Abstract
Gerassimos Moschonas, the author of In the Name of Social Democracy, has argued that although the social democratic and labour parties of Europe were founded with the intention of transforming capitalism, their success in doing so pales in comparison to how capitalism has transformed social democracy.1 This is indeed the case, not merely for the European social democratic parties but for their Australasian counterparts. It is rarely a surprise when parties of the right enthusiastically embrace neoliberal, market-oriented economic policies. But for parties of the left to do so, not merely as concessions in the face of objective economic conditions but at the ideological, programmatic level, indicates that a dramatic change has taken place within social democracy in general—indeed, a change in social democracy’s very ‘essence’. The question is, why has this occurred?
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Notes
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© 2015 Jason Schulman
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Schulman, J. (2015). Introduction: The Transformation of Social Democratic Parties. In: Neoliberal Labour Governments and the Union Response. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137303172_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137303172_1
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