One Hundred Years of Socialism: The West European Left in the Twentieth Century

One HundredYears Of

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dOnald sassOOn

One HundredYears Of

sOcialismTHe WesT eurOpean

lefT in THe TWenTieTH cenTurY

dOnald sassOOn

This new edition of Donald Sassoon’s magisterial history of the Left in the twentieth century includes a substantial new preface by the author. With unique authority and unparalleled scholarship, Sassoon traces the fortunes of the political parties of the Left in Western Europe across 14 countries, examining socialism from the rise of the Bolsheviks through two world wars to the revival of feminism and the rise of ‘green’ politics.

dOnald sassOOn was born in Cairo and educated in Paris, Milan and London. He is Emeritus Professor of Comparative European History at Queen Mary, University of London and is the author of several highly acclaimed books, including Contemporary Italy: Politics, Economy and Society Since 1945, Mona Lisa: The History of the World’s Most Famous Painting, The Culture of the Europeans and Mussolini and the Rise of Fascism.

www.ibtauris.comCover image: ‘Il Quarto Stato’ by Giuseppe Pellizza da Volpedo. Galleria d’Arte Moderna, Milan

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‘A remarkable new work of historical analysis, which will soon establish itself as a classic, Donald Sassoon’s lucid and erudite One Hundred Years of Socialism demonstrates that … the effective parties of the Left, whether social democratic or (in a few cases such as France and Italy) communist … have served to regulate and socialize the wealth-creating and directionless economic dynamism of capitalism, not replace it.’ Eric Hobsbawm

‘A majestic work. Nothing like this great survey exists in any language … stylishly written, with an ironic wit and vivid gift of metaphor, the book is an unfailing pleasure to read.’ The Economist

‘Sassoon’s book is remarkable. A massive and original synthesis which deserves to become a classic, there is nothing comparable to it in the English language.’ David Marquand

‘Donald Sassoon tells his kaleidoscopic story with ease and urbanity as he guides his readers, with great skill, through the complex issues of ideology and industrial development, diplomacy and war, which have shaped one hundred years of European socialism.’ Paul Preston

‘[An] extraordinary achievement … Sassoon constantly stresses, with an amazing and enviable width of scholarship, how the pre-existent cultures of different countries made the socialist project so different in each … this book is a small masterpiece. It is vastly informative … and wise in its conclusions … I have not felt so sure that a work would be a standard book in a long time.’ Sir Bernard Crick

‘An astonishing achievement. One Hundred Years of Socialism is so learned and wide-ranging, so densely packed and yet so readable, so subtle and refined in its judgements and scholarship, it is a constant source of inspiration.’ Hugo Young

‘I read it with unflagging interest and appetite never wishing it a page shorter. After reading Sassoon’s enthralling account, glib capitalist triumphalism seems as historically misconceived as the naive socialist millenarianism of an earlier generation.’ Peter Clarke

‘A brilliant and scholarly work.’ Tony Benn

‘A genuinely major contribution to political understanding.’ New York Times

‘Epic … an encyclopaedic comparative work drawing freely on the histories of countries as diverse as Britain, Germany, Greece, Denmark and Finland … its greatest strength lies in his placing of the Left–Right ideological battle within the context of the change and development of a capitalist system. Thus, [Sassoon] says, there has been no defeat of socialism by capitalism; the crisis of socialism was precipitated by the expansion of and changes in capitalism.’ Alan Thompson, Times Higher Education Supplement

‘Brilliant … Sassoon’s view is based on quite phenomenally extensive reading and knowledge. Yet we never feel ourselves to be drowning in a morass of unconnected or undigested detail. Nor does learning here preclude liveliness and wit … an astonishing achievement, which deserves to become a classic of socialist history.’ Anthony Arblaster, Tribune

‘Admirable … based on vast reading (the sixty-page bibliography is no exercise in vanity, but is copiously exploited in ninety pages of helpful notes), the book is an authoritative guide to the recent history of social democratic parties and governments not only in the major Western European states but also in the many smaller countries.’ Tony Judt, Times Literary Supplement

‘The panoptic history of the European Left, from Oslo to Athens, and 1900 to 1995, is uninterruptedly interesting … the author has scaled a mountain of scholarship and returned with an indispensable work of reference and reflection.’ Norman Birnbaum, Political Quarterly

‘A compelling account.’ Malcolm Rutherford, Financial Times

‘This history of the Western European Left, recounted by Donald Sassoon with style and sympathy, is the history not of revolution but of reform.’ Stephen Tindale, Prospect

‘Compelling … an antidote to the fin de siècle gloom and modish talk of the end of ideology.’ Fabian Review

‘The major political book of the year … Sassoon offers an extraordinary, wide-angle focus on socialist parties over a century and across the industrialized world.’ Patricia Hewitt, New Statesman Books of the Year

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Donald Sassoon was born in Cairo and educated in Paris,Milan and London. He is Emeritus Professor of ComparativeEuropean History at Queen Mary, University of London andis the author of several highly acclaimed books, including Con-temporary Italy: Politics, Economy and Society Since 1945, MonaLisa: The History of the World’s Most Famous Painting, TheCulture of the Europeans and Mussolini and the Rise of Fascism.



One Hundred Years of Socialism

The West European Left inthe Twentieth Century

d o n a l d s a s s o o n



New paperback edition published in 2014 by I.B.Tauris & Co. Ltd6 Salem Road, London W2 4BU175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010

www.ibtauris.com

Distributed in the United States and Canada Exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010

First published in 1996 by I.B.Tauris & Co. Ltd, reprinted 2002, 2010

Copyright © 1996, 2002, 2010, 2014 Donald Sassoon

The right of Donald Sassoon to be identified as the author of this work hasbeen asserted by the author in accordance with the Copyright, Designs andPatents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or anypart thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrievalsystem, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permissionof the publisher.

