The Primacy of Politics: Social Democracy and the Making of Europe's Twentieth Century [Paperback]

Sheri Berman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 7, 2006 | ISBN-10: 0521521106 | ISBN-13: 978-0521521109 | Edition: 1

Political history in the industrial world has indeed ended, argues this pioneering study, but the winner has been social democracy - an ideology and political movement that has been as influential as it has been misunderstood. Berman looks at the history of social democracy from its origins in the late nineteenth century to today and shows how it beat out competitors such as classical liberalism, orthodox Marxism, and its cousins, Fascism and National Socialism by solving the central challenge of modern politics - reconciling the competing needs of capitalism and democracy. Bursting on to the scene in the interwar years, the social democratic model spread across Europe after the Second World War and formed the basis of the postwar settlement. This is a study of European social democracy that rewrites the intellectual and political history of the modern era while putting contemporary debates about globalization in their proper intellectual and historical context.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"In this fascinating book, Sheri Berman rewrites the ideological balance sheet of the twentieth century, making a powerful case that history ended with the triumph not of free market liberalism but social democracy. In emphasizing the variety of capitalisms and diverse paths that societies take, she makes us think differently about the past and the future. As countries struggle to find their way in a new age of globalization, Berman's work offers essential insights. It is likely to become a classic in the field."
Fareed Zakaria, author of The Future of Freedom

"Sheri Berman has written a wonderfully lucid account of the origin of social democratic ideas, which she uses to make a passionate argument for their continued relevance as a way of preserving democracy in the world of globalization."
Harold James, Princeton University

"Sheri Berman's book is a real tour de force, a real land-mark study of ideology, social democracy and European political history. It is an outstanding analysis of the importance of ideas and ideology in politics. Berman argues convincingly that social democracy should neither be understood as a watered down version of Marxism, nor as capitalism with a human face. Instead, Berman shows that social democracy is a distinct political ideology in its own right that should be understood as a political meta-ideology about how to connect everyday social and economic realities with abstract theory in real-world politics. As such, the book is not only an excellent study of the past, but also has important lessons for the present discussion about the possibility of politics in the new globalized economy."
Bo Rothstein, Göteborg University

"Sheri Berman writes with great lucidity, analytic skill, and political sympathy about the undervalued social democrats of Europe. Everyone knows the story of fascist and Stalinist brutality in 20th century Europe; Berman tells another story, less known and often denied, of social democratic solidarity and compassion."
Michael Walzer, Institute for Advanced Study

"[A]mbitious and provocative... this is a strong, useful defense of a political ideology and a political movement that have done much good and fought evil with courage and lucidity."
Foreign Affairs

"...The Primacy of Politics is one of the most thought-provoking books on twentieth-century ideologies to appear for many years."
Vernon Bogdanor, Times Literary Supplement

"...this book is an excellent overview of the several strands of political thinking that began with the criticism of Marxist economic determinism and ended with the dominant role of social democracy, especially in the last half of the twentieth century in Europe." -Dietrich Orlow, H-German

Book Description

Examines the history of social democracy from the late nineteenth century to today. It argues that social democracy has become the most successful ideology of the modern era by figuring out how to reap the benefits of free markets while protecting society from their most corrosive and destabilizing effects.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press; 1 edition (August 7, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0521521106
• ISBN-13: 978-0521521109
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 5.9 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #259,567 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A must for anybody interested in political economy, September 6, 2006

By 

a reader (Cambridge, MA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Primacy of Politics: Social Democracy and the Making of Europe's Twentieth Century (Paperback)

Berman argues that most of what we think about twentieth century politics is just wrong. Instead of seeing the chief ideological battle as one between democrats and totalitarians, or between capitalists and communists, she argues that the real struggle--or, better put, a crucial yet forgotten struggle--was about how to make capitalism and democracy mutually compatible.

Free markets don't only bring growth, she points out, but also bring instability, social dislocation, and other problems--problems that mass publics demand be solved. Older ideologies like classical liberalism or orthodox Marxism were unwilling to interfere with market operations, and so they got discredited when capitalism generated crises like the Great Depression. This paved the way for a battle between newer, more activist ideologies like fascism and social democracy, which were prepared to intervene in free markets as necessary to protect what they saw as society's interests. When fascism was defeated in WWII, social democracy was left standing as the only healthy and politically viable response to the problems of modern political economy.

Her argument is basically that "we're all social democrats now," even if we don't know it or acknowledge it, because pretty much everybody accepts the idea of combining some form of market-based economy with substantial government intervention to head off problems (the welfare state, countercyclical policies, etc. etc.). Yet only social democracy, she claims, has such an approach at its theoretical core, and so only social democrats really understand what they're doing and have a consistent approach to political economy.

She backs up this argument by tracing the debates over political economy in Europe from the late 19th century onward, showing how the earlier traditions foundered, how fascism and social democracy both emerged from revisionist Marxism, and how social democracy went from being an ideological outlier to being the core of the postwar settlement and contemporary policy. The book covers several countries over nearly a century of tumultuous history, but it's somehow beautifully written and very clear nevertheless.

Guaranteed to give American readers a new perspective on modern political economy, and explain to Europeans how they came to believe what they do. Highly recommended!

9 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars buyer beware, June 12, 2007

By 

chitatel (Connecticut) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Primacy of Politics: Social Democracy and the Making of Europe's Twentieth Century (Paperback)

I picked up this book expecting to find a comprehensive history of 20th century social democracy. But it turns out the book is an intellectual history of social democratic thought in Italy, France and Germany in the 19th century through the 1930s, with a lot of detailed discussion of pretty obscure thinkers and party congresses. It may be fascinating for historians but not for political scientists. It does not really dig into political economy or political sociology, has no data on the size of workers' parties, labor unions etc in these countries. The main problem is that it peters out just when the story gets interesting - with the construction of a social democratic Europe after 1945.

5.0 out of 5 stars A wonderful overview of an important subject., December 14, 2011

By 

S. Matthew (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Primacy of Politics: Social Democracy and the Making of Europe's Twentieth Century (Paperback)

In the Primacy of Politics, Sheri Berman provides a historical overview of the development of three "third way" political systems in Europe in the early 20th century: Social Democracy, Fascism, and National Socialism (Nazism). She shows that all three systems shared something in common: an emphasis on what she terms "the primacy of politics" and the importance of communitarianism in the face of tumultuous social and economic changes. Each system appealed to all classes of society, and used nationalism to promote unity amongst the public and central economic planning to dull the rough edges of creative destruction. All were remarkably popular, yet only Social Democracy was able to maintain a commitment to human rights and universal suffrage, and avoided the irrationality and barbarity of the Fascist and Nazi regimes. With Europe once again facing troubling times, suffering from the ravages of neoliberalism and an unassimilated immigrant (see Immigrant Nations) population, Berman's suggestion to turn once again to Social Democracy could not be more timely.