History of Social Democracy
Social democracy is a hybrid political tradition composed of socialism and liberalism. Social democracy is often referred to as ‘parliamentary socialism’.
A commitment to nationalization of the basic means of production was, until the 1950s, a central feature of party programmes in parties such as the British Labour Party as well as those such as the German Social Democratic Party (SPD).
Bad Godesberg Programme of the SPD from 1959. The Godesberg Programme was anticipated by Anthony Crosland’s The Future of Socialism. Crosland distinguishes five criteria which have subsequently continued the core values of social democracy: political liberalism, the mixed economy, the welfare state, Keynesian economics, and a belief in equality.
In the north social democratic parties were closely connected to the labour movement, not like parties in the south. Conditions of life and labour in industrial society bred a class solidarity which became the parties’ leitmotif.
Established in 1875 SPD was the cradle of Marxian social democracy. In practical day-to-day politics a cautious pragmatism had come to dominate the SPD by 1914.
In Britain the title Labour Party was used for the first time in 1906. The new part was oriented towards practical trade union issues like labour law. Party was strongly influenced by Fabian socialism.
Parties started to look for supporters outside working class.
The question ‘reform or revolution’ which had exercised European socialists greatly in the late 1890s, returned to the International Congress agenda. Patriotism and socialist solidarity met head on.
After the WWI the schism gave democratic socialists dominance over the Left in all the countries of western Europe. In Italy and Germany the collapse of the liberal order into fascist dictatorship meant the physical liquidation of social democracy.
The earliest evangelist of Keynesian social democracy was Ernst Wigforss, principal theoretician of the Swedish party.
The Swedes were responsible for harnessing the new economics to social democratic objectives and creating the Swedish model of the full employment welfare state. They also pioneered what one observer has called the ‘historic compromise’ of social democracy with capitalism.
Social Democratic Ideology
Working-class socialism and programmatic social democracy
Ideological diversity is one of the hallmarks of social democracy. Fluidity is another of the defining characteristics of social democratic ideology. A pragmatic flexibility which frequently subordinated doctrine to electoral strategy.
In the aftermath of the WWII, social democracy appeared to hold the key to the future, Laissez-faire capitalism had been undermined and discredited.
For two years after the war, social democracy, communism and Christian democracy merged in demands for the economic, social, political and moral reconstruction of Europe.
Social democracy drew up programmes for the postwar order with three central themes: the socialization of the means of production, state planning and control in the economy, security and equality in society.
Viktor Agartz sought a ‘third way’ between communism and capitalism which placed economic power in collective hands whilst avoiding the rigid centralization of the Soviet model.
Labour’s model for the nationalized industries was Herberts Morrison’s 1951 Bill for the reorganization of London’s transport services.
From 1947 onward the control of inflation and monetary stability took priority over socialist measures for reshaping the economy.
Social democrats had no more a coherent view of the role of economic planning than they had of socialization.
The welfare ideology in Britain was influenced by R.H. Tawney and Willliam Beveridge. In Scandinavia the ideology was associated with K.K.Steincke, F. Zeuthan, Ernst Wigforss and Gustav Molle.
The 1950s saw a tendency to move for a support from other groups outside the working class. This was coupled with a move to welfare capitalism.
Keynes had outlined the political economy of modern, managed capitalism. Keynesianism was the economic foundation for ‘welfare capitalism’.
Anthony Crosland’s The Future of Socialism. For Crosland, twentieth-century capitalism was qualitatively different from its forebears.
The Swedish social democrats developed a particularly sophisticated version of Keynesian model of social democracy. Economic ownership and equality of income and wealth were marginal in the party’s 1960 programme. Democratic control of the economy occupied the central position. The political strength of the Swedish trade unions in relation to organized capital enabled the social democrats to implement reform initiatives which served to vindicate the new ideology.
In 1946 the title Social Democratic Workers Party had been amended to the Dutch Labour Party (PvDA). By 1959 the party issued a new programme in which the residue of its Marxist past was purged.
In Austria the Marxist tradition had been more deeply engrained in the Austrian Socialist Party (SPO). Otto Bauer and Max Adler had created ‘Austro-Marxism’. The 1958 programmes stressed that SPO was a party of all working people and made explicit mention of economic planning and socialization alongside a commitment to Keynesianism. It was not until Bruno Kreisky leadership in 1967 that the party embarked wholeheartedly upon ideological revision.
