangeable than they were in the past.
At the heart of these political and ideological reclassifications, and of the renewed interest in the development of party systems and ‘old’ polarities, in the ‘decline’ of the left/right divide, in the fate of the class model of politics, in the future of working-class politics and institutions of working-class origin, in the future of capitalism and globalization, in the future of the party form itself – in the future, even, of European civilization – lies a very old political family: social democracy.
Semper vetus, semper novus?
In the eye of the storm since the second half of the 1970s, and racked by the abandonment of Keynesian solutions, the transformation of the traditional working class, and the renewed influence of enterprise culture, the social democracy of the new millennium has reacted very effectively to the dynamism of the right and the centre-right. Having been prepared to envisage a genuine problematization of its political and economic strategies, it was clearly the victorious camp at the dawn of the twenty-first century. Instead of being severely weakened and thwarted, social democracy was the great victor at the fin-de-siècle elections.
Semper novus? In and through the changes prompted by social evolution, social democracy emerges and re-emerges as an enduring historical current, invariably capable of bouncing back. This venerable political family, which has participated in great collective projects that have been denatured, deconstructed or shattered, is still with us.
The historical trajectory of social democracy is made up of renunciations and betrayed loyalties, of successful ideological/programmatic ‘overhauls’, and a demonstrable ability to modernize itself. No doubt capitalism has transformed social democracy more than social democracy has transformed capitalism. From a revolutionary force, spokesman for the masses, and tribunitian party, social democacy, abandoning its founding project of socialism, has become an essential component of the capitalist universe. Moreover, the golden age of social democracy – a peaceful, prosperous society with a clearly delineated social state, site, perhaps, of the realization of that ‘mediocre happiness’ to which Tocqueville referred – is probably, at least in large part, simply a retrospective rationalization sustained ‘by the misty nostalgia for better days bygone’.7 Social democracy has abandoned its anti-capitalist vocation, and did so long ago; this represents the great break and great event in its political trajectory. Nevertheless, if we consider the longer history, the conclusion is unequivocal: the working-class movement has profoundly marked the experience, representations, and social and institutional ‘texture’ of European civilization; and with social democracy, because of social democracy, despite the shattered dreams of social democracy, something incontestably changed in our societies.
The idea that ‘social democracy means something completely different before the first war, after the second, and again after the present economic crisis’ is not, as such, unfounded.8 Change has unquestionably been a constant in the long history of social democracy. It is not at all surprising, therefore, that in this period of great transformations, contemporary social democracy has changed once again. Yet its actions today, like its victories and defeats, unfold under the shadow of a historically novel ‘threat’: the threat of a radical loss of identity.
Even the most superficial examination reveals that social democracy today is exploring new ideological and electoral territory, ‘testing’ novel organizational forms and disciplines, proposing and implementing unprecedented solutions in government. Having made its majority vocation – one might say its ‘majority impatience’9 – second nature after a long apprenticeship, social democracy is in the process of changing its horizons. The social-democratic past, which was not always glorious, seems to be absorbed into an inordinately cramped and conservative present. Decidedly open to the fascination exercised by the ‘iron law’ of capital, divided between ‘catch-all’ roaming, popular implantation and neoliberal logic, contemporary social democracy has – at least according to many observers – fully entered the magnetic field of its opponents. The philosopher Jean Vogel has written:
The gravity of the current crisis of the left’s reference points unquestionably lies … in the fact that it is not confined to the sphere of politics in the narrow sense, but affects the imaginary hearth thanks to which the left was a warm current in history for two centuries.… If this mutation in the imaginary persists, there will come a time when the notion of the left will denote no more than the void.10
The social-democratic ‘snail’ – to borrow the image used by Günter Grass and Olaf Palme11 – has lost its bearings according to some, and is enjoying a new youth according to others. In its obsession with adapting to the most difficult and harsh terrain, has this habitual gradualist lost its sense of direction and its reference points? Has the ‘snail’ committed the brazen indiscretion of crossing the ‘boundary’, the imaginary red line that imparts significance to the famous ‘duality of tendencies’, the distinction between dominant and dominated, and the left/right divide? In other words, has the time come when the notion of social democracy denotes no more than the void?