ISBN 978 1 78076 761 1

A full CIP record for this book is available from the British LibraryA full CIP record is available from the Library of Congress

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: available

Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY



Contents

Preface to the 2014 Edition ixList of Tables xxiiiList of Figures xxvAcknowledgements xxviiList of Abbreviations xxix

Introduction xxxiii

Book One Expansion i

part one The Hard Road to Political Power 3

1 The Establishment of Socialism Before 1914 5

2 From War to War (1914–40) 27

The War /27 The Birth of Modern Communism /31The Socialists: Nordic Success and Spanish Failure /41The German Social Democrats /48 The Popular Frontin France /52 The Failure of the British Labour Party /56

3 Thwarted Alternatives 60

The ‘Neo-Socialist’ Planners /60 Austro-Marxism andOtto Bauer /70 Italian Communism and Gramsci /73

4 The War, Resistance and Its Aftermath: The Rise andFall of West European Communism 1939–48 83

Book Two Consolidation 113

part two The Construction of Welfare Socialism 1945–50 115

5 The Socialists After 1945 117

6 Building Social Capitalism 1945–50 137

The Welfare State /137 Controlling Capitalism:Nationalization and Economic Planning /150

7 External Constaints: A Socialist Foreign Policy? 167



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part three Towards Revisionism 1950–60 187

8 The Golden Age of Capitalism 189

9 Between Neutralism and Atlanticism 209

10 The Foundations of Revisionism 241

part four The Perplexing Sixties: ‘Something in the Air’ 275

11 The Return of the Left 277

Prosperity /277 Elections /282 Opposition /285In Power /309

12 The Establishment of a Foreign Policy Consensus 323

part five The Great Contestation 355

13 The Revival of Working-class Militancy 1960–73 357

14 The Revival of Ideology and the Student Contestation 383

15 The Revival of Feminism 407

Book Three Crisis 441

part six The End of the Great Capitalist Boom 1973–89 443

16 The Crisis and the Left: An Overview 445

The End of the Golden Age of Capitalism /445The Vicissitudes of the Left /461

17 Social Democracy in Small Countries: Austria,Sweden, Holland and Belgium 469

Austria /470 Sweden /479 Holland /487 Belgium /491

18 Germany and Britain: SPD and Labour in Power 497

19 The French Experiment 534

20 The Failure of Italian Communism 572



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21 The End of Authoritarian Regimes in Western Europe:Portugal, Spain and Greece 594

Economic Preconditions /594 The Revolucao in Portugal /607The Ruptura Negociada in Spain /616 The Greek Allaghi /627

part seven The Great Crisis of Socialism 645

22 Workers, Women and Greens 647

Only the Workers? /647 Fewer Workers/651 WorkingWomen /657 Sex Equality /665 The ‘New Politics’ /670The Greens /674 The Presence of Women /679

23 The 1980s: Radicalism in its Last Redoubt 691

Rise and Fall of the Labour Party Left /692 The SwedishWage-earners Funds /706 The New Politics of the SPD /713

24 The New Revisionism 730

Epilogue 755

Notes 778

Bibliography 887

Index 944



Preface to the 2014 Edition

the first edition of One Hundred Years of Socialism mapped out the history ofWest European socialist parties in the century that followed the creation of the Sec-ond International in 1889. New archival work, the endless stream of memoirs, andthe constant outpouring of interpretative books have not modified the basic storyoutlining the vicissitudes of West European socialist and communist parties. Whathas considerably changed, however, is our perception of the future of socialism.

In 1996, few questioned the view that communism was dead, but many couldreasonably expect that socialism, in the sense of modern social democracy, had stilla lease of life. The tasks of the two movements, however, had long been different.The two forms of socialism that have characterized the twentieth century – socialdemocracy and communism – were never quite comparable in terms of the tasksthey had effectively set for themselves. They may have started with the same goal –that of overcoming capitalism – but they soon acquired other objectives, andinevitably so since ideologies are shaped by the societies within which they operateand the relationship they have to political and economic power. Social democratsruled only where capitalism was well established and democracy had become thecommon property of the main political parties. Communists had to develop anindustrial society; social democrats had to manage it. Communists prevailed inless-developed societies, social democrats in developed market economies. Once itwas accepted that the goal of social democracy was the reform of capitalism and notits supersession, it could be assumed that no momentous event could deal socialdemocracy the kind of fatal blow that history had dealt the communist movement.

Today, no one can be sure that a distinct brand of European social democracywill survive in the future except perhaps as isolated local forms in a handful ofWestern European countries. Generic progressive politics will, of course, continueto inspire a significant proportion of Europeans and, indeed, of people throughoutthe world. They will advocate human and civil rights; promote legislation support-ing claims made by those who have been and still are discriminated against; seek towiden access to education, culture and health. But one does not need to be com-mitted to a socialist or a social democratic agenda to hold such views. Progressiveliberals, ‘social’ Christians (or Muslims) and even ‘compassionate’ conservatives cando so just as well. And socialists too were inspired by the principles of individualrights that originated with the Enlightenment well before socialism developed aworld view. Though socialists, as they emerged as an organized political movementin the late nineteenth century, wanted to challenge the power of capitalism, they ad-vocated an extension of democracy that was based on the (liberal) idea of individual

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rights rather than class principles. Universal suffrage, which they supported withpassion, assumes that all individuals have exactly the same worth when voting:each, literally, counts as one. In the domain of politics, socialists, far from beingclass conscious, were staunch individualists.

Those who, at the turn of the century, upheld a class conception of democracywere the liberals and the conservatives who defended an electoral system thatallocated votes in terms of the wealth possessed or earned by each individual. Manyof them even opposed the enfranchisement of women. Though socialists often didnot fight for female suffrage with great vigour, they all stood firmly on the side ofreal universal suffrage. One could almost say that one of the great achievements ofsocialists was to have forced liberals and conservatives onto the path of liberalismand civil and human rights while advocating first the destruction of capitalismand then its reform. Liberals and conservatives, of course, can claim with equalvigour that they succeeded in imposing on socialists the realism of accepting marketrelations and the abandonment of the utopianism of the classless society.

So the socialists set about reforming capitalism – an apparently modest taskwhen contrasted to the final goal of abolishing it. Nevertheless, reforming capitalismis exceedingly complicated. The problem lies in conceptualizing what the reform ofcapitalism entails. The system, it is widely acknowledged – and by Marx and Engelsin the first place – is one which, unlike its predecessors, has change and dynamismat its very core. As one of the more famous passages of The Communist Manifestodeclares, change is in the nature of the beast; it reforms itself continuously:

The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the instruments ofproduction, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relationsof society. Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form, was, onthe contrary, the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes. Constantrevolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, ever-lasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones.All fixed, fast frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices andopinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify.All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelledto face with sober senses his real condition of life and his relations with his kind.