In West Germany the party (SPD) had been reconstructed in 1945 on basis of 1925 Heidelberg Progamme. Kurt Schumacher still followed the pre-war tradition. The banning of the German Communist Party in 1956 removed an obstacle to ideological revision. The Bad Godesberg Congress in 1959 was the turning point. The programme was based on basic principles of freedom, justice and solidarity. It went on to endorse liberal pluralism of the West German state and the market economy, calling for an extension of democratic principles into the social and economic sphere.
In Britain there was no Marxist heritage to be erased. But there was a Clause IV in the constitution from 1918 that represent an explicit commitment to socialism – the common ownership of the means of production and the best obtainable system of popular administration and control of each industry or service. Hugh Gaitskell underestimate the sentiment around Clause IV, Harold Wilson adopted a subtler approach to ideological revision.
In France the mythology and symbolism of social doctrine was even more resistant to change.
Also in Italy where the Italian Socialist Party (PSI) was reluctant to accept new strategy until late 1950s and early 1960s.
The era of managed growth and the challenge of the new left
Social democracy in the immediate postwar years has been a hybrid political philosophy embracing both socialism and liberalism.
By the 1960s a compromise was now reached in which a market economy was made responsive to creatin social ends – general affluence and economic security, full employment, individual fulfilment within an open society.
The growth of a new, secular, middle class opened up new avenues of electoral recruitment.
The new conception of social democracy was based on the economic growth and was a way to solve the distributional conflict. The social democracy contained the answers to the problems of modern society, not by offering a rigid theory, but by tackling without the prejudice the problems of the future.
Social democracy enjoyed a period of intellectual and political dominance in northern Europe in the 1960s. However, behind the image of modernity and dynamism there was an ideological vacuum. They were therefore vulnerable to the challenge of the New Left.
The Swedish and Danish parties both issued new programmes in response to the Left’s challenge, promising a more aggressive pursuit of reform and opening up the issue of economic democracy.
Even before the onset of the international recession in 1973-74 social democratic politics had shown signs of disorientation, decay and stagnation.
Social democratic parties everywhere have developed an increasing tendency towards a leader orientation but in both the French and Italian parties this tendency has been unusually pronounced. Francois Mitterrand and Bettino Craxi. They renewed their parties and socialism in those two countries.
It is a characteristic of modern social democracy that ideology and programme are flexible and often downgraded in relation to the goal of exercising government power.
Social democracy in the recession
The notion that capitalist accumulation was now compatible with full employment and a comprehensive welfare state simply collapsed in no or low growth economies.
With the collapse of Keynesianism, social democracy lost the political and intellectual coherence which it had appeared to possess in the 1960s.
In Britain the new climate was recognized by the Labour Prime Minister James Callaghan in the party 1976 conference. Labour shift to the Left was the product of four factors:
- The general tendency to move to the Left when in opposition.
- Changed social composition of the party.
- The economic recession had made the centre ground of politics untenable.
- Move to the Left mirrored the rightward drift of the Conservative Party under Thatcher.
In West Germany a powerful catalyst to policy change was the rise of the new social movements for ecology and peace.
In France the failure of the socialist experiment in economic crisis saw a strengthening of republican thinking at the expense of radical socialism.
In Sweden SAP pioneered the middle way solution of a socially symmetrical crisis package presented in a programme entitled A Future for Sweden. Main idea was the selective rationalization of the welfare state. The most radical element was for wage-earner funds proposed by Rudolf Meidener. It was about employee stockholding.
In the British Labour party Roy Hattersley and Bryan Gould identified themselves with the market socialism concept. The promotion of cooperatives, employee share options, worker buy-outs and new forms of public-private partnership, was at the heart of market socialism, within a ‘framework of laws and intuitions that enables different forms of economic organization to evolve.
The SPD developed the concept of qualitative growth. The ecological modernization of the economy would simultaneously create a dynamic growth sector with a job-creating potential, and serve social and environmental needs.
Social Democratic Ideology on the Southern European Periphery
The rise of socialism in the Iberian countries and in Greece was synonymous with the collapse of dictatorship and the transition to democracy.
The Portuguese party quickly accepted assimilation into social democratic tradition. The Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE), had long Marxist tradition. And the Greek party (PASOK) has remained most distant from the mainstream of social democracy.
PSAOK was formed in 1974 out of a movement of resistance to the infamous Colonels’ regime.