The Purpose of this Study
Supposedly in a state of gradual decline, social democracy has reasserted its powers. Supposedly ageing intellectually, it has also reasserted its capacity for renewing both its ideas and itself. Social democracy has changed. That much is ‘obvious’.
But there are very different ways of talking about the same ‘obvious’ thing, without being able to agree on the content, the significance, or the extent of the ‘change’. The purpose of the present work, in general terms, is to identify the character of the change in social democracy. However, the current reality of formations as old as the social-democratic parties cannot be grasped in an instant. To employ an established formula: ‘The past is not another country’. The objective of this book is thus twofold: on the one hand, to examine the various (and sometime disparate) ‘minor’ and ‘major’ changes that are affecting the contemporary social democracies, while integrating them into an overall logic; on the other hand, to apprehend the dynamic of social-democratic recomposition in the light of both a still recent, and an already far distant, past. The study that follows aims to render the logic of the constitution and action of postwar social democracy intelligible, but will devote more space to the present period, that of social-democratic crisis and mutation. It begins with the present and ends in the present. The present, as A.N. Whitehead would say, is ‘a holy land’.
Following the fall of the communist regimes in eastern Europe, however, social-democracy-in-the-present has acquired a new historical dimension, with its division – by enlargement – into western and eastern parts. The social democracy that forms our subject matter is neither that of the east nor that of the developing countries. It comprises western and Nordic Europe, and also southern Europe – the half of the European continent that represents the Europe of the affluent countries.
How are we to explain the ‘magical return’ and fin-de-siècle victories of a political force that seemed, not so very long ago, to be in the vice-like grip of ‘historical decline’? What does social democracy represent in an epoch when ‘farewells to the proletariat’ are expressed with all the confidence of self-evidence?12 What has happened to the unique ‘features’ (which I am not going to enumerate here) that historically defined social democracy, which were interdependent, and constituted the support and vital base that made social democracy ‘social-democratic’? Does social democracy still represent a specific and original way of structuring the left,13 a complex – and hence rare – political species? Or has it been stripped of its originality, to the point of becoming a political force and form like all the others? Today, how does the group that was designated in the past by different names (manual workers, fourth estate, poor classes, dangerous classes, inferior classes, labouring classes, proletariat, working classes) – the group that finally became ‘the working class,’14 and (until recently) formed the veritable backbone of social-democratic influence and stability – behave? What role has the social democracy of the ‘third way’ or the ‘plural left’ assigned the figure of the working class – a central social figure, and the founding myth of social-democratic history and passions?
Does contemporary social democracy contribute to the establishment of a new compromise and a new generation of social pacts, or not? Is there still a specifically social-democratic political logic and project (whether reformist or not)? Similarly, does the new profile of social democracy, lost amid a plethora of national particularities, possess a certain coherence and robustness? Or is it fragile and ephemeral, a sort of interregnum destined rapidly to disappear? What is the specific contribution and influence of the British ‘third way’ in the emergence and consolidation of the ‘new’ social democracy? Is there a different approach to modernization in social-democratic ranks from that of identifying it with a race to the centre and a ‘managerial contest between two teams of administrators’? What of ‘la gauche plurielle’, the latest version of what George Ross calls ‘popular power in France’?15 How does social democracy seek to respond today to the two major challenges confronting any left-wing force: Europe and globalization? Does it propose – or will it be in a position to propose in the foreseeable future – an alternative to the dominant neoliberalism, whether on its own or in conjunction with the trade unions or political poles to its left (communists, post-communists, Greens)? Finally, is there a potential coherence between the new ideological/programmatic profile of contemporary social democracy and the historical identity of social democracy? What is the ‘hard core’ – if there is one – ensuring continuity within a long tradition that is marked by more breaks than continuities? Has the link with the past – or rather, with the different social-democratic pasts – been definitively snapped, making the modernization in progress one that is external to social-democratic tradition? Does current social-democratic moderation, based on ideological and programmatic ‘minimalism’ (a postmodern moderation, as it were), signal the end of the long reformist social-democratic tradition, however resolutely and incorrigibly moderate it may have been? Finally, semper novus? In all likelihood, yes. But how? To what extent, with what consequences, and at what cost to its identity?