The dilemma of social democracy, as explained throughout this work, is thattraditional social democratic reforms, such as the welfare state and redistributionof wealth, tend to strengthen capitalism by providing it with both social peace anda wider market for consumer goods. But, in turn, social welfare and redistributionalso require a strong capitalism. Reforms that aim to regulate capitalism itself,such as setting a ceiling on the length of the working day, the regulation of payby establishing a minimum wage, and basic labour rights such as maternity andpaternity leave, create winners and losers among capitalist firms since some, becauseof their size, or their position in the market or their efficiency, will benefit fromthe discomfiture of those that are less lucky or less efficient or too small. In somecircumstances, large firms are better able to cope with such reforms than small ones,



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but this is not a universal law: flexibility may enable some small firms to be moreeffective in times of rapid technological change. So social democrats, inevitably,always face the issue of trying to establish which aspects of their own ‘national’capitalism will be strengthened or weakened by their reforms.

‘Spontaneous’ reforms can be unleashed by virtually anything, from changesgenerated by capitalism itself, such as technological developments, migration andthe exhaustion of some natural resources, or by semi-exogenous factors such aschange in the weather, taste and fashion. But reforming social democrats can alsouse (and have traditionally used) two powerful instruments. The first was the labourmovement, usually organized in trade unions making demands on capitalists. Thesecond, which became important as social democrats grew in numbers and wereable to capture government, was the democratic state. This was the basis forthe Left’s acceptance of the state – not just the state as a concept, but the stateas a machine, as a coercive apparatus, as an instrument for the enactment andenforcement of laws. This recognition came late in the twentieth century becausesocial democrats, before 1945, were seldom in control of the government machine.In the years before the First World War, they had assumed that they would beable to force the bourgeois state to implement many of the reforms of the socialistprogramme without necessarily being part of the government. They could have theluxury of winning battles without having to enter the minefield of administeringdirectly the public thing, the res publica. They were not wrong. The premises ofthe European welfare state, particularly in Germany and in Great Britain, were laiddown by conservative or liberal forces, partly out of fear of the socialist movement orbecause of popular pressures. The socialization of some of the cost of reproductionof the working class (the welfare state) and the regulation of the working day didnot require socialist parties. Powerful trade unions, without a political party, couldhave struggled alone and negotiated with employers over the length of the workingday, the conditions of work, holiday pay, etc. They could have acted as a pressuregroup and wrested concessions from governing political parties.

This is what happened in Britain, in the nineteenth century when socialdemocrats did not yet exist; but the British working class was large and wellorganized with, by the standards of the time, a long history of struggles and mili-tancy. No established party could ignore the workers. The religious fragmentationof the country, and especially of the working class, contributed to preventing theformation of a religious party along the lines of continental Christian democracy.The result was that, in the second half of the nineteenth century, liberals andconservatives competed with each other for the support of the labouring classesand incorporated in their own programme aspects of a social democratic platformbefore that could constitute itself as an organized political party. This helped delaythe formation and growth of a large British socialist party on the model of theGerman Social Democratic Party.

On the continent, a similar process of co-option was under way: nation-buildingrequired the incorporation of demands emerging from the lower classes and took theform of what was called in Germany a form of ‘state socialism’ – built by Bismarck



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and supported by the socialist leader Ferdinand Lassalle. Liberal, conservative andnationalist parties were at the forefront of this movement. They were eventuallyjoined by Church-based parties, particularly when the Roman Catholic Churchabandoned its intransigent defence of the ancient regime and adopted a newposition towards what it called the ‘social question’ with the publication, in 1891,of Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical Rerum novarum.

It followed that it was no longer possible, if it ever was, to establish a clear andpermanent distinction between socialists and non-socialists in terms of practicalpolicies. The extension of democracy, the institution of the welfare state and thecontrol of the working day were socialist aims and policies, but one can alwaysfind, at any moment, similar demands advanced and implemented by non-socialistparties, be they right, centre, conservatives, liberal, Christian or nationalist. Fromthe outset, ‘socialism’ was not the prerogative of socialists.

Socialists were forced, in their everyday practice, to trim their demands andaccept compromises, but so too were the conservatives and liberals. The extensionof democracy and the advance of mass society meant that no political party couldhope to obtain sufficient support either by defending the status quo in toto (theessential conservative position) or by proposing to return to the status quo ante (theessential reactionary position). Reformism triumphed. It was adopted by the mostvaried forces: in Germany by Bismarck and the later Wilhelmine politicians as wellas the ‘social’ Christians of the Zentrum party; in Italy by the majority wing of theLiberal Party (Giovanni Giolitti) and the emerging forces of political Catholicism;in France by the Radicals of the Third Republic; in Britain by Disraeli’s andSalisbury’s conservatives as well as by Joseph Chamberlain, Gladstone, the NewLiberals, Asquith and Lloyd George; in Austria by the anti-Semitic Social Christiansof Karl Luger; and in Holland by the new confessional parties in alliance with themore enlightened liberals.

The success of reformist socialism, like the success of all political ideologies,lay in the fact that it did not have a monopoly on what it stood for. In politics,success consists in ensuring that what one thinks of as normal or desirable orpossible becomes the shared attitude, the common property of the entire polity.To achieve this, however, it is necessary to formulate demands that are detachablefrom the ideological package (the symbols and language) which accompanies it.This can only be realized when the connection between ideological values andpractical policies is vague and loose, and thus ready to be endlessly renegotiated.It is precisely because it is perfectly possible to be in favour of adequate pensionswithout signing up to the end goal of socialism that adequate pensions can befought for by liberals and conservatives. Consistency and coherence may enablesmall political sects to survive indefinitely, but they spell certain ruin for partiesand movements with real hegemonic ambitions.

The commitment of socialists to the state grew as these aims became moresignificant and as the final aim of a post-capitalist state receded ever more into thefuture. Universal suffrage made the state more receptive to the demands made bythe socialists on behalf of all citizens. It also made it more legitimate and hence



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more powerful. It enabled socialists to achieve political power by ‘capturing thestate machine’. This facilitated the implementation of the rest of their reformprogramme – the regulation of the working day and the socialization of some ofthe cost of production and reproduction. This transformed industrial society.