From the mid-1970s, the socialist parties of the new Mediterranean democracies were significantly more successful than the older, better-established parties further north.
Faced with the onerous task of democratic and economic consolidation, Gonzales, Soares and Papandreou responded by instilling into their parties a well-developed sense of pragmatism.
The Internal Life of Social Democratic Parties
The Solidarity Community
Socially, the classic social democratic party was based on the working class. When social democracy spoke politically, it was the voice of the skilled European worker.
In the interwar period the largely homogeneous social base of the parties was changing as attempts were made to broaden the base of electoral appeal.
After the war parties gain ground.
In Germany Schumacher believed that SPD was the only force morally and intellectually qualified to lead postwar Germany, so only he could lead the SPD.
In Austria the old Austrian Party, the SPAPDO, had reached a peak of 708.839 members in 1929, and it took until 1955 until the postwar SPO again reached the comparable figure of 691.150 members.
The Victory of the Catch-all Party
Wave of programmatic rewriting went on after the war. The best example being Bad Godesberg Programme of the SPD in 1959.
In the Scandinavia there was very little change in the internal organization of the parties in 1950s.
Invasion of Hungary in 1956 caused many communist parties in west Europe to lose their members to the New Left.
In Germany the radicalization of the student movement also affected the SPD. Entering into Grand Coalition with Christian Democrats was another step that influenced certain part of membership.
Will Brandt replied to confrontation with young demonstrators at the Nurnberg Party Conference. The mob remains the mob even when it is composed of young faces. Brandt also was the man behind the attempt of SPD to absorb as many APO members as possible.
The Dutch Labour Party, like its Belgian neighbor, was one of the most revisionist in western Europe.
The intellectual ferment associated with the student movement also had a crucial impact on developments in France.
The revival of factions
Max Weber drew a distinction between parties based on ideology and those based on patronage. Factionalism, he argued, is far more persistent and pervasive in ideological parties.
Factionalism in social democratic parties reached an early peak in the years leading up to the WWI.
In SPD Eduard Bernstein led the revisionist faction and wanted to reform the party. Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg led the Left.
The division of European socialism into communist and social democratic parties after 1918 greatly reduced the intensity of the factional struggle inside social democratic parties.
In Germany another phase of factionalism was attempt to integrate young socialist (JUSO) and left-wingers after 1969. Brandt was replaced as Federal Chancellor by Helmut Schmidt.
In Britain factionalism was present. The Left was fairly well represented in the Attlee government of 1945-50. Aneurin Bevan was the main representative.
The social democratic party in its classic form as a ‘solidarity community’ had a clearly identifiable social profile.
In Scandinavia in the early postwar years parties enjoyed a member/voter ratio which was only rivalled in Austria.
In Britain the membership was lower, in France was very low.
The erosion of the social identity of the social democratic parties has led to the loss of that remarkable fit between structures and members’ aspirations.
The participation of social democratic parties on government and the high value accorded to unity and solidarity in the labour movement strengthened the position of the party leadership vis-à-vis the members in the decades after the WWI.
In Britain the relationship between the trade unions and the parliamentary leadership started to brake down in the 1970s,
A historic dichotomy of strong leadership/pliant membership in Northern Europe and weak leadership/assertive factionalized membership in southern Europe has largely been reversed in the 1980s.
The erosion of membership sovereignty in southern European parties can largely be explained by eight main factors:
- The strength of the personalities of major leaders.
- Political culture.
- The experience of clandestine activity and exile.
- Extensive use of public broadcasting by leaders.
- The electoral system.
- Party financing.
- Support from northern social democratic parties.
- State financing.
The Electoral History of Social Democracy
Social democracy and the electoral route
Socialism for Bernstein was simply ‘democracy brought to its logical conclusion’.
The split in the socialist world after the Soviet Revolution of 1917 into communist and social democratic parties reflected, among other differences, a sharply divergent estimate of the route to power.
The proletariat had not been, and never in fact became, a numerical majority in any of the industrialized societies of western Europe.
Two obstacles for mobilizing the votes of united proletariat:
- Sizeable portions of the working class in a number of European countries had been mobilized behind electoral ambitions of organized Catholicism.
- Split in socialist movement in 1917.
The Red/Green formula was very appealing electorally and provided the basis of social democratic domination of the Swedish and Norwegian governments in the 1930s.
Keynesian-type economic policies were a success factor in Britain and Scandinavia.