In the Name of Social Democracy will attempt an answer to all these questions. But they can basically all be summed up in one question, which Georges Clémenceau, quoted above, formulated emphatically: that of the singular bond, both rare and mysterious, which links – and sometimes ceases to link – the present and past being of a political current and, by extension, the present and past being of a political-ideological divide. To pose this question is to pose the simple and crucial question of identity – a very complex question, which in a sense there is no need to pose. For social democracy has performed different functions at different moments of its history, and has changed its objectives on several occasions;16 social democracy is ‘inconsistent and its historic path ruptural’.17 In the Europe of the twenty-first century, the question of the identity of this ‘inconsistent’ force is the motor behind renewed intellectual and political debate on this venerable political family. The ‘eternal’ question of identity – which, if we look at history, follows social democracy like its shadow – is at the heart of this work. It is to be found at the beginning, at the end, and at the intersections and crossroads of all the chapters (that is, of all the debates conducted separately) that structure the present study.
The Scope of the Book
If we study the numerous occurrences of the term ‘social democracy’, we can see that it covers a very wide semantic field.18 Let us stick with the basic, uncontested usage. The usual employment of the term ‘social democracy’ refers either to a particular social group – the party – or to its objectives and achievements. By virtue of the decisive role of social-democratic parties in defining the basic consensus after the Second World War – some have spoken in this context of a ‘social-democratic consensus’, others of a ‘social-democratic civilization’ – this second use of the term ‘social democracy’ has acquired legitimacy. It specified a ‘way of seeing’ the social and the economic, a model of problems and solutions, which furnished the outline and prototype of ‘normal politics’, particularly during the trente glorieuses.
In this study, the main emphasis will be on the party and its ‘identity’ traits. Because of social democracy’s particular historical trajectory, however, it acquired its full specificity only through its achievements, through a socioeconomic model peculiar to itself. A knowledge of how the junction between the identity traits of the social-democratic party and its governmental performance operated in the postwar period is a nodal point that will permit us to establish a better connection between the partisan force and its historical achievements.
If – according to the central hypothesis of this book – we are witnessing a recasting of the European social democracies, the end of a political and social cycle, it is impossible to grasp this process without some provisional definition of the specificity of the ‘typical’ social democracy of the 1950s and 1960s. Foregrounding the social-democratic differentia specifica of the 1950s and 1960s, a period that marks the high point of governmental social democracy, will provide us with the requisite interpretative grid to cover contemporary social democracy. This line of approach must thus be regarded as a central organizing principle that implicitly runs through the analysis, and structures it in its entirety.
Establishing the specificity of social democracy consists essentially in describing its general features, enumerating a certain number of distinctive characteristics. The initial impression conveyed by observation of this political force is, however, one of diversity: a variety of historical destinies, organizational structures, and political achievements. In the face of this diversity, what gives it its unity is open to question. In this respect, the first aim of the present work is to demonstrate that social democracy is a specific mode of constitution of the left, and that parties of a social-democratic type, although perceived, conceived or named in different ways, share – despite their great diversity – a number of general common features.
In effect, what is involved is an operation of conceptual homogenization to extract the general characteristics of the political type ‘social democracy’ from the multitudo dissoluta of real, historical social democracies. If this operation is successful, it will facilitate transition from intuitive, observational reconnaissance of the object to its conceptual reconnaissance. Accordingly, in some respects this study is intended to account for the logic and action of social democracy in its entirety, not of ‘individual’ social-democratic parties. Here, on the basis of dissimilar experiences and actors, it aims to determine the physiognomy of a unique, abstract, coherent, and hence somewhat unreal actor. In other respects, however, emphasis will be put on national specificities, the better to account for the richness of a complex, ambivalent, multiple reality. Here also, on the basis of dissimilar experiences and actors, it is a question of signalling the distinctions – which, I hope, are pertinent – in order to illuminate original party trajectories that are not reducible to a common model.