It is thus hardly surprising that, as socialists proved successful in reforming theircapitalist societies, they were reluctant to let go of the existing regulatory insti-tutions: a large public sector, a powerful central bank, a mechanism of exchangecontrol, a complex system of subsidies and regional policies, and an intricate mech-anism for the control of the labour market. This regulatory aspect became the centreof all socialist policies towards capitalism and further reduced the importance ofthe older goal of abolishing capitalism. The prosperity associated with capitalistgrowth, the establishment of full employment, the protective apparatus of the wel-fare state, the patent incapacity of communist states to develop a consumer societycomparable to that of the West, had almost eliminated the deep-seated antago-nism against capitalism that had previously existed. Other political parties, such asthose committed to Christian and conservative values, who, in the past, had notbeen major proponents of capitalism, discovered its virtues too. Thus, graduallybut constantly, at varying speeds depending on differing political conjuncturesand, above all, on electoral vicissitudes, the parties of the Left dropped their radicalanti-capitalist symbols. This process, generally referred to as revisionism, acceleratedin the late 1950s with the German SPD Bad Godesberg Congress, culminating withTony Blair’s New Labour in 1997. By then, free untrammelled market capitalismhad established itself as a major ideological strand in European politics to an extentunparalleled in the past where, especially in Catholic Europe (Spain, Portugal, Italy,Austria and southern Germany), the leading non-socialist ideologies had alwayshad a traditionalist form (Christian democracy) or, as in France, a national–popularone (Gaullism) or an authoritarian–populist one (as in Spain and Portugal). Even inProtestant Nordic countries, where the agrarian parties actively co-operated in theestablishment of social democratic hegemony, neo-liberalism acquired a significantposition. In Britain – the original home of laissez-faire ideology – free marketliberalism gained a dominant position during the 1980s.

Having correctly identified the state as the principal regulator of the capitalisteconomy, socialists sought, successfully, to democratize it and use it. As long as thestate held the position of chief regulator, social democratic strategy retained its fullcoherence. But as various aspects of capitalism (especially its financial organization)developed, with increasing force from the 1980s onward, in a global direction, thisstate-oriented strategy began to falter. Social democrats in the West remainedwedded to a national conception of politics and reinforced it constantly, ring-fencing their achievements (welfare, education, civil rights) within the territorialboundaries of the state, while capitalism set out to stride the globe.

The crumbling of communism, some had hoped, might have led to a strength-ening of social democracy – in spite of the unfounded but widespread view thatit would affect negatively social democracy, tarred, it was said, by its ideologicalassociation with communism. In fact, as I point out in the final chapters, social



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democratic parties were strongest in the decade following the collapse of com-munism, a movement which they had disparaged anyway well before the officialdemise of the USSR.

The Western communist parties were, of course, deeply affected by the endof the USSR. The Italian Communist Party, the strongest in the West, changedits name and continued its long-standing evolution towards social democracy –evolution punctuated by repeated changes of name, each underlining its growingdistance from its roots: first as the Democratic Party of the Left (still bearingsome of the symbols of its past such as the hammer and the sickle), then ‘LeftDemocrats’, before expunging even the generic label of ‘Left’ and its symbols tobecome, with unchanging prospects, Il Partito Democratico tout court, but barelyable to compete even with a discredited figure such as that of Silvio Berlusconi.The Italian communists survived as a shadow of their former selves. The fate of theItalian Socialist Party was far worse: fatally undermined by the corruption scandalsof 1991–92, it simply disappeared.

In the rest of Europe, the communist parties were annihilated. Even here,however, one should not over-estimate the impact of the fall of the Berlin Wallin 1989. Their crisis had started earlier. A year before the fall, at the 1988 Frenchpresidential elections, the French Communist candidate Andre Lajoinie could onlyobtain a paltry 6.7 per cent (in 1969 Jacques Duclos had managed a respectable 21

per cent). Worse was to follow when Robert Hue fell to 3.4 per cent in 2002 andMarie-George Buffet plummeted to a miserable 1.94 per cent in 2007. Even theTrotskyites did better. The French Communist Party had become a groupuscule. In2012 all it could muster were ten deputies elected on a platform which includedmore than half a dozen tiny formations – an ignoble end for what had been oneof the strongest communist parties in the West. The crucial reason behind itsdisappearance was the emergence, in the 1970s and 1980s, of a socialist party strongenough to rally all those who wanted to defeat the Right, well before events inMoscow sanctioned the end of communism. And when the fortunes of the PartiSocialiste started deteriorating after the astounding defeat of Lionel Jospin in thepresidential elections of 2002, French communism was beyond resuscitation.

Elsewhere the communist story was equally dismal. The Portuguese CommunistParty, which had obtained 18.9 per cent in 1979, declined throughout the 1980sending up with less than 8 per cent in 2011 (in alliance with the Greens). In Spainthe fall of the communists was even more abrupt. Under the banner of IzquierdaUnida it gathered only 11 per cent in 1996. By 2008 it had crumbled to 3.8 per cent,though it did improve in 2011, as the global crisis was hitting Spain, to reach 6.9per cent.

On the whole, far-right parties did far, far better than the far left. Marine LePen obtained 17.9 per cent of the vote in the French presidential elections of 2012,the Austrian FPO 17.5 per cent (2008), the Belgian Vlaams Blok 15 per cent inFlanders (2010), the Danks Folkeparti 12.3 per cent (2011), and the PVV in theNetherlands obtained 10 per cent (2012). In the Austrian presidential election thefar-right candidate, Barbara Rosenkranz, obtained over 15 per cent of the popular



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vote. Only in Greece was a leftist political party able to capitalize on the gravecrisis which had befallen the country: in the second election of 2012 Syriza (theCoalition of the Radical Left–Unitary Social Front) polled almost 27 per cent (inthe first it obtained 16 per cent) and became the main opposition. But even therethe far right did well: Golden Dawn, a proto-Nazi party, reached a remarkable 6.9per cent.

Thus, after 1989, social democracy remained the only significant organizedforce of the Left in Europe, including Eastern and Central Europe where theformer communist parties were reborn as social democratic parties. These weredetermined to defend and extend one of the positive features of communist rule,namely the welfare state and the protection of workers, protection all the morenecessary since pro-market forces had been unleashed and enjoyed wide localand international support. The prospects of this revitalized Left with a foot inthe (communist) past were, at first, fairly good. In the first free elections after1989, the post-communist parties were the strongest parties of the Left everywherein the former communist countries except in the Czech Republic – where thecommunist party had kept its name. The others had re-christened themselves associal democrats or some similar appellation, thus explicitly recognizing the failureof a movement whose original raison d’etre had been its sharp demarcation fromthe traditional socialist movement in the West. Lenin’s embalmed remains werestill exhibited before tourists in Moscow, but Leninism was now truly defunct.