Outside Scandinavia there was a general slackening of support for social democratic parties in the 1950s. That was one of the reasons to move to superclass strategy, a catch-all party approach.
The 1960s and 1970s were in general electorally good years for the classic social democratic parties.
The intellectual appeal and coherence of the social democratic paradigm began to crumble in the mid 1970s.
In general we can talk about three geographical groups of social democratic parties:
The northern: Scandinavia.
The central: Austria, Germany Benelux and Britain.
The southern: France, Italy, Portugal, Spain.
In the Scandinavia Sweden had the strongest social democratic success, with Danmark being the weakest. Esping-Andersen influence is important. Politics against markets.
In Germany the 1980s was a decade of electoral decline for the SPD. The trend was also present in Austria and Britain. The Benelux was an exception.
Social democracy had always been a weak plant electorally in southern Europe.
From the mid 1970s onwards the electoral obstacles confronting social democracy appeared much greater. Keynesianism proved an increasingly inadequate basis for the electoral work.
Social Democracy in Power
Postwar reconstruction and the challenge to laissez-faire
Nationalization and government controls played a large part in economic programmes.
In Britain the ‘big five’ (Attlee, Ernest Bevin, Herbert Morrison, Stafford Cripps and Hugh Dalton) constituted a cohesive group united around common purposes.
Dalton’s tax changes was uppermost in Labour’s thinking on the welfare state. Aneurin Bevan was responsible for comprehensive National Health Service. National Insurance Act of 1946 create a comprehensive and unified system of social security benefits.
A major obstacle to a truly innovative approach to welfare was the labour movement. TUC was ambivalent towards some aspects of the Beveridge Plan of a coherent welfare state in which social policy and wages could be integrated.
But there was no third way between liberalism and communism. The only resistance to Atlanticism and economic liberalism came from Hugh Gaitskell.
Nationalization, planning and welfare made up the collective trinity of programmatic themes running through government social democracy in Britain and Norway.
In France and Italy, the laissez-fare liberals had the upper hand.
In West Germany the Christian Democratic Union had committed itself decisively to economic liberalism.
In Austria SPO didn’t dominate the postwar years.
The SAP was more hesitant in setting their course than in Norway. The were avoiding nationalization and used the more liberal prescriptions of Keynesian demand management. An important element in the Swedish model was welfare state. It was built on three main principles: universalism, institutionalization and unconditional entitlement. Institutionalization meant that the state accepted responsibility for the welfare of its citizens. Universalism meant the complete socialization of welfare provisions. Unconditional entitlement separated benefits from contributions, thus eliminating market criteria from social welfare.
It is possible to distinguish the social democratic countries by their predisposition towards full employment, state interventionism and welfare collectivism. This was reflected in a marked increase in the share of national income taken up by government expenditure. In Sweden and the Netherlands, the increase from before the war was 50 per cent; in Britain, Denmark and Norway it was one-third. Elsewhere, the increase was negligible.
The hegemony of social democracy in the era of managed growth
It was minimalist model of economic management which took root over most of the Continent in the 1950s. the only major country to go far beyond this minimalist model of economic management was France.
When the growth miracle of the 1950s began to falter, the employment-inflation dilemma was intensified. The attempt to control inflation within the full employment led governments towards intervention on an increasing scale. Some factors that influenced the success:
- The institutional and attitudinal environment of political and economic life was of primary importance.
- The balance of power between capital and labor.
- The capacity resources and traditions of the state.
- Underlying strength and resilience of national economies.
Gosta Rehn’s scheme entailed a system of solidaristic, wage bargaining, by which negotiation took place on a national scale, across different industries and regions, between the central organizations of capital and labor. An active labor market policy, orchestrated by the state through the prewar Labour Market Board, would include large-scale retraining and labor mobility programmes in order to relocate labor from defunct to profitable industrial sectors. Rehn’s technically brilliant scheme reconciled the requirements of profitability and rationality in a capitalist economy.
The preconditions for full employment was the labor movement’s willingness to let market forces dictate wage behavior, and politics were still not permitted to interfere in markets.
In Germany the SPD was in power between 1966 and 1982. It had become a party of pragmatic reform. In 1974 the hard-headed pragmatist Helmut Schmidt replaced the reformist Willy Brandt.
In Italy in 1963 the multy-party Centre-Left coalition was formed. The experience of the centre-left coalition underlines the importance of the strong state of the success of government social democracy.
