The Retreat of Social Democracy

An examination of policy and programme in the key social democratic parties of Britain, France, Germany and Sweden since the 1970s. It seeks to situate change in the context of capitalist restructuring. This has been a period of mass unemployment, faltering economic performance, rising inflation and strain on welfare states. It has witnessed the advancing internationalisation of capital, the spread of capitalist relations of production, the international dominance of neo-liberal economic ideology and a shift in the balance of power between capital and organized labour to the detriment of the latter. John Callaghan shows how the radical Left within social democracy initially responded to the unfolding crisis of the post-war order and why it was ultimately defeated. His analysis also reveals the extent of the divergence between British Labour's subsequent ideological evolution and that of its sister parties in continental Europe. While all these parties have had to contend with adverse circumstances, only New Labour has turned vice into virtue.