Social democracy lived on where once communism prevailed. But it did not livewell. In Hungary the socialist party (the post-communist party) was able to obtainover 42 per cent of the vote in the 2008 election (it had only 33 per cent in 1994)and was in coalition with the liberals. But in 2010 it sunk miserably to 19.3 per centwhile the conservative Fidesz (a party well to the right of mainstream Europeanconservative parties) obtained an absolute majority of the vote – a rare feat in thepanorama of post-war elections in Europe. Nor were the Hungarian socialists ableto rally the discontented since this role was taken by a far-right party, Jobbik, whichgathered an impressive 16.7 per cent.

The Bulgarian (ex-communist) socialist party fared little better. In 2005, as partof a wider electoral bloc, it obtained 34 per cent and was returned to government incoalition with other parties. But in the subsequent elections, in 2009, it plummetedto a dismal 17.7 per cent obtaining only 40 out of 240 seats.

In Poland, a coalition of left-wing parties led by the Democratic Left Alliance(SLD: Sojusz Lewicy Demokratycznej) won clearly the 2001 elections but it lost,equally clearly, the subsequent two elections.

In other words: in Eastern and Central Europe even social democracy failed toestablish a hegemonic presence. Its weakness, or timidity, was one of the causesof the near impossibility of preserving a strong public sector, or containing thegrowth in inequalities, or enhancing or even maintaining the pre-existing welfarestate. The fault was not (entirely) of the new social democratic parties: a weak andbarely established market economy is not the best platform for the development orpreservation of social democracy. As G. M. Tamas, once a dissident in Romania and



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in Hungary and a former liberal member of the Hungarian parliament, explained,the brief period of ‘liberal effervescence’ that followed the fall of communism ledto widespread privatization and ‘the dismantling of the remains of the “socialist”welfare state, along with the realignment of the former “communist” state parties’to the neo-liberal agenda.1

How about Western Europe? What have been and what are the prospects forsocial democratic reformism? The parties, of course, are still there, and will be therefor a while, but has the impetus for social democratic policies exhausted itself overthese last 10 or 20 years? Is there any comfort for those who still regard themselvesas social democrats? I write these words at a time of deep crisis for social democracy.At the end of the 1990s there seemed to be no crisis at all. In 1996, Romano Prodi,at the head of a coalition of parties which included the former communists, formedthe first ‘Left’ government in post-war Italian history, defeating Silvio Berlusconi.The following year the British Labour Party, led by Tony Blair, was returned topower after 18 years of conservative rule with a historic majority. In the same year,in France, the Parti Socialiste won the legislative election and Lionel Jospin becameprime minister. The following year – we are now in 1998 – Gerhard Schroder, leaderof the German Social Democratic Party, became chancellor of Germany. Thus, forthe first time ever, the largest four states in Western Europe – Germany, GreatBritain, France and Italy – were all led by parties of the Left. Nor was this left-wingwave confined to the big four. The Left also ruled (alone or in coalition) in almostall the other countries of the European Union: Sweden, Holland, Finland, Austria,Belgium, Denmark, Portugal and Greece.

Had European social democratic parties succeeded in exploiting that uniqueconjuncture to develop common policies at the continental level, establishing, forinstance, a social security net binding the whole of the European Union, or aredistributive fiscal policy across the EU, or a tight system of labour regulationsenforceable throughout Europe, one would be able to write, with some degree ofconfidence, that social democracy, though unable to expand seriously in the rest ofthe world, had managed to survive and even thrive in its European redoubt.

This, however, was far from being the case. Each socialist party pursued itsdomestic agenda with scant regard for the wider European dimension while givingthe odd rhetorical nod to the idea of supra-national integration. The establishmentof a single currency, the euro, did not pave the way for a system of pan-Europeancontrols which would have given the currency the proper regulatory structure. InBritain ‘New’ Labour stayed well clear of the single currency in order to allowits financial system as much freedom as possible. How difficult it was for socialdemocracy to abandon the integument of the nation-state was abundantly notedin the first edition of this book. All that has happened since has confirmed this.By and large, the European Union has remained a loose confederation of stateswith different capitalisms. As the twentieth century faded away, the 15 countries ofthe Union (as they were then) still had markedly different fiscal policies, differentindustrial relations systems and different welfare states. In the first few years ofthe new millennium, 12 more states joined the Union, most of them poorer than



P R E F A C E xvii

the poorest of the old 15, with ill-equipped industrial structures and a poorlyregulated capitalism. The ease with which the European Union was enlarged waswidely celebrated, even though the chief reason why expansion was so simplewas because integration had been so perfunctory. Much of what the EuropeanUnion had achieved was the removal of barriers to competition to facilitate thefree movement of goods, capital and people. There was no significant Europeanpolitical or social dimension – just a group of states negotiating. There was never aserious Europe-wide co-operation between socialist parties. The Party of EuropeanSocialists (PES) may comprise more than 30 social democratic parties, but it is nota party in any of the accepted senses of the word since it does not even contestthe elections for the European Parliament (which are always contested by nationalparties and never by a European party). The European Confederation of TradeUnions is a pressure group that issues declarations and negotiates agreements, not aforce employers or governments have to reckon with. They have no authority overnational unions. They are restricted in what they do by the limitations the memberstates have imposed on supra-nationalism. And everything must be subject to thegoal of unrestricted competition under the guise of harmonization.

The global downturn that started in 2007 added fuel to anti-European senti-ments. A survey conducted in September 2012 showed that the European Unionhad declining (though still favourable) ratings from a majority of the population inwell-established EU members such as Germany, France and Italy, and a respectable45 per cent in Britain. By May 2013 Germany’s support for the European projecthad fallen from 68 to 60, Britain’s was down to 43, France’s to 41 (from 60), Spainto 46 (from 80 per cent in 2007!). All this seems to suggest that pro-European sen-timents reflect the behaviour of the economy: when things go well, Europe is up.Yet, even here national politics dominates: all surveys show that many more blametheir own governments than they blame Europe (or, surprisingly, the banks).2

Socialist parties, when in power, ended up having to do what European gov-ernments have always been expected to do: to ensure that their own ‘national’capitalism (i.e. firms operating within their borders and/or employing a consid-erable number of their own people) remain strong and competitive. This is why,addressing the financial community at Mansion House on 20 June 2007, just asthe cataclysmic forces of the credit crunch were about to be unleashed, GordonBrown, then chancellor of the Exchequer, congratulated the City of London for itsremarkable achievements, ‘an era that history will record as the beginning of a newgolden age for the City of London’.3 Happy that London had seen off the compe-tition from Tokyo, and New York, he praised the country’s and, by implication, hisgovernment’s openness to the world and global reach, ‘pioneers of free trade andits leading defenders ... with a deep and abiding belief in open markets’.