The 1960s and early 1970s was a period of political hegemony for government social democracy. Party leaders – Brandt, Palme, Kreisky, Wilson – strode the stage of national, international and European politics. Success was based in large part on a convergence between social democracy and the economic orthodoxies of the day, growth management and Keynesian interventionism.
Government social democracy in the recession
The roots of the decline in Keynesian economies have been located in the international effect of the breakdown in US hegemony over the international economy, and the emergence of the OPEC oil cartel.
Both Wilson/Callaghan government in Britain (1974-9) and the Schmidt administration in West Germany (1974-82) were quick to respond to crisis.
The recognition that the state could no longer guarantee full employment was part of a wider break away from Keynesian orthodoxy.
The British and West German experience revealed the limits of crisis management under social democratic government.
The fall of Anker Jorgensen in 1982 signaled the end of the ascendancy of government social democracy in Denmark.
In Austria in 1986 brough a major policy reorientation for SPO and shift away from Austro-Keynesianism.
Sweden was the only exception to social democracy decomposition as government parties. SAP returned to government in 1982. Palme government accepted some limitation to welfare state. By the end of the decade, however, the preconditions of social democratic success began to disintegrate.
The French ‘socialist experiment’ (the Project Socialiste – 1981), entailed an ambitious and ultimately miscalculated dash for growth, spearhead by the state sector and fueled by an expansion of consumer demand.
In Italy Craxi set out to change Italy’s political landscape to accommodate the new circumstances of the low-growth era.
But parties of the new Mediterranean democracies flourished. By the early 1980s, Spain, Greece, and Portugal were ruled by socialists. The hallmark of government social democracy in the southern periphery of Europe was its pragmatism, most marked in economic policy. Papandreou, Gonzales and Soares were party leaders at the time. The public sector of state-owned industrial undertakings was a particular problem for socialist governments. None of the three governments were committed to the ideology of state ownership. By the end of the decade, however, government socialism was losing its gloss in both Greece and Spain.
The impact of social democracy in power
Moderate incrementalism was part of the credo of government social democracy.
The emergence of the welfare state might also be seen in terms of a broader logic of industrial society. The long-term tendency for wages and salaries to rise in relation to income from capital and property appears to stem from demographic trends and changes in the structure of capital.
Relations with Organized Labor and Business
Relations with Organized Labor
From their inceptions the social democratic parties of northern Europe had a natural affinity with the trade unions. Drawing support from the same social strata, oriented towards common objectives, and with an overlapping leadership and membership, a strong party union axis was in the interests of both.
Over most of northern Europe, labor movements were cohesive and politically homogeneous.
In France and Italy, where labor movements were weak, the parties were excluded from the government most of the time.
In Sweden SAP and trade union confederation (LO) are the clearest example of party-union relations. 90 per cent of all manual workers were in unions in Sweden. LO ability to structure the labor market and to orchestrate wage bargaining has made an indispensable ally of social democratic government.
In Austria Austrian trade union confederation (OGB) was also a strong factor in labor movement and its centralized power was strong support for social democratic party.
In West Germany the labor movement was more de-centralized and confederation (DGB) power was lower.
Both OGB and DGB still align with parties at least on informal level.
In Britain the unions are formally affiliated to the party. But the relationship is ironically not as cohesive as in countries where relations are not institutionalized. The TUC power is limited so their ability to control actions of different unions is not high.
In France and Italy labor movement is highly fragmented. The leading unions are closely aligned to communist parties.
Social democracy and organized business
Having accepted the pluralist society and subscribing to the doctrine the mixed economy in which the private sector continued to play the central role, social democrats had little choice but to come to terms with organized capital.
A number of factors contributed to this relationship of critical harmony. Social democrats usually recognized the prerogatives of capital – property rights, the right to manage, and market freedoms. They also accepted without questions the necessity for consultation with employer organizations, trade associations and large firms. The accord between government leaders and business interest was the third factor.
Corporatism arose out of an attempt to reconcile the political management of the national economy with the autonomy of market forces. Corporatism reflected a social theory in which ‘the interest of society as a whole transcend narrow sectional interests’.
Of the seven countries in which corporatism took root most strongly, five had experienced sustained periods of government social democracy: Sweden, Austria, Norway, Denmark and Belgium.
The organizational strength, and the cohesion of labor movement was the most important of the preconditions for the development of corporatism.
The foundations of the modern corporatist state were laid Durgin WWII and in the immediate postwar years.
