Transnational Labour History: Explorations by Marcel van der Linden

Author:Marcel van der Linden [Linden, Marcel van der]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, General
ISBN: 9781351877916
Google: ozorDwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 2907766
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2003-10-17T00:00:00+00:00

Notes

1 The first draft of this chapter was presented as a paper at the conference ‘Nuevos Aspectos en la Historia del Movimiento Obrero’, Fundación 10 de Mayo (Comisiones Obreras), and Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, 5–6 October 1998. I wish to thank Juan Pan-Montojo, Manuel Pérez Ledesma, and Victor Wallis for their helpful comments.

2 The concepts ‘social democratic party’, ‘socialist party’ and ‘labour party’ are used synonymously in this chapter.

3 For example, Kitschelt, Herbert (1994), The Transformation of European Social Democracy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

4 For example, Fox Piven, Frances (1991), ‘The Decline of Labor Parties. An Overview’, in idem (ed.), Labor Parties in Postindustrial Society, Cambridge: Polity Press, pp. 1–19.

5 For example, Pontusson, Jonas (1995), ‘Explaining the Decline of European Social Democracy’, World Politics, 47, pp. 495–533.

6 Hobsbawm, Eric J. (1981), ‘The Forward March of Labour Halted?’, in Martin Jacques and Francis Mulhern (eds), The Forward March of Labour Halted?, London: New Left Books, pp. 1–19. Hobsbawm’s text was originally published in 1978.

7 Dahrendorf, Ralf (1983), Die Chancen der Krise. Über die Zukunft des Liberalismus, Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, pp. 16–24; idem (1990), Reflections on the Revolution in Europe, London: Times Books, p. 38.

8 A critique of relevant literature appears in Armingeon, Klaus (1989), ‘Sozialde-mokratie am Ende? Die Entwicklung der Macht sozialdemokratischer Parteien im internationalen Vergleich 1945–1988’, Österreichische Zeitschrift für Politikwis-senschaft, 18, pp. 321–45, esp. pp. 322–27.

9 Sänkiaho, Risto (1984), ‘Political Remobilization in Welfare States’, in Russell J. Dalton, Scott C. Flanagan and Paul Allen Beck (eds), Electoral Change in Advanced Industrial Democracies. Realignment or Dealignment?, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, p. 73.

10 A similar point is made (for the shorter period 1945–90) in Merkel, Wolfgang (1992), ‘After the Golden Age. Is Social Democracy Doomed to Decline?’, in Christiane Lemke and Gary Marks (eds), The Crisis of Socialism in Europe, Durham and London: Duke University Press, pp. 136–70 at pp. 139–40.

11 The Southern European parties are generally treated as a separate category in the literature. See, for example, Buci-Glucksmann, Christine and Therborn, Göran (1981), Le défi social-démocrate, Paris: Maspéro, pp. 30–34; Keman, Hans (1990), ‘Social Democracy and the Politics of Welfare Statism’, Netherlands’ Journal of Social Sciences, 26, pp. 17–34, 18–25; Sassoon, Donald (1998), ‘Fin-de-Siècle Socialism’, New Left Review, 227, January-February, pp. 88–96 at p. 91. I will not address the parties in Luxembourg and Iceland (these countries are so small that the phenomena reflect a different order of magnitude), Ireland, Greece, and Finland (because of the language barrier), or Portugal (due to lack of sufficient historical work on the pre-Salazar period). I also neglect the history of competing party organizations.

12 While a detailed explanation would exceed the scope of this chapter, I recommend distinguishing ‘capitalists’ from ‘capitalism’. I define capitalism as a society ruled by production, distribution, and consumption of commodities; I consider capitalists to be people and institutions that own means of production and purchase labour power on the labour market. Theoretically, capitalism can survive the elimination of capitalists: if workers acquire control of all companies while the commodities-based economy is unaffected, capitalism will remain without the capitalists.

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