Politics remained overwhelmingly ‘national’ in character, and the parties of theLeft, just like those of the Right, continued to respond to their own nationalelectorate. They were inevitably constrained by the weight of their own traditionsand those of their own countries. They reacted to the persisting differences in thelevels of development and structural characteristics of their respective economies.



xviii O N E H U N D R E D Y E A R S O F S O C I A L I S M

The fabled European convergence is now as remote as ever, largely becausethe political pressure for expansion (from 15 to 27, and, by July 2013, 28 with theaccession of Croatia) are greater than the requirements of economic synchroniza-tion. The creation of the euro failed to produce a greater degree of cohesion, andthe subsequent crisis of the eurozone, following the global downturn of 2007–08,added to the woes of the European project.

The crisis of the eurozone did not start in Europe and was not due to thecommon currency. It started in the USA with the sub-prime crisis which led to thebankruptcy of Lehman Brothers (the fourth largest investment bank in America),and the Federal bailout of AIG, the largest underwriter of commercial and industrialinsurance. The crisis then ‘transferred’ itself to the European banking system,forcing various states to refinance their banks. The austerity policies which thenfollowed had the effect of exacerbating the divisions among European countries(including those not in the eurozone, such as the United Kingdom and Iceland).Just as economic growth helped social democracy, austerity programmes and theconsequent contraction of public spending and the public sector added to thewoes of the parties of the Left. Those in power felt themselves forced to followpolicies which would disadvantage their followers more than the better off. Those inopposition were not able to rally support by deploying the same populist methodsas the parties of the far right.

The crisis revealed new differences within Europe, differences which only acentral authority might be able to remedy (just as national states tried, oftensuccessfully, to contain the growth of regional differences). But there were olderones too: the size of the working class may have been shrinking everywhere, butthe rate of de-industrialization was highly uneven: far higher in Sweden and in theUK than in Germany or Austria; unemployment in Spain was always higher thanelsewhere; inward and outward investment prevailed in Britain far more than inItaly. Opposition to cuts in welfare spending was more significant in France andGermany (where, however, it took different forms) than in Britain.

Social indicators suggest other significant differences: a higher rate of divorceand family break-ups in Britain; a lower demographic growth in Italy, Greeceand Spain; lower female participation in the labour force in Italy; more part-timefemale work (and concentrated among the less skilled) in Britain than in France.The murder rate in Lithuania is three times that of nearby Finland and six timesthat of Sweden; that of Belgium is three times that of Austria.4 Ecology plays a farmore important role in politics in Germany and Sweden than in France or Spain.Feminism has greater strength in Western than in Eastern Europe.

The last 30 years have witnessed the extraordinary ideological success of the pro-ponents of the liberalization of market forces and the effective termination of themain European model of capitalist regulation: ‘national-Keynesianism’. ‘National-Keynesianism’ assumed that national economic policy could be relatively effectivein determining major economic variables, such as the balance of payments, interestrates, prices, growth and employment. Irrespective of separate national traditions,economic particularities, contrasting social structures and cultural differences, the



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nations of the world were being enjoined to deregulate labour markets, to lower oreliminate tariffs, to privatize state property, to eliminate subsidies and, in general,to let market forces operate with as few impediments as possible. An internationalcommunication system, largely originating in the West but global in its reach,enveloped the entire planet. Consumption patterns were rapidly international-ized: similar fast food outlets, items of fashion and television programmes becameavailable in New Delhi, Tokyo, Rome, Paris, Moscow and Cairo. The spectaculardevelopment of the internet further shortened distances and facilitated commu-nications. A ‘grand narrative’ of global proportion, unequalled in earlier times,established itself. It told a story of progress which was sharply different from thattold by the Left. The narrative of the Left was one in which socialism was the naturalsuccessor to the Enlightenment. A rational system of distributing resources and or-ganizing the economy would complete the work of democracy. Against this project,so argued those on the Left, were ranked the forces of obscurantism and reaction,those who wished to protect ancient privileges under new (capitalist) guises.

But the new, grand neo-liberal narrative told a different story. According to this,the world market was opening up an unprecedented era of individual freedom.The state, by imposing rules and regulation, was holding back such development.By taxing people it taxed enterprise, innovation and individual effort. Socialism,in whatever form, had been defeated and deservedly so since it was, and is, sothey allege, illiberal, statist and dogmatic; rewards inefficiency; and penalizes ini-tiative. Socialism, continued the neo-liberal narrative, has remained anchored toa nation-state whose only useful tasks are now not much more than maintaininglaw and order and defending the national territory. There could be no global chal-lenge to global market forces – only resurgent forms of nationalism or the rise ofdifferent varieties of religious fundamentalism – paltry local reactions rather thaninternational countervailing forces able to challenge the Onward March of Capital.

It is, of course, far too early to establish whether the so-called global downturnthat started in 2007–08 and the ensuing global economic crisis can lead to a revivalof the fortunes of social democratic parties and the abandonment of neo-liberalism.The fact is that in the ten years following the peak of social democratic electoraland political gains there have not been major strides either towards a strengtheningof welfare states or towards redistribution even in the economically strongest states.Quite the contrary.

