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

~ (Author) "For the first half of the twentieth century, Europe was the most turbulent region on earth, convulsed by war, economic crisis, and social and political..." (more)
Key Phrases: democratic revisionists, revolutionary revisionism, democratic revisionism, New York, Princeton University Press, Cambridge University Press (more...)

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

Product Description

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.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 238 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
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #539,836 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 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

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!

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars nylawyergirl, October 19, 2006

By	LawyerGirl (Brooklyn, New york) - See all my reviews

Sheri Berman has written a brillant, sweeping historical review of European Politics. She offers original insights into the development of the modern global economy. Destined to become a classic in its field, this book should be mandatory reading for political historians everywhere.

3 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

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

By	chitatel (Connecticut) - See all my reviews

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.