This work thus contains two complementary aspects. On the one hand – and primarily – it seeks to understand social democracy and its political capacity by asking on what structure and coherence – a coherence that is political, and not necessarily logical – it is based. On the other hand, it tries to understand the plurality and ambiguity of social democracy, which – in and through the complexities of its national versions – seems to partake of different, partly contradictory ‘natures’, and to call for qualified and partly contradictory judgements. The proliferation of national forms scarcely fit for insertion into an economic, ‘geometrical’ composition dictates an incessant toing-and-froing between the ‘general’ and the ‘national’, in order to deal with disproportions, ruptures and transitions. This labour of conceptual homogenization will be undertaken in the introductory part of the book, and resumed in Part III and the Conclusions.
As for the structure of the argument (and the book), I have deliberately opted for a step-by-step, sectoral analysis of social-democratic-type parties (generally, but not always, adopting the following order: party-organization, party-in-the-electorate, party-in-competition, party-in-government). We shall consider these ‘sectors’ or dimensions not only in their static structure, from the standpoint of what Auguste Comte called ‘social statics’, but in their evolution and development, from the standpoint of their ‘social dynamics’. This division into domains or ‘spaces’ – which, when all is said and done, is rather commonplace – will first of all allow us to establish inventories and propose reference points. Next, it will enable us to tackle the different aspects and dimensions of the great transformation of social democracy, whose cumulative effects lead to a dilution of the specificity (the ‘banalization’) of this great political family. Basically, the division into spheres or ‘spaces’ accords with the central hypothesis of this book. According to this hypothesis, the social-democratic ‘great transformation’ is not only ideological/programmatic (for all that public debate often focuses on this aspect), but encompasses all the spaces of the ‘system’ of social democracy. It is the product of several ‘little great transformations’. It is to be understood as a change that involves every dimension of the social-democratic universe (ideology and programmes, organizational structures, leadership, link with the trade unions, sociology of the organization and electorate, governmental policies). This division, then, will determine and punctuate the steps of the reconnaissance and deeper knowledge of the phenomenon; it will offer nothing more than ‘some reference points, some indices of weighting’.19
The Plan of the Book
The book is divided into five parts.
The introductory part (Chapters 1–5) offers an account of the social-democratic differentia specifica of the 1950s and 1960s, draws up an inventory, and proposes some reference points. Intent on clarification, it aims to render the logic of the constitution and action of postwar social democracy intelligible.
Part II endeavours to furnish a concrete, ‘sectoral’ view of the social-democratic mutation. On the one hand, the erosion or progressive alteration of the ‘supporting institutions’ and ‘supporting social base’, as well as the gradual disappearance of the old ideological reference points, make social democracy a decreasingly ‘distinctive set of institutions and policies’ (Karl Ove Moene and Michael Wallerstein). On the other hand, the new aspects of social democracy are outlined sector by sector. Chapter 6 sets out the electoral record of the social-democratic parties from 1960 to 2000; this is somewhat surprising, and does not support the thesis of a new electoral ‘golden age’. Chapter 7 treats the issue of class voting at length. The architecture of the electoral space of the vieille maison, divided between working-class erosion and defection and the deus ex machina of the middle classes, is in the process of being renewed and revitalized. Next, I examine the new sociology of the organizations: an evident waning of the popular presence, a displacement in the centre of gravity towards leader and experts, the major ‘paradox’ of leadership, the end of strong integrating bonds and a new ‘utilitarian’ ethos among activists, the decline in trade-union influence – all these are analysed. The internal social-democratic space – the party intra-muros – appears genuinely, profoundly and irrevocably altered (Chapter 8). Chapter 9 examines the programmatic/ideological response of social democrats to the dual challenge represented by the strong rise of neoliberalism and the ‘new politics’. Emphasis is placed on the content of the current strategy of a ‘natural party of government’, and on what distinguishes it from the ‘semi-working-class/semi-catch-all’ strategy of the 1950s and 1960s. Is there really a left variant of this strategy? What of the ‘project of rectification’ that defines the left, and the ‘regulative ideal’ of equality?20 Chapter 10 queries socialists’ ability to renew the redistributive agenda. Two pairs of governmental experiences are analysed: first, Sweden and Austria (countries with ‘labour dominant corporatism’), where the initial outline of a specifically social-democratic response to the economic crisis (formulated in the 1980s) came to grief on the reef of expanding neoliberalism, capping the decline of Keynesian social democracy; second, France and Great Britain, two cases considered representative – in their rivalry, whether alleged or real – of contemporary socialism. The crisis of corporatist co-ordination and the relative decentralization of systems of national collective bargaining will likewise be at the centre of our analysis.