Today the signs are ominous and disheartening for social democrats. This may besurprising since it was widely assumed that the neo-liberal apologists of deregulationwould have been the ideological losers from the collapse of banks and insurancecompanies and from the unpopularity of incompetent bankers in receipt of absurdlylarge bonuses. The wave of nationalization and state intervention which followedthe credit crunch of 2007–08 did certainly humiliate the neo-liberals as startlingand unexpected events unfolded, such as the transformation of the US governmentunder George W. Bush into the largest shareholder in the American bankingsystem.5 The humiliation for those who had once been celebrated as the Mastersof the Universe was compounded when their unjustified greed was revealed –



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spectacularly so in the case of Richard (Dick) Fuld, the Lehman Brothers’ chiefexecutive, who admitted receiving from his company ‘only’ $350 million in bonuses(and not 500 million dollars as he had been accused) between 1993 and 2007 –which works out at well over $10,000 per working hour (the US federal minimumwage was, in July 2009, $7.25). Yet his main achievement appears to have been thatof driving Lehman Brothers to the largest corporate bankruptcy in recorded history.An institution with assets of $639 billion – more than the gross domestic productof Argentina (one of Latin America’s richest countries) – was not worth anything atall by the second half of 2008.6 In the USA the beneficiary of the crumbling of theneo-liberal state may well have been the election of Barak Obama, the most ‘left-wing’ president since Roosevelt (though hardly the proponent of a ‘new Americansocialist experiment’ as some of his opponents, such as the Republican leader inthe House of Representatives, John Boehner, claimed on 27 February 2009).7 InEurope, however, the anxieties, so far, have been directed elsewhere, namely towardsstrengthening the already substantial vote for the parties of the xenophobic Right.The Left performed increasingly dismally and, by the end of 2013, there will hardlybe any socialist governments left in Europe – a remarkable change since 1999.Those that exist, such as that of Francois Hollande in France, faced, soon after itsvictory, growing popular hostility. Six months after his election, in November 2012,he broke the record as the most unpopular French president at that stage of thepresidential mandate, with the backing of only 36 per cent of the French people –Nicolas Sarkozy had a 53 per cent approval rating six months after his election in2007.8 In Italy the apparent demise of Silvio Berlusconi in 2011, his resignationbeing followed by a technocratic government led by the monetarist economistMario Monti, turned out to be temporary. The discontent of Italians with theMonti government was not transformed into gains for the Left in the elections ofFebruary 2013 but into a surprising advance for an ‘anti-political’ populist party,the Movimento Cinque Stelle led by the comedian Beppe Grillo, whose ideologicaloutlook is ambiguous and unclear.

The global downturn, which so many have compared to the Great Crash of1929, far from representing a springboard for a revival of socialism, has confirmedthe triumph of capitalism. A social order can be said to be truly ensconced notwhen everyone celebrates its beneficial effects, its sturdiness and strength, butwhen everyone rallies to its defence when it falters. The central preoccupationof political forces everywhere was, in fact, to save the system. From Beijing toWashington through to London, Paris and Berlin, Left and Right were unitedby the understanding that capitalism had to be rescued, since its demise, so theythought, would be catastrophic for all. Few, even on the Left, envisaged that acredible alternative to capitalism could be erected over its ruins. Social democratsrefrained from rocking the boat when it leaked and did their best to find waysof keeping it afloat. They knew that their past and future successes were closelyconnected not only to their ability to obtain popular support but to a multiplicityof factors including the wealth of the economy and the prevailing political ethosand the relative strength of capital and labour. And labour was weak.



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The global downturn was greeted at first as a fundamental defeat for neo-liberalism. After the first shock, it was indeed a little humbled. But it soon recoveredand, with an enviable self-assurance and without the slightest sign of self-criticism,it returned to its crusade against state intervention and the public sector.

The difficulty facing those who still call themselves socialist is that, while theyneed capitalism and the economic growth and prosperity which it can generate,capitalism does not need them. Capitalist societies can be organized in an eco-nomically sustainable way by offering only minimal protection to some marginalgroups (the USA) or by devolving welfare activities to organizations of civil societysuch as large firms, families and social groups (Japan). Moreover, socialist leadersand followers are increasingly reluctant to identify themselves with the term social-ism. No ideology can survive for long if its followers are embarrassed to identifythemselves with it.

The defence of the ‘European social model’ is all that remains of the social demo-cratic agenda. This is now largely defensive action. Its success will depend on howthe global crisis develops and on the longer-term effect of the shift of manufacturingaway from Europe. Though the connection between social democratic parties andthe working class had become looser over the years, there was still sufficient close-ness with the organized labour movement – the trade unions – to maintain a highdegree of continuity with the traditional socialist demands of the past. NowadaysEuropean trade unions are weak, particularly in the private sector, and there arefewer industrial workers in Europe than at any time since the nineteenth century.Union density – that is, the proportion of trade union members among workersand employees – has not collapsed, yet, but the trend is unmistakable.

Trade Union Density

Germany France Italy UK

1980 34.8 18.2 49.5 49.71999 25.3 8.1 35.4 30.12003 23.0 7.9 33.6 29.5c.2011 18.4 7.5 35.1 25.8

Source: OECD

The figures for Sweden and Denmark are higher (though these have declinedtoo) suggesting that the Scandinavian model has better chances of surviving. Butthis can offer few reasons for comfort, particularly since the majority of unionmembers tend to be in the public sector: no longer workers versus capitalists butworkers versus the state as an employer. In the UK, union density in the publicsector was, in 2010, 56.3 per cent, but only 14.2 per cent in the private sector.9

Faced with an international environment which has been, and will continue tobe, hostile to the survival of national welfare states, the basic co-ordinates of the



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Left’s defensive strategy are an acceptance that market forces should be regulatedbut not so that they make the national economy uncompetitive; that the growth ofpublic spending must be contained – particularly after the drain on resources causedby the necessity of saving the financial system; that the welfare state can be defendedbut not extended; that privatization may well be desirable; that equality, thoughstill appealing as a goal, may have to be tempered by electoral considerations; andthat the power of international financial institutions cannot be contained – in spiteof the rhetoric of co-ordination used in all international forums.

The poor performance of the Left and the modesty of its aims is all the moreremarkable when one bears in mind that most surveys show that a massive majority(well over 70 per cent) of Europeans believe that the gap between the rich and thepoor has increased, that the current economic system favours the rich, and thatinequalities are a serious problems.10 Unable or unwilling to capitalize on suchsentiments, the prospects for the Left are dismal. Its parties have been forced onthe defensive and have little new to propose. A defensive strategy can work only ifit is temporary. The point of politics, however, is to win and not to stand still.

Notes

1. G. M. Tamas, ‘Words from Budapest’, New Left Review, No. 80, March/April 2013,p. 22.

2. See the following surveys:http://www.pewglobal.org/2012/05/29/european-unity-on-the-rocks;http://www.pewglobal.org/2013/05/13/the-new-sick-man-of-europe-the-european-union;http://www.pewglobal.org/2012/05/29/chapter-1-national-conditions-and-economic-ratings.