In Scandinavia the structural shape of corporatism differed from country to country.
In Austria the initial impetus behind the institutionalization of corporatist relations was wage control. The forum in which the agreements were negotiated was known as the Economic Commission.
In Britain the corporatism was weak.
Production planning, and the wage/price policies which often became necessary to suppress the inflationary pressures inherent in full employment economies, required the cooperation of organized labor and capital.
The rapid advance of corporatism in the early postwar years was halted in 1950s, but than took off again in 1960s due to stagnating growth and inflation.
In West Germany the entry of SPD into government in 1966 saw important new developments in state-economy relations. The Dusseldorf Programme of 1963 was a milestone for the labor movement, representing ‘the victory of Keynes over Marx’.
In Britain Labour governments were in power for eleven of the fifteen years between 1964 and 1979. Economic concertation was the main point of economic strategy. The centerpiece of the policy was the Joint Statement of Intent on Productivity, Prices and Incomes, signed by the government, TUC and employers’ organization. The failure of this agreement reveals the shortcomings of corporatist solutions under British conditions. In 1979 ‘the winter of discontent’ signaled the end of Labour as a viable part of government.
At the heart of corporatist relations, a systematic and long-term political exchange between government and trade unions, the basis of which is a trade-off between wage moderation on the one hand and, on the other, economic and labor market policies aimed at fostering growth and sustaining employment.
The ebbing of social democratic corporatism
The international economic recession seriously undermined corporatist agreements in most western European countries.
Dismantling the machinery of corporatism was thus a step in the restoration of the unconditional hegemony of capital over labor.
The collapse of the postwar Keynesian vision of full employment and economic growth had destroyed the foundation for political exchange between organized labor and government. Labor movement cohesion – a principal preconditions for corporatism – had broken down. The mutual embrace between social democratic parties and trade unions was weakened.
Only in Austria the trend towards the decomposition of social democratic corporatism was bucked. The core model of wage and price regulation stayed intact.
In France and Italy corporatism was rejected by socialist government coming to power.
In Mediterranean democracies authoritarian variations of corporatism flourished.
A common tendency was toward decoupling of social democracy and organized labor.
Foreign Policy
The socialist international
Domestic focus is where social democratic parties differ from communist parties. Some loose set of principles on foreign affairs from socialist parties was: internationalism, class consciousness, supranationality, and anti-militarism. This ideas were articulated in the Second International.
The Socialist Labor International was not reconstituted after 1945, but a series of international socialist conferences were held largely at the behest of the British Labour Party. The Socialist International was reconstituted at Frankfurt in 1951. On the other hand the communist attempt was Cominform as a successor to Commitern.
In 1950s and 1960s the main conversation in the Socialist Internation were around East-West relations and equitable distribution of global resources.
Acceptance of NATO as the main instrument of western European defense was almost universal among social democratic parties by 1949.
The death of Stalin in 1953 had major impact on thinking of social democratic parties. The soviet threat perception lowered. The most influential statement of social democratic views on disengagement was given by Hugh Gaitskell in Harvard lectures which were published in The Challenge of Coexistence (1957).
Germany was the main area where east and west met. In 1969 the main policy was Ostpolitik. Brandt as chancellor was talking about one nation, two countries. They focused on nation defined by culture not citizenship.
Throughout the 1980s the social democratic parties, led by the SPD, constantly called for the maintenance of friendly relations with Eastern Europe.
Decolonization and the third world
Social democratic parties reflected their socialist heritage in their rejection of imperialism.
It was in France that decolonization posed the most serious problems for a European socialist party.
Social democratic parties and European integration
The tension between the programmatic commitment of democratic socialist parties to internationalism and the impact of national allegiances is an old one.
The parties in the Low Countries and Italy were enthusiastic supporters of European integration. Other parties were more reserved. The priority of the British Labour Party was the transformation of British society. The Scandinavian social democratic parties shared this reluctance.
The SPD was strong supporters to the Schuman plan.
The question of West German rearmament and the European Defence Community was to be very difficult for social democratic parties until 1954.
Social democratic parties
In the 1980s social democracy lost the intellectual and political ascendency which it had exercised since the WWII. For the first three postwar decades, social democracy dominated the political agenda in the democratic states of western Europe.
The unavoidable (but ultimately unanswerable) question is whether social democracy has exhausted its historical potential or merely entered a long phase of lassitude and disorientation.