In Part III (Chapters 11–12), the main lines and decisive form of the social-democratic ‘great transformation’ will be delineated. The innovation made by supporters of the ‘third way’; the internal cohesion (and points of tension) of social democracy’s new physiognomy; the entrepreneurial culture and strategic flexibility that distinguish contemporary social democracy’s system of action; its ideological ‘adaptability’ and programmatic modesty; the solidity or fragility of its social and electoral anchorage; the ‘left marketing’ aspect – these are themes that our attempted synthesis cannot ignore (Chapter 13).
In Part IV, the following question is tackled: is social democracy in a position – on its own, or with the trade unions or forces to its left – to implement a modern version (national and inter- or supranational) of ‘politics against markets’? What can we expect of the other left? Or of Europe and the Party of European Socialists, a Europarty summoned to assume the role of co-ordinator and engine of integration, but one which seems incapable of transcending its own ‘immature’, transnational makeup? The history of European socialism teaches us that it is not always the great ‘ideological’ paradigms that generate effective policies: effective policies can also give rise to ideological paradigms. What potential for effectiveness does social democracy harbour (Chapters 14–16)?
In the final, concluding part, I round off my analysis of the social-democratic mutation. The main issue I shall tackle is whether there is consistency between the new ideological/programmatic profile of contemporary social democracy and the historical social-democratic inheritance. What are the ‘ultimate’ reference points that guarantee continuity, and how does the modernization in progress differ from those of the past (Chapter 17)? Where does the project of the century – the ‘project of politicization’ derived from working-class culture – stand, following the social-democratic turn and the wreck of communism (Chapter 18)?
In conclusion, I shall take up the main themes elaborated in the book again, one by one – both to satisfy the impatient reader and to connect up the ‘sectoral’ analysis of the social-democratic phenomenon with the problematic of the ‘great transformation’, which itself developed in stages.
The ‘longue durée’ of Modernity
In the Name of Social Democracy aims to recount the history – a history which is not that of the historian – of the ‘great transformation’ of social democracy. Its objective is to understand and assess the parameters of this great change – step by step, social-democratic space by space. Our object is the social-democratic ‘structure’ – or, better: the soul of a unique structure which was born, matured and consolidated with the social question, and which today, perhaps, is imperilled and losing its soul. Losing its soul? In questions of identity, ‘loss’ betokens ‘gain’. The abandonment, exhaustion, or simple alteration of historical social-democratic identity allows a new identity to emerge. It permits the emergence of new ideological and programmatic reference points, a new organizational ‘formula’, a different electoral coalition, different sociological markers, a new effectiveness and ineffectiveness, another ambiance, a different ‘style’ – all of which means (to draw on Michelet) a ‘new soul’. Having frequently demonstrated its capacity for self-renewal, social democracy will probably be able to escape the void. Not necessarily the ‘void’ indicated by Jean Vogel, but certainly the political void. Social democracy is not dead. It is with us, and will remain so for a long time yet – as will the social question. For the social question is not like other questions. To borrow Eustache Kouvélakis’s fine phrase, it is inscribed ‘in the longue durée of modernity’.21 The same applies, we should add, to the left/right divide.