3. Speech by the chancellor of the Exchequer, the Rt Hon Gordon Brown MP, to Man-sion House; see http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/+/http:/www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/2014.htm.

4. Figures from United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime; see http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/data-and-analysis/homicide.html.

5. Stephen Foley, ‘Wall Street humiliated by nationalisation of banks’, Independent, 15 October2008.

6. See ‘A Fight for a Piece of What’s Left’ by Jonathan D. Glater and Gretchen Mor-genson, in New York Times, 15 September 2008: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/16/business/16bankruptcy.html.

7. Speech to the Conservative Action Conference, 27 February 2009; see http://www.gwu.edu/∼action/2008/cpac2009/cpac2009boehner.html.

8. TNS-Sofres for Le Figaro magazine; see http://www.lefigaro.fr/assets/pdf/barometre-figmag-021112.pdf.

9. James Achur, Trade Union Membership 2012, Department of Business Initiative and Skills,p. 10; see https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment data/file/16384/tum2010.pdf.

10. http://www.pewresearch.org/2013/05/14/europeans-grow-dissatisfied-with-the-inequities-of-the-economic-system.

‘A remarkable new work of historical analysis, which will soon establish itself as a classic, Donald Sassoon’s lucid and erudite One Hundred Years of Socialism demonstrates that … the effective parties of the Left, whether social democratic or (in a few cases such as France and Italy) communist … have served to regulate and socialize the wealth-creating and directionless economic dynamism of capitalism, not replace it.’ Eric Hobsbawm

‘A majestic work. Nothing like this great survey exists in any language … stylishly written, with an ironic wit and vivid gift of metaphor, the book is an unfailing pleasure to read.’ The Economist

‘Sassoon’s book is remarkable. A massive and original synthesis which deserves to become a classic, there is nothing comparable to it in the English language.’ David Marquand

‘Donald Sassoon tells his kaleidoscopic story with ease and urbanity as he guides his readers, with great skill, through the complex issues of ideology and industrial development, diplomacy and war, which have shaped one hundred years of European socialism.’ Paul Preston

‘[An] extraordinary achievement … Sassoon constantly stresses, with an amazing and enviable width of scholarship, how the pre-existent cultures of different countries made the socialist project so different in each … this book is a small masterpiece. It is vastly informative … and wise in its conclusions … I have not felt so sure that a work would be a standard book in a long time.’ Sir Bernard Crick

‘An astonishing achievement. One Hundred Years of Socialism is so learned and wide-ranging, so densely packed and yet so readable, so subtle and refined in its judgements and scholarship, it is a constant source of inspiration.’ Hugo Young

‘I read it with unflagging interest and appetite never wishing it a page shorter. After reading Sassoon’s enthralling account, glib capitalist triumphalism seems as historically misconceived as the naive socialist millenarianism of an earlier generation.’ Peter Clarke

‘A brilliant and scholarly work.’ Tony Benn

‘A genuinely major contribution to political understanding.’ New York Times

‘Epic … an encyclopaedic comparative work drawing freely on the histories of countries as diverse as Britain, Germany, Greece, Denmark and Finland … its greatest strength lies in his placing of the Left–Right ideological battle within the context of the change and development of a capitalist system. Thus, [Sassoon] says, there has been no defeat of socialism by capitalism; the crisis of socialism was precipitated by the expansion of and changes in capitalism.’ Alan Thompson, Times Higher Education Supplement

‘Brilliant … Sassoon’s view is based on quite phenomenally extensive reading and knowledge. Yet we never feel ourselves to be drowning in a morass of unconnected or undigested detail. Nor does learning here preclude liveliness and wit … an astonishing achievement, which deserves to become a classic of socialist history.’ Anthony Arblaster, Tribune

‘Admirable … based on vast reading (the sixty-page bibliography is no exercise in vanity, but is copiously exploited in ninety pages of helpful notes), the book is an authoritative guide to the recent history of social democratic parties and governments not only in the major Western European states but also in the many smaller countries.’ Tony Judt, Times Literary Supplement

‘The panoptic history of the European Left, from Oslo to Athens, and 1900 to 1995, is uninterruptedly interesting … the author has scaled a mountain of scholarship and returned with an indispensable work of reference and reflection.’ Norman Birnbaum, Political Quarterly

‘A compelling account.’ Malcolm Rutherford, Financial Times

‘This history of the Western European Left, recounted by Donald Sassoon with style and sympathy, is the history not of revolution but of reform.’ Stephen Tindale, Prospect

‘Compelling … an antidote to the fin de siècle gloom and modish talk of the end of ideology.’ Fabian Review

‘The major political book of the year … Sassoon offers an extraordinary, wide-angle focus on socialist parties over a century and across the industrialized world.’ Patricia Hewitt, New Statesman Books of the Year

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One HundredYears Of

sOcialismTHe WesT eurOpean lefT in THe TWenTieTH cenTurY

dOnald sassOOn

One HundredYears Of

sOcialismTHe WesT eurOpean

lefT in THe TWenTieTH cenTurY

dOnald sassOOn

This new edition of Donald Sassoon’s magisterial history of the Left in the twentieth century includes a substantial new preface by the author. With unique authority and unparalleled scholarship, Sassoon traces the fortunes of the political parties of the Left in Western Europe across 14 countries, examining socialism from the rise of the Bolsheviks through two world wars to the revival of feminism and the rise of ‘green’ politics.

dOnald sassOOn was born in Cairo and educated in Paris, Milan and London. He is Emeritus Professor of Comparative European History at Queen Mary, University of London and is the author of several highly acclaimed books, including Contemporary Italy: Politics, Economy and Society Since 1945, Mona Lisa: The History of the World’s Most Famous Painting, The Culture of the Europeans and Mussolini and the Rise of Fascism.

www.ibtauris.comCover image: ‘Il Quarto Stato’ by Giuseppe Pellizza da Volpedo. Galleria d’Arte Moderna, Milan

‘remarkable …’ eric HObsbaWm

‘majesTic …’ THe ecOnOmisT

‘cOmpelling …’ TOnY judT

‘brillianT …’ TOnY benn

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One Hundred Years of Socialism: The West European Left in the Twentieth Century