At its root, the real question addressed to this social democracy in the throes of modernization – and to the left in its entirety – is not of modernity, but of which modernity. In politics, as in life, there are different ways of being ‘modern’. One can be ‘modernist’ in an economic sense, modernist ‘with a heart’,22 and possibly ‘modernist’ in other ways as well. But how? Moreover, the modernity of the other side, the opponent, is equally modern. Operating in a period of accelerated change, where time has become ‘condensed’ and the terrain is mined, contemporary social democracy is in the process of defining, inventing and, finally, selecting its own modernity.
The subject of this work is a force that is at once old and admirably youthful, which in its frantic pursuit of modernization (so that it remains a ‘warm current’ in history) is prey to a strange difficulty. It is succeeding in its modernization, yet at the same time (precisely because of this successful modernization!) it appears profoundly incapable of dealing with a formidable challenge, perhaps the greatest challenge of the new century: the ‘longue durée of modernity’.
Notes
1.Quoted in Pierre Dauzier and Paul Lombard, Anthologie de l’éloquence française, Éditions Table Ronde, Paris 1995, p. 304.
2.Maurice Duverger, Political Parties, trans. Barbara and Robert North, Methuen, London 1964, p. 215; emphasis added.
3.Quoted in Jeff Faux, ‘Lost on the Third Way’, Dissent, Spring 1999, p. 76.
4.See Michel Offerlé, Les Partis politiques, Presses Universitaires de France, Paris 1987, p. 40.
5.See Seymour Martin Lipset and Stein Rokkan, Party Systems and Voter Alignments: Cross-National Perspectives, Free Press, New York and Collier-Macmillan, London 1967.
6.Perry Anderson, ‘Renewals’, New Left Review (second series), no. 1, 2000, p. 13.
7.Peter Beilharz, ‘The Life and Times of Social Democracy’, Thesis Eleven, no. 26, 1990, p. 91.
8.Ibid., p. 79.
9.The term is Daniel Bensaïd’s, from Lionel, qu’as-tu fait de notre victoire?, Albin Michel, Paris 1998, p. 273.
10.Jean Vogel, ‘De la gauche imaginée à l’imaginaire de gauche’, Politique, nos 9–10, 1999, pp. 100, 103; emphasis added.
11.See Klaus Misgeld, Karl Molin and Klas Amark, Creating Social Democracy: A Century of the Social Democratic Labor Party in Sweden, Pennsylvania University Press, Pittsburgh 1992, p. xi.
12.René Mouriaux, quoted in Jacques Capdevielle, Les opinions et les comportements politiques des ouvriers: une évolution inévitable? Irréversible?, Les Cahiers du CEVI-POF, Presses de la Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques/CEVIPOF, Paris 1999, p. 127.
13.See Gerassimos Moschonas, La Social-démocratie de 1945 à nos jours, Montchrestien, Paris 1994.
14.Offerlé, Les Partis politiques, p. 41.
15.George Ross, ‘The Changing Face of Popular Power in France’, in Frances Fox Piven, ed., Labor Parties in Postindustrial Societies, Oxford University Press, New York 1992.
16.Gérard Grunberg, Vers un socialisme européen?, Hachette, Paris 1997, p. 8.
17.Beilharz, ‘The Life and Times of Social Democracy’, p. 79.
18.‘In all these writings I never describe myself as a social-democrat, but as a communist,’ wrote Engels: ‘For Marx, as for me, it is absolutely impossible to use such an elastic term to denote our own conception’ (quoted in Roger Dangeville, trans., La Social-démocratie allemande par Engels et Marx, Union Générate d’Éditions, Paris 1975, p. 7).
19.Pierre Avril, Essai sur les partis, Payot, Paris 1990, p. 92.
20.See, respectively, Steven Lukes, ‘What is Left? Essential Socialism and the Urge to Rectify’, Times Literary Supplement, 27 March 1992, and Vogel, ‘De la gauche imaginée à l’imaginaire de gauche’, p. 101.
21.Eustache Kouvélakis, Philosophie et révolution de Kant à Marx, doctoral thesis, University of Paris VIII, 1998, p. 1; Presses Universitaires de France, Paris 2001.
22.George Ross, ‘Saying No to Capitalism at the Millennium’, in Leo Panitch et al., eds, Socialist Register 1995, Merlin Press, London 1995, p. 59.